Susy’sⒶapparatus note remarks about her grandfatherⒶapparatus note Langdon—Mr. Clemens tells about Mr. Atwater—Mr. David Gray;Ⓐapparatus note and about meeting David Gray, junior, at a dinner recently.
I have wandered far from Susy’sⒶapparatus note chat about her grandfather, but that is no matter. In this autobiography it is my purpose to wander whenever I please and come back when I get ready. I have now come back, and we will set down what SusyⒶapparatus note has to say about her grandfather.
From Susy’s Biography.Ⓐapparatus note
IⒶapparatus note mentioned that mamma and papa couldn’t stay in their house in Bufalo because it reminded so much of grandpapa. Mamma received a letter from Aunt SusyⒶapparatus note in which Aunt SusyⒶapparatus note Ⓔexplanatory note says a good deal about grandpapa, and the letter showed so clearly how much every one that knew grandpapa loved and respected him, that mamma let me take it to copy what is in it about grandpapa, and mamma thought it would fit in nicely here.
“Quarry Farm.
April 16, ’85.
Livy dear, are you not reminded by to-day’s report of General GrantⒺexplanatory note of father? You remember how as Judge SmithⒺexplanatory note and others whom father had chosen as executors were going out of the room, he said ‘Gentlemen I shall live to bury you all’—smiled, and was cheerful. At that time he had far less strength than General Grant seems to have, but that same wonderful courage to battle with the foe. All along there has been much to remind me of father—of his quiet patience—in General Grant. There certainly is a marked likeness in the souls of the two men. Watching, day by day, the reports from the Nation’s sick room brings to mind so vividly the days of that summer of 1870. And yet they seem so far away. I seemed as a child, compared with now, both in years and experience. The best and the hardest of life have been since then to me, and I know this is so in your life. All before seems dreamy. I sepose this was because our lives had to be all readjusted to go on without that great power in them. Father was quietly such a power in so many lives beside ours, Livy dear—not in kind or degree the same to any one but oh, a power!
The evening of the last company, I was so struck with the fact that Mr. AtwaterⒺexplanatory note stood quietly before father’s portrait a long time and turning to me said, ‘We shall never see his like again,’ with a tremble and a choking in his voice—this after fifteen years, and from a business friend. And some stranger, a week ago, spoke of his habit of giving, as so remarkable, he having heard of father’s generosity. . . .”Ⓐapparatus note
I remember Mr. Atwater very well. There was nothing citified about him or his ways. He was in middle ageⒶapparatus note, and had lived in the country all his life. He had the farmer look, the farmer gait; he wore the farmer clothes, and also the farmer goatee, a decoration which had been universal when I was a boy, but was now become extinct in some of the westernⒶapparatus note towns and in all of the easternⒶapparatus note towns and cities. He was transparently a good and sincere and honest man. He was a humble helper of Mr. Langdon, and had been in his employ many years. His rôleⒶapparatus note was general utility. If Mr. Langdon’s sawmills needed unscientific but plain common-senseⒶapparatus note inspection, Atwater was sent on that service. If Mr. Langdon’s timber rafts got into trouble on account of a falling river or a rising one, Atwater was sent to look after the matter. [begin page 374] Atwater went on modest errands to Mr. Langdon’sⒶapparatus note coal mines; also to examine and report upon Mr. Langdon’sⒶapparatus note interests in the buddingⒶapparatus note coal-oil fields of Pennsylvania. Mr. Atwater was always busy, always moving, always useful in humble ways,Ⓐapparatus note always religious, and always ungrammatical, except when he had just finished talking and had used up what he had in stock of that kind of grammar. He was effective—that is, he was effective if there was plenty of time. But he was constitutionally slow, and as he had to discuss all his matters with whomsoever came along, it sometimes happened that the occasion for his services had gone by before he got them in. Mr. Langdon never would discharge Atwater, though young CharleyⒶapparatus note Langdon suggested that course now and then. Young CharleyⒶapparatus note could not abide Atwater, because of his provoking dilatoriness and of his comfortable contentment in it. But I loved Atwater. Atwater was a treasure to me. When he would arrive from one of his inspection journeys and sit at the table, at noon, and tell the family all about the campaign in delicious detail, leaving out not a single inane, inconsequential and colorless incident of it, I heard it gratefully; I enjoyed Mr. Langdon’s placid patience with it; the family’s despondency and despair; and more than all these pleasures together, the vindictiveness in young Charley’sⒶapparatus note eyes and the volcanic disturbances going on inside of him which I could not see, but which I knew were there.
I am dwelling upon Atwater just for love. I have nothing important to say about Atwater—in fact only one thing to say about him at all. And even that one thing I could leave unmentioned if I wanted to—but I don’t want to. It has been a pleasant memory to me for a whole generation. It lets in a fleeting ray of light upon Livy’s gentle and calm and equable spirit. Although she could feel strongly and utter her feelings strongly, none but a person familiar with her and with all her moods would ever be able to tell by her language that that language was violent. Young CharleyⒶapparatus note had many and many a time tried to lodge a seed of unkindness against Atwater in Livy’s heart, but she was as steadfast in her fidelity as was her father, and Charley’sⒶapparatus note efforts always failed. Many and many a time he brought to her a charge against Atwater which he believed would bring the longed-forⒶapparatus note bitter word, and at last he scored a success—for “allⒶapparatus note things come to him who waits.”
I was away at the time, but CharleyⒶapparatus note could not wait for me to get back. He was too glad, too eager. He sat down at once and wrote to me while his triumph was fresh and his happiness hot and contentingⒶapparatus note. He told me how he had laid the whole exasperating matter before Livy and then had asked her “Now what do you say?” And she saidⒶapparatus note “ DamnⒶapparatus note Atwater.”
CharleyⒶapparatus note knew that there was no need to explain this to me. He knew I would perfectly understand. He knew that I would know that he was not quoting, but was translating. He knew that I would know that his translation was exact, was perfect, that it conveyed the precise length, breadth, weight, meaning and force of the words which Livy had really used. He knew that I would know that the phrase which she really uttered was “I disapprove of Atwater.”
He was quite right. In her mouth that word “disapprove” was as blighting and withering and devastating as another person’s damn.
One or two days ago I was talking about our sorrowful and pathetic brief sojourn in Buffalo, where we became hermits, and could have no human comradeship except that of young [begin page 375] David Gray and his young wife and their baby boy. It seems an age ago. Last night I was at a large dinner party at Norman Hapgood’s palace up-townⒺexplanatory note, and a very long and very slender gentleman was introduced to me—a gentleman with a fine, alert and intellectual face, with a becoming gold pince-nez on his nose and clothed in an evening costume which was perfect from the broad spread of immaculate bosomⒶapparatus note to the rosetted slippers on his feet. His gait, his bows, and his intonations were those of an English gentleman, and I took him for an earlⒶapparatus note. I said I had not understood his name, and asked him what it was. He said “David Gray.”Ⓔexplanatory note The effect was startling. His very father stood before me, as I had known him in Buffalo thirty-six years ago. This apparition called up pleasant times in the beer millsⒶapparatus note of Buffalo with David Gray and John Hay when this David Gray was in his cradle, a beloved and troublesome possession. And this contact kept me in Buffalo during the next hour, and made it difficult for me to keep up my end of the conversation at my extremityⒶapparatus note of the dinner-table. The text of my reveries was “What was he born for? What was his father born for? What was I born for? What is anybody born for?”
His father was a poet, but was doomed to grind out his living in a most uncongenial occupation—the editing of a daily political newspaper. He was a singing bird in a menagerie of monkeys, macaws, and hyenas. His life was wasted. He had come from Scotland when he was five years old; he had come saturated to the bones with Presbyterianism of the bluest, the most uncompromising and most unlovely shade. At thirty-three, when I was comrading with him, his Presbyterianism was all gone and he had become a frank rationalist and pronounced unbeliever. After a few years news came to me in Hartford that he had had a sunstroke. By and by the news came that his brain was affected,Ⓐapparatus note as a result. After another considerable interval I heard, through Ned HouseⒺexplanatory note, who had been visiting him, that he was no longer able to competently write either politics or poetry, and was living quite privately and teachingⒶapparatus note a daily Bible ClassⒶapparatus note of young people, and was interested in nothing else. His unbelief had passed away; his early Presbyterianism had taken its place.
This was true. Some time after this I telegraphed and asked him to meet me at the railway station. He came, and I had a few minutes’ talk with him—this for the last time. The same sweet spirit of the earlier days looked out of his deep eyes. He was the same David I had known before,—great,Ⓐapparatus note and fine,Ⓐapparatus note and blemishless in character, a creature to adore.
Not long afterward he was crushed and burned up in a railway disaster, at nightⒺexplanatory note—and I probably thought then, as I was thinking now, through the gay laughter-and-chatter fogⒶapparatus note of that dinner-table, “What was he born for? What was the use of it?” These tiresome and monotonous repetitions of the human life—where is their value? SusyⒶapparatus note asked that question when she was a little child. There was nobody thenⒶapparatus note who could answer it; there is nobody yet.Ⓐapparatus note
When Mr. Langdon died, on the 6th of August, 1870, I found myself suddenly introduced into what was to meⒶapparatus note a quite new rôleⒶapparatus note—that of business man, temporarily.
Aunt Susy] Susan Crane.
to-day’s report of General Grant] The newspapers closely followed Grant’s battle with cancer. On 16 April 1885 the New York Times described “the General . . . serenely conversing with his family, his voice good, his appearance indicative of returning health, walking about with as firm steps as in bygone months, and the family free from worry about him” (“A Day of Hopefulness,” 16 Apr 1885, 4).
Judge Smith] H. Boardman Smith, an attorney with Smith, Robertson and Fassett of Elmira, was a witness to the will, not an executor. Presumably he later became a judge. The executors included Clemens himself, Theodore Crane, Charles J. Langdon, John D. F. Slee, and Langdon’s widow, Olivia L. Langdon (Boyd and Boyd 1872, 195; “Last Will and Testament of Jervis Langdon,” photocopy in CU-MARK).
Mr. Atwater] Dwight Atwater (1822–90) was born in a rural area near Ithaca, New York. He engaged in the lumber business in New York and Pennsylvania before settling in Elmira. In later years he owned a boot and shoe factory there (“Death of Dwight Atwater,” Elmira Advertiser, 2 Jan 1890, unknown page).
Norman Hapgood’s palace up-town] Hapgood (1868–1937), a writer and journalist, had been editor of Collier’s Weekly since 1903. His house was on East 73rd Street, off Park Avenue.
He said “David Gray.”] David Gray, Jr. (1870–1968), graduated from Harvard in 1892, wrote for several Buffalo newspapers, and was admitted to the bar in 1899. In World War I he served in the American Expeditionary Force, receiving the Croix de Guerre. From 1940 to 1947 he was the U.S. minister to Ireland (“David Gray Dies; Former Envoy, 97,” New York Times, 13 Apr 1968, 25).
Ned House] Edward H. House (1836–1901) was a staff journalist on the New York Tribune when he met Clemens in January 1867. In 1870 he went to Japan to teach English at the University of Tokyo and to serve as the Tribune’s “regular correspondent.” He also corresponded for the New York Herald on Japan’s 1874 incursion into Formosa, turning his reportage into a book-length monograph, The Japanese Expedition to Formosa, which he printed in Tokyo in 1875. He founded the Tokyo Times, an English-language weekly funded by the Japanese government. He returned permanently to the United States in 1880, subsequently publishing a travel volume, Japanese Episodes (House 1881), and a novel, Yone Santo: A Child of Japan (House 1888) (3 May 1871 to Bliss, L4, 389 n. 1; 20 Jan 1872 to OLC, L5, 30 n. 2; L6: 10 Apr 1875 to Bliss, 445 n. 1; link note following 10 Nov 1875 to Seaver, 591–92 n. 1). In 1889–90 House and Clemens quarreled over a dramatization of The Prince and the Pauper. The adaptation for the stage was done by Abby Sage Richardson; House claimed Clemens had given him the dramatic rights to the novel in 1886, and filed an injunction to prevent performance. The controversy estranged House and Clemens permanently. House spent his last years in Japan (9 June 1870 to Bliss, L4, 149–50 n. 3; N&J3, 542–43 n. 183).
railway disaster, at night] The accident occurred on the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad near Binghamton, New York, early on the morning of 16 March 1888. Gray suffered a head injury and died two days later (New York Times: “Overturned in the Snow,” 17 Mar 1888, 5; “Editor Gray Dead,” 19 Mar 1888, 1).
Source documents.
TS1 Typescript, leaves numbered 359–66, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.TS2 Typescript, leaves numbered 500–508, made from the revised TS1.
Clemens considered this dictation for possible publication through Samuel McClure’s newspaper syndicate, writing ‘Mc’ in blue pencil, and then deleting it, on the first page of TS1. That notation was later partially erased (see the Introduction, p. 29). Clemens’s notes on TS1 suggest that he considered publishing an excerpt in the NAR, but he did not revise TS2.
Marginal Notes on TS1 Concerning Publication in the NAR