December — Sam’s article, “Marjorie Fleming, the Wonder-Child,” ran in the Dec. issue of Harper’s Bazar [Hill 250].
Sam signed his copy of A Dash at the Pole (1909) by William Lyon Phelps: “SL Clemens from / Wm Lyn Phelps / Dec 1909” [Gribben 542].
Paine writes of Sam quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes’ poem, “The Last Leaf”:
One evening he spoke of those who had written but one immortal thing and stopped there. He mentioned “Ben Bolt”.
“| met that man once,” he said. “In my childhood I sang ‘Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,’ and in my old age, fifteen years ago, I met the man who wrote it. His name was Brown. He was aged, forgotten, a mere memory. I remember how it thrilled me to realize that this was the very author of ‘Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt.’ He was just an accident. He had a vision and echoed it. A good many persons do that — the thing they do is to put in compact form the thing which we have all vaguely felt. ‘Twenty Years Ago’ is just like it ‘I have wandered through the village, Tom, and sat beneath the tree’-— and Holmes’s ‘Last Leaf’ is another: the memory of the hallowed past, and the gravestones of those we love. It is all so beautiful — the past is always beautiful.”’
[Thomas Dunn English. Mr. Clemens apparently remembered only the name satirically conferred upon him by Edgar Allan Poe, “Thomas Dunn Brown.”]
He quoted, with great feeling and effect:
The massy marbles rest
On the lips that we have pressed
In their bloom,
And the names we love to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
He continued in this strain for an hour or more. He spoke of humor, and thought it must be one of the chief attributes of God. He cited plants and animals that were distinctly humorous in form and in their characteristics. These he declared were God’s jokes.
“Why,” he said, “humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.”
“Your own case is an example,” I answered. “Without it, whatever your reputation as a philosopher, you could never have had the wide-spread affection that is shown by the writers of that great heap of letters.”
“Yes,” he said, gently, “they have liked to be amused.”
I tucked him in for the night, promising to send him to Bermuda, with Claude to take care of him, if he felt he could undertake the journey in two days more [MTB 1555-6]. Note: see also Gribben 319.
Gertrude Natkin wrote on a 2”x5” card with a picture of a young miss: “Dear Mr. Clemens—/ I want to wish you a very bright and happy New Year and hope that with its coming it will bring you health & happiness Marjorie” [MTP]. Note: she dates this only “Dec, 1909” but likely it came late in the month.
Putnam's Magazine ran an anonymous article in “The Lounger”, p. 369-70. Tenney: “Brief comment on Clara’s wedding to Ossip Gabrilowitsch, quoting MT’s answer when asked whether the marriage pleased him: ‘Yes, fully as much as any marriage could please me or perhaps any other father. These are two or three tragically solemn things in this life, and a happy marriage is one of them, for the terrors of life are all to come. A funeral is a solemn office, but I go to them with a spiritual uplift, thankful that the dead friend has been set free. That which follows is to me tragic and awful—the burial. I am glad of this marriage, and Mrs. Clemens would be glad, for she always had a warm affection for Gabrilowitsch, but all the same it is a tragedy, since it is a happy marriage with its future before it, loaded to the Plimsoll line with uncertainties.’ Also contains comments by MT at a musicale in Redding (Sept. 21). The writer mentions having ‘spoken of Mr. Clemens’s country home more than once in these pages’” [46]. Note: the Sept. 21 concert for the Mark Twain Library, held at Stormfield. See entry.