November 27 Friday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: “The King read for the benefit of the Library” [MTP: IVL TS 81].
Elizabeth Wallace describes the events of a full day at Stormfield:
Mr. Clemens spent half of each morning in bed, and sometimes he did not appear until lunch- time; but the morning after Thanksgiving he was downstairs at ten, and proposed that we take a walk over the hills, his hills. It was a gloriously bright, crisp, cold day, and the atmosphere was so limpid that we could see far away. Mr. Clemens put on a fur-lined great-coat and his gray cap, saw that there was a goodly supply of cigars in his pockets, and we started off down the walk, through the pergola, and picked our way to a winding path that led us to all sorts of charming places.
Just as we were starting from the house, Mr. Clemens had stopped me and had said: “I want you to look at this view.” I looked at the slope below, that dipped down into a pretty valley, and then at the gentle hills beyond, where winter had forced the trees to drop their sheltering screens, so that unexpected houses and isolated farms were here and there revealed. Mr. Clemens asked, “Do you see that white building over there?” pointing, at the same time, to what was unmistakably a country church. He went on: “We’ve just discovered that it is a church. It’s the nearest one. Just at a safe distance. All summer we thought that it was a wind mill.”
That morning walk in the white November sunlight will always remain a vivid memory. We scrambled down the hillside and came to the stream, which Mr. Clemens pointed out to me with the proud gesture of a discoverer. It was just what a New England stream should be, winding and clear, flowing at times turbulently over obstructing stones, and then pausing to form a still, golden-brown pool. We followed its windings with happy delight, finding new beauties to show to each other and to exclaim over. Mr. Clemens told me Indian stories and legends he had heard in his boyhood days.
We came to a tiny cave, at the side of the road, where there were some baby stalactites, and Mr. Clemens stopped there to discourse on the wonders of geology. He told me he had lately been investigating the subject of the formation of the earth, and he had found it so wonderful that he wanted to know more about it. He had found some old treatises on geology which amused him greatly, but he wanted to get some more modern and scientific information.
And so we wandered on, beguiled by the stream, which kept on murmuring seductively of charms farther on.
We talked of the Angel-fish and their many attractions. Mr. Clemens told me of Margaret’s last visit to Stormfield and of what good times they had had together. “She is a dear womanly child,” said Mr. Clemens, “and we had one conversation together which convinced me more than ever of her sweet consideration for others. She was telling me how she intended to bring up her children, and what were her plans for their education. There were to be two, a boy and a girl. The girl was to be named after her mother. I asked her what the boy’s name would be, and she replied, with a reproachful look in her brown eyes: ‘Why, Mr. Clemens, I can’t name him until I know what his father’s name is.’ Now, wasn’t that truly thoughtful?”
We finally had to leave the stream, for it was the lunch hour, so we made an abrupt turn and approached Stormfield by the opposite side from which we had left it. As we climbed the hill, Mr. Clemens paused a moment to say: “I never want to leave this place. It satisfies me perfectly”
AT luncheon Mr. Clemens spoke of his lasting gratitude to Captain Stormfield. For it was to the success of his Heavenly Experiences that the building of the loggia was due. And that was the reason the peaceful house was thus christened.
Our meal was somewhat hurried by the announcement, made by the deeply-interested butler, that the people were beginning to come. We were to have that afternoon the first entertainment of a series for the benefit of the Library Fund of the village. Mr. Clemens had offered to tell stories, and the entrance fee was to be twenty-five cents. Chairs had been hired from the local under taker, and had been placed in close rows in the big living-room, in the loggia, and out in the hall.
The first who arrived had walked five miles. More came. They came in buggies and in other handy vehicles. They entered the house solemnly and took their places silently, refusing to make themselves comfortable, and held on grimly to fur overcoats and fleece lined jackets.
Soon the big living-room was filled to overflowing, and then Mr. Clemens stepped up to the improvised platform at one end of the long room and bade them welcome. As usual, he made a most picturesque appearance. On the wall behind him was a very large square, of carved, rich, old Italian oak which filled the space between the two windows and formed an effective background for the white-haired, white-clad figure of the speaker. Mr. Clemens told story after story in his happiest vein—how he became an agriculturist, how he was lost in the dead of night in the black vastness of a German banqueting hall. He was brilliant, wonderful. He seemed determined to bring a ripple into the faces of that silent audience. Once in a while stern features would relax for a moment, but the effort seemed to hurt, and the muscles would become fixed again.
In the back of the room there sat some of the younger generation, who suffered from occasional apoplectic outbursts. And yet we knew that everyone there was enjoying it deeply, hugely, only, as Mr. Clemens said afterwards, “they weren’t used to laughing on the outside.” And they were proud, too, proud almost to sinning, of their illustrious fellow-townsman, and they would have shouted with laughter, if they only could.
When Mr. Clemens had finished, after an entertainment of an hour and a half, there was no lack of applause. This they could give. The audience dispersed slowly, many of the number stopping to look, with open mouthed but inarticulate admiration, at the beauties and luxuries of this home, so different from theirs.
That evening Mr. Clemens rested himself by playing billiards. Before beginning, he showed me his collection of fish. Charmingly colored pictures of Angel-fish and other varieties were framed and hung low around the billiard-room. He told me that each real Angel-fish who came to visit him could choose one of those and call it her coat-of-arms. There were other very remarkable sketches and caricatures hung on the walls, but Mr. Clemens seemed most interested in the piscatorial collection.
It was sometimes a wonderful and fearsome thing to watch Mr. Clemens play billiards. He loved the game, and he loved to win, but he occasionally made a very bad stroke, and then the varied, picturesque, and unorthodox vocabulary, acquired in his more youthful years, was the only thing that gave him comfort. Gently, slowly, with no profane inflexions of voice, but irresistibly as though they had the head-waters of the Mississippi for their source, came this stream of unholy adjectives and choice expletives. I don’t mean to imply that he indulged himself thus before promiscuous audiences. It was only when some member of the inner circle of his friends was present that he showed him this mark of confidence, for he meant it in the nature of a compliment. His mind was as far from giving offense as the mind of a child, and we felt none. We only felt a kind of awe. At no other time did I ever hear Mr. Clemens use any word which could be called profanity. But if we would penetrate into the billiard-room and watch him play, we must accept certain inevitable privileges of royalty [Mark Twain and the Happy Island, chapters 11-12]. Note: Fatout does not list this benefit talk by Clemens, though Lyon does. The Mark Twain Library Association minutes notes Sam’s “short talk” and observed “quite a good attendance” [Copied by Tenney, Nov. 15, 1981].
Bennie Bercu, 12 years old, wrote from Providence, RI to express delight with Twain’s books [MTP].
National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C. per Willis L. Moore wrote to ask Sam to make a toast at their Dec. 15 annual banquet [MTP]. Note: “Ans. Dec 1. MLH”
Thomas Brower Peacock, composer, wrote from Denver,Colo. to advise he’d sent Sam his latest song, “Beautiful Girl” as a birthday present. He enclosed a clipping with his photo relating the song was inspired by Virginia Dare, the first white woman born in N. America [MTP]. Note: “Ans. Dec 1. MLH”