Part 3

“That’s what the gossips told me, and they had it from their great-great-great-grandmothers, a blessed heritage.”

“Go on,” said Mark.

“Well, that governess knew that her life depended upon finding a substitute for Elizabeth, and the substitute couldn’t materialize quickly enough. Briefly, it did materialize in the person of the late Princess’ boy playmate--here are his name and affiliations, as Overcourt neighborhood has it.”

“Fine,” said Mark, “the rest I know or can imagine. She dressed up that kid in Elizabeth’s petticoats and togs and frightened the life out of him not to betray her or himself with the King or any one else.”

“Quite right,” mused Mark, “for the eighth Henry was an ogre--the very unborn children of England knew it. Besides, reading up the official history of Elizabeth, I find that Hal hadn’t seen his daughter for three or four years previous to his visit in Overcourt. The deception, then, worked easily enough. _I_ could have done it at a pinch.”

* * * * *

Mark next went into the life history of the great Queen, or supposed Queen. “She was a male character all over--a thousand acts of hers prove it,” he insisted. “Now tell me what were the conspicuous Tudor traits--”

“But you said she wasn’t a Tudor,” I interrupted.

“Precisely, but she had to copy the Tudors as our stage impersonators imitate Bernhardt and Henry Dixie. Now what were those Tudor traits: remorselessness, cunning, lying till the cows come home, murder, robbery, despoliation! All of them Elizabeth, or the man who impersonated the Queen, practiced to the dotlet on the _i_. Think of the letters she wrote to Francis Drake, the inventor of fried potatoes, and to the second Philip of Spain. Wasn’t that a man’s game? Could woman ever get up anything so misleading and contraband?

“And the way she fooled her English, Spanish, Austrian, German and French admirers, setting each against the other, never neglecting to threaten Spain’s flank, and, at the last, throwing them the head of Mary of Scots as a gage of battle--regular male strumpet’s chicanery, I tell you.”

From a drawer Mark pulled a highly decorated volume, and turned the leaves quickly. “Elizabeth’s official lovers,” he explained. “Lord Seymour, second husband of her stepmother, Queen Catherine Parr. Catherine, I gather, was in the secret; otherwise she wouldn’t have allowed Seymour to carry on with ‘Elizabeth’ as he did. And he had about a yard of whiskers on his face at that. There was Leicester, this big chap here with the goatee. She had him beheaded, not because he knew anything against her, or about her real sex, but because he had the _reputation_ of knowing things. The Virgin Queen made her alleged lover a head shorter, just to show that she didn’t care what she did. Henry and Francis, the French Valois brothers, Dukes of something or other, were likewise large, sinister looking fellows. These, too, she used, man fashion, like boobs, and as no other crowned harridan ever used a lover. Think of Catharine (of Russia) and of Josephine and Marie Louise--to be loved by those ladies was real fun, a treat.” Mark lowered his voice to add: “I read somewhere that Catharine allowed the brothers Orloff no less than fifty thousand roubles pajama money--fifty thousand! One can buy a powerful lot of nighties for that much money, even at the Louvre, across the way.”

“There’s the Britannica,” continued Mark, jumping up. He found a paragraph under the caption of “Elizabeth” that tickled him immensely. “Read this, and call me a liar if you dare.”

The paragraph states that there was “some physical defect” in Elizabeth’s make-up, that she was “masculine in mind and temperament,” likewise, that no man ever lost his head over her as they did over Mary of Scots.

“’Nuff said on the score of love-making and lying,” concluded Mark. “’Nuff for the present, I mean; but here is another thing. We all know there is only one Hetty Green, that there never was another. Yet this here Elizabeth, so called--_i. e._, the man who impersonated her--was as clever a financier as John D. Rockefeller. As John D. gobbled up all the oil in creation, or out of it, so Elizabeth, so called, lapped up all the gold, minted and otherwise. Up to the sixties and seventies (of the sixteenth century) Spain had an absolute monopoly of the yellow and white metals, you know. When the person called Elizabeth died, all the gold of the world was in English hands, and, besides, England dominated all the ocean trade routes, where formerly the Spanish flag had been unchallenged.”

“As circumstantial evidence, can’t be beat,” I suggested timidly, “but--”

“You remind me of the cat that bolted a whole box of Seidlitz powders and then had no more judgment than to lie under the open hydrant,” exploded Mark. “Why don’t you ask me to trot out Elizabeth in an Andy Carnegie Highland costume, kilts and all? There will be missing links, plenty of them, after all these years, that goes without saying, but it’s a great story, nevertheless. Needs a hunk of brain, though, to puzzle it out to its logical conclusion.”

Soon after this conversation, the Clemenses went to Italy, and for some little time I expected to hear from Mark further on the Elizabeth legend. But the yarn seems to have slipped his memory, and as I found him engrossed in matters of the moment, I didn’t try to revive his interest in one so remote.

But I have often wondered whether, or not, his many unpublished writings show that he brought “his hunk of brains” to work on unsexing Elizabeth.

MARK--THE SLEIGHT-OF-HAND MAN

Minister William Walter Phelps gave a dinner to the Clemenses in Frankfort, when Mark Twain and Livy were staying at a nearby watering place, but Mrs. Clemens was not well enough to attend--or, as Mark whispered to Mr. Phelps--was unwilling to go, being afraid that he might disgrace the family by some practical joke. So Mark had it all his own way and enjoyed his freedom hugely, keeping all in a roar.

Finally, Dr. Von Something-or-Other tried to get in a word edgewise and abruptly asked Mark what he thought of the European equilibrium.

(Mark said afterwards: “Knowing my political incompetence, the Doctor probably tried to inveigle me into making an ass of myself.”)

The Herr Von’s question having been delivered in no sotto voce style, everybody pricked up ears to hear Mark’s answer.

“I can’t explain in a few words,” he said, “but I’ll demonstrate.” And turning to Mr. Phelps: “Hand me the Doctor’s plate, please.”

The Doctor looked up “disgusted,” because he had only just commenced to eat and was “as hungry as a dog.” Plate in hand, Mark stepped to a space between the window and the table and asked the Doctor to join him, bringing his knife. “Now,” he said, “I will throw the plate up to the ceiling and you will catch it, on the end of your knife, but don’t you spill anything. After catching it, you will please keep it spinning upon the end of your steel for five minutes, balancing it so as not to lose a drop of sauce, a chop, or fried murphy. And when you have performed all these stunts without mishap, you will have gained a correct idea of what I think of the balance of European power.”

MARK AND THE IMPERIAL MISTRESS

At Vienna, in the late nineties, Clemens one fine day intoxicated himself with the idea that there would be millions in writing a play with Kathi Schratt, Emperor Francis Joseph’s acknowledged mistress, as heroine. He had in mind a collaborator among native playwrights, and the piece was to be translated into all living tongues. Mark actually started on the thing, adding to his knowledge of German as he went along. Matters having gone so far, I persuaded him to go and see Frau Schratt for local color.

“Bully,” he said. “But you must come along. I would never trust myself alone with a royal mistress, not I.”

Well, we went, saw, and--wondered at Francis Joseph’s taste. In speech and manner, though, the Schratt was a fine old girl. Showed us a big houseful of presents, all gifts from his Majesty, and elaborately so marked.

We had duly admired the silver bed, the silver folding stool and the ditto cabinet, likewise other chamber paraphernalia of white metal, when the Schratt said: “There is one thing more the like of which you haven’t in America.”

“You don’t say so!” ejaculated Mark, in blasphemous German.

The Schratt pushed a button, a wall panel shot sideways, and the handsomest silver-gilt bathtub ever came waltzing in, or rather roller-skated in.

In our homeward bound fiacre, Mark remained silent for fully ten minutes; then he delivered himself sadly but firmly:

“No, it’s all off with that mellerdrammer. For if I let Schratt ride down to the footlights in that golden tub, people will want to see the Empress in it, too; next they will holler for Kaiser Bill, Sarah Bernhardt, Loie Fuller, and William Jennings Bryan. It won’t work--people are such hogs!”

And the drama was never proceeded with.

MARK ON LYNCH LAW

They were talking lynch law in Professor Krafft-Ebing’s library in Vienna--some horrible nightmare that had come in the latest cable--and as a matter of course Clemens was asked his opinion as an American and observer of human nature.

“Lynch law means mob-lawlessness, doesn’t it?” he drawled. “Well, what does it argue? To my mind it argues that men in a crowd do not act as they would as individuals. In a crowd they don’t think for themselves, but become impregnated by the contagious sentiment uppermost in the minds of all who happen to be en masse. While in Paris last, the family and I toured all the places of horror, made odious during the White Terror--we followed pretty closely the scent of the ‘Tale of Two Cities,’ Michelet, Dumas, and others. I was particularly interested in the ‘Official Gazette’ of the guillotine, ‘The Moniteur,’ and my girls helped me read and digest many tell-tale pages yellow with age and tattered by usage. Among other interesting items, I found recorded that on a certain date the Nobles had voted to forego their feudal privileges.

“Now, their previous failure to renounce these same rights had been one of the prime causes of the Revolution. Yet when they acquiesced, they were put to the knife just the same, for mob-law ruled then. Another case in the ‘Moniteur’: I read of a deputy named Monge, the same whom Napoleon in his Saint Helena talks pronounced a most lovable character, so kind-hearted that he would never eat any fowl if he had to kill it first. Yet in the Convention, in the midst of the mob of his fellows, this same Monge vociferated for unlimited bloodshed, for ‘war to the knife.’ He had caught the contagion and, intoxicated with bloodthirstiness, acted the madman.

“‘I love my children,’ he cried, ‘but if the Convention decrees war on the enemies of the Republic, I will give my two daughters to the first two of our countrymen wounded in battle.’ Would he have said that seated quietly at his fireside? Certainly not. It was the mob that was talking through his mouth.”

THE TERROR

Mark returned to the subject on another occasion. He said:

“You know I have always been a great admirer of Dickens, and his ‘Tale of Two Cities’ I read at least every two years. Dickens witnessed my first holding hands with Livy when I took her to one of his lectures in New York. Now that I have finished ‘The Two Cities’ for the ’steenth time, I have come to this conclusion:

“Terror is an efficacious agent only when it doesn’t last. In the long run there is more terror in threats than in execution, for when you get used to terror your emotions get dulled. The incarnation of the White Terror, Robespierre, wasn’t awe-inspiring at all to the general public. Mention of his name did not send the children to bed, or make them crawl under the blankets. On the days when he made his great speeches, the galleries and the aisles of the Convention Hall were thronged with women, old and young--that does not look as if Robespierre had been an object of general fear or abomination--does it?”

RECOLLECTIONS OF KING CHARLES AND GRANT

“Now show me the place where that ancestor of mine had King Charlie beheaded.”

We had been sitting on some chairs which the great Napoleon had used in Saint Helena--the heaviest sort of mahogany, “and not a rat bite to be seen,” Mark pointed out, as we went exploring the Army Museum at Whitehall, London.

Agreeable to his demand, I took Mark by the arm and led him to a window looking out on the “Horse-Guards,” the famous old barracks, gazed at so much by American visitors.

“Outside of this window,” I explained, “the Commonwealth built a platform, and on this platform stood the block where Charles lost his silly bean.”

“Served the traitor right,” said Mark, “but that reminds me of----”

He thought a while, then repeated:

“Why it reminds me of (let’s see, we are in the second story, are we not?)--the grandstand in front of the Palmer House, Chicago, for that was also entered from the windows of the second story. I am speaking of the Chicago of 1879, welcoming General Grant after his triumphal journey around the world. What a sight the Windy City was, and what a grand sight he looked when he stepped upon the platform to review the Army of the Tennessee.”

“Yes,” I interrupted, “and I saw you on that very platform shake hands with Grant.”

But Mark Twain could not be tempted to go into his personal history when General Grant was being discussed.

“Did you ever see a city so magnificently and so patriotically bedecked?” he cried. “There was not a monument, palace, rookery, saloon or telegraph pole that was not gay with streamers and bunting, pictures, garlands, colored lanterns and placards of all sorts.”

“Yes there was,” said one of our friends.

Mark stretched out his hand and grabbed the speaker’s arm.

“No nonsense now.”

“I am as serious as you, and I say that the German Consul, with offices opposite the Court House, did not have a flag out on the day of Grant’s entry and reception.”

“Are you sure?” demanded Clemens.

“As sure as you are standing there. And I am proud to-day that I wrote up the story in the Chicago ‘Times’ and that Guy Magee, the city editor, headed it: ‘The German Son of a B----.’

“Well done. I could not have written a more accurate head myself.”

MARK MISSED GALLOWS-LAND

“Every time I went to Italy,” Mark Twain once said, “I felt like crossing over into Monaco.”

“To gamble?”

“Guess again, when billiards and solitaire are the only games I indulge in. Indeed, I am so ignorant, I would not know a roulette from another baby circus. I was and I am still crazy to go to Monaco to see a gallows, or, preferably, a hundred of them.” Mark eyed his audience curiously. After an impressive pause, he continued:

“Once upon a time, in the days of Louis XV and Mme. du Barry, there was a Prince of Monaco who was blessed with a very beautiful wife. Well, evil-minded people said of this prince that he smelled like a dead horse, and Madame the Princess simply could not endure defunct ‘gee-gee.’ So she decided that she had a perfect right to look for a soul-mate elsewhere, and be sure she got them by the score. Of course not in Monaco, as it is such a small country. She went to France, and particularly to Paris, for her amusements. And every time the Prince learned of a new lover worshipping at his wife’s shrine, he set up a gallows and hung the favored one in effigy with frightful ceremonies.

“The country, as remarked, being rather Lilliputian, his Highness had to go to the frontiers for his gallows planting, and as Madame the Princess was of a very changeable nature the principality, in the course of several years, became enclosed in a regular fence of gallows trees. When Paris heard of this, it laughed boisterously at the Prince’s strange humor and Madame the Princess’s latest lover swore that he would go to Monaco, rob the gallows of their manikins and carry them off to the future Champs Elysées for a marionette show.

“He tried--with a band of companions, but got pinched and was hanged by the neck in person, and not in effigy. Now, I wondered whether these gallows are still standing,” concluded Mark, “and if not, I wanted to find their habitat anyhow--make a map of gallows-land, so to speak.”

Too bad Mark missed writing a book on so promising a subject.

THINK OF HER SORROWS

He read to several friends in Vienna what he had written about the murdered Empress Elizabeth. “I know it is full of exaggeration,” he admitted. “I did gown her with virtues she never thought of possessing and I have denied all her frailties. As I learn now, she was just an ordinary woman, and her surpassing vanity was the only extraordinary thing about her. But think how much she suffered and think of the man she was married to. Re-read, too, that story about the murdered Rudolph. When Count Something approached her to break the news, she ran to him wringing her hands and cried: ‘My Rudy is dead. Oh, my Rudy!’ What told this Niobe among royal women that her son had been destroyed--killed in a low debauch? When I reflect how she maintained her self-respect in a life of constant disappointment and tragedy, I think I did well making her out a noble soul.”

BREAKING THE NEWS GENTLY

Returning to Vienna from a flying trip to Budapest, Mark was full of “a yarn that would illustrate like a circus and run for five years, every Sunday a page.” He said he heard the story at the archduke Joseph’s country place, the same Joseph who, towards the end of the war, tried to make himself King of Hungary and failed, but the probabilities are that the story was Mark’s own, with Magyar trimmings. It ran as follows:

A great landowner, after a business trip of several months, returned to Budapest, and was met at the station by his carriage and pair that was to take him to his estate in the country.

“Everything well at home?” he asked the coachman.

“Excellently well,” replied the driver, cracking his whip.

After a while the Baron ventured another question:

“Why didn’t you bring my dogs along?” he asked.

“Dogs are sick, your Excellency.”

“My dogs sick? How did that happen?”

“Ate too much fried horse.”

“Fried horse? Where did they get that?”

“Stable burned down.”

“My stable burned down, cattle and all? Awful! What about the castle?”

“Oh, the castle is all right.”

The Baron thought it over for the space of a mile, then said:

“You are sure the castle was not hurt by the fire?”

“Sure, only the two wings burned down.”

“But the family is safe?”

“Yes, the family is all right.”

When the horses entered upon their tenth mile, the Baron resumed his examination:

“Children all well?”

“All well and happy, except János and Maritzka, who were burned.”

“Burned, oh Lord! And the Baroness, my wife?”

“Oh, she is better off than any of us. God has her in His holy keeping. She was burned to death. Yes, indeed, she died with her mother and in her arms.”

“This is what I call breaking the news gently,” said Mark.

DUKES AND UNBORN CAR HORSES

I told Mark Twain of the Princes and Dukes of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, “in meeting assembled” at London, who had protested against the expulsion of their kinsman, Dom Pedro, from the throne of Brazil.

“Just as efficacious as if the car horses that remain unbred since the arrival of the trolley sued the Brooklyn Rapid Transit, or the Third Avenue electric line, for murder,” snapped Mark.

“PA USED TO BE A TERRIBLE MAN”

With Mark’s daughter Susie, I was walking in the Berlin Thiergarten one afternoon when we encountered a very rough specimen of the genus tramp.

“Look at him,” said Susie. “You know, Pa, too, was an awful man before Mamma took him in hand and married him.” And with added seriousness, she continued: “He used to swear and swear, and then swear again, and the only thing that he didn’t do that was bad was to let cards and liquor alone--some kinds of liquor.”

It is too bad that I forget Mark’s comment on the above when I told him.

MARK ON THE BERLIN COPS

You know, of course, that Mark Twain at one time had a flat in Berlin and kept it going for a whole month. “I am tired of hotels,” he said, “and hereafter I am going to take my comfort in my apartment as Dr. Johnson took his in his inn.” After that he entertained the habitués of the embassy for a week or longer with stories of the beauties of home life, until we voted “Koernerstrasse Nr. 7 the jewel.”

But one fine evening I found a note from him at the Hotel de Rome, asking me to call at the Royal at 8:00. I met him in the lobby with several sympathizing friends, and he said:

“It’s all up with Koernerstrasse; too much police.”

“Did you have burglars, or the bailiffs, in?” was asked.

“Neither; just social calls from policemen--ten per day. The cops weren’t exactly unkind, but they annoyed me.”

“What did they do to you?”

“Asked questions.”

“Income queries?”

“Yes, of course, but I don’t mind lying about little things like that. On the contrary, making a clean breast of it, I confessed that I get a whole cent a word for every word I do, even for little words like ‘I’ or ‘Manafraidofhismotherinlaw.’ Did they believe me? Not they! They thought I was exaggerating.”

“What did they ask about next?”

“Craved information about Eliza and Marie. ‘Don’t know any such females,’ I growled severely.

“‘Mr. Clemens,’ bawled the policeman, ‘if you are trying to hoodwink the Royal Police of Berlin, there will be trouble. Confess now. You have an Eliza and a Marie and a Gretchen in this house.’

“‘Oh, you mean the maids,’ said I. ‘I don’t know anything about them. My Missus hires and bosses them. Ask the girls whether I am stringing you.’

“That evidently made no hit with the policeman, for he vociferated respectfully but sternly:

“‘It is your duty (according to paragraph this and that of the Civil Code) as head of the household (according to paragraph so and so of the Civil Code) to be informed whether or not these girls have been properly vaccinated.’

“His ‘head of the household’ made me laugh, but I managed to object: ‘How should I know?’

“‘Don’t you see them around with bare arms?’

“‘Maybe I do, but I never paid enough attention to say offhand whether they wear cuticle or fur.’

“‘And you didn’t notice vaccination marks on their arms?’

“‘Never. I can swear to that.’

“‘Then you _do_ know, that they are not vaccinated on their arms,’ said the policeman ever so insinuatingly. I’ll bet he read up the story of the serpent in Paradise.

“‘On the contrary, I _don’t_ know whether they are vaccinated on their arms or not,’ I answered truthfully. ‘Maybe they had themselves vaccinated _under_ their arms. I haven’t looked.’

“‘Some women,’ said the policeman, ‘are so vain that they get themselves vaccinated on their legs.’