MARK TWAIN'S LOVE OF COLOUR IN ALL COSTUMING

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THE ARTIST AND HIS COSTUME >>

The setting sun streamed through the ancient stained glass, dyeing their dirty

sheepskin crimson, and purple, and green, until they looked like illuminations in

old missals. To the eye and the mind of western Europe it was all

incomprehensible. Yet those were the people of Russia who are to-day her mass of

armed defenders; the element that has been counted on from the first by Russia and

her allies stood penniless before an altar laid over with gold and silver and precious

stones. Just before we got to Kiev, one of those men in sheepskins with uncut hair

and dogged expression, who had a sense of values in human existence, broke into

the church and stole jeweled chalices from the altar. They were traced to a

pawnshop in a distant city and brought back. It was a common thing to see men halt

in the street and stand uncovered, while a pitiful funeral cortege passed. A wooly,

half-starved, often lame horse, was harnessed with rope to a simple four-wheeled

farm wagon, a long-haired peasant at his head, women and children holding to the

sides of the cart as they stumbled along in grief, and inside a rough wooden coffin

covered with a black pall, on which was sewn the Greek cross, in white. Heartless,

hopeless, weary and underfed, those peasants were taking their dead to be blessed

for a price, by the priest in cloth of gold, without whose blessing there could be no

burial.

CHAPTER XXIII

MARK TWAIN'S LOVE OF COLOUR IN ALL COSTUMING

HE public thinks of Mark Twain as being the apostle of white during the

last years of his life, but those who knew him well recall his delightfully

original way of expressing an intense love for bright colours. This brings

to mind a week-end at Mark Twain's beautiful Italian villa in Reading,

Connecticut, when, one night during dinner, he held forth on the compelling

fascination of colours and the American Indian's superior judgment in wearing

them. After a lengthy elaboration--not to say exaggeration--of his theme, he

ended by declaring in uncompromising terms, that colour, and plenty of it, crimson

and yellow and blue, wrapped around man, as well as woman, was an obligation

shirked by humanity. It was all put as only Mark Twain could have put it, with that

serious vein showing through broad humour. This quality combined with an

unmatched originality, made every moment passed in his company a memory to

treasure. It was not alone his theme, but how he dealt with it, that fascinated one.

PLATE XXIX

One of the 1917 silhouettes.

Naturally, since woman to-day dresses for her

occupation--work or play--the characteristic

silhouettes are many.

This one is reproduced to illustrate our point

that outline can be affected by the smallest

detail.

The sketch is by Elisabeth Searcy.

Drawn from Life by

Elisabeth Searcy A

Modern Silhouette--

1917 Tailor-made

Mark Twain was elemental and at the same time a great artist,--the embodiment of

extreme contradictions, and his flair for gay colour was one proof of his elemental

strain. We laughed that night as he made word pictures of how men and women

should dress. Next morning, toward noon, on looking out of a window, we saw

standing in the middle of the driveway a figure wrapped in crimson silk, his white

hair flying in the wind, while smoke from a pipe encircled his head. Yes, it was

Mark Twain, who in the midst of his writing, had been suddenly struck with the

thought that the road needed mending, and had gone out to have another look at it!

It was a blustering day in Spring, and cold, so one of the household was sent to

persuade him to come in. We can see him now, returning reluctantly, wind-blown

and vehement, gesticulating, and stopping every few steps to express his opinion of

the men who had made that road! The flaming red silk robe he wore was one his

daughter had brought him from Liberty's, in London, and he adored it. Still

wrapped in it, and seemingly unconscious of his unusual appearance, he joined us

on the balcony, to resume a conversation of the night before.

The red-robed figure seated itself in a wicker chair and berated the idea that mortal

man ever could be generous,--act without selfish motives. With the greatest

reverence in his tone, sitting there in his whimsical costume of bright red silk, at

high noon,--an immaculate French butler waiting at the door to announce lunch,

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