Red Devils -17 Mark Twain

March 22

Fredrick knew that he had to present his work on Mark Twain (pictured above)  on next Monday, and all during the meeting we had with him on Saturday, he looked really worried. He kept his notebook in his hand the whole time, and seemed to be copying down just about everything Mr. Clemens said.

He stood in the front of the room, cleared his throat and started speaking:

"I have not written out my essay in a finished fashion yet, but what I have done is to put down the questions I put to Mr. Clemens, and his answers. I hope, Miss Marble, that you will think this is acceptable for my report. I really haven’t had time since Saturday to write all that I learned up."

“Well, let’s hear what you have to say, Fredrick.”

"Well, as well as our visit on Saturday, I did write to Mr. Clemens and he answered me. I asked him about knowing the other people that were the subjects of the rest of your essays. I hope you don’t feel like I'm stealing your thunder, but I thought it so interesting that these people knew each other.

Did you find any kind of common ground when you met Charles Dickens?

"I met him on February 5, 1868 on his second trip here. I was working as a correspondent in San Francisco, and was 32. He was 55 but seemed much older. I commended Mr. Dickens on his style and his stride, and complained about his enunciation. I only heard him read once. It was in New York. I had a seat about the middle of Steinway Hall, and that was rather further away from the speaker than was pleasant or profitable.

"Promptly at 8 P.M., unannounced, and without waiting for any stamping or clapping of hands to call him out, a tall, "spry," thin-legged old gentleman, gotten up regardless of expense, especially as to shirt-front and diamonds, with a bright red flower in his button-hole, gray beard and mustache, bald head, and with side hair brushed fiercely and tempestuously forward, as if its owner were sweeping down before a gale of wind, the very Dickens came! He did not emerge upon the stage - that is rather too deliberate a word - he strode. He strode - in the most English way and exhibiting the most English general style and appearance - straight across the broad stage, heedless of everything, unconscious of everybody, turning neither to the right nor the left - but striding eagerly straight ahead, as if he had seen a girl he knew turn the next corner. He brought up handsomely in the center and faced the opera glasses. 

"Mr. Dickens had a table to put his book on, and on it he had also a tumbler, a fancy decanter and a small bouquet. Behind him he had a huge red screen - a bulkhead - a sounding-board, I took it to be - and overhead in front was suspended a long board with reflecting lights attached to it, which threw down a glory upon the gentleman, after the fashion in use in the picture-galleries for bringing out the best effects of great paintings. Style! - There is style about Dickens, and style about all his surroundings.

"He read David Copperfield. He is a bad reader, in one sense - because he does not enunciate his words sharply and distinctly - he does not cut the syllables cleanly, and therefore many of them fell dead before they reached our part of the house.

"I was a good deal disappointed in Mr. Dickens' reading - I will go further and say, a great deal disappointed. The Herald and Tribune critics must have been carried away by their imaginations when they wrote their extravagant praises of it. Mr. Dickens' reading is rather monotonous, as a general thing; his voice is husky; his pathos is only the beautiful pathos of his language - there is no heart, no feeling in it - it is glittering frost work; his rich humor cannot fail to tickle an audience into ecstasies save when he reads to himself. And what a bright, intelligent audience he had! He ought to have made them laugh, or cry, or shout, at his own good will or pleasure - but he did not. They were very much tamer than they should have been.

 "I have given "first impressions." Possibly if I had heard Mr. Dickens read a few more times I might have found a different style of impressions taking possession of me. But not knowing anything about that, I cannot testify."

How did you get to know Mr. P. T. Barnum?

"I met them through my wife, Susy, when they called on her in Hartford. At the time Phineus was lecturing for the Redpath Lyceum Bureau and we heard his lecture, “The World and How to Live in It.” He spoke without notes, illustrating his ideas with many a capitally told story. It is safe to say that as a humorist he could soon make a reputation as a lecturer second only to mine.

"And he used an anecdote in his talk about something I told him about my aunt who would borrow trouble for days, weeks, months, a year ahead; who would borrow it from the grave, and who one day even “jumped the grave.” I found the old lady one day in an attitude of extreme dejection. “Why, aunty,” I said, “what is the trouble now? I am sure you are borrowing trouble about something.”

“Ah,” said she, “I was thinking about heaven, and that perhaps after all it ain’t as nice a place as we think it is.”

What did you think of Abe Lincoln?

"It was no accident that planted Lincoln on a Kentucky farm, half way between the lakes and the Gulf. The association there had substance in it. Lincoln belonged just where he was put. If the Union was to be saved, it had to be a man of such an origin that should save it. No wintry New England Brahmin could have done it, or any torrid cotton planter, regarding the distant Yankee as a species of obnoxious foreigner. It needed a man of the border, where civil war meant the grapple of brother and brother and disunion a raw and gaping wound. It needed one who knew slavery not from books only, but as a living thing, knew the good that was mixed with its evil, and knew the evil not merely as it affected the Negroes, but in its hardly less baneful influence upon the poor whites. It needed one who knew how human all the parties to the quarrel were, how much alike they were at bottom, who saw them all reflected in himself, and felt their dissensions like the tearing apart of his own soul. When the war came Georgia sent an army in gray and Massachusetts an army in blue, but Kentucky raised armies for both sides. And this man, sprung from Southern poor whites, born on a Kentucky farm and transplanted to an Illinois village, this man, in whose heart knowledge and charity had left no room for malice, was marked by Providence as the one to "bind up the Nation's wounds."

Did you fight in the Civil War?

"I was born in a slave state. My father was a slave-owner before the Civil War, and I was a second lieutenant in the confederate service - for a while.

"Oh, I could have stayed longer. There was plenty of time. The trouble was with the weather. I never saw such weather. I was there, and I have no apologies to offer. But I will say that if this second cousin of mine, Henry Watterson, who was born and reared in a slave state and was a Colonel in the Confederate service, had rendered me such assistance as he could and had taken my advice the Union armies would never have been victorious. I laid out the whole plan with remarkable foresight, and if Colonel Watterson had carried out my orders I should have succeeded in my vast enterprise.

"It was my intention to drive General Grant into the Pacific Ocean. If I could have had the proper assistance from Colonel Watterson it would have been accomplished. I told Watterson to surround the eastern armies and wait until I came up. But he stood upon the punctilio of military etiquette and refused to take orders from a Second Lieutenant of the Confederate army, and so the Union was saved. Now, this is the first time that this secret has ever been revealed. No one outside of the family has known these facts, but they're the truth of how Watterson saved the Union, and to think that up to this very hour that man gets no pension! That's the way we treat people who save Unions for us.

"The hearts of this whole nation, North and South, were in the war. We of the South were not ashamed of the part we took. We believed in those days we were fighting for the right - and it was a noble fight, for we were fighting for our sweethearts, our homes, and our lives. Today we no longer regret the result, today we are glad that it came out as it did, but we of the South are not ashamed that we made an endeavor."

What is your impression of the American Indians?

"I write about Indians in my books. Here is a quote from one of my talks that includes them.

 “I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other.”

"Years ago, I was accused of loading an Indian up with beans lubricated with nitro-glycerine and sending him in an ox wagon over a stumpy road. This was impossible, on its face, for no one would risk oxen in that way. But it shows how far malice will deflect an aborigine from the equator of truth."

Can you give me any advice about my wanting to write?

"When in doubt, tell the truth. A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. Get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you wish. Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.

Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people will always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too can become great."

What sorts of books do you recommend that I read?

"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."

 What is your philosophy of life?

"I am different from Washington; I have a higher, grander standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie, but I won't. Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.

"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. The way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.

"The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.

"The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money. The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right.

"Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more."

How do you like being famous?

"There's always something about your success that displeases even your best friends."

What is it like living next door to Harriet Beecher Stowe?

"We belong to an artistic community known as Nook Farm. The name derived from the nook in the river by the baseball diamond. One reason why so many literate people are attracted to Hartford is that the city became a major center of publishing soon after the American Revolution. By 1820 there were twenty publishing houses there and it was very congenial to literary men and women.

"I first visited Hartford in 1868. The following year I had my first big success with the publication of The Innocents Abroad. I chose Hartford because my publisher and my wife's close family friends were here. In addition, the city was a leader in the publishing world.

"When I moved there, I got into the middle of a family squabble that was also the scandal of the century. I rented space in the house of John Hooker and his wife, Isabella Beecher who is Harriet’s sister. Her work for women's suffrage placed her at odds with her sisters, Catherine and Harriet, who publicly denounce women's suffrage. Indeed, the whole women's movement split into two wings, with the more conservative wing backed by Henry Ward, Catherine and Harriet. Isabella stayed with the more liberal wing. She defended the controversial Victoria Woodhull, who combined an advocacy of women's suffrage with free-love. In 1872, Victoria went public with the oft-repeated story of Henry Ward's adulterous affair with the wife of one of his colleagues. Isabella believed her brother to be guilty and urged him to make a public confession. As a result of her stand, she became a virtual isolate in the community.

"I was caught in the middle as I was living in the Hooker house from 1871 to 1874 and I looked upon the scandal as further proof of the moral rottenness of the nation. But I used it in my writing which you will find is often critical of American society. I wanted to express my outrage so I used it in my novel, The Gilded Age."

Fredrick finished his talk and sat down, and we all thought that he had done a good job.