The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Mark Twain [good summer reads .TXT] 📗

to every man he could hear of who was likely to need a mortuary monument for himself, or his friends, or acquaintances, and had also applied for the chance of a competition for a soldiers’ monument⁠—for all things of this sort⁠—but always without success; the natural result, as his name was not known. He had no reputation.

Once, J. Q. A. Ward, in speaking of his early struggles to get a status as a sculptor, had told me that he had made his beginning by hanging around the studios of sculptors of repute and picking up odd jobs of journey work in them, for the sake of the bread he could gain in that way.

I may as well say here, and be done with it, that my connection with Gerhardt had very little sentiment in it, from my side of the house; and no romance. I took hold of his case, in the first place, solely because I had become convinced that he had it in him to become a very capable sculptor. I was not adopting a child, I was not adding a member to the family, I was merely taking upon myself a common duty⁠—the duty of helping a man who was not able to help himself. I never expected him to be grateful, I never expected him to be thankful⁠—my experience of men had long ago taught me that one of the surest ways of begetting an enemy was to do some stranger an act of kindness which should lay upon him the irritating sense of an obligation. Therefore my connection with Gerhardt had nothing sentimental or romantic about it. I told him in the first place that if the time should ever come when he could pay back to me the money expended upon him, and pay it without inconvenience to himself, I should expect it at his hands, and that, when it was paid, I should consider the account entirely requited⁠—sentiment and all; that that act would leave him free from any obligation to me. It was well, all round, that things had taken that shape in the beginning, and had kept it, for if the foundation had been sentiment that sentiment might have grown sour.

One evening Gerhardt appeared in the library and I hoped he had come to say he was getting along very well and was contented; so I was disappointed when he said he had come to show me a small bust he had been making, in clay, of General Grant, from a photograph. I was the more irritated for the reason that I had never seen a portrait of General Grant⁠—in oil, watercolors, crayon, steel, wood, photograph, plaster, marble, or any other material⁠—that was to me at all satisfactory; and, therefore, I could not expect that a person who had never even seen the general could accomplish anything worth considering in the way of a likeness of him.

However, when he uncovered the bust my prejudices vanished at once.

The thing was not correct in its details, yet it seemed to me to be a closer approach to a good likeness of General Grant than any one which I had ever seen before. Before uncovering it, Gerhardt had said he had brought it in the hope that I would show it to some member of the general’s family and get that member to point out its chief defects, for correction; but I had replied that I could not venture to do that, for there was a plenty of people to pester these folks without me adding myself to the number. But a glance at the bust had changed all that in an instant. I said I would go to New York in the morning and ask the family to look at the bust, and that he must come along to be within call in case they took enough interest in the matter to point out the defects.

We reached the general’s house at one o’clock the next afternoon, and I left Gerhardt and the bust below and went upstairs to see the family.

And now, for the first time, the thought came into my mind that perhaps I was doing a foolish thing; that the family must of necessity have been pestered with such matters as this so many times that the very mention of such a thing must be nauseating to them. However, I had started, and so I might as well finish. Therefore, I said I had a young artist downstairs who had been making a small bust of the general from a photograph, and I wished they would look at it, if they were willing to do me that kindness.

Jesse Grant’s wife spoke up with eagerness and said, “Is it the artist who made the bust of you that is in Huckleberry Finn?” I said, “Yes.” She said, with great animation, “How good it was of you, Mr. Clemens, to think of that!” She expressed this lively gratitude to me in various ways until I began to feel somehow a great sense of merit in having originated this noble idea of having a bust of General Grant made by so excellent an artist. I will not do my sagacity the discredit of saying that I did anything to remove or modify this impression that I had originated the idea and carried it out to its present state through my own ingenuity and diligence.

Mrs. Jesse Grant added, “How strange it is; only two nights ago I dreamed that I was looking at your bust in Huckleberry Finn and thinking how nearly perfect it was, and then I thought that I conceived the idea of going to you and asking you if you could not hunt up that artist and get him to make a bust of father!”

Things were going on very handsomely!

The persons present were Col. Fred Grant, Mrs. Jesse Grant, and Doctor Douglas.

I went down for Gerhardt and he brought up the bust and uncovered it. All of the family present exclaimed over