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

“Mark Twain as a Newspaper Reporter” (1910)

[213] === “Mark Twain as a Newspaper Reporter” (1910) Frank Marshall White Twain and his family sailed from Cape Town on 15 July and arrived in England on 31 July 1896. The American journalist Frank Marshall White (1861–1919), the European correspondent of the New York Journal, interviewed Twain in the spring of 1897, a few months after the death of Susy on 18 August 1896 in Hartford of spinal meningitis. Jean Clemens had meanwhile joined her parents and surviving sister in London. White inadvertently became the source of the story that Twain was dying in London. Later in 1897 Twain was a firsthand witness to the riots in the Austrian Reichsrath in Vienna. in 1897 i was the European representative of an important New York newspaper , and it occurred to me that it would be legitimate journalistic enterprise to engage Mark Twain, who was then living in London, to report the Diamond Jubilee procession that was to be the feature of the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of Queen Victoria’s reign, to occur in June. Perhaps I might not have ventured to make the proposition to one whom many regarded as America’s first man of letters had I not believed that money would be an object to him, for it was soon after the failure of the publishing firm that involved him in financial disaster, and he was then engaged in the courageous struggle that resulted in his paying the debts of the concern single-handed and acquiring another fortune. Although this was about the time that the rumor was circulated in America that the great humorist was dying in poverty in a London garret , he was living with Mrs. Clemens and their two daughters in a comfortable home in Chelsea, was in good health, and working ten or twelve hours per day. It was a house of mourning, however, for only a few months before death had removed the oldest daughter from the family of five . . . and the visitor felt a prevailing sadness in the atmosphere, in the subdued voices of the servants, in the silence of the darkened rooms. Mrs. Clemens had not left her own apartment for many days, and her daughters were twain in his own time [214] constant in their attendance upon her. In the great tragedy that had come into their lives, the pecuniary calamity was realized only by the head of the family. Nevertheless, although his face was lined with care and sorrow, Mark Twain was as whimsical as usual when I made my errand known. I told him, to start with, that the exigencies of the situation were such, with a greater amount of work devolving upon telegraph wires and cables in every direction from London during the Jubilee than had ever deluged them before , that he would be compelled after the procession had passed to “rush” whatever he might write with the utmost speed in order to insure its transmission to New York. “That’s one reason why I don’t like to write for newspapers—the hurry,” he drawled, shaking his shaggy head that was just beginning to turn gray. “I wrote something for a New York newspaper not long ago, and made up my mind not to write for one again. They asked me to write a humorous article , and I thought it was humorous when I sent it in. It may not have been that, but at least it was more humorous than when it appeared. They put words into my mouth. I’d rather they had put street sweepings there. I want to see proofs of things I write before they are published.” Upon being assured that he might depend on anything he might write appearing word for word as he wrote it in the columns of the sheet I represented , although the correction of the proofs was impracticable in the circumstances, since the process would occupy some three weeks, he had another objection to present. “You see,” he said, “with the great crowds there will be in London during the celebration—on the day of the procession probably the most tremendous crowds of all—I couldn’t possibly get home to write my report in time.” I told him that I proposed to secure a seat for him to view the procession on the Hotel Cecil stand, and that I would also get him a room in the hotel in which he could write his article. “But I couldn’t have my wife there...