Latest / Mark Twain; his life and work. A biographical sketch / 06 - Mark Twain; his life and work. A biographical sketch by William M. Clemens

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06 - Mark Twain; his life and work. A biographical sketch by William M. Clemens · Mark Twain; his life and work. A biographical sketch

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  Speaker 1: This is chapter six of Mark Twain, His Life and Work,
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  Speaker 1: a biographical sketch by William M. Clemens. This LibriVox recording
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  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Chapter six Marriage, read by
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  Speaker 1: John Greenman. Among those cultivated people who were passengers on
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  Speaker 1: the steamer Quaker City in the now memorable excursion to
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  Speaker 1: the Holy Land in eighteen sixty seven were Judge J. L.
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  Speaker 1: Langdon and family of Elmira, New York. A son of
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  Speaker 1: Judge Langdon figures as Dan in innocence Abroad. Miss Lizzie,
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  Speaker 1: a handsome and accomplished sister of Dan, was introduced to
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  Speaker 1: Mark Twain during the voyage outward, and when the Quaker
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  Speaker 1: City sailed homeward, mister Clemens was paying deep attention to
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  Speaker 1: the young lady. She was somewhat of an invalid, and
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  Speaker 1: upon the return of the family to Elmira, her illness
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  Speaker 1: took a more serious form. Perhaps the proximity of Buffalo
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  Speaker 1: to Elmira, the home of his sweetheart, occasioned Mark's removal
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  Speaker 1: to the former city in the latter part of eighteen
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  Speaker 1: sixty nine. For at all events, we find him there
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  Speaker 1: occupying an editorial position on the Buffalo Express. Subsequently, we
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  Speaker 1: find him making periodical visits to the neighboring city of Elmira.
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  Speaker 1: Miss Langdon was a young lady of position and fortune.
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  Speaker 1: Mark knew that her father did not look upon him
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  Speaker 1: with favor, but nevertheless he acquired sufficient courage to propose
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  Speaker 1: and was rejected, much to his sorrow. Well, he said
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  Speaker 1: to the lady, I didn't much believe you'd have me,
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  Speaker 1: but I thought i'd try. After a while, he tried again,
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  Speaker 1: with the same result, and then he remarked, with his
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  Speaker 1: celebrated drawl, I think a great deal more of you
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  Speaker 1: than if you'd say yes, But it's hard to bear.
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  Speaker 1: A third time he met with better fortune, and then
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  Speaker 1: came to the most difficult part of his task, to
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  Speaker 1: address the old gentleman judge. He said, to the dignified millionaire,
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  Speaker 1: have you seen anything going on between miss Lizzie and me? What? What?
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  Speaker 1: Exclaimed the judge rather sharply, apparently not understanding the situation,
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  Speaker 1: yet doubtless getting a glimpse of it from the inquiry.
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  Speaker 1: Have you seen anything going on between miss Lizzie and me? No? No, indeed,
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  Speaker 1: replied the magnate sternly, No, sir, I have not. Well,
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  Speaker 1: look sharp, and you will. The judge did look sharp
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  Speaker 1: after that, and one day he called the ardent and
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  Speaker 1: devoted young man into his study, and said, after some preamble,
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  Speaker 1: mister Clements, I have something to say to you which
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  Speaker 1: bears upon a subject of great importance, at least to
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  Speaker 1: me and mine. You have been coming here for some time,
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  Speaker 1: and your manners leave no doubt in my mind as
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  Speaker 1: to your object. Now, my daughter's welfare is very dear
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  Speaker 1: to me, and before I can admit you to her
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  Speaker 1: society on the footing of a suitor to her hand,
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  Speaker 1: I would like to know something more than I do
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  Speaker 1: about you, your antecedents, et cetera. Stop a minute. You
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  Speaker 1: must remember that a man may be a good fellow
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  Speaker 1: and a pleasant companion on a voyage and all that.
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  Speaker 1: But when it is a question as grave as this,
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  Speaker 1: a wise father tries to take every precaution before allowing
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  Speaker 1: his daughter's affections to become engaged. And I ask of you,
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  Speaker 1: as a gentleman, that you shall give me the names
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  Speaker 1: of some of your friends in California, to whom I
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  Speaker 1: may write and make such inquiries as I deem necessary,
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  Speaker 1: that is, if you still desire our friendship. Mark put
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  Speaker 1: on a bold front, Sir, said, he bowing profoundly as
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  Speaker 1: became a young man who respects his hoped for father
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  Speaker 1: in law. Your sentiments are in every way correct. I
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  Speaker 1: approve of them myself, and hasten to add that you
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  Speaker 1: have not been mistaken in my sentiments towards your daughter,
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  Speaker 1: whom I may tell you candidly seems to me to
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  Speaker 1: be the most perfect of her sex, and I honor
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  Speaker 1: your solicitation for her welfare. I am not only perfectly
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  Speaker 1: willing to give you reference, but am only too glad
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  Speaker 1: to have an opportunity to do so, which my natural
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  Speaker 1: modesty would have prevented me from offering. Therefore, permit me
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  Speaker 1: to give you the names of a few of my friends.
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  Speaker 1: I will write them down. First is Lieutenant General John McCombe,
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  Speaker 1: Alexander Badlam, General Lander, and Colonel W. H. L. Barnes.
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  Speaker 1: They will all lie for me, just as I would
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  Speaker 1: for them under like circumstances. The prospective father in law
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  Speaker 1: wrote letters of inquiry to several residents of San Francisco,
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  Speaker 1: to whom Clemens referred him, and with one exception, the
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  Speaker 1: letters denounced him bitterly, especially deriding his capacity for becoming
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  Speaker 1: a good husband. Mark sat beside his fiancee when the
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  Speaker 1: letters were read aloud by the old gentleman. There was
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  Speaker 1: a dread for silence for a moment, and then Mark stammered, well,
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  Speaker 1: that's pretty rough on a fellow anyhow. His betrothed came
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  Speaker 1: to the rescue, however, and overturned the mass of testimony
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  Speaker 1: against him by saying, I'll risk you anyhow. So they
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  Speaker 1: were married, the wedding occurring in the parlor of the
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  Speaker 1: Langdon residence in Elmira. Mark had instructed his friends in
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  Speaker 1: the newspaper office at Buffalo to select him a suite
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  Speaker 1: of rooms in a first class boarding house in the city,
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  Speaker 1: and to have a carriage at the depot to meet
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  Speaker 1: the bride and groom. He knew that they would comply
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  Speaker 1: with his request and gave himself no more anxiety about it.
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  Speaker 1: When the happy couple alighted from the train at the
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  Speaker 1: Buffalo depot, they found a handsome carriage, a beautiful span
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  Speaker 1: of horses, and a driver in livery. They were driven
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  Speaker 1: to a handsome house on an aristocratic street, and as
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  Speaker 1: the door was opened, there were the parents of the
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  Speaker 1: bride to wellcomed them home. The old folks had quietly
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  Speaker 1: arrived by a special train. After Mark had gone through
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  Speaker 1: the house and admired its elegant furnishings, he was informed
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  Speaker 1: officially that he had been driven by his own coachman
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  Speaker 1: in his own carriage to his own house. They say
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  Speaker 1: that the tears came to his wonderfully dark and piercing eyes,
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  Speaker 1: and that all he could say was, well, this is
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  Speaker 1: a first class swindle. For nearly a year, mister Clemmons
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  Speaker 1: was editorially connected with the Buffalo Express. For this journal,
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  Speaker 1: he wrote many excellent sketches, among them an unburlescable Thing,
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  Speaker 1: a Memory, the Widow's Protest, Running for Governor, and others.
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  Speaker 1: The Reverend J. Hyatt Smith relates an amusing anecdote of
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  Speaker 1: Mark's life in Buffalo. When I was living in Buffalo,
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  Speaker 1: says mister Smith, Mark Twain occupied a cottage across the street.
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  Speaker 1: We did not see very much of him. But one morning,
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  Speaker 1: as we were enjoying our cigars on the veranda after breakfast,
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  Speaker 1: we saw Mark come to his door in his dressing
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  Speaker 1: gown and slippers and look over at us. He stood
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  Speaker 1: at his own door and smoked for a minute, as
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  Speaker 1: if making up his mind. About something, and at last
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  Speaker 1: opened his gate and came lounging across the street. There
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  Speaker 1: was an unoccupied rocking chair on the veranda, and when
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  Speaker 1: my brother offered it to him, he dropped into it
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  Speaker 1: with a sigh of relief. He smoked for a few
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  Speaker 1: moments and said, nice morning, Yes, very pleasant. Shouldn't wonder
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  Speaker 1: if we had rain by and by well we could
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  Speaker 1: stand a little. This is a nice house you have here, Yes,
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  Speaker 1: we rather like it. How's your family quite well? And yours? Oh,
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  Speaker 1: we're all comfortable. There was another impressive silence, and finally
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  Speaker 1: Mark crossed his legs, blew a puff of smoke in
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  Speaker 1: the air, and in his lazy drawl, remarked, I suppose
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  Speaker 1: you're a little surprised to see me over here so early.
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  Speaker 1: Fact is I haven't been so neighborly, perhaps as I
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  Speaker 1: ought to be. We must mend that state of things.
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  Speaker 1: But this morning I came over because I thought you
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  Speaker 1: might be interested in knowing that your roof is on fire.
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  Speaker 1: It struck me that it would be a good idea
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  Speaker 1: if but at the mention of fire, the whole family
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  Speaker 1: hurried upstairs. When we had put the fire out and
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  Speaker 1: had returned to the veranda, mark wasn't there. Some years later,
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  Speaker 1: when mister Clemmons was lecturing in Buffalo. After being introduced
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  Speaker 1: to the audience, he spoke as follows, in his low,
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  Speaker 1: drawling characteristic manner. I notice many changes since I was
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  Speaker 1: a citizen of Buffalo fourteen or fifteen years ago. I
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  Speaker 1: miss the faces of my old friends. They have gone
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  Speaker 1: to the tomb, to the gallows, to the White House.
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  Speaker 1: Thus far the rest of us have escaped. But be
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  Speaker 1: sure our own time is coming over us. With awful
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  Speaker 1: certainty hangs one or the other of these fates. Therefore,
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  Speaker 1: that we be secure against error, the wise among us
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  Speaker 1: will prepare for them all. This word of admonition may
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  Speaker 1: be sufficient. Let us pass to cheerfuller things. I remember
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  Speaker 1: one circumstance of bygone times with great vividness. I arrived
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  Speaker 1: here after dark on a February evening in eighteen seventy
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  Speaker 1: with my wife and a large company of friends, when
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  Speaker 1: I had been a husband twenty four hours. And they
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  Speaker 1: put us to in a carriage and drove us up
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  Speaker 1: and down and every which way through all the back
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  Speaker 1: streets in Buffalo, until at last I got shamed and
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  Speaker 1: said I asked mister Slee to get me a cheap
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  Speaker 1: boarding house, but I didn't mean he should stretch a
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  Speaker 1: con to the going outside the state to find it.
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  Speaker 1: The fact was there was a practical joke to the
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  Speaker 1: fore which I didn't know anything about, and all this
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  Speaker 1: fooling around was to give it time to mature. My
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  Speaker 1: father in law, the late Jervis Langdon, whom many of
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  Speaker 1: you will remember, had been clandestinely spending a fair fortune
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  Speaker 1: upon a house and furniture in Delaware Avenue for us,
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  Speaker 1: and had kept his secrets so well that I was
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  Speaker 1: the only person this side of the Niagara Falls that
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  Speaker 1: hadn't found it out. We reached the house at last
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  Speaker 1: about ten o'clock and were introduced to a Missus Johnson,
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  Speaker 1: the ostensible landlady. I took a glance around, and then
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  Speaker 1: my opinion of mister Slee's judgment as a provider of
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  Speaker 1: cheap boarding houses for men who had to work for
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  Speaker 1: their living dropped to zero. I told Missus Johnson there
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  Speaker 1: had been an unfortunate mistake that mister Slee had evidently
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  Speaker 1: supposed I had money, whereas I only had talent, and
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  Speaker 1: so by her leave we would abide with her a week,
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  Speaker 1: and then she could keep my trunk and we would
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  Speaker 1: hunt another place. Then the battalion of ambushed friends and
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  Speaker 1: relatives burst in on us, out of closets and from
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  Speaker 1: behind curtains. The property was delivered over to us, and
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  Speaker 1: the joke revealed Such jokes as these are all too
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  Speaker 1: scarce in a person's life. That house was so completely
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  Speaker 1: equipped in every detail, even two servants and a coachman,
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  Speaker 1: that well, there was nothing to do but just sit
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  Speaker 1: down and live in it. In the fall of eighteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy mister Clemens resigned his position on the Buffalo Express
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  Speaker 1: and took his residence in Hartford, Connecticut. He had received
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  Speaker 1: several large sums of money as royalty on his Innocence Abroad,
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  Speaker 1: and this, together with his wife's funds, were invested in
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  Speaker 1: local corporations, mostly insurance companies. During the winter following he
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  Speaker 1: wrote Roughing It, and early in eighteen seventy one the
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  Speaker 1: book was published. The volume awakened fully as much interest
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  Speaker 1: as Innocence Abroad. It is a humorous record of his
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  Speaker 1: life in the mining regions, and is replete with adventure, tragedy,
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  Speaker 1: and comedy. The writing of Roughing It was inspired according
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  Speaker 1: to Mark's confession, by the stimulating use of tobacco luxury,
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  Speaker 1: which he never denied himself, even in his days of poverty.
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  Speaker 1: In speaking upon this point, he once said, I began
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  Speaker 1: smoking immoderately when I was eight years old. That is,
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  Speaker 1: I began with one hundred cigars a month, and by
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  Speaker 1: the time I was twenty, I had increased my allowance
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  Speaker 1: to two hundred a month. Before I was thirty, I
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  Speaker 1: had increased it to three hundred a month. Once, when
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  Speaker 1: I was fifteen, I ceased from smoking for three months,
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  Speaker 1: but I do not remember whether the effect resulting was
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  Speaker 1: good or evil. I repeated this experiment when I was
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  Speaker 1: twenty two. Again I do not remember what the result was.
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  Speaker 1: I repeated the experiment once more when I was thirty
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  Speaker 1: four and ceased from smoking for a year and a half.
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  Speaker 1: My health did not improve, because it was not possible
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  Speaker 1: to improve health that was already perfect. As I never
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  Speaker 1: permitted myself to regret this abstinence, I experienced no inconvenience
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  Speaker 1: from it. I wrote nothing but occasional magazine articles during pastime,
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  Speaker 1: and as I never wrote one except under strong impulse,
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  Speaker 1: I observed no lapse of facility. But by and by,
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  Speaker 1: I sat down with a contract behind me to write
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  Speaker 1: a book of five or six hundred pages. The book
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  Speaker 1: called roughing it. And then I found myself seriously obstructed.
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  Speaker 1: I was three weeks writing six chapters. Then I gave
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  Speaker 1: up the fight, resumed my three hundred cigars, burned the
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  Speaker 1: six chapters, and wrote the book in three months without difficulty.
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  Speaker 1: End of chapter six read by John Greenman.