Autobiography of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  Presently came the memorable 4th of March, 1885—forever memorable to me for a picture which it brought.

  Thursday, May 31, 1906

  The lovely morning and the majestic Mount Monadnock—Mr. Clemens speaks freely in this autobiography because he speaks from the grave—Does not believe in immortality—Webster a Jew—Bill taken up in Congress on last day of Arthur’s term by which Grant was again made a General—Grant’s indifference to eulogies.

  This is a magnificent morning. This shady front porch is the right vantage-ground to dictate from. There isn’t a softer, peacefuller prospect than this anywhere in the earth. There isn’t a bluer sky, even over Sweden. There isn’t a more bewitching arrangement of white cloudlets to be found in any sky this side of Australia. Monadnock is so close by, in the divine atmosphere of this morning, that I almost think I could stretch out and rest my elbow in the crotch of its twin peaks as in a crutch. Monadnock is always impressive, always majestic, always beautiful, with a beauty whose phases are as manifold as those that are working their enchantments upon that valley yonder, which stretches away and away, on a morning like this, until its hundred shades of green melt into blue, and the blue becomes a dream and melts and mingles with the base of heaven under the remote horizon.

  This is not a time nor a place to damn Webster, yet it must be done. It is a duty. Let us proceed. It is not my purpose, in this history, to be more malicious toward any person than I am. I am not alive. I am dead. I wish to keep that fact plainly before the reader. If I were alive I should be writing an autobiography on the usual plan. I should be feeling just as malicious toward Webster as I am feeling this moment—dead as I am—but instead of expressing it freely and honestly, I should be trying to conceal it; trying to swindle the reader, and not succeeding. He would read the malice between the lines, and would not admire me. Nothing worse will happen if I let my malice have frank and free expression. The very reason that I speak from the grave is that I want the satisfaction of sometimes saying everything that is in me instead of bottling the pleasantest of it up for home consumption. I can speak more frankly from the grave than most historians would be able to do, for the reason that whereas they would not be able to feel dead, howsoever hard they might try, I myself am able to do that. They would be making believe to be dead. With me, it is not make-believe. They would all the time be feeling, in a tolerably definite way, that that thing in the grave which represents them is a conscious entity; conscious of what it was saying about people; an entity capable of feeling shame; an entity capable of shrinking from full and frank expression, for they believe in immortality. They believe that death is only a sleep, followed by an immediate waking, and that their spirits are conscious of what is going on here below and take a deep and continuous interest in the joys and sorrows of the survivors whom they love and don’t.

  But I have long ago lost my belief in immortality—also my interest in it. I can say, now, what I could not say while alive—things which it would shock people to hear; things which I could not say when alive because I should be aware of that shock and would certainly spare myself the personal pain of inflicting it. When we believe in immortality we have a reason for it. Not a reason founded upon information, or even plausibilities, for we haven’t any. Our reason for choosing to believe in this dream is that we desire immortality, for some reason or other, I don’t know what. But I have no such desire. I have sampled this life, and it is sufficient. Another one would be another experiment. It would proceed from the same source as this one. I should have no large expectations concerning it, and if I may be excused from assisting in the experiment I shall be properly grateful. Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born—a hundred million years—and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.

  It is understandable that when I speak from the grave it is not a spirit that is speaking; it is a nothing; it is an emptiness; it is a vacancy; it is a something that has neither feeling nor consciousness. It does not know what it is saying. It is not aware that it is saying anything at all, therefore it can speak frankly and freely, since it cannot know that it is inflicting pain, discomfort, or offence of any kind.

  Some people had a prejudice against Webster which I did not share. They disapproved of him because he was a Jew. At least they said he was a Jew, and they professed to know that he was a Jew. I have no prejudices against Jews. I have nothing that resembles a prejudice against Jews. To me, Jews are just merely human beings, and to my mind the difference between one human being and another is not a matter of the slightest consequence. As between a crocodile and an alligator there is no real choice, to my mind, therefore why should there be a choice between Jew and Christian—or between anybody and anybody else? To be a human being of any kind is a hard enough lot, and unpleasant and disreputable in the best of circumstances. Therefore why should a man think more of himself, being a Christian, than he thinks of his neighbor who has escaped that privilege?

  One of these prejudiced people said to me that he could not abide Webster because he was a Jew. It seemed to me an unkind feeling, and I explained to him that I was destitute of it, and tried to reason him into coming up and standing with me on my higher and nobler plane. I said I would always try to be just to any human being, in any circumstances, and be as prompt and interested in getting him out of the way as if I had a personal interest in accomplishing it. However, I am wandering from Webster and the Grant Memoirs, which is my subject for the present.

  I am talking freely about Webster because I am expecting my future editors to have judgment enough and charity enough to suppress all such chapters in the early editions of this book, and keep them suppressed, edition after edition, until all whom they could pain shall be at rest in their graves. But after that, let them be published. It is my desire, and at that distant date they can do no harm.

  I go back, now, to the concluding sentence of yesterday’s dictation.

  In the history of the United States there had been one officer bearing that supreme and stately and simple one-word title, “General.” Possibly there had been two. As to that I do not remember. In the long stretch of years lying between the American Revolution and our Civil War, that title had had no existence. It was an office which was special in its nature. It did not belong among our military ranks. It was only conferrable by Act of Congress and upon a person specially named in the Act. No one could inherit it. No one could succeed to it by promotion. It had been conferred upon General Grant, but he had surrendered it to become President. He was now in the grip of death, with the compassionate and lamenting eyes of all the nation upon him—a nation eager to testify its gratitude to him by granting any wish that he might express. It was known to his friends that it was the dearest ambition of his heart to die a General. On the last day of Mr. Arthur’s term and of the Congress then sitting, a bill to confer the title was taken up, at the last moment. There was no time to lose. Messengers were sent flying to the White House. Mr. Arthur came in all haste to the Capitol. There was great anxiety and excitement. And, after all, these strenuous efforts were instituted too late! In the midst of the taking of the vote upon the bill the life of the Congress expired. No, would have expired—but some thoughtful person turned the clock back half an hour, and the bill went through! Mr. Arthur signed it at once, and the day was saved.

  The news was dispatched to General Grant by telegram, and I was present, with several others, when it was put into his hands. Every face there betrayed strong excitement and emotion—except one, General Grant’s. He read the telegram, but not a shade or suggestion of a change exhibited
itself in his iron countenance. The volume of his emotion was greater than all the other emotions there present combined, but he was able to suppress all expression of it and make no sign.

  I had seen an exhibition of General Grant’s ability to conceal his emotions once before, on a less memorable occasion. This was in Chicago, in 1879, when he arrived there from his triumphal progress around the globe, and was fêted during three days by Chicago and by the first army he commanded—the Army of the Tennessee. I sat near him on the stage of a theatre which was packed to the ceiling with surviving heroes of that army, and their wives. When General Grant, attended by other illustrious Generals of the war, came forward and took his seat, the house rose, and a deafening storm of welcome burst forth which continued during two or three minutes. There wasn’t a soldier on that stage who wasn’t visibly affected, except the man who was being welcomed, Grant. No change of expression crossed his face.

  Then the eulogies began. Sherman was present, Sheridan was present, Schofield, Logan, and half a dozen other bearers of famous military names were there. The orators always began by emptying Niagaras of glory upon Grant. They always came and stood near him, and over him, and emptied the Niagara down on him at short range, but it had no more effect upon him than if he had been a bronze image. In turn, each orator passed from Grant to Sherman, then to Sheridan, and to the rest, and emptied barrels of inflamed praise upon each. And in every case it was as if the orator was emptying fire upon the man, the victim so writhed and fidgeted and squirmed and suffered. With a spy-glass you could have picked out the man that was being martyrized, at a distance of three miles. Not one of them was able to sit still under the fiery deluge of praise except that one man, Grant. He got his Niagara every quarter of an hour for two hours and a half, and yet when the ordeal was over he was still sitting in precisely the same attitude which he had assumed when he first took that chair. He had never moved a hand or foot, head, or anything. It would have been a sufficiently amazing thing to see a man sit without change of position during such a stretch of time without anything whatever on his mind, nothing to move him, nothing to excite him; but to see this one sit like that for two hours and a half under such awful persecution, was an achievement which I should not have believed, if I had not seen it with my own eyes.

  Friday, June 1, 1906

  General Grant wishes Mr. Clemens’s opinion of the literary quality of his Memoirs—Mr. Clemens places them side by side with Caesar’s “Commentaries”—Depew’s best speech—Buckner’s visit to General Grant—General Grant’s death—Success of the Memoirs, and Webster’s enlarged head—Webster suspects his bookkeeper, Scott.

  Whenever galley-proofs or revises went to General Grant, a set came also to me. General Grant was aware of this. Sometimes I referred to the proofs casually, but entered into no particulars concerning them. By and by I learned, through a member of the household, that he was disturbed and disappointed because I had never expressed an opinion as to the literary quality of the Memoirs. It was also suggested that a word of encouragement from me would be a help to him. I was as much surprised as Columbus’s cook could have been to learn that Columbus wanted his opinion as to how Columbus was doing his navigating. It could not have occurred to me that General Grant could have any use for anybody’s assistance or encouragement in any work which he might undertake to do. He was the most modest of men, and this was another instance of it. He was venturing upon a new trade, an uncharted sea, and stood in need of the encouraging word, just like any creature of common clay. It was a great compliment that he should care for my opinion, and should desire it, and I took the earliest opportunity to diplomatically turn the conversation in that direction and furnish it without seeming to lug it in by the ears.

  By chance, I had been comparing the Memoirs with Caesar’s “Commentaries” and was qualified to deliver judgment. I was able to say, in all sincerity, that the same high merits distinguished both books—clarity of statement, directness, simplicity, unpretentiousness, manifest truthfulness, fairness and justice toward friend and foe alike, soldierly candor and frankness, and soldierly avoidance of flowery speech. I placed the two books side by side upon the same high level, and I still think that they belonged there. I learned afterward that General Grant was pleased with this verdict. It shows that he was just a man, just a human being, just an author. An author values a compliment even when it comes from a source of doubtful competency.

  This reminds me of the most telling speech I ever listened to—the best speech ever made by the capable Depew, and the shortest. Although General Grant was a vivacious and interesting talker when none were present but familiar friends, it was his habit to keep his jaws locked when strangers were about. It was difficult to get him to venture even half a dozen words on a public occasion. He would keep his seat, when called upon to speak, and would leave the toast-master to make his excuses for him. That fine speech of Depew’s was made at a banquet in honor of General Grant. Depew always came late to banquets, in those early days, and this time he arrived just as the chairman was finishing an impassioned eulogy of the guest of the occasion. Depew came striding up the centre of the house, and just as he reached the middle the chairman sat down, in the midst of the usual cyclone of cries for “Grant, Grant, General Grant!”

  General Grant said “There’s Depew. Let him respond for me.”

  Depew stopped where he was, and without pause or hesitation said, with fine impressiveness, in substance, this:

  “Respond for him? It is not necessary. No felicity of words can so eloquently speak as can the silence and the visible person of a man whose name will still be familiar upon the lips of men when twenty centuries shall have come and gone.”

  That was the substance of what he said, not the words. The language was finished, perfect, moving, flawless. Depew was the prince of after-dinner orators during thirty years. He made some hundreds of happy and distinguished speeches, but I think his briefest one was his best. He is dying now, and under a cloud—a pity, too, that such should be his fate after so long a career of great and uninterrupted popularity.

  General Grant wrought heroically with his pen while his disease made its steady inroads upon his life, and at last his work stood completed. He was moved to Mount McGregor, and there his strength passed gradually away. Toward the last, he was not able to speak, but used a pencil and small slips of paper when he needed to say anything.

  I went there to see him once, toward the end, and he asked me with his pencil, and evidently with anxious solicitude, if there was a prospect that his book would make something for his family.

  I said that the canvass for it was progressing vigorously, that the subscriptions and the money were coming in fast, that the campaign was not more than half completed yet—but that if it should stop where it was there would be two hundred thousand dollars coming to his family. He expressed his gratification, with his pencil.

  When I was entering the house, the Confederate General, Buckner, was leaving it. Buckner and Grant had been fellow cadets at West Point, about 1840. I think they had served together in the Mexican war, a little later. After that war Grant (then a Captain in the regular army) was ordered to a military post in Oregon. By and by he resigned and came East and found himself in New York penniless. On the street he met Buckner, and borrowed fifty dollars of him. In February 1862 Buckner was in command of the Confederate garrison of Fort Donnellson. General Grant captured the fortress, by assault, and took fifteen thousand prisoners. After that, the two soldiers did not meet again until that day at Mount McGregor, twenty-three years later.

  Several visitors were present, and there was a good deal of chaffing and joking, some of it at Buckner’s expense. Finally General Buckner said,

  “I have my full share of admiration and esteem for Grant. It dates back to our cadet days. He has as many merits and virtues as any man I am acquainted with, but he has one deadly defect. He is an incurable borrower, and when he wants to borrow he knows of only one limit—he wants what yo
u’ve got. When I was poor he borrowed fifty dollars of me; when I was rich he borrowed fifteen thousand men.”

  General Grant died at Mount McGregor on the 23d of July.

  In September or October the Memoirs went to press. Several sets of plates were made; the printing was distributed among several great printing establishments; a great number of steam presses were kept running night and day on the book; several large binderies were kept at work binding it. The book was in sets of two volumes—large octavo. Its price was nine dollars in cloth. For costlier bindings the price was proportionately higher. Two thousand sets in tree-calf were issued at twenty-five dollars per set.

  The book was issued on the 10th of December, and I turned out to be a competent prophet. In the beginning I had told General Grant that his book would sell six hundred thousand single volumes, and that is what happened. It sold three hundred thousand sets. The first check that went to Mrs. Grant was for two hundred thousand dollars; the next one, a few months later, was for a hundred and fifty thousand. I do not remember about the subsequent checks, but I think that in the aggregate the book paid Mrs. Grant something like half a million dollars.

  Webster was in his glory. In his obscure days his hat was No. 6¼; in these latter days he was not able to get his head into a barrel. He loved to descant upon the wonders of the book. He liked to go into the statistics. He liked to tell that it took thirteen miles of gold leaf to print the gilt titles on the book backs; he liked to tell how many thousand tons the three hundred thousand sets weighed. Of course that same old natural thing happened: Webster thought it was he that sold the book. He thought that General Grant’s great name helped, but he regarded himself as the main reason of the book’s prodigious success. This shows that Webster was merely human, and merely a publisher. All publishers are Columbuses. The successful author is their America. The reflection that they—like Columbus—didn’t discover what they expected to discover, and didn’t discover what they started out to discover, doesn’t trouble them. All they remember is that they discovered America; they forget that they started out to discover some patch or corner of India.