Who Is Mark Twain? (5 page)

I published his book—I say I, because I was the bulk of the firm of Charles L. Webster & Co, publishers. That is, I furnished the money, not the brains. Nobody furnished the brains. The book published itself—it was strong enough to go alone—it needed no help.

The last time I saw Gen. Grant alive was a few days before his death. He knew that his end was very near. He was sitting in his chair, fully dressed; his book was finished, and he was putting one or two finishing touches to it with his pencil—the last work he was ever to do. He had been for some time in very straightened circumstances,—had lost everything he had in the world through the depredations of the infamous firm which had not only reduced him to penury but had brought shame and humiliation upon him, and now all his solicitude was for his family—he had written his book solely that they might not be left in the grip of hard fortune when he was gone. He had said when he first began to write the book that he hoped it would realize as much as General Sherman’s memoirs had produced; he said that that was $25,000, and he would be satisfied with that. He asked me if I thought his book would do as well. And now at death’s door the thought of his family was at his heart and he came back to that matter once more; and he wrote a question on his tablets, Could I give him an idea this early of how much the book might yield? He wrote because he could not speak. The cancer in his throat had done its work—in intolerable pain the book had been written—month after month it had been a day and night race between the soldier and death—the grave was in sight, now, but the soldier who had never lost a fight had won. He had won, but he had to ask his question with his pencil, for the voice had fallen silent which had said so many inspiring things when the clouds hung low upon the spirits of his countrymen, and the voice which had never failed in its uplifting office since the day that it first made itself heard in the country’s struggle for its life—that day that it dictated those words that revealed to this nation that there was a
man
risen up at the front, and that the day of vacillation and timidity and compromise was at an end in at least
one
of the country’s thousand camps—“the only terms are—unconditional surrender.”

[PICTURE OF GRANT SITTING IN HIS WRAPS. GET IT FROM THE ENGRAVING IN THE “
C
ENTURY
.
”] HOUSE
RISE
.

MUSIC.

But we do not need to lament for him. He did his mighty work, he died his noble death, and his name will live forever.

[PICTURE OF TOMB.]

I could answer his question without guessing. I already knew. I told him that his profit upon the orders already sent in by the General Agents and secured by safe bonds, would be $320,000. He was satisfied. As it turned out, his share of the profits was far and away beyond that. My firm’s cash profit was $130,000; but by tact, perseverance, watchfulness and sagacity in discovering the right opportunities during 18 careful months they managed to waste it all and get in debt. Eighteen months. As a financial achievement, by people entirely unacquainted with finance, it does not need to hang its head in the presence of anything of the kind that has happened in the American history of that great science.

By continued caution, tact, watchfulness and inspired financiering, during the next 7 years, the firm was able to retire from business in debt—if my wife and I may be counted in with the other creditors—in debt $208,000 above the assets. However, my wife and I don’t have to be paid, so that reduces the debt a good deal more than half. Nothing has to be paid but the rest of the debt; and here I stand, nobly paying it—out of your pockets. That is the way with debts; they just dump along, from shoulder to shoulder, and you never know who has got to foot the bill at last.

I
t was being whispered around that Satan was in Vienna incognito, and the thought came into my mind that it would be a great happiness to me if I could have the privilege of interviewing him. “When you think of the Devil” he appears, you know. It was past midnight, I was standing at the window of my work-room high aloft on the third floor of the hotel, and was looking down upon a stage-setting which is always effective and impressive at that late hour: the great vacant stone-paved square of the Morzin Platz with its sleeping file of cab-horses and drivers counterfeiting the stillness and solemnity of death; and beyond the square a broad Milky Way of innumerable lamps bending around the far-reaching curve of the Donau canal, with not a suggestion of life or motion visible anywhere under that glinting belt from end to end. If the square and the curve were dim or dark, the impressiveness would be wanting; but the multitudinous lights seem to belong properly with life and energy and the roar and tumult of traffic, and these being now wholly absent, the resulting impression conveyed to the spirit is that they have been suddenly and mysteriously annihilated, and that this brooding midnight silence and solemnity are the signs and symbols of the tragedy that has happened.

Now, with a most strange suddenness came an inky darkness, with a stormy rush of wind, a crash of thunder and a glare of lightning; and the glare vividly revealed the figure of a slender and shapely gentleman in black coming leisurely across the empty square. By his dress he was an Anglican Bishop; but I noticed that he cast a shadow. That gave him away, as Goethe phrases it; for by the ministrations of lightning no legitimate Anglican Bishop can do that—nor can any other earth-born creature, for that matter. This person was Satan. I knew it. It was in his honor that the sudden storm had been summoned and its thunders delivered in salute. It was inspiring, it was uplifting, this sublime ceremonial. If I had been a monarch it would have spoiled, for one while, my satisfaction in my little artillery salutes. And yet I would have tried to be properly philosophical, and ease and content myself with the reflection that the honors had been fairly and justly proportioned to the difference existing between Satan’s importance and mine, I being but a passing and evanescent master of a limited patch of empire, and he the long-term master of the majority of the human race.

I had that glimpse of Satan and his shadow, and the next moment he was by my side in the room. He did not embarrass me. Real royalties do not embarrass one; they are sure of their place, sure of its recognition; and so they bear about with them an alpine serenity and reposefulness which quiet the nerves of the spectator. It is the prerogative of a viscount or a baron to make a person feel small, and of a baronet to extinguish him.

Satan would not allow me to take his hat, but put it on the table himself, and begged me not to put myself to any trouble about him, but treat him just as I would an old friend; and added that that was what he was—an old friend of mine, and also one of my most ardent and grateful admirers. It seemed a doubtful compliment; still, it was said in such a winning and gracious way that I could not help feeling gratified and proud. His carriage and manners were enviably fine and courtly, and he was a handsome person, with delicate white hands and an intellectual face and that subtle air of distinction which goes with ancient blood and high lineage, commanding position and habitual intercourse with the choicest society. The usual portraits of him are but resemblances, nothing more. They are very inaccurate. None of them is recent. The latest is as much as three hundred years old. They were all made by monks, and from memory; for the monks did not tarry. The monk was always excited, and he put his excitement into the picture. He thus conveyed an error, for Satan is a calm person; aristocratically calm and self-possessed. Satan’s face is notably intellectual, and fine, and expressive. It suggests Don Quixotte’s, and also Richelieu’s, but it is not so melancholy as the one nor so austere as the other; and neither of those grand faces has the winning quality which is the immortal charm and grace of Satan’s.

In Germany the sofa is the seat of honor and is always offered to the guest. It may be so in Austria also, therefore I tendered it to Satan, and called him by the loftiest titles I could think of—
Durchlauchtigst,
and
Ihre Majestät
—but he declined it, saying he would have no ceremony, and so took a chair. He said—

“You are very comfortable here. The German stove is the best in the universe.”

“I agree to that, with all my heart, Durchlaucht. That one there is eleven feet high and four feet square, and looks like a graveyard monument built of white tiles; but its looks are its only blemish. At eight in the morning it burns up one small basketful of wood in twenty minutes, and that is all it requires for the day. This great room will keep the same level and pleasant and comfortable degree of warmth hour after hour without change, and there is no artificial heat in the world that is comparable to it for wholesomeness, healthfulness. It does not inflame the skin, it does not oppress the head or make the temples throb; there isn’t a headache in a hundred years of it. As for economy, it is a good ten times more economical than any other house-heating apparatus known to the world.”

“You use it in America, of course?”

I was pleasantly surprised at that, and said—

“Is it possible that Ihre Majestät is not familiar with America?”

“Well—no. I have not been there lately. I am not needed there.”

At first I was gratified; but next I was suspicious that maybe his remark did not quite mean what I had thought it meant; so it seemed good diplomacy not to stir the matter, but leave it alone and go on about the stove again.

“No,” I said, “we don’t use the German stove in America. We have the name of being the most ingenious of the nations in the matter of inventing and putting to practical use all manner of conveniences, comforts, and labor-saving and money-saving contrivances, and we have fairly earned that name and are proud of it; but we do not know how to heat a house rationally, yet, and it seems likely that we shall never learn. The most of our stoves are extravagant wasters of fuel; the most of them require frequent attention and recharging; none of them furnishes a continuously equable heat, and we have not one that does not scorch the skin and oppress the head. We have spent tons and tons of money upon furnaces with elaborate and costly arrangements for distributing dry heat or steam or hot water throughout a house; but they are all ravenous coal-cannibals, and if there is one among them whose heat-output can be successfully regulated I have not seen it. As far as my knowledge goes, we have none but insane ways of heating houses and railway cars in America.”

“Then why don’t you introduce the German stove?”

“I wish I could. I could save the country money enough annually to pay the silly pension bill. And if we had that admirable stove we should soon find a way to rid it of its grim and ghostly look and make it a pretty and graceful thing to look at, and an ornament to the room; for we are a capable people in those directions. But I suppose we shall never see the day. The Americans who come over here do not study the German stove, they merely make fun of its personal appearance, and go away without finding out what a competent and inexpensive miracle it is. The Berlin stove is the best that I have seen. When we kept house there several winters ago we charged our parlor monument at 7 in the morning with a peck of cheap briquettes made of refuse coal-dust, let the fire burn half an hour, then shut up the stove and never touched it again for twenty-four hours. All day long and up to past midnight that room was perfectly comfortable, not too hot, not too cold, and the heat not varying, but remaining at the same pleasant level all the time. Do you like the German stove, Durchlaucht?”

“Not for my boarders—no.”

“What do you use, Durchlaucht?”

He named sixty-four varieties of stoves and house-furnaces. Dear me, those old familiar names—they were all American! But I didn’t say anything. I was ashamed; and yet at the same time I was conscious of a private little thrill of patriotic pride in the reflection that in a humble way we had been able to add a discomfort to hell.

Of course we were smoking, all this time, for Durchlaucht has had experience of the chief joy of man for many ages. The early American Indians introduced it in Sheol twenty or thirty thousand years ago, and out of gratitude he is never severe on that race. I thought I would venture to indicate in an unobtrusive way that by rights I was an Indian, though changed in the cradle through no fault of mine—and waited timorously for a comment. But I was disappointed. He only looked. It may be that he did not mean anything by the look, but often a look like that is discouraging, anyway, if you are conscious yourself that you have been trying to pull a person’s leg, as the saying is. In such cases you let on that you did not know you had said anything; and it is the best way, and soonest over.

Then you change the subject; and I did. I asked him to try the Navy Cut, and I loaded his pipe with it and gave him a light. He liked it. I was sure he would. He sent up a cloud of fragrant smoke, and said admiringly—

“It is good; very, very good; burns freely and smells like a heretic.”

That made me shudder a little, but that was nothing; we all have our metaphors, symbols, figures of speech, and they vary according to habitat, environment, taste, training, and so on.

“Where do you get this tobacco?”

“In London, Durchlaucht.”

“But where in Vienna?”

“It is a pity to have to say it, but one can’t get it in Vienna at all.”

“You must be mistaken about that. You must remember that this is one of the most superb cities that was ever built; and is very rich, and very fond of good things, and can command the best of everything that the world can furnish; and it also has the disposition to do it. This is my favorite city. I was its patron saint in the early times before the reorganization of things, and I still have much influence here, and am greatly respected. When you intimate that there is anything of first excellence which one cannot get in Vienna, you hurt my feelings. You would not wish to hurt my feelings?”

“I? Indeed, no. Do not look at me like that, Durchlaucht; you break my heart. But what I have said is really the truth. Consider what this noble city smokes—latakia! It is true, just as I say. It smokes latakia, and fine-cut Turkish and Syrian ordure that burns your tongue and makes a mephitic odor which suffocates.”

We are a vain and thoughtless race. In criticising in this large and arrogant way other people’s tastes in the matter of tobacco I was satirizing myself, without for the moment being conscious of it. For it has been my habit to look down in a superior way upon persons who were so low in the scale of intelligence as to believe such a thing possible as the establishing of a
standard
of excellence in tobacco and cigars. Tastes in this matter seem to be infinite. Each man seems to have a standard of his own, and he also seems to be ashamed of the next man’s taste and hostile to his standard. I think that no one’s standard is steadfast, but is at all times open to change. When we travel, and are obliged to go without our favorite brand and take up with the cigar of the country we chance to be in, we presently find ourselves establishing
that
cigar as our standard. In Venice we are at first too good to smoke those cheap black rat-tail “Virginias” that have a straw through them, but a fortnight’s familiarity with them changes all that and we adopt the Virginia as our standard. In Florence and Rome we are sorry for a people who are condemned to smoke the cheap menghettis and trabucos, but soon we prefer them to any other cigars. In Germany, France and Switzerland we take less kindly to the native cigars; but in India we quickly come to believe that the Madras two-cent cigar is much better than the Cuban cigar which costs twenty cents in New York. I must not claim to speak fairly and justly about high-priced cigars, for I have never bought any myself, and have not smoked other people’s when I could substitute a cheap one of my own without being discovered; for to my mind there is no cigar that is quite so vile and stenchy and inflammable as a twenty-cent Havana. This is probably a superstition; for I am well satisfied that all notions, of whatever sort, concerning cigars, are superstitions—superstitions and stupidities, and nothing else. It distresses me to hear an otherwise sane man talk about “good” cigars, and pretend to know what a good cigar is—as if by any chance his standard could be a standard for anybody else.

We have all noticed this—and it tells its own story: that when we go out to dine at another man’s house, we privately carry along a handful of cigars as a protection. We know that the chances are that his standard and ours will differ. We take his cigar, but we manage a substitution furtively. From long habit—backed by prejudice and superstition—I dread those high-priced Havanas with a fancy label around them; a label which costs the hundredth part of a cent, and augments the price of the cigar twenty-seven degrees beyond its value. I have accepted tons of those; and given them to the poor. It is not that I hate the poor, for I do not; but only because I cannot bring myself to waste anything, even a fancy-labeled execrable cigar.

Not more than two persons in eight hundred thousand know even their own cigars when they are outside of the box; they think they do, but that is another superstition. Years ago several friends of mine used to come to my house every Friday night to play billiards. They patiently smoked my cheap cigars and never said a wounding word about them. With one exception. That was a gentleman who thought he knew all about cigars, and whose opinion was like the rest of the world’s—not valuable. He had a high-priced brand of his own, and he did not like my cheap weeds. He tried to smoke them, but he growled all the time, and always threw the cigar away after a few whiffs, and tried another and another and another. He did that all one winter. The truth was, that they were his own cigars, not mine. By request, his wife sent me a couple of dozen every Friday afternoon. He may not believe this when he sees it in print, but the other witnesses are there yet, and they will confirm the truth of my statement.