The Hour I First Believed

by Wally Lamb

  Back at the Twichells’, Grandmother and I rested and readied ourselves for the evening ahead. When it was time to leave, I saw with some dismay that Harmony and her mother had changed into lovely evening frocks. I, however, was doomed to wear the same mud-spattered brown dress that I had been wearing the live-long day, wrinkles and all. Grandmother wore her usual drab Quaker garb. We returned on foot to the Clemens manse, for it is but a short distance. Grandmother and Mr. and Mrs. Twichell led the way, and Harmony and I strolled arm in arm behind them. It amused me to see the eminent but tiny Lizzy Popper betwixt the Twichells, both of whom are tall of stature. A study in opposites these three truly made!

  We were the first guests to arrive. Susy descended the stairs in a satin dress of sky-blue—cerulean, she called it—which she had complemented with a hair band of matching color and a clutch of artificial violets at her waist. Mrs. Clemens was the picture of elegant refinement in a high-collared gown of sea-green silk. Mr. Clemens looked more respectable than he had earlier, blowing bubbles in his open collar and rolled-up shirtsleeves.

  No sooner had introductions been made when Grandmother pounced on her quarry, asking Mr. Clemens if she might have a word with him about a matter of import. She was foiled, however, by the boisterous arrival of two other guests, Mr. William Gillette and his wife, Helen—a fetching couple, indeed. Mr. Gillette is a stage actor and a former Nook Farm neighbor of the Clemenses. “Young Will owes his acting career to the many games of charades he played here as a youth,” Mr. Clemens declared. “I have often suggested to him that we should share in his box office receipts now that he has made a success of himself, but he has thus far resisted the notion resolutely.” There was laughter all around, except from Grandmère, whose opportunity to exact a promise from Mr. Clemens had slipped away, and who, after all, has opined many a time that actors are humbugs lacking in moral character.

  Here, Lillian, is a list of last evening’s dinner guests: Reverend and Mrs. Twichell and Harmony, the Gillettes, Mr. Walter Camp (a Yale man employed by the New Haven Clock Company), Grandmother, and myself. A ninth guest—Mr. Tesla—was also invited but had failed to materialize nearly an hour after we others had arrived. “Oh, he will be here, poor fellow,” Mr. Clemens kept saying. “He may be lost, or thinking up some grand new invention. Scientific geniuses are not ruled by their pocket watches.” They could only wait so long nonetheless, Mrs. Clemens said, and so, the party proceeded to the dining room.

  A magnificent room it is! Flocked wallpaper of red and gold in a pattern of repeating lilies, Oriental vases filled with bouquets of ostrich plumes and peacock feathers, and a splendid view of the adjacent library and conservatory. The table was draped with a covering of fine Irish lace and set beautifully with silver candlesticks and blue and white willow pattern china. At each place was a small card, also in the willow pattern, which told where we were to sit. Mr. Clemens sat at head of table. To his left was Mr. Camp and to his right was the empty chair for the missing Mr. Tesla. Mrs. Clemens sat opposite her husband and was flanked by Grandmother to her left and Susy to her right. My place, I was happy to see, was between Susy and Harmony. Next to Harmony sat the Gillettes, and to Grandmother’s left sat the Twichells.

  Here were the courses served: a delicious cream soup of celery and leeks, poached Fishers Island oysters, roasted ducks with potato cakes and root vegetables, a lettuce leaf salad with chestnuts and figs, and for dessert, charlotte russe and ice cream in the shapes of cherubs. Spirits flowed freely throughout: aperitifs, sherry, champagne, and after-dinner liqueurs of vivid colors, one of which I recognized as the crème de menthe which Madame Buzon sips in her office to aid digestion. Susy, Harmony, and I abstained from these, of course, as did Grandmother—ever the virtuous Quaker! All of the modern ladies partook, even Mrs. Twichell, though she is the wife of a clergyman.

  Oh, Lil, the dinner conversation was lively and gay! Mr. Clemens was asked by Mrs. Gillette what novel he was writing at present, and he said he has been laboring for some time on a story about a modern man who finds himself misplaced in the medieval past. From there, he spoke comically about how his books are edited. Mrs. Clemens reads each new chapter aloud, says he, taking out all of the “delightfully terrible parts” and editing these “into the stove.” If Mrs. C. had not performed surgery on Huckleberry Finn, he said, that book would have run to a thousand pages! The jest produced laughter from all, even from Mrs. C. herself. “Oh, Youth, our guests will think me a tyrant,” she said, to which Mr. C. responded, “Only when there is an editor’s pencil in your hand, my dear.” It is plain to see that Susy’s parents share a great fondness for one another. I think it amusing that Mrs. Clemens calls her gray-haired husband “Youth.” Mr. Twain’s youth is long past! He is forty if he is a day.

  From Mr. Twain’s books, the conversation turned to Mr. Camp, who is an athlete as well as a clock maker. He spoke of the need of humans to imitate the beasts of the jungle and exercise their muscles lest their health fail. He has designed a calisthenics regime which he calls his “daily dozen” and says that those who adhere to it will lengthen their lives. Much fun was had at Mr. Camp’s expense when he gave the names of these contortions he has designed: “the grind,” “the grasp,” “the roll,” “the crawl.” Mr. Camp also spoke at length about football, a gentlemen’s game about which I know not a jot or care to.

  I was far more interested in Mr. Gillette’s tales of his life on the theatrical stage. He says he is an advocate of “natural acting” rather than melodramatic declaiming. He has played Benvolio and Shylock, as well as Rosencrantz to Edwin Booth’s Hamlet. There was ample discussion around the table about this Mr. Booth’s troubles—a wife gone mad, horrid in-laws, dizziness mistaken for drunkenness during a performance and reported in the newspapers as such. Mr. Gillette also spoke of “the terrible burden of brotherhood” which Mr. Booth bears. It was only then that I realized they were speaking of the brother of the black-hearted villain who murdered President Lincoln! What must that be like, I wonder? To share common blood with one so infamous? Does one go on loving his wicked relation, or does he join the multitudes in reviling him? The burden of brotherhood, indeed!

  From Mr. Booth and his many trials, the talk shifted to merrier matters. Mrs. Clemens and Susy spoke of a New York theatrical they had attended this past spring, a musical farce called The Mikado. Mrs. Clemens called it “merriment to relieve the strains of the day,” and Susy said the elaborate sets and costumes made her feel as if she had been transported by magic to the Orient. Mr. Clemens saw The Mikado as well and called it “phantasmagoric.” He then turned to Susy, Harmony, and me and asked which of us could spell “phantasmagoric.”

  “Oh, Pappa, you know I am a dreadful speller,” Susy lamented. Harmony, too, declined to essay. I, however, spelled the word correctly and was declared by Mr. Twain to be “a brilliant intellect of the highest order.” It made me blush to be described so and to have all eyes upon me, but I must admit I do have a talent for spelling. Have I not won the upper-level bee at Madame Buzon’s school not once but twice? Still, I was relieved when the conversation shifted from my spelling prowess to those bomb-throwing labor agitators in Chicago and the capture of Geronimo and his renegade band.

  But alas and alack, Lil, my relief was short-lived. When the discussion lit upon the government’s ill treatment of the Red Man, Grandmother climbed upon her soapbox and spoke her familiar refrain about the grave injustices done to the poor by the greedy upper classes and their apologists, the evil Social Darwinists. And at the end of her speechifying, she turned to our host and challenged him directly. “Mr. Clemens, does thee not agree that it is more a matter of society’s failure than one of personal failure when the downtrodden fall prey to vice?”

  I knew what she was up to, for had Grandmother not accepted this dinner invitation in pursuit of an endorsement from Mr. Twain concerning the building of her precious penitentiary? But if her question was cheese in the mousetrap, Mr. Clemens proved himself a sly and
crafty rodent. With a twinkling in his eye, he asked Grandmother to which vices she referred. “Because my good woman, if you mean cursing and smoking, I confess I am guilty of both.” All chuckled at this remark except Grandmother. Oh, Lil, was there ever a woman so earnest and yet so humorless as she?

  “I refer, sir, to the city vices to which the female of the species in particular is vulnerable,” Grandmother responded.

  “Such as?” someone asked.

  “Such as prostitution and rape. And along with these, the wages these sins exact from both the sinner and her society: children born outside of holy wedlock and the spread of syphilis!”

  Oh, Lil, to hear such matters spoken of at that elegant table to those elegant people—by my own relation, no less! I have never been so ashamed. But Grandmother would not be silenced. Nor would she look away from our host. “And what, sir, becomes of the unfortunate females who fall prey to these vices and afflictions? Are they granted asylum? Delivered to a place where they can be guided back to feminine virtue by God-fearing Christian women? No, sir, they are not. They are thrown into prison alongside the masculine criminal element—tossed like meat to hungry dogs!”

  There was sympathetic murmuring from the ladies at the table and stony silence from the men. Susy and Harmony looked at each other, wide-eyed, and I was relieved that neither looked at me.

  It was Grandmother’s friend Reverend Twichell who came to her rescue. “Mrs. Popper has a solution to the problems she so forcefully articulates,” said he. Turning to Grandmother, he asked if she might be so kind as to tell those gathered about her vision. She did so, describing the curing of female criminals with fresh air and farmwork, penitence and prayer. “I am firm in my belief that those women who have fallen can rise again,” she said.

  “And so, Mrs. Popper has been traveling the state in pursuit of letters of support,” Mr. Twichell said. “For she feels that a chorus of voices from esteemed individuals will help persuade the legislature of the need for a ladies’ reformatory quite separate from the harmful male element.”

  I saw Grandmother’s hands tremble as she spoke the next. “And toward that end, Mr. Clemens, I should be grateful to thee, sir, if—”

  Here the poor old soul as foiled once more, for Mr. Camp interrupted her in the middle of her request. “But with all due respect, Mrs. Popper,” said he, “I cannot see why women who have fallen to wickedness deserve deliverance to this Elysium you would create. Nor, for that matter, can I entirely discount the theories of the Social Darwinists. Like it or not, in both nature and capitalism, there will always be the powerful and the weak.”

  The interruption flummoxed poor Grandmother. “With all due respect, sir,” said she, cheeks flushed and nostrils a-flare, “that sounds like the reasoning of one more attuned to calisthenics than to Christian charity.” A period of awkward silence followed. I half-expected the Old Girl and her humiliated granddaughter to be shown the door!

  “Yes, well, I met Charles Darwin once,” Mr. Clemens finally said. “Our mutual friend Mr. Howells introduced us. I told Darwin that I had read and enjoyed his Descent of Man, and he told me that he kept a volume of mine by his bedside because it helped him to fall asleep. I chose to take it as a compliment.”

  Having regained the reins of the discourse, Mr. Clemens steered it in an entirely different direction—namely, his love for darky spirituals. He jumped from his chair like a jack-in-the-box, ran to the piano in the adjacent drawing room, and began to sing and play, comically off key and out of tune, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Go Chain the Lion Down.” I dared to glance at Grandmother but once during this musical interlude and saw that she was flushed with pique. I likewise saw her friend Mr. Twichell reach over and pat her hand in a kindly gesture of reassurance. Mrs. Clemens, too, leaned to her and seemed to offer a soothing word or two. Whatever was said, Grandmother sulked a bit more, then began to look more weary than peeved.

  As the oyster plates were being cleared away, Mr. Twain told a silly story about how his dog Hash had trained him to fetch sticks. The servants, a darky butler and an Irish maid, midway through serving the next course, stopped to listen and laugh. Mr. Twain took note of this, announcing to his guests that both preferred listening to working and that we should not be alarmed should they pull chairs to the table and force the rest of us to serve ourselves. The butler laughed heartily at this jest, but the maid seemed mortified. She finished passing the potato cakes, then hurried, red-faced, back to the kitchen.

  During our devouring of the ducks, Grandmother made one last attempt to broach the subject of the penitentiary but once more was thwarted—this time by a clamorous knocking at the front door. “Tesla!” Mr. Twain ejaculated. He jumped to his feet and all but galloped to the entrance hall.

  I heard this Mr. Tesla before I saw him. In English so atrocious that it was barely comprehensible, he spoke a hundred apologies and his host in return gave a hundred reassurances that these were unnecessary. When the two entered the dining room, I was aghast! Horror-struck! For there before us stood none other than Mr. Tatty Suit from the morning train! And in seeing him, my mind’s eye saw once again the images on those filthy postal cards which had landed in my lap—the woman naked as a jaybird save for her shoes and lavaliere, the man with his beastly protrusion. I am quite sure Mr. Tesla recognized me, too, for when his eyes fell upon me, he appeared quite startled. To my great relief, he did not look at me again for the remainder of the evening.

  If I was unnerved by Mr. Tesla’s presence, Mr. Twain was made ecstatic by it. He explained to us that the two—inventor and lover of inventions—had been introduced earlier in the year at a New York gentlemen’s club by their mutual acquaintance, a Mr. Edison. Mr. Tesla had come to America from Austria-Hungary two years earlier in hopes of interesting this Mr. Edison in some sort of electrical motor he had designed. “Now, my good fellow, tell our guests the story of how your brilliant invention came to you,” Mr. Twain entreated. In his atrocious English, Mr. Tesla then related a tale that to me seemed less fact than fancy. In Budapest, said he, as he was walking through a city park and reciting poetry, the idea for his motor had come to him fully realized, as if delivered by a bolt of lightning. He grabbed a stick and sketched in the sand a diagram of his idea.

  Mr. Twain clapped his hands in delight. “The revelation of an instantaneous truth!” he declared. “And I daresay, friends, Mr. Nikola Tesla’s invention will change the world. Here among us is an electronical wizard!”

  An electronical wizard perhaps, I cannot say, but the man certainly is no diplomat. When Mrs. Twichell inquired of him how he finds America, he opined—while eating with his mouth open, the brute—that ours is a country a century behind Europe in civilization. That whereas his homeland reveres aesthetic beauty and high culture, America loves only money and machines. ’Tis a pity you feel thus, I felt like interjecting. Perhaps you should return from whence you came, and until you do, kindly eat like a gentleman, not a hooligan.

  At the conclusion of the dinner, girlish giggling called us all to the Clemenses’ library. In the company of her sister Clara, little Jean, dressed for bed in her nightclothes, demanded a story from her father. He indulged her, fashioning a tale from items displayed on and about the fireplace mantel—an Oriental ginger jar, a cat statue, and the like. It was quite a clever narrative, enjoyed by all. Its chief antagonist was a runaway tiger because, as Mrs. Clemens explained, “Jean must always have a tiger in her stories.”

  After Mr. Twain spoke the words, “The End,” Jean was sent off to bed. Mrs. Clemens led the ladies of our party to the drawing room for quiet conversation and a game of bezique. Grandmother declined to play, of course, but at least she neither scowled nor voiced disapproval. Seated by herself at the far end of the settee, she promptly fell asleep.

  How Grandmother could slumber through the adjacent racket I do not know, for the gentlemen, who had remained in the library to drink brandy and smoke their Havanas, were quite boisterous, Mr. Twain and Mr. Gill
ette most especially, and Reverend Twichell to a lesser degree. At one point, Mr. Twain persuaded Mr. Camp to lead them all in a round of his “daily dozen.” It was quite peculiar to see those men of mark rolling and writhing on the floor like apes. All partook of the exercises, even Mr. Tesla, though he looked quite frightened to be thus engaged.

  Toward the end of the evening, the men joined us in the drawing room. Coffee was served, and Mrs. Clemens and Susy passed pralines and tiny sugared delectables on a silver tray. It was during this interlude that Mr. Tesla rose to his feet and delivered a strange and quite unexpected tribute to his host, Mr. Twain. At the age of seventeen, Mr. Tesla told us, he had had the misfortune of contracting cholera. He was bedridden for several weeks, during which time his condition grew steadily worse. The doctors declared that his was a hopeless case and advised Mr. Tesla’s parents to prepare for the worst. Prior to his illness, Mr. Tesla said, his father had insisted that his son was to follow in his footsteps and become an Orthodox priest. Mr. Tesla, however, was inclined more toward science than religion and had dreamed of studying engineering. In that respect, he was less like his father and more like his mother, who had herself invented a mechanical eggbeater and a superior clothesline reel. Mr. Tesla grew weaker and weaker from the cholera, and it was while he was in this withered state that his father made him a tearful promise: if he survived, he could study engineering. Mr. Tesla’s mother, unable to comfort her son in any other way, went each week to the lending library and lugged home books for her son to read in bed. It was amongst those stacks of borrowed books, Mr. Tesla said, that he discovered the works of the great Mark Twain. With each of Mr. Twain’s books he read, he seemed to grow more sanguine. And after a while, he was able to leave his bed, rejoin the world, and attend the Austrian Polytechnic Academy. “And so, Mr. Mark Twain,” Mr. Tesla said, “I salute you for having written the books that saved my life!” It was all quite strange, Lil. Having heard Mr. Tesla’s story, Mr. Twain, that man of laughter, was reduced to tears.