A Family Sketch and Other Private Writings

by Twain, Mark, Griffin, Benjamin

  Rosa was a good disciplinarian, and faithful to her orders. She was not allowed to talk to the children in any tongue but German. Susy was amenable to law and reason, but when Clara was a little chap she several times flew out against this arrangement, and once in Hesse Cassel, with grieved and resentful tears in her eyes, she said to Miss Spaulding,—

  “Aunt Clara, I wish God hadn’t made Rosa in German.”

  Rosa was with us until 1883, when she married a young farmer in the State of New York, and went to live with him on his farm. When the young corn began to sprout the crows took to pulling it up, and then an incident followed whose humor Rosa was quite competent to appreciate. She had spread out and stuck up an old umbrella to do service as a scarecrow, and was sitting on the porch waiting to see what the marauders would think of it. She had not long to wait; soon rain began to fall, and the crows pulled up corn and carried it in under the umbrella and ate it—with thanks to the provider of the shelter!

  Katy was a potent influence, all over the premises. Fidelity, truthfulness, courage, magnanimity, personal dignity, a pole-star for steadiness—these were her equipment, along with a heart of Irish warmth, quick Irish wit, and a good store of that veiled and shimmering and half-surreptitious humor which is the best feature of the “American” brand—or of any brand, for that matter. The drift of the years has not spirited away any of these qualities; they are her possession still.

  Of course there were birds of passage—servants who tarried a while, were dissatisfied with us or we with them, and presently vanished out of our life, making but slight impression upon it for good or bad, perhaps, and leaving it substantially unmodified by their contributions in the way of training. The Egyptian always excepted. And possibly Elise,—a temporary nurse-help for Jean. Elise was a pretty and plump and fresh young maiden of fifteen, right out of a village in the heart of Germany, speaking no language but her own, innocent as a bird, joyous as fifty birds, and as noisy as a million of them. She was sincerely and germanically religious, and it is possible that she did teach us some little something or other—to swear, perhaps. For she had that German gift; and had it in the German way, which does not offend, and is not meant to offend. Her speeches were well larded with harmless handlings of the sacred names. “Allmächtiger Gott!” “Gott im Himmel!” “Heilige Mutter Gottes!” “Nun, schönen Dank, dass ist fertig, bei Gott!” “Lieber wäre ich in der Hölle verloren als dass ich dasselbe wieder thun müssen!” “O, Herr Jesus, ja! ich komme gleich!” Apostrophe to the soup, which had burnt her mouth: “Oooh! die gottverdammte Suppe!”b

  Jean, the baby, catching the sound of distant thunder rumbling and crashing down the sky one day, listened a moment to make sure, then nodded her head as one whose doubts are removed, and said musingly—

  “That’s Elise, again.”

  One is obliged to like the German profanity, after the ear has grown used to it, because it is so guileless and picturesque and alluring. As winning a swearer as we have known was a Baroness in Munich of blameless life, sweet and lovely in her nature, and deeply religious. During the four months we spent there in the winter of 1878–9, our traveling comrade, Miss Clara Spaulding, spent a good deal of time in her house, and the two became intimate friends. The Baroness was fond of believing that in many pleasant ways the Germans and the Americans were alike, and once she hit upon this happy resemblance:

  “Why, if you notice, we even talk alike. We say Ach Gott, and you say goddam!”

  The Hartford house stood upon the frontier where town and country met, the one side of the premises being in the town and the other side within the cover of the original forest. The nearest neighbor, in one direction—across the sward with no fence between—was Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe; and the nearest neighbors in another direction—through the chestnuts, with no fences—were the Warners (Charles Dudley and George). Further away were other intimates: John Hooker and Isabella Beecher Hooker, the Norman Smiths, the Perkinses, the Jewells and Whitmores, Rev. Francis Goodwin; Rev. Joseph Twichell (shepherd of our flock and uncle by adoption to the children); Rev. Dr. Burton, Rev. Dr. Parker, Gen. Hawley, Hammond Trumbull, the Robinsons, the Tafts, President Smith of Trinity, the Dunhams, the Hamersleys, the Colts, the Gays, the Cheneys, General Franklin, the Hillyers, the Bunces and so on; and in the very earliest days one had the momentary privilege of a word with the Rev. Horace Bushnell, whose body was failing and his step halting, but his great intellect had suffered no impairment, and in his wonderful eyes the deeps had not shoaled. Now and then the Howellses and the Aldriches and James T. Fields came down from Boston, and Stedman and Bayard Taylor up from New York, and Nasby from Toledo, and Stanley from Africa, and Charles Kingsley and Henry Irving from England, and Stepniak from Russia, and other bright lights from otherwheres. In their several ways, all trainers of the family, and rarely competent! When Susy was twelve years old General Grant described one or two of Sheridan’s achievements to her, and gave his reasons for regarding Sheridan as the first general of the age; and later, when she was fifteen or sixteen, Kipling called (at the summer-home near Elmira), and spoke with her and left his card in her hand; and she kept it, and was able to produce it by and by, when Kipling’s name shot up out of the unknown and filled the world with its fame.

  From all these friends and acquaintances the children unconsciously gathered something, little or much, and it went to the sum of their training, for all impressions leave effects, none go wholly to waste.

  “The Farm.”

  Our summers were spent at “The Farm”—full name, “Quarry Farm”—the home of Theodore and Susan Crane, brother-in-law and sister of Mrs. Clemens. There the children’s training was continued by Katy and Rosa, strongly reinforced by John T. Lewis, colored, ex-slave (Mr. Crane’s farmer), Aunty Cord, colored, ex-slave (cook), David, colored, coachman, and the other Crane servants. Also, there were minor helps: Mr. and Mrs. Crane; Rev. Thomas and Mrs. Beecher, and the Gleasons, half-way down the hill; and the Langdon household at the homestead in Elmira, down in the valley—consisting of one grandmother, and her son Charles and his young family, which young family was of the same vintage as our own.

  Mark Twain’s study in its original location at Quarry Farm, about 1874. Today the building is on the campus of Elmira College.

  The house stood seven or eight hundred feet above the valley, and thirteen hundred above sea level, and the view commanded the sweep of the valley, with glimpses and flashes of the river winding through it, the wide-spread town, and the blue folds and billows of the receding Pennsylvanian hills beyond. My study stood (and still stands) on a little summit a hundred yards from the house and at a higher elevation. It was octagonal, glazed all around, like a pilot house, with a sun-protection of Venetian blinds; it had a fireplace, contained a table, a chair and a sofa, and was subject to invasions by the children, but was under quarantine against other wandering people. There was a higher summit, with a furnished tent for these. It was seldom uncomfortably warm at the farm, as it overlooked valleys both in front and behind, and the unobstructed breezes kept the air cool. Every summer we left home for The Farm with great enthusiasm as soon as Clara’s birthday solemnities were over. It was always a healthy place. Two of the carriage horses of the early days are hale and serviceable yet, and one of the children’s riding-horses, which they rode in almost primeval times is there still, although he was retired on pension years ago and has been a gentleman loafer ever since. This is “Vix,” named for Col. Waring’s war horse, whose pathetic and beautiful history, as told in the book bearing that title, won the children’s worship, and broke their hearts and made them cry; and two of them lived to mourn again when Waring, a finer hero than even his Vix, laid down his life in rescuing Cuba from her age-long scourge of yellow fever—victor and vanquished in one, for he died of the malady himself.

  Aunty Cord was six feet high, and nearly twice as black. She was straight and brawny and strong, and had strong notions about things, and a vigorous eloquence in expressing
them if the opposing force were “niggers;” for she had no great opinion of “niggers,” and was not backward about saying so. She spoke the plantation dialect of Maryland, where she had grown up and produced a little family of slaves before the war. For white folks she had flatteries, the common inheritance of servitude, but none for “niggers.” She called Mrs. Clemens “Queen o’ de Magazines,”—which was indefinite but sounded fine, and that was enough for Aunty Cord,—and she was even able to invent grand names for me—at half a dollar each. She was expensive, but then she was the only one I could depend upon for such attentions in that over-fastidious household. She petted the children, of course, and also of course she filled their heads with “nigger” superstitions and damaged their sleep, for she had ghosts and witches in stock, and these were a novelty to the children. According to her gospel, a spider in the heart of an apple must be killed, otherwise bad luck will follow; but spiders with cobwebs under the ceiling must be protected from the housemaid’s broom, it was bad luck to disturb them. Snakes must be killed on sight, even the harmless ones; and the discoverer of a sloughed snake-skin lying in the road was in for all kinds of calamities. The weather, the phases of the moon, uncanny noises, and certain eccentricities of insects, birds, cattle and other creatures all spoke to her in mystic warnings, and kept her in a fussy state of mind the most of the time. But no matter, she was cheerful, inexhaustibly cheerful, her heart was in her laugh and her laugh could shake the hills. Under emotion she had the best gift of strong and simple speech that I have known in any woman except my mother. She told me a striking tale out of her personal experience, once, and I will copy it here—and not in my words but her own. I wrote them down before they were cold.c

  a[Mark Twain’s footnote:] One evening in the nursery, when Clara was four or five years old and she and Susy were still occupying cribs, Clara was told it was time to say her prayers. She asked if Susy had said hers, and was told she had. Clara said, “Oh, one’s enough,” and turned over and went to sleep.

  By and by, after some months, it was found that Susy had ceased from praying. Upon inquiry it transpired that she had thought the matter out and arrived at the conclusion that it could not be well to trouble God about her small wants, since He knew what they were anyway and could be trusted to reach wise and right decisions concerning them without suggestions from her. She added, tranquilly, “And so I just leave it to Him—He knows.”

  While Jean was still a little thing, Katy discovered that she was nightly doing some private praying on her own motion after the perfunctory supplications had been disposed of and the nursery vacated by the mamma and other outsiders. These voluntaries were of a practical sort, and covered several important desires: among them a prompt and permanent remedy for stomach-ache. Katy gave us timely notice, and we went up and listened at the door. Jean described the persecutions of her distemper, and added, with strong feeling: “It comes every day; and oh, dear Jesus, if you ever had it yourself you would reconnize what it is, and just stop it!” “Reconnize” was her largest word, and her favorite. She was the youngest of the children, and came late, comparatively—July 26, 1880.

  b[Translations for German profanities: “Almighty God!” “God in Heaven!” “Holy Mother of God!” “Now, thank goodness that’s finished, by God!” “I’d rather be damned in Hell than do that over again!” “O, Lord Jesus, yes, I’ll be right there!” “Oooh, the goddamned soup!”]

  c[Mark Twain’s rendering of Mary Ann Cord’s story follows, as “A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It”—BG.]

  MARK TWAIN

  A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It

  It was summer time, and twilight. We were sitting on the porch of the farmhouse, on the summit of the hill, and “Aunt Rachel” was sitting respectfully below our level, on the steps,—for she was our servant, and colored. She was of mighty frame and stature; she was sixty years old, but her eye was undimmed and her strength unabated. She was a cheerful, hearty soul, and it was no more trouble for her to laugh than it is for a bird to sing. She was under fire, now, as usual when the day was done. That is to say, she was being chaffed without mercy and was enjoying it. She would let off peal after peal of laughter, and then sit with her face in her hands and shake with throes of enjoyment which she could no longer get breath enough to express. At such a moment as this a thought occurred to me, and I said:

  “Aunt Rachel, how is it that you’ve lived sixty years and never had any trouble?”

  She stopped quaking. She paused, and there was a moment of silence. She turned her face over her shoulder toward me, and said, without even a smile in her voice:

  “Misto C., is you in arnest?”

  It surprised me quite a good deal—and it sobered my manner and my speech, too. I said:

  “Why, I thought—that is, I meant—why you can’t have had any trouble. I’ve never heard you sigh, and never seen your eye when there wasn’t a laugh in it.”

  She faced fairly around, now, and was full of earnestness:

  “Has I had any trouble? Misto C., I’s gwyne to tell you, den I leave it to you. I was bawn down mongst de slaves—I knows all ’bout slavery, ’case I ben one of ’em my own se’f. Well, sah, my ole man—dat’s my husban’—he was lovin’ an’ kind to me—jist as kind as you is to yo’ own wife. An’ we had chil’en—seven chil’en—an’ we loved dem chil’en jist de same as you loves yo’ chil’en. Dey was black, but de Lord can’t make no chil’en so black but what dey mother loves ’em an’ wouldn’t give ’em up, no, not for anything dat’s in dis whole world.

  “Well, sah, I was raised in ole Fo’ginny, but my mother she was raised in Maryland, an’ my souls! she was turrible when she’d git started! My lan’! but she’d make de fur fly! When she’d git into dem tantrums, she always had one word dat she said. She’d straighten herse’f up an’ put her fists in her hips an’ say, ‘I want you to understan’ dat I wa’nt bawn in de mash to be fool’ by trash! I’s one o’ de ole Blue Hen’s Chickens, I is!’—’case you see dat’s what folks dat’s bawn in Maryland calls deyselves, an’ dey’s proud of it. Well dat was her word. I don’t ever forgit it, becase she said it so much, an’ becase she said it one day when my little Henry tore his wris’, awful, an’ most busted his head, right up at de top of his forehead, an’ de niggers didn’t fly aroun’ fas’ enough to ’tend to him. An’ when dey talk’ back at her, she up an’ she says, ‘Look-a-heah!’ she says, ‘I want you niggers to understan’ dat I wa’nt bawn in de mash to be fool’ by trash!—I’s one o’ de ole Blue Hen’s Chickens, I is!’ an’ den she clar’ dat kitchen an’ bandage’ up de chile herse’f. So I says dat word, too, when I’s riled.

  “Well, bymeby my ole mistis say she’s broke, an’ she got to sell all de niggers on de place. An’ when I heah dat dey gwyne to sell us all off at oction in Richmon’, O de good gracious I know what dat mean!”

  [Aunt Rachel had gradually risen, while she warmed to her subject, and now she towered above us, black against the stars.]

  “Dey put chains on us an’ put us on a stan’ as high as dis poach—twenty foot high—an’ all de people stood aroun’—crowds an’ crowds. An’ dey’d come up dah an’ look at us all roun’, an’ squeeze our arm, an’ make us git up an’ walk, an’ den say, ‘Dis one too ole,’ or ‘Dis one lame,’ or ‘Dis one don’t ’mount to much.’ An’ dey sole my ole man, an’ took him away, an’ dey begin to sell my chil’en an’ take dem away, an’ I begin to cry; an’ de man say ‘Shet up yo’ dam blubberin’,’ an’ hit me on de mouf wid his han’. An’ when de las’ one was gone but my little Henry, I grab’ him clost up to my breas’, so, an’ I ris up an’ says, ‘You shan’t take him away!’ I says; ‘I’ll kill de man dat tetches him!’ I says. But my little Henry whisper an’ say, ‘I gwyne to run away, an’ den I work an’ buy yo’ freedom.’ O, bless de chile, he always so good. But dey got him—dey got him, de men did—but I took an’ tear de cloes mos’ off of ’em an’ beat ’em over de head wid my cha
in; an’ dey give it to me, too, but I didn’t mine dat.

  “Well, dah was my ole man gone, an’ all my chil’en—all my seven chil’en—an’ six of ’em I hain’t set eyes on agin to dis day—an’ dat’s twentytwo year ago las’ Easter. De man dat bought me b’long’ in Newbern, an’ he took me dah. Well, bymeby de years roll on an’ de waw come. My marster he was a Confedrit Colonel, an’ I was his family’s cook. So when de Unions took dat town, dey all run away an’ lef’ me all by myse’f wid de other niggers in dat mons’us big house. So de big Union officers move in dah an’ dey ask me would I cook for dem. ‘Lord bless you,’ says I, ‘dat’s what I’s for.’

  “Dey wa’nt no small-fry officers, mine you, dey was de biggest dey is; an’ de way dey made dem sojers mosey roun’! De Gen’l he tole me to boss dat kitchen; an’ he say if anybody come meddlin’ wid you, you jist make ’em walk chalk; don’t you be afeard, he say, you’s ’mong frens, now.

  “Well, I thinks to myse’f, if my little Henry ever got a chance to run away, he’d make to de Norf, o’ course. So one day I comes in dah whah de big officers was, in de parlor, an’ I drops a kurtchy, so, an’ I up an’ tole ’em ’bout my Henry, dey a listenin’ to my troubles jist de same as if I was white folks; an’ I says, ‘What I come for is becase if he got away and got up Norf whah you gemmen comes from, you might a seen him, maybe, an’ could tell me so as I could fine him agin; he was very little, an’ he had a sk-yar on his lef’ wris’, an’ at de top of his forehead.’ Den dey look mournful, an’ de Gen’l say, ‘How long sence you los’ him?’ an’ I say ‘Thirteen year.’ Den de Gen’l say, ‘He wouldn’t be little no mo’, now—he’s a man!’