Twain in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates

“Mark Twain in Clubland” (1910)

[183] === “Mark Twain in Clubland” (1910) William H. Rideing During the panic of 1893, Twain’s finances worsened. He left his family in Europe and sailed to New York in late August to try to raise money. On 29 September he rented a room at the Players’ Club on Gramercy Park South, where he was visited by the editor William Henry Rideing (1853–1918). for several months “Mark,” as his intimates were allowed to call him, lived at The Players in one of the two best rooms which had been occupied at the opening of the club by Edwin Booth and Lawrence Barrett, and I, then the managing editor of the North American Review, went there one morning to ask him whether he would write an article for us on the origin of the most famous of his stories, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog.” We were fellow-members, and I had already known him several years. He pointed amiably to a chair, in which I sat while he paced the floor and puffed at a slow-burning pipe, using it much as an artist uses a brush or his hand in swings and curves when he describes the tremendous things he intends to do with an almost untouched canvas. He talked more slowly than usual—I never heard him talk fast—and at intervals stopped altogether, now resting midway, then striding from wall to wall, shaking his head at what he disagreed with or nodding it in concurrence. All the typographical dashes in the printer’s case would be insufficient if I used them to indicate the long-drawn pauses between his words and sentences . Every syllable was given its full value, distinctly and sonorously. To me his voice was beautiful. It was not a laughing voice, or a light-hearted voice, but deep and earnest like that of one of the graver musical instruments , rich and solemn, and in emotion vibrant and swelling with its own passionate feeling. “I didn’t write that story as fiction,” he said, after a delay, tirelessly but slowly moving his head from side to side; “I didn’t write it as fiction,” he repeated in the way he had of repeating everything he desired you to twain in his own time [184] understand he stood by, and that there could be no mistake about, “I wrote it—.” To and fro again and a sweep of his arm. A pause in the middle of the room. “I wrote it as—not as fiction, not as fancy, not out of imagination—I wrote it as a matter, a matter of h-i-s-t-o-r-y. I can remember now at this very minute , I can remember now, right here, just how that story happened, every incident in it.” Here there was another pause, as if the curtain had been drawn on an interlude in a play. He never under any circumstances was precipitous, or to be driven. Nobody could ever hasten him out of his excogitations. His face was serious, reflective and reminiscent. That was its prevalent expression . I knew him for nearly thirty years, and cannot remember hearing him laugh in all that time, even when he must have been amused and others were laughing around him—Howells, for instance, bubbling with the freshest, merriest, sincerest, and most contagious laugh in the world, Howells, who, though so different in many ways, was one of the dearest and most congenial of his friends, Howells and Aldrich, both of whom he especially delighted in. A smile, an engaging, communicative, penetrative smile, which wrapped one in its own liquid and suffusing satisfaction, was his nearest approach to risibility, save perhaps a shrug or a scarcely audible chuckle. I could see that some unexpected thing was coming, while I listened to those clear but halting sentences, which dropped from him like pebbles breaking the silence of a lonely pool. His face, that aquiline, almost occipital face, was as grave as if life and death had been in the balance. “Well,” he drawled, “what do you suppose happened last night? Don’t be in a hurry. It’s no good being in a hurry.” I did not presume a guess, and he emitted a cloud from the reviving pipe as if to symbolize the impenetrability of his mystery. Again he paced the room before he explained himself. “A fellow sitting next to me at dinner last night said to me, ‘How old do you suppose that story of...