The Twainian Vol 34 No 2 (1975)
In our issue of “The Twainian” for January-February we wanted to give the story which was published in the Columbia newspaper at the time, namely 1902, and we realized the importance of telling even more of the story, the recollections of a prominent man who had Mark Twain as his house guest in Columbia at the time. The recital of details by one of Columbia's foremost citizens in 1926 bears recording, it was written by one H. C. Turner for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, January 30, 1927, largely in the language of E. W. Stephens. We will omit the story about the goat and also the story about the watermelons since they are very much as recited in our previous ‘‘Twainian’’. The recollections and additional personal observations, so far as we are able to discover, are known only by a few and are deserving of a permanent record.
“By E. W. STEPHENS.
Mark Twain came to Columbia in 1902 to receive from the Missouri University the degree of LL.D. Two members of Roosevelt's Cabinet, Secretary Hitchcock of the Department of the Interior and Secretary Wilson of the Department of Agriculture and Prof. Beverly Calloway of the of Agriculture at Washington also had similar degrees conferred upon them at the same time.
Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, was my guest. I had the opportunity of studying him at short range and to learn some things about him and from him that may be of general interest.
I met him at the train and took him to my home. I was at first somewhat disappointed in his general appearance, as he impressed me more as a Missouri farmer or man of affairs than as a literary person.
I discovered at once, however, that he was congenial personally, and I had a great time with him for three or four days.
He did not want to visit around in the community or to have any exploitation of himself, but he preferred to remain in the quietude of my home, where after a little while, I was able to get pretty close to him and to enjoy a lot of his eccentric, original and remarkable humor.
I told him as soon as he reached my home that he would be expected that night to make a speech at a banquet. He said he did not want to speak, but if he spoke he wanted to be the last speaker on the program.
Roasted Other Speakers
I afterwards discovered that his reason for this was that he wanted an opportunity to roast the other speakers.
After he had reached his room and dressed for dinner, he underwent an entire change in his personal appearance. When he doffed his traveling suit and combed out his fluffy white hair and assumed the proper garb for an evening dinner, the farmer had been transformed into an author and he looked the part in every respect.
That evening we attended a banquet of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and in accordance with his request, I had the toastmaster put him at the end of the program.
He listened with a great deal of intentness to the other speakers bending over the table and looking into their eyes in a manner that showed he was taking in every word, evidently with the purpose of catching some expression upon which he might hinge his remarks afterwards.
Among others were addresses delivered by Secretary Hitchcock and Secretary Wilson and Galloway. Hitchcock responded to a toast to President Roosevelt; Wilson to sentiment, “The Farmers,” and Galloway spoke to the world at large.
In the course of his address Hitchcock paid high tribute to Roosevelt, renominating him for President while Wilson thanked the university authorities for conferring upon him the degree of LL.D., saying that he considered it a tribute to the farmers rather than himself. For some reason, Galloway made a reference to a goat.
When Clemens arose, he first complimented the University curators upon the excellent judgment they had shown in selecting him as a recipient of the degree of LL.D. He told them he did not see how they could have made a wiser choice and that in consideration of the honor they had paid him, he promised to send them a full set of his published works.
Hitchcock Smart Man.
The humor of this opening statement was fully appreciated by the audience. He then turned his attention to Hitchcock. He said, “‘Gentlemen, I am especially impressed with the brilliant genius of this Secretary of the Interior. The first and very nearly the only thing he did in his speech was to nominate his boss for re-election as next President of the United States. This Secretary is a smart man, he will hold his job.”
Then turning to Secretary Wilson he remarked, “How different this other Secretary. How much more generous and how much less he is thinking of himself. He doesn't care whether Roosevelt is elected President again or not, or whether he continues to be Secretary or not. All of his interest centers around the farmers. He is glad he has been made an LL.D. because it is an honor to the farmers.
“Gentlemen, how wonderous it is to see a man who loves a farmer!”
“Young man, I call your attention to these two secretaries. How different they are, one thinking about being secretary again and the other only cares for the farmers and doesn’t think of himself.”
Amused Crowd Immensely.
He said much more in his banquet speech, but what is quoted above comes back to me today after twenty-five years. Of course the crowd was immensely amused.
The next day in the presence of a large assembly, there was conferred upon him the degree of LL.D., and also upon the other three gentlemen.
It was the habit at that time in the conferring of degrees upon distinguished people for a man to introduce the recipient of the degree with a speech in which he gave the history of the person honored and paid some tribute to his services.
The orator who had introduced Hitchcock spoke very highly of him as a lawyer and as an official, as did those who introduced Wilson and Galloway, but Clemens seemed to take special pleasure in roasting Hitchcock.
The first thing he said upon rising was, “Gentlemen, I have been listening to an address eulogizing and introducing this secretary. It was a fine speech, evidently written by the Secretary himself."
Then, turning to the man who had introduced Hitchcock, he said to him: “Why didn't you come to me and let me tell you some facts about this Secretary’s life? You would have made a different kind of a speech.”
“I discovered during the several days he was with me at my residence that the more informal our intercourse with each other, the more he enjoyed it. He sat near to me at the table and in the course of our conversation I said a good many things to him that I would not have dared to say to a man of a great deal of dignity, and he seemed to enjoy them. I also explained to him that I would suffer from my conversation after he had left; my wife would rebuke my lack of dignity.
He responded, ‘‘She will dust you off, will she?”
I said, “Yes, that’s exactly what she will do.”
“It will do no good to dust you off after I have gone. Why doesn’t she dust you off now? I used to have the same trouble,” he continued "at my home. I told my wife that there was no use dusting me off after the company had left. Why not dust me off while they were there so that I could make the correction before it was too late. I suggested that we use a code while the company was present which they would not understand, and here's what it was:
“She would say, ‘What did you do with the green card that was lying on the bureau upstairs? That meant, ‘Quit talking to the woman on your right and go to talking to the woman on your left.’ Then she would refer to another card and she would inquire what I had done with it. That meant, ‘Remember you are not the whole show, give somebody else a chance; don't talk so much.’ Then I would stop and would not utter another word and she would ask, ‘What did you do with that white card,’ which meant, ‘You haven't gone entirely to sleep, have you?’
“Now you will see," he said, "that an arrangement of this kind operates fine. The company doesn't know what you are talking about and you will be able to correct yourself before it is too late.”
Women Unreasonable Sometimes.
“I think,” he said, “that women are very unreasonable sometimes. For instance, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe was an adjacent neighbor of ours in Hartford, Conn. One Sunday morning I went over to see her, but I failed to wear a cravat. When I returned home my wife took me down severely for it and said to me, ‘Is it possible you called on Mrs. Stowe without a cravat on?"
“I asked her, ‘What use has Mrs. Stowe got for a cravat? If she wants one I'll go back and give her one.’ So I went over to Mrs. Stowe's residence and took the cravat and gave it to her.
“I told Mrs. Stowe, ‘I understand I didn’t have any cravat on when I came over here, so here’s one, you can have it.”
We had beaten biscuit at our table for breakfast. He had not seen any since he left Missouri when he was a boy and they greatly interested him. But the biscuits were small and he soon devoured one, sometimes before the maid could return with another.
He turned and asked me, ‘What am I going to do?”
“Why,” I said, "take two or three.”
He said, “I'll do it.”. And when the girl returned with a plate of biscuit, he took about a dozen and laid them all around his plate and seemed to enjoy them immensely.
He said, “I'm safe now, am I not?”
And I said, “You're all right now.”
The next day I invited a number of gentlemen to my residence to dine with him. He would not say a word to the guests, but spent the entire evening surrounding his plate with beaten biscuit. I noticed afterwards that in his autobiography, the last book which he ever wrote, he paid quite a tribute to Missouri beaten biscuit, some of which, I fancy, are those which he ate at my residence.
He did not like to meet people or to go down into town. Persons were continually calling him on the phone or called on him to get his autograph. This worried him very much; in fact he said, "I do not want to see anybody, anywhere. I have seen everything in the world that I want to see. Some years ago I visited the West Indies with Tom Reed and Charles Dudley Warner and others and I would not even leave the ship when we reached port. I told them I did not want to see anything else.
Could Not Take Joke.
He sat in my room smoking his pipe and talking to me in his drawling, interesting way. Finally a gentleman called up and said, ‘I want to see Mr. Clemens very much. His grandmother and my grandmother were sisters." I turned to him and putting my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, I said to him, “Here's a man you'll have to see; he will never forgive me unless you see him. He says that your grandmother and his grandmother were sisters.”
“I couldn't help it, but I'll see him anyhow," he answered.
He could not take a joke on himself. He reveled in jokes upon others, some of them cruel, but if anyone attempted a story or a joke on him, he hit back at once vigorously.
He took especial fancy to a young woman visiting us and was especially impressed with her complexion. On mornings when she appeared at breakfast, he always greeted her with this remark: "You look fine this morn, you have evidently been emphasizing your complexion.”
I did not have much opportunity to talk with him concerning his published works. I gathered from brief references that he considered "Joan of Arc’ as his greatest work. I asked him who was the original of Mulberry Sellers.
“No man especially was the original of all the qualities typified in the character. He was a combination of traits I gathered from different persons whom I observed during a life time,” he answered. “But the man whom the character more nearly represented than any other was an uncle of mine. Raymond, the actor, who portrayed the character on the stage, failed to catch the most important trait of this uncle’s character which I embodied in Mulberry Sellers. It was the pathetic side of him. He was a very earnest, sensitive, patriotic and highly moral person, who was especially devoted to temperance. He always felt that he had a mission in life. His special fad was temperance and he had peculiar ways of demonstrating the evils of drink. For instance, at one time he organized a temperance society in the town in which he lived and had a public celebration. All the men and women had on rosettes and sashes and presented a very spectacular sight. He headed the procession, but before doing so he got very drunk so as to demonstrate to the world the evils of strong drink. He staggered around in the street while marching at the head of the procession, making a very pathetic spectacle of himself.
Friend Recognized Character.
“A friend of mine in St. Louis once asked me, as have a great many others, ‘Who was the original person from whom the character was drawn?’
“We were in the Southern Hotel of that city and I told him that if he would sit in an adjoining room I would have my uncle come in and I would draw him out. I thought he would recognize the character.
“I did so and he said that he fully recognized him.”
At times Clemens was somber and even gruff in his manner, but it was only occasionally that he livened up and gave vent to his humor. I think you will find his books the same way, sometimes even prosy, but when he gives vent to humor, no one equals him.
One thing about Clemens impressed me very strongly, that was that he was a man of vigorous intellect, well read, of real convictions, of high moral principle, and with ideas upon public affairs. He was no mere clown and fun maker. He was a philosopher as well as a humorist. He had only contempt for men who got fun out of puns or silly jokes. His jokes all had a point to them.
There was much philosophy in his humor.
I parted with him with a decided impression that he was America's greatest humorist. The more I read of his books, the more this impression has grown upon me. In fact no other American author has left a deeper impress upon the world and none is now more widely read and quoted.
He lived only a few years after he left Columbia, but I shall always esteem it a pleasure that it was my good fortune to entertain him.
After he left us, he wrote to my wife a beautiful letter of appreciation showing a knowledge of the proprieties and the real Missouri spirit.
I cannot recall in Missouri literature any name that deserves higher rank than Mark Twain, and to think he never had a college education and was only an ordinary printer.
Pictures of him and of Eugene Field hang in the Governor's reception room of the Missouri State Capitol. They will live in history as Missouri's two most attractive authors. It is a pleasure to me to record the fact that I knew them both and enjoyed their personal friendship."