Page:McClure's Magazine v10 no3 to v11 no2.djvu/61

Rh but the world has a short memory, and it forgets that at the first it strove with equal unanimity, East and West, on the continent of America no less than on the continent of Europe, to place the label "clown" on his back. I saw the other day a book of cartoons on the great President, taken from American and European sources, which strike the modern eye as little short of blasphemous. However, the paste never got time to dry, and the label did not stick.

Mr. Clemens was hardly so fortunate. In early life he conjured up the cap and bells, and the bells jingled a merry, golden tune. And now when he attempts to do a serious piece of work, the bells ring as they used to do in that somber play which Henry Irving has placed so effectively before us. Yet Fate made some effort to save Mark Twain from this canorous shadowing. The publishers had "The Innocents Abroad" all set up, printed, and bound for nearly two years, but were afraid to issue it, thinking it might not be popular, so different was it from anything they had ever seen before. It came forth at last practically under compulsion, for the indignant author gave them, in a telegraph message, the choice of publishing the book or appearing before the law courts. They took the former alternative, and the instant success of the volume stamped Mark Twain as the humorist of America, if not of the world. Thus it comes about that all of the multitudinous articles which have appeared since then upon the writer of this book have treated of him entirely as the funny man, and have ignored the fact that he has eminent qualities which are no less worthy of consideration.

I think I may claim with truth that I know Mr. Clemens somewhat intimately, and I have no hesitation in saying that, although I have as keen an appreciation of humor as the next man, humor is merely a small part of his mental equipment; perhaps the smallest part. You have but to look at the man to realize this. His face is the face of a Bismarck. I have always regarded him as the typical American, if there is such a person. If ever the eyes and the beak of the American eagle were placed into and on a man's face, Samuel L. Clemens is that man. In the first published description of him, written more than thirty years ago, Dr. Hingston says, "His eyes are light and twinkling." In the most recent article, Mr. Stead says: "His eyes are gray and kindly looking."

They are kindly-looking, for the man himself is kindly, and naturally his eyes give some index of this, but their eagle-like, searching, penetrating quality seems to me their striking peculiarity. They are eyes that look into the future; that can read a man through and through. I should hate to do anything particularly mean and then have to meet the eyes of Mark Twain. I know I should be found out.

It is an achievement for a man once labeled to meet success outside of what the public consider to be his line. This Mark Twain has done. "The Prince and the Pauper" is certainly one of the very best historical novels that ever was written, and if it had not appeared, some popular books which might be mentioned would not now be in existence. "Joan of Arc" has been hailed by several of the most distinguished critics of Europe as a distinct gain to the serious literature of this country. In "A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur" the author ran counter, not only to his own label, but to a labeled section of history. The age of Arthur has been labeled "sentimental," and the iconoclast who stirred it up with the inflexible crowbar of fact and showed under what hard and revolting conditions the ordinary man then existed, naturally brought upon himself the censure of the Slaves of the Label. But these are three books which, aside from their intrinsic interest, cause a man to think; and I hope that some day Mr. Clemens will turn his attention to American history and give us a volume or two which will be illuminating.

There is a popular idea that Mark Twain is an indolent man, but as a matter of fact, I never knew one who was so indomitably industrious. As he has said to me on more than one occasion, no man is indolent on a subject that absorbingly concerns him, and in his writing Mark Twain is indefatigable, destroying more manuscript that does not entirely satisfy him than probably any other writer. His endeavor is to get his sentences as perfect as possible when first written, and not to depend on after correction, either in manuscript or proof. In the construction of the sentence, in the careful selection of the exact word, he has the genius that consists in taking infinite pains. In theory he labors each day from eleven to four or half-past, and is content if he achieves 1,800 words; but in practice he is apt to work on and on unless somebody drags him away from his task, so completely does