MY PLATONIC SWEETHEART: MARK TWAIN

[Guest guest]

I MET her first when I was seventeen and she fifteen. It was in a

dream. No, I did not meet her; I overtook her. It was in a Missourian

village which I had never been in before, and was not in at that

time, except dreamwise; in the flesh I was on the Atlantic seaboard

ten or twelve hundred miles away. The thing was sudden, and without

preparation - after the custom of dreams. There I was, crossing a

wooden bridge that had a wooden rail and was untidy with scattered

wisps of hay, and there she was, five steps in front of me; half a

second previously neither of us was there. This was the exit of the

village, which lay immediately behind us. Its last house was the

blacksmith-shop; and the peaceful clinking of the hammers - a sound

which nearly always seems remote, and is always touched with a spirit

of loneliness and a feeling of soft regret for something, you don't

know what - was wafted to my ears over my shoulder; in front of us

was the winding country road, with woods on one side, and on the

other a rail fence, with blackberry vines and hazel bushes crowding

its angles; on an upper rail a bluebird, and scurrying toward him

along the same rail a fox-squirrel with his tail bent high like a

shepherd's crook; beyond the fence a rich field of grain, and far

away a farmer in shirt-sleeves and straw hat wading knee-deep through

it; no other representatives of life, and no noise at all; everywhere

a Sabbath stillness.

 

I remember it all - and the girl, too, and just how she walked, and

how she was dressed. In the first moment I was five steps behind her;

in the next one I was at her side - without either stepping or

gliding; it merely happened; the transfer ignored space. I noticed

that, but not with any surprise; it seemed a natural process.

 

I was at her side. I put my arm around her waist and drew her close

to me, for I loved her; and although I did not know her, my behavior

seemed to me quite natural and right, and I had no misgivings about

it. She showed no surprise, no distress, no displeasure, but put an

arm around my waist, and turned up her face to mine with a happy

welcome in it, and when I bent down to kiss her she received the kiss

as if she was expecting it, and as if it was quite natural for me to

offer it and her to take it and have pleasure in it. The affection

which I felt for her and which she manifestly felt for me was a quite

simple fact; but the quality of it was another matter. It was not the

affection of brother and sister - it was closer than that, more

clinging, more endearing, more reverent; and it was not the love of

sweethearts, for there was no fire in it. It was somewhere between

the two, and was finer than either, and more exquisite, more

profoundly contenting. We often experience this strange and gracious

thing in our dream-loves; and we remember it as a feature of our

childhood-loves, too.

 

We strolled along, across the bridge and down the road, chatting like

the oldest friends. She called me George, and that seemed natural and

right, though it was not my name; and I called her Alice, and she did

not correct me, though without doubt it was not her name. Everything

that happened seemed just natural and to be expected. Once I

said, " What a dear little hand it is! " and without any words she laid

it gracefully in mine for me to examine it. I did it, remarking upon

its littleness, its delicate beauty, and its satin skin, then kissed

it; she put it up to her lips without saying anything and kissed it

in the same place.

 

Around a curve of the road, at the end of half a mile, we came to a

log house, and entered it and found the table set and everything on

it steaming hot - a roast turkey, corn in the ear, butterbeans, and

the rest of the usual things - and a cat curled up asleep in a splint-

bottomed chair by the fireplace; but no people; just emptiness and

silence. She said she would look in the next room if I would wait for

her. So I sat down, and she passed through a door, which closed

behind her with a click of the latch. I waited and waited. Then I got

up and followed, for I could not any longer bear to have her out of

my sight. I passed through the door, and found myself in a strange

sort of cemetery, a city of innumerable tombs and monuments

stretching far and wide on every hand, and flushed with pink and gold

lights flung from the sinking sun. I turned around, and the log house

was gone. I ran here and there and yonder down the lanes between the

rows of tombs, calling Alice; and presently the night closed down,

and I could not find my way. Then I woke, in deep distress over my

loss, and was in my bed in Philadephia. And I was not seventeen, now,

but nineteen.

 

Ten years afterward, in another dream, I found her. I was seventeen

again, and she was still fifteen. I was in a grassy place in the

twilight deeps of a magnolia forest some miles above Natchez,

Mississippi; the trees were snowed over with great blossoms, and the

air was loaded with their rich and strenuous fragrance; the ground

was high, and through a rift in the wood a burnished patch of the

river was visible in the distance. I was sitting on the grass,

absorbed in thinking, when an arm was laid around my neck, and there

was Alice sitting by my side and looking into my face. A deep and

satisfied happiness and an unwordable gratitude rose in me, but with

it there was no feeling of surprise; and there was no sense of a time-

lapse; the ten years amounted to hardly even a yesterday; indeed, to

hardly even a noticeable fraction of it. We dropped in the

tranquilest way into affectionate caressings and pettings, and

chatted along without a reference to the separation; which was

natural, for I think we did not know there had been any that one

might measure with either clock or almanac. She called me Jack and I

called her Helen, and those seemed the right and proper names, and

perhaps neither of us suspected that we had ever borne others; or, if

we did suspect it, it was probably not a matter of consequence.

 

She had been beautiful ten years before; she was just as beautiful

still; girlishly young and sweet and innocent, and she was still that

now. She had blue eyes, a hair of flossy gold before; she had black

hair now, and dark-brown eyes. I noted these differences, but they

did not suggest change; to me she was the same girl she was before,

absolutely. It never occurred to me to ask what became of the log

house; I doubt if I even thought of it. We were living in a simple

and natural and beautiful world where everything that happened was

natural and right, and was not perplexed with the unexpected or with

any forms of surprise, and so there was no occasion for explanations

and no interest attaching to such things.

 

We had a dear and pleasant time together, and were like a couple of

ignorant and contented children. Helen had a summer hat on. She took

it off presently and said, " It was in the way; now you can kiss me

better. " It seemed to me merely a bit of courteous and considerate

wisdom, nothing more; and a natural thing for her to think of and do.

We went wandering through the woods, and came to a limpid and shallow

stream a matter of three yards wide. She said:

 

" I must not get my feet wet, dear; carry me over. "

 

I took her in my arms and gave her my hat to hold. This was to keep

my own feet from getting wet. I did not know why this should have

that effect; I merely knew it; and she knew it, too. I crossed the

stream, and said I would go on carrying her, because it was so

pleasant; and she said it was pleasant to her, too, and wished we had

thought of it sooner.

 

All the long afternoon I bore her in my arms, miles upon miles, and

it never occurred to either of us that there was anything remarkable

in a youth like me being able to carry that sweet bundle around half

a day without some sense of fatigue or need of rest. There are many

dream-worlds, but none is so rightly and reasonably and pleasantly

arranged as that one.

 

After dark we reached a great plantation-house, and it was her home.

I carried her in, and the family knew me and I knew them, although we

had not met before; and the mother asked me with ill disguised

anxiety how much twelve times fourteen was, and I said a hundred and

thirty-five, and she put it down on a piece of paper, saying it was

her habit in the process of perfecting her education not to trust

important particulars to her memory; and her husband was offering me

a chair, but noticed that Helen was asleep, so he said it would be

best not to disturb her; and he backed me softly against a wardrobe

and said I could stand more easily now; then a negro came in, bowing

humbly, with his slouch-hat in his hand, and asked me if I would have

my measure taken. The question did not surprise me, but it confused

me and worried me, and I said I should like to have advice about it.

He started toward the door to call advisers; then he and the family

and the lights began to grow dim, and in a few moments the place was

pitch dark; but straightway there came a flood of moonlight and a

gust of cold wind, and I found myself crossing a frozen lake, and my

arms were empty. The wave of grief that swept through me woke me up,

and I was sitting at my desk in the newspaper office in San

Francisco, and I noticed by the clock that I had been asleep less

than two minutes. And what was of more consequence, I was twenty-nine

years old.

 

That was 1864. The next year and the year after I had momentary

glimpses of my dream-sweetheart, but nothing more. These are set down

in my notebooks under their proper dates, but with no talks nor other

particulars added; which is sufficient evidence to me that there were

none to add. In both of these instances there was the sudden meeting

and recognition, the eager approach, then the instant disappearance,

leaving the world empty and of no worth. I remember the two images

quite well; in fact, I remember all the images of that spirit, and

can bring them before me without help of my notebook. The habit of

writing down my dreams of all sorts while they were fresh in my mind,

and then studying them and rehearsing them and trying to find out

what the source of dreams is, and which of the two or three separate

persons inhabiting us is their architect, has given me a good dream-

memory - a thing which is not usual with people, for few drill the

dream-memory and, no memory can be kept strong without that.

 

I spent a few months in the Hawaiian Islands in 1866, and in October

of that year I delivered my maiden lecture; it was in San Francisco.

In the following January I arrived in New York, and had just

completed my thirty-first year. In that year I saw my platonic dream-

sweetheart again. In this dream I was again standing on the stage of

the Opera House in San Francisco, ready to lecture, and with the

audience vividly individualized before me in the strong light. I

began, spoke a few words, and stopped, cold with fright; for I

discovered that I had no subject, no text, nothing to talk about. I

choked for a while, then got out a few words, a lame, poor attempt at

humor. The house made no response. There was a miserable pause, then

another attempt, and another failure. There were a few scornful

laughs; otherwise the house was silent, unsmilingly austere, deeply

offended. I was consuming with shame. In my distress I tried to work

upon its pity. I began to make servile apologies, mixed with gross

and ill-timed flatteries, and to beg and plead for forgiveness; this

was too much, and the people broke into insulting cries, whistlings,

hootings, and cat-calls, and in the midst of this they rose and began

to struggle in a confused mass toward the door. I stood dazed and

helpless, looking out over this spectacle, and thinking how everybody

would be talking about it next day, and I could not show myself in

the streets. When the house was become wholly empty and still, I sat

down on the only chair that was on the stage and bent my head down on

the reading-desk to shut out the look of that place. Soon that

familiar dream-voice spoke my name, and swept all my troubles away:

 

" Robert! "

 

I answered: " Agnes! "

 

The next moment we two were lounging up the blossomy gorge called the

Iao Valley, in the Hawaiian Islands. I recognized, without any

explanations, that Robert was not my name, but only a pet name, a

common noun, and meant " dear " ; and both of us knew that Agnes was not

a name, but only a pet name, a common noun, whose spirit was

affectionate, but not conveyable with exactness in any but the dream-

language. It was about the equivalent of " dear, " but the dream-

vocabulary shaves meanings finer and closer than do the world's

daytime dictionaries. We did not know why those words should have

those meanings; we had used words which had no existence in any known

language, and had expected them to be understood, and they were

understood. In my note-books there are several letters from this

dream-sweetheart, in some unknown tongue - presumably dream-tongue -

with translations added. I should like to be master of that tongue,

then I could talk in shorthand. Here is one of those letters - the

whole of it:

 

" Rax oha tal. "

 

Translation. - " When you receive this it will remind you that I long

to see your face and touch your hand, for the comfort of it and the

peace. "

 

It is swifter than waking thought; for thought is not thought at all,

but only a vague and formless fog until it is articulated into words.

We wandered far up the fairy gorge, gathering the beautiful flowers

of the ginger-plant and talking affectionate things, and tying and

retying each others ribbons and cravats, which didn't need it; and

finally sat down in the shade of a tree and climbed the vine-hung

precipices with our eyes, up and up and up toward the sky to where

the drifting scarfs of white mist clove them across and left the

green summits floating pale and remote, like spectral islands

wandering in the deeps of space; and then we descended to earth and

talked again.

 

" How still it is - and soft, and balmy, and reposeful I could never

tire of it. You like it, don't you, Robert? "

 

" Yes, and I like the whole region - all the islands. Maui. It is a

darling island. I have been here before. Have you? "

 

" Once, but it wasn't an island then. "

 

" What was it? "

 

" It was a sufa. "

 

I understood. It was the dream-word for " part of a continent. "

 

" What were the people like? "

 

" They hadn't come yet. There weren't any. "

 

" Do you know, Agnes - that is Haleakala, the dead volcano, over there

across the valley; was it here in your friend's time? "

 

" Yes, but it was burning. "

 

" Do you travel much? "

 

" I think so. Not here much, but in the stars a good deal. "

 

" Is it pretty there? "

 

She used a couple of dream-words for " You will go with me some time

and you will see. " Non-committal, as one perceives now, but I did not

notice it then.

 

A man-of-war-bird lit on her shoulder; I put out my hand and caught

it. Its feathers began to fall out, and it turned into a kitten; then

the kitten's body began to contract itself to a ball and put out

hairy, long legs, and soon it was a tarantula; I was going to keep

it, but it turned into a star-fish, and I threw it away. Agnes said

it was not worth while to try to keep things; there was no stability

about them. I suggested rocks; but she said a rock was like the rest;

it wouldn't stay. She picked up a stone, and it turned into a bat and

flew away. These curious matters interested me, but that was all;

they did not stir my wonder.

 

While we were sitting there in the lao gorge talking, a Kanaka came

along who was wrinkled and bent and white-headed, and he stopped and

talked to us in the native tongue, and we understood him without

trouble and answered him in his own speech. He said he was a hundred

and thirty years old, and he remembered Captain Cook well, and was

present when he was murdered; saw it with his own eyes, and also

helped. Then he showed us his gun, which was of strange make, and he

said it was his own invention and was to shoot arrows with, though

one loaded it with powder and it had a percussion lock. He said it

would carry a hundred miles. It seemed a reasonable statement; I had

no fault to find with it, and it did not in any way surprise me. He

loaded it and fired an arrow aloft, and it darted into the sky and

vanished. Then he went his way, saying that the arrow would fall near

us in half an hour, and would go many yards into the earth, not

minding the rocks.

 

I took the time, and we waited, reclining upon the mossy slant at the

base of a tree, and gazing into the sky. By and by there was a

hissing sound, followed by a dull impact, and Agnes uttered a groan.

She said, in a series of fainting gasps:

 

" Take me to your arms - it passed through me - hold me to your heart -

I am afraid to die - closer - closer. It is growing dark - I cannot

see you. Don't leave me - where are you? You are not gone? You will

not leave me? I would not leave you. "

 

Then her spirit passed; she was clay in my arms.

 

The scene changed in an instant and I was awake and crossing Bond

Street in New York with a friend, and it was snowing hard. We had

been talking, and there had been no observable gaps in the

conversation. I doubt if I had made any more than two steps while I

was asleep. I am satisfied that even the most elaborate and incident-

crowded dream is seldom more than a few seconds in length. It would

not cost me very much of a strain to believe in Mohammed's seventy-

year dream, which began when he knocked his glass over, and ended in

time for him to catch it before the water was spilled.

 

Within a quarter of an hour I was in my quarters, undressed, ready

for bed, and was jotting down my dream in my note-book. A striking

thing happened now. I finished my notes, and was just going to turn

out the gas when I was caught with a most strenuous gape, for it was

very late and I was very drowsy. I fell asleep and dreamed again.

What now follows occurred while I was asleep; and when I woke again

the gape had completed itself, but not long before, I think, for I

was still on my feet. I was in Athens - a city which I had not, then

seen, but I recognized the Parthenon from the pictures, although it

had a fresh look and was in perfect repair. I passed by it and

climbed a grassy hill toward a palatial sort of mansion which was

built of red terra-cotta and had a spacious portico, whose roof was

supported by a rank of fluted columns with Corinthian capitals. It

was noonday, but I met no one. I passed into the house and entered

the first room. It was very large and light, its walls were of

polished and richly tinted and veined onyx, and its floor was a

pictured pattern in soft colors laid in tiles. I noted the details of

the furniture and the ornaments - a thing which I should not have

been likely to do when awake - and they took sharp hold and remained

in my memory; they are not really dim yet, and this was more than

thirty years ago.

 

There was a person present - Agnes. I was not surprised to see her,

but only glad. She was in the simple Greek costume, and her hair and

eyes were different as to color from those she had had when she died

in the Hawaiian Islands half an hour before, but to me she was

exactly her own beautiful little self as I had always known her, and

she was still fifteen, and I was seventeen once more. She was sitting

on an ivory settee, crocheting something or other, and had her

crewels in a shallow willow work-basket in her lap. I sat down by her

and we began to chat in the usual way. I remembered her death, but

the pain and the grief and the bitterness which had been so sharp and

so desolating to me at the moment that it happened had wholly passed

from me now, and had left not a scar. I was grateful to have her

back, but there was no realizable sense that she had ever been gone,

and so it did not occur to me to speak about it, and she made no

reference to it herself. It may be that she had often died before,

and knew that there was nothing lasting about it, and consequently

nothing important enough in it to make conversation out of.

 

When I think of that house and its belongings, I recognize what a

master in taste and drawing and color and arrangement is the dream-

artist who resides in us. In my waking hours, when the inferior

artist in me is in command, I cannot draw even the simplest picture

with a pencil, nor do anything with a brush and colors; I cannot

bring before my mind's eye the detail image of any building known to

me except my own house at home; of St. Paul's, St. Peters, the Eiffel

Tower, the Taj, the Capitol at Washington, I can reproduce only

portions, partial glimpses; the same with Niagara Falls, the

Matterhorn, and other familiar things in nature; I cannot bring

before my mind's eye the face or figure of any human being known to

me; I have seen my family at breakfast within the past two hours; I

cannot bring their images before me, I do not know how they look;

before me, as I write, I see a little grove of young trees in the

garden; high above them projects the slender lance of a young pine,

beyond it is a glimpse of the upper half of a dull-white chimney

covered by an A-shaped little roof shingled with brown-red tiles, and

half a mile away is a hill-top densely wooded, and the red is cloven

by a curved, wide vacancy, which is smooth and grass-clad; I cannot

shut my eyes and reproduce that picture as a whole at all, nor any

single detail of it except the grassy curve, and that but vaguely and

fleetingly.

 

But my dream-artist can draw anything, and do it perfectly; he can

paint with all the colors and all the shades, and do it with delicacy

and truth; he can place before me vivid images of palaces, cities,

hamlets, hovels, mountains, valleys, lakes, skies, glowing in

sunlight or moonlight, or veiled in driving gusts of snow or rain,

and he can set before me people who are intensely alive, and who

feel, and express their feelings in their faces, and who also talk

and laugh, sing and swear. And when I wake I can shut my eyes and

bring back those people, and the scenery and the buildings; and not

only in general view, but often in nice detail. While Agnes and I sat

talking in that grand Athens house, several stately Greeks entered

from another part of it, disputing warmly about something or other,

and passed us by with courteous recognition; and among them was

Socrates. I recognized him by his nose. A moment later the house and

Agnes and Athens vanished away, and I was in my quarters in New York

again and reaching for my note-book.

 

In our dreams - I know it! - we do make the journeys we seem to make:

we do see the things we seem to see; the people, the horses, the

cats, the dogs, the birds, the whales, are real, not chimeras; they

are living spirits, not shadows; and they are immortal and

indestructible. They go whither they will; they visit all resorts,

all points of interest, even the twinkling suns that wander in the

wastes of space. That is where those strange mountains are which

slide from under our feet while we walk, and where those vast caverns

are whose bewildering avenues close behind us and in front when we

are lost, and shut us in. We know this because there are no such

things here, and they must be there, because there is no other place.

 

This tale is long enough, and I will close it now. In the forty-four

years that I have known my Dreamland sweetheart, I have seen her once

in two years on an average. Mainly these were glimpses, but she was

always immediately recognizable, notwithstanding she was so given to

repair herself and getting up doubtful improvements in her hair and

eyes. She was always fifteen, and looked it and acted it; and I was

always seventeen, and never felt a day older. To me she is a real

person, not a fiction, and her sweet and innocent society has been

one of the prettiest and pleasantest experiences of my life. I know

that to you her talk will not seem of the first intellectual order;

but you should hear her in Dreamland - then you would see!

 

I saw her a week ago, just for a moment. Fifteen, as usual, and I

seventeen, instead of going on sixty-three, as I was when I went to

sleep. We were in India and Bombay was in sight; also Windsor Castle,

its towers and battlements veiled in a delicate haze, and from it the

Thames flowed, curving and winding between its swarded banks, to our

feet. I said:

 

" There is no question about it, England is the most beautiful of all

the countries. "

 

Her face lighted with approval, and she said, with that sweet and

earnest irrelevance of hers:

 

" It is, because it is so marginal. "

 

Then she disappeared. It was just as well; she could probably have

added nothing to that rounded and perfect statement without damaging

its symmetry.

 

This glimpse of her carries me back to Maui, and that time when I saw

her gasp out her young life. That was a terrible thing to me at the

time. It was preternaturally vivid; and the pain and the grief and

the misery of it to me transcended many sufferings that I have known

in waking life. For everything in a dream is more deep and strong and

sharp and real than is ever its pale imitation in the unreal life

which is ours when we go about awake and clothed with our artificial

selves in this vague and dull-tinted artificial world. When we die we

shall slough off this cheap intellect, perhaps, and go abroad into

Dreamland clothed in our real selves, and aggrandized and enriched by

the command over the mysterious mental magician who is here not our

slave, but only our guest.

 

a nice bedtime story..I love M.T.

..........bob