February 4 Sunday – At 21 Fifth Ave., N.Y. Isabel V. Lyon wrote for Sam to Richard R. Bowker asking when “a copyright meeting of importance in Washington or elsewhere” would take place [MTP].
Isabel Lyon’s journal:
Yesterday Mr. Paine gave to Mr. Clemens and me copies of the first Tammany Tiger designed by Nast. Mr. Paine is a generous man, it is a comfort to have his presence in the house and to know that every morning he is working over Mr. Clemens’s autobiographical papers. He is bringing into order the clippings and letters and everything.
Today Mr. Clemens lunched with Mr. and Mrs. John W. Alexander and Maude Adams. We didn’t see him on his returns; but at tea time when Mr. Montague and Mr. and Mrs. Loomis were here and he came down to join us he told what a delightful time he had had and how charming Miss Adams was in her description of the great interest that the children take in her play of Peter Pan. To them it is a reality. They write letters to her about the wonderful flying and one little boy sent her five cents to pay for telling him just how it is done [MTP TS 24]. Note: Nast first drew the Tammany Tiger in 1871; it was first published in Harper’s Weekly. See insert.
Edward E. Clarke wrote to Sam from Hastings, England. Clarke referred to Clemens’ Dec. 1904 article on Joan of Arc. He had sent copies of it to various French authorities and asked if Sam would send the MS for the article to be placed in a French artifact collection. A listing of artifacts referred to is not in the file [MTP].
Samuel Johnson Woolf, graphic artist, journalist, and illustrator (1880-1948), wrote from NYC enclosing a note from Col. George Harvey. Woolf wished to paint Twain’s portrait and since Sam had “so kindly consented to sit” he wished to know when he should come [MTP]. Note: shortly after this letter, a reply was made (not extant) and an appointment set for Clemens to sit for Woolf. The following article is Woolf’s account of the meeting (day not specified, which ran in Collier’s, vol. 45, no. 8, 1910, pages 42-44, and now shown on Schmidt’s website:
It was on an afternoon in February 1906, [Feb. 9] that I had my first appointment to meet Mark Twain and make arrangements for sittings for a portrait which I was to paint of him. At that time he lived in the old-fashioned red-brick house on the corner of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, the one he occupied up to the time that he moved to Stormfield. Promptly at the appointed time I called, and passing through a hall filled on either side with book-cases, I was ushered into a long, high-ceilinged front parlor so characteristic of the older New York houses.
Book-cases here filled all sides of the room, and, with a hasty glance, I noticed Macaulay’s “England,” Gibbon’s “Rome,” and Carlyle’s works. Two large pictures also attracted my attention; one of him painted in Italy and Alexander’s charming decorative representation of the unfortunate Jean Clemens.
I had little time for observing more, for, on looking through the open folding doors, and which led to a cozy sitting-room, I caught my first sight of the venerable author who had but a few months before passed his seventieth milestone.
How different, in most cases, are the impressions that photographs and portraits give from those received when we stand face to face with the original! How unlike were all the pictures which I had seen of him. At that time he still wore his black clothes, and his entire head seemed strikingly pale. Instead of the rugged, weather-beaten face which I had expected, I saw one softer and calmer, but no less strong, while the delicacy and refinement of his features were most noticeable. His hair, too, which I had always though wiry, was glossy and silken. Never have I seen a head where it seemed more an integral part—its ivory-like tones melting imperceptibly into the lighter hues of the skin, so that the line of juncture was almost entirely lost. Even his hands betrayed a more actively nervous man than one would be led to imagine a former river-pilot could be. In build he was smaller and slighter than he appeared in most pictures, though it probably was the massiveness of his head that gave this appearance.
On hearing me in the other room, and without waiting for me to be announced, he got up from a long sofa which was placed crossways in a bay window, and removing a pair of steel spectacles, he wrinkled his bushy white eyebrows until his eyes were almost lost, and came forward with a short “How d’ye do?”
My heart fell: so here was America’s humorist; how glum, how severe! But scarcely had I time to record these impressions than the eyebrows relaxed, and beginning at the corner of his deep- set eyes, a smile, no, not a smile, but rather a soft reflection of one, illumined his face; and underneath the glow of kindly sweetness could be seen the touch of sadness.
“So you have come here to do me, my boy; come in and sit down: I have been done before,” he added, “in many ways, and I have also had some portraits painted, though each one I vowed would be the last; and as I don’t believe any one’s word should be broken in at least ten years, I guess you will really be the last one to do it. Wait until you look around, and I think you will agree that I am perfectly preserved—in oil, at least.”
Reminiscences
Before deciding upon a suitable place to paint, we talked. He had seen a portrait of an actor which I had painted recently, so we, or rather he, talked of the stage and his one excursion into dramatic literature, “The Gilded Age.” Getting up from the sofa and clasping his hands behind his back, he walked up and down the room, recalling scenes of thirty or more years ago, and stopping in front of the marble mantel now and then while he emphasized some especial point.
“They thought they could kill it,” he began; “the morning after the first performance all the critics damned it—not a word in its favor; the second night we had hardly a handful of people.” Up to this point there was resentment in his voice. The plaint of the unappreciated was heard, but suddenly changing his tone, he went on, the smile again beginning to break.
“I grew anxious for my personal safety. But the third night there were almost two handfuls and several laughs, and at the end of the second week those of our friends who had not lent a willing hand had to pay for their seats. Yes, if you have something to say, say it often enough and folks will be bound to listen.” Suddenly remembering what I was there for, he said: “But this isn’t painting the portrait; we have work to do, both of us.” And so he took me from one room to the other, pointing out cherished tokens and mementoes.
Into the dining-room with its colonial furniture and a portrait of himself painted years ago by Frank Millet. “It’s all mine, except the hair,” he remarked. I looked in bewilderment. “It was this way,” he explained, “when I started sitting for that one, my hair was fairly long, but as the sittings continued, it grew until it was uncomfortable. So one day, without saying anything to Millet about it, I went to the barber to have it trimmed. Unfortunately, I grew sleepy in the comfortable chair, and when I woke up I saw that I had lost all likeness to my portrait. I didn’t know what to do, for I was afraid of Millet in those days, so on the day for the next sitting I hired a wig and went to the studio. When I got there Millet at once noticed how fine my hair looked and painted it, and it wasn’t until the session was ended that I took it off.”
Then we went upstairs to his bedroom, in which, in contrast to the rest of the house, everything was in a delightful disorder. On the window-sill stood his shaving glass and cup, while on either side of a large dark wood Italian bed, with two carved angels over the head, were tables covered with books and pipes. Opening off of this room was his den, also filled with books, and how his eyes glistened as he showed the various little keepsakes which brought back the memories of dead years. A silver loving-cup, a Bismarck tobacco jar, a drawing by Howard Pyle of the menu for his seventieth birthday dinner, together with the gilded laurel wreath with which a young girl dressed as Joan of Arc had crowned him on that occasion.
It was finally decided that the sofa in the room between the parlor and the dining-room would be the best place for him to pose. It was there as a usual thing he would sit after lunch and smoke and dream. On one side of the room was a large organ, and often during the sittings either his daughter or secretary would play. Music seems to appeal to him, rather from the associations it recalled than on its own account; and often when some old ballad or war song was played, a peculiar look would steal across his face, and his eyes would fill with tears; then, as the melody changed and some other remembrance came to him, he would pass it off with a light remark, joking in a way at his own seriousness. But that seemed to be especially characteristic of him—no matter how deep the thought that engaged his attention, by a peculiar process of mental conjuring he changed his appearance, or perhaps his point of view, so as to make it present a lighter side. In doing this he never for one moment lost sight of the original depth, but felt rather that by donning the cap and bells he could hold the attention and preach and amuse simultaneously.
At the end of one of the sitting he got up and came over to see the progress which I made on the picture.
“Make me beautiful,” he said; “remember, truth is your most valuable possession; therefore don’t waste it.” At another time two friends, very tall men came in to see him, to ask him to take a walk on the avenue. “With you two!” said he, standing between them and taking each by the arm, “never, never shall it be said that Mark Twain was the cross-piece of a capital H.”
His Interest in His Hair
After two or three sittings he saw that talking did not interfere with my work, and sometimes he conversed during the entire sitting. One day, however, he said: “I am afraid my talking bothers you. I guess you are one of the few people who would be willing to pay me to keep quiet.” I assured him that such was by no means the case, and that, far from interfering with the progress of the picture, it helped me.
If he was vain about anything in his personal appearance, it was his hair; and that I should get it right in the picture seemed to give him the greatest concern. Several times he gave me suggestions as to the way he wore it, asking me to wait until he went upstairs and brushed it. Then he would come down with it rearranged, and I would get to work again.
As the head began to near completion, he wanted to know what I would do with his hands, for I had them only sketched in, so as to get the general arrangement of the entire figure on the canvas. “I guess a book would look better in them,” he remarked, smilingly, one day, “even if a cigar is more natural.” I solved the difficulty by putting a cigar in one hand and a book in the other, as one seemed as much a part of him as the other.
One day while I was there a prominent New York paper called him up on the telephone and offered to give one hundred dollars to any charity which he might name for a fifteen-minute interview on a certain subject which he did not care to discuss. The refusal worried him during the rest of the afternoon, and before I left he gave me a note to mail to a certain hospital, enclosing a check as contribution to its “conscience fund.” In many other ways did he show the same spirit, and I can never forget how on one occasion when a severe snowstorm set in while I was at his house he insisted that I wear his overshoes home, assuring me that he was old enough to break any appointment on account of the weather, and that he would not need them again until it was clear, and then he did not wear them.
The last time he posed he was particularly reflective; in fact, he said very little during the entire sitting. While I was still there the expressman called for the picture to take it up to my studio. As it was being carried out, Mr. Clemens turned and said; “Now I feel as if I had attended my own funeral!”
Note: Lyon’s journal gives Feb. 9 as the day Woolf began the portrait of Twain; see Feb. 9.
Isabel Lyon’s journal:
Yesterday Mr. Paine gave to Mr. Clemens and me copies of the first Tammany Tiger designed by Nast. Mr. Paine is a generous man, it is a comfort to have his presence in the house and to know that every morning he is working over Mr. Clemens’s autobiographical papers. He is bringing into order the clippings and letters and everything.
Today Mr. Clemens lunched with Mr. and Mrs. John W. Alexander and Maude Adams. We didn’t see him on his returns; but at tea time when Mr. Montague and Mr. and Mrs. Loomis were here and he came down to join us he told what a delightful time he had had and how charming Miss Adams was in her description of the great interest that the children take in her play of Peter Pan. To them it is a reality. They write letters to her about the wonderful flying and one little boy sent her five cents to pay for telling him just how it is done [MTP TS 24]. Note: Nast first drew the Tammany Tiger in 1871; it was first published in Harper’s Weekly. See insert.
Edward E. Clarke wrote to Sam from Hastings, England. Clarke referred to Clemens’ Dec. 1904 article on Joan of Arc. He had sent copies of it to various French authorities and asked if Sam would send the MS for the article to be placed in a French artifact collection. A listing of artifacts referred to is not in the file [MTP].
Samuel Johnson Woolf, graphic artist, journalist, and illustrator (1880-1948), wrote from NYC enclosing a note from Col. George Harvey. Woolf wished to paint Twain’s portrait and since Sam had “so kindly consented to sit” he wished to know when he should come [MTP]. Note: shortly after this letter, a reply was made (not extant) and an appointment set for Clemens to sit for Woolf. The following article is Woolf’s account of the meeting (day not specified, which ran in Collier’s, vol. 45, no. 8, 1910, pages 42-44, and now shown on Schmidt’s website:
It was on an afternoon in February 1906, [Feb. 9] that I had my first appointment to meet Mark Twain and make arrangements for sittings for a portrait which I was to paint of him. At that time he lived in the old-fashioned red-brick house on the corner of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, the one he occupied up to the time that he moved to Stormfield. Promptly at the appointed time I called, and passing through a hall filled on either side with book-cases, I was ushered into a long, high-ceilinged front parlor so characteristic of the older New York houses.
Book-cases here filled all sides of the room, and, with a hasty glance, I noticed Macaulay’s “England,” Gibbon’s “Rome,” and Carlyle’s works. Two large pictures also attracted my attention; one of him painted in Italy and Alexander’s charming decorative representation of the unfortunate Jean Clemens.
I had little time for observing more, for, on looking through the open folding doors, and which led to a cozy sitting-room, I caught my first sight of the venerable author who had but a few months before passed his seventieth milestone.
How different, in most cases, are the impressions that photographs and portraits give from those received when we stand face to face with the original! How unlike were all the pictures which I had seen of him. At that time he still wore his black clothes, and his entire head seemed strikingly pale. Instead of the rugged, weather-beaten face which I had expected, I saw one softer and calmer, but no less strong, while the delicacy and refinement of his features were most noticeable. His hair, too, which I had always though wiry, was glossy and silken. Never have I seen a head where it seemed more an integral part—its ivory-like tones melting imperceptibly into the lighter hues of the skin, so that the line of juncture was almost entirely lost. Even his hands betrayed a more actively nervous man than one would be led to imagine a former river-pilot could be. In build he was smaller and slighter than he appeared in most pictures, though it probably was the massiveness of his head that gave this appearance.
On hearing me in the other room, and without waiting for me to be announced, he got up from a long sofa which was placed crossways in a bay window, and removing a pair of steel spectacles, he wrinkled his bushy white eyebrows until his eyes were almost lost, and came forward with a short “How d’ye do?”
My heart fell: so here was America’s humorist; how glum, how severe! But scarcely had I time to record these impressions than the eyebrows relaxed, and beginning at the corner of his deep- set eyes, a smile, no, not a smile, but rather a soft reflection of one, illumined his face; and underneath the glow of kindly sweetness could be seen the touch of sadness.
“So you have come here to do me, my boy; come in and sit down: I have been done before,” he added, “in many ways, and I have also had some portraits painted, though each one I vowed would be the last; and as I don’t believe any one’s word should be broken in at least ten years, I guess you will really be the last one to do it. Wait until you look around, and I think you will agree that I am perfectly preserved—in oil, at least.”
Reminiscences
Before deciding upon a suitable place to paint, we talked. He had seen a portrait of an actor which I had painted recently, so we, or rather he, talked of the stage and his one excursion into dramatic literature, “The Gilded Age.” Getting up from the sofa and clasping his hands behind his back, he walked up and down the room, recalling scenes of thirty or more years ago, and stopping in front of the marble mantel now and then while he emphasized some especial point.
“They thought they could kill it,” he began; “the morning after the first performance all the critics damned it—not a word in its favor; the second night we had hardly a handful of people.” Up to this point there was resentment in his voice. The plaint of the unappreciated was heard, but suddenly changing his tone, he went on, the smile again beginning to break.
“I grew anxious for my personal safety. But the third night there were almost two handfuls and several laughs, and at the end of the second week those of our friends who had not lent a willing hand had to pay for their seats. Yes, if you have something to say, say it often enough and folks will be bound to listen.” Suddenly remembering what I was there for, he said: “But this isn’t painting the portrait; we have work to do, both of us.” And so he took me from one room to the other, pointing out cherished tokens and mementoes.
Into the dining-room with its colonial furniture and a portrait of himself painted years ago by Frank Millet. “It’s all mine, except the hair,” he remarked. I looked in bewilderment. “It was this way,” he explained, “when I started sitting for that one, my hair was fairly long, but as the sittings continued, it grew until it was uncomfortable. So one day, without saying anything to Millet about it, I went to the barber to have it trimmed. Unfortunately, I grew sleepy in the comfortable chair, and when I woke up I saw that I had lost all likeness to my portrait. I didn’t know what to do, for I was afraid of Millet in those days, so on the day for the next sitting I hired a wig and went to the studio. When I got there Millet at once noticed how fine my hair looked and painted it, and it wasn’t until the session was ended that I took it off.”
Then we went upstairs to his bedroom, in which, in contrast to the rest of the house, everything was in a delightful disorder. On the window-sill stood his shaving glass and cup, while on either side of a large dark wood Italian bed, with two carved angels over the head, were tables covered with books and pipes. Opening off of this room was his den, also filled with books, and how his eyes glistened as he showed the various little keepsakes which brought back the memories of dead years. A silver loving-cup, a Bismarck tobacco jar, a drawing by Howard Pyle of the menu for his seventieth birthday dinner, together with the gilded laurel wreath with which a young girl dressed as Joan of Arc had crowned him on that occasion.
It was finally decided that the sofa in the room between the parlor and the dining-room would be the best place for him to pose. It was there as a usual thing he would sit after lunch and smoke and dream. On one side of the room was a large organ, and often during the sittings either his daughter or secretary would play. Music seems to appeal to him, rather from the associations it recalled than on its own account; and often when some old ballad or war song was played, a peculiar look would steal across his face, and his eyes would fill with tears; then, as the melody changed and some other remembrance came to him, he would pass it off with a light remark, joking in a way at his own seriousness. But that seemed to be especially characteristic of him—no matter how deep the thought that engaged his attention, by a peculiar process of mental conjuring he changed his appearance, or perhaps his point of view, so as to make it present a lighter side. In doing this he never for one moment lost sight of the original depth, but felt rather that by donning the cap and bells he could hold the attention and preach and amuse simultaneously.
At the end of one of the sitting he got up and came over to see the progress which I made on the picture.
“Make me beautiful,” he said; “remember, truth is your most valuable possession; therefore don’t waste it.” At another time two friends, very tall men came in to see him, to ask him to take a walk on the avenue. “With you two!” said he, standing between them and taking each by the arm, “never, never shall it be said that Mark Twain was the cross-piece of a capital H.”
His Interest in His Hair
After two or three sittings he saw that talking did not interfere with my work, and sometimes he conversed during the entire sitting. One day, however, he said: “I am afraid my talking bothers you. I guess you are one of the few people who would be willing to pay me to keep quiet.” I assured him that such was by no means the case, and that, far from interfering with the progress of the picture, it helped me.
If he was vain about anything in his personal appearance, it was his hair; and that I should get it right in the picture seemed to give him the greatest concern. Several times he gave me suggestions as to the way he wore it, asking me to wait until he went upstairs and brushed it. Then he would come down with it rearranged, and I would get to work again.
As the head began to near completion, he wanted to know what I would do with his hands, for I had them only sketched in, so as to get the general arrangement of the entire figure on the canvas. “I guess a book would look better in them,” he remarked, smilingly, one day, “even if a cigar is more natural.” I solved the difficulty by putting a cigar in one hand and a book in the other, as one seemed as much a part of him as the other.
One day while I was there a prominent New York paper called him up on the telephone and offered to give one hundred dollars to any charity which he might name for a fifteen-minute interview on a certain subject which he did not care to discuss. The refusal worried him during the rest of the afternoon, and before I left he gave me a note to mail to a certain hospital, enclosing a check as contribution to its “conscience fund.” In many other ways did he show the same spirit, and I can never forget how on one occasion when a severe snowstorm set in while I was at his house he insisted that I wear his overshoes home, assuring me that he was old enough to break any appointment on account of the weather, and that he would not need them again until it was clear, and then he did not wear them.
The last time he posed he was particularly reflective; in fact, he said very little during the entire sitting. While I was still there the expressman called for the picture to take it up to my studio. As it was being carried out, Mr. Clemens turned and said; “Now I feel as if I had attended my own funeral!”
Note: Lyon’s journal gives Feb. 9 as the day Woolf began the portrait of Twain; see Feb. 9.
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