Georgia Cayvan dead—Some details of her career—The pension scheme for raising money for charity—Instance where it worked: Helen Keller—Mr. Ellsworth’s attempt to raise money, by written applications, for Major Pond’s little boy, which did not work.
Georgia Cayvan is dead. I find this in the morning paper. She was close upon fifty years old. It is another tragedy. Apparently, broadly speaking, life is just that, simply that—a tragedy; with a dash of comedy distributed through it, here and there, to heighten the pain and magnify it, by contrast. I knew Georgia Cayvan thirty years ago. [begin page 278] She was so young, then, and so innocent and ignorant, that life was a joy to her. She did not need to say so in words; it beamed from her eyes and expressed itself—almost shouted itself—in her attitudes, her carriage, the tones of her voice, and in all her movements. It was refreshment to a jaded spirit to look at her. She was a handsome creature; I remember her very well indeed. She was just starting in life; just making tentative beginnings toward earning her bread. She had taken lessons in the Delsarte elocutionary methodsⒺexplanatory note, and was seeking pupils, with the idea of teaching that art. She came to our house in Hartford every day, during a month or two, and her class came there to learn. Presently she tried her hand as a public reader. Once, when she was to read to the young ladies in Miss Porter’s celebrated schoolⒺexplanatory note in Farmington, eight miles back in the country, I went out there and heard her. She was not yet familiar enough with the arbitrary Delsarte gestures to make them seem easy and natural, and so they were rather machine-like, and marred her performance; but her voice and her personality saved the day and won the praises of the house.
The stage was her dream and her ambition. She presently got engagements in New York, and soon began to rise in popular favor. Her advancement was rapid; she quickly acquired a wide reputation and became a welcome figure upon every stage between New York and San Francisco. She commanded high pay; she was a pet of prosperity; her high place seemed permanently established; consequently she was envied, which was natural. Years went by; her health failed; she was obliged to retire from the stage; her name no longer appeared in print, and she was presently forgotten. By and by she was able to appear again, for a little while, but the days of her good fortune were over; she showed age and care; her form had lost its grace, and to her houses she was a stranger; they were cold, and their coldness quenched her fires. She could not play against this frost, which was more than a frost, and deadlier, since the feeling evinced was that of compassion—the most fatal of all the attitudes an audience can assume.
She again retired from the stage, discouraged and with broken health, and again her name passed out of print. Presently it was discovered that her mind was affectedⒺexplanatory note, and that she was wholly without means. But she had been generous, in her prosperous days, toward actors smitten with misfortune, and now her generosity bore fruit. The profession flocked to her reliefⒺexplanatory note, and quickly raised a fund sufficient to keep her in comfort during the rest of her days. She has remained in a private asylum for the insane ever since, and now good fortune is hers once more after these eleven dragging years of melancholy darkness, for she is dead. It is a pathetic history.
Actors can alwaysⒶtextual note raise a fund for their unfortunates, they being able by their genius and accomplishments to furnish an equivalent for every dollar the friend and the stranger may contribute, but what other profession can do it? Raising a fund for a benevolent object is one of the most difficult enterprises that this life furnishes. As much as thirty years ago, I had already acquired experience enough in the solemn joys of raising charity funds to enable me to retire from that business permanently. Mrs. Clemens and I undertook, at various times, to raise several funds of the kind, of several thousand dollars each, but we had no success, and had to contribute the whole of the [begin page 279] funds ourselves, to “save our face.”Ⓐtextual note This was expensive. That was oneⒶtextual note difficulty; another difficulty was that the fund-raising idea is a stupid one by the very nature of it. So we retired from that business and invented a better system—a more rational system—and reduced it to a code, and put it in writing, for future guidance. This was a pension system.
The idea was this: a rich man who could afford a subscription of a thousand dollars quite easily, wouldn’t contribute it; he wouldn’t spare it out of his business; neither was he willing to cut down his children’s estate to that degree. But we argued that perhaps he would contribute the interest Ⓐtextual note on a thousand dollars annually, for a time, and that if he paid the fifty dollars in instalments, quarterly, he wouldn’t miss, nor mind, the small periodical outgo of twelve dollars and a half. We also argued that the man to whom a hundred dollars in a lump was a matter of consequence, would not contribute so considerable a sum to a fund, but could be persuaded to contribute the interest upon such a sum once a year toward a pension account.
The pension scheme succeeded to our entire satisfaction. When we asked a person to contribute the interest on a certain sum we asked him to contribute it annually for as many years as he would, but with the distinct understanding that he could withdraw his name, without prejudice, whenever he chose to do it, and without apology or explanation; but give us timely notice, so that we could supply his place with another benefactor, and thus keep the pension aggregate unimpaired.
As the years went by we now and then recommended the pension system to persons who called to get subscriptions for a fund, and we were gratified to see that whenever they tried our system it succeeded. I call to mind a couple of instances of comparatively recent years.
One was the case of Helen Keller. I will come to it presently. I first met Helen Keller, that wonderful creature, when she was fourteen years old. It was at Laurence Hutton’s houseⒺexplanatory note, one rainy Sunday afternoon.Ⓐtextual note She had thenⒶtextual note been under the loving care and competent instruction of Miss Sullivan for seven years. When Miss Sullivan undertook the case, Helen was seven years old, and had been stone blind, deaf, and dumb, for five years and a half. To educate such a child was certainly a formidable undertaking, and nearly equivalent to trying to educate a graven image; but Miss Sullivan was a pastmasterⒶtextual note of Dr. Howe’s methodsⒺexplanatory note, and by heroic pluck and perseverance she gradually introduced the blessed light into that darkened mind. In seven years she made a scholar out of that child. To-day Helen Keller is one of the best educated women in the world. She is a college graduate, and is a competent scholar in Greek, Latin, German, French, and mathematics; she is familiar with the literature of those languages, and not many persons can write so ably, so gracefully, and so eloquently as she—witness the letter which she wrote me last March, and which I copied into this autobiography at the time.
Three or four years after the visit to Laurence Hutton’s house—Ⓐtextual notea visit which I have described at considerable length in an earlier chapter of this autobiography—I was sojourning in London with my family. I received a letter from Hutton, stating that disaster had befallen Helen;Ⓐtextual note that the wealthy gentleman who had been her and her teacher’s support for a number of years, and who had intended to make provision for them in his [begin page 280] will, had suddenly died intestate, leaving Helen and Miss Sullivan destituteⒺexplanatory note. Hutton was proposing to raise a fund of fifty thousand dollars, the income of which was to go to the support of the two women, and he asked me if I could raise a part of this fund in London. I wrote him that it would take him a good while to raise the fifty thousand dollars, and that meantime the beneficiaries would need money. Then I detailed to him the pension scheme, and suggested that he conduct both schemes at the same time, and told him I thought the pension scheme would succeed at once, and that the fund scheme would drag.
After a week or two he wrote that the fund scheme was dragging, but that he had acquired in a single afternoon a pension list of twenty-five hundred dollars a year, the interest on fifty thousand dollars, and that a fund would not be needed. One man on that list pledged twelve hundred dollars a year, the interest on twenty-five thousand dollars, and in the ten years which have since elapsed his contribution has aggregated twelve thousand dollars. He still pays it. He does not feel, or mind, this gradual outgo; but if he had been asked to contribute five thousand dollars in a lump to a fund, he would have declined.
When J. B. Pond, the lecture agent, died, three or four years ago, he left no estate. Ellsworth, of the Century Company, undertook to raise a fund of twelve or fifteen thousand dollars, the interest on it to be devoted to the school and college expenses of Pond’s little boyⒺexplanatory note. Ellsworth wrote and asked me to subscribe, and said he was going to apply to the hundred, or hundred and fifty, or two hundred, professionals, of one kind and another, for whose exhibitions Pond had acted as agent during twenty years. He was going to apply to these people by letter. I wrote him that he would not be able to raise any such fund—certainly not by letter. I proposed my pension scheme, and pledged myself for fifty dollars a year for five years, and begged him to try the system, but not by letter. It must be done in person, and face to face with the victim. But he preferred his own plan, and proceeded to raise his twelve- or fifteen-thousand-dollarⒶtextual note fund by letter. From Sir Henry M. Stanley he received a gift of one hundred dollars, and a like contribution from two or three others of Pond’s most shining stars; but he got no more than a hundred dollars from any client except me, and I would not have contributed my two hundred and fifty dollars in a lump sum.
Stanley’s lecture tour in the United States, after he returned from finding and rescuing Emin PachaⒺexplanatory note, was Pond’s one really brilliantⒶtextual note triumph of his twenty years’ service as a lecture agent. For once, Pond was brave. He offered Stanley a hundred and ten thousand dollars for a hundred and ten nights, all expenses paid, and he came out of the campaign a clear hundred and ten thousand to the good himself.
I knew Stanley well for thirty-seven years—from the day that he stenographically reported a lecture of mine in St. LouisⒺexplanatory note, for a local newspaper, until his death in 1904—and I know that if Ellsworth had sent a persuasive representative to talk with himⒶtextual note on a pension basis, heⒶtextual note would have pledged a hundred dollars a year indefinitely, and without hesitation.
[begin page 281]When Ellsworth got through with his effort to raise a fund of twelve or fifteen thousand dollars, he had secured sixteen hundred, and was a sad, sad man. It is possible that he sometimes admiringly reflects, now, that I am a wise person. As for me, I wish there were some more of usⒶtextual note in the world, for I find it lonesome.
Georgia Cayvan . . . had taken lessons in the Delsarte elocutionary methods] Cayvan (1857–1906) was born in Bath, Maine. She studied at the Lewis B. Monroe School of Oratory, which taught the system of expressive gestures created by French musician and teacher François Delsarte (1811–71), and embarked on a career as a professional reader and reciter (Gagey 1971, 2:314–15; “Georgia Cayvan Dead,” New York Tribune, 20 Nov 1906, 7; Wilbor 1887, 256–57).
Miss Porter’s celebrated school] Sarah Porter’s boarding school for girls in Farmington, Connecticut, established around 1843, offered instruction in Latin, German, French, natural philosophy, rhetoric, mathematics, chemistry, geography, history, and music in a noncompetitive fashion that dispensed with grades and examinations and allowed each student to progress at her own pace. No record of Georgia Cayvan’s visit to the school, or Clemens’s, has been found ( N&J3, 444 n. 121).
The stage was her dream . . . her mind was affected] Cayvan made a great success as Jocasta in an 1881 production of Oedipus Tyrannus. She reached the zenith of her career as the leading woman of New York’s Lyceum Theatre in 1887–94, but in the latter year she entered a period of ill health and inactivity. In 1898 she was named as co-respondent in a sensational divorce case. Although she was exonerated, it was reported that the scandal had deranged her mind. She was placed in a sanatorium in 1900, where she eventually became blind and passed into a vegetative state; news reports leave little doubt that her disease was syphilis (“Miss Cayvan Exonerated,” New York Times, 4 Jan 1899, 7; “Georgia Cayvan Childish,” Hartford Courant, 17 July 1902, 10; “Georgia Cayvan Dead,” New York Tribune, 20 Nov 1906, 7; “Georgia Cayvan Dead,” New York Sun, 20 Nov 1906, 1).
The profession flocked to her relief] In 1903 Cayvan’s personal wealth had been exhausted, and Broadway’s most prominent actors and managers staged a benefit performance on her behalf (“Benefit for Georgia Cayvan,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 13 Jan 1903, 6).
I first met Helen Keller . . . at Laurence Hutton’s house] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 30 March 1906 ( AutoMT1 464–67, 650 n. 465.6–7).
Miss Sullivan was a pastmaster of Dr. Howe’s methods] Samuel Gridley Howe (1801–76) was an American teacher specializing in the education of the blind, the deaf, and the mentally disabled. He taught language to the blind and deaf Laura Bridgman by means of two tactile methods: first, using cards printed with embossed letters, and later, with a manual alphabet (finger spelling). Anne Sullivan, Keller’s teacher, graduated from Howe’s school for the blind (the Perkins Institute); she studied his notes of the Bridgman case before she went to Alabama to teach Keller (for Sullivan see AutoMT1 , 650 n. 465.9).
I was sojourning in London . . . leaving Helen and Miss Sullivan destitute] In November 1896 the Clemenses were in deep seclusion, mourning Susy’s death, when Eleanor Hutton wrote that Keller’s wealthy patron, John S. Spaulding, had died without making provision for her, thus casting in doubt her ability to attend Radcliffe. On 26 November Clemens replied to Mrs. Hutton:
There is only one reason why I do not turn out at once & try to interest rich Englishmen in Helen’s case: I go nowhere, I see no one, I keep my address strictly concealed. I must not get discovered, or my work on my long book would be disastrously interfered with, straightway.
But I have written to Mrs. Rogers & asked her to persuade her husband to lay the case before the other Standard Oil chiefs & ask them to contribute a temporary annual fund, to continue while Helen is in college; something to supply the essential immediate need, & give you time to work out your plan for achieving a permanent fund. I do hope my suggestion will bear fruit. I remarked that Laurence would be close by & handy at Harper’s when wanted.
I would suggest to you that whenever a person declines to subscribe to your permanent fund, you strike him for a $25. annual subscription, & let him off with less, if you must. For many years Mrs. Clemens & I did the annual thing to the amount of $2,300—the interest on $40,000, you see; & it didn’t hamper us—but it would have made us shudder if we had been asked to put up the $40,000. (NjP-SC)
Rogers himself wrote Clemens a month later that “the Helen Keller matter has been adjusted satisfactorily with Mrs. Hutton for the time being, at any rate.” He then described “a singular coincidence in connection with that matter.” Having conversed with Laurence Hutton at a recent Lotos Club dinner, he learned of Helen Keller’s situation and offered to help:
Monday morning at the breakfast table I received a letter from Mrs. Hutton and Mrs. Rogers received a letter from you; they were both on the same subject, viz: Helen Keller. Mrs. Rogers went that day to call on Mrs. Hutton and had a very pleasant talk, and the arrangement that I before referred to was consummated. I do not know whether you would bring that coincidence into your mental telegraphy business or not, at any rate, I thought I would tell you about it, and knew it would please you to say the least. (Rogers to Clemens, 24 Dec 1896, CU-MARK, in HHR, 256–58)
In a letter of 4 January 1897 Clemens agreed, saying the coincidence “is more easily explained as an instance of telegraphy than in any other way” (Salm, in HHR, 258–60). Rogers supported Keller’s education at Radcliffe, and he left her an annuity at his death in 1909 (Herrmann 1999, 94, 108–9; Keller 2005, 113).
When J. B. Pond, the lecture agent, died . . . Pond’s little boy] James B. Pond (see AutoMT1 600 n. 381.14) died of heart failure on 21 June 1903, after an operation to remove a gangrenous leg. His son, James B. Pond, Jr., was thirteen at the time. William Webster Ellsworth (1855–1936) was principally a publisher but was also an author and lecturer, one of Pond’s clients. Clemens answered his appeal in late June 1903: “A fund? Raise it? It is easier to raise the dead. A pension is the thing. I have tried it, & I know. Get people to put up a monthly sum” (late June 1903 to Ellsworth, extract in CU-MARK; Hudson Census 1900, 979:10A; New York Times: “Major J. B. Pond Is Dead,” 22 June 1903, 1; “Wm. W. Ellsworth, Lecturer, 81, Dies,” 19 Dec 1936, 19).
Sir Henry M. Stanley . . . finding and rescuing Emin Pacha] Explorer-author Henry M. Stanley (1841–1904) was born John Rowlands, in Wales. His mother abandoned him at birth, and his father died a short time later. After the death of his grandfather, he was in foster care, then at age six was sent to a workhouse, where he was brutally treated. He ran away at age fifteen, and in 1859 emigrated to New Orleans. There he was adopted by a merchant, Henry Morton Stanley, whose name he assumed. His successful career as a journalist began after the Civil War, during which he fought for—and deserted from—both sides. In 1869 he received an assignment from the New York Herald to search for the Scottish missionary David Livingstone, who had disappeared in Africa several years earlier. After enduring great hardship, he succeeded in November 1871 (“Dr. Livingstone, I presume”), and returned to Europe, where his writings and lectures made him famous. In 1879 Stanley explored the Congo and founded the Congo Free State on behalf of King Leopold II of Belgium. He went back to Africa in 1887 as head of a mission to relieve Emin Pasha, the European-born governor of a province of the Sudan, who was holding out against the Mahdist rebellion which had overrun the rest of the country. But Emin, when located in 1888, wanted supplies, not rescue; he accompanied Stanley to the east coast, only to return to the interior, where he was later killed by slave traders. The relief expedition failed of its object and its casualties were enormous; but Stanley’s lecture tour of America, under the management of James B. Pond, was highly successful (November 1890–April 1891), as was his book In Darkest Africa (1890), which Clemens tried without success to acquire for Webster and Company. Stanley settled in England, served in Parliament, and was knighted in 1899 (25 Oct 1872 to OLC, L5, 201–2 n. 4; Chicago Tribune: “Henry M. Stanley Starts on His Long Lecturing Tour,” 14 Nov 1890, 2; “Henry M. Stanley to Sail Next Week,” 11 Apr 1891, 2; N&J3, 304–5 n. 19).
Source documents.
TS1 ribbon Typescript, leaves numbered 1395–1404, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.TS1 carbon Typescript carbon, leaves numbered 1395–1404, revised.
TS1 ribbon, and its carbon copy, were made by Hobby from her stenographic notes. Both ribbon and carbon bear (nearly identical) sets of authorial revisions. In the one place where a revision on TS1 ribbon is not also made on TS1 carbon (‘interest’ at 279.8), we accept the revision. Clemens marked TS1 carbon: ‘Not usable now’; he must have decided so after he performed the revisions which removed the name of Laurence Hutton (279.25–26, 279.38).