Archive for December, 2009

I was always discovering new wonders in his personality. I came to the conclusion that he was a great man even if he hadn’t written a great book. For it was the consensus of criticism at the time that his book, so much discussed, was only queer, not in any sense an original creation. “What does it matter?” he’d say to me: “supper I have made a new try and failed?” But as I studied I was more and more convinced that he hadn’t failed. That the world had failed. I saw that one of the greatest battles of history had been and was being fought about this man. Greater battles than the slaughter things that usually go by that name. And yet here he was a quiet unconcerned old man, going equably about everywhere, and even seeming to be satisdied to spend precious hours with me, an inconsequential printer’s devil. It induced me to revise all my ideas of greatness.”

– Horace Traubel. “Collect H.T.” The Conservator, Vol 30, no 1, 3.

It was literally true that neither of us could remember first meeting. His mother lived in Camden. I knew her before I knew him…. Two brothers and a sister lived there with the mother. One of these brothers was a derelict. As small children we were afraid of him, His distorted face used to terrify us. We’d run from him. I can see him now looking out of the half open barn door grinning at us. His grin was even worse than his frown… One of my earliest memories of the old man, who always looked older than he was, was sitting with him under the trees in front of the house of a mild summer evening, he on a chair and I on the curb… I knew him a long time before I knew his books. He said to me again and again: “Dont[sic] bother about my books. They;ll come later on. I’d rather you bother about me.” …He heard of a man in the Camden who proposed to send me to college. “Dont go. A boy like you’s better off without it.” ,,, We’d roam out on the lots and see the boys playing baseball. He took a hot interest in the game. “It’s our game. It’s the American game.” (In) those first years.. he always seemed to like the idea that I hadn’t read his book. He was in the habit of putting it off. “No hurry. Take your time. You know me. What do you need with the books, anyway?” In the end I got there. Very vehemently there. And have been there ever since. But he preserveredin his notion that we were friends, not that he was a writer and I was a reader of books. “Let is last this way forever. I dont care.” But I did care. My curiosity intensified my desire. Finally he assured me: “I dont care as long as it dont operate as wedge between us.”

– Horace Traubel. “Collect H.T.” The Conservator, Vol 30, no 1, 2.

[Mark Twain]‘s instincts were true. He never humbugged his own intelligence into cultural affectations. For instance, he didn’t like poetry. He didn’t brag of it or confess it with shame. He just said so whenever he needed to as he’d say he’d no taste for olives… Mark was always alive to the huma  appeal. He was one of the little group of men who contributed to the monthly Whitman fund I took charge of for four or five years preceding Walt’s death. Mark once wroe me a lengthy letter concerning Whitman but didn’t say a word in it with reference to his poetry. He confined himself strictly ot Walt’s personality–his courage and his wisdom.

–Horace Traubel. “As to Books and Writers.” The Conservator. May,1918. Vol 29, No 3, 58.