Mark Twain, A Biography Vol II, Part 1: 1875 - 1886 The Three Fires - Some Benefactions byPaine, Albert Bigelow
The tradition that fires occur in groups of three was justified in the
Clemens household that winter. On each of three successive days flames
started that might have led to ghastly results.
The children were croupy, and one morning an alcohol lamp near little
Clara's bed, blown by the draught, set fire to the canopy. Rosa, the
nurse, entered just as the blaze was well started. She did not lose her
presence of mind, --[Rosa was not the kind to lose her head. Once, in
Europe, when Bay had crept between the uprights of a high balustrade, and
was hanging out over destruction, Rosa, discovering her, did not scream
but spoke to her playfully and lifted her over into safety.]-- but
snatched the little girl out of danger, then opened the window and threw
the burning bedding on the lawn. The child was only slightly scorched,
but the escape was narrow enough.
Next day little Jean was lying asleep in her crib, in front of an open
wood fire, carefully protected by a firescreen, when a spark, by some
ingenuity, managed to get through the mesh of the screen and land on the
crib's lace covering. Jean's nurse, Julia, arrived to find the lace a
gust of flame and the fire spreading. She grabbed the sleeping Jean and
screamed. Rosa, again at hand, heard the scream, and rushing in once
more opened a window and flung out the blazing bedclothes. Clemens
himself also arrived, and together they stamped out the fire.
On the third morning, just before breakfast-time, Susy was practising at
the piano in the school-room, which adjoined the nursery. At one end of
the room a fire of large logs was burning. Susy was at the other end of
the room, her back to the fire. A log burned in two and fell, scattering
coals around the woodwork which supported the mantel. Just as the blaze
was getting fairly started a barber, waiting to trim Mr. Clemens's hair,
chanced to look in and saw what was going -on. He stepped into the
nursery bath-room, brought a pitcher of water and extinguished the
flames. This period was always referred to in the Clemens household as
the "three days of fire."
Clemens would naturally make philosophical deductions from these
coincidental dangers and the manner in which they had been averted. He
said that all these things were comprehended in the first act of the
first atom; that, but for some particular impulse given in that remote
time, the alcohol flame would not have blown against the canopy, the
spark would not have found its way through the screen, the log would not
have broken apart in that dangerous way, and that Rosa and Julia and the
barber would not have been at hand to save precious life and property.
He did not go further and draw moral conclusions as to the purpose of
these things: he never drew conclusions as to purpose. He was willing to
rest with the event. Logically he did not believe in reasons for things,
but only that things were.
Nevertheless, he was always trying to change them; to have a hand in
their improvement. Had you asked him, he would have said that this, too,
was all in the primal atom; that his nature, such as it was, had been
minutely embodied there.
In that charming volume, 'My Mark Twain', Howells tells us of Clemens's
consideration, and even tenderness, for the negro race and his effort to
repair the wrong done by his nation. Mark Twain's writings are full of
similar evidence, and in his daily life he never missed an opportunity to
pay tribute to the humbler race. He would go across the street to speak
to an old negro, and to take his hand. He would read for a negro church
when he would have refused a cathedral. Howells mentions the colored
student whose way through college Clemens paid as a partial reparation
"due from every white man to every black man." --[Mark Twain paid two
colored students through college. One of them, educated in a Southern
institution, became a minister of the gospel. The other graduated from
the Yale Law School.]-- This incident belongs just to the period of which
we are now writing, and there is another which, though different enough,
indicates the same tendency.
Garfield was about to be inaugurated, and it was rumored that Frederick
Douglass might lose his position as Marshal of the District of Columbia.
Clemens was continually besought by one and another to use his influence
with the Administration, and in every case had refused. Douglass had
made no such, application. Clemens, learning that the old negro's place
was in danger, interceded for him of his own accord. He closed his
letter to General Garfield:
A simple citizen may express a desire, with all propriety, in the
matter of recommendation to office, and so I beg permission to hope
that you will retain Mr. Douglass in his present office of Marshal
of the District of Columbia, if such a course will not clash with
your own preferences or with the expediencies and interests of your
Administration. I offer this petition with peculiar pleasure and
strong desire, because I so honor this man's high and blemishless
character, and so admire his brave, long crusade for the liberties
and elevation of his race.
He is a personal friend of mine, but that is nothing to the point;
his history would move me to say these things without that, and I
feel them, too.
Douglass wrote to Clemens, thanking him for his interest; at the end he
I think if a man is mean enough to want an office he ought to be
noble enough to ask for it, and use all honorable means of getting
it. I mean to ask, and I will use your letter as a part of my
petition. It will put the President-elect in a good humor, in any
case, and that is very important.
With great respect,
Mark Twain's benefactions were not all for the colored race. One morning
in February of this same year, while the family were at late breakfast,
George came in to announce "a lady waiting to see Mr. Clemens in the
drawing-room." Clemens growled.
"George," he said, "it's a book agent. I won't see her. I'll die, in my
He went, fuming and raging inwardly, and began at once to ask the nature
of the intruder's business. Then he saw that she was very young and
modest, with none of the assurance of a canvasser, so he gave her a
chance to speak. She told him that a young man employed in Pratt &
Whitney's machine-shops had made a statue in clay, and would like to have
Mark Twain come and look at it and see if it showed any promise of future
achievement. His name, she said, was Karl Gerhardt, and he was her
husband. Clemens protested that he knew nothing about art, but the young
woman's manner and appearance (she seemed scarcely more than a child) won
him. He wavered, and finally promised that he would come the first
chance he had; that in fact he would come some time during the next week.
On her suggestion he agreed to come early in the week; he specified
Monday, "without fail."
When she was gone, and the door shut behind her, his usual remorse came
upon him. He said to himself:
"Why didn't I go now? Why didn't I go with her now?"
She went from Clemens's over to Warner's. Warner also resisted, but,
tempted beyond his strength by her charm, laid down his work and went at
once. When he returned he urged Clemens to go without fail, and, true to
promise, Clemens took Patrick, the coachman, and hunted up the place.
Clemens saw the statue, a seminude, for which the young wife had posed,
and was struck by its evident merit. Mrs. Gerhardt told him the story of
her husband's struggles between his daily work and the effort to develop
his talent. He had never had a lesson, she said; if he could only have
lessons what might he not accomplish?
Mrs. Clemens and Miss Spaulding called next day, and were equally carried
away with Karl Gerhardt, his young wife, and his effort to win his way in
art. Clemens and Warner made up their minds to interest themselves
personally in the matter, and finally persuaded the painter J. Wells
Champney to come over from New York and go with them to the Gerhardts'
humble habitation, to see his work. Champney approved of it. He thought
it well worth while, he said, for the people of Hartford to go to the
expense of Gerhardt's art education. He added that it would be better to
get the judgment of a sculptor. So they brought over John Quincy Adams
Ward, who, like all the others, came away bewitched with these young
people and their struggles for the sake of art. Ward said:
"If any stranger had told me that this 'prentice did not model that thing
from plaster-casts I should not have believed it. It's full of
crudities, but it's full of genius, too. Hartford must send him to Paris
for two years; then, if the promise holds good, keep him there three
When he was gone Mrs. Clemens said:
"Youth, we won't wait for Hartford to do it. It would take too long.
Let us send the Gerhardts to Paris ourselves, and say nothing about it to
any one else."
So the Gerhardts, provided with funds and an arrangement that would
enable them to live for five years in Paris if necessary, were started
across the sea without further delay.
Clemens and his wife were often doing something of this sort. There was
seldom a time that they were not paying the way of some young man or
woman through college, or providing means and opportunity for development
in some special field of industry.