Mark Twain’s Memoirs - Part VIIb
This is the continuation from Part VIIa.
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Now to continue reading this new chapter is Part VIIb.
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CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.–IV.
…What I have been travelling toward all this time is this: the first critic that ever had occasion to describe my personal appearance littered his description with foolish and inexcusable errors whose aggregate furnished the result that I was distinctly and distressingly unhandsome. That description floated around the country in the papers, and was in constant use and wear for a quarter of a century. It seems strange to me that apparently no critic in the country could be found who could look at me and have the courage to take up his pen and destroy that lie. That lie began its course on the Pacific coast, in 1864, and it likened me in personal appearance to Petroleum V. Nasby, who had been out there lecturing.
For twenty-five years afterward, no critic could furnish a description of me without fetching in Nasby to help out my portrait. I knew Nasby well, and he was a good fellow, but in my life I have not felt malignant enough about any more than three persons to charge those persons with resembling Nasby. It hurts me to the heart. I was always handsome. Anybody but a critic could have seen it. And it had long been a distress to my family–including Susy–that the critics should go on making this wearisome mistake, year after year, when there was no foundation for it.
Even when a critic wanted to be particularly friendly and complimentary to me, he didn’t dare to go beyond my clothes. He never ventured beyond that old safe frontier. When he had finished with my clothes he had said all the kind things, the pleasant things, the complimentary things he could risk. Then he dropped back on Nasby.
Yesterday I found this clipping in the pocket of one of those ancient memorandum-books of mine. It is of the date of thirty-nine years ago, and both the paper and the ink are yellow with the bitterness that I felt in that old day when I clipped it out to preserve it and brood over it, and grieve about it. I will copy it here, to wit:
A correspondent of the Philadelphia “Press,” writing of one of
Schuyler Colfax’s receptions, says of our Washington correspondent:
“Mark Twain, the delicate humorist, was present: quite a lion, as
he deserves to be. Mark is a bachelor, faultless in taste, whose
snowy vest is suggestive of endless quarrels with Washington
washerwomen; but the heroism of Mark is settled for all time, for
such purity and smoothness were never seen before. His lavender
gloves might have been stolen from some Turkish harem, so delicate
were they in size; but more likely–anything else were more likely
than that. In form and feature he bears some resemblance to the
immortal Nasby; but whilst Petroleum is brunette to the core, Twain
is golden, amber-hued, melting, blonde.”
Let us return to Susy’s biography now, and get the opinion of one who is unbiassed:
_From Susy’s Biography._
Papa’s appearance has been described many times, but very
incorrectly. He has beautiful gray hair, not any too thick or any
too long, but just right; a Roman nose, which greatly improves the
beauty of his features; kind blue eyes and a small mustache. He has
a wonderfully shaped head and profile. He has a very good
figure–in short, he is an extrodinarily fine looking man. All his
features are perfect, except that he hasn’t extrodinary teeth. His
complexion is very fair, and he doesn’t ware a beard. He is a very
good man and a very funny one. He _has_ got a temper, but we all of
us have in this family. He is the loveliest man I ever saw or ever
hope to see–and oh, so absent-minded. He does tell perfectly
delightful stories. Clara and I used to sit on each arm of his
chair and listen while he told us stories about the pictures on the
wall.
I remember the story-telling days vividly. They were a difficult and exacting audience–those little creatures.
Along one side of the library, in the Hartford home, the bookshelves joined the mantelpiece–in fact there were shelves on both sides of the mantelpiece. On these shelves, and on the mantelpiece, stood various
ornaments. At one end of the procession was a framed oil-painting of a cat’s head, at the other end was a head of a beautiful young girl, life-size–called Emmeline, because she looked just about like that–an
impressionist water-color.
Between the one picture and the other there were twelve or fifteen of the bric-a-brac things already mentioned; also an oil-painting by Elihu Vedder, “The Young Medusa.” Every now and then the children required me to construct a romance–always impromptu–not a moment’s preparation permitted–and into that romance I had to get all that bric-a-brac and the three pictures. I had to start always with the
cat and finish with Emmeline. I was never allowed the refreshment of a change, end-for-end. It was not permissible to introduce a bric-a-brac ornament into the story out of its place in the procession.
These bric-a-bracs were never allowed a peaceful day, a reposeful day, a restful Sabbath. In their lives there was no Sabbath, in their lives there was no peace; they knew no existence but a monotonous career of violence and bloodshed. In the course of time, the bric-a-brac and the pictures showed wear. It was because they had had so many and such tumultuous adventures in their romantic careers.
As romancer to the children I had a hard time, even from the beginning. If they brought me a picture, in a magazine, and required me to build a story to it, they would cover the rest of the page with their pudgy
hands to keep me from stealing an idea from it.
The stories had to come hot from the bat, always. They had to be absolutely original and fresh. Sometimes the children furnished me simply a character or two, or a dozen, and required me to start out at once on that slim basis and deliver those characters up to a vigorous and entertaining life of crime. If they heard of a new trade, or an unfamiliar animal, or anything like that, I was pretty sure to have to deal with those things in the next romance.
Once Clara required me to build a sudden tale out of a plumber and a “bawgunstrictor,” and I had to do it. She didn’t know what a boa-constrictor was, until he developed in the tale–then she was better satisfied with it than ever.
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This concludes Part VIIb.
The next part is PartVIIc
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