Mr. Clemens plays practical joke on Jim WolfⒶtextual note—Wasps in his bed—From Susy’s BiographyⒶtextual note—Tributes to Mr. Clemens on his fiftiethⒶtextual note birthday from Oliver Wendell Holmes and Uncle Remus—Depression which the fiftiethⒶtextual note year brought to James Russell Lowell and Major GeneralⒶtextual note Franklin—Mr. Clemens not affected by it.
IⒶtextual note remember a circumstance in support of this conviction of mine; it preceded theⒶtextual note episode which I have just recorded.Ⓐtextual note In those extremely youthful days I was not aware that practical joking was a thing which, aside from being as a rule witless, is a base pastime and disreputable. In those early days I gave the matter no thought, but indulged freely in practical joking without stopping to consider its moral aspects. During three-fourths of my life I have held the practical joker in limitless contempt and detestation; I have despised him as I have despised no other criminal, and when I am delivering my opinion about him the reflection that I have been a practical joker myself seems to increase my bitterness rather than to modify it.
One afternoon, ages ago when I was fourteen or fifteen years old,Ⓐtextual note I found the upper part of the window in Jim Wolf’sⒶtextual note bedroom thickly cushionedⒶtextual note with wasps. Jim always slept on the side of his bed that was against the window. I had what seemed to me a happy inspiration:Ⓐtextual note I turned back the bed-clothesⒶtextual note andⒶtextual note brushed the wasps down and collected a few hundred of them on the sheet on that side of the bed, then turned the covers over them and made prisoners of them. I made a deep crease down the centreⒶtextual note of the bed to protect the front side from invasion by them, and then at night I offered to sleep with Jim. He was willing.
I made it a point to be in bed first,Ⓐtextual note to see if my side of it was still a safe place to rest in. It was. None of the wasps had passed the frontier. As soon as Jim was ready for bed I blew out the candle and let him climb in in the dark. He was talking, as usual, but I couldn’t answer, because by anticipation I was suffocating with laughter, and although I gagged myself with a hatful of the sheet I was on the point of exploding all the time. Jim stretched himself out comfortably, still pleasantly chatting; then his talk began to break, and become disjointed; separations intervened between his words, and each separation was emphasized by a more or less sudden and violent twitch of his body, and I knew that the immigrants were getting in their work. I knew I ought to evince some sympathy, and ask what was the matter, but I couldn’t do it safely,Ⓐtextual note because I should laugh if I tried. Presently he stopped talking altogether—that is,Ⓐtextual note on the subject which he had been pursuing, and saidⒶtextual note,
“There is something in this bed.”
I knew it, but held my peace. He said,Ⓐtextual note
“There’s thousands of them.”
Then he said he was going to find out what it was. He reached down and began to [begin page 263] explore. The wasps resented this intrusion and began to stab him all over and everywhere. Then he said he had captured one of them and asked me to strike a light. I did it, and when he climbed out of bed his shirt was black withⒶtextual note half-crushed waspsⒶtextual note dangling by one hind leg, and in his two hands he held a dozen prisoners that were stinging and stabbing him with energy, but his gritⒶtextual note was good and he held them fast. By the light of the candle he identified them, and said,Ⓐtextual note
“Wasps!”
It was his last remark for the night. He added nothing to it. In silence he uncovered his side of the bed and, dozen by dozen, he removed the wasps to the floor and beat them to a pulp with the bootjack,Ⓐtextual note with earnest and vindictive satisfaction, while I shook the bed with mute laughter—laughter which was not all a pleasure to me, for I had the sense that his silence was ominous. The work of extermination being finally completed, he blew out the light and returned to the bed and seemed to compose himself to sleep—in fact he did lie stiller than anybody else could have done in the circumstances.
I remained awake as long as I could, and did what I could to keep my laughter from shaking the bed and provoking suspicion, but even my fears could not keep me awake forever, and I finally fell asleep and presently woke again—under persuasion of circumstances. Jim was kneeling on my breast and pounding me in the face with both fists. It hurt—but he was knocking all the restraints of my laughter loose; I could not contain it any longer, and I laughed until all my body was exhausted,Ⓐtextual note and my face, as I believed, battered to a pulp.
Jim never afterward referred to that episode, and I had better judgment than to do it myself, for he was a third longer than I was, although not any wider.
I played many practical jokes upon him,Ⓐtextual note but they were all cruel and all barren of wit. Any brainless swindler could have invented them. When a person of mature age perpetrates a practical joke it is fair evidence, I think, that he is weak in the head and hasn’t enough heart to signify.
I have wandered far from my semi-centennial. Susy inserts a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes and a greeting from Uncle Remus (Joel Chandler Harris)Ⓔexplanatory note.
From Susy’s Biography.
To Mark Twain
(on his fiftieth birthday).
We both of us were younger,—
How fondly mumbling o’er the past
Is Memory’s toothless hunger!
So fifty years have fled, they say,
Since first you took to drinking,—
I mean in Nature’s milky way,—
Of course no ill I’m thinking.
[begin page 264] But while on life’s uneven road
Your track you’ve been pursuing,
What fountains from your wit have flowed—
What drinks you have been brewing!
I know whence all your magic came,—
Your secret I’ve discovered,—
The source that fed your inward flame—
The dreams that round you hovered:
Before you learned to bite or munch
Still kicking in your cradle,
The Muses mixed a bowl of punch
And Hebe seized the ladle.
Dear babe, whose fiftieth year to-day
Your ripe half-century rounded,
Your books the precious draught betray
The laughing Nine compounded.
So mixed the sweet, the sharp, the strong,
Each finds its faults amended,
The virtues that to each belong
In happier union blended.
And what the flavor can surpass
Of sugar, spirit, lemons?
So while one health fills every glass
Mark Twain for Baby Clemens!
Nov. 23d, 1885. Oliver Wendell HolmesⒺexplanatory note .
To the Editors of The Critic:
There must be some joke about this matter, or else fifty years are not as burdensome as they were in the days when men were narrow-minded and lacked humor—that is to say, when there was no Mark Twain to add salt to youth and to season old age. In those days a man at fifty was conceded to be old. If he had as many enemies as he had grandchildren it was thought that he had lived a successful life. Now Mark Twain has no grandchildren, and his enemies are only among those who do not know how to enjoy the humor that is inseparable from genuine human nature.
I saw Mr. Twain not so very long ago piloting a steamboat up and down the Mississippi River in front of New Orleans, and his hand was strong and his eye keen. Somewhat later I heard him discussing a tough German sentence with littleⒶtextual note Jean—a discussion in which the toddling child probably had the best of it,—but his mind was clear, and he was bubbling over with good humor. I have seen him elsewhere and under other circumstances, but the fact that he was bordering on fifty years never occurred to me.
And yet I am glad that he is fifty years old. He has earned the right to grow old and mellow. He has put his youth in his books, and there it is perennial. His last [begin page 265] book is better than his first, and there his youth is renewed and revived. I know that some of the professional critics will not agree with me, but there is not in our fictive literature a more wholesome book than ‘Huckleberry Finn.’ It is history, it is romance, it is life. Here we behold human character stripped of all tiresome details; we see people growing and living; we laugh at their humor, share their griefs; and, in the midst of it all, behold we are taught the lesson of honesty, justice and mercy.
But this is somewhat apart from my purpose; it was my desire simply to join The Critic in honoring the fiftieth anniversary of an author who has had the genius to be original, and the courage to give a distinctively American flavor to everything he has ever written.
Joel Chandler HarrisⒺexplanatory note.
Twenty-one years have gone by since then, but they have had absolutely no effect upon my spiritual constitution; they have left not a single trace upon it; on the contrary, I seem to feel several years younger than I felt then. When a man reaches fifty, age seems to suddenly descend upon him like a black cloud. He feels immeasurably old—very much older than he is ever to feel again, I am sure. I doubt if any person ever crosses his fiftieth parallel without experiencing what I have just described. Once when I was visiting Howells in Cambridge, a long time ago, he glanced through the window and said,
“Be careful now; don’t mention age; keep clear away from subjects that can suggest it. Here comes James Russell LowellⒺexplanatory note. He has just arrived at his half-century and thinks he is a thousand years old. He is under a depression which he cannot shake off. He is miserable with the realization that he is at last old—old beyond escape, old beyond cure; but he keeps his black secret shut up within, and perhaps is not aware that it is exposing itself on the outside, in his carriage and expression, as effectively as he could expose it by speech. Just at present his age is the only thing he thinks about and the only thing he won’t talk about.”Ⓐtextual note
It was true. Mr. Lowell talked to usⒶtextual note about many things during the next hour, but age was not one of them.
Several years later another instance came under my notice. Major GeneralⒶtextual note Franklin, who had been one of McClellan’s favorite generals in the Civil WarⒶtextual note, arrived at his fiftieth year,Ⓐtextual note and his life-long cheerfulness suddenly deserted him as completely as if it had been a garment which he had discarded. He sat an evening through at the Monday Evening ClubⒺexplanatory note and when it came his turn to speak he excused himself, and during the evening no utterance escaped him but now and then a profound sigh. But within a couple of months he had resumed his youth again and had forgotten that he was old. There was evidence of this at the club. He illustrated his part of the discussion with war reminiscences of a cheerful sort, just as had been his common habit before the fifty-year bolt struck him down. One of his illustrations was the followingⒶtextual note incident. I have forgotten what he employed it to illustrate, but I remember the incident very well. He was telling about the rout at the first Bull RunⒺexplanatory note, and was describing the wild flight of the soldiery and how they flung knapsacks, muskets, and everything away as they fled, and how they sought [begin page 266] protection from the bullets wherever they could find it. He found one of his soldiers lying at full length in a gully, and said to him,Ⓐtextual note
“Come out of that, you rabbit! Come out of it and try to be a man!”
But the soldier said tranquilly “Yes, you want the place yourself, you son of a bitch!”
Lowell regained his cheerfulness and went to his death a cheerful soul at seventy-two. Franklin reached a greater age, I think, but the depressions which his fiftieth year brought him passed quickly and did not return.
I do not perceive that my fifty-seven added years have broughtⒶtextual note serious depressions to me, if any at all, but if they have, they have failed toⒶtextual note last. I am aware that I am very old now, but I am also aware that I have never been so young as I am now, in spirit, since I was fourteenⒶtextual note and entertained Jim WolfⒶtextual note with the wasps. I am only able to perceive that I am old by a mental process; I am altogether unable to feel old in spirit. It is a pity, too, for my lapses from gravity must surely often be a reproach to me. When I am in the company of very young people I always feel that I am one of them, and they probably privately resent it.
Susy inserts a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes and a greeting from Uncle Remus (Joel Chandler Harris)] Holmes’s poem and the letter from Harris are from a clipping of The Critic of 28 November 1885 which Susy pasted into her biography (see AD, 15 Oct 1906, note at 259.21–26).
Oliver Wendell Holmes] Clemens expressed his gratitude in the following letter to Holmes, probably written on 29 November 1885 ( MTL, 2:466):
Dear Mr. Holmes,—I shall never be able to tell you the half of how proud you have made me. If I could you would say you were nearly paid for the trouble you took. And then the family: If I can convey the electrical surprise and gratitude and exaltation of the wife and the children last night, when they happened upon that Critic where I had, with artful artlessness, spread it open and retired out of view to see what would happen—well, it was great and fine and beautiful to see, and made me feel as the victor feels when the shouting hosts march by; and if you also could have seen it you would have said the account was squared. For I have brought them up in your company, as in the company of a warm and friendly and beneficent but far-distant sun; and so, for you to do this thing was for the sun to send down out of the skies the miracle of a special ray and transfigure me before their faces. I knew what that poem would be to them; I knew it would raise me up to remote and shining heights in their eyes, to very fellowship with the chambered Nautilus itself, and that from that fellowship they could never more dissociate me while they should live; and so I made sure to be by when the surprise should come.
Charles Dudley Warner is charmed with the poem for its own felicitous sake; and so indeed am I, but more because it has drawn the sting of my fiftieth year; taken away the pain of it, the grief of it, the somehow shame of it, and made me glad and proud it happened.
With reverence and affection,
Sincerely yours,
S. L. Clemens.
Joel Chandler Harris] Clemens also wrote to Harris on 29 November 1885 (GEU):
Dear Uncle Remus:
I thank you cordially; & particularly for the good word about Huck, that abused child of mine who has had so much unfair mud flung at him. Somehow I can’t help believing in him, & it’s a great refreshment to my faith to have a man back me up who has been where such boys live, & knows what he is talking about.
May you never be fifty till you’ve got to be, & then may we all be there to say the kind word that will mollify the affront of it.
Sincerely Yours
S L Clemens
In addition to thanking his friends individually, Clemens wrote to them as a group via The Critic, also on 29 November (CLU-SC):
My dear Conspirators:
It was the pleasantest surprise I have ever had, & you have my best thanks. It reconciles me to being fifty years old; & it was for you to invent the miracle that could do that—I could never have invented one myself that could do it. May you live to be fifty yourselves, & find a fellow-benefactor in that time of awful need.
Sincerely Yours
S. L. Clemens
No individual letter thanking Warner for his tribute in The Critic is known to survive (see AD, 15 Oct 1906; “Mark Twain Surprised,” The Critic, 4 Dec 1885, 271).
James Russell Lowell] Lowell turned fifty on 22 February 1869, almost a year before Clemens met Howells in December 1869.
Major General Franklin, who had been one of McClellan’s favorite generals in the Civil War . . . Monday Evening Club] William Buel Franklin served under General George B. McClellan. Clemens discusses Franklin, McClellan, and the Monday Evening Club in the Autobiographical Dictations of 12 and 13 January 1906 ( AutoMT1 , 269–72, 273, 558 n. 269.1–6, 560 n. 273.3–5).
rout at the first Bull Run] The First Battle of Bull Run, fought near Manassas, Virginia, on 21 July 1861, ended with the Union forces retreating in panic.
Source documents.
Critic Clipping from The Critic, 28 November 1885, 253, attached to pp. 59–60 of OSC 1885–86: ‘To Mark . . . Chandler Harris.’ (263.31–265.12).TS1 ribbon Typescript, leaves numbered 1360–69, made from Hobby’s notes and The Critic and revised.
TS1 carbon Typescrpt carbon, leaves numbered 1360–69, revised.
Paine reviewed TS1 ribbon for possible publication in NAR; he queried the entire anecdote about Jim Wolf for possible omission. Clemens lightly revised TS1 ribbon, then transferred most of his revisions to TS1 carbon. He then further revised TS1 carbon with the intention of using it in an NAR installment together with an excerpt about the execution of deserters from AD, 21 March 1906, but no such installment was produced. The first three sections of this proposed installment have not been identified.
As Clemens notes in the dictation (‘Susy inserts a poem’, 263.28), Susy Clemens pasted a clipping from The Critic for 28 November 1885 into her biography. The clipping includes the texts of three letters to the journal—from Frank Stockton, Charles Dudley Warner, and Joel Chandler Harris—plus a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Hobby was evidently given the clipping to transcribe (the exactness of her transcription demonstrates that it was not read aloud to her, as were other parts of the biography), and so it forms the basis of our text. (One of the letters and the poem are in this dictation; the two remaining letters are in AD, 15 October 1906.) Susy cut off the dateline at the bottom of Harris’s letter— ‘Atlanta, Ga., 21 Nov., 1885.’—which is therefore omitted here as well.
Marginal Notes on TS1 carbon Concerning Publication in NAR