by Mark Twain
“That accident had in it prodigious consequences for me, although I did not suspect it at the time, of course. Like all our other accidents, it happened on the minute, on the second, on the fraction of a second. No accident ever comes late; it always arrives precisely on time. When that one happened I had never been so near the ministry in my life.
“I took that berth, and during my occupancy of it I had to go to Carson City, the capital, and report the proceedings of the legislature. Every Sunday I wrote a letter to the paper, in which I made a resumé of the week’s legislative work, and in order that it might be readable I put no end of seasoning into it. I signed these letters ‘Mark Twain.’
“Signing them in that way was another accident which had been decreed by Adam’s first act. It was the cause of my presently drifting out of journalism and into literature. I could go on, now, and trace everything that has ever happened to me since, in all these forty years, straight back to that accident. Out of it grew, two years later, the accident which gave me a correspondence-job to live on when I was discharged from the San Francisco Morning Call; out of that correspondence grew the accident of my being sent to the Sandwich Islands for the Sacramento Union; out of that accident grew a notoriety which enabled me to mount the lecture platform when I was once more penniless and pointed for the ministry; out of the lecture accident resulted my opportunity to join the Quaker City Excursion; out of that excursion grew the accident of an invitation to write ‘The Innocents Abroad’ and become profitably notorious all over America; out of that same accident grew the accident of my stepping into Charley Langdon’s stateroom one day when the ship lay at anchor in the Bay of Smyrna and finding on his table a likeness of his sister, whom I was to seek out within the year and marry two years later; out of this happy accident resulted a thousand other happy accidents, link after link, year after year, until the chain reached down to you and your affairs, a week ago, and enabled me to do you a service which you believe could not have been done for you by any other person with whom you are acquainted. To my mind, it is absolutely certain that if ever a link, a single link, a link of the most apparently trifling sort, in the chain that stretches back from me to Adam, had ever been broken, there is no likelihood, nor even a remote possibility, that you and I would ever have looked into each other’s faces in this life.”
Wednesday, October 3, 1906
Clara Clemens’s début in Norfolk, Connecticut—The episode of her crib catching fire when she was seven years old—The two other fires on the two following days—Rosa’s promptness in rescuing the children—Rosa’s marriage, and her experience with the scarecrow and the crows.
Yesterday I mentioned that on the 22d of September I went up to Norfolk, Connecticut, from New York, and witnessed my daughter Clara’s début as a singer. She had sung in public once before, but that was in Italy in a class of a dozen other girls—a music teacher’s exhibition—and of course the house was full of approving and uncritical papas and mammas and brothers and sisters and aunts and cousins and uncles, and it was not a real début, and had few of the terrors of a real début. It was two years and a half ago. In Norfolk Clara was two-thirds of the entire show. The other third consisted, according to custom, of interlardings of instrumental music. She showed good nerve. She was frozen stiff with stage-fright, but it was not detectable.
She always had plenty of nerve. I think I have several times touched upon this fact in earlier chapters. Once when she was seven years old she came near being burnt up one morning, but she was more interested in the tumult and excitement than she was in the danger. As far as the peril was concerned, she was as indifferent as if she had a paid-up fire policy on her life. She had the diphtheria, and had been removed to our room so that her mother might have her under her eye all the time. She was in her crib, and over the crib had been built a tent of blankets; on the floor was an alcohol lamp, which supplied heat to a vessel filled with lactic acid and lime; from this vessel a spout discharged the medicated steam into the tent. It was early morning. The season was winter, and the weather was very cold. Mrs. Clemens left the room for a moment, and then one of those accidents happened which had been decreed by Adam’s first act—or, at any rate, was an unavoidable result of that act. The lamp set the blanket-tent and the bedding on fire. Rosa, the German nurse, entered at that moment. The flames were streaming up round about the child, but that did not make Rosa lose her head—nothing ever did, during the twelve years that she was in our service. She went at the work of rescue with that fine intelligence which begins at the right end instead of the wrong end. She first snatched Clara from the crib and put her on the bed; then she flung up a window; next she gathered the burning tent in her hands and carried it there and flung it out; next she carried the burning mattress and bedding to the window and threw them out; finally she enveloped the child in wraps. She did all these things in their proper order, giving each service its right and proper place in the list. Rosa was a swift person, and she accomplished these several things in about the space of time it would have taken me to think out one of them and start out to hunt up somebody to do it. Clara was not badly scorched, and she enjoyed all the details of the stirring incident. (This was Rosa’s testimony.) She also enjoyed the tumult and the excited ejaculations which followed when her mother and I and the entire household, big and little, swarmed into the room a few moments later. We got the impression that she would like to have it all done over again.
While I am back in that distant time I will go on and tell about what happened the next morning, and the morning after. On the first of these two mornings Jean, a baby of one year’s experience of life, was asleep in her crib in the nursery, under a tall canopy of flimsy white muslin, or some such material. The crib was in front of a brisk wood fire, and the whole fireplace-front was covered by a spark-arrester in the form of a screen of fine copper wires—wires that were so close together that you could hardly insert a knife-blade between them—nevertheless a spark was discharged through this obstruction, and it lit on the slope of that canopy and set it afire. It was about breakfast-time, and no one was in the room. The Polish wet-nurse ought to have been there, but she wasn’t; she wasn’t, because Adam’s first act had created a chain of events which made it impossible for her to be there at that time. But she presently entered and saw the canopy blazing up. She was not a Rosa, and she lost her head at once, what there was of it, and went screaming out of the place. The screams brought Rosa, and she flew into the room and snatched Jean out and put her on the bed; next she ran and threw up a window; then she carried the burning mattress and bed-clothes to the window and threw them out, along with what was left of the canopy; next she threw water on the crib and on the wood-work at the base of the wall—for both were on fire—and finally she clothed Jean in wraps, and was then all through and ready for the household to swarm in and make a tumult, as usual.
With the practice which Rosa had now accumulated, she could have saved a child from a burning crib every morning for the rest of her life, and never put any detail of the incident in the wrong place in the list. Jean had suffered two or three burns, but they were of small consequence.
The next morning, just before breakfast-time, Susy, aged nine, was practising at the piano in the schoolroom, which adjoined the nursery. At one end of the room a fire of large logs was burning. Susy was at the other end of the room with her back toward the fire. A log burned in two and the ends fell and scattered coals around about the heavy wood-work which supported the mantelpiece, and set it on fire. Just at the right moment the barber entered that room. This had been made necessary and unavoidable by Adam’s first act, and could never have happened if Adam had done something other than the thing which he did do. No one was likely to enter that room at that hour. The barber had never entered it before; he had always shaved me in a bedroom on the ground floor, but this time, in obedience to Adam’s arrangement, that room was in possession of a guest, and George, the colored butler, had sent the barber up to the schoolroom wi
th instructions to abide there in peace until I should come. He made no outcry when he saw the flames climbing to the mantelpiece, but brought water from the nursery bath-room and extinguished them. If Adam had delayed him even three or four minutes, the house could not have been saved.
Our family has never had many adventures, and so we have always set a high value on the three which I have described; and the value of them to us has been greatly enhanced by the fact that they were not scattered over a period of months or years, but all happened in a bunch in three consecutive days.
Rosa was a remarkable girl. She was very lively, and active, and spirited, with a strong sense of humor, and she had a rollicking laugh that came easily and was as catching as the smallpox. You would not expect such a character to be cool and prompt and effective in an emergency, but she was. I have not met her match for coolness and clear-headedness and wisdom in times of excitement and peril. Once when Clara was four years old we were living for a time on the third floor of a hotel in Baden-Baden, and one morning a middle-aged German chambermaid appeared in our room, white-faced and trembling, and tried to tell us something, but was so frightened that she couldn’t speak. While we waited—which was the natural thing for ordinary people to do—Rosa didn’t, but slipped out, without a word, and found Clara entertaining herself in a most questionable way. She had crowded her small body through the pillars of the marble balustrade, and had then faced about and clasped her hands around a pillar, with her back overhanging the marble pavement of the lobby, three stories below. Rosa approached her nonchalantly, and said,
“Wait here, Clärchen, I am going to bring you something pretty—no, maybe I better take you with me. It is at the other end of the hall.”
Then she lifted the child over the balusters, brought her and delivered her into the arms of her mother, and then sat down and cried.
She saved Clara again the next summer, in America. It was at the seaside, and a number of children attended by their nurses were playing in the water. I was sitting on a little precipice twenty-five feet high overlooking the scene. Rosa and Susy were sitting on the sand at some little distance from Clara. A girl seven or eight years old began to splash water in Clara’s face; this bewildered the child and partially strangled her, and in struggling to get away from the persecution she fell on her face, and so remained, helplessly struggling. Of course this meant death, unless a rescue was prompt. The nursery maids stood appalled, and through fright they were not able to move a limb. There was no way for me to get down that precipice without breaking my neck. But after a moment Rosa saw what had happened, and she came flying and rushed in and dragged the child ashore. Clara has had other alarming adventures by water, and if I had been the right kind of a father I would have taken out both fire and marine insurance on her long ago.
When Rosa had been with us twelve years she married a young farmer whose place was near Susy Crane’s “Quarry Farm.” The couple put in a corn crop, and when it was sprouting the crows came and began to dig up the result. There was no scarecrow, but Rosa had a superannuated old gingham umbrella, and she spread it and stuck it up amidst the corn-sprouts for a scarecrow. Then she sat down on the porch very much pleased with her cunning idea. But there was a surprise awaiting her. It began to rain, and the crows pulled up the corn-sprouts and took them under the umbrella to eat them! Rosa’s sense of humor enabled her to enjoy that episode to the full.
Thursday, October 4, 1906
Miss Clara Clemens’s début as a concert singer, at Norfolk, Connecticut, September 22d—Mr. Clemens’s talk—Difference between speeches and talks.
It was my purpose, yesterday morning, to talk about Clara’s début, and about that only, but of course I soon wandered from the track—however, it is no matter; as I have said before, there is no law back of this autobiography which requires me to ever talk about a thing which I was intending to talk about, if in the meantime I chance to get interested in something else. I will return to that début now.
When the fact transpired that Clara was to sing in Norfolk on the 22d, the Associated Press and the newspapers took it up, and although some of them printed Clara’s portrait, and in that way made her prominent above me, all of them touched her name rather lightly in the display-heads but put “Mark Twain’s daughter” in very large letters. This was vinegar for Clara, but saccharin for me, for I had been pretending for two years that for her there could be no glory comparable to the glory of being my daughter, and that therefore she ought to suppress herself and sail altogether under my name. Naturally, she wouldn’t listen to this most reasonable suggestion, but perversely wanted to succeed upon her own merit or not at all. In Florence, two years ago, she thought she had suppressed me in the bills, but at the last moment the management treacherously intruded me, and she sang (mainly) as Mark Twain’s daughter. Our skirmishings have continued ever since, and they have had a real joy for me and a vexation for her which was not wholly fictitious.
When she was leaving for Norfolk on the 21st I begged her to let me go up there, the next day, and lead her out on the platform, but she wouldn’t allow it. She evidently believed I was in earnest. She said I would get all the welcome and she none. But when our old Katy came back from depositing her on board her train, she said that Clara’s courage had weakened, and she had concluded that she would prefer to face her first audience under her father’s protection. This would be unwise, and of course must not happen, but I thought I would keep up the game, anyway. When she arrived in Norfolk, Mrs. R. W. Gilder, who was mothering her, promptly decided that it wouldn’t do for me to lead her out. Her manager also said it mustn’t even be thought of. Other friends said the same. Very well, who was to convey this decision to me? Neither Clara nor the others were willing to bell this cat.
When I arrived in Norfolk at noon on the 22d, Clara timidly suggested that if I led her out I would have to answer the call for a speech, and she thought it ought to be very brief. I pretended to be greatly gratified with even this small chance to show off, and eagerly said I would confine myself to saying merely these words:
“I should be most glad to respond, but Mr. Luckstone, who was to accompany me on the trombone, has unfortunately caught cold and is not able to keep his engagement.”
Clara was much relieved, and said that if I would restrict myself to that she would be content. But when she reported this to the manager there was more trouble. He said:
“It will not do. They will not let him stop with that, and if he gets to talking he will be so charmed with himself that he may never get through at all; and meantime you will be standing there gradually wilting away to nothing. This is our show, not his, and if we don’t keep him off the platform, somehow or other, he will take it away from us.”
Clara asked him to convey this decision to me, but he said he was too young to approach my white head with such a mission. Mr. Luckstone declined on the same terms, and so did the others. But Rodman Gilder, aged twenty-three, spoke up and said he would tell me. They all admired his pluck, and were properly thankful. They left for the hall at seven in the evening in a quite happy and grateful frame of mind, and when Rodman and I followed them, an hour and a half later, he said:
“Mr. Clemens, they don’t want you to lead Miss Clara out.”
I said, “Why I never intended to”—and we dropped the subject there and took up another one.
When we arrived, Rodman reported, but those people were so set in their belief that I was going to raid their show that they didn’t credit Rodman’s statement, but placed guards over the greenroom and the stage entrances to bar me out.
They gave us seats in the third row, and I awaited Clara’s appearance without much apprehension, for I judged that in case her vocalization should not be up to standard, her youth and her beauty would carry her to success anyway, for she is beautiful, I concede it myself, who shouldn’t. She was heartily received, and when she had reached the middle of her first number Mr. Luckstone, at the piano, turned his head over his shoulder a
nd beamed upon her, and Miss Gordon, who sat breathless and trembling with anxiety at my right, whispered,
“That means approbation!—she’s perfectly safe now.”
And it was true. She gathered strength and confidence from that time forth, and carried the house with her to the end. From the beginning of the evening to the finish she was frozen with stage-fright, but she had concealed it so well that, with all my stage experience, I had not suspected it, and I am sure that no one in the house had detected it. That was good grit, and characteristic of her native pluck.
At the finish she was recalled a couple of times; then Miss Gordon and I made a plunge for the stage—both of us to congratulate her, and I to show off and get my share of the glory. When we reached the stage she was coming on in answer to a third call, and I kissed her, with calculated effusion and ostentation, but the audience thought it was only a stage kiss, a pretended kiss, and they shouted:
“Do it—do it!”
I led her off the stage to the greenroom, and then, in answer to a call for myself, she led me on, thus reversing my original program.
I didn’t make a speech, but only talked. I talked fifteen or twenty minutes; and that is the disaster that could have happened if my vicious original program had been carried out—a procedure which I had never at any time proposed to myself, of course.
In our trip around the world Clara had heard me make a great many speeches, and so when she said of this one “it is the happiest talk you have ever made,” I said she was a competent judge and I could endorse her verdict. My talk was reported in the newspapers, and by consequence I now have an opportunity to say something which I have long wanted to say. It is this: