PURELY COMMENTARY

Notable American Saga

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Continued from Page 2

Jewish! Do you think the horrors of Ger-
many can strike us here?" I assured her
that America was not Germany!
In a tribute to the late pianist-
composer, "I knew Gabrilowitsch," in the
DAC News of Detroit, Herman Wise, who
was music editor of the Detroit Free Press
during the years of Gabrilowitsch's direc-
tion of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra,
wrote, with reference to Mark Twain and
his daughter, quoting Clara Clemens
Gabrilowitsch's impressions of her father
and husband:
Mrs. Gabrilowitsch enjoyed
telling of the many evenings she
spent listening to her father and
husband exchange ideas or
philosophize about things in gen-
eral or enjoy hearty laughs as the
highly developed sense of humor
of the two men was brought into
play. Each had temper to spare,
she said, with one important dif-
ference — Mark Twain expressed
what he had to say with thunder
and blasphemy, her husband with
firmness and never an objectiona-
ble word. But the two men had
much in common, particularly
self-condemnation and the ability
to laugh at one's self, and their
mutual respect was genuine.
There is very little about Gab-
rilowitsch in Mark Twain's writings, but
the fact is that he was most respectful of
Judaism. This cynic who condemned all
religions admired Jews and Judaism. He
criticized Christianity, never Judaism. He
wrote an admiring article about the Jews
as "a marvelous race" during the early
years of the Affaire Dreyfus.
Two great names are linked histori-
cally — Mark Twain's with Ossip Gab-
rilowitsch's — and Gabrilowitsch's is inde-
libly and inseparably fused with music,
Jewry, Zionism and Israel.

Mark Twain .. .
His Daughter ..
Gabrilowitsch • •

The death in November 1962 of Mrs.
Clara Clemens Samossoud, the former
Mrs. Ossip Gabrilowitsch, the last of the
five daughters of Mark Twain (Samuel
Clemens), created an. occasion for re-
miniscing about the lady, her first hus-
band and her eminent father.
Less than a month before the world
famous pianist, conductor and composer
was called by death, I interviewed Mark
Twain's daughter at the Gabrilowitsch
home on West Boston Boulevard in De-
troit. While I waited .for her — she was
delayed, visiting her husband at the hos-
pital where he was suffering from an in-
curable malignancy — I had occasion to
browse among her books, and I was the
first newspaperman to discover the in-
scriptions by Mark Twain to his daughter
in a 24-volume set of his works he had
presented to Clara.
With Mrs. Gabrilowitsch's permis-
sion, I incorporated these unpublished
Mark Twain epigrams. in the November
1935 issue of Real America and in my own
paper.
In her interview, Clara Clemens Gab-
rilowitsch took occasion to speak with de-
voted esteem of her father's hatred for all
types of injustice and of the manner in
which he abhorred persecution. And when
I read the inscriptions in her books I
realized he never forgot his sense of
humor. •
The first volume of The Innocents
Abroad is inscribed: To Clara Langdon
Clemens, with the love of her father, the

20

Friday, June 20, 1986

Anna Slomovitz

author," and appended to it is the state-
ment: "Be good and you will be lonesome.
Like me." In the second volume of The In-
nocents Abroad comes a striking commen-
tary on the need for adherence to the prac-
tical even by the- most principled. Wrote
Mark Twain, therin: "Prosperity is the
best protector of principle."
That his sense of the practical contin-
ued to dominate is indicated by his in-
scriptions in the third and fourth volumes,
constituting A Tramp Abroad, on the title
pages of which Mark Twain wrote:
"To succeed in the other trades,
capacity must be shown in the law, conce-
alment of it will do.
"By trying we can easily learn to
endure adversity. Another man's I mean.
"Few of us can stand prosperity. An-
other man's, I mean."
His inscription in the second part of
Following the Equator reads: "Let me
make the superstitions of a nation and I
care not who makes its laws, or its songs
either."
Subtlety marks the inscription to the
first portion of Following the Equator: "It
is nobler to show another how to be good
than to be good yourself, and less trouble."
In Roughing It, Mrs. Gabrilowitsch,
and, through her kindness, now the
readers of Real America, perceive that
Mark Twain, with all his practicability,
knew the ultimate worthleSsness of
worldly goods: "Each person is born to one
posssession which out-values any he can
earn or inherit — his last breath."
Thinking of Chicago people thirty-one
years ago, he thus inscribed Personal Re-
collections of Joan of Arc: "Satan (to new-
comers), The trouble with you Chicago
people is that you think you are the best
people down here; whereas you are merely
the most numerous."
Lawyers will appreciate his comment
in Sketches New and Old: "In the first
place God made idiots. This was for prac-
tice. Then he made juries."
And dreamers will find justification
for their visions in Mark Twain's inscrip-
tion to American Claimant and Other
Stores: " -r)0n' 4 na.7t with your illus:nns
When they are 'gone, you may still exist,
but you have ceased to live."
There is wisdom in his inscription to
Tom Sawyer Abroad: "Often the surest
way to convey misinformation is to tell the
truth."
Evidently Mark Twain had been
touched for many a loan. judging by an-

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Dora Ehrlich

other inscription in Roughing It: "There is
an old-time toast which is golden for its
beauty: 'When you ascent the hill of pros-
perity may you never meet a friend.' " And
perhaps an excellent sequel to this is his
statement in The Gilded Age: "It takes
your enemy and your friend, working to-
gether, to hurt you.to the heart: The one to
slander you and the other to hurry the
news to you."
The creator of Tom Sawyer, inscrib-
ing his daughter's volume ofAdventures of
Tom Sawyer, finds beauty even in wrink-
les when he writes: "Wrinkles should
merely indicate where the smiles have
been."
Very appropriate is the inscription in
The Prince and the Pauper: "A simple rule
for saving money when you are red-hot to
contribute to a charity: To save half, wait
and count 40. To save three-quarters,
count 60. To save it all, count 65."
Mark Twain believed that good
things should be shared with others, as is
noted on the title page of A Connecticut
Yankee: "Grief can take care of itself; but
to get the full value of a joy, you must
have somebody to divide it with."
Among the other inscriptions in Mrs.
Gabrilowitsch's gift from her father are
the following:
" 'Hunger is the hand maid of genius.'
Or the barmaid, or the housemaid, or the
lady's maid, I don't know for sure which it
is, but it is one of those, anyway."
"The old saw - says: 'Let a sleeping dog
lie.' Experience knows better; experience
says, if you want to convince, do it your-
self." •
"If the desire to kill and the opportu-
nity to kill came always together, who -
would escape the gallows?"
"Everyone is a moon and has a dark
side which he never shows to anybody."
"Irreverence is another man's disre-
spect for your God. There isn't any word
that tells us what your disrespect for his
God is." .
But perhaps the most striking of all
the inscriptions is the one contained in the
last volume, The $30,000 Bequest, and out
of which the 3aughte• of A.f1acIr
must have gotten a great thrill because of
the personal allusion to inheritance. In-
scribing The $30,000 Bequest Mark Twain
informed his daughter: "Not Any."
Meanwhile, some recollections about
the visit with Clara Gabrilowitsch. it was
in September of 1935. The Nazis had al-
ready marked for extinction not only the

Jews but also half- and quarter-Jews.
What will happen to my daughter, she
asked? She is a half-Jewess: does that
place her in danger? Can it happen here?
she asked, referring to the threat to man-
kind from - Hitlerism.
Clara was unquestionably influenced
by her father's attitude toward the Jews,
and she had much to learn from her first
husband who, although he came from an
ultra-assimilated Jewish home, became
thoroughly imbued with the Zionist idea
and in the last ten or 15 years of his life
had made Zionism his major cause. He ad-
vocated the teaching of Hebrew to Jewish
children, supported the Jewish National
Fund and was the patron fo the Palestine
Symphony Orchestra — which preceded
the Israel Symphony — in this country.
Mark Twain, whose views on the
Jews first appeared in a lengthy article in
Harper's Magazine in 1904, paid great
tribute to the Jews. In Mark Twain's Es-
says, Vol. 2, Page 253, we read:
The Jew is not a disturber of
the peace of any country. Even his
enemies concede that. He is not a
loafer, he is not a sot, he is not
noisy, he is not a brawler nor a rio-
ter, he is not quarrelsome. In the
statistics of crime, his presence is
conspicuously rare in all coun-
tries. With murder and other
crimes of violence he has but little
to do; he is a stranger to the
hangman.
In the police court's daily long
roll of "assaults" and "drunk and
disorderlies" his name seldom ap-
pears. That the Jewish home is a
home in the truest sense is a fact
which no one will dispute. The
family is knitted together by the
strongest affections: its members
show each other every due re-
spect; and reverence for the elders
is an inviolate law of the house.
The Jew is not a burden on the
charities of the state nor of the
city; these could cease from their
functions without affecting him.
When he is well enough, he works;
when he is incapacitated, his own
people take care of him. And not
in a poor and stingy way, but with
a fine and large benevolence. His
race is entitled to be called the
most benevolent of all the races of
men.

Dr. Theodor Herzl, who was known as
a most distinguished feuilletonist before
he became world famous as the founder of
the political Zionist movement and of the
World Zionist Congresses, once wrote an
essay on "Mark Twain in Paris." In it he
paid his tribute to the great American
humorist:

His humor is something im-
mense, overpowering and shatter-
ing
great chunks of humor in-
tended for a people that doesn't
smile. Once an Englishman makes
up his mind to laugh, he means to
do so wholeheartedly; he lets him-
self go.- and he laughs until his
sides split. And it is this little man
who is responsible for this huge
laughter wherever the English
tongue is spoken. reaching the
widest field.

—

Sholem Aleichem, the great Yiddish
humorist, was likened to Mark Twain.
When he came to the United States in
1910, he was introduced to Mark Twain as
"the Jewish Mark Twain," and the great
American author remonstrated with a re-
sponse that has become famous; "No, no,"
he said, "I am the American Sholem
Aleichem."

