Mark Twain A Biography Part 164

"That is buckwheat. I always recognize buckwheat when I see it. I wish I knew as much about other things as I know about buckwheat. It seems to be very plentiful here; it even grows by the roadside." And a little later: "This is the kind of a road I like; a good country road through the woods."

The water was flowing over the mill-dam where the road crosses the Saugatuck, and he expressed approval of that clear, picturesque little river, one of those charming Connecticut streams. A little farther on a brook cascaded down the hillside, and he compared it with some of the tiny streams of Switzerland, I believe the Giessbach. The lane that led to the new home opened just above, and as he entered the leafy way he said, "This is just the kind of a lane I like," thus completing his acceptance of everything but the house and the location.

The last of the procession had dropped away at the entrance of the lane, and he was alone with those who had most anxiety for his verdict. They had not long to wait. As the carriage ascended higher to the open view he looked away, across the Saugatuck Valley to the nestling village and church-spire and farm-houses, and to the distant hills, and declared the land to be a good land and beautiful--a spot to satisfy one's soul. Then came the house--simple and severe in its architecture--an Italian villa, such as he had known in Florence, adapted now to American climate and needs. The scars of building had not all healed yet, but close to the house waved green gra.s.s and blooming flowers that might have been there always. Neither did the house itself look new. The soft, gray stucco had taken on a tone that melted into the sky and foliage of its background.

At the entrance his domestic staff waited to greet him, and then he stepped across the threshold into the wide hall and stood in his own home for the first time in seventeen years. It was an anxious moment, and no one spoke immediately. But presently his eye had taken in the satisfying harmony of the place and followed on through the wide doors that led to the dining-room--on through the open French windows to an enchanting vista of tree-tops and distant farmside and blue hills. He said, very gently:

"How beautiful it all is? I did not think it could be as beautiful as this."

He was taken through the rooms; the great living-room at one end of the hall--a room on the walls of which there was no picture, but only color-harmony--and at the other end of the hall, the splendid, glowing billiard-room, where hung all the pictures in which he took delight.

Then to the floor above, with its s.p.a.cious apartments and a continuation of color--welcome and concord, the windows open to the pleasant evening hills. When he had seen it all--the natural Italian garden below the terraces; the loggia, whose arches framed landscape vistas and formed a rare picture-gallery; when he had completed the round and stood in the billiard-room--his especial domain--once more he said, as a final verdict:

"It is a perfect house--perfect, so far as I can see, in every detail.

It might have been here always."

He was at home there from that moment--absolutely, marvelously at home, for he fitted the setting perfectly, and there was not a hitch or flaw in his adaptation. To see him over the billiard-table, five minutes later, one could easily fancy that Mark Twain, as well as the house, had "been there always." Only the presence of his daughters was needed now to complete his satisfaction in everything.

There were guests that first evening--a small home dinner-party--and so perfect were the appointments and service, that one not knowing would scarcely have imagined it to be the first dinner served in that lovely room. A little later; at the foot of the garden of bay and cedar, neighbors, inspired by Dan Beard, who had recently located near by, set off some fireworks. Clemens stepped out on the terrace and saw rockets climbing through the summer sky to announce his arrival.

"I wonder why they all go to so much trouble for me," he said, softly.

"I never go to any trouble for anybody"--a statement which all who heard it, and all his mult.i.tude of readers in every land, stood ready to deny.

That first evening closed with billiards--boisterous, triumphant billiards--and when with midnight the day ended and the cues were set in the rack, there was none to say that Mark Twain's first day in his new home had not been a happy one.

CCLXIX. FIRST DAYS AT STORMFIELD

I went up next afternoon, for I knew how he dreaded loneliness. We played billiards for a time, then set out for a walk, following the long drive to the leafy lane that led to my own property. Presently he said:

"In one way I am sorry I did not see this place sooner. I never want to leave it again. If I had known it was so beautiful I should have vacated the house in town and moved up here permanently."

I suggested that he could still do so, if he chose, and he entered immediately into the idea. By and by we turned down a deserted road, gra.s.sy and beautiful, that ran along his land. At one side was a slope facing the west, and dotted with the slender, cypress-like cedars of New England. He had asked if that were part of his land, and on being told it was he said:

"I would like Howells to have a house there. We must try to give that to Howells."

At the foot of the hill we came to a brook and followed it into a meadow. I told him that I had often caught fine trout there, and that soon I would bring in some for breakfast. He answered:

"Yes, I should like that. I don't care to catch them any more myself. I like them very hot."

We pa.s.sed through some woods and came out near my own ancient little house. He noticed it and said:

"The man who built that had some memory of Greece in his mind when he put on that little porch with those columns."

My second daughter, Frances, was coming from a distant school on the evening train, and the carriage was starting just then to bring her. I suggested that perhaps he would find it pleasant to make the drive.

"Yes," he agreed, "I should enjoy that."

So I took the reins, and he picked up little Joy, who came running out just then, and climbed into the back seat. It was another beautiful evening, and he was in a talkative humor. Joy pointed out a small turtle in the road, and he said:

"That is a wild turtle. Do you think you could teach it arithmetic?"

Joy was uncertain.

"Well," he went on, "you ought to get an arithmetic--a little ten-cent arithmetic--and teach that turtle."

We pa.s.sed some swampy woods, rather dim and junglelike.

"Those," he said, "are elephant woods."

But Joy answered:

"They are fairy woods. The fairies are there, but you can't see them because they wear magic cloaks."

He said: "I wish I had one of those magic cloaks, sometimes. I had one once, but it is worn out now."

Joy looked at him reverently, as one who had once been the owner of a piece of fairyland.

It was a sweet drive to and from the village. There are none too many such evenings in a lifetime. Colonel Harvey's little daughter, Dorothy, came up a day or two later, and with my daughter Louise spent the first week with him in the new home. They were created "Angel-Fishes"--the first in the new aquarium; that is to say, the billiard-room, where he followed out the idea by hanging a row of colored prints of Bermuda fishes in a sort of frieze around the walls. Each visiting member was required to select one as her particular patron fish and he wrote her name upon it. It was his delight to gather his juvenile guests in this room and teach them the science of billiard angles; but it was so difficult to resist taking the cue and making plays himself that he was required to stand on a little platform and give instruction just out of reach. His snowy flannels and gleaming white hair, against those rich red walls, with those small, summer-clad players, made a pretty picture.

The place did not retain its original name. He declared that it would always be "Innocence at Home" to the angel-fish visitors, but that the t.i.tle didn't remain continuously appropriate. The money which he had derived from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven had been used to build the loggia wing, and he considered the name of "Stormfield" as a subst.i.tute. When, presently, the summer storms gathered on that rock-bound, open hill, with its wide reaches of vine and shrub-wild, fierce storms that bent the birch and cedar, and strained at the bay and huckleberry, with lightning and turbulent wind and thunder, followed by the charging rain--the name seemed to become peculiarly appropriate.

Standing with his head bared to the tumult, his white hair tossing in the blast, and looking out upon the wide splendor of the spectacle, he rechristened the place, and "Stormfield" it became and remained.

The last day of Mark Twain's first week in Redding, June 25th, was saddened by the news of the death of Grover Cleveland at his home in Princeton, New Jersey. Clemens had always been an ardent Cleveland admirer, and to Mrs. Cleveland now he sent this word of condolence--

Your husband was a man I knew and loved and honored for twenty-five years. I mourn with you.

And once during the evening he said:

"He was one of our two or three real Presidents. There is none to take his place."

CCLXX. THE ALDRICH MEMORIAL. At the end of June came the dedication at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, of the Thomas Bailey Aldrich Memorial Museum, which the poet's wife had established there in the old Aldrich homestead. It was hot weather. We were obliged to take a rather poor train from South Norwalk, and Clemens was silent and gloomy most of the way to Boston. Once there, however, lodged in a cool and comfortable hotel, matters improved. He had brought along for reading the old copy of Sir Thomas Malory's Arthur Tales, and after dinner he took off his clothes and climbed into bed and sat up and read aloud from those stately legends, with comments that I wish I could remember now, only stopping at last when overpowered with sleep.

We went on a special train to Portsmouth next morning through the summer heat, and a.s.sembled, with those who were to speak, in the back portion of the opera-house, behind the scenes: Clemens was genial and good-natured with all the discomfort of it; and he liked to fancy, with Howells, who had come over from Kittery Point, how Aldrich must be amused at the whole circ.u.mstance if he could see them punishing themselves to do honor to his memory. Richard Watson Gilder was there, and Hamilton Mabie; also Governor Floyd of New Hampshire; Colonel Higginson, Robert Bridges, and other distinguished men. We got to the more open atmosphere of the stage presently, and the exercises began.

Clemens was last on the program.

The others had all said handsome, serious things, and Clemens himself had mentally prepared something of the sort; but when his turn came, and he rose to speak, a sudden reaction must have set in, for he delivered an address that certainly would have delighted Aldrich living, and must have delighted him dead, if he could hear it. It was full of the most charming humor, delicate, refreshing, and spontaneous. The audience, that had been maintaining a proper gravity throughout, showed its appreciation in ripples of merriment that grew presently into genuine waves of laughter. He spoke out his regret for having worn black clothes. It was a mistake, he said, to consider this a solemn time--Aldrich would not have wished it to be so considered. He had been a man who loved humor and brightness and wit, and had helped to make life merry and delightful. Certainly, if he could know, he would not wish this dedication of his own home to be a lugubrious, smileless occasion. Outside, when the services were ended, the venerable juvenile writer, J. T. Trowbridge, came up to Clemens with extended hand. Clemens said: "Trowbridge, are you still alive? You must be a thousand years old. Why, I listened to your stories while I was being rocked in the cradle." Trowbridge said:

"Mark, there's some mistake. My earliest infant smile was wakened with one of your jokes."

They stood side by side against a fence in the blazing sun and were photographed--an interesting picture.

We returned to Boston that evening. Clemens did not wish to hurry in the summer heat, and we remained another day quietly sight-seeing, and driving around and around Commonwealth Avenue in a victoria in the cool of the evening. Once, remembering Aldrich, he said:

"I was just planning Tom Sawyer when he was beginning the 'Story of a Bad Boy'. When I heard that he was writing that I thought of giving up mine, but Aldrich insisted that it would be a foolish thing to do. He thought my Missouri boy could not by any chance conflict with his boy of New England, and of course he was right."