Sep. 9th ’85
Mamma is teaching Jean a little natural history and is making a little collection of insects for her. But Mamma does not allow Jean to kill any insects she only colects those insects that are found dead. Mamma has told us all perticularly Jean to bring her all the little dead insects that she finds. The other day as we were all sitting at supper Jean broke into the room and ran triumfantly up to Mamma and presented her with a plate full of dead flies. Mamma thanked Jean very enthusiastically although she with difficulty concealed her amusement. Just then Sour Mash entered the room and Jean believing her hungry asked Mamma for permission to give her the flies. Mamma laughingly consented and [the flies] almost immediately dissappeared.
Sep. 10th ’85.
The other evening Clara and I brought down our new soap bubble water and we all blew soap bubles. Papa blew his soap bubles and filled them with smoke and as the light shone on them they took very beautiful opaline colors.
Papa would hold them and then let us catch them in our hand and they felt delightful to the touch the mixture of the smoke and water had a singularly pleasant effect.
“Papa blew his soap bubles and filled them with smoke.”
Illustration from Sunday Magazine, 26 April 1908.
Nov. 29th ’85.
Papa was fifty years old last Nov. and among his numerous presents The Critick sent him a delightful notice of his semicentenial; containing a poem to him by Dr. Holms a paragraph from Mr. F. R. Stockton, one from Mr. C. D. Warner, and one from Mr. J. C. Harris (Uncle Remus).
Papa was very much pleased and so were we all. I will put the poem and paragraphs in here.
The Critic.
Mark Twain’s Semi-Centennial.
MARK TWAIN will be half-a-hundred years old on Monday. Within the past half-century he has done more than any other man to lengthen the lives of his contemporaries by making them merrier, and it looks as if he were going to do even more good in this way within the next fifty years than in those just ended. We print below a few letters of condolence from writers whose pens, like his, have increased ‘the stock of harmless pleasures,’ and whom we have reminded of the approach of Mr. Clemens’s first semi-centennial.
MY DEAR MR. CLEMENS:
In your first half-century you have made the world laugh more than any other man. May you repeat the whole performance and ‘mark twain!’ Yours very truly,
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA.FRANK R. STOCKTON.
MY DEAR NEIGHBOR:
You may think it an easy thing to be fifty years old, but you will find it not so easy to stay there, and your next fifty years will slip away much faster than those just accomplished. After all, half a century is not much, and I wouldn’t throw it up to you now, only for the chance of saying that few living men have crowded so much into that space as you, and few have done so much for the entertainment and good-fellowship of the world. And I am glad to see that you wear your years as lightly as your more abundant honors. Having successfully turned this corner, I hope that we shall continue to be near neighbors and grow young together. Ever your friend,
CHAS. DUDLEY WARNER.
To Mark Twain
(ON HIS FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY).
Ah Clemens, when I saw thee last,—
We both of us were younger,—
How fondly mumbling o’er the past
Is Memory’s toothless hunger!
So fifty years have fled, they say,
Since first you took to drinking,—
I mean in Nature’s milky way,—
Of course no ill I’m thinking.
But while on life’s uneven road
Your track you’ve been pursuing,
What fountains from your wit have flowed—
What drinks you have been brewing!
I know whence all your magic came,—
Your secret I’ve discovered,—
The source that fed your inward flame—
The dreams that round you hovered:
Before you learned to bite or munch
Still kicking in your cradle,
The Muses mixed a bowl of punch
And Hebe seized the ladle.
Dear babe, whose fiftieth year to-day
Your ripe half-century rounded,
Your books the precious draught betray
The laughing Nine compounded.
So mixed the sweet, the sharp, the strong,
Each finds its faults amended,
The virtues that to each belong
In happier union blended.
And what the flavor can surpass
Of sugar, spirit, lemons?
So while one health fills every glass
Mark Twain for Baby Clemens!
Nov. 23d, 1885. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
TO THE EDITORS OF THE CRITIC:
There must be some joke about this matter, or else fifty years are not as burdensome as they were in the days when men were narrow-minded and lacked humor—that is to say, when there was no Mark Twain to add salt to youth and to season old age. In those days a man at fifty was conceded to be old. If he had as many enemies as he had grandchildren it was thought that he had lived a successful life. Now Mark Twain has no grandchildren, and his enemies are only among those who do not know how to enjoy the humor that is inseparable from genuine human nature.
I saw Mr. Twain not so very long ago piloting a steamboat up and down the Mississippi River in front of New Orleans, and his hand was strong and his eye keen. Somewhat later I heard him discussing a tough German sentence with Little Jean—a discussion in which the toddling child probably had the best of it,—but his mind was clear, and he was bubbling over with good humor. I have seen him elsewhere and under other circumstances, but the fact that he was bordering on fifty years never occurred to me.
And yet I am glad that he is fifty years old. He has earned the right to grow old and mellow. He has put his youth in his books, and there it is perennial. His last book is better than his first, and there his youth is renewed and revived. I know that some of the professional critics will not agree with me, but there is not in our fictive literature a more wholesome book than ‘Huckleberry Finn.’ It is history, it is romance, it is life. Here we behold human character stripped of all tiresome details; we see people growing and living; we laugh at their humor, share their griefs; and, in the midst of it all, behold we are taught the lesson of honesty, justice and mercy.
But this is somewhat apart from my purpose; it was my desire simply to join THE CRITIC in honoring the fiftieth anniversary of an author who has had the genius to be original, and the courage to give a distinctively American flavor to everything he has ever written.
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS.
Dec. 1884. Last winter when papa was away reading he wrote me a good many letters which I have kept and will put in here.
The first one is written in german.
Grand Rapids Mich.
Dec. 14 1884.
Mein liebes Töchterchen,
Wie geht es jetzt mit der Cleveland und der Buffalo Bill? Errinerst du dich an die Bergziegen, oder Bergschäfe die wir bei des austellung Buffalo Bills zu Elmira gesehen haben? Nun die arme Thiere sind neulich dur Schiffsbauch veloren. Diese unfall ist auf der Mississippi vorgekommen. Wer Dampfboot an einen versteckten Fels zerstört wurde, und obgleich Buffalo Bill und seine Indianer und andere Thieren gerettet ward, die Ziegen stürtzte sich gleich ins Wasser und man sah sie noch nie wieder. Auch ein oder vieleicht zwei von den Buffalonen ertunken wurden. Dass macht mirs Herz so schwer dass ich nicht mehr schreiben kann.
Schreib an mich wieder und noch wieder meine libeling
Papa.
P.S. Meine herzlichsten grüssen an deine Grossmama.a
Utika, Dec. 1884.
Susie, my dear, I have been intending to write you and Ben† for a long time, but have been too busy. Nach meinen vorlesung in Ithika ging ich in der Bier lager und fand ungefähr fierzig Stüdenten von Cornwell Universität dort gesammelt; und sie machten mich herzlich will
[kommen] durch heftig jüchzend und klatchen in die Hände. Dann sangen sie viele prachtvolle Gesänge, mit Solo und donnerhaften Chor. Ich habe dort geblieben bis nach mitternacht, dann machte ich ihnen eine hubsche Reden, und erzählte zwei kommische Geschiten, die waren mit grossen Beifal erhielt. Nach dem fuhr ich nach Hause und bald ins Bett gegangen wurde.‡
I love you sweetheart good-bye
Papa.
The following letter was written not long after “Huckleberry Finn” came out, it was an answer to a letter I wrote papa letting him [know] how much Margaret Warner (a friend of mine) and I had enjoyed reading the book together, and how much we admired it.
St Paul Jan 23/85
Susie dear,
I am glad you and Daisy had such a good time over Huck Finn. I wish I had another book like it ready for you.
Some young ladis school teachers—called on Mr. Cable and me yesterday afternoon, and they wanted to see my family and I showed them the picture and they were very complimentary about the group, but they said they thought Jean must be a rascal. So she is; Jean is a very attractive rascal and a very good rascal too.
The thermometer has been ridiculus for fully ten days now away down below zero all day and all night long. And this in a country where the only heating apparatus known is an air tight stove. Dreadful things they are. My windows yesterday comanded a principal street, but during the entire day I did not see a woman or a girl out of doors. Only men ventured out and very few of those. Yet at night the opera house was full of people come out partly to hear us and partly to get their noses frozen off I suppose.
I am very sorry to hear that Miss Corey and Miss Foote are sick. I hope you and Mamma and the rest of you will manage to make out with colds, and not go any further with that sort of thing. Your loving Papa.
Indianapolis Feb. 8/85
Susie dear
When I get home, you must take my Morte Arthur and read it It is the quaintest and sweetest of all books. And is full of the absolute English of 400 years ago. For instance here is a paragraph which I will quot from memory.—And you too may learn it by heart for its worth it. There are only two other things in our language comparable to it for tender eloquence and simplicity, one is Mr. Lincolns Gettysburg speech, and the other has for the moment escaped my memory.
———The paragraph just referred to is given a little further back under heading “Gen Grant.”
“There isnt that beautiful? In this book one finds out where Tennyson got the quaint and pretty phrases which he uses in The “Idyls of the king”—“Lightly” and “Ware” and the rest. Yes you must read it when I come sweetheart. Kiss Mamma for me; and Ben and Jean.
Papa
Chicago Feb. 3/85.
Sweetheart,
Mamma has sent me your composition, and I am very greatly pleased with it, and very much obliged to Mamma for sending it. I ment to return it to Mamma, but sealed my letter previously. So I’ll get you to do it for me.
It appears that the violin is becoming quite the fashion among girls. One of Gen. Fair Childe’s daughters plays that instrument I didn’t see the girls exept the one that was a baby in Paris. They were away on a visit. It is said that one of them is very beautiful.
In this hotel, (the Grand Pacific) there is a colored youth who stands near the great dining room door, and takes the hats of the gentlemen as they pass into dinner and sets them away. The people come in shoals and sometimes he has his arms full of hats and is kept moving in a most lively way. Yet he remembers every hat, and when these people come crowding out, an hour, or an hour and a half later he hands to each gentlemen his hat and never makes any mistake. I have watched him to see how he did it but I couldn’t see that he more than merely glanced at his man if he even did that much. I have tried a couple of times to make him believe he was giving me the wrong hat but it didn’t persuade him in the least. He intimated that I might be in doubt, but that he knew.
Goodbye honey
Papa
Chicago Jan./85
Susie dear, your letter was a great pleasure to me. I am glad you like the new book; and your discription of its effect on Daisy is all that the most exacting and most praise-hungry author could desire. And by the way this reminds me to appoint you to write me two or three times a week in Mamma’s place; and when you write she must not write. What I am after is to save her. She writes me when she aught to be resting herself after the heavy fatigues of the day. It is wrong. It must be stopped. You must stop it.
When it is your day to write and you have been prevented, see to it that the day passes without a letter, she must not write a line. Goodbye sweetheart
Papa.
Toronto Feb. 15/85
Susie dear, it was a good letter you wrote me, and so was Clara’s I dont think that either of you have ever written better ones.
I went toboganing yesterday and it was indiscribeable fun. It was at a girls’ College in the country. The whole College—51 girls, were at the lecture the night before, and I came down off the platform at the close, and went down the aisle and overtook them, and said I had come down to introduce myself, because I was a stranger, and didn’t know any body and was pretty lonesome. And so we had a hand shake all around, and the lady principal said she would send a sleigh for us in the morning if we would come out to the College. I said we would do that with pleasure. So I went home and shaved. For I didn’t want to have to get up still earlier in order to do that; and next morning we drove out through the loveliest winter landscape that ever was. Brilliant sunshine, deep snow everywhere, with a shining crust on it—not flat but just a far reaching white ocean, laid in long smoothe swells like the sea when a calm is coming on after a storm, and every where near and far were island groves of forest trees. And farther and farther away was a receding panorama of hills and forests dimmed by a haze so soft and rich and dainty and spiritual, that it made all objects seem the unreal creatures of a dream, and the whole a vision of a poets paradise, a veiled hushed holy land of the immagination.
You shall see it some day
Ich küsse dich mein liebchen
Papa.
Feb. 6th ’86.
We have just had our third “Prince and Pauper” and we have had more fun acting it than ever before, the programme was the same exept that Papa lengthened the “Lady Jane Grey scene” in which Clara was the Lady Jane Grey. He also added a little to the interview between the prince and pauper, by putting in a little scene behind the scenes to represent their talking while changing clothes. It was as follows.
Behind scenes.
Prince. Oh wait! I did not notice! thoust got that all wrong, that part goes behind. Wait, let me help thee truss the points. There now.
Pauper. Ah good your worship I did never truss a point In all my life before tis by the grace of God alone that my rags hang together.
Prince. Wait, again, wait! You see this goes this way, then this goes in here, then one turns this back so, and brings the other forward. There now it’ll do.
Pauper. Ah good your worship, thou hast not disposed that rag to it’s just advantage, prithee let me give it the touch, that is familiar to it.
Prince. Ah thanks, thanks, here I dont quite understand how this relic,—ah good very good thanks, Oh wait the sword belongeth on thy other side, so thats right. Come.
(they go onto stage)
The addition to the Lady Jane Grey scene was this.—
(Pauper sitting despondently) (enter page)
Page. The lady Jane Grey
(Exit)
(enter lady Jane Grey bows low)
Pauper. Oh prithee let me, out!
Lady Jane. (surprised,—a little ruffled—with distant politeness) Let thee out! My lord since when must the prince of Wales sue to common Clay for leave, to leave his room when he would, you jest my lord! and I? I do not like it.
Pauper. (distressed) Oh dear lady I am not the prince of Wales!
Lady Jane. (still piqued and sarcastic) Indeed! perhaps thou art Ananias or Saphyra
in sooth with practice your grace might serve for both my lord. (another toss)
Pauper. (distressed) Oh lady, do not be cruel!
Lady Jane. Cruel? I cruel! I left mine amusement to come and help thee with thy greeck.
Pauper. Greeck? Oh dear lady I know no Greeck.
Lady Jane. Aside. How strangely he acts. I grow afraid of him saith he knoweth no Greeck, and how strange it is that he should say that for its true! (suddenly and with terrified conviction) his mind’s disordered
Clara as Lady Jane Grey and Daisy Warner as the pauper (in the prince’s clothing), costumed for the Prince and the Pauper play, 1886.
Pauper. (stepping nearer appealingly) Oh gracious lady—
Lady Jane. (interupting and shooing off with her hand) Do not touch me! (here insert old scene given in book) Oh what aileth thee my lord?
Pauper. Oh be merciful thou, in sooth I am no lord, but only poor Tom Canty of Offal Court in the City prithee let me see the prince and he will of his grace restore me to my rags and let me hence unhurt Oh be thou merciful and save me!
Lady Jane. Oh my lord! On thy knees and to me!
(exit in a frightened way)
Feb. 7th 86. Jean who is just five years old, has learned the part of the lady Jane Grey by hearing us rehearse, and she can act it quite well making up for the words she cant get straight, by adding great emphasies to the ones she knows.
A Family Sketch and Other Private Writings Page 13