But he was never going to a.s.sociate Rogers with such corruption. In his eyes, his friend occupied a plane far above that of the other tyc.o.o.ns. He was more generous, more amiable, and more interesting. Twain knew that Rogers often made a point of hiding his more generous side for fear that it would be taken as a sign of weakness by Wall Street rivals. It was only after his death that the public learned how freely Rogers had supported a number of worthy causes. At Twain"s urging, he had become one of Helen Keller"s benefactors, paying her way through college and giving her a lifetime annuity. Deeply appreciative, Keller called Rogers "one of the n.o.blest men that ever lived." He was also a supporter of over sixty schools for the children of black farmworkers in the South, donating money every year to construct new buildings and hire teachers. The man who quietly disbursed these educational funds on Rogers"s behalf was Booker T. Washington, who came to know him well and considered him "one of the best and greatest men I have ever met."28 Nothing could make Twain denounce a loyal confidant. As his closest friends knew, if you had his trust, you had all of it. If you lost it, it was almost impossible to get it back. Major J. B. Pond-Twain"s lecture manager in the 1880s and 1890s-once remarked of his star performer, "He possesses some of the frontier traits-a fierce spirit of retaliation, and the absolute confidence that life-long "partners," in the Western sense, develop."29 It didn"t hurt that Twain had a soft spot in his heart for uncommon buccaneers like Rogers. He thought a few pirates must have been among his own Clemens ancestors in the Elizabethan era, when playing that part in the queen"s service was "a respectable trade." As he confessed in an autobiographical dictation from 1906, "In my time I have had desires to be a pirate myself."30 For Rogers, playing the fearless buccaneer in the business world was a serious game. For Twain, it was just a game-the stuff of fantasy, like the daydreams of Tom Sawyer, whose favorite pastime is pretending to be a pirate on the river. Under an oak tree on Cardiff Hill, Tom sits back and imagines the joy of becoming famous one day as "the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main." He sees himself arrayed in glory with a plumed hat, red sash, "crime-rusted cutla.s.s," and high boots. "How his name would fill the world," he muses in a moment of youthful ecstasy, "and make people shudder." As Twain jokes in Life on the Mississippi, the boys of his hometown "had a hope that if we lived and were good, G.o.d would permit us to be pirates."31 There is more than a touch of Tom in Mark Twain"s lively description of his own moneymaking abilities as an internationally famous author giving talks during his world tour, and then sending the profits home to his trusted partner at 26 Broadway: "On the 15th of July, 1895, [I started] on our lecturing raid around the world. We lectured and robbed and raided for thirteen months. ... I sent the book-money and lecture-money to Mr. Rogers as fast as we captured it." It pleased Twain to think of himself as a mildly disreputable but lovable figure in league with similar fellows. Part of his satisfaction in wearing the white suit was knowing that it was a joke against himself, a "whited sepulchre" that concealed a heart with darker moods and a character that was far from spotless.32 When a new installment of Ida Tarbell"s muckraking history of Standard Oil appeared in 1904 with an account of Rogers that cast him in a better light than Rockefeller, Twain pretended to be greatly disappointed. He teased Rogers that the journalist had whitewashed his character, and he accused him of buying her off. "She gives you no rank as a conspirator-does not even let you say any dark things; does not even let you sit mute and awful in a Buffalo Court like John D., and lower the temperature of justice. Henry H., the woman has been bought!"
As both men were well aware, it was in fact Twain who had made the arrangements for Tarbell to meet Rogers at the beginning of her research, which in turn had helped the millionaire launch the charm offensive that resulted in a more favorable portrait from the journalist. Indeed, as she later admitted, she couldn"t help liking Rogers, whose appearance and manner reminded her of Twain. Her final judgment on the tyc.o.o.n-which she included in an autobiography published long after his death-was one that would have delighted both men. She called him "as fine a pirate as ever flew his flag in Wall Street."33 ...
A PIRATE NEEDS A SHIP, and Rogers had a superior one. With all his millions, there was no luxury he couldn"t afford, including a big yacht. His was a stunner-a 227-foot steam-powered vessel called the Kanawha. Built to serve as a racing yacht, the vessel could reach speeds in excess of twenty-two knots and was said to be faster even than J. P. Morgan"s renowned Corsair. It was the star attraction of the New York Yacht Club"s annual cruise at Newport, winning its racing prize-the Lysistrata Cup-two years in a row. Rogers entered the ship in many races and lost only once.34 The name of Rogers"s yacht was an inside joke. For several years he had been secretly involved in a business venture of such magnitude that it represented the biggest gamble of his life. If it failed, he stood to lose half his fortune. Around the time that he acquired the Kanawha-in 1901-he was quietly buying up thousands of acres of cheap land around a little village in West Virginia called Deepwater, which bordered the Kanawha River. The land was located among some of the richest coalfields in America, but there was no easy way to haul the coal to ports on the Atlantic coast, where it could be shipped to factories, generating plants, and homes up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Rogers"s ambitious plan-which he estimated would require at least six years to complete-was to build his own railroad from the Kanawha River to the seaport at Norfolk, Virginia. It was a distance of more than four hundred miles, and he was intending to pay for every mile of it out of his own pocket. The cost was estimated at between $30 and $40 million.
The trick was to keep his plan secret during as much of the construction period as possible. He couldn"t afford to have compet.i.tors inflating prices for land or putting legal obstacles in his way. Rogers"s ingenious solution was to build not one railroad, but two-neither of which would appear to have any connection with the other nor pose any great threat to his existing rivals. Using a few carefully chosen front men, Rogers stayed in the background and pulled all the strings from the safe distance of his office on Broadway. In West Virginia he secretly backed construction of the Deepwater Railroad, which stopped at the border with Virginia. On the other side of the state line, he poured money into the Tidewater Railroad, which started in Norfolk and stopped at the border with West Virginia. At the last minute he planned to connect the two, reveal his ownership of both, and merge them into what he hoped would become the most profitable freight operation in the world.
The whole scheme sounds like a practical version of the railway Colonel Sellers hopes will make him rich in The Gilded Age. His road is supposed to run from Slouchburg to Corruptionville. "Ain"t it a ripping road, though?" Sellers asks after he has traced the imaginary route on his kitchen table. "I tell you, it"ll make a stir when it gets along. Just see what a country it goes through. There"s your onions at Slouchburg-n.o.blest onion country that graces G.o.d"s footstool; and there"s your turnip country all around Doodleville-bless my life, what fortunes are going to be made there when they get that contrivance perfected for extracting olive oil out of turnips."35 It is unlikely that Twain knew much about Rogers"s scheme until fairly late in the game. His friend liked keeping his business affairs shrouded in mystery, and Twain usually preferred talking about his own get-rich schemes rather than other people"s. But when the secret finally leaked out at the end of January 1907, and Twain became fully aware of the monumental risk Rogers had taken, he had nothing but praise for the gamble. As he told his friend at a later time, he considered the project not merely a great achievement, but "the triumph of your life." There was still a lot of work to be done before the line was ready to send its first coal trains to the coast. But, unlike Colonel Sellers, Rogers knew how to turn bold visions into realities, and to make them pay.36 As for the Kanawha, Twain was almost as fond of the yacht as Rogers was. Whether the name was a clue to anything or not was of little concern to him. He simply enjoyed sailing on such a fine ship, and sharing that experience with "Admiral" Rogers, as he liked to call him. They had some of their best times together on the vessel, which was not only fast but luxurious.
When the time was right and the weather was fair, they liked to sail away from New York with several friends and stay out at least a few days. Frequently, the destination was Rogers"s hometown of Fairhaven, Ma.s.sachusetts, where he had built an eighty-five-room mansion for weekend escapes and family holidays. At night Twain and other pals liked to join the "Admiral" on the deck and spend hours playing cards, drinking strong whiskey, and swapping tall tales. So many hands of poker were played in the forward deckhouse that Twain called it the "poker chapel."
The smoke-filled atmosphere on the Kanawha often turned raucous, especially when Twain started telling ribald jokes with an innocent face. They always sounded funnier, and less juvenile, coming from him. He recorded one of his favorites in a notebook from this period: A drunk on the telephone asks, "Zis "e S"iety for Saving Fallen Women?" The answer is yes. Well, the drunk responds, "Save two for me tonight."37 Both Rogers and Twain were inclined to exaggerate the extent of their dissipation on these cruises. Before leaving on a long ocean voyage with his goodhearted and patient wife, Emilie, Rogers invited Twain to come along and added in jest, "The only essentials this time will be drunkenness, profanity and sodomy."38 Unfortunately, Twain was unable to make that trip.
The one thing he didn"t enjoy about the yacht was its performance in rough weather. Rogers liked to tell the story of seeing Twain clinging to the rail in a heavy storm.
"Mr. Clemens," a steward had asked, "can I get you something?"
"Yes," the seasick Twain replied. "Get me a little island."39 But in calm seas he was never happier than when he was sailing on the Kanawha with his friends. At night the vessel would chug gently along like a big steamboat in a smooth channel, rekindling in his heart some of the joy of his younger days. He could almost close his eyes and imagine himself back on the river, listening to the talk of the crew and the drone of the steam engine. On his return from one of the yacht"s bracing voyages, he seemed so full of life that Isabel Lyon said he looked "like a boy fresh from his wild oats."40 After returning from a cruise on Henry Rogers"s steam yacht, the Kanawha, Twain looked "like a boy fresh from his wild oats."
It must have been a great disappointment to Rogers that no one in the press or on Wall Street seemed curious about the origin of the yacht"s name. In any case, when the secret was finally revealed on January 28, 1907, it was the Wall Street Journal that had the scoop. The paper declared that H. H. Rogers was the mastermind behind "one of the remarkable railroad enterprises of recent years." The report also included a detailed description of how the rival lines had been fooled into a.s.suming the Deepwater and the Tidewater railroads were separate ent.i.ties, and of how Rogers had created a superior road that would be difficult for anyone to compete against.41 To celebrate his triumph, he planned a big yachting adventure for the end of April 1907, and asked Twain to come along. They were going to sail from New York to Virginia and attend the opening of the Jamestown Exposition, a "world"s fair" commemorating the three hundredth anniversary of the first English settlement. The location of the original Jamestown was considered unsuitable for the fair, so Norfolk was chosen instead. President Theodore Roosevelt and many other dignitaries planned to be there.
It wasn"t, however, the fair or the president that Rogers wanted to see. He wanted to admire the new piers he had built in Norfolk to receive the contents of all the coal cars he would soon be sending to the coast on the Virginian Railway, which was his new name for the combined Deepwater and Tidewater lines. And his white-clad partner in crime was eager to make an appearance at his side. Twain saw it as a golden opportunity to expand his own fame when the world"s attention would be focused on the great fair.
"Yes, I"m going to be a buccaneer," he boasted to the press shortly before leaving New York. "The bucks and buccaneers on this cruise to the Spanish Main will be the guests of Henry H. Rogers, aboard his yacht Kanawha. We expect to have a bully time, and our first port of entry will be Jamestown."42 ...
TWAIN"S USE OF THE WORD "bully" was probably meant as a little joke at the expense of the other famous visitor to the fair. As everyone knew, President Roosevelt and Henry Rogers were on the worst possible terms. Indeed, as a trustbuster, the president regarded Rogers and the rest of the Standard Oil millionaires as among the worst of what he memorably called "malefactors of great wealth." He saw himself locked in battle with "a few ruthless and determined men whose wealth makes them particularly formidable, because they hide behind the breastworks of corporate organization." His Justice Department was doing everything in its power in the federal courts to break up the oil trust and to reduce the influence of Rogers and his partners. (By the end of the year, Standard Oil would be facing legal suits in no fewer than seven federal and six state courts.) A famous cartoon of the period shows a defiant Roosevelt as the "infant Hercules" trying to wrestle a two-headed serpent into submission. One head belongs to John D. Rockefeller, the other to Henry Rogers.43 Rather than antagonize the president any further, one of the heads of that serpent-Rockefeller-had decided to play it safe and was keeping a low profile. But Rogers was less cautious, and wasn"t going to allow anyone to stop him from celebrating his great success with the Virginian Railway-not even the president of the United States.
"He would go to Halifax for half a chance to show off," Mark Twain complained of Roosevelt in 1907, "and he would go to h.e.l.l for a whole one."44 At the new Exposition both the leader of America and the nation"s greatest living writer would be given a "whole" chance to demonstrate their star power without straying beyond Hampton Roads. Quite an expert himself at showing off, Twain felt that he knew his man. Whereas he considered himself a harmless self-promoter, he thought the president was a dangerous egotist whose policies-both foreign and domestic-were undermining America.
Whenever they had met, however, he was civil to the president, and didn"t hesitate to use his wit to win Roosevelt"s approval for causes near to his heart, such as copyright reform. Face-to-face, he always found the president"s personal charm difficult to resist. After a lunch at the White House in 1905, he told Isabel Lyon, "You can"t help liking [Roosevelt] for he is a magnetic creature, and he shows his teeth in his forceful smile, just as much as ever, and he unconsciously says that he is "De-lighted" to see you, just as the caricaturists have it on the record." For his part, the president always said that he thought highly of the author, calling him "not only a great humorist, but a great philosopher."
But the politician in Roosevelt made Twain cringe. As he remarked in private, "Whenever (as a rule) I meet Roosevelt the statesman & politician, I find him dest.i.tute of morals & not respectworthy."45 Arriving in Norfolk a day before the president, Twain was quick to get ash.o.r.e and draw a crowd. After chatting with the local press, he paraded around the docks in a yachting cap and his white clothes, then took an automobile ride to the Exposition, where he made an early tour of the grounds before the official opening. A crowd of 25,000 was expected the next day. As for Rogers, he had his own business to attend to and went off immediately to inspect the new railroad. Accompanying him was his son, Harry, who was in his late twenties, and who was being groomed to take over his father"s empire.
Besides the typical exhibits of historical interest, the fair featured amus.e.m.e.nt rides, a Wild West show, animal acts, military displays, souvenir shops, and-as a modern novelty-a building full of premature babies in incubators. The electric sign outside announced in big letters, "Baby Incubators with Living Infants." For those who missed the original event, there was also a theatrical reenactment of the San Francisco earthquake of the previous year, with crashing scenery, explosions, and fires. As for the original Jamestown settlers, they were represented in a life-size diorama featuring Captain John Smith trading goods with the Powhatan tribe.46 On opening day-Friday, April 26, 1907-President Roosevelt arrived right on time for his part in the official ceremonies. An armada of sixteen American battleships and dozens of foreign warships had been a.s.sembled to welcome him with twenty-one-gun salutes. The spring weather was ideal, with a sunny sky and a light breeze. After cruising down the Chesapeake Bay on the presidential yacht, USS Mayflower, Roosevelt woke at dawn and was dressed and ready at half past eight, standing on the deck and watching the horizon through the shiny ovals of his pince-nez. Wearing a top hat and frock coat, he was attended by members of his administration and various naval officers.
When his ship entered Hampton Roads, the naval guns roared their welcome. For a solid hour the battleships boomed away, sending out white clouds of smoke as the Mayflower slowly sailed down the line. From the sh.o.r.e, an artillery battery gave a three-hundred-gun salute. Most of the American warships were relatively new-ten had been built in the last three years-and each was painted a dazzling white. At the end of the year, the president would send this "Great White Fleet" on a cruise around the world to show potential adversaries that America"s naval might was second to none.
Asked about the fleet, Twain told the press that he didn"t think it was necessarily a bad thing for America to have "a whacking big navy." The problem, he explained, was that the country had too many politicians who seemed eager to unleash "the martial canines." For Twain-who had been named in 1901 an honorary vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League of New York-America"s brutal conquest of the Philippines in the early years of the century had been a sobering example of the enormous damage a modern military could create in the service of jingoistic leaders. As he would say later in the year, he considered the Philippines campaign "a stain upon our flag that can never be effaced." In the rapid buildup of the navy he feared that the president and others were preparing to engage in more misadventures abroad. Privately, he complained that Roosevelt had to be watched because he was tempted "to do insanely spectacular things."
Asked if he considered himself a man of peace, Twain answered honestly, saying that sometimes he was, and sometimes he wasn"t. "I could get up and shout for peace, whatever that means, just as well as any of the rest of us. Then I might get mad afterward and do just what I had been declaring with the utmost positiveness, that I wouldn"t and oughtn"t to do."47 As he had tried to make clear in "The War Prayer"-which was written in 1905 but rejected for publication in March of that year by Harper"s Bazaar as "not quite suited to a woman"s magazine"-Twain loathed men of war who pretended to be men of peace. No author has ever satirized sanctimonious warmongers better than Mark Twain. If such people spoke truthfully, he pointed out, any prayer for divine a.s.sistance in war would reveal its hypocrisy instantly, exposing the real horrors of a victorious campaign against a supposedly unrighteous enemy: "Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it in the spirit of love, of Him Who Is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset ... Amen."48 At the Jamestown celebration, Twain didn"t engage in any public dispute about the patriotic glorification of the Great White Fleet, but some members of the Exposition"s advisory board did complain that its partic.i.p.ation in the festivities was an example of an "extravagant militarism" imposed on an event whose purposes were peaceful. But as an old Rough Rider and a former a.s.sistant secretary of the navy, Roosevelt wanted an extravagant display of firepower, and he got it. The performance of the fleet filled him with joy. "It was an inspiring sight," he wrote a few days later, "and one I would not have missed for a great deal."49 While the warships were busy impressing the dignitaries on the presidential yacht, the Kanawha was steaming among the many sailboats and other pleasure craft that had gathered at a distance to observe the festivities. The news quickly spread that Mark Twain was aboard Henry Rogers"s yacht, and soon the vessel was being shadowed by the large excursion steamer John Sylvester, which was taking more than five hundred eager tourists to the fair. The pa.s.sengers began calling out the author"s name, and at one point the steamer came close enough to the yacht to graze its bow. To satisfy their curiosity, Twain appeared on deck, waving and bowing. To those who asked if the contact between the two vessels had caused any damage, he stepped forward and shouted proudly, "Never touched me."
But playing to the crowd only made things worse. When hundreds of pa.s.sengers on the steamer raced to one side for a closer view of Twain, they almost caused their vessel to capsize. In fact, there was so much activity on the water that, before the day was over, the Sylvester nearly collided with another ship. Realizing the danger in the overcrowded waters, the captain of the Kanawha found a safe spot where he could anchor, and then Twain and the rest of the Rogers party were transferred to a launch, which safely transported them to the fair.50 The Exposition opened with a long military parade down the newly paved street along the waterfront, where the various state exhibitions were housed in large colonial-style buildings. Roosevelt watched from a reviewing stand surrounded by so much security that neither Twain nor Rogers would have been able to get near him if they had wanted to. There were rumors that an anarchist like the one who had killed President William McKinley six years earlier at the Pan-American Exposition had come from Chicago with the sole purpose of shooting Roosevelt at the Jamestown Exposition. As the Washington Post reported, "A strong force of troops lined the s.p.a.ce in front of the grand stand, half a hundred Secret Service men mixed with the crowd, and everybody who attempted ... to get to the grand stand was stopped."51 Despite the fact that Rogers and Roosevelt remained at a safe distance from each other at the fair, the president knew from press reports that the tyc.o.o.n was in Norfolk. Though he was supposed to be celebrating America"s past, Roosevelt couldn"t pa.s.s up an opportunity to bash his current foes-"the predatory cla.s.ses," as he called them-and to issue a warning that may have been meant for Rogers personally. "This country," Roosevelt declared in his speech at the fair, "should move to the reform of abuses of corporate wealth. The wrong-doer, the man who swindles and cheats, whether on a big scale or a little one, shall receive at our hands mercy as scant as if he committed crimes of violence or brutality."
As dire as these words may have sounded to most people, they wouldn"t have made much of an impression on Rogers, who knew how to play the legal system to his advantage. In several high-profile suits against Standard Oil and other companies in which he held a large stake, he had proven himself to be such a slippery defendant that the Wall Street Journal had started calling him "the Artful Dodger."52 But regardless of what the president said or did, Rogers and Twain were determined to enjoy the day. After the main events were done, Rogers mingled with some of the employees of the Virginian Railway, all of whom had been given the day off, while Twain wandered over the grounds and admired the elegant row of state exhibition halls. Finally, he "blundered into the Virginia building"-as he put it-where he found himself interrupting a reception for the young Democratic governor, Claude Swanson. Seeing Twain, everyone soon forgot the politician and began to gather around the author. Swanson didn"t seem to mind.
"I took it off his hands," Twain said of the reception afterward. "It gave him a rest & he was thankful."53 When the long day came to an end, Twain, Rogers, and the rest of their party returned to the yacht and spent the night at anchor near the battleships, all of which were illuminated with strings of electric lights that were visible for miles. Gazing at the long row of naval vessels from the dark sh.o.r.e, one reporter turned poetic and described the scene as a "line of fire which shimmered across the water."54 In good spirits, Twain retired to his cabin. His first day at the fair, he wrote later, "was very gay, & really paid for the excursion." He had every reason to be satisfied. In the view of the New York Times, the crowds had shown "more interest in him than they had in the big naval review at the opening of the Jamestown Exposition." 55 ...
THE NEXT DAY-a Sat.u.r.day-brought a change in the weather that kept Twain from going ash.o.r.e for a few days. The sky turned overcast and a cold drizzle began to fall. Much of the Exposition was still under construction, and the rain left the grounds muddy. So while they waited for the sky to clear, Twain and his friends contented themselves with the entertainments available on the yacht.
It remained gloomy throughout the weekend, with a heavy fog descending over much of the Virginia coast. On Monday morning Rogers felt that pressing business in New York required him to return home immediately. To save time, he and his son, Harry, disembarked and took a fast train to New York. Rogers"s son-in-law Urban Broughton, an English-born engineer, stayed behind to keep Twain company on the Kanawha while the yacht"s captain waited for the weather to improve.
Twain grew restless as the fog persisted into Tuesday, and he finally went ash.o.r.e to the Chamberlin Hotel, a large resort at Old Point Comfort. Holding court in the lobby with admirers-including a few reporters-he enjoyed portraying himself as an ancient mariner who had been marooned and was beginning to worry he would never see home again. Conveniently forgetting that Broughton was with him, he spun a sad tale for his audience.
"Here I am," he said, "all alone on Mr. H. H. Rogers"s yacht Kanawha, anch.o.r.ed out there, and not a saint to look down in pity. ... For two days we have been held up by the fog out by the Cape, and the navigation officer says that he won"t risk the pa.s.sage. ... So here I remain, pacing the boards of the Kanawha or the carpets of the Chamberlin, utterly, unforgivably alone. I think of that Fifth Avenue and of the dear omnibus trundling up and down from the monument, and I feel that I am without a country."56 When some of his innocent listeners suggested that he simply take a train home, he answered that he detested rail travel and said he had no alternative but to "remain a marooned mariner until the fog lifts."57 He was so good at delivering such words with a straight face that some people concluded from his remarks that he was actually in distress, especially when the headlines the next day read, "Mark Twain in Gloom. Marooned at Old Point by Fog. Tells a Tale of Desertion," and "Humorist Only Unhappy Man at Hampton Roads. Refuses to Desert the Ship." But by the time these stories appeared in print, the weather had improved and the captain was ready to sail. With Broughton and the crew of forty attending to his every need, Twain was able to relax and enjoy himself on the return voyage. By Thursday, May 2, the old mariner was safely back at 21 Fifth Avenue, listening once again to the comforting rattle of the Washington Square omnibus as it pa.s.sed his door.
But the joke that he had been "marooned" was not yet played out. It was taken up by Rogers himself, who saw the newspaper headlines about "desertion" and decided to match Twain"s false story with one of his own. And his tall tale was much more outrageous. Though he was well aware that his beloved yacht had returned to New York the day before, he sent an urgent message on Friday to newspapermen in Norfolk saying that the Kanawha had not yet arrived at her home port, and that he feared his friend Mark Twain might be lost at sea. ("The only way [I] was lost at sea," Twain joked afterward, "was for something to do.") The reporters took Rogers at his word, forgetting that he was the same man who had fooled everyone by building one railroad disguised as two seemingly unconnected ones. "The Standard Oil wizard showed a remarkable willingness to let the newspapers into the workings of his mind," the Washington Post later remarked, "and the narrative of the missing humorist was born."58 It was said that the editor of the Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch was so worried by the possibility of Twain going down with the yacht that he "sat up all night with an "extra" ready and with his heart in his mouth." Messengers were put on the alert at the telegraph office to convey to the paper any news of ships in distress. When the concerns expressed in Virginia were relayed to New York, the national press jumped on the story.
On Sat.u.r.day morning readers found Mark Twain"s name splashed across the front page of the New York Times. The news appeared very bad indeed. "Twain and Yacht Disappear at Sea," the headline read. "Humorist and the Kanawha Missing from Hampton Roads." The report on the front page of the New York Tribune was equally alarming, with an urgent message by telegraph from Norfolk appealing for help in locating "H. H. Rogers"s yacht Kanawha, having on board Mark Twain. The yacht has been missing since Wednesday." To most readers, it must have seemed that the humorist was a goner.59 Twain was as surprised as anyone to learn that he was in peril on the open ocean. "I see you are lost in the fog," a neighbor teased after finding the author at home, and in good shape.
Bewildered, Twain asked, "Lost in a fog? What do you mean?" When the news report was shown to him, he quickly guessed that Rogers was behind the story and rose magnificently to the occasion.
"You can a.s.sure my Virginia friends," he solemnly informed the reporters who soon gathered at his door, "that I will make an exhaustive investigation of this report that I have been lost at sea. If there is any foundation for the report, I will at once apprise the anxious public."
The next day the papers had great fun playing with variations on Twain"s old joke about exaggerated stories of his death. The New York American came up with the best headline: "Twain Hesitates to Admit He"s Dead." 60 Mark Twain enjoying a day of sailing during a visit to Bermuda.
FOUR.
Body and Soul.
What G.o.d lacks is convictions-stability of character. He ought to be a Presbyterian or a Catholic or something-not try to be everything.
Mark Twain.
IN ONE OF HIS COMMENTS to the press about his supposed disappearance at sea, Twain denied that he was trying to hide from anyone. In particular, he joked, he didn"t want people spreading rumors that he was "dodging Mrs. Eddy." He offered no further explanation, but contemporary readers of New York papers would have understood his joke right away. Over the past several years he had received considerable attention in the press for articles he had written that were critical of Mary Baker Eddy and the Christian Science movement she had founded. At the beginning of 1907, Harper"s brought out a collection of his writings on the subject under the t.i.tle Christian Science, with Notes Containing Corrections to Date. An earlier version of the book was supposed to have appeared in 1903, but at the last minute Harper"s had decided not to publish it. Church members had already raised a fuss over Twain"s articles, and-according to the author himself-Harper"s asked him "not to insist upon its publication, they being afraid it could hurt their house by antagonizing the Scientists."2 His publisher had good reason to be concerned. Reclusive and secretive, Eddy-now in her eighties and not in good health-still exercised absolute control over the affairs of her sect, and her teachings were revered by thousands of members who attended services at more than seven hundred churches. Her followers zealously defended their faith from the frequent attacks launched against it in the popular press, insisting that Eddy was a benevolent mother figure who exercised her authority with a soft touch.
Twain"s quarrel was not so much with the religion as with the character of its leader, whom he enjoyed criticizing in personal terms that were bound to offend many of her admirers. In his view, Eddy ruled over her church like an American pope, communing with G.o.d behind the lace curtains of her Victorian parlor and giving orders with the certainty of one who thought "her authority was from heaven, and had no limits." Though Twain was Harper"s most important author, the publishing house was understandably reluctant to issue a work that called the seemingly mild-mannered Eddy a "remorseless tyrant;" "a bra.s.s G.o.d with clay legs;" "a Christian for revenue only;" and a despot who was "grasping, sordid, penurious, famishing for everything she sees-money, power, glory." For good measure, Twain also accused Eddy of plagiarism, claiming that her Science and Health-the textbook for believers-was entirely the work of others.3 At the end of 1906 the Harper"s office finally decided to risk publication after the New York World and McClure"s Magazine launched investigations into Eddy"s life that made Twain"s portrait seem less extreme. The author of the long series of articles that ran in McClure"s came to a conclusion about Eddy"s character that was every bit as harsh as Twain"s, declaring, "Probably no other woman so handicapped-so limited in intellect, so uncertain in conduct, so tortured by hatred and hampered by petty animosities-has ever risen from a state of helplessness and dependence to a position of such power and authority."4 It is sometimes suggested that Twain"s criticisms of Eddy were the product of a curmudgeon"s bitterness or a misogynist"s rage. But such reasoning wouldn"t explain the similar thoughts of the McClure"s contributor, who was a promising young female writer with no predisposition to attack Christian Science or its leader. For more than a year Twain"s neighbor in Manhattan, Willa Cather, had been investigating Eddy"s career for McClure"s, conducting much of her work in Boston, the church"s home base. As a result of her own independent research, she had come to share Twain"s conviction that the founder had misled her flock and had never, in Cather"s words, "produced an original idea on her own account." In her opinion Eddy"s princ.i.p.al ambitions were to enjoy a life of ease and "to exact homage from the mult.i.tude."5 A modern literary scholar has accused Twain of indulging in "paranoid fantasies" about Christian Science. It is true that both Cather and Twain overestimated Eddy"s influence and the size of her following, but mistrust of Eddy and her inner circle was so widespread during the early years of the twentieth century that even the normally reserved editors of the New York Times became zealous foes of the church and led a relentless campaign to discredit it in ways that Twain never dared to employ. Again and again, the paper"s editorial pages lambasted the church, calling it a "crude and squalid cult" and referring to a group of Eddy"s faith healers as "wretched sorcerers" and "vampires." It warned the public against Christian Science "harpies," argued that Eddy was an outright fraud, and said her followers were "dupes." The campaign reached a fever pitch in 1904, when the New York Times said of Eddy, "To reverence, therefore, she has no faintest t.i.tle, and it was through reverence that she and her a.s.sociates in the miracle business were able to accomplish the little they have magnified into much."6 Rarely seen beyond the gates of her large home in Concord, New Hampshire-where she enjoyed a quiet, comfortable life, thanks to her various attendants and the resources made possible by a personal fortune of $3 million-Eddy provided an easy target for her foes. But, unlike the New York Times and many other critics of Christian Science, Twain sympathized with the basic concept of the religion and spoke admiringly of the potential for treating illness through mental and spiritual powers. Without any trace of irony, he used the words "gracious and beautiful" to describe "the power, through loving mercifulness and compa.s.sion, to heal fleshy ills and pains and griefs-all-with a word, with a touch of the hand!" To a correspondent who questioned his views, he explained that it was easy for him to separate the good in Christian Science from its leader, who, in his opinion, had distorted its purpose for personal gain. Though the "healing principle" was a real force, he explained, Eddy had "hitched it to the shirt-tail of a religion" and was like "a tramp stealing a ride on the lightning express." In private, his comic nickname for her was Eddypus.7 At various times in his life, Twain had wanted desperately to believe in mental healing. Livy"s delicate health was often affected by her state of mind, and it was said that she had benefited in her youth from a faith healer who had supposedly helped her overcome a long bout of illness. Struggling to understand the slow decline of his wife"s health in her last years, Twain searched for explanations that went beyond what the doctors could tell him. Miracle cures appealed to his imagination and offered the only alternative to the inadequate treatments available from the limited medical science of the day.
Similarly, in Jean"s case, even her own doctors believed that her best hope of controlling her epilepsy was to adjust her way of thinking and to exert more control over her moods. At the time, no reliable drugs existed for her condition, so the next best thing was to help her establish a sense of calm in her mind and in her surroundings. Her treatment in Katonah was a kind of mental healing, a touch of Christian Science without the religion. It is little wonder that Twain was reluctant to discount its potential.
But part of his anger toward Eddy seems to have been driven by his own frustrated expectations for mental healing. It had failed to save Livy, and it had yet to produce much of a change in Jean. Moreover, in darker moments, he sometimes blamed Susy"s death on her interest in various forms of mental science and spiritualism, believing that she had relied too much on these things to alleviate the pains of the spinal meningitis that killed her. If nothing else, attacking Eddy was one way of venting his frustration over all these private sorrows, especially since he considered her such a deserving target. For him, laughing at her personal failings was better than crying over the more serious problems created by incurable illnesses. "I am not combating Xn Science," he told a campaigner against the movement. "I haven"t a thing in the world against it. Making fun of that shameless old swindler, Mother Eddy, is the only thing about it I take any interest in."8 Her writing style gave him endless amus.e.m.e.nt. Recalling his conversations with Twain about Christian Science, Howells said, "It would not be easy to say whether in his talk of it his disgust for the illiterate twaddle of Mrs. Eddy"s book, or his admiration of her genius for organization, was the greater." Twain was convinced that she couldn"t write a coherent paragraph and gleefully seized on examples of bad prose in her published work. Of her cryptic remark that a "spiritual noumenon" had "silenced portraiture," he dryly observed: "You cannot silence portraiture with a noumenon; if portraiture should make a noise, a way could be found to silence it, but even then it could not be done with a noumenon." His doubts about her authorship of Science and Health were based largely on his reading of her autobiography, which he considered a stylistic mess full of basic grammatical mistakes and misprints. Having spent much of his youth setting type by hand as a printer"s apprentice, he offered the church some professional advice: "I think her proof-reader should have been shot."9 In case anyone thought he was being too hard on an old woman whose calling was religious rather than literary, he made a point of saying that his expectations for her prose weren"t unreasonable. "I wish to say that of Mrs. Eddy I am not requiring perfect English, but only good English. No one can write perfect English and keep it up through a stretch of ten chapters. It has never been done. ... It has been approached in several English grammars; I have even approached it myself; but none of us made port."10 Eddy"s top officials responded to Twain"s critique of their leader by undertaking a low-key effort to make peace with him. The Christian Science member responsible for press relations in New York-William McCrackan-contacted Twain after his early articles on the sect appeared and asked to speak with him in private. The author agreed, and a series of meetings and telephone conversations followed in which McCrackan did his best to soften Twain"s views on Eddy. It didn"t work, but the two men were polite to each other, and agreed to disagree. In one of their meetings Twain revealed his exasperation with a power greater than Eddy"s.
Twain found little to admire in Mary Baker Eddy"s Science and Health, the textbook for her Christian Science followers, saying of it, "I think her proofreader should have been shot."
"They tell me," he said to McCrackan, "that G.o.d is all powerful. He can do everything. Then I think of the miners down there in Pennsylvania working for a pittance in the dark. I think of the cruelties, oppressions, injustices everywhere and according to this, G.o.d is responsible for all of them. Why, I"d rather have Satan any day than that kind of a G.o.d."11 McCrackan was worried that Twain"s mind had been poisoned against Eddy by false stories from an excommunicated member named Josephine Woodbury. A woman of considerable physical charm, Woodbury had been one of the church"s prominent teachers until she had become pregnant by one of her students and had then claimed that mental science was the real cause of her pregnancy. She was a great believer in hypnosis and the power of suggestion, so she thought it perfectly natural to announce that her child-christened "The Prince of Peace"-was the result of an immaculate conception. Eddy refused to go along with this ruse, and Woodbury was banished from the church. For several years, however, she waged a rearguard action against her former sect, and Twain was one of the people she approached with disparaging tales of Eddy"s private life. After McCrackan found out that Twain had met with the disgraced former member, he concluded that she must have cast a spell over the old man and turned him into her latest "victim of vulgar hypnotic trickery." To the faithful, this may have seemed as good an explanation as any for Twain"s sharp criticisms of their leader.12 Accordingly, the church hierarchy decided that the best response to Twain"s new book from Harper"s was simply to downplay its importance and to carry on with their own work, which would soon include establishing a daily newspaper designed to uphold Eddy"s expressed ideal of fair play in a country where the press was often her enemy. On November 25, 1908, the Christian Science Monitor would make its first appearance.
THERE WAS ONE wealthy member of the New York church, however, who was convinced that Twain deserved a public rebuke for his new book. Without any encouragement from other Christian Scientists, Genie Holtzmeyer Rosenfeld decided to wage a one-woman battle against him. A native of England, and a novelist in her youth, Rosenfeld was a middle-aged society figure and patron of the arts who had abandoned her Jewish roots and had become a fervent believer in Christian Science. As the wife of Broadway producer Sidney Rosenfeld, she was well known in theatrical circles and was president of the Century Theatre Club, which boasted a membership of four hundred women dedicated to promoting what they called "intelligent" drama on the New York stage.
When one of her committees at the Theatre Club made the mistake of not consulting the proud president before inviting Mark Twain to partic.i.p.ate in a charity benefit, Genie Rosenfeld exploded with anger and threatened to resign if the committee did not promptly withdraw the invitation. Her stand attracted the interest of the press, which reported on her "stormy" confrontation with the offending committee. After reminding her members that she was devoted to Christian Science, she rejected any suggestion that the club could raise money for charity by asking Twain to autograph copies of his books. She had no use for the author or his books and wanted everyone to know it. With a flair for overstatement common to the melodramas of the time, President Rosenfeld informed the committee that "Christ is dearer to me than anything else in this world, and so is Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy. I will not tolerate the reception of anybody who has attacked us as Mark Twain has done. I"ll resign from the Century sooner than be forced into this position of seeming approval of his work."13 If Rosenfeld expected her members to support her, she was mistaken. Almost as one, they turned against her. Some said they would be happy to accept her resignation, and others threatened to resign if she prevailed. "I didn"t know I had joined a Christian Science club," declared one angry member, "and I am going to get out."
At a hastily called meeting of the entire membership on May 1, 1907, the club voted not only to stand by the invitation to Twain, but to send him a formal message apologizing for the statements of their president. The apology took a light tone, but it represented a stunning defeat for Rosenfeld and-indirectly-the cause of Christian Science. The message to Twain affirmed the group"s respect for him and specifically disavowed the president"s remarks with the explanation that "Mrs. Rosenfeld is an Englishwoman and does not understand that, after the Const.i.tution and the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, you are our biggest native doc.u.ment and our best beloved inst.i.tution."14 Twain might have enjoyed dealing with this controversy if it had arisen two weeks earlier. As it was, he was preoccupied with another matter at the end of the first week of May. This was the period when he was kept busy explaining why he had not perished at the bottom of the Atlantic. The Theatre Club"s meeting took place on the day the Kanawha left Virginia, and by the time reporters found Twain safe at home three days later, his "disappearance" at sea was the only subject anyone wanted him to discuss. But he had seen enough in the newspapers of the past week to make a sly point of denying that he was trying to hide from Mrs. Eddy or her supporters.
Indeed, as though to prove his fearlessness, he put on his white uniform two days later and made a grand entrance at the charity event that had sparked all the controversy-the Actors" Fund Fair. It was held at the Metropolitan Opera House, and its purpose was to raise money for actors impoverished by illness or old age. Large crowds turned out to buy raffle tickets and various novelties sold by celebrities and chorus girls.
To avoid any conflicts, the management of the fair steered Twain away from Rosenfeld"s club and arranged for him to autograph his books at another group"s booth. He agreed to this plan, and took up his post at a table where he sold "autographs while you wait." Meanwhile, as the New York Tribune reported, "There was a gloom around the booth of the Century Theatre Club, across the way, that could have been cut with a knife. "It"s too bad, isn"t it?" one of the members of the club said to a Tribune reporter, under her breath. "I"m a Christian Scientist myself, but I don"t believe in bringing religion into a thing of this kind. Mark Twain feels very bad about the fuss; I heard him say so. No, Mrs. Rosenfeld hasn"t been here at all." "15 When the fair opened, Mark Twain was asked to speak and was introduced to loud applause as "that American inst.i.tution and apostle of wide humanity." He thanked the crowd for their good wishes, but urged them to "trans.m.u.te" those feelings into hard cash for the benefit of the fund. Then, usurping the authority of President Roosevelt-who had officially opened the Actors" Fund Fair by pressing a b.u.t.ton in Washington that switched on lights in the Opera House-Twain said, "By virtue of the authority in me vested I declare the fair open. I call the ball game. Let the trans.m.u.ting begin!"16 He emerged as one of the best fund-raisers of the event, lending his star power to a couple of auctions, including one hosted by the society hostess Mrs. Stuyvesant (Mamie) Fish, whose floral booth was a big attraction. "Mrs. Fish was making sales yesterday," reported the Tribune, "and early in the afternoon Mark Twain a.s.sisted her by officiating at a floral auction in front of the booth." The fair also featured appearances by his friend Ethel Barrymore and another rising star of the stage, Douglas Fairbanks.17 As for Rosenfeld, she did indeed stay home, not wanting to risk any chance of meeting Twain. After her club had rejected her demands, she had no choice but to step down from the leadership. Humbled, she offered apologies and hoped she would be forgiven, but a new president was promptly elected, and she never recovered her place of importance in the group. In his brief remarks at the opening of the fair Twain made only one reference to the controversy. He chose not to joke about it, but spoke in terms that were broad and generous.
"There is to be no creed here," he said, "no religion except charity."18 ...
THOUGH MANY OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES were delighted by his campaign against Eddy, Twain always understood that his unvarnished views of mainstream Christianity were better saved for the edification of posterity. When he was dictating some of his angriest comments on the G.o.d of the Bible in the summer of 1906, he told Howells, "To-morrow I mean to dictate a chapter which will get my heirs & a.s.signs burnt alive if they venture to print it this side of 2006 A.D." His abuse of Eddy pales beside that which he heaped on the "Lord of Creation" during this period, calling the Bible "the most d.a.m.natory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading, by contrast." The adjectives he applies to G.o.d include "repulsive," "malignant," "vindictive," and "pitiless." He was certainly right to think that his contemporaries weren"t ready for such strong stuff, especially his scornful verdict on the concept of G.o.d the Father: "We know quite well that we should hang His style of father wherever we might catch him."19 Twain was a vociferous critic of Christian missionaries-especially those working in Asia, where the new American empire was making inroads. In 1901 he had expressed his views in the powerful essay "To the Person Sitting in Darkness," urging American missionaries and other amba.s.sadors of "the Blessings-of-Civilization Trust" to quit meddling in the affairs of China or any other place where the natives were presumed to be living in darkness. "Give those poor things a rest," he said. They had already suffered enough from exposure to "Maxim Guns and Hymn Books, and Trade-Gin and Torches of Progress and Enlightenment (patent adjustable ones, good to fire villages with, upon occasion)."
As he argued privately, if the missionaries really wanted to do good work, they could return home and help stop lynchings and similar atrocities committed by supposedly G.o.d-fearing Americans. "O kind missionary," he joked bitterly, "O compa.s.sionate missionary, leave China! come home and convert these Christians!"20 In light of these views, it might seem hard to believe that Twain wrapped up his busy week at the beginning of May 1907 by making a four-hundred-mile round-trip train journey to raise money for the First Presbyterian Church of Annapolis, Maryland. He had never been to Annapolis before and knew only two people in the congregation, yet he was willing to go on the long trip merely for the sake of making a prosperous church a little more prosperous. It wasn"t that he had suddenly experienced a change of heart about religion. The failings of Christianity always made his blood boil, but he still felt a sentimental attachment to the church of his youth and was inclined to help it. He could view such generosity as a public duty, whereas his feud with G.o.d was mostly a private affair. At any rate, even his fiercest tirades against Christianity couldn"t manage to loosen some bonds that went back to his earliest days. His mother had been an active member of the First Presbyterian Church of Hannibal, and he had attended its Sunday school, whose traditions are gently mocked in Tom Sawyer.
As his closest friends understood, he never entirely escaped the influence of his Presbyterian upbringing, no matter how hard he tried to play the opposite of the much loathed figure of his boyhood-the congregation"s Model Boy, who never missed a worship service and "was the pride of all the matrons." As Howells once told him, "If I had been your maker, I could have improved you I suppose, but for the creature of the Presbyterian deity who did make you, you are very well; and I am willing to take you as you are." On occasion Twain could even show a grudging sense of pride in Presbyterianism, praising it for its moderation: "You never see any of us Presbyterians getting in a sweat about religion and trying to ma.s.sacre the neighbors."21 In any case, the particular Presbyterian who invited him to Annapolis was not an easy person to refuse. She was the first lady of Maryland, the wife of Governor Edwin Warfield, a Democrat who was then widely considered a strong choice for his party"s presidential nomination in the next election. The governor belonged to one of the oldest families in Maryland and had patrician features suitable for the leader of a Border State, with a white mustache and long goatee. (One of his poor relations was then a young girl in Baltimore who would one day be known to the world as the woman for whom King Edward VIII surrendered the British throne-Wallis Warfield Simpson.) When Governor Warfield"s wife, Emma, wrote Twain asking him to partic.i.p.ate in an "entertainment" to benefit her church, she caught him in an unusually good mood, and he promptly made up his mind to tell her yes. Discussing the invitation with Isabel Lyon-who would accompany him on the trip-he was not being entirely facetious when he explained that the offer was "right in my line for I"m nothing if I"m not a Presbyterian." Besides, he added, he had always wanted to see the Naval Academy at Annapolis and welcomed the chance to tour it as the governor"s guest.22 The Warfields were in awe of the author and went out of their way to make sure his visit was a success. The governor himself met Twain and Lyon when they arrived in Baltimore on Thursday, May 9, and escorted them the rest of the way to Annapolis, where Twain was the guest of honor at a large dinner held in the Executive Mansion. So many tickets were sold for Twain"s talk on behalf of the Presbyterians that Warfield had to move the event from the mansion to the marble chamber of the House of Delegates in the capitol. (In those days, n.o.body seemed to doubt the legality of a bunch of Presbyterians taking over the statehouse for the night.) While preparations for the great event were underway, the governor and his wife took Twain to see the Naval Academy. For many years, the school had enforced a strict no-smoking policy on its grounds. Of course, the visiting author ignored the rule, and no one in the official party accompanying him was willing to point out his mistake. But the sentries knew their duty and told him twice to extinguish his cigar.
"Arrested again," Twain complained when he was caught the second time. "Const.i.tuted constabulary will run this country yet." Everyone laughed, but having to give up his cigar-even for a short time-was not a laughing matter to Twain. "I will fill the world with crime if I don"t smoke," he said in a voice that seemed only partly joking. Fortunately, the governor intervened and quickly won special permission from the superintendent"s wife to let Twain sit on her porch and smoke to his heart"s content while he watched a special parade of midshipmen.
"I have smoked practically all my life," he explained to the Warfields, "and it has never done me any harm."23 Many of the state"s newspapers sent correspondents to cover Twain"s visit, and one overly excited journalist even went to the trouble of writing an original poem of thirty-six lines to celebrate the occasion. "Throw wide the sweet doors of the State," the newspaper poet rhapsodized about Twain"s arrival in Annapolis. "And gather, ye bevies of beauty, with cheeks of the rose, at the gate!"24 On the evening of his talk there were no "bevies of beauty" waiting for Twain, but at least five hundred people bought tickets, and the author gave them a good show. He told a few anecdotes about his wayward youth and ended with his favorite ghost story, "The Golden Arm," which had been a staple of his act during his years on the lecture circuit. He still had the power to transfix an audience with his artful drawl and dramatic climaxes. Thirty years later, one of the spectators at the House of Delegates that night vividly recalled the powerful moment when the white-clad humorist ended his ghost story about the corpse with the golden arm. "He made everyone"s flesh creep. "Who"s got my golden arm?" he demanded ... and at the climax, when he shouted "YOU!" everyone popped up out of his seat."25 During the evening Twain also discussed his earlier "arrest" at the Naval Academy and decided to embellish the details a bit. He claimed that he had been "caught red-handed" breaking a federal law and had escaped punishment only because someone had whispered to the sentries that they couldn"t lock up a gentleman whom the governor considered "one of the greatest men in the world." He pleaded rhetorically, "Who am I to contradict the Governor of Maryland? Worm that I am, by what right should I traverse the declared opinion of that man of wisdom and judgment whom I have learned to admire and trust?"26 With his usual genius for such things, he managed to do a good deed for the Warfields and their church while at the same time casting himself as an endearing old rake who could barely stay one step ahead of the law. And the more he played the incorrigible sinner, the more the crowd loved him. He was proud to be a walking contradiction and was only too happy to point it out.
During a lull in the festivities he talked politics with the governor and told him that he usually tried to avoid siding with one party against another. He said he was a "mugwump," which he defined as someone unafraid to change his mind on any issue at any time.
"I want to change my mind every day if I feel like it," Twain said. "I vote for the men, not for their principles-sometimes I doubt if he has any principles."27 Warfield didn"t take the comment personally. In fact, he seems to have been delighted by his guest"s refreshing willingness to speak his mind. As for Mrs. Warfield, she considered Twain"s visit one of the highlights of her time as first lady, posing proudly at his side for the official photographs in a heavy dress that covered her ample figure from neck to foot and made her look the very model of Presbyterian rect.i.tude.
Though Twain was in Maryland for only forty-eight hours, the Warfield itinerary kept him busy nearly every waking minute. By the end of Friday night, he was exhausted. The original plan was for him to stay the weekend and return home on Monday, but living for two days on someone else"s schedule was about all he could stand-especially if it included a lot of formal socializing. So when Sat.u.r.day came along, he decided it was time to leave. Isabel Lyon offered a polite excuse to the Warfields, saying that Twain was suddenly needed in New York on urgent business. Adding apologies of his own, he was able to make an early exit without causing any offense.
It also helped that on the return trip to Baltimore he allowed the governor to accompany him and to have one more chance to show him off. During his short layover in the city, he went with Warfield to see the new headquarters of the Sun newspaper. While he toured the offices, Twain brought smiles to the faces of the editors when he paused near one of their rooms to admire its tidy appearance, exclaiming, "I could even write something good in here myself!"28 ...
THOUGH IT WASN"T EXACTLY URGENT, Twain did have business to attend to back home. He had an appointment coming up in June that he considered one of the most important in his life. He had learned about it only a week earlier when a message from England reached him as the Kanawha was leaving Virginia. It came from the American amba.s.sador in London, who was forwarding a request from Lord Curzon, formerly viceroy of India and now chancellor of the oldest inst.i.tution of higher learning in the English-speaking world.
"Oxford University would confer degree of Doctor of Letters on you on June 26," the amba.s.sador cabled. "But personal presence necessary."
The invitation didn"t allow much time for making the necessary arrangements-especially given that the voyage alone would take at least nine days from New York to London-but Twain promptly sent a wire with the simple response: "I will come with greatest pleasure."
He was overjoyed by the news and wouldn"t have missed the chance to accept the degree in person. "I never expected to cross the water again," he acknowledged, "but I would be willing to journey to Mars for that Oxford degree." Clara later remarked that this was "one of the great moments in Father"s career," and recalled that the prospect of making such a long voyage didn"t deter him because "the goal at the other end shone with magnetic brilliance." She remembered him exclaiming with a mixture of pride and regret, "If only Livy could have known of this triumph!"29 He sent off his response so quickly that it arrived in London just before the barrage of press cables went out announcing that the Kanawha was missing. For a while it amused him to imagine that the amba.s.sador might think his reply had come from the next world. Chuckling over the possible confusion, he joked, "Those at the American Emba.s.sy must have figured that while on my way down to Davy Jones I had stopped long enough to tap the cable and send them the message."30 At any rate, he delayed publicizing the Oxford degree until after he had traveled to Maryland. With Governor Warfield at his side, he told the press the good news, which gave the announcement an official air, as though he meant to emphasize that the award was a rare honor for America as well as for himself. And that was, in fact, the way it came to be seen on both sides of the Atlantic. As the good women of the Century Theatre Club had already told him, he was now such a national icon that it was impossible for his admirers not to see his achievements as a reflection of the American spirit at its best.
But why did an academic honor-especially one from the Old World-mean so much to a self-made man such as Twain? He offered a facetious explanation in which he cast himself as a wily backwoods renegade taking an easy prize from the innocent university authorities, then skipping out before anyone was the wiser. "I take the same childlike delight in a new degree that an Ind