CLXXIII

A SUMMER AT ONTEORA

With the exception of one article—­“A Majestic Literary Fossil” —­[Harper’s Magazine, February, 1890.  Included in the “Complete Works.”] —­Clemens was writing nothing of importance at this time.  This article grew out of a curious old medical work containing absurd prescriptions which, with Theodore Crane, he had often laughed over at the farm.  A sequel to Huckleberry Finn—­Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians —­was begun, and a number of its chapters were set in type on the new Paige compositor, which had cost such a gallant sum, and was then thought to be complete.  There seems to have been a plan to syndicate the story, but at the end of Chapter IX Huck and Tom had got themselves into a predicament from which it seemed impossible to extricate them, and the plot was suspended for further inspiration, which apparently never came.

Clemens, in fact, was troubled with rheumatism in his arm and shoulder, which made writing difficult.  Mrs. Clemens, too, had twinges of the malady.  They planned to go abroad for the summer of 1890, to take the waters of some of the German baths, but they were obliged to give up the idea.  There were too many business complications; also the health of Clemens’s mother had become very feeble.  They went to Tannersville in the Catskills, instead—­to the Onteora Club, where Mrs. Candace Wheeler had gathered a congenial colony in a number of picturesque cottages, with a comfortable hotel for the more transient visitor.  The Clemenses secured a cottage for the season.  Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge, Laurence Hutton, Carroll Beckwith, the painter; Brander Matthews, Dr. Heber Newton, Mrs. Custer, and Dora Wheeler were among those who welcomed Mark Twain and his family at a generous home-made banquet.

It was the beginning of a happy summer.  There was a constant visiting from one cottage to another, with frequent assemblings at the Bear and Fox Inn, their general headquarters.  There were pantomimes and charades, in which Mark Twain and his daughters always had star parts.  Susy Clemens, who was now eighteen, brilliant and charming, was beginning to rival her father as a leader of entertainment.  Her sister Clara gave impersonations of Modjeska and Ada Rehan.  When Fourth of July came there were burlesque races, of which Mark Twain was starter, and many of that lighthearted company took part.  Sometimes, in the evening, they gathered in one of the cottages and told stories by the firelight, and once he told the story of the Golden Arm, so long remembered, and brought them up with the same old jump at the sudden climax.  Brander Matthews remembers that Clemens was obliged frequently to go to New York on business connected with the machine and the publishing, and that during one of these absences a professional entertainer came along, and in the course of his program told a Mark Twain story, at which Mrs. Clemens and the girls laughed without recognizing its authorship.  Matthews also remembers Jean, as a little girl of ten, allowed to ride a pony and to go barefoot, to her great delight, full of health and happiness, a favorite of the colony.