A Family Sketch and Other Private Writings

by Twain, Mark, Griffin, Benjamin

  We were living in London at the time. I early learned what had happened, but I kept it from the family as long as I could, the midnight of Susy’s loss being still upon them and they being ill fitted to bear an added sorrow; but as the months wore on and no letter came from George in answer to theirs, they became uneasy, and were about to write him and ask what the matter was; then I spoke.

  As I have already indicated, Mrs. Clemens and I, and Miss Foote the governess, were in our respective degrees of efficiency and opportunity trainers of the children—conscious and intentional ones—and we were reinforced in our work by the usual and formidable multitude of unconscious and unintentional trainers, such as servants, friends, visitors, books, dogs, cats, horses, cows, accidents, travel, joys, sorrows, lies, slanders, oppositions, persuasions, good and evil beguilements, treacheries, fidelities, the tireless and everlasting impact of character-forming exterior influences which begin their strenuous assault at the cradle and only end it at the grave. Books, home, the school and the pulpit may and must do the directing—it is their limited but lofty and powerful office—but the countless outside unconscious and unintentional trainers do the real work, and over them the responsible superintendents have no considerable supervision or authority.

  Conscious teaching is good and necessary, and in a hundred instances it effects its purpose, while in a hundred others it fails and the purpose, if accomplished at all, is accomplished by some other agent or influence. I suppose that in most cases changes take place in us without our being aware of it at the time, and in after life we give the credit of it—if it be of a creditable nature—to mamma, or the school or the pulpit. But I know of one case where a change was wrought in me by an outside influence—where teaching had failed,—and I was profoundly aware of the change when it happened. And so I know that the fact that for more than fifty-five years I have not wantonly injured a dumb creature is not to be credited to home, school or pulpit, but to a momentary outside influence. When I was a boy my mother pleaded for the fishes and the birds and tried to persuade me to spare them, but I went on taking their lives unmoved, until at last I shot a bird that sat in a high tree, with its head tilted back, and pouring out a grateful song from an innocent heart. It toppled from its perch and came floating down limp and forlorn and fell at my feet, its song quenched and its unoffending life extinguished. I had not needed that harmless creature, I had destroyed it wantonly, and I felt all that an assassin feels, of grief and remorse when his deed comes home to him and he wishes he could undo it and have his hands and his soul clean again from accusing blood. One department of my education, theretofore long and diligently and fruitlessly labored upon, was closed by that single application of an outside and unsalaried influence, and could take down its sign and put away its books and its admonitions permanently.

  In my turn I admonished the children not to hurt animals; also to protect weak animals from stronger ones. This teaching succeeded—and not only in the spirit but in the letter. When Clara was small—small enough to wear a shoe the size of a cowslip—she suddenly brought this shoe down with determined energy, one day, dragged it rearward with an emphatic rake, then stooped down to examine results. We inquired, and she explained—

  “The naughty big ant was trying to kill the little one!”

  Neither of them survived the generous interference.

  Among the household’s board of auxiliary and unconscious trainers, four of the servants were especially influential—Patrick, George, Katy, and Rosa the German nurse; strong and definite characters, all, and all equipped with uncommonly good heads and hearts. Temporarily there was another influence—Clara’s wet nurses. No. 1 was a mulatto, No. 2 was half American half Irish, No. 3 was half German half Dutch, No. 4 was Irish, No. 5 was apparently Irish, with a powerful strain of Egyptian in her. This one ended the procession—and in great style, too. For some little time Clara was rich in given-names drawn from the surnames of these nurses, and was taught to string them together as well as her incompetent tongue would let her, as a show-off for the admiration of visitors, when required to “be nice and tell the ladies your name.” As she did it with proper gravity and earnestness, not knowing there was any joke in it, it went very well: “Clara Lewis O’Day Botheker McAleer McLaughlin Clemens.”

  It has always been held that mother’s milk imparts to the child certain details of the mother’s make-up in permanency—such as character, disposition, tastes, inclinations, traces of nationality and so on. Supposably, then, Clara is a hybrid and a polyglot, a person of no particular country or breed, a General Member of the Human Race, a Cosmopolitan.

  She got valuable details of construction out of those other contributors, no doubt; no doubt they laid the foundations of what she is now, but it was the mighty Egyptian that did the final work and reared upon it the imposing super structure. There was never any wet-nurse like that one—the unique, the sublime, the unapproachable! She stood six feet in her stockings, she was perfect in form and contour, raven-haired, dark as an Indian, stately, carrying her head like an empress, she had the martial port and stride of a grenadier, and the pluck and strength of a battalion of them. In professional capacity the cow was a poor thing compared to her, and not even the pump was qualified to take on airs where she was. She was as independent as the flag, she was indifferent to morals and principles, she disdained company, and marched in a procession by herself. She was as healthy as iron, she had the appetite of a crocodile, the stomach of a cellar, and the digestion of a quartz-mill. Scorning the adamantine law that a wet-nurse must par take of delicate things only, she devoured anything and everything she could get her hands on, shoveling into her person fiendish combinations of fresh pork, lemon pie, boiled cabbage, ice cream, green apples, pickled tripe, raw turnips, and washing the cargo down with freshets of coffee, tea, brandy, whisky, turpentine, kerosene—anything that was liquid; she smoked pipes, cigars, cigarettes, she whooped like a Pawnee and swore like a demon; and then she would go up stairs loaded as described and perfectly delight the baby with a banquet which ought to have killed it at thirty yards, but which only made it happy and fat and contented and boozy. No child but this one ever had such grand and wholesome service. The giantess raided my tobacco and cigar department every day; no drinkable thing was safe from her if you turned your back a moment; and in addition to the great quantities of strong liquors which she bought down town every day and consumed, she drank 256 pint bottles of beer in our house in one month, and that month the shortest one of the year. These things sound impossible, but they are facts. She was a wonder, a portent, that Egyptian.

  Patrick the coachman was a part of our wedding outfit, therefore he had been with us two years already when Susy was born. He was Irish; young, slender, bright, quick as a cat, a master of his craft, and one of the only three persons I have had long acquaintance with who could be trusted to do their work well and faithfully without supervision. He was one of the three, I am not the other two—nor either of them. They are John the gardener and his wife—Irish; they were in our service about twenty years.

  Patrick, from the earliest days, thirty-six years ago, when he was perhaps twenty-five, carried on his work systematically, competently, and without orders. He kept his horses and carriages and cows in good condition; he kept the bins and the hayloft full; if a horse or a cow was unsatisfactory he made a change; he filled the cellars with coal and wood in the summer while we were away; as soon as a snow-storm was ended he was out with his snow-plow; if a thing needed mending he attended to it at once. He had long foresight, and a memory which was so good that he never seemed to forget anything. In the house, supplies were constantly failing at critical moments, and George’s explanation never varied its form, “I declare, I forgotten it”—which was monstrous. This phrase was not in Patrick’s book, nor John’s.

  Patrick rode horseback with the children in the forenoons; in the afternoons he drove them out, with their mother; Susy never on the box, Clara always there, holding the reins in t
he safe places and prattling a stream; and when she outgrew the situation Jean took it, and continued the din of talk—inquiries, of course; it is what a child deals in. The children had a deep admiration for Patrick, for he was a spanking driver, yet never had an accident; and besides, to them he seemed to know everything and how to do everything. They conferred their society upon him freely in the stable, and he protected them while they took risks in petting the horses in the stalls and in riding the reluctant calves. Also he allowed them, mornings, to help him drive the ducks down to the stream which lazily flowed through the grounds, and back to the stable at sunset. Furthermore, he allowed them to look on and shrink and shiver and compassionately exclaim, when he had a case of surgery on hand—which was rather frequent when the ducks were youthful. They would go to sleep on the water, and the mud-turtles would get them by the feet and chew until Patrick happened along and released them. Then he brought them up the slope and sat in the shade of the long quarter-deck called “the ombra” and bandaged the stumps of the feet with rags while the children helped the ducks do the suffering. He slaughtered a mess of the birds for the table pretty frequently, and this conduct got him protests and rebukes. Once Jean said—

  “I wonder God lets us have so much ducks, Patrick kills them so.”

  A proper attitude for one who was by and by, in her sixteenth year, to be the founder of a branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

  Patrick was apt to be around when needed, and this happened once when he was sorely needed indeed. On the second floor of the stable there was a large oat-bin, whose lid shut with a spring. It had a couple of feet of oats in it. Susy, Clara, and Daisy Warner climbed into it, the lid fell and they were prisoners, there in the dark. They were not able to help themselves, their case was serious, they would soon exhaust the air in that box, then they would suffocate. Our house was not close by; Patrick’s house was a part of the stable, but between it and the stable were thick walls, muffled screams could not bore through them. We at home in the house were comfortable and serene, not suspecting that an awful tragedy was imminent on the premises. Patrick arrived from down town and happened to step into the carriage house instead of passing along to his own door, as had been his purpose. He noticed dull cries, but could not at once tell whence they proceeded—sounds are difficult things to locate. A stupider man would have gone outside, and lost his head, and hunted frantically everywhere but in the right place; a few minutes of this would have answered all tragic purposes. But Patrick was not stupid; he kept his head and listened, then moved when he had reached a conclusion.

  It was not Susy that arranged that scrape, it was Clara; Susy was not an inventor of adventures, she was only an accommodating and persuadable follower of reckless inventors of such things, for in her gentle make-up were no nineteen second-hand nationalities and the evil energies of that Egyptian volcano. Susy took, in its turn, each step of the series that led up to the scrape, but she originated none of them, it was mainly Clara’s work, the outcome of her heredities. She was within a day or two of eight years old at the time. Miss Foote required of the children a weekly composition, and Clara utilized the episode in satisfaction of that law. It exhibits Clara’s literary gait of that day, and I will copy it here from the original document:

  The barn by Clara Clemens.

  Caught in the Oat Bin, Daisy, Susie and I went up in the barn to play in the hay, there was a great big Oat box up there and I said “Let’s get on it” and Daisy said “Yes,” so Susie and Daisy pushed me up, Then Susie tried to get up but she could not, I saw a big oil box, and I said “O, Susie take the oil box over there and put it on the steps and you can get on that,” and so she did, and they all got up; I began jumping off from it they all were afraid, I was too, at first, And then Daisy said “Let’s get in” so I jumped in and then Daisy did; Susie was afraid to get in because she thought there was no bottom to it, but we dug and dug and showed that there was a bottom. So pretty soon she jumped in; then we began to play and pretty soon the cover came down. Then it was roasting hot, in there. Daisy and Susie pushed and I screamed, Patrick thought he heard some one screaming, but he thought we were only playing, still as I kept screaming he thought he would come up and see what was the matter, He found the noise came from the oat box and he opened the lid and let us out, We could not see at all and we felt very hot in there, Patrick said we could have smothered in a little while.

  The End.

  It is pitiful, those frightened little prisoners struggling, pushing and screaming in the swelter and smother of that pitch-dark hole; I often see that picture and feel the pathos of it. And particularly I feel Susy’s fright; that of the others had limits, perhaps, but in such circumstances hers would have none. She was by nature timid; also, she had a forceful imagination. In time of peril this is a powerful combination. The dark closet was never put in Susy’s list of punishments; it would have been much too effective. It was tried with Clara, when she was four or five years old, but without adequate results. She was always able to entertain herself, and easily did it in this instance; she did not mind the darkness, and she was the only one that was sorry when the prison-term was up. The Egyptian was probably many times in places similar to that—by request of the State. Susy required much punishing while she was little, but not after she was six or seven years old. By that time she was become a wise and thoughtful small philosopher and able to shut the exits upon her fierce exuberances of temper and keep herself under control. But even Susy’s timidity had limits. She was not discomposed by runaways and cab-collisions, and she enjoyed storms and was not afraid of lightning; in a town of the Haute Savoie the night after the assassination of President Car not, when a mob assailed the hotel with stones and threatened to destroy it unless the Italian servants were delivered into its hands to be lynched, she kept her head. On the other hand sea-voyaging was a torture to her, and a large part of the torture was bred of a constant fear at night that the ship would burn.

  Rosa, the German nurse, who was with us ten or twelve years, was a pleasant influence in the nursery and in the house. She had a smart sense of humor, an easy and cordial laugh which was catching, and a cheery spirit which pervaded the premises like an atmosphere. She had good sense, good courage, unusual presence of mind in seasons of danger, and a sound judgment in exercising it. In a hotel in Baden Baden once, when Clara was two years old, and sly and enterprising, and a difficult person to keep track of, an elderly German chambermaid burst into our quarters, pale and frightened, and tried to say something, but couldn’t. Rosa did not wait for the woman to find her tongue, but moved promptly out to see for herself what the trouble might be. We were on the third floor. Clara had squeezed her body through the balusters, and was making the trip along them, inch by inch, her body overhanging the vacancy which extended thence to the marble floor three stories below. Rosa did not fly to the child and scare it and bring on a tragedy, but stood at a distance and said in an ordinary voice,

  “I have something pretty for thee, Kindchen—wait till I bring it.”

  Then she walked forward and lifted Clara over the balusters without rousing any opposition, and the danger was over for that time. Four years later, at a seaside resort, Clara was drowning, in the midst of a crowd of women and children, who stood paralyzed and helpless and did nothing; Rosa had to run a matter of twenty yards, but she covered the distance in time and saved what was left of the child—a doubtful asset, to all appearances, but, as it turned out, less doubtful than the appearances promised.

  Also, Rosa had a two-thirds share in “the Three Days;” the barber had the other third. We were living in the Hartford home at the time, and it was cold weather. Clara had diphtheria, and her crib was in our bedroom, which was on the second floor; over the crib was built a tent of blankets, into which projected the pipe of a steaming apparatus which stood upon the floor. Mrs. Clemens left the room for a little while, and presently Rosa entered on an errand, and found a conflagration; the alcohol lamp had s
et fire to the tent and the blankets were blazing. Rosa snatched the patient out and put her on the bed, then gathered up the burning mattrass and blankets and threw them out of the window. The crib itself had caught fire; she smothered that detail. Clara’s burns were very slight, and Rosa got no burns, except on her hands.

  That was the First Day. The next morning Jean, the baby, was asleep in her crib in front of a vigorous wood fire in the nursery on the second floor. The crib had a tall lawn canopy over it. A spark was driven through the close-webbed fire-screen and it lit on the slant of the canopy, and presently the result was a blaze. After a little a Polish servant-woman entered the nursery, caught sight of the tall flame, and rushed out shrieking. That brought Rosa from somewhere, and she rescued the child and threw the burning mattrass and bedding out of the window. The baby was slightly burnt in several spots, and again Rosa’s hands suffered, but otherwise no harm was done. Nothing but instant perception of the right thing to do, and lightning promptness in doing it could save the children’s lives, a minute’s delay in either case would have been fatal; but Rosa had the quick eye, the sane mind and the prompt hand, and these great qualities made her mistress of the emergency.

  The next day was the Third Day, and completed the series. The barber came out daily from town to shave me. His function was performed in a room on the first floor—it was the rule; but this time, by luck, he was sent up to the schoolroom, which adjoined the nursery, on the second floor. He knocked; there being no response, he entered. Susy’s back was visible at the far end of the room; she was deep in a piano lesson, and unconscious of other matters. A log had burned in two, the ends had fallen against the heavy woodwork which enclosed the fireplace and supported the mantel piece, and the conflagration was just beginning. Five minutes later the house would have been past saving. The barber did the requisite thing, and the danger was over. So ended what in the family history we call “the Three Days,” and aggrandize them with capital letters, as is proper.