Mrs. Clemens’s warning to Mr. Clemens when he attends the Cleveland reception at White House—Describes the Paris house in which they lived in 1893—Also room in Villa Viviani—Also dining roomⒶapparatus note in house at Riverdale—Tells how Mr. Clemens was “dusted offⒶapparatus note” after the various dinners—and the card system of signals—Letter from Mr. Gilder regarding Mr. Cleveland’s sixty-ninthⒶapparatus note birthday—Mason.
I was always heedless. I was born heedless; and therefore I was constantly, and quite unconsciously, committing breaches of the minor proprietiesⒶapparatus note, which brought upon me humiliations which ought to have humiliated me but didn’t, because I didn’t know anything had happened. But Livy knew; and so the humiliations fell to her share, poor child, who had not earned them and did not deserve them. She always said I was the most difficult child she had. She was very sensitive about me. It distressed her to see me do heedless things which could bring me under criticism, and so she was always watchful and alert to protect me from the kind of transgressions which I have been speaking of.
When I was leaving Hartford for Washington, upon the occasion referred to, she saidⒶapparatus note “I have written a small warning and put it in a pocket of your dress vestⒶapparatus note. When you are dressing to go to the Authors’ Reception at the White HouseⒺexplanatory note you will naturally put your fingers in your vest pockets, according to your custom, and you will find that little note there. Read it carefully, and do as it tells you. I cannot be with you, and so IⒶapparatus note delegate my sentry duties to this little note. If I should give you the warning by word of mouth, now, it would pass from your head and be forgotten in a few minutes.”
It was President Cleveland’s first term. I had never seen his wife—the young, the beautiful, the good-hearted, the sympathetic, the fascinatingⒺexplanatory note. Sure enough, just as I had finished dressing to go to the White House I found that little note, which I had long ago forgotten. It was a grave little note, a serious little note, like its writer, but it made me laugh. Livy’s gentle gravities [begin page 386] often produced that effect upon me, where the expert humorist’s best joke would have failed, for I do not laugh easily.
When we reached the White House and I was shaking hands with the President, he started to say something but I interrupted him and said,
“IfⒶapparatus note your Excellency will excuse me, I will come back in a moment; but now I have a very important matter to attend to, and it must be attended to at once.”
IⒶapparatus note turned to Mrs. Cleveland, the young, the beautiful, the fascinating, and gave her my card, on the back of which I had written “He didn’t”Ⓐapparatus note —and I asked her to sign her name below those wordsⒺexplanatory note.
She saidⒶapparatus note “He didn’t? He didn’t what?”
“Oh,” I said, “never mind. We cannot stop to discuss that now. This is urgent. Won’t you please sign your name?” (I handed her a fountain pen.)Ⓐapparatus note
“Why,”Ⓐapparatus note she said,Ⓐapparatus note “I cannot commit myself in that way. Who is it that didn’t?Ⓐapparatus note—and what is it that he didn’t?Ⓐapparatus note”
“Oh,” I said,Ⓐapparatus note “time is flying, flying, flying. Won’t you take me out of my distress and sign your name to it? It’s all right. I give you my word it’s all right.”
She looked nonplused;Ⓐapparatus note but hesitatingly and mechanicallyⒶapparatus note she took the pen and said,
“IⒶapparatus note will sign it. I will take the risk. But you must tell me all about it, right afterward, so that you can be arrested before you get out of the house in case there should be anything criminal about this.”
Then she signed; and I handed her Mrs. Clemens’s note, which was very brief, very simple, and to the point. It saidⒶapparatus note “Don’t wear your arctics in the White House.”Ⓐapparatus note It made her shout; and at my request she summoned a messenger and we sent that card at once to the mail on its way to Mrs. Clemens in Hartford.
During 1893 and ’94 we were living in Paris, the first half of the time at the Hotel Brighton, in the rue de Rivoli, the other half in a charming mansion in the rue de l’UniversitéⒶapparatus note, on the other side of the SeineⒺexplanatory note, which, by good luck, we had gotten hold of through anotherⒶapparatus note man’s ill luck. This was Pomeroy, the artistⒺexplanatory note. Illness in his family had made it necessary for him to go to the Riviera. He was paying thirty-six hundred dollars a year for the house,Ⓐapparatus note but allowed us to have it at twenty-six hundred. It was a lovely house; large, quaint, indefinite,Ⓐapparatus note charmingly furnished and decorated; built upon no particular plan; delightfully rambling, uncertain, and full of surprises. You were always getting lost in it, and finding nooks and corners and rooms which you didn’t know were there and whose presence you had not suspected before. It was built by a rich French artist; and he had also furnished it and decorated it with his own hand.Ⓐapparatus note The studio was cosinessⒶapparatus note itself. We used it as drawing-room, sitting-room, living-room, dancing-room—we used it for everything. We couldn’t get enough of it. It is odd that it should have been so cosyⒶapparatus note, for it was forty feet long, forty feet high, and thirty feet wide, with a vast fireplace on each side in the middle, and a musicians’Ⓐapparatus note gallery at one end. But we had, before this, found out that under the proper conditions spaciousness and cosinessⒶapparatus note do go together most affectionately and congruously. We had found it out a year or two earlier, when we were living in the Villa Viviani three miles outside the walls of Florence. That house had a room in it which was forty feet square and fortyⒶapparatus note feet high, and at first we couldn’t endure it. We called it the Mammoth [begin page 387] CaveⒺexplanatory note; we called it the skating-rink; we called it the Great Sahara;Ⓐapparatus note we called it all sorts of names intended to convey our disrespect. We had to pass through it to get from one end of the house to the other, but we passed straight through and did not loiter—and yet before long, and without our knowing how it came about,Ⓐapparatus note we found ourselves infesting that vast place day and night, and preferring it to any other part of the house.
Four or five years ago, when we took a house on the banks of the Hudson, at RiverdaleⒺexplanatory note, we drifted from room to room on our tour of inspection, always with a growing doubt as to whether we wanted that house or not. But at last when we arrived in a dining roomⒶapparatus note that was sixty feet long, thirty feet wide, and had two great fireplacesⒶapparatus note in it, that settled it.
But I have wandered. What I was proposing to talk about was quite another matter—to wit: in that pleasant Paris house Mrs. Clemens gathered little dinner companies together once or twice a week, and it goes without saying that in these circumstances my defects had a large chance for display. Always, always without fail, as soon as the guests were out of the house, I saw that I had been miscarrying again. Mrs. Clemens explained to me the various things which I had been doingⒶapparatus note which should have been left undone, and she was always able to say,
“IⒶapparatus note have told you over and over again, yet you do these same things every time, just as if I never had warned you.”
TheⒶapparatus note children always waited up to have the joy of overhearing this. Nothing charmed them, nothing delighted them, nothing satisfied their souls like seeing me under the torture.Ⓐapparatus note The moment we started up stairsⒶapparatus note we wouldⒶapparatus note hear skurryingⒶapparatus note garments, and weⒶapparatus note knew that those children had been at it again. They had a name for this performance. They called it “dusting-off papa.” They were obedient young rascals as a rule, by habit, by training, by long experience; but they drew the line there. They couldn’t be persuaded to obey the command to stay out of hearing when I was being dusted offⒶapparatus note.
At last I had an inspiration. It is astonishing that it had not occurred to me earlier. I said,
“WhyⒶapparatus note Livy, you know that dusting me off after theseⒶapparatus note dinners is not the wise way. You could dust me off after every dinner for a year and I should always be just as competent to do the forbidden thing at each succeeding dinner as if you had not said a word, because in the meantime I have forgotten all these instructions. I think the correct way is for you to dust me off immediately before the guests arrive, and then I can keep some of it in my head and things will go better.”
She recognized that that was wisdom, and that it was a very good idea. Then we set to work to arrange a system of signals to be delivered by her to me during dinner; signals which would indicate definitely which particular crime I was now engaged in, so that I could change to another. Apparently one of the children’s most precious joys had come to an end and passed out of their life. I supposed that that was so, but it wasn’t. The young unteachablesⒶapparatus note got a screen arranged so that they could be behind it during the dinner and listen for the signals and entertain themselves with them. The system of signals was very simple, but it was very effective. If Mrs. Clemens happened to be so busy, at any time, talking with her elbow-neighbor,Ⓐapparatus note that she overlooked something that I was doing, she was sure to get a low-voiced hint from behind that screen in these words:
“Blue card, mamma;”Ⓐapparatus note or “red card, mamma”Ⓐapparatus note—“green card, mamma”—so that I was under double and triple guard. What the mother didn’t notice the children detected for her.
[begin page 388]As I say, the signals were quite simple, but very effective. At a hint from behind the screen, Livy would look down the table and say, in a voice full of interest, if not of counterfeited apprehension, “What did you do with the blue card that was on the dressing-table—”
That was enough. I knew what was happening—that I was talking the lady on my right to death and never paying any attention to the one on my left. The blue card meant “Let the lady on your right have a reprieve; destroy the one on your left;”Ⓐapparatus note so I would at once go to talking vigorously to the lady on my left. It wouldn’t be long till there would be another hint, followed by a remark from Mrs. Clemens which had in it an apparently casual reference to a red card, which meant “Oh, are you going to sit there all the evening and never say anything? Do wake up and talk.” So I waked up and drowned the table with talk. We had a number of cards,Ⓐapparatus note of differentⒶapparatus note colors, each meaning a definite thing, each calling attention to some crime or other in my common list; and that system was exceedingly useful. It was entirely successful. It was like Buck Fanshaw’s riot, itⒶapparatus note broke up the riot before it got a chance to beginⒺexplanatory note. It headed off crime after crime all through the dinner, and I always came out at the end successful, triumphant, with large praises owing to me, and I got them on the spot.
It is a far call back over the accumulation of years to that night in the White House when Mrs. Cleveland signed the card. Many things have happened since then. The Cleveland family have been born since then. Ruth, the first-born, whom I never knew,Ⓐapparatus note but with whom I corresponded when she was a baby, lived to reach a blooming and lovely young maidenhood, then passed awayⒺexplanatory note.
To-day comes this letter, and it brings back the Clevelands, and the past, and my lost little correspondent.
EditorialⒶapparatus note Department
The Century Magazine. March 3, 1906.
Union Square, New York.
My dear Mr. Clemens:
President Finley and I are collecting letters to Ex-President Cleveland from his friends, appropriate to his 69th birthday.
If the plan appeals to you, will you kindly send a sealed greeting under cover to me at the above address, and I will send it, and the other letters, South to himⒺexplanatory note in time for him to get them, all together, on the 18th of the present month.
Yours sincerely,
R. W. Gilder.
G.
Mr. Samuel L. Clemens.Ⓐapparatus note
When the little Ruth was about a yearⒶapparatus note or a year and a halfⒶapparatus note old, Mason, an old and valued friend of mine,Ⓐapparatus note was Consul GeneralⒶapparatus note at Frankfort-on-the-Main. I had known him well in 1867, ’68 and ’69, in America, and I and mine had spent a good deal of time with him and his family in Frankfort in ’78Ⓔexplanatory note. He was a thoroughly competent, diligent, and conscientious official. Indeed he possessed these qualities in so large a degree that among AmericanⒶapparatus note ConsulsⒶapparatus note he might fairly be said to be monumental, for at that time our consular service was largely—and I think I may say mainly—in [begin page 389] the hands of ignorant, vulgar, and incapable men who had been political heelersⒺexplanatory note in America, and had been taken care of by transference to consulates where they could be supported at the Government’s expense instead of being transferred to the poor houseⒶapparatus note, which would have been cheaper and more patriotic. Mason, in ’78, had been Consul GeneralⒶapparatus note in Frankfort several years—four, I think. He had come from Marseilles with a great recordⒺexplanatory note. He had been ConsulⒶapparatus note there during thirteen years, and one part of his record was heroic. There had been a desolating cholera epidemic, and Mason was the only representative of any foreign country who stayed at his post and saw it through. And during that time he not only represented his own country, but he represented all the other countries in Christendom and did their work, and did it well and was praised for it by themⒶapparatus note in words of no uncertain sound. This great record of Mason’s had saved him from official decapitation straight along while Republican PresidentsⒶapparatus note occupied the chair, but now it was occupied by a Democrat. Mr. Cleveland was not seated in it—he was not yetⒶapparatus note inaugurated—before he was deluged with applications from Democratic politicians desiring the appointment of a thousand or so politically useful Democrats to Mason’s place. MasonⒶapparatus note wrote me and asked me if I couldn’t do something to save him from destructionⒺexplanatory note.
upon the occasion referred to . . . Authors’ Reception at the White House] That is, referred to at the end of the previous Autobiographical Dictation (26 Feb 1906). After his first reading at a matinee on 17 March 1888, which Olivia did not attend, Clemens went to a tea at the White House. Olivia joined him in Washington in time for his second reading on 19 March, and accompanied him to the reception afterward (16 Mar 1888 to OLC, CU-MARK, in LLMT, 249–51; Rosamond Gilder 1916, 195–96).
President Cleveland’s first term. I had never seen his wife . . . the fascinating] Cleveland served two terms, in 1885–89 and 1893–97. He married Frances Folsom (1864–1947) in the White House on 2 June 1886. She became known for her beauty, her advocacy of women’s education, her Saturday receptions for working-class women and the poor, and her liveliness and wit. The anecdote Clemens recounts here must have occurred on 17 March 1888, at the tea after his first Washington reading.
I asked her to sign her name below those words] The card, now in the Mark Twain Papers, is reproduced here.
During 1893 and ’94 we were living in Paris . . . other side of the Seine] The Clemens family stayed at the Hotel Brighton from November 1893 until June 1894, when they left the city to travel elsewhere in France, returning to Paris in the fall. There they again stayed at the Hotel Brighton until mid-November, when they relocated to the house at 169, rue de l’Université, where they remained until the end of April 1895.
Pomeroy, the artist] The English sculptor Frederick William Pomeroy (1856–1924) won the gold medal and traveling scholarship from the Royal Academy Schools in London in 1885, and subsequently studied in Paris and in Italy. He was associated with the “New Sculpture” movement, which depicted ideal figures drawn from mythology and literature. Nothing is known of his association with Clemens.
Mammoth Cave] An enormous cave in Kentucky, which by the 1890s was thought to be about one hundred seventy-five miles long; it is now known to be over twice that size (Baedeker 1893, 318; National Park Service 2008).
Four or five years ago, when we took a house . . . at Riverdale] In early July 1901 the Clemenses toured William H. Appleton’s house in Riverdale-on-the-Hudson, New York, and arranged to rent it from 1 October. They remained there through July 1903. Clemens called it “the pleasantest home & the pleasantest neighborhood in the Republic” (30 June 1903 to Perkins, NRivd2; Stein 2001, B1; 9 July 1901 to Rogers, CU-MARK, in HHR, 465; Wave Hill 2008).
Buck Fanshaw’s riot, it broke up the riot before it got a chance to begin] In chapter 47 of Roughing It, “Scotty” Briggs tells how Buck Fanshaw had an election riot “all broke up and prevented nice before anybody ever got a chance to strike a blow” ( RI 1993, 314).
The Cleveland family . . . passed away] Ruth (“Baby Ruth,” 1891–1904), who died at twelve of heart failure during a bout of diphtheria, was the first of five Cleveland children, followed by sisters Esther (1893–1980) and Marion (1895–1977), and brothers Richard (1897–1974) and Francis (1903–95) (“Ruth Cleveland Dead,” New York Times, 8 Jan 1904, 7). Clemens wrote to her on 3 November 1892, when she was one year old, just before her father’s election to his second term (DLC):
Dear Miss Cleveland:
If you will read this letter to your father, or ask your mother to do it if you are too busy, I will do something for you someday—anything you command. For I mean to come & see you in the White House before the four years are out. I am going to have Congress enlarge it, for you will take up a good deal of room, probably. And I am writing a book for you to practice your gums on—the very thing, for I know, myself, it is a very tough book. I shall bring my arctics, but that is all right—I know what to do with them now. . . .
No Administration could be more creditable than your father’s & mother’s last one was—& yet it ain’t agoing to begin with this one, now that you are on deck.
You have my homage, & I am
Affectionately Yours
S. L. Clemens.
kindly send a sealed greeting under cover to me . . . South to him] Clemens complied with Gilder’s request the following day. See the Autobiographical Dictation of 6 March 1906 for the text of his letter, which Gilder sent to Cleveland in Stuart, Florida. Gilder had first met President Cleveland in the White House before Cleveland’s marriage in 1886, but their friendship began in 1887 (Richard Watson Gilder 1910, 7; Rosamond Gilder 1916, 142; Lynch 1932, 533).
Mason, an old and valued friend . . . Frankfort in ’78] Clemens first became acquainted with Frank H. Mason (1840–1916), his wife, Jennie V. Birchard Mason (1844?–1916), and their son, Dean B. Mason (b. 1867), in Cleveland in 1867–68. Mason worked as reporter, editorial writer, and finally managing editor of the Cleveland Leader from 1866 to 1880, when he was appointed U.S. consul at Basel, Switzerland. Clemens must be misremembering when he “spent a good deal of time” with Mason, since neither family sojourned in Frankfurt in 1878. The families did socialize, however, during the summer of 1892 in Bad Nauheim: Mason wrote in 1905 that his family had “kept you all in the same old warm corner of our hearts,” and recalled, “We were at the Hotel Kaiserhof, in the suite of rooms just above the ones in which Mrs. Clemens and you and the girls lived during that happy summer” (Mason to SLC, 30 July 1905, CU-MARK; “Mrs. Frank H. Mason Dead,” Washington Post, 26 Nov 1916, 2).
ignorant, vulgar, and incapable men . . . political heelers] Heelers, or ward heelers, were apparently so called because they followed at the heels of a political boss, sometimes acting unscrupulously in the hope of future reward.
Mason, in ’78, had been Consul General in Frankfort several years . . . He had come from Marseilles with a great record] Although Clemens’s account of Mason’s career is essentially correct, his dates are not. In early 1884, Mason was appointed U.S. consul at Marseilles, where within months a cholera epidemic broke out, followed by a widespread panic and flight from the city. During the ensuing year he distinguished himself by his detailed dispatches about the origins, treatment, and social effects of the disease (which was complicated by a concurrent outbreak of typhus and typhoid fever), and by his efforts to prevent its spread. By late August 1885 he reported that the panic of 1884 had subsided somewhat, but the death rate in the “reeking city” was still a “frightful record.” From 1889 through 1898 he served as consul general at Frankfurt, and from 1899 to 1905 as consul general at Berlin; his next post was in Paris (Washington Post: “The Cholera at Marseilles,” 8 Sept 1885, 4; “Capt. Frank H. Mason Dead,” 25 June 1916, ES11; New York Times: “The Cholera Panic in France,” 4 July 1884, 1; “Origin of the Epidemic,” 1 Aug 1884, 3; Department of State 1911).
This great record of Mason’s . . . save him from destruction] Mason’s letter is not known to survive. For Clemens’s response to his request, see the next Autobiographical Dictation (6 Mar 1906).
Source documents.
TS1 Typescript, leaves numbered 398–409, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.TS2 Typescript, leaves numbered 536–47, made from the revised TS1 and further revised.
NAR 7pf Galley proofs of NAR 7, typeset from the revised TS2 and further revised, ViU (the same extent as NAR 7).
NAR 7 North American Review 183 (7 December 1906), 1089–91: ‘I was . . . in Hartford.’ (385.20–386.24); ‘When the . . . from destruction.’ (388.36–389.15).
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). One revision in black ink on TS1 is in Paine’s hand: the insertion of ‘A year or two later’ (see the entry at 10.19). Since this revision was incorporated into TS2, it must date from 1906, but is not adopted here. Harvey reviewed TS2 for possible publication in the NAR and selected two excerpts. Clemens revised TS2 to serve as printer’s copy for NAR 7, where it is followed by excerpts from the ADs of 6 March and 23 March 1906. The top of page 539 was cut away and sent to the NAR with pages 546–47; Clemens retained the intervening pages.
Marginal Notes on TS2 Concerning Publication in the NAR