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Mark Twain
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A Connecticut Yankee 1872-1891
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The Father Figure
 
 

“Papa uses very strong language, but I have an idea not nearly so strong as when he first married mamma. A lady acquaintance of his is rather apt to interrupt what one is saying, and papa told mamma that he should say to the lady’s husband ‘I am glad your wife wasn’t present when the Deity said ‘Let there be light.’”

Susy Clemens, Biography

Mark Twain, Autobiography, posthumous

Playing Hero and Leander at Onteora with Susy, 1890
Playing Hero and Leander
at Onteora with Susy, 1890
Courtesy of The Mark Twain House, Hartford
Clara, Jean and Susy (from left to right), March 28, 1881
Clara, Jean and Susy (from
left to right), March 28, 1881
Courtesy of The Mark Twain Project,
Bancroft Library, Berkeley
Audio Real Audio: 56k  
“Our House”

At Home with Family, Hartford, CT
At Home with Family, Hartford, CT
Courtesy of The Mark Twain House, Hartford		 Clara Clemens and Margaret Daisy Warner dressed for Prince and The Pauper Performance (from left to right)
Clara Clemens and Margaret “Daisy” Warner dressed for Prince and The Pauper Performance (from left to right)
Courtesy Mark Twain House, Hartford

“Along one side of the library, in the Hartford home, the bookshelves joined the mantelpieces...and on the mantelpiece, stood various ornaments. At one end of the procession was a framed oil-painting of a cat’s head, at the other was a head of a beautiful girl called Emmeline...

The children required me to construct a romance—always impromptu—not a moment’s preparation permitted—and into that romance I had to get all that bric-a-brac and the...pictures. I had to start always with the cat and finish with Emmeline. I was never allowed the refreshment of a change, end for end. It was not permissible to introduce a bric-a-brac ornament into the story out of its place in the procession.

These bric-a-bracs were never allowed a peaceful day, a reposeful day, a restful Sabbath...They knew no existence but a monotonous career of violence and bloodshed. In the course of time the bric-a-brac and the pictures showed wear. It was because they had had so many and such tumultuous adventures in their romantic career.”—Mark Twain, Autobiography, posthumous

 
 
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