Part 5

“By the way,” he continued, “every time I paddle the Atlantic I say to myself, ‘Mark, old boy, don’t die on this trip.’ For, of course, folks have a foolish notion that one’s bones must rest at home. Accordingly, if I died as United States consul in the Kingdom of Sheba--if there be such a place--Washington would have to send a warship to fetch my bones back to America. Again, if I died a plain citizen in London, I would be shipped back in an ordinary liner. But think of it. Before shipping my body, it would have to go into an undertaker’s vault, and undertakers’ cellars are dark and mildewed, and nasty smelling. By George, I wouldn’t like to be in a cellar for a week or two. And afterwards they would place the casket in the hold of the ship with other boxes, and the rats come gnawing about, and perhaps the ocean looks in too and gives you a swim. No, it isn’t pleasant to die abroad. I want to die at home, in bed and in comfort.”

At another time Mark returned to the theme, saying:

“Remember my story about the body in the morgue? They couldn’t make out whether the person was dead or merely shamming death, and so they put a bell-rope in the man’s hand, and later, when the man awoke from his deathlike sleep and rang the bell, the watchers got so frightened they ran away, and, it being freezing cold, the man died a real death. When they next looked upon him, he was as dead as a doornail. No, as I said before, I want to die at home, without any bell-ropes, or undertakers’ cellars, or rats, or bilge water.”

THE LEFT HAND DIDN’T KNOW

“I saw your protégé in Paris--he is getting along finely with his painting,” I told Mark, meeting him in the Strand, London.

“I do not know what you mean by protégé,” he said evasively, “but I am glad to hear that the boy is progressing. Do you know,” he added quickly, “I hold with that famous English letter-writer, whose name I forget, that an artist has brush and pencil and that the public will reward him as it sees fit.”

Of course, Mark didn’t “hold” anything of the sort. He had then supported that bright American boy in Paris for three years, giving him the best of teachers and advancing his chances in every way possible, but he resented my touching upon the subject. I suppose he would have cut me dead the next time we met, if I had reminded him of the colored boy whom he was seeing through college in the States.

AMERICAN HUMORISTS

They were talking about humorists in Mr. Jackson’s office. Jackson was the first secretary of legation, blessed with a very beautiful wife and money. After a lot of talk, Twain was asked for his opinion.

“Well,” he said, “the greatest American humorist I know of is Mr. Fox of the ‘Police Gazette’--the fellow who put full evening dress on sluggers. John L. Sullivan and some of the hard-boiled boys he licked were, of course, familiar to the American eye in trunks and undershirts. Reflect on the giant mind that conceived the original idea of making them look like Kyrle Bellew or Augustin Daly. Fox with that picture beat us Knights of the Quill easily.”

TELEPATHY OR SUGGESTION

In the nineties Mark had asked me to translate his yarn on telepathy for the “Berlin Boersen Courier.” The story had caught on, and the editor kept bothering for more of that sort. Mark had promised again and again, but nothing came of it. When I asked him for the tenth or fifteenth time, he said, “Pshaw, telepathy is out of date. I saw some mental suggestion done at Professor Glossen’s in Zurich that knocked spots out of telepathy.” He asked the rest of the company to listen, and continued:

“That there be no room for deception of any kind, the professor asked me to go to any drug store in town and buy a bottle of distilled water. We scraped the label off, swathed the bottle in linen, and then buried it carefully in a box--a sort of fireless cooker arrangement. This was done before the students began to arrive. When the lecture room was good and full, the Professor addressed the boys to the effect that he was on the track of a new chemical, but that his discovery was still far from complete. The chemical, he continued, had a peculiar odor, heretofore not classified, and this morning he was anxious to study the rapidity with which that odor would diffuse itself through the air. Hence he asked the students to give the utmost attention to what he was doing. Each student was to raise his hand the moment he perceived the strange odor.

“The Professor unburied and opened the bottle, turning his head away so as not to be overcome by the odor, while I watched the proceedings by a stop-watch. The boys were all ears--nose, I mean. After fifteen seconds, most of the students in the first row were holding up a hand. In 40 seconds the odor, which did not exist, had traveled to the rear benches, and when we counted noses, seventy-five percent of the students acknowledged perception of the odor and some even went so far as to be nauseated by it.”

TRYING TO BE SERIOUS DIDN’T WORK

At Brown’s, in London, somebody spoke in glowing terms of Raymond’s portrayal of Colonel Sellers.

“You needn’t praise him for _my_ sake,” said Mark. “I did not write the part for an actor like him at all. I wrote it for Edwin Booth. That is, I had Edwin Booth in mind when I did the play. But Raymond was the superior money-maker. He had the masses with him--and I was pressed for funds.

“As a matter of fact, my Colonel Sellers is a portrait study--a take-off on a fine old Southern gentleman, Colonel Mulberry Sellers, whom I knew in life. He had some funny traits about him, but these never counted with me. It was the pathos in his life that got me. And the pathos, relieved by a few funny things, I intended to put upon the stage. Raymond caricatured the part, and I often felt like taking it away from him.”

ASSORTED BEAUTIES

Of the Vienna women Mark Twain used to say that they were so “cussed pretty a man walking out with his wife feels relieved when he meets a plain one.”

He was reminded of his visit to the Berlin court and was asked what he thought of the ladies he met there.

“They were so loaded down with tiaras, necklaces, and sets of jewelry, my eyes were too dazzled to get a good view of their faces. I am sure, though, that most of the old ones had enormous backs. And that recalls a story that I heard at an embassy here, which I must not name. The ambassadors were talking of the beauty of the women of their own country, and they all looked with pity on the Korean consular representative, wondering what he would say, but he was a spunky chap, and when his turn came, blurted out: ‘Well, gentlemen, as to the fair sex, there isn’t much to boast of in my country, but I _will_ admit that the ladies of our court at home are no less ill-favored than the women of the Berlin Schloss, and they are dirtier, too.’ That postscript,” said Mark, “was the funniest thing I heard in a long time. He said it in a right hearty and well-meaning way, too. He evidently meant it and was proud of it.”

MARK’S CHILDREN KNEW HIM

I congratulated Mark Twain on the fact that he had been mistaken for the great Mommsen, and, throwing out his chest, he said:

“I feel indeed flattered because somebody thought that I have the whole Roman world, with Poppæa and Nero and Augustus and all the rest, under my hat, yet, when I come to think of it, there is some difference between us two. _My_ children know their papa, and I know Susan, Clara, and Jean. But think what happened to Mommsen the other day. He was proceeding to a bus from his residence, when an unmannerly wind carried off his hat. A boy, playing in the street, picked it up and brought it to the great man. (By the way, never run after your own hat--others will be delighted to do it. Why spoil their fun?)

“‘Thank you,’ said Mommsen. ‘I never could have recovered the hat myself.’ He looked the boy over carefully, and added:

“‘And a nice little boy. Do you live in the neighborhood? Whose little boy are you?’

“‘Why,’ said the kid, ‘mamma says I am Professor Mommsen’s little boy, but I never see him. He is always among the Romans, writing in a book.’

“‘Bless your heart, little man,’ said Mommsen. ‘To-night I will surely be home early; tell your mamma, and ask her to introduce you and the other children properly.’”

MARK, DOGS, DAGOES, AND CATS

Mark never tired telling of the Italian literary shark who unsuccessfully tried to blackmail him out of twenty francs.

“He had a peculiar grievance, that Dago,” said Mark. “He vocalized to the effect that he had done me the honor to call four times at my villa and that, just as often, he came near losing the seat of his pants by the actions of my degraded dogs, who drove him off. Hence, he calculated that I owed him at least five francs per visit, on account of his trouble and the anxiety he suffered. But as I kept no dogs, neither degraded nor otherwise, my dogs couldn’t have worried the man. And he wasn’t on my visiting list anyhow.”

“Somewhere,” continued Mark, “I put on record that I know the business end of a horse very well, but I never bothered enough about dogs to make sure of their anatomy. Pussy is the animal for me. You remember my adventures in Koernerstrasse No. 7, Berlin. The women took that apartment in Slumland over my head, and lured me to approve of their choice by having two purring cats on the hearth, when I first saw the place. I simply can’t resist a cat, particularly a purring one. They are the cleanest, cunningest, and most intelligent things I know, outside of the girl you love, of course.”

THE TRAGEDY OF GENIUS

On October 13, 1891, Mark Twain and I went together to the Berlin University to see the great Virchow lionized and almost deified by his fellow professors and by the students. Mark was much impressed and promised to give Virchow a good send-off in his correspondence. And on the way home he waxed almost sentimental, saying: “Virchow is seventy years old. In a little while he will either be dead or that great intellect of his will begin to deteriorate, and what a pity that would be!

“There was Emerson, who valued impressions and ideas above everything--in his way as great a man as Virchow and certainly a great benefactor of his countrymen. But Holmes told me that in the late seventies of his long life, facts counted no longer with Emerson, for his memory was gone. At Longfellow’s funeral, which preceded his own by a few months only, Emerson walked up to the coffin twice, probably forgetting the second time that he had already gazed upon his late friend’s face. When he had taken this last farewell, he came back to his seat and said to the person nearest to him:

“‘That dead man was a sweet and beautiful soul, but I have completely forgotten his name.’

“For myself,” concluded Twain, “I have forgotten many a thing, but I will never forget that little speech of poor old Emerson. _Sic transit gloria mundi_--such is the way of the world, a free translation, I know, but highly applicable.”

KILTIES AND THE LASSIE

“I heard a good one on a young Scotchman, a fellow who was always trying to show off in kilties. By the way, Andy Carnegie told me about him. This young Scot, with some other chaps, went on a tramp of the lakes of Scotland, and young Douglas had a good time showing off his fine calves--talked about them and made comparisons with other well-known legs, of actresses, bishops, dancers, etc. (In England all bishops wear knickers, you know.)

“At night the boys put up at a rather dilapidated inn, neither clean nor promising other creature comforts. But the girl who waited on them, maid or scullion, was a dandy--blonde and blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked and sturdy of arm and leg.

“As she flitted in and out of the room, bringing whiskey and water, cheese, bread and dried fish--that was all the bill of fare afforded--the travelers’ eyes followed her, and when she left the room there was many a knowing wink. Douglas got jealous of the attention bestowed on Miriam.

“‘What is there to go daft over?’ he demanded peevishly.

“‘Well,’ said they in chorus, ‘for one thing, she has better legs than you, Douglas.’

“Douglas hotly denied the imputation. There was an argument, and it was finally agreed that the two be measured. If Douglas lost, he must pay for the night’s reckoning.

“Accordingly, Douglas was put to the tape, and the girl also. Miriam had a few more inches of calf, but the Scotchman was undaunted. ‘Have you ever seen finer thighs than mine?’ he boasted.

“The lad who had been doing the measuring got flustered, but the girl laughed:

“‘Don’t be afeerd, Laddie; the higher you go the bigger they grow. I’ll be the winner.’

“And she was,” said Mark, with a chuckle of evident approval.

A WISE PROVISION OF PROVIDENCE

From a window at the Hotel de Rome, Mark and friends were “reviewing” the ceremonial entry of the King of Italy in Berlin.

“Fine horse-flesh,” Mark kept saying, “and the gee-gees look better fed and happier than all that bedizened and beribboned royalty.”

“What’s that string of riders following the ‘four-poster’” (Mark’s description of a state coach), “tied to the twelve horses? They seem to sport every conceivable uniform, Horse, Foot, and Artillery!”

“Those are the German kings and kinglets,” it was explained.

“Let’s count them,” said Mark.

They counted some twenty crowned heads, “young, old, and mouse-colored,” said our friend, as he retired from the window and attacked the coffee and cake. He sat musing for a while, but when somebody suggested “billiards,” he became alert as usual.

“I have been thinking,” he said--“thinking of wise Providence. Just fancy that Providence had run the Equator through Europe, instead of through the Pacific, or wherever it is now. If the Equator happened to be located in the Old World, each of the kings we have seen, and more to be heard from, would be itching and grabbing for it, pouring out their subjects’ blood like water (saving their own, of course) to get hold of the blamed thing. I would make them _sit_ on it. Hot dogs.”

THE AWFUL GERMAN LANGUAGE

In the Berlin of 1891, street-car conductors gave you a ticket for every mile traveled, and you were expected to keep all these tickets or slips of paper in apple-pie order to show to an inspector who might, or might not, come around. Mark regularly threw his on the floor, and dropped cigar ashes on them. Accordingly, he had to pay double fare every little while, and was abused into the bargain.

One afternoon, going to the Legation, we got into an old, rather narrow bus, and opposite Mark sat a woman with an enormous bosom.

“What do you bet she takes No. 52. corsets?” he whispered. “She grew that as a shelf for her bus tickets,” he continued. “If I had a ‘chester’ like that, I could save money.”

After a pause, he turned suddenly on me:

“What is bust in German?”

“Busen,” I translated.

“Male, female, or neuter?”

“Male--der Busen.”

He began slapping his knees with both hands, waggled his head from one side to the other, and laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. But he never said another word on that trip.

Two months later the lecture, “The Awful German Tongue,” was delivered. But at the embassy we knew it almost by heart before he came out with it, for he was forever talking genitive case, declinations, definite and indefinite articles, and male, female, or neuter.

ARTIST OR PHOTOGRAPHER

Mr. Clemens had met Lenbach, the eminent German painter, in Vienna, and when, a year or two afterwards, I ran across Mark in Munich, he proposed that we call at Lenbach’s studio. So to Akademie Strasse we went, and duly admired Lenbach’s collections. “Mostly painted kaisers, kings, and kinglets, also one man, W. K. Vanderbilt,” was Mark’s estimate. I saw Lenbach eye Clemens with business in his heart. Mark saw it too. “Wonder if he intends to throw me on the linen, I mean the canvas,” he whispered, while Lenbach was busy in another part of the shop.

“It would increase his popularity immensely,” I sotto voce’ed back.

Lenbach returned--with a camera, and as Mark looked puzzled, Lenbach explained: “I always get every possible angle I can of the persons I want to paint. Now, if you will just stand still, Mr. Clemens, for a little while, I will be ever so much obliged.”

And Lenbach made the rounds of Clemens, who had taken off his overcoat, more than once, photographing every important bit of anatomy, back, sides, front, arms, legs, ear, full face, back of head, cheeks, hands, eyes, etc.

“They told me in Vienna that Lenbach was an artist,” commented Mark when we gained the sidewalk. “As you saw, he is merely a photographer. Glad I never went to pieces over his art with a capital A.”

Whether the painting was ever undertaken by Lenbach I don’t know, but it would be immensely interesting to get those plates from the “photographer’s” studio.

MARK INTERVIEWED THE BARBER ABOUT HARRY THAW

During his last visit to London, Mark called me up one morning and said: “My arm aches and I can’t do it myself, so for God’s sake, take me to a barber who can scrape one’s face without taking half the hide off. I am getting mighty tired of being flayed alive in this here burg.”

Accordingly we drove down to the Cecil in the Strand.

“I understand you are the man who treats a delicate skin like an American beauty rose,” said Mark to the barber.

“I will treat yours, Mr. Clemens, as if it were a butterfly. For I have read what you have said about Italian barbers,” was answered. And the things that happened to Mark’s face, head, hands and feet while in the chair would fill a column of “The Times” to enumerate. He remained two hours in the chair, and was not allowed to pay a red penny for the accommodation.

Later, at a well-known grillroom, we saw the massage artist alone at a table, and seated ourselves at the same board. The barber talked about other American celebrities and notorieties he had treated and mentioned Thaw.

“Oh, you shaved Harry--tell me about it,” said Mark.

When the barber had finished, Mark insisted, looking fiercely at me: “Not a word of this in New York, or there will be another dozen Thaw trials.”

As Harry Thaw is now disposed of, temporarily, at least, it won’t do any harm to print Mark’s interview with the barber.

It seems that Harry and Evelyn occupied a suite at the Cecil before they made that notorious exhibition of themselves in New York. Harry was an early riser and Evelyn was not, and when the barber called at eight, as ordered, Evelyn either had to be put out of bed forcibly by Harry or remained under the covers (for a time at least).

“And could you do your barbering and currycombing with that pretty thing within arm’s length?” asked Mark.

“I had to,” said the barber. “I was paid for it; besides, there was a terrible horsewhip on the bed and a revolver in an open drawer.

“Harry insisted upon smoking while I wielded the razor, and I had the greatest difficulty in the world not to cut him. He also insisted upon quarreling with Evelyn or lauding her beauty while my knife played around his mouth. This sort of thing went on for a week or more, when one fine morning I saw that Harry had rigged up a shooting stand in the hall of the apartment.

“‘Close the door,’ he cried, ‘and pull the curtains across. I don’t want the servants to hear.’ Then he began firing at the target. Evelyn had been asleep, and hearing shots, jumped out of bed and began crying: ‘My God!’ and ‘Mamma;’ likewise promised ‘never to do it again.’”

“Never to do _what_ again?” asked Mark.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“But you were right next to her; why didn’t you ask her?” insisted Mark.

“But it was her private business,” said the barber.

“Sure it was, but that was so much more reason for worming it out of her. You are a good barber, but a h---- of a reporter.”

“Of course, the floor attendants came trooping to Thaw’s door and the house telephone and speaking tubes emitted a volley of questions.

“Harry was prepared to give an impertinent though truthful answer. But Evelyn took the phone in hand and swore that it was an accident, due to her carelessness--Harry had nothing to do with it, and she was going to apologize to the management. When things had quieted down, Thaw told me on the d. q. that he would transfer his revolver practice to a certain shooting gallery. ‘I want to be an A No. 1 shot when I return to New York,’ he said. ‘There is a fellow who has deeply wronged my girl and I am going to have it out with him.’”

HIS PORTRAIT--A MIRROR

“People wonder why I spend so much time abroad,” said Mark Twain at a little luncheon party in Vienna, where young wine, fresh from the vat, circulated freely. “One of the reasons is that I have no doubles in foreign countries, while in the States I had notice served on me twice a month on the average that I look exactly like Mr. Cobbler Smith or Mr. Bricklayer Brown. I was told they had the very same warts, in the very same places, where I sport them--accuracy or imagination, which? The day before I left New York I got a letter of that sort and, having booked passage and nothing to fear, I made bold to answer it.

“‘My dear Sir,’ I wrote. ‘I was so much impressed by the resemblance that I bear your face, feet, hands, mustache, eyelids, ears, hair, eyes, eyebrows, cheeks, and other things, that I had the portrait of yourself you so kindly enclosed framed, and hereafter I shall use it in place of a mirror when I shave.’”

“Wife never saw that letter,” added Mark. “She was packing.”

MARK, BISMARCK, LINCOLN, AND DARWIN

I had been to see Bismarck to help boom Bryan for the Presidency, when that gentleman happened to get defeated for the Senate.

“And is old Bismarck still reading those trashy French novels?” inquired Mark.

“Much worse,” I said.

“Started Paul de Kock over again?”

“Worse still. He is reading Mark Twain now.”

“You don’t say. Since when the reform?”

“Since his daughter-in-law, Herbert’s wife, the little Countess Hoyos, gave him a set for Christmas.”

“Hoyos, Hoyos. I met some people of that name in Italy.”

“Your fair patroness hails from Trieste, or neighborhood.”