|
They first met in March 1895
at a luncheon held in Keller’s honor at West 34th Street in
NYC. It was the home of Laurence Hutton, an editor and critic
who was Twain’s friend and one of Helen’s early benefactors.
Henry Rogers was there with
Twain and about a dozens others to welcome & wish Helen well
during her stay in NYC where she had come to study speech
at the School for the Deaf.
During the luncheon the two
spent time together and Helen seemed to feel more at ease
with Twain than with any of the other guests. Hutton later
said: “He was peculiarly tender and lovely with her-even
for Mr. Clemens- and she kissed him when he said good-bye.”
Helen had read some of his
work and asked him to explain the origin of his pseudonym
“Mark Twain”. After explaining its meaning to steamboat pilots
he added that the name suited him because he “was sometimes
light and on the surface, and sometimes-” “Deep,”
she interrupted, surprising him with her quickness and intelligence.
“His voice is truly wonderful,”
she later recalled. “To my touch, it was deep & resonant…he
spoke so deliberately that I could get almost every word
with my fingers on his lips.”
“Mark Twain has his own way of thinking,
saying and doing everything. I can feel the twinkle of his
eye in his handshake. Even while he utters his cynical wisdom
in an indescribably droll voice, he makes you feel that
his heart is a tender Iliad of human sympathy.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How She Felt The “Twinkle
of His Eye”
When Helen was talking with
an intimate friend, her hand went to her friend's face to
see, "the twist of the mouth." In this way she was
able to get the meaning of those half sentences which people
complete unconsciously from the tone of the voice or the twinkle
of the eye.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To the astonishment of all
the guests at this luncheon, Helen shook the hands of all
the guest and thanked them by name as they left.
For whatever reason, Twain
decided to quickly pat her on the head as he passed by, to
his astonishment…she knew who did it!
He later said: “Perhaps
someone else can explain this miracle, but I have never been
able to do it. Could she feel the wrinkles in my hand through
her hair?”
He found out how when she
visited him at Redding in 1909: “I smelled you” was
her honest reply.
Twain’s Letter to Mrs. Henry
Rogers asking for money to support Keller’s education (Twain
himself was bankrupt at this time).
“For & in behalf of Helen Keller,
Mr. Rogers will remember our visit
with that astonishing girl at Lawrence Hutton’s house when
she was 14 years old. Last July, in Boston, when she was
16 she underwent the Harvard examination for admission to
Radcliffe College. She passed without a single condition.
She was allowed only the same amount of time that is granted
to other applicants, & this was shortened in her case by
the fact that the question-papers had to be read to her.
Yet she scored an average of 90, as against an average of
78 on the part of the other applicants.
It won’t do for America to allow
this marvelous child to retire from her studies because
of poverty. If she can go on with them she will make a fame
that will endure in history for centuries. Along her special
lines she is the most extraordinary product of all the ages.
I beg you to lay siege to your husband
& get him to interest himself and Messrs. John D. & William
Rockefeller & the other Standard Oil chiefs in Helen’s case…[to]
pile that Standard Oil Helen Keller College Fund as high
as they please; they have my consent.”
The result of this letter
was that Mr. Rogers personally took charge of Helen Keller’s
fortunes, and out of his own means made it possible for her
to continue her education and to achieve for herself the enduring
fame which Mark Twain had foreseen.
Twain's Reaction to this
News:
“It is superb! And I am beyond measure
grateful to you both. I knew you would be interested in
that wonderful girl, & that Mr. Rogers was already interested
in her & touched by her; & I was sure that if nobody else
helped her you two would; but you have gone far & away beyond
the sum I expected—may your lines fall in pleasant places
here, & Hereafter for it!
Ever sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.”
From a Mark Twain Speech:
“…at sixteen years of age this miraculous
creature, this wonder of all the ages, passes the Harvard
University examination in Latin, German, French history,
belles lettres, and such things, and does it brilliantly,
too, not in a commonplace fashion. She doesn't know merely
things, she is splendidly familiar with the meanings of
them.
Has Miss Sullivan taught her by the
methods of the American public school? No, oh, no; for then
she would be deafer and dumber and blinder than she was
before. It is a pity that we can't educate all the children
in the asylums!”
Below is a Letter from
Twain to Helen in 1903:
"Riverdale - on - the Hudson
St. Patrick's Day, 1903
Dear Helen:
I must steal half a moment from my
work to say how glad I am to have your book and how highly
I value it, both for its own sake and as a remembrance of
an affectionate friendship which has subsisted between us
for nine years without a break and without a single act
of violence that I can call to mind. I suppose there is
nothing like it in heaven; and not likely to be, until we
get there and show off. I often think of it with longing,
and how they'll say, "there they come--sit down in front."
I am practicing with a tin halo. You do the same. I was
at Henry Roger's last night, and of course we talked of
you. He is not at all well--you will not like to hear that;
but like you and me, he is just as lovely as ever.
Every lovingly your friend (sic)
Mark"
Mark Twain Quoted by Helen
Keller, in Her Book Midstream:
“Blindness is an exciting business,
I tell you; if you don't believe it get up some dark night
on the wrong side of your bed when the house is on fire
and try to find the door.”
Speech in Norfolk, Virginia in 1909:
"She is the most marvelous person
of her sex that has existed on this earth since Joan of
Arc.
Miscellaneous Quotes:
“A well put together unreality is
pretty hard to beat,” was his response to a friend who
remarked that Helen’s “concept of things…must lack reality.”
In Huckleberry Finn (written
long before he met Helen), Twain wrote:
“it’s lovely to live on a raft…nothing
to hear nor nothing to see.”
Helen Keller visited Twain
for three days in January of 1909. She was 28 years old and
had recently released her second major work: “The World
I Live In”
The copy Twain received was
inscribed:
“Dear Mr. Clemens, come live in my
world a little while. -Helen Keller.”
In response, he had said
that she must come to his world first, and to bring Annie
(Sullivan) Macy & John Macy with her.
“I command you all three, to come
and spend a few days with he in Stormfield.”
Of all the visitors to Stormfield
none wrote a more vivid description of the place than Helen
Keller.
Nothing escaped her senses,
from the “tang in the air of cedar and pine” as she
made her approach to the smell of “burning fireplace logs,
orange tea and toast with strawberry jam” which were served
shortly after her arrival.
That which she could not
see was “spelled” into her hands by her teacher, Annie Sullivan
Macy, a.k.a. “The Miracle Worker” as Twain called her.
It was not generally known
that Keller had a great sense of humor, but it was one of
the things Twain liked best about her.
When he showed her to her
room on the first night at Stormfield, he told her that if
she needed anything, she would find an ample supply of cigars
and bourbon in the bathroom.
When he gave her a tour of
the billiards room, he offered to teach her the game. She
took the bait and innocently replied, “Oh Mr. Clemens,
it takes sight to play billiards.” Not the way his friends
played, he answered. “The blind couldn’t play worse.”
The highlight of Helen’s
visit came on the final evening when Twain read to her his
short story: Eve’s Diary.
He sat in a big armchair
by the fire while Helen followed the story with an ecstatic
expression on her face. At the very last line: “Wherever
she was, there was Eden.” (Twain’s tribute to his wife
Livy) Helen became tearful.
In her journal, Twain’s secretary
wrote:
“She quivered with delight, and he
was shaken with emotion & could hardly find his voice again.
It was a marvel to behold.”
In the Guestbook of Stormfield
she wrote:
“I have been in Eden three days and
I saw a King. I knew he was a King the minute I touched
him though I had never touched a King before.”
- A Daughter of Eve. Helen Keller Jan.
11
Twain understood her meaning
so completely that he wrote beside it:
“The point of what Helen says above,
lies in this: that I read the ‘Diary of Eve’ all through,
to her last night; in it Eve frequently mentions things
she saw for the first time but instantly knew what they
were & named them- though she had never seen them before.”
In Keller’s ‘The Story
of My Life’, she recalls the joy of learning the names
of things after she acquired the gift of language: “…the
more I handled things and learned their names and uses, the
more joyous & confident grew my sense of kinship with the
rest of the World.”
Keller had recognized that
Twain used this in his story and it overjoyed them both.
As a way of thanking Annie
Sullivan Macy for helping to bring Helen’s imagination to
life, Twain handed her a small souvenir before she left Stormfield.
It was a postcard on which
he wrote:
“To Mrs. John Sullivan Macy with
warm regard & with limitless admiration of the wonders she
has performed as a *miracle-worker.”
*It would take 50 years for
the term “miracle-worker” to catch on; but it did- via the
Broadway show about Annie by playwright William Gibson.
1. Mark Twain was
a pre-mature baby with little hope of surviving, let alone
succeeding. Helen Keller lost her vision and hearing at 19
months and had little hope for success.
Both “survived” and became
successful Activists, Authors, Public Speakers and Celebrities.
2. Over the course
of her life Helen came to accept religious and political beliefs
quite different from those of her family and friends.
In 1906, Twain pondered what
future audiences (100 years later) would say about his unpublished
comments on religious bigotry and social hypocrisy…
He once stated that “(my
Autobiography) will make a stir when it comes out.”
Example:
“In religion and politics people's
beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten
at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities
who have not themselves examined the questions at issue
but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners,
whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”
- Autobiography of Mark Twain
3. They both dealt
with people who wished to take advantage of them. "As she
had her entire life, the luminous Helen inspired intrigues
and power struggles, as her acquaintances and advisers fought
with one another to gain possession of her."
The same can be said for
Twain who was swindled from his riches a number of times over
the course of his lifetime, and endured a painful “power struggle”
between his daughters and business associates in the final
year of his life.
4. They were both
well traveled but both chose Fairfield County as their final
homes.
During her lifetime, Helen
Keller traveled the World and lived in many different places—Tuscumbia,
Alabama; Cambridge and Wrentham, Massachusetts; Forest Hills,
New York, but perhaps her favorite residence was her last,
the house in Easton, Connecticut she called "Arcan Ridge."
The same can be said about
Samuel L. Clemens. He too traveled the World, lived in many
places, and yet fell in love with the beauty of his final
residence… Stormfield in Redding, Connecticut.
“I was never in this beautiful region
until yesterday evening. Miss Lyon and the architect built
and furnished the house without any help or advice from
me, and the result is entirely to my satisfaction.” “It
is charmingly quiet here. The house stands alone, with nothing
in sight but woodsy hills and rolling country.”
-Samuel L. Clemens letter to Dorothy
Quick dated June 19, 1908
5. Both died of heart
disease. Helen Keller lived at 163 Redding Road in Easton,
Connecticut. She died in her sleep on June 1, 1968 at the
age of 87. The cause of her death was arteriosclerosis heart
disease (Twain died of Heart troubles too. His were tied to
his life long smoking habit). Twain died in the twilight hours
of April 21, 1910, at the age of 74.
6. Since their deaths,
their names have lived on…
Eulogy by Senator J. Lister
Hill of Alabama:
“She will live on, one of the few,
the immortal names not born to die. Her spirit will endure
as long as man can read and stories can be told of the woman
who showed the world there are no boundaries to courage
and faith.”
Twain's note to a news reporter
in 1897: "...the report of my death was an exaggeration."
Has some truth in it to this day. Twain works, quotes and
life story have remained relevant since his passing. Most
recently- to celebrate the 176th anniversary of Twain's birth
Google painted its logo using its patented "Doodle" to render
the world of Twain's Tom Sawyer, who famously cajoled friends
to whitewash a fence for him.
The hope of this exhibit is to
raise awareness of Redding and Easton's ties to these individuals
and showcase their amazing relationship.
Back to TOP
| Back to Redding Section | Back
to Georgetown Section
|
