Come Into the Garden, Mark

Our Twain reading was, I think, a success. Had a good, big crowd of roughly forty souls-- big anyway for this sort of thing -- and from the beginning, people laughed. My brief introduction proved to be perhaps a bit too brief, as we ended with time on our hands, but the passage I quoted from the new edition of the Autobiography went down well, as did most of what followed. I tried to frame the evening by sharing a scene from Twain's domestic life, and hoped that, and a few comments from me, would be enough to suggest Twain's own happy marriage in what followed. I made a mistake though in assuming that the audience would accept, even in our much abridged version, some of the rougher judgements of the gentler sex, understanding that these were not meant to be heard as Twain's, or our reader's, but of the first fool man. We'd but only just got going on our primary text, Extracts from the Diaries of Adam & Eve, when our Adam read the following of Eve:

"I wish it would not talk; it is always talking."

The laugh came, but was not universal. It was three pages in though, when Adam began the sentence -- a sentence I ought to have cut -- "She is such a numbskull..." that I heard an audible intake of breath from more than one in the crowd. I believe our Adam won them back, but it was not easy work.

The text as read was a week's work, at least, as I tried to get 27 pages down to roughly three quarters of an hour's worth of reading. Both of our readers whittled at it too, our Eve paying particular attention to anything, specially when isolated from a longer narrative, that was too renascent of female complacency , while I kept an eye on the worst of Adam. Here was the problem. In Twain's telling, Adam & Eve are both simple and not. To take from Adam all his pomposities and unkindness would spoil not only him, and the fun, but make of Eve a simp for loving him so, not in despite of his faults, but just as he is altogether. That, to my mind, was not only the comedy, but the point. A tricky thing then, at least with a contemporary audience, to let Adam be both wrong and lovable, as Eve herself concludes later on. The reading, as I said, went well, but in this, I do not think we were entirely successful. I blame my introduction as much as the editing. (Can't blame Twain, as he's dead and had no clock to watch.)

In The Ordeal of Mark Twain, the great American critic, Van Wyck Brooks said, "His wife not only edited his works but edited him." Brooks may or may not have meant to flatter Mrs. Clemens, but I did. By emphasizing in my introduction not only her devotion and critical importance to Twain's writing, but her willingness to be made the butt when he teased her by intentionally introducing passages to which she was sure to object, and strike out, I had hoped to show something of the humor that dominated the household, Twain's propensity for mischief, and his wife's tolerance of it and him. He dearly loved his daughters' arguments for restoring what their mother cut. Further, he admits joining in with them and, on the rare occasions that their side prevailed and the rougher stuff went back in, he would later cut it himself. Clearly, Mrs. Clemens, sooner or later, was in on the joke. I had originally planned to tell another story, from the same section of the Autobiography, in which Twain's "strong language" is repeated back to him by the beautiful young wife he had thought to spare by confining his curses behind what he'd thought was a closed door. "There," she says afterwards, "now you know how it sounds." He laughs aloud and says:

"Oh Livy, if it sounds like that, God forgive me, I will never do it again!"

Twain continues:

"Then she had to laugh herself. Both of us broke into convulsions, and went on laughing until we were physically exhausted and spiritually reconciled."

I needed that story. It would have helped.

Twain wrote "Eve's Diary" in 1905, not long after his wife's death. Together they had already endured the death of more than one child, including their daughter, Susy, closest to Twain in character and a favorite in the family. It is said that Mrs. Clemens never recovered from the loss. Twain himself would outlive all but one of his children. The loss of his wife would seem to have motivated Twain, who had written previous satires on the subject, to take up again with Eve, and give her something more of the wisdom and intelligence of his late wife.

Olivia Langdon Clemens was an extraordinary woman. From a progressive Northern family, she was liberally educated, fiercely intelligent and physically delicate all her life. As I did say in my introduction to our reading, it was she "who informed his opinion, refined his politics, and his style, assuaged his melancholy, and had his whole heart." I had hoped our version of Twain's story would communicate something of his delight in and awe of her, as well as his gloomier estimation of the general worth not only of mankind, but specifically of Man.

I think our audience missed some of the satire and more of affection, not because of what Twain, or even Adam said, but perhaps because of what I failed to say. Ah, regrets!

I'm indulging in this critical hindsight here not because I would take anything away from what was a lovely evening in the bookstore. A good time was had by all, including if not chiefly, me. I just wanted to demonstrate first, how difficult it can be to tinker with a finished work of art, and to read something from the beginning of the last Century to an audience at the beginning of this one, and finally, to say that even for all one may get right in such an undertaking, there may still be plenty one gets wrong. For all that though, I can think of few things more satisfying than the attempt.

I've had some experience before with both success and failure in this line. I've given, for example, readings from Dickens at the bookstore on three separate occasions to date, and will again if I can, and of the three, I think only the one I did some time ago, on Dickens' birthday, came close to being entirely successful. My reading from The Pickwick Papers for Christmas last year, suffered from the introduction of too much movement -- as I was attempting the ice-skating scene -- and I stumbled both verbally and physically, for not having rehearsed the piece enough up on my feet, and on the store's carpet. My other less than happy experience was in trying to trim a reading of The Chimes down to an hour without sacrificing the full narrative. I ended up awash in plot, which was hardly the point of the evening.

Doesn't matter. What working on Mark Twain for a reading, and on his Adam & Eve specially, has taught me most strongly is that fun of this kind requires a certain innocence of consequences. As Eve says, having accidentally invented fire, "...I was full of interest, and began to examine."

I think we pleased the people who came well enough. They were uniformly encouraging and gracious. I know I was mightily pleased by the efforts of our Adam and our Eve. As for my own efforts, I am glad of the opportunity to have a go at so great an artist, and to have spent some time back in the garden, with Mark. I'd go again. (Maybe we will some day, and I can try to do my bit better. Eve would understand the urge to do so, even if Adam wouldn't. Mark would too, I'd like to think, and Livy. What fun it must have been to make that woman laugh!)