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

From Hardly a Man Is Now Alive (1939)

[305] === Twain’s old friend Dan Beard was his near-neighbor in rural Connecticut. From Hardly a Man Is Now Alive (1939) Dan Beard i spent the day that Mr. Clemens was to arrive painting a chicken coop. My neighbor, Harry Lounsbury,1 came over to the house to ask me to help him set off some fireworks. I replied, “Harry, I will do this for you and Mark Twain, but the last time I set off fireworks was in 1884, and it was six months before I could work again.” So we climbed up on the mountain to a pergola where the fireworks were stored. There were rockets taller than myself, and everything else in proportion. We started things going. The rockets soared to an immense height, and the sticks dropped in Meeker Jones’s pasture, stampeding horses and cattle. The red fire illuminated the distant mountains. Harry and I were having great fun when someone stepped out on the piazza with a megaphone, saying, “Mr. Clemens wants Mr. Beard and Mr. Lounsbury up at the house.” Up to that time we had not realized that the red, blue and green fires and flares had illuminated the pergola so that we were plainly discernible from the house. When we reached the house the drawing room was filled with people in evening clothes, ladies with décolleté gowns with long trains, while we were powder-blackened and bedaubed with paint. However, no one seemed to notice it. I was brought up to greet Mr. Clemens. We clasped hands. Then he turned to the assembly and said, “A toast.” Everybody held their glasses aloft. “To Dan Beard!” cried the host. The party was a surprise party, but the biggest surprise that evening was my presence there. However, as no one seemed to know that I was not dressed in evening clothes, my embarrassment soon vanished. . . . The sheriff had to go to Stormfield one day when the cook had gone a little crazy with drink. He asked me to go along to help. As we approached the house we could hear loud screaming, terrible oaths and base obscenity. Clad in a pink kimono, Mark was standing out in front of the pergola, plac- twain in his own time [306] idly smoking his pipe. “Good morning, Dan,” he greeted me. “Come and take a walk with me.” I agreed and he went in to change his clothes. We met on the lawn after I’d satisfied my curiosity about the appalling racket in the house. The cook had barricaded herself in her room, while the sheriff and a deputy were letting her spend her strength before going in to take her back to town. Mr. Clemens proposed a walk down to see Albert Bigelow Paine, so down we went. As distance increased the sounds from the house became fainter and fainter. But not once, by word, speech or action, did Mark Twain show that he was conscious that anything unusual was going on. There was always something doing up at Stormfield. Gabrilowitsch would give an exhibition of his wonderful skill on the piano or play the accompaniment while his fiancée, Clara Clemens, sang. The guests came from long distances. No distance seemed too great for them to drive, but the one Mark Twain seemed to long for most and inquire about most frequently was W. D. Howells. He was very fond of Howells and very fond of [Richard Watson] Gilder, also his friend Rogers, the financier. Mark had been writing about financial pirates when Paine asked him, “How about your friend Rogers?” Mark smiled. “He’s a pirate all right, but he owns up to it and enjoys being a pirate. That’s the reason I like him.” . . . While on my farm at Redding, Connecticut, John Burroughs, John Muir, and Edwin Markham all promised to visit me, my intention being to bring this delightful group of men into personal touch with Mark Twain, who lived on the hill just above my farmhouse. I considered them then, and still do, a wonderful and typical group, the product of American environment and institutions, each one very different in character from the other, yet all bearing an unmistakable family resemblance. I had planned to have the group photographed at Stormfield, but Mark Twain was rather suddenly taken ill and never recovered, and so my party was called off. Mark went to Bermuda for his health, but he grew worse instead of better . He telegraphed to...