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

From Mark Twain and the Happy Island (1914)

[293] === From Mark Twain and the Happy Island (1914) Elizabeth Wallace Twain traveled to Bermuda four times during the final three years of his life in vain attempts to recover his health. There he met Elizabeth Wallace (1865– 1960), who recorded her memories about his visit in the autumn of 1909. once in a while it rained on the Happy Island, and when it did, it did it thoroughly. The water came down in sheets and torrents, sweeping in from the sea, across the harbor, blotting out the islands and filling the air indoors with moisture. At such times it was impossible to brave the weather, for the most impermeable protection became soaked. One compensation, however, was that the instant the rain ceased, the hard, white coral roads were as passable as ever. You could walk out, holding your head high, and with no fear of ending up in a mud puddle. One Sunday morning the weather was thus comporting itself, and it was hard to mark the dividing line between sea and rain-drenched atmosphere . We went out on the veranda, where we found a protected spot and some capacious chairs. Margaret1 had been condemned to write letters, and Mr. Clemens missed her. He came out on the veranda and joined us. He was dressed, as he always was in daytime the last few years of his life, in white serge. The only color about him was the dark brown of a row of cigars in either breast-pocket. The row diminished as the morning progressed . He was always immaculate, although he wore his clothes easily, and there was never anything about him to suggest that he himself cared how he looked. His beautiful white hair curled softly in the dampness, and he was the image of picturesque comfort as he pulled at his cigar and talked. It may have been the suggestion of the day, but, whatever it was, something moved him to discuss missionaries. This subject, together with old-fashioned orthodoxy, were topics that invariably stirred him to satiric loquacity. He gave the poor missionaries no quarter, he made no excep- twain in his own time [294] tions, they were all impaled upon the sharp brochette of his keen diction and grilled by the fire of his contempt. And all that he said, he said in his quiet slow drawl, with a twinkle of the eye, once in a while—a twinkle that one did not often see, unless one looked carefully, for his bushy eyebrows almost concealed the deep gray green eyes. He often made us wait for a word, but when it came it was the only one in the Century Dictionary that could so exactly have conveyed to us what he wanted to say. There sat not far from us a sweet soul whose heart was deeply interested in the missionary cause. All unconscious of this, Mr. Clemens went on. A long time afterward he learned that she had overheard the conversation and the quick expression of his regret showed that his kind heart saw no humor in that situation. After an exhaustive arraignment of missionaries and their weaknesses, something was said about Mr. Clemens’s recent story of “Captain Stormfield ’s Heavenly Experiences,” which had shortly before appeared in magazine form. Mr. Clemens chuckled as he asked us if we remembered the picture of Heaven as presented in Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s book, Gates Ajar. He said that when he read that book he was deeply impressed by what seemed a sentimental and foolish idea. He resolved to satirize it, and wrote the first draught of “Captain Stormfield.” The result did not quite suit him, and, besides, he hesitated to publish it so soon after the appearance of Miss Phelps’s book. So he put the manuscript aside, and it was almost forgotten. Then one day he came across it, thought it worth publishing, and sent it to the magazine where it appeared. His cigars were not all smoked, and the rain continued to fall prodigiously and so we led him on to talk of other books he had written. One that he loved best of all, perhaps, and that is not nearly so widely read as his others, was Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. He said that for years he had been impressed by the spirit of the French heroine, and year by year, for twelve years, he had laid by in his memory, and in his notes, every impression he...