by Mark Twain
And this smile of Mr. Rogers is worth seeing. It isn’t any little, skimpy, cold, selfish, calculating smile, but the real, genuine, simon-pure article. It makes one think that Mr. Rogers, to those who have the privilege of knowing him well, might be a very pleasant, even a jolly, companion. Shakspere says one may smile and smile and be a villain, but it’s hard to believe it if he smiles just as Mr. Rogers does. It isn’t any smile that won’t come off, however, for the next instant it has vanished and the keen, alert, waiting look has taken its place.
During the first day Mr. Rogers smiled quite often as he deftly parried his opponent’s thrusts, but towards the end of that day, Mr. Whipple, who smiles the hardest when he is about to do his worst, got in a pretty good blow and Mr. Rogers put on a serious and a rather annoyed look. Mr. Whipple wanted Mr. Rogers to produce a certain private correspondence book, and Mr. Rogers objected to doing this. Just as matters began to wax rather warm the judge poured oil on the troubled waters by adjourning court.
The next morning Mr. Rogers, urbane and pleasant, produced the book. That was Friday, and court adjourned to Monday to give Mr. Whipple time to look over the book so as to use its contents to the best advantage.
Monday morning the siege of Mr. Rogers’ citadel of knowledge of gas affairs was renewed by Mr. Whipple and a full day was put in at questions and answers. Whether the court was enlightened much by the day’s developments is not to be stated, but it is pretty certain that the public wasn’t. The way Mr. Rogers parried questions that he didn’t want to answer was well worth listening to. Here is a sample of it.
Q. Were your relations with Mr. Addicks unfriendly in 1901? A. I cannot answer as to that.
Q. Well, as to 1902? A. Oh, we had our differences.
Tuesday was an unusually fruitful day as to interesting topics, at least.
Time and again when Mr. Whipple asked questions as to points on which Mr. Rogers’ recollection was a bit hazy, the witness would refer counsel to his books and papers and memoranda, saying that if anything could be found in them bearing upon the matter at hand, he would be willing and even glad to have it produced.
There were several smiles by the witness, the audience and even the court, during this day. At one time Mr. Rogers smiled at some inward recollection aroused by the reading of a personal note to him from Mr. Winsor, following a trip the latter had had as Mr. Rogers’ guest on the millionaire’s yacht. This seemed to annoy Mr. Whipple. He walked up close to the witness and fired the question at short range, with briar points in his tone: “Why do you smile, Mr. Rogers?” “I smile because it is natural for me to smile,” said Mr. Rogers, in his very pleasantest, most affable way. Talk about a soft answer turning away wrath! Mr. Rogers is a past master of that little trick all right.
Tuesday was the day Mr. Rogers told of the telephone conversation with Mr. Lawson, and, in view of Mr. Lawson’s version Friday last of the same conversation, Mr. Rogers’ statement is well worth repeating:
“I called up Mr. Lawson on the telephone and asked him how he felt about this reorganization of the New England Gas and Coke Company. He said he felt very unpleasantly. I asked him how, and he recited some private grievances.”
Mr. Whipple—State what they were.
Mr. Rogers—He said, “You know how I feel towards Mr. Whitney and those other people down there, who interfered with me in reference to the New York Yacht Club matter. If I were able I’d rather lose $1,000,000 than make any compromise with them.” I told him if he felt in that frame of mind and preferred it to business it was one thing. He asked me my judgment, and I told him that I thought it would be a wise thing for him to participate in the reorganization.
He said: “Well, that’s the way I feel about it, but I am willing to be influenced by you, and take your advice in the matter.” I said, “It is not for me to advise, it is for you to determine.”
He made some few remarks which I cannot recall, and finally said, “Well, what can I get?” I said: “I don’t know. What do you want?” He said: “I think I ought to have 15 or 20 per cent out of the profits of the reorganization.” I said: “That’s pretty steep, considering that you are not to do much.”
He said: “Well, do the best you can. I am willing to leave it to you.”
I went back and reported to Mr. Winsor that I thought Mr. Lawson would be glad to have an interest in the reorganization.
Mr. Winsor asked: “What interest does he want?” I said I thought he would like to have 15 or 20 per cent. Mr. Winsor said: “I think that is pretty steep for not doing very much.” “Well,” I said, “maybe it is a little too much,” and it was finally settled that Mr. Lawson was to have 10 per cent for the reorganization and any profits that came from his own securities. Mr. Winsor said it was all right, and we took a piece of paper out of my desk and he wrote the memorandum and I initialed it, giving the substance of the conversation with Mr. Lawson.
Next morning I told Mr. Lawson over the telephone of the arrangement, and he said it was all right.
Another time that Mr. Rogers smiled, and caused everybody within hearing to smile, too, was when he was telling on Thursday, his last day on the stand, and near the close of his evidence, of his “scolding” Mr. Addicks.
“Perhaps my words were somewhat emphatic,” Mr. Rogers confessed to Mr. Whipple in a burst of confidence.
Q. Let us see what you do say when you get emphatic with J. Edward Addicks and take him to task? A. Well, in the interest of courtesy, and having a little modesty yet, I do not think I want to go into it further.
Q. Did you use words to Mr. Addicks that you do not care to repeat here? A. I must confess that at the time I was very positive. (Laughter.) In substance I said that his letters or that of his man (Senator Allee) were outrageous, and I wanted to know what he meant by having “his man” send them to me. He said he knew nothing about them, and I think that is all there was about the case.
Q. Did you threaten Mr. Addicks? A. Oh, no; I never threaten anybody. (Laughter.)
Q. But you scolded him? A. We just had a little talk. It seems that sometimes I am not half as furious as I think I am. (Laughter.)
Then Mr. Rogers smiled, not a grim smile, either, but a sort of a happy, reminiscent smile, like that of a 10-year-old boy who remembers an extra piece of mince pie.
Soon after that Mr. Rogers stepped off the stand for good, bowed pleasantly to the newspaper men to whom he hardly ever failed to speak as he passed them, and left the courtroom.
He certainly made one of the most entertaining witnesses Boston has heard in a long time. We shall be pleased to see you in a similar capacity again, Mr. Rogers.
HEATH.
The following text is preserved in an untitled manuscript in the Mark Twain Papers. Clemens labeled it “Autobiog.” at the top of the first page, but he did not integrate it with the final text of the autobiography. Paine penciled a title on the first page of the manuscript: “Anecdote of Jean. Her love of Animals.” The disaster portrayed in Jean’s picture book occurred on 1 November 1755, when a powerful series of earthquakes, followed by fires and a tsunami, destroyed much of Lisbon and killed an estimated 60,000 people and an unknown number of animals. The event became a focal point for debates on the nature of divine providence, and was frequently depicted in works of art.
Paine omitted this text from the autobiography, but in his biography of Clemens he retold the story, partly by paraphrasing this manuscript (MTB, 3:1530). The full text is printed here for the first time.
[Anecdote of Jean]
Feb. 20 ’05.
Jean’s deep love and tenderness for animals continues; and of course will always continue, since it is a part of her temperament. Temperaments are born, not made, and they cannot be changed, by time, nor training, nor by any other force. Katy has been recalling a beautiful incident, apropos of this. When Jean was a little child, Katy was one day amusing her with a picture-book. One picture represented the Lisbon earthquake: the earth was gaping open and the people were tumbli
ng into the chasm. Jean was not interested. Katy turned to the next picture: the same earthquake, but this time it was the animals that were being swallowed up. Jean’s eyes filled at once and she said “poor things!” Katy said—
“Why, you didn’t care for the people.”
Jean said—
“Oh, they could speak.”
*Aug. ’85. They deny this now, but I go bail I got that statement from Gilder himself. SLC
* If you call a policeman to settle the dispute you can depend on one thing—he will decide it against you every time. And so will the New York policeman. In London, if you carry your case into court, the man that is entitled to win it will win it. In New York—but no one carries a cab case into court there. It is my impression that it is now more than thirty years since any one has carried a cab case into court there. The foreigner is charged the wildest of prices, but the hotel keeper advises him to pay and keep quiet, and assures him that the court will of a certainty side with the hackman.
*This is Chapter XIV of my unpublished Autobiography.
*There are nineteen days of voyaging ahead yet.—M. T.
* Six days to sail yet, nevertheless.—M. T.
* It was at this time discovered that the crazed sailors had gotten the delusion that the captain had a million dollars in gold concealed aft, and they were conspiring to kill him and the two passengers and seize it.—M. T.
*That house still stands.
*See “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
†Used in—“Huck Finn,” I think.
*Used in “Tom Sawyer.”
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
MARK
TWAIN
An Early Attempt
The chapters which immediately follow constitute a fragment of one of my many attempts (after I was in my forties) to put my life on paper.
It starts out with good confidence, but suffers the fate of its brethren—is presently abandoned for some other and newer interest. This is not to be wondered at, for its plan is the old, old, old unflexible and difficult one—the plan that starts you at the cradle and drives you straight for the grave, with no side-excursions permitted on the way. Whereas the side-excursions are the life of our life-voyage, and should be, also, of its history.
My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It]
* * * * So much for the earlier days, and the New England branch of the Clemenses. The other brother settled in the South, and is remotely responsible for me. He has collected his reward generations ago, whatever it was. He went South with his particular friend Fairfax, and settled in Maryland with him, but afterward went further and made his home in Virginia. This is the Fairfax whose descendants were to enjoy a curious distinction—that of being American-born English earls. The founder of the house was Lord General Fairfax of the Parliamentary army, in Cromwell’s time. The earldom, which is of recent date, came to the American Fairfaxes through the failure of male heirs in England. Old residents of San Francisco will remember “Charley,” the American earl of the mid-’60s—tenth Lord Fairfax according to Burke’s Peerage, and holder of a modest public office of some sort or other in the new mining town of Virginia City, Nevada. He was never out of America. I knew him, but not intimately. He had a golden character, and that was all his fortune. He laid his title aside, and gave it a holiday until his circumstances should improve to a degree consonant with its dignity; but that time never came, I think. He was a manly man, and had fine generosities in his make-up. A prominent and pestilent creature named Ferguson, who was always picking quarrels with better men than himself, picked one with him, one day, and Fairfax knocked him down. Ferguson gathered himself up and went off mumbling threats. Fairfax carried no arms, and refused to carry any now, though his friends warned him that Ferguson was of a treacherous disposition and would be sure to take revenge by base means sooner or later. Nothing happened for several days; then Ferguson took the earl by surprise and snapped a revolver at his breast. Fairfax wrenched the pistol from him and was going to shoot him, but the man fell on his knees and begged, and said “Don’t kill me—I have a wife and children.” Fairfax was in a towering passion, but the appeal reached his heart, and he said, “They have done me no harm,” and he let the rascal go.
Back of the Virginian Clemenses is a dim procession of ancestors stretching back to Noah’s time. According to tradition, some of them were pirates and slavers in Elizabeth’s time. But this is no discredit to them, for so were Drake and Hawkins and the others. It was a respectable trade, then, and monarchs were partners in it. In my time I have had desires to be a pirate myself. The reader—if he will look deep down in his secret heart, will find—but never mind what he will find there: I am not writing his Autobiography, but mine. Later, according to tradition, one of the procession was Ambassador to Spain in the time of James I, or of Charles I, and married there and sent down a strain of Spanish blood to warm us up. Also, according to tradition, this one or another—Geoffrey Clement, by name—helped to sentence Charles to death. I have not examined into these traditions myself, partly because I was indolent, and partly because I was so busy polishing up this end of the line and trying to make it showy; but the other Clemenses claim that they have made the examination and that it stood the test. Therefore I have always taken for granted that I did help Charles out of his troubles, by ancestral proxy. My instincts have persuaded me, too. Whenever we have a strong and persistent and ineradicable instinct, we may be sure that it is not original with us, but inherited—inherited from away back, and hardened and perfected by the petrifying influence of time. Now I have been always and unchangingly bitter against Charles, and I am quite certain that this feeling trickled down to me through the veins of my forebears from the heart of that judge; for it is not my disposition to be bitter against people on my own personal account. I am not bitter against Jeffreys. I ought to be, but I am not. It indicates that my ancestors of James II’s time were indifferent to him; I do not know why; I never could make it out; but that is what it indicates. And I have always felt friendly toward Satan. Of course that is ancestral; it must be in the blood, for I could not have originated it.
... And so, by the testimony of instinct, backed by the assertions of Clemenses who said they had examined the records, I have always been obliged to believe that Geoffrey Clement the martyr-maker was an ancestor of mine, and to regard him with favor, and in fact pride. This has not had a good effect upon me, for it has made me vain, and that is a fault. It has made me set myself above people who were less fortunate in their ancestry than I, and has moved me to take them down a peg, upon occasion, and say things to them which hurt them before company.
A case of the kind happened in Berlin several years ago. William Walter Phelps was our Minister at the Emperor’s Court, then, and one evening he had me to dinner to meet Count S., a cabinet minister. This nobleman was of long and illustrious descent. Of course I wanted to let out the fact that I had some ancestors, too; but I did not want to pull them out of their graves by the ears, and I never could seem to get a chance to work them in in a way that would look sufficiently casual. I suppose Phelps was in the same difficulty. In fact he looked distraught, now and then—just as a person looks who wants to uncover an ancestor purely by accident, and cannot think of a way that will seem accidental enough. But at last, after dinner, he made a try. He took us about his drawing-room, showing us the pictures, and finally stopped before a rude and ancient engraving. It was a picture of the court that tried Charles I. There was a pyramid of judges in Puritan slouch hats, and below them three bare-headed secretaries seated at a table. Mr. Phelps put his finger upon one of the three, and said with exulting indifference—
“An ancestor of mine.”
I put my finger on a judge, and retorted with scathing languidness—
“Ancestor of mine. But it is a small matter. I have others.”
It was not noble in me to do it. I have always regretted it since. But it landed him. I wonder how he felt? However, it made no difference in
our friendship; which shows that he was fine and high, notwithstanding the humbleness of his origin. And it was also creditable in me, too, that I could overlook it. I made no change in my bearing toward him, but always treated him as an equal.
Jane Lampton Clemens, Keokuk, Iowa, Photograph by George Hassall.
Pamela Clemens Moffett, early 1860s. Courtesy of Mrs. Kate Gilmore and the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum, Hannibal.
Orion Clemens, early 1860s. Nevada Historical Society.
Henry Clemens, ca. 1858. Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum, Hannibal.
Samuel L. Clemens and Olivia L. Langdon. The porcelaintypes in purple velvet cases they exchanged during their engagement in 1869. His photograph was taken by Edwin P. Kellogg, Hartford.
Clara Spaulding with Susy Clemens in her lap, Olivia and Samuel Clemens, and John Brown, Edinburgh, August 1873. Photograph by John Moffat. Mark Twain House and Museum, Hartford.
Karl Gerhardt’s bust of Grant, 1885. Mark Twain House and Museum, Hartford.
Karl Gerhardt, 1880s. Courtesy of Kevin Mac Donnell.
The Paige typesetter. Photograph by Albert Bigelow Paine.
Clara, Jean, and Susy Clemens with their dog Hash, Hartford, 1884. Photograph by Horace L. Bundy.
Margaret (Daisy) Warner as the Pauper and Susy Clemens as the Prince in their costumes for the Prince and the Pauper play, Hartford, March 1886. Mark Twain House and Museum, Hartford.
