Henry W. Fischer

“ For it must be remembered that Oscar’s disgrace took place years later, in 1895, and that until his quarrel with Lord Queensbury, he was a figure to be reckoned with in London society. He was at least as important in certain social circles as Lillie Langtry, and was a Mason-brother of the Prince of Wales.
“What a fool I was, estranging Oscar,” Gene confessed. “At the time I thought it exquisitely funny, but the British can’t see through our American horseplay. They think it undignified and that’s enough to kill even the loudest laugh.” ”

“ MARK INTERVIEWED THE BARBER ABOUT HARRY THAW
During his last visit to London, Mark called me up one morning and said: “My arm aches and I can’t do it myself, so for God’s sake, take me to a barber who can scrape one’s face without taking half the hide off. I am getting mighty tired of being flayed alive in this here burg.”
Accordingly we drove down to the Cecil in the Strand.
“I understand you are the man who treats a delicate skin like an American beauty rose,” said Mark to the barber.
“I will treat yours, Mr. Clemens, as if it were a butterfly. ”

“ The fact was, poor Eugene was no business man and, unlike Mrs. Clemens, pretty Mrs. Field, as far as I could make out, had no eye or head for business either. His London writings hardly ever appealed to a more international audience than Chicago and the West, willy-nilly, furnished. Syndicating was in its infancy and the papers printed nothing but news and again news. Even the New York Herald’s Sunday edition contained hardly a line unconnected with the news of the day. And Eugene said himself he was no newsmonger. Then London society, or near-society, tried to make him out a funny man. ”

“ Now, the English metropolis is reputed the healthiest city in the world, which proves that the legend about cleanliness being nearest to godliness is blooming rot, for London is ten times dirtier than Berlin, seven and a half times dirtier than New York and six times dirtier than the best parts of Paris. ”

“ German or Austrian, as Mark called it—he sometimes dropped two or three memorable witticisms, but familiar intercourse in the long run left no doubt of the fact that a very serious vein bordering on melancholy underlay his mask of bonhomie. On the other hand a closer or more intelligent student of life never lived. He was as conscientious, as true, and as simple as Washington Irving. ”

“ Indeed, the papers disdained to send their ‘own correspondents’ or reporters to such small-fry events as the taking of a man’s or, perchance, a woman’s life in public, and entrusted that part of the daily grind to a ‘flimsy man,’ who sent duplicate copies to all the papers, morning and evening. The ‘flimsy man,’ of course, got so used to the dope and to the eternal sameness of the thing, he could dictate a first-rate hanging yarn without leaving his office, or using the phone—beg pardon, there were no phones in those days. ”

“ One day in Berlin, speaking of General Grant, Mark said, “I did not admire him so much for winning the war as for ending the war. Peace—happiness—brotherhood—that is what we want in this world.”
“Here comes the Kaiser,” he continued, “and sends me tickets for his September review. Of course I will go. But I don’t care for military spectacles, or for militarism. Tolstoy was right in calling army life ‘a school for murder.’ In Germany to-day there are ten million men drilled to look upon the Kaiser as a god. ”

“ Well, evil-minded people said of this prince that he smelled like a dead horse, and Madame the Princess simply could not endure defunct ‘gee-gee.’ So she decided that she had a perfect right to look for a soul-mate elsewhere, and be sure she got them by the score. Of course not in Monaco, as it is such a small country. She went to France, and particularly to Paris, for her amusements. And every time the Prince learned of a new lover worshipping at his wife’s shrine, he set up a gallows and hung the favored one in effigy with frightful ceremonies. ”

“ Susan, Jean, and Clara Clemens, papa Mark, and myself were having lots of fun at the famous Salamonski Circus in Berlin—Mark and I laughing with the children when there was nothing else to interest us. There was a girl of 16 or 17 doing a stunt on a horse. Mark said: “The poor child looks as if she had never had a square meal in her life—isn’t that professional smile of hers too sad for words?” While she was doing a salto mortale, a clown ran in and dived between the horse’s legs. The horse got frightened and threw the rider. ”

“ When Ida M. Tarbell’s “Life of Lincoln” was running in McClure’s during the late nineties, Mark said at luncheon at the Cafe Ronacher, Vienna, one afternoon: “That woman is writing a wonderfully good and accurate, intimate and comprehensive book and I do hope that, in the end, she will give the same prominence to Lincoln’s correspondence on pardons as to other state papers of his. When you come to think of it, a lot of nonentities have got credit for able state papers, but it takes humanity to commute a sentence of death and Lincoln has commuted thousands. ”

“ There are no healthier and more beautiful women, of their kind, than the Tedas of Asia who marry besides their chief-husband all his brothers, no matter how many he has got.
We do not go so far as to advocate polyandry. Polyandry is a condition based on a low state of civilization. But basing our proposition on physical grounds, we venture to assert that tetragamy, reorganized and protected by law, would be a married state doing away with most of the evils of monogamy from the man’s standpoint, while contributing to woman’s happiness. ”

“ As a matter of fact, for its length, the room was extremely narrow.
“If it had legs, I would call it a dachshund,” suggested Mark, when Livy kept on grumbling.
I asked whether he had many visitors and he said:
“Yes, a few every day. As many as I can stand. But the women have all deserted me. There is a bunch of American girls in Berlin just now, but none find their way to the Royal. I am without a “Mouche” (French for fly) —I mean the human kind—the same as enlivened Heine’s dying days. ”

“ There should be no communism, of course. Each man could contribute his share and the woman should be allowed free disposal of her savings.
Of course, the state must take the first woman under its protection. She can never be abandoned and can be divorced for cause only.
Under the sway of monogamy duties and nature are forever in conflict. Woman is tempted when young, is abandoned morally or physically or both when old.
If this be natural, then nature should be reformed and tetragamy substituted for monogamy. ”

“ The “neighborhood” was Tedworth Square, London, “quite the other side of Mayfair,” and leading to some queer streetlets and lanes.
“London’s Fifth Avenues,” mused Mark, “remind me of a sable coat (such as Pauline Bonaparte used to wear) edged with cat-skin: There are always Hell-kitchens within hailing distance.
“Well, at that time my girls had a friend living in Clapham, and nightly she walked me ten or more blocks to her bus through one of those Hell-kitchens lined with fried-fish shops and other ill-smelling emporiums for acquisitioning lucre.” ”

“ Nor was Mark appreciated in Italy.
“The Dagoes,” he used to say, “like their humor colored with politics, of which I know nothing, or flavored with risqué stories, which my wife won’t let me write—there you are. As to France—one critical Madame gave me to understand that I am ‘lacking in the stupendous task of interpreting the great tableaux of real American life.’ See? When a wet blanket of that kind is clapped on to you, what is the use of further efforts? I am a dead one, according to Madame, and Mark Twain is too humane to whip a dead horse. ”

“ MARK AT THE STOCK EXCHANGE, VIENNA
A day or two after I sent Clemens my translation of Field Marshal Count Moltke’s Letters, he called at my hotel in the forenoon and proposed that we walk to the stock exchange. The stock exchange, as usual, was swarming with gentlemen of the Jewish persuasion, and Mark asked me to pay particular attention to them.
“They are the smartest of the lot here,” he insisted, “and so is a Jewish peddler smarter than a Christian house-owner—I mean the average. I say it again; the Jews are the greatest people let loose. ”

“ Again, if I died a plain citizen in London, I would be shipped back in an ordinary liner. But think of it. Before shipping my body, it would have to go into an undertaker’s vault, and undertakers’ cellars are dark and mildewed, and nasty smelling. By George, I wouldn’t like to be in a cellar for a week or two. And afterwards they would [Pg 94] place the casket in the hold of the ship with other boxes, and the rats come gnawing about, and perhaps the ocean looks in too and gives you a swim. No, it isn’t pleasant to die abroad. I want to die at home, in bed and in comfort. ”

“ Tetragamy would make for morality, because it would make it easier for men to get married. It would make for morality because woman, having two husbands, would not be longing for an affinity. And when old, she would not suffer from the thought, or from the actual knowledge, that her husband betrays her.
Things are different to-day. The man who marries young sees the fire of love extinguished in the woman at his side after a certain number of years.
As to the average woman, in the state of monogamy, she is only too often compelled to marry a man physically inferior to her. ”

“ Just then a gypsy-looking, elderly woman came running from behind the scenes, looking about wildly. When her eye located the clown, she rushed up to him and hit him a [Pg 89] terrible blow in the face. “You have ruined my girl. She will never be able to ride again,” she cried.
“Served him right,” said Mark. “I do hope the manager gets a clout on the jaw, too. For he really is the responsible guy. The clown has to get laughs, the girl has to risk her limbs, so that the manager may coin money. What a world this is, what a world! ”

“ On another occasion, Gene told a few things about Oscar that he had heard at the Herald office. “Our fine American girl, Mary Anderson, has given that fop Oscar a commission, duly signed, to write a drama for her. It’s going to be called ‘The Duchess of Padua.’ Oscar may make five or ten thousand dollars out of it. If I wasn’t by nature so much inclined to humor, I might get an honorable commission like that. But people think I am only fit for cracking jokes and writing jocular and sentimental poetry.” ”

“ Two things Mark Twain was especially concerned about—the success of his “Joan of Arc,” which he considered his best work, and the possibility of getting King Leopold hanged.
Leopold and the Czar were his special bêtes noires. “I’d like to see these two fellows face their people naked except for their whiskers. Let them face public opinion in their birthday suits and see what will happen to them.” ”

“ When he finally did admit the directors, he exacted even harder terms than he had first proposed, namely: A perpetual card of admission for James Gordon Bennett and friends and, for the present, a solemn invitation to Bennett to come to the Casino and do as he liked there.
“After this,” concluded Eugene, “I suppose these directors lent him their best grand piano for the uses he put Phil May’s mother’s piano to.”
The above was a good story, but unprintable at the time, and it was all Eugene ever got out of Bennett. So most other London enterprises, Gene tried to float, proved barren. ”

“ Mark looked at Mrs. Clemens and lied brazenly: “Yes, of course.” But as she had risen to go out and was walking toward the door, he added in an undertone: “One Scotch was like taking a bottle of perfume from the ten-cent store into a glue factory to paralyze [Pg 38] the Cologne smell of a four-acre establishment of that sort.”
“To resume,” resumed Mark, “seeing each other nightly for a week or a week and a half, that undertaker chap and this here yellow journalist of literature got on famously, and our acquaintance, though by eyesight only, gradually blossomed into real brotherhood. ”

“ Many a man who can hardly support himself tries to support a wife, and not only a wife, but children, numbers of them! What is the result? The woman, driven by want, for the love of her children, becomes a breadwinner on her own account. The time she ought to devote to [Pg 84] her little ones, born or unborn, she spends in the factory, at the washboard or sewing machine.
Is that natural? If nature favored such a state of affairs, nature would be illogical, and who dare assert so monstrous a thing?
In the state of tetragamy, man has to bear but one-half of the household’s expenses. ”

“ Lenbach returned—with a camera, and as Mark looked puzzled, Lenbach explained: “I always get every possible angle I can of the persons I want to paint. Now, if you will just stand still, Mr. Clemens, for a little while, I will be ever so much obliged.”
And Lenbach made the rounds of Clemens, who had taken off his overcoat, more than once, photographing every important bit of anatomy, back, sides, front, arms, legs, ear, full face, back of head, cheeks, hands, eyes, etc.
“They told me in Vienna that Lenbach was an artist,” commented Mark when we gained the sidewalk. ”

“ Now let us look at tetragamy, as defined, from an economic standpoint.
At the present time, the average young couple enters into the marriage state when the man’s capacity as a provider is unequal to the demands of the average pleasure-loving woman. His meagre resources do not allow him to supply her with the luxuries she craves, nor has he as much money for himself as before marriage. It would be a waste of words to point out that these conditions are responsible for much unhappiness among married folks. ”