Produced by David Widger
LITERARY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES—My Mark Twain
by William Dean Howells
It was in the little office of James T. Fields, over the bookstore ofTicknor & Fields, at 124 Tremont Street, Boston, that I first met myfriend of now forty-four years, Samuel L. Clemens. Mr. Fields was thenthe editor of The Atlantic Monthly, and I was his proud and gladassistant, with a pretty free hand as to manuscripts, and an unmanacledcommand of the book-notices at the end of the magazine. I wrote nearlyall of them myself, and in 1869 I had written rather a long notice of abook just winning its way to universal favor. In this review I hadintimated my reservations concerning the 'Innocents Abroad', but I hadthe luck, if not the sense, to recognize that it was such fun as we hadnot had before. I forget just what I said in praise of it, and it doesnot matter; it is enough that I praised it enough to satisfy the author.He now signified as much, and he stamped his gratitude into my memorywith a story wonderfully allegorizing the situation, which the mockmodesty of print forbids my repeating here. Throughout my longacquaintance with him his graphic touch was always allowing itself afreedom which I cannot bring my fainter pencil to illustrate. He had theSouthwestern, the Lincolnian, the Elizabethan breadth of parlance, whichI suppose one ought not to call coarse without calling one's selfprudish; and I was often hiding away in discreet holes and corners theletters in which he had loosed his bold fancy to stoop on ranksuggestion; I could not bear to burn them, and I could not, after thefirst reading, quite bear to look at them. I shall best give my feelingon this point by saying that in it he was Shakespearian, or if his ghostwill not suffer me the word, then he was Baconian.
At the time of our first meeting, which must have been well toward thewinter, Clemens (as I must call him instead of Mark Twain, which seemedalways somehow to mask him from my personal sense) was wearing a sealskincoat, with the fur out, in the satisfaction of a caprice, or the love ofstrong effect which he was apt to indulge through life. I do not knowwhat droll comment was in Fields's mind with respect to this garment, butprobably he felt that here was an original who was not to be brought toany Bostonian book in the judgment of his vivid qualities. With hiscrest of dense red hair, and the wide sweep of his flaming mustache,Clemens was not discordantly clothed in that sealskin coat, whichafterward, in spite of his own warmth in it, sent the cold chills throughme when I once accompanied it down Broadway, and shared the immensepublicity it won him. He had always a relish for personal effect, whichexpressed itself in the white suit of complete serge which he wore in hislast years, and in the Oxford gown which he put on for every possibleoccasion, and said he would like to wear all the time. That was notvanity in him, but a keen feeling for costume which the severity of ourmodern tailoring forbids men, though it flatters women to every excess init; yet he also enjoyed the shock, the offence, the pang which it gavethe sensibilities of others. Then there were times he played thesepranks for pure fun, and for the pleasure of the witness. Once Iremember seeing him come into his drawing-room at Hartford in a pair ofwhite cowskin slippers, with the hair out, and do a crippled coloreduncle to the joy of all beholders. Or, I must not say all, for Iremember also the dismay of Mrs. Clemens, and her low, despairing cry of,"Oh, Youth!" That was her name for him among their friends, and itfitted him as no other would, though I fanci