An enterprising reporter managed to track her down in Halifax, where she and Clara were staying for a few days while waiting for another ship home. Catching her off guard, the journalist asked bluntly if she and Twain were engaged to be married.
Lyon"s face must have pa.s.sed through several shades of red as she tried to compose herself, searching for the right words to make a carefully measured reply. "I hope that you will contradict the report you have mentioned" was her stiff response. "I am so glad that I saw you in order that I might thus be able to give this unqualified denial."
She emphasized that the relationship was more professional than personal. In a Washington Post version of the report, her presence in Halifax was explained as simply the result of doing her job-she was looking after her employer"s daughter while he was out of the country: "Miss Lyon said that Miss Clemens had been ill, and they were on their way to St. Johns, Newfoundland, but since the collision they had decided to abandon the Eastern part of their trip. ... Miss Lyon, although she has recently been the secretary for Mr. Clemens, acted in the same capacity for the late Mrs. Clemens. ... On account of her attention to detail and her ability to keep track of engagements she has been invaluable to Mr. Clemens."7 Predictably, an American correspondent in London approached Twain at Brown"s Hotel and asked what he thought of the story. He wasn"t pleased. Confronted with the question of whether he intended to wed Lyon, he was "speechless." He had just returned to the hotel after a late night and wasn"t ready to discuss such a personal matter. Instead he insisted on giving his response in writing. Going to his room, he sat down and wrote two sentences. Then he sent them to the reporter waiting in the lobby. There was nothing ambiguous, coy, or forced about his reply.
"I have not known, and shall never know, anyone who could fill the place of the wife I have lost. I shall not marry again. S. L. Clemens."8 There were bound to be further complications for all concerned as long as Lyon"s service to the family was more like that of a close relation than of a mere secretary. Outsiders were naturally suspicious that the family secretary was preparing to a.s.sume the part of the family matriarch. For someone like Clara, who cared so much for "proprieties," it is odd that she failed to see how others could easily misinterpret her growing friendship with Lyon and jump to conclusions. By taking her along on the voyage, she had inadvertently done more to stir up gossip than Twain"s supposedly reckless act of strolling down the street in his bathrobe. As one press report explicitly stated at the time, this new gossip and the Canadian voyage were linked: "Miss Lyon was with Twain"s daughter when the latter proved herself a heroine ... in Halifax harbor on Monday. The engagement rumor is believed to have grown out of this incident."9 Basking in his own success, Twain didn"t criticize Clara for her trip, but teased her about his own supposedly exemplary behavior. On the day before he sailed home, he wrote her, "I have been most mannerly & etiquetical. I have returned every call-card-calls by card, delivered by myself; personal calls in person. ... Everybody has been very affectionate, & you will be spiteful & jealous."10 Of course, his way of dealing with their rivalry was to make light of it, and this was one of those times when Clara probably didn"t appreciate his sense of humor.
Instead of returning to New York with Lyon, Clara traveled on her own to Boston and then stayed for a short time in Norfolk, Connecticut, where she took refuge in another one of her rest cures. In New York, Lyon prepared for Twain"s return. She planned to meet him at the pier. But Clara decided that it would be impossible to go home so soon. She was content to let Lyon welcome her father back without her.
RETURNING TO AMERICA on the Minnetonka-a sister ship of the Minneapolis-Twain ran into the same kind of trouble that Clara and Isabel Lyon had encountered on their trip. After just two days at sea, his ship became enveloped by fog in the early morning hours and collided with a fishing schooner. Both vessels survived the accident and remained seaworthy, but there was confusion aboard the liner at first, and the captain ordered everyone on deck for possible evacuation. Most of the pa.s.sengers were sleeping at the time of the accident and emerged from their cabins still wearing their nightclothes. Just as the lifeboats were being lowered, however, the captain called off the alarm, having determined that the hole from the collision was above the waterline and repairable.
A great sense of relief ran through the various groups of pa.s.sengers standing on the foggy deck in their robes and pajamas. A moment later any remaining tension vanished completely as the pa.s.sengers noticed something that brought wide smiles to their faces. Trying to suppress their laughter, they pointed to a figure in a white robe and slippers wandering like a sleepy ghost among them with his white hair sticking out in all directions from his nightcap. It was such an amusing spectacle that the crowd soon forgot about the collision and began asking each other questions about various aspects of Twain"s sleeping attire. As one of the onlookers later recounted, "Almost as soon as the news was made known that the danger was over a stage whisper went round that Mark Twain was clad in pink pajamas. Another report was that they were blue, and another was that while they were pajamas all right they were yellow."
It was left to Ralph Ashcroft to clear up the pajamas question. "I am sorry to disappoint you," he solemnly informed the curious pa.s.sengers, "but as a matter of fact Mr. Clemens doesn"t wear pajamas at all but a night shirt." Despite this explanation, some pa.s.sengers suspected that the real cause of the confusion was that Twain had mistakenly donned his scarlet Oxford gown in the darkness and had been wearing it under his robe.11 Some pa.s.sengers were so frightened by their close call that they slept fully dressed every night of the voyage thereafter. While the ship ran at reduced speed so the crew could make repairs, Twain decided to let the outside world know that he and his fellow pa.s.sengers had survived their brush with disaster in good shape. Taking advantage of the ship"s new wireless telegraph system, he sent a brief report to New York, announcing that the damage was "very slight" and signing his message, "All well, MARK TWAIN." Later, he gave an honest explanation of why he had wired the news. "It was not that I knew anything much about it," he said, "but because I wanted to give the impression that I did."12 When the ship sailed into New York harbor on July 22 under a bright sky, the crowd at the pier was surprised to see that the damage from the accident was more serious than Twain"s brief message had indicated. As the New York American reported, "A long wicked looking sc.r.a.pe on the starboard side of the Minnetonka, a jagged hole and several bent plates told of her narrow escape in a fog by collision with an English bark." But when reporters scurried aboard the ship and began bombarding Twain with questions, he refused to take the accident seriously, preferring instead to joke about the way he was dressed when the alarm had sounded. "My costume was a model of propriety and modesty compared to some that I merely glanced at in pa.s.sing. Of the collision I saw nothing, because I dressed very leisurely. I was disappointed because I felt that I should have been notified beforehand."13 He tried to keep his responses light and fanciful, so he ducked most of the serious questions and fired up his wit to produce a steady stream of droll answers. It was a bonanza for the reporters, who were given more than enough memorable quotations to go around. As he rattled off his funny answers, a chorus of laughter periodically erupted from an admiring group of women pa.s.sengers standing nearby.
He announced right away that he expected the press to address him properly. "Doctor Twain, if you please," he said solemnly, tipping the black derby he was wearing with his white suit. "That is the only t.i.tle I am using now."
Asked whether he had any interest in tasting a new c.o.c.ktail named after a recent political scandal, he answered that he was "like the girl in a show I saw before going to England, I"ll do anything that won"t make me blush. However, I"d like to see anybody make me blush."
When he was informed of a recent rumor concerning the Missouri cabin where he was born-it was supposedly for sale-he fired back, "It is about time it was. It has been burned down four times."
On the subject of whether he understood the British sense of humor, he boasted that he was now an expert on it, saying that he was "the proud possessor of two senses of humor, British and American. Next to my degree my new sense of humor is the most sensible thing that happened to me on the trip."14 Twain enjoyed the attention so much that he was sorry when it was time to go. In reply to a question about his age, he sounded like a man who still had many years of fun left in him.
"At two o"clock in the morning I feel old and sinful," he said, "but at eight o"clock, when I am shaving, I feel young and ready to hunt trouble. There is this about old age, though-every year brings one a new acc.u.mulation of privileges, a greater capacity for enjoyment."15 He was happy with the welcome he received from-among others-Isabel Lyon and his editors at the North American Review and Harper"s. But Clara"s absence was conspicuous. She was still in Boston, where Charles Wark had joined her, and where her health had yet to improve. Whatever reason she gave for missing this proud moment-when her father"s fame had soared to new heights on both sides of the Atlantic-he couldn"t help being disappointed. But he would have understood why she was reluctant to appear at a crowded event that meant posing for yet another photograph captioned "Mark Twain and his daughter." Even some newspapers were beginning to question "the gratuitous press notices that Miss Clara Clemens is receiving on the strength of being Mark Twain"s daughter." Such notices might have done some good if she had wanted a career on the popular stage, but they didn"t impress the serious lovers of cla.s.sical music whom she desperately wanted to cultivate. She feared that few of those people would ever take her seriously as long as they were constantly being reminded that she was the daughter of a "funny man."16 ...
TWAIN DIDN"T NEED to think twice about how to spend his first day back home at 21 Fifth Avenue. He went straight upstairs to his billiards table and began taking practice shots until Paine was able to join him in the evening. As soon as they had finished exchanging greetings at the door, he motioned his biographer inside and said, "Get your cue."
Although Paine was looking forward to hearing the details of Twain"s long trip, and wanted to report on his own interviews and other research he had been doing, his host insisted that such things could be discussed later. Having been away from his cherished table for more than a month, Twain wanted to concentrate on the game.
And so, for the rest of that warm summer night, they said very little to each other that didn"t pertain to billiards.17 Absorbed in the pleasures of his favorite pastime, Twain had no idea that a grave crisis had overtaken his dearest friend earlier that day. Henry Rogers had suddenly become seriously ill, and, for a time, it was feared that he might not recover.
It was a Monday, and the businessman had gone to work as usual at 26 Broadway. But during the morning he had started feeling queasy. Then he found it difficult to stand, grew faint, and collapsed at his desk. A doctor was summoned, and soon confirmed what others in the office suspected. It was a stroke. Rogers"s face was distorted, his speech had become garbled, and his left arm was limp.
The attack came as a great shock to everyone in the office, but in keeping with their reputation for cool professionalism, his secretary and other subordinates at Standard Oil made a determined effort to remain calm. Fearing that news of the attack would cause a panic on Wall Street, they tried to pretend that nothing was amiss. Quietly, they managed to get him not only out of the building, but out of town. He was whisked away to his son-in-law Urban Broughton"s mansion on Long Island, where the best doctors from the city came in a rush and hovered over the patient. No one beyond the immediate family was allowed to see him, and the official story was that he had suffered nothing more serious than a mild case of exhaustion from overwork and the summer heat.
This drama was still unfolding at the time that Twain was cheerfully enjoying his homecoming at the pier. He was only a short distance from the Standard Oil headquarters; yet, because of all the secrecy, it would take several days before he realized that something wasn"t right. And when he tried to find out what was happening, he wasn"t told the truth. On a business visit to 26 Broadway, Isabel Lyon was given the impression by the dutiful Katharine Harrison that the powerful executive wasn"t seriously ill at all, and would soon return to work.
"Good," Twain wrote to Rogers, after receiving this misleading report, "I was uneasy at first."18 In truth, Rogers remained in a bad way for weeks and was moved in late July from New York to his mansion in Ma.s.sachusetts, where doctors hoped that the familiar surroundings would help in his recovery. It wasn"t until the middle of August that Emilie Rogers finally gave Twain a version of events that was closer to the facts. Her husband was improving, she said, but admitted that "he had really been in worse shape than we have cared to acknowledge to anybody." She added that Henry had spoken of him often and was missing "Old Mark."19 Gradually, Rogers would regain enough strength to enjoy many more hours in Twain"s company, but he would never make a complete recovery. The effects of the stroke would linger for the remainder of his life. It was a great blow that in an instant took away some of the pirate"s swagger.
Even after he knew the truth, it was hard for Twain to accept that the man he had always regarded as a tower of strength was as vulnerable to physical shocks as anyone else. Though he knew well enough how hard Rogers worked and played, he seemed to underestimate the pressures that his friend was under, especially during the first half of 1907. The combined burdens of building the Virginian Railway and defending Standard Oil in ant.i.trust proceedings had proved too much even for Rogers, and his health had suffered under the strain. For months, he had been bombarded with subpoenas, and there was talk that the many civil suits being brought against the big oil trust would be followed by criminal indictments against the directors themselves.
At the very time that Rogers fell ill, Standard Oil was on the verge of losing an important case in federal court, and a stiff penalty was expected. Only twelve days after Rogers suffered his stroke, the verdict in this case was announced. On August 3, United States district judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis (the future baseball commissioner) ruled against Standard Oil from his bench in Chicago, finding that it had accepted illegal rebate payments from a railroad transporting its petroleum products across state lines. He wanted to impose a criminal punishment on the directors of the trust, declaring that they were in the same position as someone "who counterfeits the coin or steals letters from the mail." But the law allowed him to hand down only a fine, so he made it a hefty one.
Angered by the "studied insolence" of the officers and lawyers of Standard Oil, Judge Landis required them to pay the government $29,240,000. The Washington Post called it "the greatest monetary punishment in the history of American jurisprudence."20 Because the gravity of his friend"s illness was not explained to him until after Judge Landis ruled against Standard Oil, Twain"s first reaction to the verdict was to make light of it. He probably shared the widespread a.s.sumption that the penalty would be reduced on appeal. In fact, much to the consternation of President Roosevelt, it would be revoked a year later. Perhaps hoping that he and Rogers would soon find a way to laugh about the ma.s.sive fine, Twain wrote in his notebook that it reminded him of the June bride"s comment after her wedding night: "I expected it but I didn"t suppose it would be so big."21 Such levity was just the medicine that Rogers needed, and the world"s most celebrated humorist was eager to administer a large dose as soon as possible. In early September, Rogers was given permission to receive visitors and to take short trips around his hometown of Fairhaven. Except for a slowness in his speech and some stiffness in his movements, he appeared to be doing much better. His four grown children, their spouses, and his nine grandchildren gathered at the Fairhaven mansion to lend their support to his recovery. Twain was invited to join them.
"I am hoping to see you here in Fairhaven," Rogers told his friend in a letter dictated to a secretary. "I have been on the loaf for seven or eight weeks, and think I will stay. Am due in New York after a time for law suits, but what is the need of being in a hurry?"22 Encouraged by Rogers"s unusual willingness to remain "on the loaf," Twain came for a visit on September 17, sailing up from New York on a regular pa.s.senger steamer. He remained at the mansion for three days, making himself at home and doing his best to entertain Rogers, who was delighted to have his old friend back at his side. Staying at the mansion was like staying at a large resort hotel. Built in the Queen Anne style on twenty-five acres near the sea, it had almost twenty bedrooms and a central tower with an observation balcony fifty feet high.
The two old friends were soon spotted driving around town together in a small electric car with Rogers at the wheel, his features pale and drawn but his eyes full of determination. He was a little absentminded, however, and forgot to set the brake and turn off the engine when he stopped to get a newspaper at a local shop. As Rogers walked away, the wheels slowly rolled forward while his pa.s.senger was still sitting in the car.
It took Twain a few moments to realize what was happening. The top speed of the electric engine was only six miles an hour, so the vehicle was merely crawling along. But when he finally noticed its movement, he didn"t try to steer or apply the brake. According to a reporter who witnessed the scene, "Mark Twain looked over one side, then he slid across the seat and looked over the other, and then he furtively looked at the lever. He reached for the lever, but drew his hand back uncertainly. It was obvious he was very uncomfortable and would have swapped his place for the wheelhouse of a Mississippi steamboat if the alternative had offered. The runabout continued to hitch along and Twain concluded to desert. He fled to the sidewalk and went into the newspaper store."
With a childlike air of innocence, he explained to Rogers, "She started and I got out."
His friend laughed, then strode down the street in pursuit of the runaway car. Looking almost like his old energetic self, Rogers managed to rescue the machine before it hit anything.23 I never write "metropolis" for seven cents, because I can get the same money for "city."
MARK TWAIN.
PART THREE.
THE WORLD.
ACCORDING TO.
MARK.
Twain a.s.sumed that his money was safe inside the vaults of the gleaming fortress of the Knickerbocker Trust Company.
NINE.
Princes and Paupers.
Put all your eggs into one basket-and watch that basket.
Andrew Carnegie"s advice to Mark Twain.
DURING THE HOTTEST PART of the summer Twain spent most of his time at his rented cottage in leafy Tuxedo Park, where he was able to reflect quietly on the exciting events of his English visit. His wealthy neighbors in Tuxedo were generally respectful of his privacy and made few demands. He had an open invitation to all the important social events of the late summer, yet no one seems to have pressured him to attend any of them. He went out often, however, mostly to house parties in the afternoons and the occasional dinner. Everything usually came to a standstill when he entered a room, and only gradually picked up again as the guests watched him find a comfortable place where he could hold court among his admirers.
He sometimes traveled to neighbors" houses in a "jigger," one of the small black auto taxis that served Tuxedo. But usually he preferred to wander the shady lanes of the resort in the back of an open horse-drawn carriage. The scenery along the thirty-mile network of roads included not only lawns and mansions but also long stretches of untouched countryside. With cigar in hand, he would point the driver in the direction he wanted to go and lean back to enjoy the ride as the horse went at a leisurely pace in the drowsy summer afternoon.
At home, he tried to spend part of each day working on his autobiography. Using notes that he and Ashcroft had kept during their English visit, he dictated long pa.s.sages describing his impressions of the trip, then carefully revised the stenographer"s copy. To get in the mood one day, he put on his Oxford gown and posed for photographs on the wide porch that wrapped around the house. In his dictations he lingered over the high points, proudly recounting the enthusiastic treatment he received in London and everywhere else he went. But he was at his best when he began cutting down to size the figures of Amba.s.sador Whitelaw Reid and fellow author Marie Corelli, describing all their faults with the kind of brutal honesty that posthumous publication made possible.
It wasn"t until the end of October that Twain gave up the house in Tuxedo Park and returned to the old place on Fifth Avenue. Though he was sorry to leave Tuxedo"s peaceful scenery behind, he missed the energy and excitement of city life. In fact, on quiet days in the country when he was alone for any length of time, he sometimes wondered whether he really wanted to make his permanent home in a rural area. He worried that very few people would want to visit him at the new house in Redding, and that the neighbors there wouldn"t be nearly as interesting as those in Tuxedo.
At one point in August, when construction of the new house was going slowly and the cost was rising, he almost decided to sc.r.a.p the whole thing. But John Mead Howells talked him out of it, explaining that the financial penalties for canceling the contract with the builder would be too high. Isabel Lyon also urged that the construction continue. Of course, she didn"t want to see all her hard work on the project come to nothing. But she had another reason for wanting to see the house completed. Just before he went to England, Twain had given her a ramshackle cottage and several acres at the edge of his property in Redding. Though the old house needed extensive work to make it inhabitable, Lyon considered it a great prize. She looked forward to making the "Lobster Pot"-as the cottage was called-her own little haven. It was her reward for giving Twain such devoted service.
To her relief, once she and John Howells had voiced their opinions, there was no more talk of postponing or abandoning work on the new house. Twain stopped thinking about it and resigned himself to spending at least $45,000 for a place that initially was expected to cost much less. Part of the problem was that transporting heavy wagonloads of material uphill to the site was difficult, and bad weather often caused delays. But with $51,000 sitting in his account at the Knickerbocker Trust Company, he didn"t doubt that he could pay the bills.
IT WAS ON THE RECOMMENDATION of Henry Rogers and Katharine Harrison that Twain had deposited most of his cash at the "white marble palace" housing the Knickerbocker"s headquarters in Manhattan. (James Stillman"s much larger National City Bank served Rogers"s needs.) With 21,000 depositors, and more than $60 million on deposit, the Knickerbocker paid high dividends and was known as "the rich man"s savings bank." Designed by Stanford White in the style of a Roman temple, its headquarters looked impregnable, with towering pillars guarding either side of a narrow entrance. Its executives were seen as above reproach, and its address at Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue was considered one of the most prestigious in the city. Standing next to it on one end was the old Waldorf-Astoria hotel (replaced almost twenty-five years later by the Empire State Building), and on the other was the tall building that housed one of Twain"s favorite businesses-the Aeolian Company, the makers of his beloved orchestrelle.2 Not even the normally astute Rogers seems to have doubted the reliability of the Knickerbocker Trust Company, but as depositors would soon discover to their horror, there was corruption at the top in the person of the company"s ambitious president-a beefy, bearded man of fifty-six named Charles T. Barney. A familiar figure in the New York business world, Barney was related by marriage to the powerful Whitney family and knew everyone in high society. But he was also known on Broadway for the fast company he kept, enjoying late-night parties that used to include his good friend Stanford White before the architect was gunned down by the jealous husband of his former lover, Evelyn Nesbit.
Having made a lot of money early in his career from real estate deals around Manhattan, Barney was now trying to make a lot more money on Wall Street. He had developed a habit of quietly using private loans from the Knickerbocker to buy and sell property through various cronies, who would then split the profits with him. In this way, he ama.s.sed a fortune of $7 million. But in the early autumn of 1907, he overreached when he took the biggest risk of his life and loaned several million dollars of his depositors" money to a group of Wall Street speculators trying to make a killing on inflated shares in a shady mining operation called the United Copper Company.
This stock market scheme was similar to the one Henry Rogers had employed a few years earlier with Amalgamated Copper. In fact, the mastermind behind the United Copper Company was a young, Brooklyn-born mining investor named Frederick Augustus Heinze, who was an old enemy of Rogers. The two men had spent the better part of a decade fighting for control of Montana"s vast copper reserves. Together with Senator William Clark, Heinze had used bribery, extortion, and violence in an unsuccessful effort to drive Amalgamated Copper out of Montana. His methods were so tough that eventually he alienated even Senator Clark and was left to continue his battle alone. Undaunted, he filed a hundred lawsuits against Amalgamated in courts where he had already bribed the judges. To rid themselves of this formidable adversary, Rogers and his a.s.sociates had finally been forced to buy out Heinze"s mining interests at a cost of over $10 million. With this money, Heinze moved to New York in 1906 and started a new career as a stock market speculator.
The aggressive young millionaire quickly surrounded himself with several powerful business partners in New York, including Charles Barney. In his plan to whip up a bidding frenzy for shares in the new United Copper Company, Heinze brazenly copied Rogers"s old techniques, using secret deals, dubious loans, and selected leaks of insider information to lift the stock"s price. He must have believed that he could play the game even better than his erstwhile foe. But whereas crafty Rogers had timed his tricks in the market perfectly and had emerged with a huge profit from Amalgamated Copper, Heinze and Barney and their other partners failed spectacularly. In a two-day period in mid-October 1907 they suffered combined losses of $50 million when the price of their stock dropped from $62 a share to $15.
When his fellow officers at the Knickerbocker Trust discovered that Barney had lost millions on bad loans to Heinze and others, a board meeting was hastily called and the reckless president was forced to resign. But after news of his ouster reached other financial inst.i.tutions in the city, messengers were sent racing to the company the next morning with stacks of outstanding Knickerbocker checks. They demanded immediate reimburs.e.m.e.nt. In a matter of three hours these messengers withdrew $4 million, which was half the available cash in the company"s vaults. Panicked depositors withdrew the other half, and at one in the afternoon on Tuesday, October 22, the Knickerbocker was forced to close its large bronze doors and suspend payment of funds.
When the first news of this trouble reached Twain earlier that morning, he was completely caught off guard. For the last few days he had been quietly enjoying the bright display of fall colors at Tuxedo, and was mesmerized by the reflections in the lake-"sleek as a mirror, & all the brilliant colors of the hills painted on it like a picture." Nothing could have been further from his mind than the risk of insolvency at the Knickerbocker. But as soon as he was made aware of the danger, he promptly telephoned Isabel Lyon, who happened to be at 21 Fifth Avenue preparing the house for his return the next week. He gave her instructions to withdraw all his money immediately.3 She hurried to the trust company as fast as she could and was stunned by the sight that greeted her outside. The streets were jammed with cabs, private automobiles, and "finely appointed carriages" belonging to Park Avenue widows and other wealthy depositors living nearby. With "bank books in their quivering hands"-as Lyon later put it-the crowd stood on the wide sidewalk and stared blankly at the Knickerbocker"s locked doors. Lyon had arrived too late. Police reserves, called in at the last minute, were standing at the entrance and were trying to hold back some of the depositors who were demanding to be let in. Everyone was told the company had run out of cash and would be closed indefinitely.
"Oh, it"s too dreadful," Lyon wrote in her journal that night. "Every penny the King has, fifty-one thousand dollars, is in the Knickerbocker Trust Co. and ... it has gone crashing into a terrible state."4 Many depositors a.s.sumed the worst and believed that Charles Barney had caused such enormous damage that they would never get their money back. A few were so despondent that they took their own lives. One man in Mount Vernon, New York, shot himself because he couldn"t bear the thought of losing his life savings of $20,000. Isolated from events, Jean Clemens read of the crisis and worried in silence at Katonah, suffering what she later called "the misery of imagining poor Father at 72 losing everything." Clara was on the verge of starting her latest round of concert appearances, and everyone in the family wondered whether the cost would now be prohibitive. Lyon inspected the household accounts and said of Clara"s expenses, "I thought they were heavy other years, but this year has exceeded the others, and she has all her plans made for another costly concert tour."5 For a few days, not only Twain"s financial future but that of the whole nation seemed bleak. The panic spread, affecting many banks and trust companies in New York and elsewhere. By the end of the week, money was in short supply on Wall Street and share prices were falling. Political leaders called for calm, and the secretary of the treasury came up from Washington to confer with worried financiers. In the city"s pulpits clergymen urged their congregations to "exercise the grace of patience." Speaking at a special ma.s.s for New York businessmen, Archbishop Farley declared that he wanted to "allay the panicky sentiment" among depositors by publicly announcing, "I have confidence in the solvency of the banks."6 Charles Barney reacted to all this upheaval by retreating behind the doors of his Park Avenue brownstone, where he watched as indignant depositors gathered outside almost daily to demand the return of their money. Legal suits were filed against him, and old friends deserted him. Facing ruin-with a personal debt of more than $2 million-he lost his nerve. In November he rose one morning and raised a gun to his head. But at the last moment his hand was shaking so much that he fired a shot into his lower body, blasting a hole in his abdomen. As a result, he lingered in great pain for several hours before dying during an emergency operation to save his life. He left behind a wife and four children.
"Doctor, I did it myself," he said on his deathbed. "I could not stand the pressure any longer. I alone am responsible."7 ...
DESPITE TWAIN"S EFFORTS to avoid financial disaster a second time in his life, the author seemed once again to be in deep trouble. He had been blindsided by the crooked dealings of a banker he didn"t even know. If ever there was a time when he had reason to curse his luck, this was it. After all his success of the summer, he was suddenly facing the prospect of a staggering loss. There was no federal deposit insurance in those days, so the possibility was great that he would never see any of his savings again.
Yet throughout the crisis he refused to believe all hope was lost. When Lyon saw him after her failed effort to retrieve his funds, she was surprised to find that he was holding up well. In fact, she thought he looked "brave and cheerful." His relatively good mood also impressed Paine, who had come to believe that "the smaller things of life" often upset Twain more than the big problems. As the biographer would later write of his subject, "He often met large calamities with a serenity which almost resembled indifference."8 In this case, however, he was anything but indifferent. From the start, he busied himself with plans for salvaging his finances. With Ralph Ashcroft"s help, he intended to use every legal means to recover his cash, lobbying his case both directly to the company"s officers and behind the scenes with state regulators. He also decided that, if necessary, he would sell some of his remaining stocks and bonds to pay off the cost of the Redding house.
Though he had entrusted his cash to the Knickerbocker, his other investments in various securities were substantial, and some of them were under the safe management of Rogers"s office at the Standard Oil Building. However great his disappointment in the Knickerbocker, he knew that he could survive this setback. For his immediate needs, he was able to rely on his royalty income from Harper"s, which was guaranteed under his contract to be at least $25,000 a year. (By way of comparison, Howells"s contract with Harper"s paid him $10,000 a year, and he didn"t ask for a raise until 1910.) It can also be a.s.sumed that Twain was privately counting on Rogers to use his influence to help the trust company recover its losses and reopen. The ailing oil baron was still letting subordinates handle day-to-day business operations; but, by late October, Rogers was well enough to oversee the general affairs of his empire and to set new plans in motion. Many of his rich a.s.sociates and rivals had already made a quick decision to join forces in an effort to restore order to the banking system after the Knickerbocker"s collapse. The leaders of this effort were J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, who raised millions from private and public sources to prop up dozens of beleaguered banks. A large part of this rescue fund came from their own deep pockets.
"You may not know it, but Morgan and myself stood behind something like seventy banks in New York during the panic," Rockefeller would boast to a United States senator in 1908. "Now, that was a pretty nice thing for two such very, very bad men to do, wasn"t it?"9 Indeed, thanks largely to the behind-the-scenes efforts of the tyc.o.o.ns, calm was slowly restored to the financial markets. In a matter of a few months the Knickerbocker was able not only to reopen but to resume payments to its depositors, including Twain. In the end, despite all the turmoil, he didn"t lose a penny. He had survived a close call, however, and it was impossible to forget that the whole episode had caused enormous disruption and distress in the lives of thousands of people.
Some of J. P. Morgan"s critics claimed that he had secretly engineered the whole crisis in order to take advantage of panic selling on Wall Street. The "group of financiers who withhold and dispense prosperity," said Senator "Fighting Bob" La Follette of Wisconsin, "deliberately brought on the late panic, to serve their own ends." If so, Morgan"s balance sheet didn"t show it. In 1907 his American companies suffered a loss of $21 million. What is closer to the truth is that the financial system almost collapsed because it was so poorly organized and loosely governed. It was ripe for exploitation on a grand scale. If Morgan and others had not intervened, the crisis would have been much worse. To bolster public confidence, Rockefeller had claimed that, if necessary, he would use half of his personal fortune to stabilize the troubled banks, telling the press that his supply of securities was more than ample for the job. "I have cords of them, gentlemen," he had said, "cords of them."10 It is astonishing how much damage was done by Heinze, Barney, and their a.s.sociates. They undermined faith not only in New York banks, but in the economy itself. The few weeks of uncertainty and confusion were enough to create a national business slowdown that would last for months. Their scheme also laid bare some of the worst aspects of the buccaneer capitalism that Rogers represented. Though the Standard Oil millionaire liked to think that his Wall Street tricks hurt no one but his less capable compet.i.tors, the clumsy plans of Heinze and Barney showed that such tricks could backfire and harm many innocent people. (Unlike Barney, Heinze stood his ground and fought to restore his fortune, but his hard work-and heavy drinking-would take a toll on his health. In 1914 he died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of forty-four.) Upton Sinclair-whose scathing criticism of the meatpacking industry in The Jungle had made him famous in 1906-was one of the radical voices in America who denounced the financial crisis as an example of how much the whole nation was at the mercy of a few rich men. His novel The Moneychangers, which came out in 1908, is set against the backdrop of the Knickerbocker troubles and is a pa.s.sionate attack on the ways in which finance and speculation were being used to create powerful monopolies. When a gullible character in the novel expresses surprise that a great New York banker (a fictionalized version of Charles Barney) is also known as "a daring speculator," a cynical friend replies, "When you have been in New York awhile, you will realize that there is nothing incompatible in the two."11 Though his acquaintance with Twain was slight, Sinclair wanted his support in publicly denouncing "capitalist greed and knavery." He was hoping to boost the chance for real reforms by enlisting the help of "the uncrowned king of America," as he dubbed the older writer. But in the case of the Panic of 1907, the general question of corruption in American capitalism interested Twain less than corruption at the Knickerbocker. Asked by the New York World to reflect on his blessings at Thanksgiving, he used the opportunity to lash out at the trust company: "For years it has been a rule with me not to expose my grat.i.tude in print on Thanksgiving Day, but I wish to break the rule now and pour out my thankfulness; for there is more of it than I can contain without straining myself. I am thankful-thankful beyond words-that I had only $51,000 on deposit in the Knickerbocker Trust, instead of a million; for if I had had a million in that bucket shop, I should be nineteen times as sorry as I am now."12 Twain"s feelings on any subject were never fully engaged unless he could personalize the matter. Whether the subject was imperialism or religion or capitalism, he was at his best when he was able to reduce broad issues to a single target on which he could concentrate his scorn, as in the case of his attacks on Mary Baker Eddy. Though an individual financier could easily earn his condemnation, Twain was in no position to endorse Upton Sinclair"s general dislike of Wall Street. After all, he was an inveterate speculator himself-not to mention the closest friend of h.e.l.l Hound Rogers, whom he was never tempted to blame in any way for his troubles at the Knickerbocker.
In fact, what continued to anger Twain-even long after his savings were restored at the trust company-was that Charles Barney"s loan officers had earlier refused to lend him money for his own effort to make a quick killing in the stock market. Writing on Twain"s behalf in November, Ralph Ashcroft told the company"s directors: "What seems to have rankled him most is that, a few days before the suspension, he wished to buy $50,000 of a certain stock and asked the trust Co. to loan him $25,000 of this money on his notes, taking the stock as collateral for the loan. He was informed that the Trust Co. did not care to do this. His balance at that time was about $50,000, and he seems to think that the directors of the Company were loaning this and other depositors" money on collateral of doubtful value, and refusing to make legitimate loans of the character he requested."13 In his rage at the Knickerbocker, Twain seems to have overlooked the fact that its officers had done him a great favor by refusing his loan request. Under any circ.u.mstances, it would have been unwise to bet his savings on the stock market, but he simply couldn"t resist the temptation to roll the dice when he thought he couldn"t lose. In this respect, he had a lot more in common with the unfortunate Barney than he might have cared to admit. If his loan had been granted, he would have been entering a market that was about to take a steep dive. He could easily have ended up losing thousands even if the Knickerbocker had been able to resume regular operations.
Though Twain had a hard time accepting that he was a bad judge of financial risk, his troubles with the Knickerbocker reminded many people that he had a long history of throwing good money into bad businesses. Shortly before the trust company reopened, a witty columnist at the Washington Post observed, "One good way to locate an unsafe investment is to find out whether Mark Twain has been permitted to get in on the ground floor." Of course, Twain liked to point out that his money troubles would be fewer if people didn"t have a habit of cheating him. At times he seemed almost proud of the fact that he had done business with so many dishonest people, as though that proved his financial problems were mostly the fault of others. "Why, I have been swindled out of more money than there is on this planet," he told a reporter at the end of the year.14 ...
AS CHANCE WOULD HAVE IT, three days after the body of Charles Barney was laid to rest Twain had an important appointment to keep in the poorest and most congested part of the city, where he was the unofficial host of an unusual theatrical benefit. Because the evening had been planned weeks ahead, it was simply coincidence that his troubles with a rogue banker who had thrown away millions were closely followed by an event involving scores of children whose families could barely afford to clothe and feed them. For Twain, there was no inconsistency in risking thousands of dollars on the stock market one day and raising thousands for the poor the next.
Though everyone of his cla.s.s knew that the gulf dividing rich and poor in New York was vast, very few of the rich ever bothered to take a hard look at life on the other side, much less to extend a helping hand. On this evening in November Twain went to do both, and he took with him one of the wealthiest men in the world.
At the urging of a young drama teacher, he had invited Andrew Carnegie to attend a special performance at a children"s theater on the Lower East Side. Sponsored by the Educational Alliance-a settlement house at the corner of Jefferson Street and East Broadway-the drama teacher"s large company of child actors was drawn from the families of Jewish immigrants living in some of the neighborhood"s worst tenements. One of the teacher"s declared aims was to use the magic of playacting "to counteract the evil and sordid influences" of the tenements, where crime was a growing problem, and where overcrowding was so bad that it was common to find a family of eight or more living in a four-room apartment and sharing a small bathroom with another family on the same floor. "The architecture seemed to sweat humanity at every window and door," observed British novelist Arnold Bennett after he toured the neighborhood.15 Living conditions on the Lower East Side so appalled some visitors that they looked down on the area as an alien world beyond help from outsiders. But Twain warmed easily to the immigrants-whom he refused to stereotype. He was well aware of the horrific conditions that had forced many of them to flee their homelands in Eastern Europe. For several years he been angrily denouncing the Russian government"s brutal treatment of its people and had publicly declared his support for the czar"s overthrow. He was especially incensed by reports of Jewish ma.s.sacres and bitterly criticized Russian Christians and the czar for their "b.l.o.o.d.y b.e.s.t.i.a.l atrocity."16 Eager to help the immigrants in a practical way, he found a good opportunity in the Educational Alliance, whose large five-story building was a beacon of hope to many in the neighborhood. It gave a.s.sistance and instruction to thousands of people, offering cla.s.ses to anyone who wanted to learn English or a dozen other subjects, and providing reading rooms, lecture halls, and a theater to those who wanted a stimulating cultural experience or simply a brief escape from the darkness of the tenements. The actor Zero Mostel, who took art cla.s.ses at the Alliance in the 1920s, recalled it as an oasis of open s.p.a.ces: "The Alliance gave me a new life-I had never seen such big rooms before!"17 The organization"s drama teacher was a hardworking idealist in her thirties named Alice M. Herts. She had little money and no permanent home for her children"s theater, but she found her first important benefactor in Mark Twain, who gave her permission to produce a stage version of The Prince and the Pauper. Though the work"s suitability as a drama for young actors was obvious, Herts also knew that the story about a poor child changing places with a rich one would resonate with both her cast and audience. It was easy for people on the Lower East Side to identify with the poverty suffered by "the Pauper" Tom Canty in Twain"s story, and to believe that the wealthy residents of Manhattan"s Millionaires" Row-only six miles uptown-existed in a kind of dreamworld as far beyond their reach as the palaces of Tudor England.
The child actors had staged their first performances of the play in April 1907. Accompanied by Clara and William Dean Howells, Twain had attended one of the matinees, paying the standard ten-cent admission fee for an ordinary seat among the audience, most of whom were children. At the intermission he had taken the stage to say how much he admired the production, which included elaborate sets, realistic costumes, and two accomplished girls playing the parts of Prince Edward and Tom Canty.
"I have not enjoyed a play so much, so heartily, and so thoroughly," he told the crowd, "since I played Miles Hendon twenty-two years ago. I used to play in this piece with my children, who, twenty-two years ago, were little youngsters. One of my daughters was the Prince, and a neighbor"s daughter was the Pauper, and the children of other neighbors played other parts. But we never gave such a performance as we have seen here today. It would have been beyond us."18 After the play was over, Twain had gone backstage and signed copies of the program for the cast. One of the boys who met him was Samuel Chotzinoff, who would later become a music critic and the head of cla.s.sical programming for NBC radio. He never forgot how quickly Twain"s warm manner put the young actors at ease: "Dressed all in white, his wavy hair a yellowish white, he looked pleasantly old and vividly handsome. ... I had expected him to behave somewhat haughtily, as I would have done in his position. But he spoke to us as equals."19 Twain had also taken this opportunity to chat with the teacher about the future of her theater company. "His deep interest was immediate and unbounded," Herts recalled. "After seeing his play he responded enthusiastically to a request of the players to give a special evening performance for his friends, in the hope that some wealthy person or persons might be interested to suitably subsidize this unique and practical method of providing the best means of entertainment for young men, women, and children."20 All summer long, Herts and the young actors rehea.r.s.ed, hoping to make their special performance for Twain"s friends as perfect as possible. True to his word, the author issued dozens of invitations to the event and didn"t allow anything-not even the ongoing negotiations with the directors of the Knickerbocker Trust-to interfere with his plan to attend the play at its appointed time: eight o"clock on Tuesday night, November 19, 1907. "I must stop making November engagements," he wrote at the end of October. "Of the five or six already made I can excuse myself from all but one-Nov. 19th."21 Making sure that Andrew Carnegie attended wasn"t easy. Having sold his steel empire to J. P. Morgan for $300 million in 1901, Carnegie was so absorbed in his second career as a philanthropist and opinion maker that he kept on the go constantly and had little time to spare for anything but the biggest causes. In October he was in Europe, and for much of November he was in Washington, conferring with Roosevelt and various cabinet secretaries on the Panic and other matters. In New York he was besieged by old business a.s.sociates who were in financial trouble, and who wanted advice and loans. With most of his own money in gold bonds earning a steady 5 percent, Carnegie had little reason to worry about the security of his vast fortune and was eager to make p.r.o.nouncements on the reckless financial habits of others, giving a talk in which he denounced the American banking system as "the worst in the civilized world."22 With his busy schedule, Carnegie might easily have decided that the last thing he needed to do was spend an evening at a children"s theater on the Lower East Side. But it is a measure of his respect for Mark Twain that he accepted the invitation to watch the play. Though the two saw each other only occasionally, and were never close, Twain was always fascinated by the other man"s success and ambition, and charmed him by appearing to be one of the few who didn"t take his great wealth seriously. After the steel business was sold, one of the first begging letters the tyc.o.o.n received was from Twain. Carnegie was so delighted by its irreverence that he later reprinted the letter in his Autobiography. "Dear Sir and Friend," Twain wrote. "You seem to be in prosperity. Could you lend an admirer a dollar & a half to buy a hymn-book with? G.o.d will bless you." In a postscript Twain requested, "Don"t send the hymn-book, send the money; I want to make the selection myself."23 "Dear Sir and Friend," began one of Twain"s letters to steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. "You seem to be in prosperity. Could you lend an admirer a dollar & a half to buy a hymn-book with? G.o.d will bless you."
Such joking helped to disguise Twain"s frustrations over his inability to interest Carnegie in various financial ventures. In the early years of their relationship he tried unsuccessfully to persuade Carnegie to invest in the Paige typesetter. Explaining to the wily businessman the wisdom of putting money into something besides steel, Twain cited the old advice about not keeping all your eggs in one basket. "That"s a mistake," Carnegie shot back. "Put all your eggs into one basket-and watch that basket."24 By 1907, Carnegie"s annual income was at least $10 million, yet Twain knew that getting him to donate even a small amount to the children"s theater might prove difficult. Carnegie thought nothing of turning down charity requests from even his closest friends when the cause didn"t strike him as sufficiently worthy. But Alice Herts particularly wanted the chance to show off her actors to the world"s richest philanthropist, so Twain did his part by making sure that Carnegie was indeed in the audience when the curtain went up.
On the night of the performance there was an air of excitement that extended far beyond the stage of the Educational Alliance. Twain had a.s.sembled a dazzling guest list, and when people in the neighborhood learned of some of the names, a large crowd began to gather outside, hoping to see some of the rich and famous arriving in evening dress at the main entrance. According to the New York Tribune, there were so many people on the street that the police had "their hands full in keeping the enthusiastic residents from storming the building." Besides the white-haired figures of Twain and Carnegie, other important guests attending were Governor Charles Evans Hughes; U.S. senator Chauncey Depew; District Attorney William Jerome; Police Commissioner Theodore Bingham; President Charles Eliot of Harvard; the conductor of the New York Symphony, Walter Damrosch; the nation"s most famous war correspondent, Richard Harding Davis; and the financier and longtime patron of the Educational Alliance, Jacob Schiff.
Many of these dignitaries brought their wives, who were bundled in furs and glittering with jewelry. It was a sell-out crowd of seven hundred. In the lobby the guests paraded past a line of young footmen, and backstage the children told each other they were going to perform before an audience of kings and queens. On the street, the ten-cent tickets to the play went for as much as twenty dollars. Twain was so busy mixing with his guests that one observer said he "seemed to be everywhere at once."25 Paine attended and recalled the event as "a gala night." He was astonished by the quality of the performance, later remarking of the young actors, "So fully did they enter into the spirit of Tom Canty"s rise to royalty that they seemed absolutely to forget that they were lowly-born children of the ghetto. They had become little princesses and lords and maids-in-waiting, and they moved through their pretty tinsel parts as if all their ornaments were gems and their raiment cloth of gold." A newspaper critic also liked the performance, praising it for upholding "the best standards of amateur acting," and for achieving in the stage management "a deftness that was professional."26 Twain was so pleased with the occasion that when he rose to make a brief speech, he looked out on the crowd and noted proudly that "as amba.s.sador of the children" he had managed to give them an audience that represented "the hearts and the brains of New York." He urged everyone present to support not only Alice Herts"s work but also the grander project of establishing a children"s theater "in every public school in the land." As he explained in an interview the next day, the benefits of such an organization were not limited to the children, but extended throughout their communities. "They rehea.r.s.e their parts in the homes, and the plays become known to every one of the immediate family and acquaintances. So you see, this education is an education for all the people of the East Side."27 If the children and their teacher were expecting that Carnegie would shower riches on them as a reward for their performance, they were mistaken. Though he had given small grants to the Educational Alliance in the past, he decided not to become a patron of the children"s theater. That job was taken up by a much less famous man who was also one of Twain"s invited guests and a close friend. Impressed by the talent and high spirits of the young actors, the publisher Robert Collier agreed not only to fund the acting company but to help pay for the construction of a larger theater with cla.s.srooms included. Meanwhile, he offered his own house as a quiet place for occasional meetings and rehearsals. When Twain-who accepted the t.i.tle of honorary president of the organization-shared the news of Collier"s generous offer to the children, they burst into a "joyous" dance and began chanting, "Oh, we"re to have the new theater."28 It didn"t surprise Twain that the old steel baron failed to back the project. He knew very well that Carnegie preferred giving money to libraries rather than playhouses, and that a mere children"s theater was not likely to look as imposing as a new library with the Carnegie name attached to it. The self-importance of the man both amused and annoyed Twain. Two weeks after going to all the trouble of getting Carnegie to attend the special performance at the Educational Alliance, a frustrated Twain used one of his autobiographical dictations to say what he really thought of the rich man"s celebrated acts of philanthropy. "The world thanks Mr. Carnegie for his libraries," he growled, "and is glad to see him spend his millions in that useful way, but it is not deceived as to the motive." For Twain, the motive was obvious-pure vanity. "He has bought fame and paid cash for it; he has deliberately projected and planned out this fame for himself; he has arranged that his name shall be in the mouths of men for centuries to come."
After years of suppressing his irritation with Carnegie"s highly selective generosity and overblown pride, he seized the occasion of this dictation to launch a wholesale attack on everything he didn"t like about the man, including his diminutive frame. "In truth Mr. Carnegie is no smaller than was Napoleon; he is no smaller than were several other men supremely renowned in history but for some reason or other he looks smaller than he really is. He looks incredibly small, almost unthinkably small."
Twain"s acid tone is unmistakable here and suggests that he was thinking of moral as well as physical stature. No doubt one reason the business t.i.tan was looking smaller to him now was that, despite all the great man"s millions, he had refused to support a group of poor but talented children who had tried their utmost to impress him. In contrast, Robert Collier-a busy publisher in his early thirties whose fortune was dwarfed by Carnegie"s-had risen to the challenge. And, what is more, Collier kept quiet about it.29 Unfortunately, despite Twain"s best efforts, the children"s theater failed. In the end the job simply proved too much for young Alice Herts. She was overworked, and her nerves seemed to have been strained by the anxiety of preparing her company for their big performance in November. Disputes arose between her and some of the older boys and girls, especially after she dismissed one of her a.s.sistants-the actress Emma Sheridan Fry, a favorite among the children. Her health quickly declined, and in early 1909 she decided that she could no longer continue running the theater. As she would later explain, "I was taken gravely ill, suffering from a breakdown from overwork, and was obliged to submit to an enforced rest."
Without her at the helm, there was no one who could keep the company going, and it had to be disbanded before its new home could be built. To the keen disappointment of the young players, the company was never revived. Expressing a sentiment that Twain also must have felt, Paine remarked in his biography, "It seems a pity that such a project as that must fail. The Children"s Theater exists today only as history."30 "His literature grew less and less and his life more and more," William Dean Howells wrote of Twain"s final years. One of the few books Twain published in this period is an enchanting story he had been working on for almost forty years-the afterlife adventures of a crusty old sea captain trying to make his peace with eternity. Among other things, Captain Stormfield doesn"t care much for his wings and halo "size 13," and tries to hide them in a cupboard.
TEN.
To Heaven and Back.
Try it once, and see how heavy time will hang on your hands.
Mark Twain on eternal life.
IT WAS A MATTER OF PRIDE with Andrew Carnegie that he no longer had to work for his money. It had been his ambition to become a great ironmaster, and after he had built up the world"s largest steel company, he decided to sell it and spend the rest of his life distributing the riches as he thought best. "Never to make another dollar was my resolve & I"ve kept it," he boasted. Preaching this gospel was easy when you had a vault full of gold bonds. But it wasn"t a message that Twain could take to heart.2 Though he and Carnegie were the same age-both men turned seventy-two in the last week of November 1907-Twain knew only too well that a complete retirement from the literary business was impossible. He still worried about his earning power, not only because he was so bad at managing the money he had, but also because it was impossible to make an accurate a.s.sessment of his worth. After all, the source of his greatest wealth lay in literary property that would soon begin falling into the public domain unless Congress changed the copyright law. His demands for reform were partly fueled by the knowledge that stocks and bonds were so poorly regulated while copyright was limited to a period that could easily expire before the author did.
He was keenly aware that time was running out for such early works as The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It. With "a touch of regret," he told a reporter that his first books would begin to "fall" quickly after 1911, "for they will reach their 42d year." The new copyright legislation that he had promoted on his visit to Washington in 1906 was still working its way through Congress, but if it became bogged down and seemed likely to die, he had a backup plan. It involved using large portions of his autobiographical dictations as inserts in future editions of his books. By adding enough fresh material to old works, he believed that they might earn new copyrights. It was a clever but awkward scheme. "On each page," he explained, "a rule will be run about two-thirds of the way down the page, and below these lines will be printed the autobiography."3 Because his autobiography was so important to his long-term plans, he wasn"t inclined to invest his time in any other major work. At his age, he didn"t understand why he should have to write new novels when he had written several that were popular enough to go on making money long after Carnegie"s steel plants had crumbled to dust.
Though he was proud of his art, he was also proud of his career as a literary entrepreneur and couldn"t help being fiercely protective of his creations. His friend Kipling, who knew how pa.s.sionately Twain felt on this issue, wrote sympathetically of his position: "What I saw with the greatest clearness was Mark Twain being forced to fight for the simple proposition that a man has as much right to the work of his brains (think of the heresy of it!) as to the labour of his hands."4 For the time being, there was nothing else Twain could do for his cause but to wait for his friends and supporters in Congress to do the right thing. Meanwhile, aside from working on the autobiography, he was generally content to confine his literary efforts to tinkering with some of his old unpublished ma.n.u.scripts, revising here and there or making small additions. One of the oldest was "Captain Stormfield"s Visit to Heaven," a story about the afterlife adventures of a fearless sea captain. For almost forty years he had been trying to finish it, having begun it around 1868. Once or twice a decade he would pull out "that rusty old ma.n.u.script," work on it a little, and then put it away again. It began life as a simple burlesque of a conventional heaven ("a mean little ten-cent heaven about the size of Rhode Island"), but grew more serious as the years went by. The main setting also expanded considerably. "I built a properly and rationally stupendous heaven," Twain boasted.5 He was tempted to abandon the story as unpublishable, but could never bring himself to throw it away. "I have overhauled my literary stock and transferred some of it to the fire," he said in 1906, "but "Stormfield"s Visit" always escaped."6 Perhaps what kept his interest in the story alive for so long was an awareness that the t.i.tle ch