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I went to interview him at his hotel and, sending up my card, received this reply: -- "Mark Twain is in bed, tired, and likes it so much that he is going to stay there all day." But I caught him next time.
* * * * *
He sat up in his chair and said: "Max O'Rell, like some other hastening globe-trotters, has written a book on Australia--so he may think. He forms decisions, conclusions, quicker than I; he has been going about for, say, 10 or 12 years, whereas I have been travelling, watching, and listening--waiting for each subtle sense of suggestion since I was 14. Now I am 60. How could he, or I, or anyone, from glances snatched in a fleeting passage, hope to divine what is real, what is fundamental in the character of this young nation? I have caught impressions--mere impressions--just as a bird would skimming over a forest--but what could that bird learn of the life and spirit underneath?
* * * * *
"I would not like to say what I think is my best book, for I like them all; and I could not say what I think is my worst, for I don't think there is one of them like that. But the book of mine which gave me the greatest pleasure is Huckleberry Finn because years after I had written it, and long after it had been wholly erased from the pages of my memory, I took it up and read it to my daughter, who was ill. It was new to her; it was new to me. As the reading proceeded, I didn't know what to expect--a surprise came as a genuine surprise--a genuine pleasure.
* * * * *
"The books which gave me the hardest time to write were Tom Sawyer and The Prince and the Pauper. In the middle of both I came to a dead stop--a blank wall. Couldn't get on at all; rooted around a long time--a damnation long time, for incidents, for ideas--couldn't strike any. Gave it up--gave it up for twelve months. Came back then with the tank full, broke down the wall, story flowed on. The other books were written fairly easy--working daily from 11 to 3 five days a week--tearing the work up, if necessary, afterwards--and always keeping Saturday and Sunday sacred. The Yankee at the Court of King Arthur was as easy as any. Life on the Mississippi is my biography; it is a collocation of facts. As I have shown in that book, it is marvellous how the memory can be developed. When I ceased piloting and started reporting I could go all day, remembering everything. And when I brought my catch in towards evening I had it all there in my mind--every trifling detail, every figure. I had only to empty it out. But as the fashion was for reporters to use note-books, I took up with one, and the first time I put a note down in that note-book, I wrote the death-sentence of my memory."
* * * * *
Asked about his ghastly story of the corpse watcher in the deadhouse, Twain couldn't recall it at all. It was new to him, he said, that story of the thumb-print; of the murderer being brought in a state of trance into the deadhouse, waking up amid corpses, cold, and horrors, and seeing in front of him during three hours of dying the avenger holding the brandy, torturing his foe.
* * * * *
"But my books are all founded on facts; every character was a living being; every incident or germ of that incident had occurred; every plot had actually grown, or nearly grown, within my experience. There was selection, grouping, blending. And in writing a book its characters lived always; day and night, day and night. I'd go to bed, but they'd stay up talking, talking, talking; acting, acting; always in character--spoiling my sleep, yet never doing or saying anything that was rational or valuable or even useable.
* * * * *
"I read very little fiction; I read history and biography. I think For the term of his Natural Life is the finest Australian novel, and Gabbett, the cannibal, as strongly-drawn a character as I ever met. But what gave me the greatest pleasure in reading that book was that all the time I felt that I was reading history. And the chief charm of Louis Becke's stories for me is that the author seems to be chronicling facts incidents he's seen--things he's lived amongst and knows all about. I've noticed that Charles Reade, in writing about anything he's witnessed or felt, does it with remarkable success, but when he gets his matter second-hand he makes an awful botch of it. I don't remember a book in its particulars very long, and gradually everything of it fades out of my mind.
* * * * *
"It is not true that owing to my lack of humor I was once discharged from a humorous publication. It's an event that could very likely happen were I on the staff of a humorous paper--but then I'd never get into a fix like that. I'd never undertake to be humorous by contract. If I wanted my worst enemy to be racked I'd make him the editor of a comic paper. For me there must be contrast; for humorous effect I must have solemn background; I'd let my contribution into an undertaker's paper or the London Times. Set a diamond upon a pall of black if you'd have it glisten.
* * * * *
"Dreams are more vivid than realities. The dreamer sits beside his glass of wine and accidentally causing it to begin falling lives seventy years, then stops his wine falling--drinks. Give Zola's Downfall to the day's imagination! how feeble the reproduction of those blood-stained phonographs of war's horrors! But at dead of night, when the reason is locked in the seclusion of oblivion, how the dreamer's imagination flashes upon the sensitive plate of the mind--armies, charges, battle scenes and incidents, perfect, horrible, magnificent.
* * * * *
"Periodically I dream that I'm a soldier--don't know why--never wanted to be a soldier. Was one once; found I was on the stronger side; left it to equalise things and give fair play. But in this dream I'm a soldier, in battle, in the very thick of it, the very crash. Soon realise it's not healthy and get back a little--about three miles. Seeing a large waggon, crawl under it to prevent it being taken in case the battle comes that way. By-and-bye an enemy's shell lights on that waggon, and just as I'm congratulating myself upon my generalship, waggon turns out to be full of shells--and hell-fire and explosion--the elements are earthquake and conflagration--and I wake up either dead or alive--can't tell which.
* * * * *
"And I have dreamt of something so exquisitely humorous that the seventh heaven of bliss could be only a side-issue to it--and the ecstasy of it has awakened me. And sitting up and taking pencil and paper, I have there and then written out that subtly humorous thing, lain back, deliciously happy, and gone to sleep. But in the morning what a reversion! That paper! that paper! gave me not a precious treasure, but words, words, words--creatures or irrationality--jotted down--strung together--meaningless--hopelessly meaningless.
* * * * *
"I have seen one ghost. I was seated at a window and saw a man enter the gate, walk up the path and begin mounting the steps. Suddenly at the eighth step he disappeared. I arose instantly went outside, looked round the garden, round the house, up and down the road. Couldn't see a sign of that man--of that apparition which dead sure was on my tracks. I went inside and asked a servant had she seen a man about. She replied she had just let one in. He never reached the door, I said; he came only half-way up the steps. She said--that servant, that old servant in whom I trusted--said: 'Sir, he did, I let him in; he's waiting for you now.' Sure enough I found him waiting, sitting in a chair. Fact is I dropped off to sleep--getting so tired watching that man mount those steps. That's my only apparition, and he's genuine.
* * * * *
"I have a passion for the theatre but seldom gratify it, for whenever I go there is sure to be someone before, or behind, or beside me who persists in talking loudly to his neighbor and ruining my pleasure. It is the same in America, in England, in Australia. There is always the human beast that talks; that is destitute of every artistic feeling, and of every sympathy with artistic feeling. Often have I thought of Sir Walter Raleigh's peaceful happiness in gaol; often have I thought it a bitter thing that a man must first exterminate a talker in a theatre, must become a criminal in order to gain seclusion."
* * * * *
Twain listened to a story of a Queenslander who, attending the second last farewell lecture in Sydney, was disappointed at Twain having travelled nine hours in a train on a scorching day and being too tired to lecture well. The Bananalander said: "I've come 3000 miles to hear that man, and, blow me, if the heat hasn't taken all the gas out of him." Replied Twain: "He was right to be disappointed; I have always found that whenever an audience is not pleased with me it's my fault or my manager's. Although I have been delighted with my Australian audiences."
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