Part 1
ABROAD WITH MARK TWAIN and EUGENE FIELD
_Tales They Told to a Fellow Correspondent_
By
HENRY W. FISHER
[Illustration]
NICHOLAS L. BROWN
NEW YORK MCMXXII
COPYRIGHT, 1922
_by_
NICHOLAS L. BROWN
To
MARIAN PHELPS
(_Mrs. Phelps-Peters_)
whose youth, beauty and cleverness delighted Mark Twain in his troubled Berlin days.
_EDITOR’S NOTE_
_Along in 1909, Fisher and I were working for the same newspaper, Fisher as a special writer and I in the art department. We both subsequently escaped, but that is another story. Just then I happened to be working on the_ BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN _(Harper, 1910). Fisher told me that he was going to do some magazine stories on Mark and promised to let me have proofs, but a week or two later he went away on one of his periodical trips to Europe, and I lost track of him for several years._
_Some time in 1921, I met him on Broadway, New York. “Hello, Fisher,” says I, “where have you been, what are you doing, and where are those flowing whiskers you used to sport?”_
_“Hello, Johnson,” replied Fisher, peering at me through his thick glasses, “I am just back from London, the air raids scared off my whiskers, and my eyesight has become so bad, I am only fit to be a ‘dictator’ now.”_
_“Well,” says I, continuing our conversation of many years ago, “where are those Mark Twain yarns you promised me?”_
_“In my head,” he said; “never had time to put them on paper.” “You know,” he added, “old Mark and I spent many weeks and months together in Berlin and Vienna and frequently met in London and Paris, not to mention more out-of-the-way places, and if I really put my mind to it, I can remember reams of Mark Twain’s sayings, while others are available in notebooks, diaries and such I kept off and on. And come to think of it, I can tell you about Eugene Field over there as well. I happened to occupy an editorial position in London, while Gene tried to set the Thames afire and--failed, poor chap.”_
_“Then,” says I, “come up to the studio any day, to-morrow if you like. I will have a stenographer there and you can start dictating your stories and we shall set the world laughing, putting them in a book.”_
_Fisher did, and here’s the book._
* * * * *
_Twain and Field did not expatriate themselves to the extent of other gifted Americans--Henry James, Bret Harte, Whistler, Abbey and Sargent--yet Twain settled down for months, and even years, in various European countries, while Field tried, during a hundred days or more, to make a go of it in London, before capitulating to climate and home-hunger._
_Previous glimpses of these two great American humorists during their several sojourns in Europe have come to us almost wholly through their letters to friends at home. Of course, a man reveals himself to a great extent in his private correspondence and diaries, but, even so, the picture is never complete; he cannot quite see himself as others see him. How Twain and Field appeared to another American in their strange environment is here set down for the first time._
_Fisher was in a unique position for contact with these men, both of whom he had met previously in the United States. He was one of the most widely known American correspondents in foreign parts; he had written for the Dalziel News Company (then a sort of United Press, dealing with the European continent) letters from Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Copenhagen, Belgrade, Vienna, Budapest, etc., that were telegraphed all over the world. He had acted as correspondent for the New York Telegram, the New York World, the New York Sun, the London Evening News, the Paris Messenger and the St. James Gazette; he had written special articles for Harper’s Weekly, printed alongside of Mark Twain’s contributions. He knew, or at least had a smattering knowledge of, all European languages; he knew every European capital or resort by eyesight and insight; he had met the great personages of Europe. So it was quite in the nature of things that Mark and Field ran across Fisher at the common meeting places in foreign parts, the U. S. Embassies and Legations; likewise that these American writers accepted his guidance in the strange world they found themselves in._
_Paine, Twain’s great biographer, speaks of Fisher’s contact with the famous author (vol. II, p. 935, “Mark Twain: A Biography”). Fisher’s memory, trained by years of interviewing, when no notes could be taken in the presence of the interviewed, has retained the substance and the manner, if not always the exact language, used and exchanged._
_Some writers reveal themselves only in their written, carefully edited works, but Twain’s unique personality was as eminent, as inspiring and as lasting in his daily walks and talks as in his books and lectures. In so far as Fisher reproduces the meaning of Twain’s observations on persons and things abroad, these anecdotes are of value to all friends and admirers of the great humorist. The same applies to Eugene Field, though, of course, in a more limited degree._
_MERLE JOHNSON._
_New York, January, 1922._
CONTENTS
PAGE
Editor’s Note vii
Author’s Preface xv
How Mark Would Safeguard England 25
Mark Philosophized on Willie 33
Mark--Regicide 34
The Funniest Speech Mark Ever Heard 36
Monarchical Atavism 42
Democratic Mark and the Austrian Aristocracy 43
Phil Sheridan’s Friend 45
“Elizabeth Was a He,” Said Mark 47
Mark, the Sleight-of-hand Man 55
Mark and the Imperial Mistress 57
Mark on Lynch Law 59
Recollections of King Charles and Grant 62
Mark Missed Gallows-land 64
Think of Her Sorrows 66
Breaking the News Gently 67
Dukes and Unborn Car Horses 69
“Pa Used to Be a Terrible Man” 70
Mark on the Berlin Cops 71
The Sausage Room 74
Mark’s Glimpse of Schopenhauer 77
“Murderer” Blucher in Oxford 86
Mark’s Human Side 88
An Australian Surprise 90
Mark in France and Italy 92
Why Mark Wouldn’t Like to Die Abroad 93
The Left Hand Didn’t Know 95
American Humorists 96
Telepathy or Suggestion 97
Trying to Be Serious Didn’t Work 99
Assorted Beauties 100
Mark’s Children Knew Him 101
Mark, Dogs, Dagoes, and Cats 102
The Tragedy of Genius 103
Kilties and the Lassie 105
A Wise Provision of Providence 107
The Awful German Language 108
Artist or Photographer 110
Mark Interviewed the Barber about Harry Thaw 112
His Portrait--a Mirror 115
Mark, Bismarck, Lincoln, and Darwin 116
Mark at the Stock Exchange, Vienna 120
Mark and the Prussian Lieutenant 121
Mark Studies the Costermonger Language 123 That _Beautiful_ Funeral 125 Ada’s Beast of a Man 126 Jealousy in Lowland 127 The Troubles of Liz 128
The French Madame 130
The Great Disappointment 134
Rheumatism and Prodding 137
On Literary Friendships 138
Bayard Taylor’s German 139
Genius in Extremis 140
What May Happen to You after You Are Dead 143
Kings in Their Birthday Suits 146
Mark on Lincoln’s Humanity 147
An English Lover of Kings and a Hater 150
Mark Got Arrested in Berlin 154
Books that Weren’t Written 157
Mark Enjoyed Other Humorists 160
Mark and the English Hack-writer 162
Mark Thought Joan of Arc Was Slandered 164
Running Amuck--Almost 166
Mark’s Idiomatic Gems 167
Mark and the Girls that Love a Lord 168
Mark’s Martyrdom 173
Slang Not in Mark’s Dictionary 175
Mark “No Gentleman” 177
Mark, Poetry, and Art 178
Mark Sheds Light on English History 179
Mark Explains Dean Swift 183
Mark in Tragedy and Comedy 185
“Ambition Is a Jade that More Than One Man Can Ride” 190
Mark as a Translator 192
Mark in England 194
Why Mark Was Uncomfortable in the King of Sweden’s Presence 196
Mark’s Idea of High Art 197
Mark Meets King Leopold--Almost 199
Sizing Up of Aristocracy by Mark 201
The Bald-headed Woman 204
When a Publisher Dines and Wines You 205
Mark in Politics 208
Mark on “Royal Honors” 209
American Women the Prettiest 212
Where Tay Pay Isn’t Tay Pay 213
The Man Who Didn’t Get Used to Hanging 214
Stray Sayings of Mark 218
Eugene Field and His Troubles in Chicago 223
More of Eugene Field’s Trials in London 227
Gene, a “Success of Curiosity” 230
Dire Consequences of American Horseplay 233
Field’s Library of Humor 240
Those German Professors 241
Eugene Field and Northern Lore 243
Little Boy Blue 246
PREFACE
To begin with, of course, I don’t claim that _all_ these stories are absolutely first hand. I sometimes jotted down what I heard Mark say, or stored his talk in some compartment of memory, only to hear him repeat the yarn, after a space, in quite different fashion.
“You remind me of Charles II,” I said to him once, referring to that confusing habit of his, and was going to “substantiate” when he interrupted.
“I can guess what you mean, but never mind, for all you know I may be Charlie’s reincarnation. Charles, you wanted to say, had only three stories up his sleeve and these he told over and over again for new ones to Nell and the rest of the bunch. And varied them so cleverly and disguised them so well, that his audience never got on to the fact that His Majesty had been chestnutting. As for me, I can only hope that I will succeed as well as Charlie did.”
In Berlin I once heard Susie Clemens--ill-fated, talented girl, who died so young--say to her father: “Grouchy again! They _do_ say that you can be funny when company is around--too bad that you don’t consider Henry Fisher company.”
“Out of the mouth of sucklings,” quoth Clemens and gave Susie the twenty marks she was after, and he kissed her: “Good-by, little blackmailer, and don’t tell your mamma how you worked that fool papa of yours.”
Indeed, Mark was not always the humorist the public mind pictures him. Very often, for long hours at a time, in our intercourse extending over thirty years, he was decidedly serious, while at other times he grumbled at everything and everybody. His initial object in choosing me for his “bear-leader” was to add to his stock of knowledge on foreign affairs and to correct erroneous ideas he might have acquired from books. Since I had resided many years on the Continent, and had command of the languages he lacked, he asked me to pilot him around Berlin, Paris, and Vienna, and on such occasions his talk was more often deep and learned than laughter-provoking. In an afternoon or morning’s work--getting atmosphere, _i. e._, “the hang of things” German or Austrian, as Mark called it--he sometimes dropped two or three memorable witticisms, but familiar intercourse in the long run left no doubt of the fact that a very serious vein bordering on melancholy underlay his mask of bonhomie. On the other hand a closer or more intelligent student of life never lived. He was as conscientious, as true, and as simple as Washington Irving.
Those occasional lapses into dejection notwithstanding, it struck me that Mark extracted his humor out of the bounty and abundance of his own nature. Hence his tinkling grotesquerie, unconventionality, whimsicality, play of satire, and shrieking irony, between touches of deep seriousness.
Really much of Mark’s wisdom began and ended in humor and vice versa. There was originality and penetration in everything he said. Howells has said of Mark: “If a trust of his own was betrayed--Clemens was ruthlessly, implacably resentful.” For my part, in thirty years, I never heard him speak ill of any living person, except one or two self-appointed editors.
I first met him in Chicago during the Grant celebration, November, 1879, when I heard him give the toast on babies, but I do not remember a word of his speech, for while it lasted I was sitting next to Grant and Grant kept me busy watching and attending his immutable and eloquent silence.
When Mark and I were fellow correspondents in Berlin, I met his wife and family frequently at their home, at the Hotel Royal, and on public occasions. The three girls, Jean, Susie, and Clara, were in their teens, and both lovely and lively. At that time the late William Walter Phelps of New Jersey was American minister in Berlin. We had been friends in America and Phelps had also known Mr. Clemens in the States socially. Like everybody else, he delighted in Mark’s stimulating company. Among other distinguished Americans in Berlin, in 1891, was Ward Hill Lamon, Abraham Lincoln’s Springfield law partner, later his private secretary, and Marshal of the District of Columbia during Lincoln’s administration. Lamon was the author of “The Life of Abraham Lincoln” and “Recollections of Abraham Lincoln.” These books the Lincoln family did not enjoy.
When the Clemenses went to live in Vienna, six years later, I happened to be correspondent at the Austrian capital for Dalziel’s News, London, and Galignani’s Messenger, Paris, and as Mark, used to the Berlin dialect, found it difficult “to acclimatize his German, making it chime in with the Vienna variety” (his own description), I was again much in demand as interpreter, pathfinder, and general cicerone.
In later years I met Mark repeatedly during his several London seasons, for, liking his society, I called at Brown’s or his apartment whenever he came to England, myself being engaged in literary work there. We were never on terms of particular intimacy--hail-fellows-well-met, yes! “Hello, Mark”--“Hello Henry W.--you here again?” We stuck verbally to the formula of the old Chicago days, and I was glad to be of use to him when it suited his fancy. Moreover, I was vastly interested in Mark’s books, short stories, and essays, but found him rarely inclined to talk shop unless it was the other fellow’s.
Rudyard Kipling he used to designate “the militant spokesman of the Anglo-Saxon races,” and he sometimes spoke with near-admiration of Bernard Shaw, “whose plays are popular from London to St. Petersburg, from Christiania to Madrid, from Havre to Frisco, and from Frisco to the Antipodes, while mine are nowhere.”
After I visited Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana he said to me: “Lucky dog, you have broken bread with the man who commands, and almost monopolizes, the thought of the world.”
That the universality of his humor and its humanity made him the peer of these great writers, of all his contemporaries in fact, seemed to be far from his thoughts. His verbal humor, like his fancy, was as simple in form and as direct in application as were the army orders of the great Napoleon. He liked to hear me say that, for he knew that some of my forbears had been individually attached to the person of the Emperor. But the most he ever said concerning his authorship and other writers in his own line was this:
“I pity the fellow who has to create a dialect or paraphrase the dictionary to get laughs. Like you and Susie” (referring to his oldest daughter) “I can’t spell, but I have never stooped to spell cat with a ‘k’ to get at your funny bone. I love a drink, but I never encouraged drunkenness by harping on its alleged funny side.”
One more of his sayings: At the unveiling of a bronze tablet to Eugene Field, Mark uttered these words:
“By his life he made bright the lives of all who knew him and by his books he cheered the thoughts of thousands who didn’t know him.”
Substitute “millions” for thousands and you have Mark Twain the Man and Mark Twain the Writer.
***
One afternoon, having laughed our fill with the “Belle of New York” and rejoiced in the London success of the piece (Mark, who while alive enjoyed scant luck as a playwright, yet loved to see others “win out”), our friend and the present writer happened to cross Bedford Square. Seeing the name at a street corner, Mark pulled out his notebook. “Eugene Field lived somewhere around here in 1889,” he said. I showed him the house, No. 20 Alfred Street.
“A dark and dismal hole,” said Mark, ruefully shaking his head; “no wonder he couldn’t find his ‘righteous stomach’ there, even in the absence of Chicago pies.”
“And _coffee_,” I interpolated. “Yours truly, too, would have died of dyspepsia if he had stayed in Chicago and continued at Henrici’s coffee and pie counter, as Gene did.”
Mark remained silent for a block or two. “I’ve got it,” he said at last, “God gave Gene a good enough stomach, and English hospitality completely paralyzed what was left of his digestive powers after the Cook County coffee and pie diet. Did you see much of Gene while he was in London?”
I told Mark all I knew about Field’s social and literary doings. “Bennett was right when he refused him a job on the London Herald,” said Clemens. “For one thing, the Herald didn’t last long, and the English climate would have cut poor Gene’s life still shorter by two or three winters and falls.”
Just the same, the desire for a London success, then common among American writers and artists, killed Eugene Field, the genial and lovable poet of childhood and man-about-literature’s-highways-and-byways.
HENRY W. FISHER.
In the last days of December, 1921.
ABROAD WITH MARK TWAIN
HOW MARK WOULD SAFEGUARD ENGLAND.[A]
“Not on your life,” said Mark Twain, in pajamas and dressing gown, lolling in his big armchair at Brown’s (“the only subdued and homelike inn left in London,” he used to call it)--“not if you bring the Bath Club (and tub) right into this suite so I don’t have to shock my good English friends by painting the town blue skipping across Dover Street in my dressing gown. By the way,” he added, winking an eye at Bram Stoker, “my daughter Clara bought me this--” (he held up the skirts of his bathrobe with both hands) “a most refined girl! If she wasn’t, would she have sent me a wire like this?
“‘Much worried by newspapers. Remember proprieties.’”
“And what did you answer?” asked Bram.
“None of your business! You are getting as fresh as a reporter,” snapped Twain, with mock severity, while looking at me.
In the meanwhile I consulted my notebook. “It’s sixteen years since the Kaiser--” I reopened the case--
“Oh, I have a notebook too. Wait a minute,” interrupted Twain. He gave his secretary directions, and presently read from an old, much worn diary, sustaining my date-line as it were--
“... since this democratic lamb and the Imperial lion laid down together, a little General providing grub--”
“Sixteen years is a long time, and if the Kaiser imposed silence upon you then and there, the lid is certainly off now,” I insisted. “Besides, at present, he’s got Nietzsche on the brain.”
“I don’t care whether Annie Besant and William Jennings Bryan occupy lofts in his upper story,” said Twain. “I had promised Von Versen” (the General and Mark’s relation) “not to talk about that jamboree, and the worms, if interested, will have to turn burglars and jimmy my brain cells, where memories of the banquet are stored, for I swear I’ll leave no skeleton key.”
“Pshaw! You are still sore because Willie wouldn’t let you get in a word edgewise,” said Stoker.
“Man alive!” cried Twain, “his talk was selling books for me. I was in rotten bad shape then financially, doing syndicate work for ‘The Sun’ and ‘McClure’s’. Could I afford to say, ‘Can your talk, Willie’?--like poverty, they have you with them always--but I am here for a short time only--my turn to stir up the animals.”
We agreed that if an emperor climbs the dizzy heights of bookmongerdom he ought to have all the rope he wants.
“And did you like the British better than the Berlin brand of king?” was asked.
“They let me do a lot of talking at Windsor,” evaded honest Mark. “I like these folks immensely. Ed is a manly fellow, despite his Hoboken accent--no wonder he fought with his ma, who wore the pants while Albert was alive, and tried to impose her German policies on her successor-to-be. Ed recalled an indigestion which we both entertained at Homburg, at the Elizabeth Spa there, which is more kinds of pure salt than Kissingen even. The blonde Fräulein who had sold us the liquid caviar advised walking it off, and as stomachache inclines to democracy the same as toothache, I didn’t mind tramping with Ed, though I fancied that I would hear more about royal inner works than was decent for a minister’s son.”
“Did you tell the King any yarns?”
“Well, he referred to my giving out that interview about the news of my death being greatly exaggerated, and was pleased to call it funny. When I said that everybody more or less was given to overstatement, Ed commented, dryly, ‘Especially my nephew of Germany.’ So I told the story of the Russian Jew who claimed to have been chased by 47 wolves.
“‘You probably were so frightened you saw double,’ suggested the magistrate.
“‘There were 12 at least,’ insisted Isaac.
“‘Won’t half a dozen do?’
“‘As I live, there were seven.’
“‘Now tell the truth, Isaac. There was one wolf--one is enough to frighten a little Israelite like you.’
“Isaac, glad of saving one out of 47, nodded.
“‘But maybe the creature wasn’t a wolf at all!’
“‘No wolf!’ cried Isaac, ‘what else could he be? Didn’t he have four legs, and didn’t he wag his tail?’
“After that Ed turned me over to the Queen and a tribe of Princes and Princesses, who all seemed much relieved when I solemnly informed them that I had no intention of buying Windsor Castle this trip. Then we talked commonplaces until Alexandra commanded me to put on my hat lest I catch cold, which gave me a chance to tell about Will Penn. Penn, you’ll remember, insisted on wearing his hat everywhere. When he saw King Charles, the second of his name, doff his chapeau at a court function, the future Philadelphian inquired:
“‘Friend Charles, why dost thou take off thy lid?’
“‘Because,’ answered Charles, ‘it is customary at court that only one may remain covered in the King’s presence.’
“I was ashamed, cracking that chestnut,” said Mark, “but Alexandra and the youngsters seemed to think it a real side-splitter to judge by the noise they made.”
“Nice people,” said Bram.
“You bet,” spoke Mark emphatically, “and that’s why I’ll have a word or two with the War Office of this here realm before I quit. I have been thinking, you know. When we got through with the grub at General Versen’s and retired to the smoking room, that Kaiser, in the meantime reinforced by a lot of his officers that came in for beer, pretzels and cigars--that Kaiser worked himself up into a fine frenzy about his U-boats. His Germania Shipyards at Kiel (they were really Krupps, but he was the principal stockholder) would turn out better and bigger U-boats, he said, than the French and English could ever hope to build. And when he had enough of them, with all the improvements science and technique could provide--then beware, proud Albion!
“Invasion was the least he threatened unless England helped him exterminate France.
“‘It was the easiest thing in the world,’ boasted William, ‘a hundred U-boats operating against England, Scotland and Ireland simultaneously could pull off the trick in a day or two.’”
Mark lit a fresh cigar, tilted his feet as high as the chiffonier allowed and developed what he was pleased to call his “strategy.”