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

From Roses and Buckshot (1946)

[241] === From Roses and Buckshot (1946) James Montgomery Flagg The American artist and illustrator James Montgomery Flagg (1877–1960) executed a portrait of Twain for permanent exhibition in the Lotos Club of New York, a literary association founded in 1870. Twain once referred to it as “the ace of clubs.” See also “Lotos Dinner to Mark Twain,” New York Times, 10 November 1893, 8. when dr. [william wallace] walker said that the Lotos Club would give me a life membership for my portrait of Twain, it was in the bag. Willie had to do some tall talking to get Twain to pose for a portrait, but in spite of the old gent’s saying he would “rather have smallpox than sit for his picture ” he finally consented. So I spent several Sunday mornings with Twain painting and listening. He told me stories in his drawl and I got laughing so I couldn’t paint. We were in his room at the back of the old house on West 10th Street, which was connected with the front room by a long passage. He could tip his chair back and see Mrs. Clemens sewing in her room in the front. He had been cussing softly, then he said to me: “My wife cusses too, not the same words. She says ‘Sugar!’ and the Recording Angel will give her just as black marks as he does me!” William Dean Howells and Poultney Bigelow, the pal of Willie Hohenzollern ,1 would come in and they’d all get talking. I found it so interesting I’d forget all about painting. I had just enough sense to keep my trap shut and listen. I have a hazy remembrance that these men were planning some scheme for a vast celebration which involved Queen Victoria. Mark Twain had just come back from a lecture tour of the world from which he had made $100,000 in order to pay the debts of his publisher—debts he wasn’t responsible for. And all this in his old age. The creditors were paid in full. He had a funny way of spreading his mail in a long row on the floor, walking down the line and choosing letters he thought he wanted to look at. He said he was glad I hadn’t given him “society” eyebrows. One of his twain in his own time [242] longhorn eyebrows turned up and the other one turned down. Howells, looking at my finished portrait, said: “You’ve got Sam at his stormiest!” He had a house on the [Fifth] Avenue in later years, and I often saw him standing in his area, or areaway, as old New Yorkers called the sunken space leading to the tradesman’s entrance. Occasionally he would be talking to his old Negro butler. He always was dressed in white, and with his white mane he wasn’t a figure to forget. He explained his clothes by saying: “I don’t like to be conspicuous, but I do like to be the most noticeable person!” Maisie La Shelle,2 years later, told me the best story about Mark Twain. Mark and Howells were in the front row at the old Academy hearing Adelina Patti in some opera. Howells noticed the wicked leer in Mark’s eye and questionedhim .Mark,heavingabigsigh,saidthroughhisteethinHowells’sear: “I would rather sleep with that woman stark naked than with General Grant in full uniform!” Mark himself told me a story about an Englishman in a tough saloon in the Far West, a tenderfoot; there was only one other customer, a beefy, unself-conscious, uninhibited cow-person who leaned on the bar and ran the gamut of animal noises. Starting with a sneeze, a cough, and an expectoration , he startled the Britisher, who edged down the bar with astonished and popping eyes. The cow-person went blandly through his astounding repertory, closing with a burping arpeggio closely followed by the finale—a blast as deep and as rounded as the lowest note of the trombone in mating season, and so loud that the bottles and glasses clinked on the shelves. A cryptic, conceited smile combined with an unfocused gleam of satisfaction spread on the cow-person’s red face. The Britisher had by now edged right up to the virtuoso and had leaned forward to look with stark admiration into the Westerner’s puss. “I sa-a-y! Tell me, my good fellow,” murmured the astonished Britisher, “can you do something with your navel...