by Darryl Brock
Chapter 7
Frail daughter of a millionaire coal magnate, apotheosis of gentility and respectability—everything, in short, that to Twain meant “making it”. . . .
I was surprised at the details that flooded back. Livy would become his censor, his respectability filter. I’d argued in my J school thesis that she symbolized Twain’s great sellout; that in settling for bourgeois security, he forever cashed in his bohemian credentials, sold short his creative freedom. Never again to be an independent satiric visionary—an artist—he fittingly became the superstar crony of plutocrats.
Well, hurling thunderbolts at Livy Langdon from grad school was one thing. Holding her letter now was quite another. I felt a feverish-ness beyond anything research was likely to evoke. Livy, only twenty-three if I had calculated correctly, was very much alive and being courted by Twain. I remembered that he was some ten years older, which would make him about . . . my age.
I pushed through the cars till I caught the porter. He knew of no passenger list, but suggested I stop by the saloon car, where some gentlemen still held forth. I retraced my steps and found the car near the end of the train. At a counter along one wall several forlorn men were drinking; another slumped facedown, his hat mashed on the counter. Card games were in progress at two tables, the players low-voiced, intent.
I stood in the doorway peering through clouds of smoke. In my mind was an unsmiling daguerreotype image of Twain as a young man. I tried hard to match it to the faces I saw. Impossible. I walked inside, my excitement slowly dissolving. None of these could possibly be Twain. I was about to leave when I saw the door to the toilet swing open at the far end. Out stepped a slender man with bushy auburn hair and a thick mustache that drooped beneath a Roman nose. His eyes met mine briefly; in that instant all doubt vanished. I was looking at Mark Twain.
I had an impulse to rush to him, hug him, tell him . . . what? That I’d grown up reading books he hadn’t yet written? That I’d been named for him?
I watched him sit alone at the most distant table. He was smaller than I expected; medium height, not short but small-framed, with narrow shoulders. He wore a dark, rumpled suit; his tie was unfastened. Beneath the tousled hair his skin looked pale in the lamplight. He produced a pipe and rummaged through his pockets for matches. I took a deep breath and stepped forward.
“Mr. Clemens?”
His eyes reflected blue-green as they met mine. His hands paused in their search. His mustache twitched. Something in his face changed, a quick masklike adjustment. Pensive and even melancholy in repose, the features were abruptly charged with sly alertness. “Yes?” He peered at me. “Are we acquainted?” The reedy voice held a pronounced drawl.
I held the letter out. “I think this is yours.”
“Sweet Jesus,” he breathed, snatching it and crushing it to his mouth. He breathed its scent, eyes squeezed shut. “Hang my head and carry me home to die!”
I stood awkwardly as he pulled out a handkerchief and honked into it.
“Forgive me,” he said. “As a general thing my feelings’re more cordially reserved. I’ve hunted high and low for this infernal letter. What a relief to have it!”
I told him where I’d found it.
“Must’ve dropped from my pocket. Sit down, sir! Allow me to stand a drink. This night’s built for pleasuring after all. Hell, I’ll stand us a dozen!”
He came back with four whiskeys, two apiece. Sorry, Andy, I thought, but this is a very rare occasion.
“You knew I was Clemens,” he said. “How’s that? Most sound me by a certain nom de plume. I can’t recollect—Washoe, the Pacific Slope, the Lyceum circuit? Have we met?”
“Not personally,” I said. “I’m Sam Fowler.”
“One Sam to another, I’m obliged.” We clinked glasses and drank. He gestured at the letter. “I’d be a ruined proposition if my darling thought I cared so little for her as to misplace that. Course, I’d gladly go through Hades in a celluloid suit to make up for it. Not that she’d demand it. She’s the dearest, gentlest, sweetest—oh, the best woman I can picture. Why such a noble and delicate creature as Livy consented to a conjugal matchup with the likes of—” He stopped suddenly, pulled the ribbon from the letter, and scanned its sheets.
“Why, there’re no full names here, just as I reckoned. How’d you know it was to me?”
“Isn’t it signed Livy Langdon?” I said.
He shook his head, eyes narrowing slightly over the hawk nose. “It addresses Youth and is signed Livy. Took months to convince her there’s no comfort to me in signing Olivia Louise Langdon, a practice that nigh put me into lunatic spasms. Presently I’m working to repair her spelling. When I’ve done that, I’ll relax with something easy—like bringing the Pyramids over brick by brick.”
As I laughed he gauged my reaction with a deadpan expression, the performer checking his material.
“Why Youth?” I said.
“There is no word for failure in the bright lexicon of youth,’” he recited dryly. “One of the sayings Livy keeps in her infernal little inspiration book. It’s part of her scheme to haul me out, scrape my keel, and refloat me.” He winked foxily as he produced a box of matches. His pipe emitted thick clouds and a swampy odor. He eyed me keenly. “Now, you didn’t answer me about the letter, did you?”
“I can’t really explain it, Mr. Clemens,” I said. “Call it a hunch. To tell the truth, I know a lot about you. You’re quite famous, you know.”
“Call me Mark,” he said, looking pleased. “What exactly do you know?”
The whiskey eroded my caution. “Well, for one thing, I know how you first saw Livy—her brother showed you her picture.”
His eyebrows lifted. “And where was that?”
“On your cruise around the world.”
“Bay of Smyrna, summer of ’sixty-seven.” His drawl sounded almost dreamy. “Even in that ivory miniature she was the loveliest of visions.” He shrugged and sucked on his pipe. “But you could be pals with young Charley Langdon or any other close to the family.”
“I know your engagement date.”
“Oh?” He frowned slightly. “You do?”
“February fourth.” I’d proposed to Stephanie on the same date. “It’s inscribed in Livy’s gold engagement band—and probably inside that one on your finger, too. Want another drink?”
“How’d—?” he began, staring hard. “Yes, I guess I do!” After they came he said, “What part of the country you from, Fowler?”
“San Francisco.”
“Freddy Marriott!” he exclaimed. “That’s who you pumped! And yet I don’t see how Freddy would’ve known of the rings. . . .”
“Your first daughter will be Susy,” I said, laughing, enjoying the power of it; in a way my whole life had been a preparation for this. “I’ll give my second girl that name.”
“That’s very curious,” he mused. “Later you’ll write a wonderful book about a boy on a raft and—” “Hold on,” he interrupted. “You’re not the first to tell me—I mean, about the girl Susy.”
I was speechless for a long moment. My sense of power evaporated, replaced by sharp and poignant sorrow: Susy, his favorite, would die in her early twenties, a terrible loss to Twain and his family. I had no right to be doing this.
“Who else told you?” I said.
“Spiritualist woman, a Lyceum stager with Redpath, same as I was. Went by Madame Antonia, something like that.”
I remembered the card in the drugstore. “Clara Antonia?”
“That’s the one.” He looked at me quizzically. “She also told me I’d run into a spiritual counterpart from another dimension. Said it with tolerable gravity. Even seemed a mite troubled to be informing me. It gave me pause at the time, though I didn’t exactly hang fire over it.”
My pulse quickened. I was following a path, I must be. “What would you say,” I asked him, “if I told you my full name was Samuel Clemens Fowler, and that I’d come here from another century?”
&n
bsp; He sipped his whiskey. “My historical double?”
“I don’t think—well, in a way, maybe.”
He regarded me impassively. “What century’d you have in mind?”
“Oh, say the next one—the 1980s, let’s imagine.”
“They still know about me up then?”
“You’d be surprised.”
He ran his hand through his hair. “And folks say I suffer from overblown imagination. Would you care to know what I’m wondering?”
“Whether I’m crazy?”
“No,” he said, hooded eyes alert. “It’s manifest you’re a lunatic. I’m wondering if somehow you managed to steal that letter off me.”
“I didn’t, I swear. Anyway, why would I return it?”
He nodded slowly, seeming to agree.
From whiskey we moved to champagne cocktails. Then sherry cobblers. Then brandy smashes. Twain showed the skeptical bartender how to make what he called “Californy Concoctions.” They carried names like Santa Cruz Punch, Eye-Opener, and Earthquake. He bought rounds for the car, celebrating, he said, the prodigality of his love. We raised our glasses to Livy.
Later he let himself be coaxed up beside the bar, where he slouched with thumbs hooked in his vest and told stories in a flat drawl. His style was that of a frontier Jack Benny, I thought; he maintained an unshakable deadpan, pausing often for effect, feigning puzzlement when interrupted by guffaws—a frequent occurrence.
From somebody else his material might have bombed—a preacher who spilled faro cards hidden in his gown during a sermon; a huckster who charged admission to see an eclipse from a topless tent—but Twain made it work. His cappers were tall tales—“stretchers,” he called them—about a corporation of mean men who docked an explosives worker for time lost in the air while being blown up; or a champion liar who claimed that his horse outran the edge of a thunderstorm for eighteen miles while his dog swam behind the wagon all the way.
Well into morning, when most of the others had gone, Twain and I sat bleary-eyed. He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Sam, want in on a proposition that could make us richer than Solomon?”
“Sure.” I remembered that he loved get-rich-quick schemes, and that several would prove ruinous.
“I mentioned Freddy Marriott earlier. He puts out that infernal Advertiser in Frisco. You read it?”
I shook my head, glad I hadn’t told him I was a reporter. “What about him?”
“Later this summer Freddy’ll announce news so grand it’ll make the Pacific Railroad blush. He worked with Henson in England, you know, and never gave up the notion of aerial transport. Using every dime from his paper, Freddy’s been hiring engineers on the sly.” Twain gave me his foxy look. “At last he’s developed a flying steam carriage!”
If it was meant to shock, it failed. I stifled a yawn and said, “You believe that?”
“I’m satisfied Freddy believes. He’s happy as a lord, laughing at all the doubting sapheads. A working model goes on display next month. Then he’ll offer stock in his new company.”
“A company to build and sell flying machines?”
“Nope, Freddy figures imitators’ll swarm in like insects, soon as the word gets out. He couldn’t do much to stop them. He’s primed for something bigger.”
“Bigger than airplanes?”
“Aerial carriages,” he corrected, looking around to make sure we were alone. “Freddy’s going after a monopoly on transcontinental passenger service.”
“What!” I almost laughed out loud. “He intends to fly people coast to coast?”
“These are revolutionary times, Sam,” said Twain firmly. “What sounds lunatic one year is thundering reality the next. Those who don’t take risks swallow the dust of those who do. Think of the hidebound wretches who didn’t invest in steamboats and trains, canals, the telegraph—a host of modern inventions. There’ll soon be steam trolleys and Lord knows what else. Anyway, Freddy’s letting his friends know about it now, so we can get in before things go sky high.” He paused to make sure I caught the pun. “I’d be of a mind to plunge, if I had cash at the ready. Picture the returns!”
I didn’t get much of a picture. “Why are you telling me about it?”
He looked hurt. “As a favor, my man! For the service you did. You struck me as a likely gent for a brave new game.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t have the cash either.”
“A damnable shame. Well, when you get back to Frisco”—he gave me a penetrating look—“that is, if it happens to be in this century, maybe you’ll see fit to hunt up Freddy and look into it. Are you headed back soon?”
I explained that I was meeting the Stockings in New York.
“Ah, baseball. The game’s everywhere now, puffed up like a dime-show marvel. I’ve stood reg’lar watches on Elmira’s bleaching boards, observing our two local clubs trying to humble each other. Played myself as a boy in Missouri—called it town ball then. One afternoon Tom Blankenship struck a ball through Widow Holliday’s kitchen window. Overturned a painkiller bottle from the sill. The widow’s old yellow cat, Last Judgment, took a stiff wallop of the stuff and streaked out to settle accounts with every dog in the township.”
I laughed, again aware of his scrutiny.
“You look done in,” Twain said. “Let’s get some sleep.”
It seemed only seconds after I’d fallen on my bunk that the shout came: “Jersey City! All off!”
We crossed the Hudson—here it was called the North River—on one of the small side-wheelers packed along the Jersey docks. I climbed to the observation deck, hoping to see the Manhattan skyline, but fog formed a dense curtain. The ferry’s pealing bell was answered by invisible craft on all sides. I stared into the mist and wondered what lay ahead for me. As the Desbrosses Street dock loomed, I felt my elbow touched.
“Been here before?” Twain’s reedy drawl.
“No,” I said, which was almost true. I’d attended a conference once, gotten a few first impressions.
“This island held the noblest fascination for me when I arrived sixteen years ago, a printer boy with ten dollars sewn in my coat. Stayed the whole summer of ’fifty-three. Saw the World’s Fair at the Crystal Palace. A spectacle! Did you know six thousand attended every day? Double my hometown’s population.” He knocked his pipe against the railing. “Fell in love with Manhattan like she was a woman. Now it’s different. Traffic’s an abomination. Prices are higher’n perdition—lodging alone’s triple what I paid then. By the way, where’re you staying?”
I pulled a slip of paper from my wallet. “Earle’s Hotel, Canal Street.”
“Why, that’s right near the St. Nicholas. How’d it be if we took in a few sights together? I’m a mite weary of folks I generally see.”
“You’re on,” I said, delighted.
“Buy a money belt,” he said. “The cash you’re carrying in that fancy billfold won’t be with you six blocks in a Seventh Avenue car or downtown Red Bird bus.”
“Muggers?”
“Them too, but I meant pickpockets.”
We walked down the ferry ramp. The dock was noisy with workers on freight platforms, baggage wagons rumbling over planks, horsecars gliding on rails. Twain hailed one of the lined-up hacks.
We slanted onto Canal Street and clattered beneath a flimsy-looking iron trackway running along Greenwich. It stood fifteen feet above the street. “What’s that?” I asked, reminded of erector-set constructions Grandpa and I had made.
“The new Ninth Avenue Elevated,” Twain said. “Runs from Battery Place clear up to Thirtieth and Ninth. Experimental, cars pulled by cable.” He explained that steam trains weren’t permitted below Forty-second: noise and smoke terrorized horses; cinders posed a fire hazard.
I craned my neck as we crossed Broadway. Paved sidewalks were overhung with broad awnings. The streetlamps were globes topped by brass balls. Pedestrians swarmed among bicycles—I’d learned they were fairly new and known as velocipedes—and round-topped public minicoac
hes and swifter carnages and carts and horsecars. There were no traffic signals. One cursing cop tried to keep it all moving. Traffic wasn’t bad this early, Twain remarked. To me it looked awful.
I peered around the driver, trying to see everything. A maze of telegraph wires stretched overhead. Buildings were encrusted with ironwork, and the tallest stood only five or six stories. In the distance a steeple soared above its surroundings. It was Trinity Church, Manhattan’s tallest structure at well over two hundred feet. But it would soon be surpassed, Twain said. The walls of the new St. Patrick’s on Fifth Avenue would stretch some three hundred and thirty feet heavenward.
A horrendous clanging sounded. Pedestrians and vehicles gave way to form a corridor in which an ambulance emerged, its grim-faced driver wielding a whip on a single straining horse. The cab’s shades were raised; I glimpsed an attendant struggling with his patient, a bald man thrashing spasmodically. I stared in morbid fascination. Violence and death were close to the surface back here; it lent existence a certain tenuous vitality.
The lobby of Earle’s Hotel held worn horsehair furniture, tarnished spittoons, and an oppressive portrait of the Duke of Wellington, whose painted eyes followed us. Twain rumbled disapprovingly and suggested I stay with him at the St. Nicholas. I said it was presently out of my price range. He reflected on that, nodded, and said he’d return later.
My room was drab but reasonably clean. I examined my wound. It was still stiff and tender, but had virtually healed. The gash was unchanged. Weary and a bit hung over, I tried the bed and was soon making up for lost sleep.
Manhattan’s built-up portions extended to 130th Street, near the Harlem River, and held over a million people. Twain seemed determined for me to see most of them. He started by escorting me along Broadway, tipping his hat to people staring at him, beaming and responding when they called, “Hi, Mark!”
He showed me the famous gray-stoned Astor House at the corner of Barclay. Built thirty years earlier, it had been considered too far uptown, Twain said. Now it was too far down, its glory stolen by the Metropolitan and St. Nicholas, whose homey comforts Twain preferred, and which in turn were being supplanted by mammoth new establishments farther uptown. At Madison Square we strolled into one—the Fifth Avenue Hotel. It covered a square block and held six floors. Twain showed me its steam-powered elevator (he called it a “perpendicular railway”); so many used it for fun that the management had installed in it a gas chandelier, plush carpeting, and a divan. Every room contained the latest comforts: central heating, private baths, speaking tubes for room service.