Autobiography of Mark Twain (81 page)

January 16, 1906

January 15th, continued.

That incident made a strong impression upon me. I believed I had made a discovery—the discovery already indicated—the discovery of the wide difference in interest between “news” and “history;” that news is history in its first and best form, its vivid and fascinating form; and that history is the pale and tranquil reflection of it.

This reminds me that in this daily dictation of autobiographical notes, I am mixing these two forms together all the time. I am hoping by this method of procedure to secure the values of both. I am sure I have found the right way to spin an autobiography at last, after my many experiments. Years ago I used to make skeleton notes to use as texts in writing autobiographical chapters, but really those notes were worth next to nothing. If I expanded them upon the page at once, while their interest was fresh in my mind, they were useful, but if I left them unused for several weeks, or several months, their power to suggest and excite had usually passed away. They were faded flowers, their fragrance was gone. But I believe in this present plan. When you arrive with your stenographic plant at eleven, every morning, you find me placid and comfortable in bed, smoking, untroubled by the fact that I must presently get to work and begin to dictate this history of mine. And if I were depending upon faded notes for inspiration, I should have trouble, and my work would soon become distasteful. But by my present system I do not need any notes.
The thing uppermost in aperson’s mind
is the thing to talk about or write about. The thing of new and immediate interest is the pleasantest text he can have—and you can’t come here at eleven o’clock, or any other hour, and catch me without a new interest—a perfectly fresh interest—because I have either been reading the infernal newspapers and got it there, or I have been talking with somebody; and in either case the new interest is present—the interest which I most wish to dictate about. So you see the result is that this narrative of mine is sure to begin every morning in diary form, because it is sure to begin with something which I have just read, or something which I have just been talking about. That text, when I am done with it—if I ever get done with it, and I don’t seem to get done with any text—but it doesn’t matter, I am not interested in getting done with anything. I am only interested in talking along and wandering around as much as I want to, regardless of results to the future reader. By consequence, here we have diary and history combined; because as soon as I wander from the present text—the thought of to-day—that digression takes me far and wide over an uncharted sea of recollection, and the result of that is
history
. Consequently my autobiography is diary and history combined. The privilege of beginning every day in the diary form is a valuable one. I may even use a larger word, and say it is a precious one, for it brings together widely separated things that are in a manner related to each other and consequently pleasant surprises and contrasts are pretty sure to result every now and then.

Did I dictate something about John Malone, three or four days ago? Very well, then, if I didn’t I must have been talking with somebody about John Malone. I remember now, it was with Mr. Volney Streamer. He is Librarian of the Players Club. He called here to bring me a
book which he has published, and, in a general way, to make my acquaintance. I was a foundation member of the Players Club, but ceased to be a member three years ago, through an absurdity committed by the Management of that Club, a Management which has always been idiotic; a Management which from the beginning has been selected from, not the nearest asylum in the city, but the most competent one. (And some time I wish to talk about that.) Several times, during this lapse of three years, old friends of mine and comrades in the Club—David Munro, that charming Scot, editor of the
North American Review;
Robert Reid, the artist; Saint-Gaudens, the sculptor; John Malone, the ex-actor, and others, have been resenting the conduct of that Management—the conduct, I mean, which resulted in my segregation from the Club,—and they have always been trying to find a way of restoring me to the fold without damaging my pride. At last they found a way. They made me an honorary member. This handsome honor afforded me unlimited gratification, and I was glad to get back under such flattering conditions. (I don’t like that word, but let it go, I can’t think of the right one at the moment.) Then David Munro and the others put up the fatted calf for the lost sheep in the way of a dinner to me. Midway of the dinner I got a glimpse, through a half-open pantry door, of that pathetic figure, John Malone. There he was, left out, of course. Sixty-five years old; and his history may be summarized—his history for fifty years—in those two words, those eloquent words—“left out.” He has been left out, and left out, and left out, as the years drifted by for nearly two generations. He was always expecting to be counted in. He was always pathetically hoping to be counted in; and that hope never deserted him through all those years, and yet was never in any instance realized. During all those years that I used to drop in at The Players for a game of billiards and a chat with the boys, John Malone was always there until midnight, and after. He had a cheap lodging in the Square—somewhere on Gramercy Park, but the Club was his real home. He told me his history once. His version of it was this:

He was an apprentice in a weekly little newspaper office in Willamette, Oregon, and by and by Edwin Booth made a one-night stand there with his troupe, and John got stage-struck and joined the troupe, and traveled with it around about the Pacific coast in various useful histrionic capacities—capacities suited to a beginner; sometimes assisting by appearing on the stage to say “My lord, the carriage waits,” later appearing armored in shining tin, as a Roman soldier, and so on, gradually rising to higher and higher eminences, and by and by he stood shoulder to shoulder with John McCullough, and the two stood next in rank after Edwin Booth himself on the tragic stage. It was a question which of the two would succeed Booth when Booth should retire, or die. According to Malone, his celebrity quite equalled McCullough’s in those days, and the chances were evenly balanced. A time came when there was a great opportunity—a great part to be played in Philadelphia. Malone was chosen for the part. He missed his train. John McCullough was put into that great place and achieved a success which
made
him for life. Malone was sure that if he had not missed the train he would have achieved that success himself; he would have secured the enduring fame which fell to John McCullough’s lot; he would have moved on through life serene, comfortable, fortunate, courted, admired, applauded, as was John McCullough’s case from that day until the day of his death. Malone believed with all his heart that fame and fortune were right there within his reach at that time, and that he lost them merely through missing his train. He dated his
decline from that day. He declined, and declined, and declined, little by little, and little by little, and year after year, until there came a time when he was no longer wanted on the stage; when even minor part after minor part slipped from his grasp, and at last engagements ceased altogether—engagements of any kind. Yet he was always believing, and always expecting, that a turn of fortune would come; that he would get a chance on the stage in some great part; and that
one
chance, he said, was all he wanted. He was convinced that the world would not question that he was the rightful successor of Edwin Booth, and from that day forth he would be a famous and happy and fortunate man. He never gave up that hope. Three or four years ago, I remember his jubilation over the fact that he had been chosen by some private theatrical people to play Othello in one of the big theatres of New York. And I remember his grief and deep depression when those private theatrical people gave up the enterprise, at the last moment, and canceled Malone’s engagement, snatching from him the greatness which had once more been just within his reach.

As I was saying, at mid-dinner that night I saw him through the half-open door. There he remained through the rest of the dinner, “left out,” always left out. But at the end of the speeches, when a number of us were standing up in groups and chatting, he crept meekly in and found his way to the vacant chair at my side, and sat down. I sat down at once, and began to talk with him. I was always fond of him—I think everybody was. And presently the President of the New York City College came and bent over John and asked me something about my last summer, and how I had liked it up in the New Hampshire hills, at Dublin. Then, in order to include John in the conversation, he asked him if he was acquainted with that region, and if he had ever been in Dublin. Malone said dreamily, and with the air of a man who was trying to think up long-gone things, “How does it lie as regards Manchester?” President Finley told him, and then John said “I have never been to Dublin, but I have a sort of recollection of Manchester. I am pretty sure I was there once—but it was only a one-night stand, you know.”

It filled my soul with a gentle delight, a gracious satisfaction, the way he said that—“Only a one-night stand.” It seemed to reveal that in his half-century of day-dreaming he had been an Edwin Booth, and unconscious that he was only John Malone—that he was an Edwin Booth, with a long and great and successful career behind him, in which “one-night stands” sank into insignificance and the memory unused to treasuring such little things could not keep tally of them. He said it with the splendid indifference and serenity of a Napoleon who was making an indolent effort to remember a skirmish in which a couple of soldiers had been killed, but was not finding it really worth while to dig deep after such a fact.

Yesterday I spoke to Volney Streamer about John Malone. I had a purpose in this, though I did not tell Streamer what it was. David Munro was not able to be at that dinner, and so, to get satisfaction, he is providing another, for the 6th of February. David told me the guests he was inviting, and said that if there was anybody that I would like to invite, think it over and send him the name. I did think it over, and I have written down here on this pad the name of the man I selected—John Malone—hoping that he would not have to be left out this time, and knowing he wouldn’t be left out unless David should desire it, and I didn’t think David would desire it. However, I took the opportunity to throw out a feeler or two in talking with Volney Streamer, merely asking him how John Malone stood with the membership of The
Players now—and that question was quickly and easily answered—that everybody liked John Malone, and everybody pitied him.

Then he told me John Malone’s history. It differed in some points from the history which Malone had given me, but not in essentials, I should say. One fact came out which I had not known about—that John was not a bachelor, but had a married daughter living here somewhere in New York. Then as Streamer went on, came this surprise: that
he
was a member of Edwin Booth’s Company when John Malone joined it a thousand years ago, and that he had been a comrade of John’s in the Company all over the Pacific coast and the rest of the States for years and years. There, you see, an entire stranger drops in here in the most casual way, and the first thing I know he is an ancient and moss-grown and mildewed comrade of the man who is for the moment uppermost in my mind. That is the way things happen when you are doing a diary and a history combined, and you can’t catch these things in any other way but just that. If you try to remember them, with the intention of writing them down in the form of history a month or a year hence, why, when you get to them the juice is all out of them—you can’t bring to mind the details. And moreover, they have lost their quality of surprise and joy, anyway. That has all wasted and passed away.

Very well——Yesterday Reverend Joe Twichell arrived from Hartford to take dinner and stay all night and swap some lies, and he sat here by the bed the rest of the afternoon, and we talked, and I told him all about John Malone. Twichell came in after breakfast this morning (the 16th) to chat again, and he brought me this, which he had cut out of the morning paper:

VETERAN ACTOR DEAD.

John Malone Was Historian of The Players’ Club.

John Malone, the historian of the Players’ Club and one of the oldest actors in the country, was stricken with apoplexy yesterday afternoon in front of Bishop Greer’s residence, 7 Gramercy Park, a few doors from the club. Bishop Greer saw him fall, and, with the assistance of his servants carried Mr. Malone into his house. He was unconscious, and the Bishop telephoned to Police Headquarters.

An ambulance was sent from Bellevue Hospital, and Mr. Malone was taken to the institution by Dr. Hawkes. Later the Players had him removed to the Post-Graduate Hospital, where he died last night.