Orion Clemens

“ The death of this lovely boy was a heavy sorrow to the community where he was known, for he had been a favorite with all.— [For a fine characterization of Henry Clemens the reader is referred to a letter written by Orion Clemens to Miss Wood. See Appendix A, at the end of the last volume.]
From Hannibal the family returned to Pamela's home in St. Louis. There one night Orion heard his brother moaning and grieving and walking the floor of his room. By and by Sam came in to where Orion was. He could endure it no longer, he said; he must, “tell somebody.” ”

“ The mining excitement was at its height and had brought together the drift of every race.
The Clemens brothers took up lodgings with a genial Irishwoman, the Mrs. O'Flannigan of Roughing It, and Orion established himself in a modest office, for there was no capitol building as yet, no government headquarters. Orion could do all the work, and Samuel Clemens, finding neither duties nor salary attached to his position, gave himself up to the study of the life about him, and to the enjoyment of the freedom of the frontier. ”

“ Lately a river sovereign and dandy, in fancy percales and patent leathers, he had become the roughest of rough-clad pioneers, in rusty slouch hat, flannel shirt, coarse trousers slopping half in and half out of the heavy cowskin boots Always something of a barbarian in love with the loose habit of unconvention, he went even further than others and became a sort of paragon of disarray. The more energetic citizens of Carson did not prophesy much for his future among them. Orion Clemens, with the stir and bustle of the official new broom, earned their quick respect ”

“ He needed some one to assist in the store, and took in Orion, who was by this time twelve or thirteen years old; but, besides his youth, Orion—all his days a visionary—was a studious, pensive lad with no taste for commerce. Then a partnership was formed with a man who developed neither capital nor business ability, and proved a disaster in the end. The modest tide of success which had come with John Clemens's establishment at Florida had begun to wane. Another boy, Henry, born in July, 1838, added one more responsibility to his burdens. ”

“ DEAR SIR OR MADAM,—Experience has not taught me very much, still it has taught me that it is not wise to criticize a piece of literature, except to an enemy of the person who wrote it; then if you praise it that enemy admires—you for your honest manliness, and if you dispraise it he admires you for your sound judgment.
Yours truly, S. L. C.
Even Orion, now in Keokuk on a chicken farm, pursued him with manuscripts and proposals of schemes. Clemens had bought this farm for Orion, who had counted on large and quick returns, but was planning new enterprises before the first eggs were hatched. ”

“ Orion Clemens was born in Jamestown, Fentress County, Tennessee, in 1825. He was the family's first-born, and antedated me ten years. Between him and me came a sister, Margaret, who died, aged ten, in 1837, in that village of Florida, Missouri, where I was born; and Pamela, mother of Samuel E. Moffett, who was an invalid all her life and died in the neighborhood of New York a year ago, aged about seventy-five. Her character was without blemish, and she was of a most kindly and gentle dis [Pg 114] position. Also there was a brother, Benjamin, who died in 1848 aged ten or twelve. ”

“ Clemens said “Raise his monthly pension.” So I wrote to Perkins to raise it a trifle.
Now only think of it! He still has 100 pages to write on his lecture, yet in one inking of his pen he has already swooped around the United States and invested the result!
You must put him in a book or a play right away. You are the only man capable of doing it. You might die at any moment, and your very greatest work would be lost to the world. I could write Orion's simple biography, and make it effective, too, by merely stating the bald facts—and this I will do if he dies before I do ”

“ Clemens, encouraged and full of enthusiasm, now endeavored to interest himself in the practical details of manufacture, but his stock of patience was light and the details were many. His early business period resembles, in some of its features, his mining experience in Esmeralda, his letters to Webster being not unlike those to Orion in that former day. They are much oftener gentle, considerate, even apologetic, but they are occasionally terse, arbitrary, and profane. ”

“ We all feel your deep trouble with you; and we would hope, if we might, but your words deny us that privilege. To die one's self is a thing that must be easy, and of light consequence, but to lose a part of one's self—well, we know how deep that pang goes, we who have suffered that disaster, received that wound which cannot heal.
Sincerely your friend S. L. CLEMENS. His next is of quite a different nature. Evidently the typesetting conditions had alarmed Orion, and he was undertaking some economies with a view of retrenchment. Orion was always reducing economy to science. ”

“ There was partial insurance, with which Orion replaced a few necessary articles; then, to save rent, he moved the office into the front room of the home on Hill Street, where they were living again at this time.
Samuel Clemens, however, now in his eighteenth year, felt that he was no longer needed in Hannibal. He was a capable workman, with little to do and no reward. Orion, made irritable by his misfortunes, was not always kind. Pamela, who, meantime, had married well, was settled in St. Louis. Sam told his mother that he would visit Pamela and look about the city. There would be work in St. ”

“ O'Ryan was a favourite, at whom La Touche loved to jeer, and the parable of the stars convulsed them.
At the first words O'Ryan put a hand on himself and tried to grasp the meaning of it all, but his entrance and the subsequent applause had confused him. Presently, however, he turned to the back curtain, as Orion moved slowly up the heavens, and found the key to the situation. He gasped. Then he listened to the dialogue which had nothing to do with "The Sunburst Trail."
"What did Orion do, and why does he rise? Has he got to rise? Why was the gent called Orion in them far-off days?" ”

“ Which yet must have some office, rightly used,
Man hath a secret source, for some great end,
Which by delay seems wasted. Ignorance
Chokes us, and time outwits us."—On he passed.
"That soul hath greater cause for grief than I,"
Orion thought—yet not the less was sad.
⁠Away disconsolate the giant went,
Now clambering forest slopes, now hurrying down
Precipitous brakes, tearing the berried boughs
For food, scarce tasted, and oft gathering husks,
Or wind-eggs of strange birds dropt in the fens,
To toss them in some rapid brook, and watch
Their wavering flight. ”

“ Ori ́on, a giant of great beauty, and a famous hunter, who cleared the island of Chios of wild beasts. While in the island, Orion fell in love with Merŏpê, daughter of king Œnop ́ion; but one day, in a drunken fit, having offered her violence, the king put out the giant’s eyes, and drove him from the island. Orion was told if he would travel eastward, and expose his sockets to the rising sun, he would recover his sight. Guided by the sound of a Cyclop’s hammer, he reached Lemnos, where Vulcan gave him a guide to the abode of the sun. ”

“ Paula put in.
"But there was no audience, dear friend. Orion would not have got up such a performance for his mother and little Mary."
"But he is a poet—and a highly-gifted one too. He sings beautiful songs of his own invention to the lyre; his ecstatic and versatile mind works him up into any frame of feeling; but his soul is perverted; it is soaked in wickedness as a sponge drinks up water. He is a vessel full of beautiful gifts, but he has forfeited all that was good and noble in him —all!" ”

“ I find so far, without exception, that the high-up aristocracy are simple and cordial and agreeable.
When Clemens appeared as a public entertainer all society turned out to hear him and introductions were sought by persons of the most exclusive rank. Once a royal introduction led to an adventure. He had been giving a charity reading in Vienna, and at the end of it was introduced, with Mrs. Clemens, to her Highness, Countess Bardi, a princess of the Portuguese royal house by marriage and sister to the Austrian Archduchess Maria Theresa. ”

“ Hog-faced and hog-backed with his daily toil,
Mudded and root-stained by the steaming ooze,
As he himself were some unnatural growth;
Who yet, at times, whistled through broken fangs—
"Happier than I, this hind," Orion thought.
⁠Once tow'rds the city outskirts strayed his steps,
With a half purpose some relief to seek
Midst haunts of men, and on the way he met
A mastic-sifter with his fresh-oiled face.
"O friend!" Orion said, "why dost thou walk
With shining cheek so sadly in the sun?"
Sighing, the melancholy man replied:—
"The lentisk-trees have ceased to shed their gums ”

“ Around their listless bodies thoughtfully.
"Three giants slain outright by Phoibos' beams,—
Now hath a dead sleep fallen on my friends.
'T was wise in Akinetos not to move."
An earthquake would not wake them. Artemis
Rejoices, and the hopes of Merope,
To whom the news a breathless shepherd bore,
Throbbed fearfully suspended o'er the brink
Of this event. Not long Orion paused:
"Though all may fail, the utmost shall be tried:
Secure is he who on himself relies." ”

“ Who with change-hating eyes, fixed on the earth,
Discoursed, and to Orion's anxious looks
Thus made reply. "We have resolved to give
Our utmost aid—or aid that may suffice,—
In furtherance of thy task, which many days
Rightly requires." "Six days," Orion said,
And turned to go; when Harpax interposed:
"Be it then six, but our conditions hear.
Take Merope, thy prize; the rest be ours. ”

“ The old man's tall figure was not bent, his snowy hair flowed in abundance round his proud head, and a white beard fell in soft waves far down his breast. His fine eyes rested on the young man with a keen glance, and though he had last seen Orion as a boy he recognized him at once as the master of the house. While Orion bowed low before him, the patriarch, in his deep, rich voice, addressed him with cheerful dignity.
"All hail, son of my never-to-be-forgotten friend! The child I remember, has, I see, grown to a fine man. ”

“ Sometime later these same Pleiades became seven bright stars, and were set as a constellation in the sky, where they have remained ever since.
Orion continued to hunt from early dawn until nightfall without any misfortune overtaking him on account of his impetuous love-making. On the contrary his ardor evidently found favor with the goddess Diana, for one day, when he unexpectedly met her alone in the forest, she smiled graciously upon him and offered to share the day's sport with him. Perhaps it was the beauty of the young hunter as well as his boldness that charmed the goddess ”

“ He tells you, that all other ways of spending an estate is folly and madness.
Now Clemens has at present a moderate estate, which he spends upon himself, in the same vanities and indulgences as other people do. He might live upon one third of his fortune, and make the rest the support of the poor; but he does nothing of all this that is in his power, but pleases himself with what he would do if his power was greater. Come to thy senses, Clemens; do not talk what thou wouldest do, if thou wast an angel, but consider what thou canst do, as thou art a man. ”

“ He was a youth to the end of his days, the heart of a boy with the head of a sage; the heart of a good boy, or a bad boy, but always a wilful boy, and wilfulest to show himself out at every time for just the boy he was.
II. There is a gap in my recollections of Clemens, which I think is of a year or two, for the next thing I remember of him is meeting him at a lunch in Boston, given us by that genius of hospitality, the tragically destined Ralph Keeler, author of one of the most unjustly forgotten books, 'Vagabond Adventures', a true bit of picaresque autobiography. ”

“ At all other times he seemed to know that whatever wrongs the workingman committed work was always in the right.
When Clemens returned to America with his family, after lecturing round the world, I again saw him in New York, where I so often saw him while he was shaping himself for that heroic enterprise. He would come to me, and talk sorrowfully over his financial ruin, and picture it to himself as the stuff of some unhappy dream, which, after long prosperity, had culminated the wrong way. ”

“ You could offer Clemens offences that would anger other men and he did not mind; he would account for them from human nature; but if he thought you had in any way played him false you were anathema and maranatha forever. Yet not forever, perhaps, for by and-by, after years, he would be silent. There were two men, half a generation apart in their succession, whom he thought equally atrocious in their treason to him, and of whom he used to talk terrifyingly, even after they were out of the world. He went farther than Heine, who said that he forgave his enemies, but not till they were dead. ”

“ The morning after the dreadful dinner there came a glowing note from Professor Child, who had read the newspaper report of it, praising Clemens’s burlesque as the richest piece of humor in the world, and betraying no sense of incongruity in its perpetration in the presence of its victims. I think it must always have ground in Clemens’s soul, that he was the prey of circumstances, and that if he had some more favoring occasion he could retrieve his loss in it by giving the thing the right setting. ”