Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

by Mark Twain

  Kinney went to Wall Street to become a Jay Gould and slaughter the innocents. Then he sank out of sight. I never heard of him again, nor saw him during thirty-five years. Then I encountered a very seedy and shabby tramp on Broadway—it was some months ago—and the tramp borrowed twenty-five cents of me. To buy a couple of drinks with, I suppose. He had a pretty tired look and seemed to need them. It was Kinney. His dapperness was all gone; he showed age, neglect, care, and that something which indicates that a long fight is over and that defeat has been accepted.

  Mr. Langdon was a man whose character and nature were made up pretty exclusively of excellencies. I think that he had greatness in him also—executive greatness—and that it would have exhibited itself if his lines had been cast in a large field instead of in a small and obscure one. He once came within five minutes of being one of the great railway magnates of America.

  Tuesday, February 20, 1906

  About Rear-Admiral Wilkes—And meeting Mr. Anson Burlingame in Honolulu.

  MRS. MARY WILKES DEAD.

  Florence, Italy, Feb. 19.—Mrs. Mary Wilkes, widow of Rear-Admiral Wilkes, U.S.N., is dead, aged eighty-five.

  It is death-notices like this that enable me to realize in some sort how long I have lived. They drive away the haze from my life’s road and give me glimpses of the beginning of it—glimpses of things which seem incredibly remote.

  When I was a boy of ten, in that village on the Mississippi River which at that time was so incalculably far from any place and is now so near to all places, the name of Wilkes, the explorer, was in everybody’s mouth, just as Roosevelt’s is to-day. What a noise it made; and how wonderful the glory! How far away and how silent it is now. And the glory has faded to tradition. Wilkes had discovered a new world, and was another Columbus. That world afterward turned mainly to ice and snow. But it was not all ice and snow—and in our late day we are rediscovering it, and the world’s interest in it has revived. Wilkes was a marvel in another way, for he had gone wandering about the globe in his ships and had looked with his own eyes upon its furthest corners, its dreamlands—names and places which existed rather as shadows and rumors than as realities. But everybody visits those places now, in outings and summer excursions, and no fame is to be gotten out of it.

  One of the last visits I made in Florence—this was two years ago—was to Mrs. Wilkes. She had sent and asked me to come, and it seemed a chapter out of the romantic and the impossible that I should be looking upon the gentle face of the sharer in that long-forgotten glory. We talked of the common things of the day, but my mind was not present. It was wandering among the snow-storms and the ice floes and the fogs and mysteries of the Antarctic with this patriarchal lady’s young husband. Nothing remarkable was said; nothing remarkable happened. Yet a visit has seldom impressed me so much as did this one.

  Here is a pleasant and welcome letter, which plunges me back into the antiquities again.

  Knollwood

  Westfield, New Jersey.

  February 17, 1906.

  My dear Mr. Clemens:—

  I should like to tell you how much I thank you for an article which you wrote once, long ago, (1870 or ’71) about my grandfather, Anson Burlingame.

  In looking over the interesting family papers and letters, which have come into my possession this winter, nothing has impressed me more deeply than your tribute. I have read it again and again. I found it pasted into a scrap-book and apparently it was cut from a newspaper. It is signed with your name.

  It seems to bring before one more clearly, than anything I have been told or read, my grandfather’s personality and achievements. . . . .

  Family traditions grow less and less in the telling. Young children are so impatient of anecdotes, and when they grow old enough to understand their value, frequent repetitions, as well as newer interests and associations seem to have dulled, not the memory, but the spontaneity and joy of telling about the old days—so unless there is something written and preserved, how much is lost to children of the good deeds of their fathers.

  Perhaps it will give you a little pleasure to know that after all these years, the words you wrote about “a good man, and a very, very great man” have fallen into the heart of one to whom his fame is very near and precious.

  You say “Mr. Burlingame’s short history—for he was only forty-seven—reads like a fairy-tale. Its successes, its surprises, its happy situations occur all along, and each new episode is always an improvement upon the one which went before it.” That seems to have been very true and it is interesting to hear, although it has the sad ring of Destiny. But how shall I ever thank you for words like these? “He was a true man, a just man, a generous man, in all his ways and by all his instincts a noble man—a man of great brain, a broad, and deep and mighty thinker. He was a great man, a very, very great man. He was imperially endowed by nature, he was faithfully befriended by circumstances, and he wrought gallantly always in whatever station he found himself.” How indeed shall I thank you for these words or tell you how deeply they have touched me, and how truly I shall endeavor to teach them to my children.

  That your fame may be as sacred as this, is my earnest, grateful wish, not wholly the inevitable, imperishable fame that is laid down for you, but the sweet and precious fame, to your family and friends forever, of the fair attributes you ascribe to my grandfather, which could never have been discerned by one who was not like him in spirit.

  With the hope some time of knowing you,

  Yours sincerely,

  Jean Burlingame Beatty.

  (Mrs. Robert Chetwood Beatty.)

  This carries me back forty years, to my first meeting with that wise and just and humane and charming man and great citizen and diplomat, Anson Burlingame. It was in Honolulu. He had arrived in his ship, on his way out on his great mission to China, and I had the honor and profit of his society daily and constantly during many days. He was a handsome and stately and courtly and graceful creature, in the prime of his perfect manhood, and it was a contenting pleasure to look at him. His outlook upon the world and its affairs was as wide as the horizon, and his speech was of a dignity and eloquence proper to it. It dealt in no commonplaces, for he had no commonplace thoughts. He was a kindly man, and most lovable. He was not a petty politician, but a great and magnanimous statesman. He did not serve his country alone, but China as well. He held the balances even. He wrought for justice and humanity. All his ways were clean; all his motives were high and fine.

  He had beautiful eyes; deep eyes; speaking eyes; eyes that were dreamy, in repose; eyes that could beam and persuade like a lover’s; eyes that could blast when his temper was up, I judge. Potter, (that is the name, I think,) the Congressional bully, found this out in his day, no doubt. Potter had bullied everybody, insulted everybody, challenged everybody, cowed everybody, and was cock of the walk in Washington. But when he challenged the new young Congressman from the West he found a prompt and ardent man at last. Burlingame chose bowie-knives at short range, and Potter apologized and retired from his bullyship with the laughter of the nation ringing in his ears.

  When Mr. Burlingame arrived at Honolulu I had been confined to my room a couple of weeks—by night to my bed, by day to a deep-sunk splint-bottom chair like a basket. There was another chair but I preferred this one, because my malady was saddle-boils.

  When the boat-load of skeletons arrived after forty-three days in an open boat on ten days’ provisions—survivors of the clipper Hornet which had perished by fire several thousand miles away—it was necessary for me to interview them for the Sacramento Union, a journal which I had been commissioned to represent in the Sandwich Islands for a matter of five or six months. Mr. Burlingame put me on a cot and had me carried to the hospital, and during several hours he questioned the skeletons and I set down the answers in my note-book. It took me all night to write out my narrative of the Hornet disaster, and——but I will go no further with the subject now. I have already told the rest in some book of mine.

&
nbsp; Mr. Burlingame gave me some advice, one day, which I have never forgotten, and which I have lived by for forty years. He said, in substance:

  “Avoid inferiors. Seek your comradeships among your superiors in intellect and character; always climb.”

  Mr. Burlingame’s son—now editor of Scribner’s Monthly this many years, and soon to reach the foothills that lie near the frontiers of age—was with him there in Honolulu; a handsome boy of nineteen, and overflowing with animation, activity, energy, and the pure joy of being alive. He attended balls and fandangos and hula hulas every night—anybody’s, brown, half white, white—and he could dance all night and be as fresh as ever the next afternoon. One day he delighted me with a joke which I afterwards used in a lecture in San Francisco, and from there it traveled all around in the newspapers. He said “If a man compel thee to go with him a mile, go with him Twain.”

  When it was new, it seemed exceedingly happy and bright, but it has been emptied upon me upwards of several million times since—never by a witty and engaging lad like Burlingame, but always by chuckle-heads of base degree, who did it with offensive eagerness and with the conviction that they were the first in the field. And so it has finally lost its sparkle and bravery, and is become to me a seedy and repulsive tramp whose proper place is in the hospital for the decayed, the friendless and the forlorn.

  Wednesday, February 21, 1906

  Mr. Langdon just escapes being a railway magnate—Mr. Clemens’s

  dealings with Bliss, the publisher.

  But I am wandering far from Susy’s Biography. I remember that I was about to explain a remark which I had been making about Susy’s grandfather Langdon having just barely escaped once the good luck—or the bad luck—of becoming a great railway magnate. The incident has interest for me for more than one reason. Its details came to my knowledge in a chance way in a conversation which I had with my father-in-law when I was arranging a contract with my publisher for “Roughing It,” my second book. I told him the publisher had arrived from Hartford, and would come to the house in the afternoon to discuss the contract and complete it with the signatures. I said I was going to require half the profits over the essential costs of manufacture. He asked if that arrangement would be perfectly fair to both parties, and said it was neither good business nor good morals to make contracts which gave to one side the advantage. I said that the terms which I was proposing were fair to both parties. Then Mr. Langdon after a musing silence said, with something like a reminiscent sorrow in his tone,

  “When you and the publisher shall have gotten the contract framed to suit you both and no doubts about it are left in your minds, sign it—sign it to-day, don’t wait till to-morrow.”

  It transpired that he had acquired this wisdom which he was giving me gratis, at considerable expense. He had acquired it twenty years earlier, or thereabouts, at the Astor House in New York, where he and a dozen other rising and able business men were gathered together to secure a certain railroad which promised to be a good property by and by, if properly developed and wisely managed. This was the Lehigh Valley railroad. There were a number of conflicting interests to be reconciled before the deal could be consummated. The men labored over these things the whole afternoon, in a private parlor of that hotel. They dined, then reassembled and continued their labors until after two in the morning. Then they shook hands all around in great joy and enthusiasm, for they had achieved success, and had drawn a contract in the rough which was ready for the signatures. The signing was about to begin; one of the men sat at the table with his pen poised over the fateful document, when somebody said “Oh, we are tired to death. There is no use in continuing this torture any longer. Everything’s satisfactory; let’s sign in the morning.” All assented, and that pen was laid aside.

  Mr. Langdon said “We got five or ten minutes’ additional sleep that night, by that postponement, but it cost us several millions apiece, and it was a fancy price to pay. If we had paid out of our existing means, and the price had been a single million apiece, we should have had to sit up, for there wasn’t a man among us who could have met the obligation completely. The contract was never signed. We had traded a Bank of England for ten minutes’ extra sleep—a very small sleep, an apparently unimportant sleep, but it has kept us tired ever since. When you’ve got your contract right, this afternoon, sign it.”

  I followed that advice. It was thirty-five years ago, but it has kept me tired ever since. I was dealing with the salaried manager of the American Publishing Company of Hartford, E. Bliss, junior, a Yankee of the Yankees. I will tell about this episode in a later chapter. He was a tall, lean, skinny, yellow, toothless, bald-headed, rat-eyed professional liar and scoundrel. I told him my terms. He suggested that they were a little high. I showed him letters which I had received from various reputable firms, offering me this rate. I also showed him a letter from perhaps the best firm in America offering me three-fourths of the profits above cost of manufacture. I showed him still another letter from a far better firm than his own, offering me the whole of the profits and saying it would be content with what they could get out of the book as an advertisement. I said I did not care to consider these offers, and that I should prefer to remain where my success had been accomplished for me, but that I must insist upon half profits.

  Bliss then said that on the whole perhaps my requirement was fair—sufficiently fair, at any rate, although there was argument that as his house had found me penniless and unknown, and had created me, so to speak, this service ought to be considered and compensated in the contract. It did not occur to me to remind him of a conversation which we had had nine months after the publication of “The Innocents Abroad,” in which he had effusively thanked me for saving that publishing-house’s life—a talk in which he had said that when my book was issued the Company’s stock couldn’t be given away, but at the end of nine months the stock had paid three 20 per cent dividends; cleared the Company of debt; was quoted at two hundred, and was not purchasable even at that gilded rate. I forgot to mention—for I didn’t know it—that my 5 per cent royalty on that book represented only a fifth of the book’s profits, and that for each dollar paid me by the Company, the Company had made four.

  Bliss said he would go to the hotel and draw up the contract in accordance with the agreed terms. When he brought the contract, it had nothing in it about half profits. It was a royalty again—7½ per cent this time. I said that that was not what we had agreed upon. He said that in so many words it wasn’t, but that in fact the terms were still better for me than half profits, because that up to a sale of one hundred thousand copies my profit on the book would be some trifle more than half, and that only on a sale of two hundred thousand copies would the Company get back that advantage.

  I asked him if he was telling me the strict truth. He said he was. I asked him if he could hold up his hand and make oath that what he had said was absolutely true. He said he could. I asked him to put up his hand, which he did, and I swore him.

  1879

  He published that book and the next one, at 7½ per cent royalty. He published the next two at 10 per cent. But when I came back from Europe bringing the manuscript of still another book—“A Tramp Abroad,” at the end of 1879—the doubts which had been lingering in my mind for all these years took the form of almost the conviction that this animal had been swindling me all the while, and I said that this time the words “half profits above cost of manufacture” must go into the contract or I would carry the book elsewhere—that I was tired of the royalty terms and believed it was a swindle upon me.

  He accepted this proposition with effusion, and came back to my house the next day with that kind of contract. I saw that it did not mention the American Publishing Company, but only E. Bliss, junior. Apparently I was dealing solely with him. I inquired. He said “Yes,” that it was a mean crowd, an ungrateful crowd; that it would have lost me long ago if it had not been for him; yet that it was in no sufficient degree grateful for this service, although it knew qu
ite well that I was the sole source of its prosperities and even of its bread and butter. He said the Company had been threatening to reduce his salary; that he wanted to leave and set up for himself; and that he wanted nothing further to do with those skinflints.

  The idea pleased me, for I detested those people myself, and was quite willing to leave them. So we signed the contract.

  That rascal told me afterward that he took that contract and shook it in the face of the Board of Directors and said,

  “I’ll sell it to you for three-fourths of the profits above cost of manufacture. My salary must be continued at the present rate; my son’s salary must be continued at the present rate, also. Those are the terms. Take them or leave them.”

  It could be that this was true. If it was true it was without doubt the only time during Bliss’s sixty years that he opened his mouth without a lie escaping through the gaps in his teeth. I never heard him tell the truth, so far as I can remember. He was a most repulsive creature. When he was after dollars he showed the intense earnestness and eagerness of a circular-saw. In a small, mean, peanut-stand fashion, he was sharp and shrewd. But above that level he was destitute of intelligence; his brain was a loblolly, and he had the gibbering laugh of an idiot. It is my belief that Bliss never did an honest thing in his life, when he had a chance to do a dishonest one. I have had contact with several conspicuously mean men, but they were noble compared to this bastard monkey.