Who Is Mark Twain? Read online

  I first knew Judge Fuller in Great Salt Lake City, in the summer of ’61. He has always had titles. He was Archbishop Fuller then. He was not connected with any Church. It was only a decoration. It was an office which did not exist. There was no Church there but the Mormon Church, and it had only Bishops, and the Bishoprics were all full. So Fuller took the title of Archbishop because he wanted to be something, and there was no other vacancy. And he was entitled to some such reward, on account of religious services which he had rendered the Church in keeping a broker’s office where wives and children and such things could be exchanged for the necessaries of life.

  Next I knew him in Nevada Territory. He was ex-Governor then; not ex-Governor of any particular commonwealth, but just ex-Governor at large. He wanted to be something, and there was no other vacancy. He was always bright, energetic, sanguine, useful. There, the public finances being low, he tried to get legalized prize-fighting introduced to save the treasury’s life, but it failed—the people were not advanced enough yet.

  Next, I knew him in San Francisco. He was General then. It was a brevet. He was learning the military business, and getting ready.

  Later, in Arizona, he was Admiral; then he came on to New York and became Judge—and waited for a vacancy. That was nearly 30 years ago. I came on, myself, the next year. It was then that this thing happened, which I spoke of a while ago. He wanted me to lecture. I was afraid of it. I said I was not known. He said that that was merely my modesty; that I was too modest; much too modest; abnormally modest; morbidly modest, indecently modest. He said it was a disease and must not be allowed to run on or it would get worse. He said that so far from being unknown, I was the best known man in America except Gen. Grant, and the most popular. He went on talking like that until he made me believe that New York was in distress to hear me. He even frightened me; for he made me believe that if I stood out and refused to lecture, there would be riots. He was at white heat with one of his splendid enthusiasms, and so I was carried away by it and believed it all. For I was only a young thing—callow, trustful, ignorant of the world—hardly 33 years old, and easily persuaded to my hurt by any person with plausible ways and an eloquent tongue—and he had these.

  So at last I consented, but begged him to get a small hall—a hall which would not seat more than 500—so as to cover accidents; and then if it should be overpacked we could take a large hall next time. But he would not hear of it. He said it was diffident foolishness—insanity. He said he was not acting upon guesswork, he knew what he was about. He knew it was going to be the most colossal success that New York had seen since Jenny Lind—and it was going to beat Jenny Lind, too. He was so sure of it that he was going to foot all the bills himself and if it didn’t turn out as he said it wouldn’t cost my pocket anything.

  The more he talked about it the more enthusiastic he got and the more uncontrollable. First, he went off and hired the large hall of Cooper Institute; and came back distressed and mourning, because it would seat only 3,000. Why of course I was aghast. I said it was rank lunacy—that we couldn’t have the least use for such a gigantic place like that; the audience would get lost in it, and we’d have to offer a reward. I implored him, I supplicated him to get rid of Cooper Institute; and if he couldn’t, I offered to go and burn it down.

  It had no effect—none in the world; he didn’t even listen to me—only walked the floor and said what a pity it was that we got to talk in a little coop like that. Then he brightened up and said he knew how to fix it now—he would go and hire it for 3 weeks. I couldn’t get my voice for terror—and he just marched the floor in a rapture of happiness—and finally flung out of the place, jamming his hat on his head as he went, and said he would go and hire it for 3 months. There’s a time to die. My time. Missed fire.

  So I sat down and cried. I was a young thing, and all this dreadful peril was so new to me. But he came back raging, and said the hall was engaged for months ahead, and only his one night was vacant; and moreover those people showed no proper pride or exultation in what we were going to do for them. And he had told them to their faces that we wouldn’t ever lecture in their shop again.

  I asked him what our date was, and he said ten days hence. Ten days! Only 10 days to advertise in? Couldn’t pull a house together for Adam in 10 days. Oh, dear, I said, we haven’t a show in the world. I begged him to get to work straight off with his advertising; and I offered to sit up all night and every night and help. He looked astonished; and said there was a much more serious thing than that to be looked after and thought about, and that was, what to do with 30,000 people in a house that would seat only a tenth of it.

  But he said he would advertise, and he did. He spent his money as freely as if it had been somebody else’s, and maybe it was—I dono where he got it. And he worked, too—worked like a steam engine. It was inspiring to see him at it. He performed prodigies. Well, you can’t be in the company of forces like that and remain dead. His splendid confidence, his volcanic enthusiasm carried me out of myself again. I got to believing, once more.

  The plans that that man made! He was going to have all the horse-cars in the city put on the line that ran by the hall;—bridge of cars from one end of New York to the other—couldn’t move. He said that didn’t make any difference, people just pay their fare and walk through and go in. He was going to have the neighboring streets walled by policemen to preserve order in the multitudes; he was going to have ambulances all along, to carry away people wounded in the crush—and some hearses, and undertakers; all there were in town; he was going to have cavalry and artillery to put down the riots—amongst the people that couldn’t get in. And he sent out invitations to all the celebrated people in America, and said he was going to seat them on the platform—when they came. He was going to have Senator Nye introduce me.

  During three days I led the most exciting life I had ever known—and the happiest and proudest. Then I began to sober a little. It seemed to me that the excitement was too local—it didn’t seem to be spreading outside of our quarters. I said so to Fuller. He said, Sho, the town is just boiling, underneath. Vesuvius! he said; that’s what it is; and there’s going to be an irruption—the biggest since Pompeii was buried. Don’t fret—it’s all right.

  But the next three days were no better. The city was still calm; awfully calm; ominously calm, I feared. But Fuller was not troubled. He said there’s always that kind of a calm before a storm. He said he was working the newspapers—keeping them quiet, so’t they would begin to talk presently. Which they didn’t. And he said they would talk after the lecture, too. I was afraid of that myself.

  On the eighth day I was in a panic—for that deadly calm held on as solidly as ever. I couldn’t hear a whisper anywhere about my lecture. Fuller said, don’t worry—look at these; you’ll see what these will do. They were little handbills the size of your hand, all display headings full of extravagant laudations of my celebrity and my lecture, and names of the illustrious people who were going to be there. He didn’t say how many of them he had had printed, but there were 13 barrels of them. They were tied together in bunches of 50, with a string that had a loop to it. He had them hung up in the omnibuses and horse-cars, and also on all the door-knobs in town. I could not rest, I was too miserable, too distressed, too sad, too hopeless. I rode in omnibuses all that day, up and down Broadway, and watched those bunches of lies dangling from the cleats, crick in back of my neck from looking up, all day. But nobody ever took one; and gradually my heart broke. At least nobody took one till late in the afternoon. Then a man pulled one down and read it, and made me happy. His friend spoke up and asked Who is Mark Twain? and he said God knows—I don’t.

  These things seem funny, now, after 30 years; much funnier than they did then. But then the development of the humor of a thing is a pretty slow growth sometimes.

  I did not ride any more. I went to Fuller and said the case is absolutely desperate. There isn’t going to be a soul at the lecture—you must paper the house—you must loa
d up every bench in it with dead-head tickets.

  It made him sad to hear me talk so. He said “there was going to be $3,000 in it and $40,000 outside trying to get in—but your comfort is the first thing to be considered, and it shall be as you say. And I will give you the very best and brainiest dead-head audience that ever sat down under a roof in this world—both sexes, and every last one of them a school-teacher.” And straightway he began to send out market-baskets loaded with dead-head tickets. He fairly snowed the public schools under with them, north, south and west for 30 miles around New York. Then I felt better.

  On the ninth and tenth days, we began to hear from the illustrious men who had been invited.

  [A succession on the screen, here, of good portraits of the time, beginning with Grant and ending with Nye—with explanations of why they couldn’t be present. Then portraits of the time, of Fuller and me. Then of us as at present; and then or at the end Fuller must come on and say he noticed, as I went along, that some of the things I said were true.]

  The lecture was to begin at 8. I was nervous, and I went a little early. It was just as well that I did. Massed in the street were all the school teachers in America, apparently, and more coming. The streets were blocked, all traffic was at a standstill. It took me a while to get in. At 8 every seat was occupied. Even the huge stage was packed, and I never had a better time in my life. Fuller had kept his word: there were more brains there than were ever under a roof before—and without counting me.

  And also, in the box-office, in cold cash, there was $35. First I began and worked up to and told Bucking horse—man got up—

  I don’t know what that wild scheme cost Fuller. He has never mentioned the matter once. And when the newspaper notices came out in the morning he was the best satisfied man in New York. He said “You’re a made man—you’ll see.” And just there comes the strangest part of it; just there this discredited prophet spoke true. Those notices went about the country, and lyceums that didn’t know me from Adam began to shout for me to come. I responded—with modesty, but also with promptness. I accepted a hundred invitations at $100 a piece; and but for Fuller I wouldn’t have been worth fourteen.

  Well, Fuller’s final idea was to invite the Queen of England. I said that that was nonsense; he said it wasn’t nonsense. He said it was a good move; she wouldn’t come, but no matter, the fact that she was invited would be published all over the world and would at once lift this show high up in the estimation of all mankind and make it respectable. And he wanted me to write the letter. Of course I refused. How little I imagined, at that time, that some day I should really be corresponding with the Queen of England. But we never can tell what is going to happen to us in this world—not even in the next. I did write her a letter—it was about 10 or 12 years ago. I didn’t get any answer, because the mails were very irregular then; and so I didn’t keep up the correspondence; but I did have the honor of writing her one letter, anyway. The way it happened was this. About 10 or 12 years ago

  [AFTER GR ANT—THIS.]

  That anecdote about Gen. Grant’s remark at Chicago, is in a sort of kinship with another remark evincing memory high-placed—a remark which was made to me in Europe 3 or 4 years ago by a Personage whose name, like Grant’s, is widely known in the world.

  [PICTURE OF PRINCE OF WALES.]

  There he is—the Heir to one of the best positions that I know of. It so happened that ten or twelve years ago I was surprised and shocked to receive from England—from the Internal Revenue Office—a tax-bill of £48—an income-tax bill, levied on my English copyrights. I was shocked, but it was not all shock. I was flattered as well as shocked; flattered to be formally taken notice of by a foreign government. It seemed to kind of introduce me into the family of nations; seemed—well, it seemed to sort of recognize me as one of the Friendly Powers—not on a large scale, of course—not like Russia and China and those, but on a—well, on a secondary scale—New Jersey. Not one of the Six Powers, you understand, but No. 7. Not an actual member of the Concert of Europe, but a kind of understudy, in case one of them should get sick. So, really there was more pleasure than shock about it. Consequently, so as to clinch that thing—so that they couldn’t get out of it, some time or other when there was a war breeding and I should want to come in and take a hand and help plan out the way to conduct it—I wrote over to the publisher not to make any protest; keep quiet, don’t say anything, just pay the bill. And he did. And so to this day, just by that neat little turn, I am still one of the Seven Powers—sleeping-partner in the firm—and in those European affairs I can give advice whenever I want to. I’ve done it often. I don’t get anything for it, and I don’t get any answer, and don’t want any. I only just want my advice followed—that’s all—and I can see by the Cretan business that they’ve been doing it.

  Yes, that part of that tax matter was all right, and flattering, but there was one feature of it that was less so—and that was, the class of industries under which the British Government had taxed my literary faculty. In England, everything is taxed in detail and named; and my publisher had advised me not to pay this tax because authors’ copyright is nowhere named in the tax lists—it isn’t mentioned at all. Still, I made him pay it, but I asked the British Government to tell me what head I came under. The Government sent me the vast printed document where every taxable thing under the sun was named, and most courteously explained that I was taxed under paragraph No. 14, section D. Now you will never believe it, but I give you my honor that this—this, which you see before you—was actually taxed as a Gas Works. If I have never spoken the truth before I have spoken it this time.

  Well, even I, hurt as I was, was able to see that there was a sort of diabolical humor about that situation; and so, as Harper’s Magazine wanted a squib about that time, I dug it out of that tax-bill. I put it in the form of a letter to the Queen of England—the rambling and garrulous letter of a pleasant and well-disposed and ignorant ass who had the idea that she conducted all the business of the Empire herself, and that the best way to get my literature taxed under some other head than Gas Works was to ask her to attend to it personally. It was a long letter, and I began by explaining why I came to her with the matter. I said “I do not know the people in the Inland Revenue Office, your majesty, and it is embarrassing to me to correspond with strangers; for I was raised in the country and have always lived there, the early part in Marion county, Missouri, before the War, and this part in Hartford county, Connecticut, near Bloomfield and about 8 miles this side of Farmington, though some call it 9, which it is impossible to be, for I have walked it many and many a time in considerably under 3 hours, and General Hawley says he has done it in 2¼, which is not likely; so it seemed best that I write your Majesty. It is true that I do not know your Majesty personally, but I have met the Lord Mayor, and if the rest of the Family are like him, it is but just that it should be named royal; and likewise plain that in a family matter like this I cannot better forward my case than to frankly carry it to the head of the family itself. I have also met the Prince of Wales once, in the fall of 1873, but it was not in any familiar way, but in a quite informal way,—being casual—and was of course a surprise to us both. It was in Oxford street, just where you come out of Oxford into Regent Circus, over there, you know, where the hat store is, a little above where that corner grocery used to be, you remember, and just as the Prince turned up one side of the circle at the head of a Sons of Temperance procession, I went down the other on the top of a bus. He will remember me on account of a light gray coat with flap pockets that I wore, as I was the only person on the omnibus that had on that kind of a coat; and I remember him of course as easy as I would a comet. He looked quite proud and satisfied, but that is not to be wondered at, as he has a good situation. And once I called on your Majesty, but they said you were out. But that is no matter, it happens with everybody. I will call again.

  Of course, your Majesty, my idea was that this tax that I am coming to was for only about 1 percent., but las
t night I met Professor Sloane, professor of history at Princeton University and he said it was 2½.

  [PICTURE OF SLOANE]

  You may not know Mr. Sloane, but you have probably seen him every now and then, for he goes to England a good deal—a large man and very handsome and absorbed in thought, and if you have noticed such a man on platforms after the train is gone, that is the one, he generally gets left; for he is like all those historians and specialists and scholars, they know everything except how to apply it.”

  And so on and so on and so on. It was a very long letter, and very intelligent; and by and by got down to the subject, and explained it. I wish I had the rest of the letter here, to read it, and I wish I had the answer to it that miscarried, I would read that, too; because I like to talk about it, and it always makes me proud to remember that I have corresponded with a Queen, for very few people have had a distinction like that. It’s a fascinating thing to talk about,—however, I’ve got to move along, I reckon.

  Well, Fuller was bound that the Prince of Wales should be invited to the lecture; and maybe he did invite him—I never knew—I remember—I remember he didn’t come.

  [PICTURE OF THE PRINCE]

  So at last I consented. Well, I couldn’t well resist when he said he was going to have all the distinguished people in the country at the lecture—that conquered me—it made me feel good—and proud. Yes, he had buttered me in the right place. He said he was going to have Nasby.

  [PICTURE OF NASBY.]

  Now there was a good fellow. He was sweeping the country with his lecture, “Cursed by Canaan,” in those days—packing his houses to the ceiling. He told me once that in his first campaign he delivered that lecture during a stretch of 9 straight months without ever missing a night. Yet he always read it from MS. He wouldn’t trust his memory for a single sentence. Not because he hadn’t a good memory, but because he hadn’t any confidence in it. The lecture began, “We are all descended from grandfathers;” and he said that when the terrible 9 months were over he went home and slept 3 days and nights, with only 3 little breaks—momentary breaks—at 8 o’clock—lecture-time—each night. Then he woke up and said “We are all descended from grandfathers,” and went to sleep again. Force of habit. And Fuller would have Josh Billings at my lecture.