by Mark Twain
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.
Mr. Malone was 65 years old, and had supported all the notable actors of a past generation. For a long time he was associated with Booth and Barrett. He had appeared on the stage but infrequently of late years, devoting the greater part of his time to magazine work. He lived with a married daughter in West 147th Street, but visited the Players’ Club nearly every day. He was on his way to the club when stricken.
So there is another surprise, you see. While Twichell and I were talking about John Malone he was passing from this life. His disappointments are ended. At last he is not “left out.” It was a long wait, but the best of all fortunes is his at last.
I started to say, awhile ago, that when I had seemingly made that discovery of the difference between “news” and “history” thirty-nine years ago, I conceived the idea of a magazine to be called The Back Nu
mber, and to contain nothing but ancient news; narratives culled from mouldy old newspapers and mouldy old books; narratives set down by eye-witnesses at the time that the episodes treated of happened.
Wednesday, January 17, 1906
January 16th, continued. About General Sickles.
With considerable frequency, since then, I have tried to get publishers to make the experiment of such a magazine, but I was never successful. I was never able to convince a publisher that The Back Number would interest the public. Not one of them was able to conceive of the idea of a sane human being finding interest in stale things. I made my latest effort three years ago. Again I failed to convince. But I, myself, am not convinced. I am quite sure that The Back Number would succeed and become a favorite. I am also sure of another thing—that The Back Number would have this advantage over any other magazine that was ever issued, to wit: that the man who read the first paragraph in it would go on and read the magazine entirely through, skipping nothing—whereas there is no magazine in existence which ever contains three articles which can be depended upon to interest the reader. It is necessary to put a dozen articles into a magazine of the day in order to hit six or eight tastes. One man buys the magazine for one of its articles, another is attracted by another, another by a third; but no man buys the magazine because of the whole of its contents. I contend that The Back Number would be bought for the whole of its contents, and that each reader would read the whole.
“Mr. Paine, you and I will start that magazine, and try the experiment, if you are willing to select the ancient news from old books and newspapers, and do the rest of the editorial work. Are you willing?”
Mr. Paine. “I should be very willing, when we get so that we can undertake it.”
“Very well, then we will, by and by, make that experiment.”
Twichell and I stepped across the street, that night, in the rain, and spent an hour with General Sickles. Sickles is eighty-one years old, now. I had met him only once or twice before, although there has been only the width of 9th street between us for a year. He is too old to make visits, and I am too lazy. I remember when he killed Philip Barton Key, son of the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and I remember the prodigious excitement it made in the country. I think it cannot be far from fifty years ago. My vague recollection of it is that it happened in Washington, and that I was there at the time.
I have felt well acquainted with General Sickles for thirty-eight or thirty-nine years, because I have known Twichell that long. Twichell was a chaplain in Sickles’s brigade in the Civil War, and he was always fond of talking about the General. Twichell was under Sickles all through the war. Whenever he comes down from Hartford he makes it his duty to go and pay his respects to the General. Sickles is a genial old fellow; a handsome and stately military figure; talks smoothly, in well-constructed English—I may say perfectly constructed English. His talk is full of interest and bristling with points, but as there are no emphases scattered through it anywhere, and as there is no animation in it, it soon becomes oppressive by its monotony, and it makes the listener drowsy. Twichell had to step on my foot once or twice. The late Bill Nye once said “I have been told that Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.” That felicitous description of a something which so many people have tried to describe, and couldn’t, does seem to fit the General’s manner of speech exactly. His talk is much better than it is. No, that is not the idea—there seems to be a lack there somewhere. Maybe it is another case of the sort just quoted. Maybe Nye would say that “it is better than it sounds.” I think that is it. His talk does not sound entertaining, but it is distinctly entertaining.
Sickles lost a leg at Gettysburg, and I remember Twichell’s account of that circumstance. He talked about it on one of our long walks, a great many years ago, and although the details have passed out of my memory, I still carry the picture in my mind as presented by Twichell. The leg was carried off by a cannon ball. Twichell, and others, carried the General out of the battle, and they placed him on a bed made of boughs, under a tree. There was no surgeon present, and Twichell and Rev. Father O’Hagan, a Catholic priest, made a make-shift tourniquet and stopped the gush of blood—checked it, perhaps is the right term. A newspaper correspondent appeared first. General Sickles considered himself a dying man, and (if Twichell is as truthful a person as the character of his cloth requires him to be) General Sickles put aside everything connected with a future world in order to go out of this one in becoming style. And so he dictated his “last words” to that newspaper correspondent. That was Twichell’s idea—I remember it well—that the General, no doubt influenced by the fact that several people’s last words have been so badly chosen—whether by accident or intention—that they have outlived all the rest of the man’s fame, was moved to do his last words in a form calculated to petrify and preserve them for the future generations. Twichell quoted that speech. I have forgotten what it was, now, but it was well chosen for its purpose.
Now when we sat there in the General’s presence listening to his monotonous talk—it was about himself, and is always about himself, and always seems modest and unexasperating, inoffensive,—it seemed to me that he was just the kind of man who would risk his salvation in order to do some “last words” in an attractive way. He murmured and warbled, and warbled, and it was all just as simple and pretty as it could be. And also I will say this: that he never made an ungenerous remark about anybody. He spoke severely of this and that and the other person—officers in the war—but he spoke with dignity and with courtesy. There was no malignity in what he said. He merely pronounced what he evidently regarded as just criticisms upon them.
I noticed then, what I had noticed once before, four or five months ago, that the General valued his lost leg away above the one that is left. I am perfectly sure that if he had to part with either of them he would part with the one that he has got. I have noticed this same thing in several other Generals who had lost a portion of themselves in the Civil War. There was General Fairchild, of Wisconsin. He lost an arm in one of the great battles. When he was Consul General in Paris and we Clemenses were sojourning there some time or other, and grew to be well acquainted with him and with his family, I know that whenever a proper occasion—an occasion which gave General Fairchild an opportunity to elevate the stump of the lost arm and wag it with effect—occurred, that is what he did. It was easy to forgive him for it, and I did it.
General Noyes was our Minister to France at the time. He had lost a leg in the war. He was a pretty vain man, I will say that for him, and anybody could see—certainly I saw—that whenever there was a proper gathering around, Noyes presently seemed to disappear. There wasn’t anything left of him but the leg which he didn’t have.
Well, General Sickles sat there on the sofa and talked. It was a curious place. Two rooms of considerable size—parlors opening together with folding-doors—and the floors, the walls, the ceilings, cluttered up and overlaid with lion skins, tiger skins, leopard skins, elephant skins; photographs of the General at various times of life—photographs en civil; photographs in uniform; gushing sprays of swords fastened in trophy form against the wall; flags of various kinds stuck here and there and yonder; more animals; more skins; here and there and everywhere more and more skins; skins of wild creatures, always, I believe;—beautiful skins. You couldn’t walk across that floor anywhere without stumbling over the hard heads of lions and things. You couldn’t put out a hand anywhere without laying it upon a velvety, exquisite tiger skin or leopard skin, and so on—oh, well, all the kinds of skins were there; it was as if a menagerie had undressed in the place. Then there was a most decided and rather unpleasant odor, which proceeded from disinfectants and preservatives and things such as you have to sprinkle on skins in order to discourage the moths—so it was not altogether a pleasant place, on that account. It was a kind of museum; and yet it was not the sort of museum which seemed dignified enough to be the museum of a great soldier—and so famous a soldier. It was the sort
of museum which should delight and entertain little boys and girls. I suppose that that museum reveals a part of the General’s character and make. He is sweetly and winningly childlike.
Once, in Hartford, twenty or twenty-five years ago, just as Twichell was coming out of his gate Sunday morning to walk to his church and preach, a telegram was put into his hand. He read it immediately, and then, in a manner, collapsed. It said “General Sickles died last night at midnight.”
1880
Well, you can see, now, that it wasn’t so. But no matter—it was so to Joe at the time. He walked along—walked to the church—but his mind was far away. All his affection and homage and worship of his General had come to the fore. His heart was full of these emotions. He hardly knew where he was. In his pulpit, he stood up and began the service, but with a voice over which he had almost no command. The congregation had never seen him thus moved, before, in his pulpit. They sat there and gazed at him and wondered what was the matter; because he was now reading, in this broken voice and with occasional tears trickling down his face, what to them seemed a quite unemotional chapter—that one about Moses begat Aaron, and Aaron begat Deuteronomy, and Deuteronomy begat St. Peter, and St. Peter begat Cain, and Cain begat Abel—and he was going along with this, and half crying—his voice continually breaking. The congregation left the church that morning without being able to account for this most extraordinary thing—as it seemed to them. That a man who had been a soldier for more than four years, and who had preached in that pulpit so many, many times on really moving subjects, without even the quiver of a lip, should break all down over the Begats, was a thing which they couldn’t understand. But there it is—any one can see how such a mystery as that would arouse the curiosity of those people to the boiling-point.
