April 17 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Richard C. Carr in Bogotville, Chicoutine County, P.Q., Canada.
“I have not heard of the learned pere Vignie before, still he could have existed. The main trouble with him is, that he did not furnish his “documents” instead of merely talking about them. In my judgment the unverified testimony of no unknown person is valuable—even when found in a Bible. / Very Truly Yours “… [MTP]. Note: “Père,” or father, was used by certain Catholic priests; it also was used to distinguish a father from a son. No further reference for Carr or Père Vignie was found.
Sam also wrote to Margery H. Clinton.
Dear Miss Marjorie—
It was lovely of you to knit that beautiful tie for me. It is in the right hands, it is in appreciative hands: I shall wear it with ostentation.
I am so sorry you have escaped to Europe; & I am sorry you will not be in the box to-morrow with Miss Polly & the rest of us. / Sincerely Yours / SL. Clemens [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Angelfish, 10-year-old Hellen Elizabeth Martin of Montreal, Canada.
I miss you, dear Helen [sic Hellen]. I miss Bermuda too, but not so much as I miss you; for you were rare, and occasional, and select, and Ltd., whereas Bermuda’s charms and graciousnesses were free and common and unrestricted,—like the rain, you know, which falls upon the just and the unjust alike; a thing which would not happen if I were superintending the rain’s affairs. No, I would rain softly and sweetly upon the just, but whenever I caught a sample of the unjust out- doors I would drown him [MTP]. Note: Hellen Elizabeth Martin (b. ca. 1897), one of five children and the daughter of Robert Dennison Martin and Helen Moncrieff Morton. Robert died in 1905; at this time Mrs. Martin was a wealthy widow. Sam recorded in his NB for June 1908 that Hellen’s age was 12. Cooley notes that this is Clemens’ only surviving letter to Hellen [MTAq 141n3].
Sam also replied to the Apr. 15 from Joe Twichell. A draft survives:
I am glad, Joe—uncommonly glad—for you will tell me about the “new movement” up your way which your clergy have been importing from Boston. Something of it has reached me, & has filled me to the eyelids with irreverent laughter. You will tell me if my understanding of the New Movement is correct: to-wit, that it is just Christian Science, with some of the earmarks painted over & the others removed, after the fashion of the unanointed cattle-thieves of the wild, wild West. My word, how ecclesiastical history do repeat herself! The Jews steal a God & a Creation & a Flood & a Moral Code from Babylon; Egypt steals the like from a forgotten Antiquity; Greece steals the swag from Egypt; Rome steals it from Greece; Christianity comes belated along & steals morals & miracles & one thing & another from Budh & Confucius; Christian Science arrives & steals the Christian outfit & gives it a new name; & now at last comes the Boston puritan—hater of Christian Science—& steals the plunder anew, & re- baptises it, & shouts tearful & grateful glory to God for winking at the mulct & not letting on— according to His shady custom these thirty million years.
Oh yes, I am aware that the Science was emptying New England’s churches, & that the wise recognized that something had got to be done or the Church must go out of business & put up its pulpits at auction; I am aware that the peril was forestalled, & how; I am aware that Christian Science, disguised & new-named, has arrived in Hartford & is being preached & thankfully welcomed—where? In the most fitting of all places: The Theological Factory, which was largely built out of stolen money. Money stolen from me by that precious Christian, Newton Case, & his pals of the American Publishing Company.
Oh, dear Joe, why doesn’t somebody write a tract on “How to Be a Christian & yet keep Your Hands off of Other People’s Things” [MTP]. Note: Newton Case (1807-1890), wealthy railroad executive and and past Hartford neighbor of Sam’s. Case was also a friend of Twichells, who had offered to pay Julia Twichell’s passage to Europe. See entries on Case, Vol. I & II.
In Sam’s A.D. for this day he dictated about his collection of Angelfish, listing the names and sketches of each girl: Dorothy Butes, Frances Nunnally, Dorothy Quick, Margaret Blackmer, Irene Gerken, Hellen Martin, Jean Spurr, Loraine Allen, Helen Allen, and Dorothy Sturgis. Notably absent from this list was Margaret Illington (honorary), Dorothy Harvey, Louise Paine, and Marjorie Breckenridge, all of whom were listed in the “Constitution for the Aquarium” dated only “Summer, 1908.” This suggests that Clemens added this last group to his Aquarium Club sometime after Apr. 17. Loraine Allen, on the other hand, appears in this list and dictation below, but not in the Constitution. See Schmidt’s Twainquotes website for more on Loraine and the other Angelfish.
After my wife’s death, June 5, 1904, I experienced a long period of unrest and loneliness. Clara and Jean were busy with their studies and their labors and I was washing about on a forlorn sea of banquets and speechmaking in high and holy causes—industries which furnished me intellectual cheer and entertainment, but got at my heart for an evening only, then left it dry and dusty. I had reached the grandpapa stage of life; and what I lacked and what I needed was grandchildren, but I didn’t know it. By and by this knowledge came by accident, on a fortunate day, a golden day, and my heart has never been empty of grandchildren since. No, it is a treasure-place of little people whom I worship, and whose degraded and willing slave I am. In grandchildren I am the richest man that lives to-day; for I select my grandchildren, whereas all other grandfathers have to take them as they come, good, bad and indifferent.
The accident I refer to, was the advent of Dorothy Butes, 14 years old, who wanted to come and look at me. Her mother brought her. There was never a lovelier child. English, with the English complexion; and simple, sincere, frank and straightforward, as became her time of life. This was more than two years ago. She came to see me every few weeks, until she returned to England eight months ago. Since then, we correspond.
My next prize was Frances Nunnally, school-girl, of Atlanta, Georgia, whom I call Francesca for short. I have already told what pleasant times we had together every day in London, last summer, returning calls. She was 16 then, a dear sweet grave little body, and very welcome in those English homes. She will pay me a visit six weeks hence, when she comes North with her parents Europe-bound. She is a faithful correspondent.
My third prize was Dorothy Quick—ten years and ten-twelfths of a year old when I captured her at sea last summer on the return-voyage from England. What a Dorothy it is! How many chapters have I already talked about her bright and booming and electrical ways, and her punctuationless literature and her adorably lawless spelling? Have I exhausted her as a text for talk? No. Nobody could do it. At least nobody who worships her as I worship her. She is eleven years and nearly eight-twelfths of a year old, now, and just a dear! She was to come to me as soon as I should get back from Bermuda, but she has an earlier grandpapa, and he is leaving for Europe next Monday morning, and naturally he had to have the last of her before sailing. Is she her old self, and is her pen characteristically brisk and her spelling and punctuation undamaged by time and still my pride and delight? Yes:
[Dorothy Quick’s Apr. 16 letter was inserted here; see entry]
Next is Margaret—Margaret Blackmer, New York, 12 years old last New Year’s. She of the identification shell. Those shells were so frail and delicate that they could not endure exposure on a watch-chain, therefore we have put them safely and sacredly away and hung gold shells enameled with iridescent shell-colors on our watch-chains to represent them and do the identifying with. Margaret’s father will bring her down from her school at Briarcliff on the Hudson six days hence to visit me—as I learn per her letter of five days ago—and then she will go with me to play at the Children’s Theatre, where, as Honorary President of that admirable institution, I am to say a few words.
Next is Irene—Irene Gerken, of 75th Street, New York, that beautiful and graceful and altogether wonderful child—I mean fairy—of 12 summers. To-morrow she will go to a matinee with me, and we are to play billiards the rest of the day. In Bermuda, last January, we played much billiards together, and a certain position of the balls is still known by her name there. When her ball backed itself against the cushion and became thereby nearly unusable, she was never embarrassed by that defect but always knew how to remedy it: she just moved it out to a handier place, without remark or apology and blandly fired away! Down there, now, when a ball lies glued to a cushion, gentlemen who have never seen that child lament and say,
“O hang it, here’s another Irene!”
Next is Hellen Martin, of Montreal, Canada, a slim and bright and sweet little creature aged ten and a half years.
Next is Jean Spurr, aged 13 the 14th of last March, and of such is the kingdom of Heaven.
Next is Loraine Allen, nine and a half years old, with the voice of a flute and a face as like a flower as a face can be, and as graciously and enchantingly beautiful as ever any flower was.
Next is Helen Allen, aged 13, native of Bermuda, perfect in character, lovely in disposition, and a captivator at sight!
Next—and last, to date—is Dorothy Sturgis, aged 16, of Boston. This is the charming child mentioned in yesterday’s chapter when I was talking about Lord Grey. On the voyage together we were at the stern watching the huge waves life the ship skyward then drop her, most thrillingly H—alifax-ward, when one of them vast bulk leaped over the taffrail and knocked us down and buried us under several tons of salt water. The papers, from one end of America to the other, made a perilous and thundersome event of it, but it wasn’t that kind of thing at all. Dorothy was not discomposed, nobody was hurt, we changed our clothes from the skin outward, and were on deck again in half an hour. In talking of Dorothy yesterday I referred to her as one my “angel-fishes.”
All the ten school-girls in the above list are my angel-fishes, and constitute my Club, whose name is “The Aquarium” and contains no creature but these angel-fishes and one slave. I am the slave. The Bermudian angel-fish, with its splendid blue decorations, is easily the most beautiful fish that swims, I think. So I thought I would call my ten pets angel-fishes, and their club the Aquarium.
The club’s badge is the angel-fish’s splendors reproduced in enamels and mounted for service as a lapelpin—at least that is where the girls wear it. I get these little pins in Bermuda; they are made in Norway.
A year or two ago I bought a lovely piece of landscape of 210 acres in the country near Redding, Connecticut, and John Howells, the son of his father, is building a villa there for me. We’ll spend the coming summer in it. I have never been to that region, but the house is so lauded by Clara and Miss Lyon that I am becoming anxious to see it.
The billiard room will have the legend “The Aquarium” over its door, for it is to be the Club’s official headquarters. I have good photographs of all my fishes, and these will be framed and hung around the walls. There is an angel-fish bedroom—double-bedded—and I expect to have a fish and her mother in it as often as Providence will permit.
There’s a letter from the little Montreal Hellen. I will begin an answer now, and finish it later: [MTAq 137-41]. Note: see letter to Hellen above in entry.
Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Went to Boston with E. Cowles” [MTP: IVL TS 46]. Note: Edith Cowles.
Diana Belais for the New York City Humane Society wrote to Sam. Having called on Clemens the day before but not finding him in, Belais wrote she’d had a “charming conversation” with Lyon who suggested she write. She wanted to acquaint Clemens with their society, especially on the issue of vivisection, in which she knew he was interested. She hoped he “might be inclined to take some very slight, but active, part in our endeavor” [MTP].
Hellen Elizabeth Martin wrote to Sam.
I wrote you a letter but was just too late for the mail for Bermuda. I hope you had a pleasant voyage coming back. My Brother Charlie who is at Boarding School, is coming back for the Easter Holidays. How are you feeling now? I am feeling fine. Lots of Love from / Your Loving Little friend / Hellen Martin / P.S. Wishing you a very Happy Easter. H.M. [MTP].
Photo insert: Twain and Rogers are standing in the middle next to the windows.