Autobiography Of Mark Twain, Volume 1

by Mark Twain

  The Executive’s efforts to reconstruct Wuthering Heights are marked by wisdom, patience and gentle and persuasive speech. They will succeed, yet, and it is a pity. This morning at half past eight I was lying in my bed counterfeiting sleep; the Executive was lying in hers, reasoning with Wuthering Heights, who had just brought the hot water and was buzzing around here and there and yonder preparing the baths and putting all manner of things to rights with her lightning touch, and accompanying herself with a torrent of talk, cramped down to a low-voiced flutter to keep from waking me up.

  “You talk too much, Wuthering Heights, as I have told you so often before. It is your next worst fault, and you ought to try your best to break yourself of it. I—”

  “Ah, indeed yes, gnädige Frau, it is the very truth you are speaking, none knows it better than I nor is sorrier. Jessus! but it is a verdammtes defect, as in your goodness you have said, yourself, these fifty times, and—”

  “Don’t! I never use such language—and I don’t like to hear it. It is dreadful. I know that it means nothing with you, and that it is common custom and came to you with your mother’s milk; but it distresses me to hear it, and besides you are always putting it into my mouth, which—”

  “Oh, bless your kind heart, gnädige Frau, you won’t mind it in the least, after a little; it’s only because it is strange and new to you now, that it isn’t pleasant; but that will wear off in a little while, and then—oh, it’s just one of those little trifling things that don’t amount to a straw, you know—why, we all swear, the priest and everybody, and it’s nothing, really nothing at all; but I will break myself of it, I will indeed, and this very moment will I begin, for I have lived here and there in my time, and seen things, and learned wisdom, and I know, better than a many another, that there is only one right time to begin a thing, and that is on the spot. Ah yes, by Gott, as your grace was saying only yesterday—”

  “There—do be still! It is as much as aperson’s life is worth to make even the triflingest remark to you, it brings such a flood. And any moment your chatter may wake my husband, and he”—after a little pause, to gather courage for a deliberate mis-statement—“he can’t abide it.”

  “I will be as the grave! I will, indeed, for sleep is to the tired, sleep is the medicine that heals the weary spirit. Heilige Mutter Gottes! before I—”

  “Be still!”

  “Zu befehl. If—”

  “Still!”

  After a little pause the Executive began a tactful and low-temperature lecture which had all the ear-marks of preparation about it. I know that easy, impromptu style, and how it is manufactured, for I have worked at that trade myself. I have forgotten to mention that Wuthering Heights has not always served in a subordinate position; she has been housekeeper in a rich family in Vienna for the past ten years; consequently the habit of bossing is still strong upon her, naturally enough.

  “The cook and Charlotte complain that you interfere in their affairs. It is not right. It is not your place to do that.”

  “Oh, Joseph and Mary, Deuteronomy and all the saints! Think of that! Why, of course when the mistress is not in the house it is necessary that somebody—”

  “No, it is not necessary at all. The cook says that the reason the coffee was cold yesterday morning was, that you removed it from the stove, and that when she put it back you removed it again.”

  “Ah, but what would one do, gnädige Frau? It was all boiling away.”

  “No matter, it was not your affair. And yesterday morning you would not let Madame Blank into the house, and told her no one was at home. My husband was at home. It was too bad—and she had come all the way from Vienna. Why did you do that?”

  “Let her in?—I ask you would I let her in? and he hard at his work and not wishing to be disturbed, sunk in his labors up to his eyes and grinding out God knows what, for it is beyond me, though it has my sympathy, and none feels for him more than I do when he is in his lyings-in, that way—now would I let her in to break up his work in that idle way and she with no rational thing in the world to pester him about? now could I?”

  “How do you know what she wanted?”

  The shot struck in an unprotected place, and made silence for several seconds, for W. H. was not prepared for it and could not think of an answer right away. Then she recovered herself and said—

  “Well—well, it was like this. Well, she—of course she could have had something proper and rational on her mind, but then I knew that if that was the case she would write, not come all the way out here from Vienna to—”

  “Did you know she came from Vienna?”

  I knew by the silence that another unfortified place had been hit. Then—

  “Well, I—that is—well, she had that kind of a look which you have noticed upon a person when—when—”

  “When what?”

  “She—well, she had that kind of a look, anyway; for—”

  “How did you know my husband did not want to be disturbed?”

  “Know it? Oh, indeed, and well I knew it; for he was that busy that the sweat was leaking through the floor, and I said to the cook, said I—”

  “He didn’t do a stroke of work the whole day, but sat in the balcony smoking and reading.” [In a private tone, touched with shame: “reading his own books—he is always doing it.”] “You should have told him; he would have been very glad to see Madame Blank, and was disappointed when he found out what had happened. He said so, himself.”

  “Oh, indeed, yes, dear gnädige Frau, he would say it, that he would, but give your heart peace, he is always saying things which—why, I was saying to the butcher’s wife no longer ago than day before yesterday—”

  “Ruhig! and let me go on. You do twice as much of the talking as you allow me to do, and I can’t have it. If—”

  “It’s Viennese, gnädige Frau. Custom, you see; that’s just it. We all do it; it’s Viennese.”

  “But I’m not Viennese. And I can’t get reconciled to it. And your interruptions—why, it makes no difference: if I am planning with the cook, or commissioning a dienstman, or asking the postman about the trains, no matter, you break right in, uninvited, and take charge of the whole matter, and—”

  “Ah, Jessus! it’s just as I was saying, and how true was the word! It’s Viennese—all over, Viennese. Custom, you see—all custom. Sorel Blgwrxczlzbzockowicz—she’s the Princess Tzwzfzhopowic’s maid—she says she always does so, and the Princess likes it, and—”

  “But I am not the Princess, and I want things my way; can’t you understand a simple thing like that? And there’s another thing. Between the time that the three of us went to Vienna yesterday morning, and ten at night when we returned, you seem to have had your hands over-full. When the cook’s old grandfather came to see her, what did you meddle, for?”

  [A Viennese Procession]

  June 26, Sunday; Kaltenleutgeben. I went in the eight o’clock train to Vienna, to see the procession. It was a stroke of luck, for at the last moment I was feeling lazy and was minded not to go. But when I reached the station, five minutes late, the train was still there, a couple of friends were there also, and so I went. At Liesing, half an hour out, we changed to a very long train, and left for Vienna with every seat occupied. That was no sign that this was a great day, for these people are not critical about shows, they turn out for anything that comes along. Half an hour later we were driving into the city; no particular bustle anywhere—indeed less than is usual on an Austrian Sunday; bunting flying, and a decoration here and there—a quite frequent thing in this Jubilee year; but as we passed the American Embassy I saw a couple of our flags out and the Minister and his menservants arranging to have another one added. This woke me up—it seemed to indicate that something really beyond the common was to the fore.

  As we neared the bridge which connects the First Bezirk with the Third, a pronounced and growing life and stir were noticeable; and when we entered the wide square where the Schwarzenberg palace is, there was something
resembling a jam. As far as we could see down the broad avenue of the Park Ring both sides of it were packed with people in their holiday clothes. Our cab worked its way across the square, and then flew down empty streets, all the way, to Liebenberggasse No. 7—the dwelling we were aiming for. It stands on the corner of that street and the Park Ring, and its balconies command a mile-stretch of the latter avenue. By a trifle after nine we were in the shade of the awnings of the first-floor balcony, with a dozen other guests, and ready for the procession. Ready, but it would not start for an hour, yet, and would not reach us for half an hour afterward. As to numbers it would be a large matter; for by report it would march 25,000 strong. But it isn’t numbers that make the interest of a procession; I have seen a vast number of long processions which didn’t pay. It is clothes that make a procession; where you have those of the right pattern you can do without length. Two or three months ago I saw one with the Emperor and an Archbishop in it; and the Archbishop was being carried along under a canopied arrangement and had his skull-cap on, and the venerable Emperor was following him on foot and bareheaded. Even if that had been the entire procession, it would have paid. I am old, now, and may never be an Emperor at all; at least in this world. I have been disappointed so many times that I am growing more and more doubtful and resigned every year; but if it ever should happen, the procession will have a fresh interest for the Archbishop, for he will walk.

  The wait on the balcony was not dull. There was the spacious avenue stretching into the distance, right and left, to look at, with its double wall of massed humanity, an eager and excited lot, broiling in the sun, and a comforting spectacle to contemplate from the shade. That is, on our side of the street they were in the sun, but not on the other side, where the Park is—there was dense shade there. They were good-natured people, but they gave the policemen plenty of trouble, for they were constantly surging into the roadway and being hustled back again. They were in fine spirits, yet it was said that the most of them had been waiting there in the jam three or four hours—and two-thirds of them were women and girls.

  At last a mounted policeman came galloping down the road in solitary state—first sign that pretty soon the show would open. After five minutes he was followed by a man on a decorated bicycle. Next, a marshal’s assistant sped by on a polished and shiny black horse. Five minutes later—distant strains of music. Five more, and far up the street the head of the procession twinkles into view.

  That was a procession! I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. According to my understanding, it was to be composed of shooting-match clubs from all over the Austrian Empire, with a club or two from France and Germany as guests. What I had in my imagination was 25,000 men in sober dress, drifting monotonously by, with rifles slung to their backs—a New York target-excursion on a large scale. In my fancy I could see the colored brothers toting the ice-pails and targets, and swabbing off perspiration.

  But this was a different matter. One of the most engaging spectacles in the world is a Wagner opera-force marching onto the stage, with its music braying and its banners flying. This was that spectacle infinitely magnified, and with the glories of the sun upon it and a countless multitude of excited witnesses to wave the handkerchiefs and do the hurrahing. It was grand, and beautiful, and sumptuous; and no tinsel, no shams; no tin armor, no cotton velvet, no make-believe silk, no Birmingham oriental rugs; everything was what it professed to be. It is the clothes that make a procession; and for these costumes all the centuries were drawn upon, even from times which were already ancient when Kaiser Rudolph himself was alive.

  There were bodies of spearmen with plain steel casques of a date a thousand years ago; other bodies in more ornamental casques of a century or two later, and with breastplates added; other bodies with chain-mail elaborations—some armed with crossbows, some with the earliest crop of matchlocks; still other bodies clothed in the stunningly picturesque plate-armor and plumed great helmets of the middle of the sixteenth century. And then there were bodies of men-at-arms in the darling velvets of the Middle Ages, and nobles on horseback in the same—doublets with huge puffed sleeves, wide brigand hats with great plumes; and the rich and effective colors—old gold, black, and scarlet; deep yellow, black, and scarlet; brown, black, and scarlet. A portly figure clothed like that, with a two-handed sword as long as a billiard cue, and mounted on a big draft-horse finely caparisoned, with the sun flooding the splendid colors—a figure like that, with fifty duplicates marching in his rear, is procession enough, all by itself.

  Yet that was merely a detail. All the centuries were passing by; passing by in glories of color and multiplicities of strange and quaint and curious and beautiful costumes not to be seen in this world now outside the opera and the picture-books. And now and then, in the midst of this flowing tide of splendors appeared a sharply contrasting note—a mounted committee in evening dress—swallow-tails, white kids and shiny new plug hats; and right in their rear, perhaps, a hundred capering clowns in thunder-and-lightning dress, or a band of silken pages out of ancient times, plumed and capped and daggered, dainty as rainbows, and mincing along in flesh-colored tights; and as handy at it, too, as if they had been born and brought up to it.

  At intervals there was a great platform car, bethroned and grandly canopied, upholstered in silks, carpeted with oriental rugs, and freighted with girls clothed in gala costumes. There were several military companies dressed in uniforms of various bygone periods—among others, one dating back a century and a half, and another of Andreas Hofer’s time and region; following this latter was a large company of men and women and girls dressed in the society fashions of a period stretching from the Directory down to about 1840—a thing worth seeing. Among the prettiest and liveliest and most picturesque costumes in the pageant were those worn by regiments and regiments of peasants, from the Tyrol, and Bohemia, and everywhere in the Empire. They are of ancient origin, but are still worn to-day.

  I have seen no procession which evoked more enthusiasm than this one brought out. It would have made any country deliver its emotions, for it was a most stirring sight to see. At the end of this year I shall be sixty-three—if alive—and about the same if dead. I have been looking at processions for sixty years; and curiously enough, all my really wonderful ones have come in the last three years: one in India in ’96, the Queen’s Record procession in London last year, and now this one. As an appeal to the imagination—an object-lesson synopsizing the might and majesty and spread of the greatest empire the world has seen—the Queen’s procession stands first; as a picture for the eye, this one beats it; and in this regard it even falls no very great way short, perhaps, of that Jeypore pageant—and that was a dream of enchantment.

  In August 1898, after several months of intensive work on his autobiography, Clemens decided to write up how he came to publish what he called his first magazine article, about the burning at sea of the clipper ship Hornet. At the end of August he told Henry Harper, “I want to write a magazine article of a reminiscent sort. The first magazine article I ever published appeared in Harper’s Monthly 31 years ago under the name of (by typographical error) MacSwain. Can you send it to me?” (30 Aug 1898, InU-Li). Harper must have sent him tear sheets of “Forty-Three Days in an Open Boat,” which had been published in the December 1866 issue of Harper’s several months before Clemens published his first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches. “Forty-Three Days” was not, of course, Mark Twain’s “first magazine article,” since he had already published dozens of articles in The Californian and in several East Coast journals. But it was the first nonfictional work he had published in so eminent a journal as Harper’s, and even though it was by no means humorous, it obviously followed upon his decision the previous year, in October 1865, to seriously pursue a literary career (19 and 20 Oct 1865 to OC and MEC, L1,322–25).

  The lengthy manuscript that Clemens wrote in October 1898 is now in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale. His Vienna typist, Ma
rion von Kendler, made a typescript of it (now lost), which Clemens revised and eventually published in the November 1899 issue of the Century Magazine (SLC 1899). The Century publication made no mention of the autobiography, but the original manuscript shows that Clemens initially regarded the article as part of that work: “This is Chapter XIV of my unfinished Autobiography and the way it is getting along it promises to remain an unfinished one.” Before the manuscript was typed he revised “unfinished” to “unpublished” and deleted the words following “Autobiography.” In February 1899, when he submitted the revised typescript to Century editor Richard Watson Gilder, he claimed he had “abandoned my Autobiography, & am not going to finish it; but I took a reminiscent chapter out of it & had it type-written, thinking it would make a readable magazine article” (25 Feb 1899, CtY-BR). The article, which Clemens subsequently revised again at the request of one of the Hornet passengers, was collected in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900) and My Début as a Literary Person with Other Essays and Stories (1903). The text that follows here is a critical reconstruction, based on the manuscript and revised as Clemens published it in the Century, not as it was reprinted in 1900 and 1903.

  In 1906 Clemens considered including the piece in his Autobiographical Dictation of 20 February, noting in pencil on the typescript, “Insert, here my account of the ‘Hornet’ disaster, published in the ‘Century’ about 1898 as being a chapter from my Autobiography.” For several reasons, that instruction cannot be carried out. But it shows that the piece was among those Clemens considered including in the final form of his autobiography, and it is therefore included in this section of preliminary drafts. Neither Paine nor Neider published this text.