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The Complete Works of Mark Twain - Part 16
Mark Twain loved him, pitied
him--also enjoyed him, especially with Howells. Orion's new plan
to lecture in the interest of religion found its way to Munich,
with the following result:
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
MUNICH, Feb. 9. (1879)
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I have just received this letter from Orion--take care
of it, for it is worth preserving. I got as far as 9 pages in my answer
to it, when Mrs. Clemens shut down on it, and said it was cruel, and made
me send the money and simply wish his lecture success. I said I couldn't
lose my 9 pages--so she said send them to you. But I will acknowledge
that I thought I was writing a very kind letter.
Now just look at this letter of Orion's. Did you ever see the
grotesquely absurd and the heart-breakingly pathetic more closely joined
together? Mrs. Clemens said "Raise his monthly pension." So I wrote to
Perkins to raise it a trifle.
Now only think of it! He still has 100 pages to write on his lecture,
yet in one inking of his pen he has already swooped around the United
States and invested the result!
You must put him in a book or a play right away. You are the only man
capable of doing it. You might die at any moment, and your very greatest
work would be lost to the world. I could write Orion's simple biography,
and make it effective, too, by merely stating the bald facts--and this I
will do if he dies before I do; but you must put him into romance. This
was the understanding you and I had the day I sailed.
Observe Orion's career--that is, a little of it: (1) He has belonged to
as many as five different religious denominations; last March he withdrew
from the deaconship in a Congregational Church and the Superintendency of
its Sunday School, in a speech in which he said that for many months (it
runs in my mind that he said 13 years,) he had been a confirmed infidel,
and so felt it to be his duty to retire from the flock.
2. After being a republican for years, he wanted me to buy him a
democratic newspaper. A few days before the Presidential election, he
came out in a speech and publicly went over to the democrats; he
prudently "hedged" by voting for 6 state republicans, also.
The new convert was made one of the secretaries of the democratic
meeting, and placed in the list of speakers. He wrote me jubilantly of
what a ten-strike he was going to make with that speech. All right--but
think of his innocent and pathetic candor in writing me something like
this, a week later:
"I was more diffident than I had expected to be, and this was increased
by the silence with which I was received when I came forward; so I seemed
unable to get the fire into my speech which I had calculated upon, and
presently they began to get up and go out; and in a few minutes they all
rose up and went away."
How could a man uncover such a sore as that and show it to another? Not
a word of complaint, you see--only a patient, sad surprise.
3. His next project was to write a burlesque upon Paradise Lost.
4. Then, learning that the Times was paying Harte $100 a column for
stories, he concluded to write some for the same price. I read his first
one and persuaded him not to write any more.
5. Then he read proof on the N. Y. Eve. Post at $10 a week and meekly
observed that the foreman swore at him and ordered him around "like a
steamboat mate."
6. Being discharged from that post, he wanted to try agriculture--was
sure he could make a fortune out of a chicken farm. I gave him $900 and
he went to a ten-house village a miles above Keokuk on the river bank
--this place was a railway station. He soon asked for money to buy a
horse and light wagon,--because the trains did not run at church time on
Sunday and his wife found it rather far to walk.
For a long time I answered demands for "loans" and by next mail always
received his check for the interest due me to date. In the most
guileless way he let it leak out that he did not underestimate the value
of his custom to me, since it was not likely that any other customer of
mine paid his interest quarterly, and this enabled me to use my capital
twice in 6 months instead of only once. But alas, when the debt at last
reached $1800 or $2500 (I have forgotten which) the interest ate too
formidably into his borrowings, and so he quietly ceased to pay it or
speak of it. At the end of two years I found that the chicken farm had
long ago been abandoned, and he had moved into Keokuk. Later in one of
his casual moments, he observed that there was no money in fattening a
chicken on 65 cents worth of corn and then selling it for 50.
7. Finally, if I would lend him $500 a year for two years, (this was 4
or 5 years ago,) he knew he could make a success as a lawyer, and would
prove it. This is the pension which we have just increased to $600. The
first year his legal business brought him $5. It also brought him an
unremunerative case where some villains were trying to chouse some negro
orphans out of $700. He still has this case. He has waggled it around
through various courts and made some booming speeches on it. The negro
children have grown up and married off, now, I believe, and their
litigated town-lot has been dug up and carted off by somebody--but Orion
still infests the courts with his documents and makes the welkin ring
with his venerable case. The second year, he didn't make anything. The
third he made $6, and I made Bliss put a case in his hands--about half an
hour's work. Orion charged $50 for it--Bliss paid him $15. Thus four or
five years of slaving has brought him $26, but this will doubtless be
increased when he gets done lecturing and buys that "law library."
Meantime his office rent has been $60 a year, and he has stuck to that
lair day by day as patiently as a spider.
8. Then he by and by conceived the idea of lecturing around America as
"Mark Twain's Brother"--that to be on the bills. Subject of proposed
lecture, "On the, Formation of Character."
9. I protested, and he got on his warpaint, couched his lance, and ran a
bold tilt against total abstinence and the Red Ribbon fanatics. It
raised a fine row among the virtuous Keokukians.
10. I wrote to encourage him in his good work, but I had let a mail
intervene; so by the time my letter reached him he was already winning
laurels as a Red Ribbon Howler.
11. Afterward he took a rabid part in a prayer-meeting epidemic; dropped
that to travesty Jules Verne; dropped that, in the middle of the last
chapter, last March, to digest the matter of an infidel book which he
proposed to write; and now he comes to the surface to rescue our "noble
and beautiful religion" from the sacrilegious talons of Bob Ingersoll.
Now come! Don't fool away this treasure which Providence has laid at
your feet, but take it up and use it. One can let his imagination run
riot in portraying Orion, for there is nothing so extravagant as to be
out of character with him.
Well-good-bye, and a short life and a merry one be yours. Poor old
Methusaleh, how did he manage to stand it so long?
Yrs ever,
MARK.
To Orion Clemens
(Unsent and inclosed with the foregoing, to W. D. Howells):
MUNICH, Feb. 9, (1879)
MY DEAR BRO.,--Yours has just arrived. I enclose a draft on Hartford for
$25. You will have abandoned the project you wanted it for, by the time
it arrives,--but no matter, apply it to your newer and present project,
whatever it is. You see I have an ineradicable faith in your
unsteadfastness,--but mind you, I didn't invent that faith, you conferred
it on me yourself. But fire away, fire away! I don't see why a
changeable man shouldn't get as much enjoyment out of his changes, and
transformations and transfigurations as a steadfast man gets out of
standing still and pegging at the same old monotonous thing all the time.
That is to say, I don't see why a kaleidoscope shouldn't enjoy itself as
much as a telescope, nor a grindstone have as good a time as a whetstone,
nor a barometer as good a time as a yardstick. I don't feel like girding
at you any more about fickleness of purpose, because I recognize and
realize at last that it is incurable; but before I learned to accept this
truth, each new weekly project of yours possessed the power of throwing
me into the most exhausting and helpless convulsions of profanity. But
fire away, now! Your magic has lost its might. I am able to view your
inspirations dispassionately and judicially, now, and say "This one or
that one or the other one is not up to your average flight, or is above
it, or below it."
And so, without passion, or prejudice, or bias of any kind, I sit in
judgment upon your lecture project, and say it was up to your average,
it was indeed above it, for it had possibilities in it, and even
practical ones. While I was not sorry you abandoned it, I should not be
sorry if you had stuck to it and given it a trial. But on the whole you
did the wise thing to lay it aside, I think, because a lecture is a most
easy thing to fail in; and at your time of life, and in your own town,
such a failure would make a deep and cruel wound in your heart and in
your pride. It was decidedly unwise in you to think for a moment of
coming before a community who knew you, with such a course of lectures;
because Keokuk is not unaware that you have been a Swedenborgian, a
Presbyterian, a Congregationalist, and a Methodist (on probation), and
that just a year ago you were an infidel. If Keokuk had gone to your
lecture course, it would have gone to be amused, not instructed, for when
a man is known to have no settled convictions of his own he can't
convince other people. They would have gone to be amused and that would
have been a deep humiliation to you. It could have been safe for you to
appear only where you were unknown--then many of your hearers would think
you were in earnest. And they would be right. You are in earnest while
your convictions are new. But taking it by and large, you probably did
best to discard that project altogether. But I leave you to judge of
that, for you are the worst judge I know of.
(Unfinished.)
That Mark Twain in many ways was hardly less child-like than his
brother is now and again revealed in his letters. He was of
steadfast purpose, and he possessed the driving power which Orion
Clemens lacked; but the importance to him of some of the smaller
matters of life, as shown in a letter like the following, bespeaks a
certain simplicity of nature which he never outgrew:
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
MUNICH, Feb. 24. (1879)
DEAR OLD JOE,--It was a mighty good letter, Joe--and that idea of yours
is a rattling good one. But I have not sot down here to answer your
letter,--for it is down at my study,--but only to impart some
information.
For a months I had not shaved without crying. I'd spend 3/4 of an hour
whetting away on my hand--no use, couldn't get an edge. Tried a razor
strop-same result. So I sat down and put in an hour thinking out the
mystery. Then it seemed plain--to wit: my hand can't give a razor an
edge, it can only smooth and refine an edge that has already been given.
I judge that a razor fresh from the hone is this shape V--the long point
being the continuation of the edge--and that after much use the shape is
this V--the attenuated edge all worn off and gone. By George I knew that
was the explanation. And I knew that a freshly honed and freshly
strapped razor won't cut, but after strapping on the hand as a final
operation, it will cut.--So I sent out for an oil-stone; none to be had,
but messenger brought back a little piece of rock the size of a
Safety-match box--(it was bought in a shoemaker's shop) bad flaw in
middle of it, too, but I put 4 drops of fine Olive oil on it, picked out
the razor marked "Thursday" because it was never any account and would be
no loss if I spoiled it--gave it a brisk and reckless honing for 10
minutes, then tried it on a hair--it wouldn't cut. Then I trotted it
through a vigorous 20-minute course on a razor-strap and tried it on a
hair-it wouldn't cut--tried it on my face--it made me cry--gave it a
5-minute stropping on my hand, and my land, what an edge she had!
We thought we knew what sharp razors were when we were tramping in
Switzerland, but it was a mistake--they were dull beside this old
Thursday razor of mine--which I mean to name Thursday October Christian,
in gratitude. I took my whetstone, and in 20 minutes I put two more of
my razors in splendid condition--but I leave them in the box--I never use
any but Thursday O. C., and shan't till its edge is gone--and then I'll
know how to restore it without any delay.
We all go to Paris next Thursday--address, Monroe & Co., Bankers.
With love
Ys Ever
MARK.
In Paris they found pleasant quarters at the Hotel Normandy, but it
was a chilly, rainy spring, and the travelers gained a rather poor
impression of the French capital. Mark Twain's work did not go
well, at first, because of the noises of the street. But then he
found a quieter corner in the hotel and made better progress. In a
brief note to Aldrich he said: "I sleep like a lamb and write like a
lion--I mean the kind of a lion that writes--if any such." He
expected to finish the book in six weeks; that is to say, before
returning to America. He was looking after its illustrations
himself, and a letter to Frank Bliss, of The American Publishing
Company, refers to the frontpiece, which, from time to time, has
caused question as to its origin. To Bliss he says: "It is a thing
which I manufactured by pasting a popular comic picture into the
middle of a celebrated Biblical one--shall attribute it to Titian.
It needs to be engraved by a master."
The weather continued bad in France and they left there in July to
find it little better in England. They had planned a journey to
Scotland to visit Doctor Brown, whose health was not very good. In
after years Mark Twain blamed himself harshly for not making the
trip, which he declared would have meant so much to Mrs. Clemens.
He had forgotten by that time the real reasons for not going--the
continued storms and uncertainty of trains (which made it barely
possible for them to reach Liverpool in time for their
sailing-date), and with characteristic self-reproach vowed that
only perversity and obstinacy on his part had prevented the journey
to Scotland. From Liverpool, on the eve of sailing, he sent Doctor
Brown a good-by word.
To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:
WASHINGTON HOTEL, LIME STREET, LIVERPOOL.
Aug. (1879)
MY DEAR MR. BROWN,--During all the 15 months we have been spending on the
continent, we have been promising ourselves a sight of you as our latest
and most prized delight in a foreign land--but our hope has failed, our
plan has miscarried. One obstruction after another intruded itself, and
our short sojourn of three or four weeks on English soil was thus
frittered gradually away, and we were at last obliged to give up the idea
of seeing you at all. It is a great disappointment, for we wanted to
show you how much "Megalopis" has grown (she is 7 now) and what a fine
creature her sister is, and how prettily they both speak German. There
are six persons in my party, and they are as difficult to cart around as
nearly any other menagerie would be. My wife and Miss Spaulding are
along, and you may imagine how they take to heart this failure of our
long promised Edinburgh trip. We never even wrote you, because we were
always so sure, from day to day, that our affairs would finally so shape
themselves as to let us get to Scotland. But no,--everything went wrong
we had only flying trips here and there in place of the leisurely ones
which we had planned.
We arrived in Liverpool an hour ago very tired, and have halted at this
hotel (by the advice of misguided friends)--and if my instinct and
experience are worth anything, it is the very worst hotel on earth,
without any exception. We shall move to another hotel early in the
morning to spend to-morrow. We sail for America next day in the
"Gallic."
We all join in the sincerest love to you, and in the kindest remembrance
to "Jock"--[Son of Doctor Brown.]--and your sister.
Truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
It was September 3, 1879, that Mark Twain returned to America by the
steamer Gallic. In the seventeen months of his absence he had taken
on a "traveled look" and had added gray hairs. A New York paper
said of his arrival that he looked older than when he went to
Germany, and that his hair had turned quite gray.
Mark Twain had not finished his book of travel in Paris--in fact,
it seemed to him far from complete--and he settled down rather
grimly to work on it at Quarry Farm. When, after a few days no word
of greeting came from Howells, Clemens wrote to ask if he were dead
or only sleeping. Howells hastily sent a line to say that he had
been sleeping "The sleep of a torpid conscience. I will feign that
I did not know where to write you; but I love you and all of yours,
and I am tremendously glad that you are home again. When and where
shall we meet? Have you come home with your pockets full of
Atlantic papers?" Clemens, toiling away at his book, was, as usual,
not without the prospect of other plans. Orion, as literary
material, never failed to excite him.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, Sept. 15, 1879.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--When and where? Here on the farm would be an elegant
place to meet, but of course you cannot come so far. So we will say
Hartford or Belmont, about the beginning of November. The date of our
return to Hartford is uncertain, but will be three or four weeks hence,
I judge. I hope to finish my book here before migrating.
I think maybe I've got some Atlantic stuff in my head, but there's none
in MS, I believe.
Say--a friend of mine wants to write a play with me, I to furnish the
broad-comedy cuss. I don't know anything about his ability, but his
letter serves to remind me of our old projects. If you haven't used
Orion or Old Wakeman, don't you think you and I can get together and
grind out a play with one of those fellows in it? Orion is a field which
grows richer and richer the more he mulches it with each new top-dressing
of religion or other guano. Drop me an immediate line about this, won't
you? I imagine I see Orion on the stage, always gentle, always
melancholy, always changing his politics and religion, and trying to
reform the world, always inventing something, and losing a limb by a new
kind of explosion at the end of each of the four acts. Poor old chap,
he is good material. I can imagine his wife or his sweetheart
reluctantly adopting each of his new religious in turn, just in time to
see him waltz into the next one and leave her isolated once more.
(Mem. Orion's wife has followed him into the outer darkness, after 30
years' rabid membership in the Presbyterian Church.)
Well, with the sincerest and most abounding love to you and yours, from
all this family, I am,
Yrs ever
MARK.
The idea of the play interested Howells, but he had twinges of
conscience in the matter of using Orion as material. He wrote:
"More than once I have taken the skeleton of that comedy of ours and
viewed it with tears..... I really have a compunction or two about
helping to put your brother into drama. You can say that he is your
brother, to do what you like with him, but the alien hand might
inflict an incurable hurt on his tender heart."
As a matter of fact, Orion Clemens had a keen appreciation of his
own shortcomings, and would have enjoyed himself in a play as much
as any observer of it. Indeed, it is more than likely that he would
have been pleased at the thought of such distinguished
dramatization. From the next letter one might almost conclude that
he had received a hint of this plan, and was bent upon supplying
rich material.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, Oct. 9 '79.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Since my return, the mail facilities have enabled Orion
to keep me informed as to his intentions. Twenty-eight days ago it was
his purpose to complete a work aimed at religion, the preface to which he
had already written. Afterward he began to sell off his furniture, with
the idea of hurrying to Leadville and tackling silver-mining--threw up
his law den and took in his sign. Then he wrote to Chicago and St. Louis
newspapers asking for a situation as "paragrapher"--enclosing a taste of
his quality in the shape of two stanzas of "humorous rhymes." By a later
mail on the same day he applied to New York and Hartford insurance
companies for copying to do.
However, it would take too long to detail all his projects. They
comprise a removal to south-west Missouri; application for a reporter's
berth on a Keokuk paper; application for a compositor's berth on a St.
Louis paper; a re-hanging of his attorney's sign, "though it only creaks
and catches no flies;" but last night's letter informs me that he has
retackled the religious question, hired a distant den to write in,
applied to my mother for $50 to re-buy his furniture, which has advanced
in value since the sale--purposes buying $25 worth of books necessary to
his labors which he had previously been borrowing, and his first chapter
is already on its way to me for my decision as to whether it has enough
ungodliness in it or not. Poor Orion!
Your letter struck me while I was meditating a project to beguile you,
and John Hay and Joe Twichell, into a descent upon Chicago which I dream
of making, to witness the re-union of the great Commanders of the Western
Army Corps on the 9th of next month. My sluggish soul needs a fierce
upstirring, and if it would not get it when Grant enters the meeting
place I must doubtless "lay" for the final resurrection. Can you and Hay
go? At the same time, confound it, I doubt if I can go myself, for this
book isn't done yet. But I would give a heap to be there. I mean to
heave some holiness into the Hartford primaries when I go back; and if
there was a solitary office in the land which majestic ignorance and
incapacity, coupled with purity of heart, could fill, I would run for it.
This naturally reminds me of Bret Harte--but let him pass.
We propose to leave here for New York Oct. 21, reaching Hartford 24th or
25th. If, upon reflection, you Howellses find, you can stop over here on
your way, I wish you would do it, and telegraph me. Getting pretty
hungry to see you. I had an idea that this was your shortest way home,
but like as not my geography is crippled again--it usually is.
Yrs ever
MARK.
The "Reunion of the Great Commanders," mentioned in the foregoing,
was a welcome to General Grant after his journey around the world.
Grant's trip had been one continuous ovation--a triumphal march.
In '79 most of his old commanders were still alive, and they had
planned to assemble in Chicago to do him honor. A Presidential year
was coming on, but if there was anything political in the project
there were no surface indications. Mark Twain, once a Confederate
soldier, had long since been completely "desouthernized"--at least
to the point where he felt that the sight of old comrades paying
tribute to the Union commander would stir his blood as perhaps it
had not been stirred, even in that earlier time, when that same
commander had chased him through the Missouri swamps. Grant,
indeed, had long since become a hero to Mark Twain, though it is
highly unlikely that Clemens favored the idea of a third term. Some
days following the preceding letter an invitation came for him to be
present at the Chicago reunion; but by this time he had decided not
to go. The letter he wrote has been preserved.
To Gen. William E. Strong, in Chicago:
FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD.
Oct. 28, 1879.
GEN. WM. E. STRONG, CH'M,
AND GENTLEMEN OF THE COMMITTEE:
I have been hoping during several weeks that it might be my good fortune
to receive an invitation to be present on that great occasion in Chicago;
but now that my desire is accomplished my business matters have so shaped
themselves as to bar me from being so far from home in the first half of
November. It is with supreme regret that I lost this chance, for I have
not had a thorough stirring up for some years, and I judged that if I
could be in the banqueting hall and see and hear the veterans of the Army
of the Tennessee at the moment that their old commander entered the room,
or rose in his place to speak, my system would get the kind of upheaval
it needs. General Grant's progress across the continent is of the
marvelous nature of the returning Napoleon's progress from Grenoble to
Paris; and as the crowning spectacle in the one case was the meeting with
the Old Guard, so, likewise, the crowning spectacle in the other will be
our great captain's meeting with his Old Guard--and that is the very
climax which I wanted to witness.
Besides, I wanted to see the General again, any way, and renew the
acquaintance. He would remember me, because I was the person who did not
ask him for an office. However, I consume your time, and also wander
from the point--which is, to thank you for the courtesy of your
invitation, and yield up my seat at the table to some other guest who may
possibly grace it better, but will certainly not appreciate its
privileges more, than I should.
With great respect,
I am, Gentlemen,
Very truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Private:--I beg to apologize for my delay, gentlemen, but the card of
invitation went to Elmira, N. Y. and hence has only just now reached me.
This letter was not sent. He reconsidered and sent an acceptance,
agreeing to speak, as the committee had requested. Certainly there
was something picturesque in the idea of the Missouri private who
had been chased for a rainy fortnight through the swamps of Ralls
County being selected now to join in welcome to his ancient enemy.
The great reunion was to be something more than a mere banquet. It
would continue for several days, with processions, great
assemblages, and much oratory.
Mark Twain arrived in Chicago in good season to see it all. Three
letters to Mrs. Clemens intimately present his experiences: his
enthusiastic enjoyment and his own personal triumph.
The first was probably written after the morning of his arrival.
The Doctor Jackson in it was Dr. A. Reeves Jackson, the
guide-dismaying "Doctor" of Innocents Abroad.
To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:
PALMER HOUSE, CHICAGO, Nov. 11.
Livy darling, I am getting a trifle leg-weary. Dr. Jackson called and
dragged me out of bed at noon, yesterday, and then went off. I went down
stairs and was introduced to some scores of people, and among them an
elderly German gentleman named Raster, who said his wife owed her life to
me--hurt in Chicago fire and lay menaced with death a long time, but the
Innocents Abroad kept her mind in a cheerful attitude, and so, with the
doctor's help for the body she pulled through.... They drove me to Dr.
Jackson's and I had an hour's visit with Mrs. Jackson. Started to walk
down Michigan Avenue, got a few steps on my way and met an erect,
soldierly looking young gentleman who offered his hand; said, "Mr.
Clemens, I believe--I wish to introduce myself--you were pointed out to
me yesterday as I was driving down street--my name is Grant."
"Col. Fred Grant?"
"Yes. My house is not ten steps away, and I would like you to come and
have a talk and a pipe, and let me introduce my wife."
So we turned back and entered the house next to Jackson's and talked
something more than an hour and smoked many pipes and had a sociable good
time. His wife is very gentle and intelligent and pretty, and they have
a cunning little girl nearly as big as Bay but only three years old.
They wanted me to come in and spend an evening, after the banquet, with
them and Gen. Grant, after this grand pow-wow is over, but I said I was
going home Friday. Then they asked me to come Friday afternoon, when
they and the general will receive a few friends, and I said I would.
Col. Grant said he and Gen. Sherman used the Innocents Abroad as their
guide book when they were on their travels.
I stepped in next door and took Dr. Jackson to the hotel and we played
billiards from 7 to 11.30 P.M. and then went to a beer-mill to meet some
twenty Chicago journalists--talked, sang songs and made speeches till 6
o'clock this morning. Nobody got in the least degree "under the
influence," and we had a pleasant time. Read awhile in bed, slept till
11, shaved, went to breakfast at noon, and by mistake got into the
servants' hall. I remained there and breakfasted with twenty or thirty
male and female servants, though I had a table to myself.
A temporary structure, clothed and canopied with flags, has been erected
at the hotel front, and connected with the second-story windows of a
drawing-room. It was for Gen. Grant to stand on and review the
procession. Sixteen persons, besides reporters, had tickets for this
place, and a seventeenth was issued for me. I was there, looking down on
the packed and struggling crowd when Gen. Grant came forward and was
saluted by the cheers of the multitude and the waving of ladies'
handkerchiefs--for the windows and roofs of all neighboring buildings
were massed full of life. Gen. Grant bowed to the people two or three
times, then approached my side of the platform and the mayor pulled me
forward and introduced me. It was dreadfully conspicuous. The General
said a word or so--I replied, and then said, "But I'll step back,
General, I don't want to interrupt your speech."
"But I'm not going to make any--stay where you are--I'll get you to make
it for me."
General Sherman came on the platform wearing the uniform of a full
General, and you should have heard the cheers. Gen. Logan was going to
introduce me, but I didn't want any more conspicuousness.
When the head of the procession passed it was grand to see Sheridan, in
his military cloak and his plumed chapeau, sitting as erect and rigid as
a statue on his immense black horse--by far the most martial figure I
ever saw. And the crowd roared again.
It was chilly, and Gen. Deems lent me his overcoat until night. He came
a few minutes ago--5.45 P.M., and got it, but brought Gen. Willard, who
lent me his for the rest of my stay, and will get another for himself
when he goes home to dinner. Mine is much too heavy for this warm
weather.
I have a seat on the stage at Haverley's Theatre, tonight, where the Army
of the Tennessee will receive Gen. Grant, and where Gen. Sherman will
make a speech. At midnight I am to attend a meeting of the Owl Club.
I love you ever so much, my darling, and am hoping to
get a word from you yet.
SAML.
Following the procession, which he describes, came the grand
ceremonies of welcome at Haverley's Theatre. The next letter is
written the following morning, or at least soiree time the following
day, after a night of ratification.
To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:
CHICAGO, Nov. 12, '79.
Livy darling, it was a great time. There were perhaps thirty people on
the stage of the theatre, and I think I never sat elbow-to-elbow with so
many historic names before. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Schofield, Pope,
Logan, Augur, and so on. What an iron man Grant is! He sat facing the
house, with his right leg crossed over his left and his right boot-sole
tilted up at an angle, and his left hand and arm reposing on the arm of
his chair--you note that position? Well, when glowing references were
made to other grandees on the stage, those grandees always showed a
trifle of nervous consciousness--and as these references came frequently,
the nervous change of position and attitude were also frequent. But
Grant!--he was under a tremendous and ceaseless bombardment of praise and
gratulation, but as true as I'm sitting here he never moved a muscle of
his body for a single instant, during 30 minutes! You could have played
him on a stranger for an effigy. Perhaps he never would have moved, but
at last a speaker made such a particularly ripping and blood-stirring
remark about him that the audience rose and roared and yelled and stamped
and clapped an entire minute--Grant sitting as serene as ever--when Gen.
Sherman stepped to him, laid his hand affectionately on his shoulder,
bent respectfully down and whispered in his ear. Gen. Grant got up and
bowed, and the storm of applause swelled into a hurricane. He sat down,
took about the same position and froze to it till by and by there was
another of those deafening and protracted roars, when Sherman made him
get up and bow again. He broke up his attitude once more--the extent of
something more than a hair's breadth--to indicate me to Sherman when the
house was keeping up a determined and persistent call for me, and poor
bewildered Sherman, (who did not know me), was peering abroad over the
packed audience for me, not knowing I was only three feet from him and
most conspicuously located, (Gen. Sherman was Chairman.)
One of the most illustrious individuals on that stage was "Ole Abe," the
historic war eagle. He stood on his perch--the old savage-eyed rascal
--three or four feet behind Gen. Sherman, and as he had been in nearly
every battle that was mentioned by the orators his soul was probably
stirred pretty often, though he was too proud to let on.
Read Logan's bosh, and try to imagine a burly and magnificent Indian, in
General's uniform, striking a heroic attitude and getting that stuff off
in the style of a declaiming school-boy.
Please put the enclosed scraps in the drawer and I will scrap-book them.
I only staid at the Owl Club till 3 this morning and drank little or
nothing. Went to sleep without whisky. Ich liebe dish.
SAML.
But it is in the third letter that we get the climax. On the same
day he wrote a letter to Howells, which, in part, is very similar in
substance and need not be included here.
A paragraph, however, must not be omitted.
"Imagine what it was like to see a bullet-shredded old battle-flag
reverently unfolded to the gaze of a thousand middle-aged soldiers,
most of whom hadn't seen it since they saw it advancing over
victorious fields, when they were in their prime. And imagine what
it was like when Grant, their first commander, stepped into view
while they were still going mad over the flag, and then right in the
midst of it all somebody struck up, 'When we were marching through
Georgia.' Well, you should have heard the thousand voices lift that
chorus and seen the tears stream down. If I live a hundred years I
shan't ever forget these things, nor be able to talk about them ....
Grand times, my boy, grand times!"
At the great banquet Mark Twain's speech had been put last on the
program, to hold the house. He had been invited to respond to the
toast of "The Ladies," but had replied that he had already responded
to that toast more than once. There was one class of the community,
he said, commonly overlooked on these occasions--the babies--he
would respond to that toast. In his letter to Howells he had not
been willing to speak freely of his personal triumph, but to Mrs.
Clemens he must tell it all, and with that child-like ingenuousness
which never failed him to his last day.
To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:
CHICAGO, Nov. 14 '79.
A little after 5 in the morning.
I've just come to my room, Livy darling, I guess this was the memorable
night of my life. By George, I never was so stirred since I was born.
I heard four speeches which I can never forget. One by Emory Storrs, one
by Gen. Vilas (O, wasn't it wonderful!) one by Gen. Logan (mighty
stirring), one by somebody whose name escapes me, and one by that
splendid old soul, Col. Bob Ingersoll,--oh, it was just the supremest
combination of English words that was ever put together since the world
began. My soul, how handsome he looked, as he stood on that table, in
the midst of those 500 shouting men, and poured the molten silver from
his lips! Lord, what an organ is human speech when it is played by a
master! All these speeches may look dull in print, but how the lightning
glared around them when they were uttered, and how the crowd roared in
response! It was a great night, a memorable night. I am so richly
repaid for my journey--and how I did wish with all my whole heart that
you were there to be lifted into the very seventh heaven of enthusiasm,
as I was. The army songs, the military music, the crashing applause
--Lord bless me, it was unspeakable.
Out of compliment they placed me last in the list--No. 15--I was to "hold
the crowd"--and bless my life I was in awful terror when No. 14. rose,
at a o'clock this morning and killed all the enthusiasm by delivering the
flattest, insipidest, silliest of all responses to "Woman" that ever a
weary multitude listened to. Then Gen. Sherman (Chairman) announced my
toast, and the crowd gave me a good round of applause as I mounted on top
of the dinner table, but it was only on account of my name, nothing more
--they were all tired and wretched. They let my first sentence go in.
silence, till I paused and added "we stand on common ground"--then they
burst forth like a hurricane and I saw that I had them! From that time
on, I stopped at the end of each sentence, and let the tornado of
applause and laughter sweep around me--and when I closed with "And if the
child is but the prophecy of the man, there are mighty few who will doubt
that he succeeded," I say it who oughtn't to say it, the house came down
with a crash. For two hours and a half, now, I've been shaking hands and
listening to congratulations. Gen. Sherman said, "Lord bless you, my
boy, I don't know how you do it--it's a secret that's beyond me--but it
was great--give me your hand again."
And do you know, Gen. Grant sat through fourteen speeches like a graven
image, but I fetched him! I broke him up, utterly! He told me he
laughed till the tears came and every bone in his body ached. (And do
you know, the biggest part of the success of the speech lay in the fact
that the audience saw that for once in his life he had been knocked out
of his iron serenity.)
Bless your soul, 'twas immense. I never was so proud in my life. Lots
and lots of people--hundreds I might say--told me my speech was the
triumph of the evening--which was a lie. Ladies, Tom, Dick and Harry
--even the policemen--captured me in the halls and shook hands, and
scores of army officers said "We shall always be grateful to you for
coming." General Pope came to bunt me up--I was afraid to speak to him on
that theatre stage last night, thinking it might be presumptuous to
tackle a man so high up in military history. Gen. Schofield, and other
historic men, paid their compliments. Sheridan was ill and could not
come, but I'm to go with a General of his staff and see him before I go
to Col. Grant's. Gen. Augur--well, I've talked with them all, received
invitations from them all--from people living everywhere--and as I said
before, it's a memorable night. I wouldn't have missed it for anything
in the world.
But my sakes, you should have heard Ingersoll's speech on that table!
Half an hour ago he ran across me in the crowded halls and put his arms
about me and said "Mark, if I live a hundred years, I'll always be
grateful for your speech--Lord what a supreme thing it was." But I told
him it wasn't any use to talk, he had walked off with the honors of that
occasion by something of a majority. Bully boy is Ingersoll--traveled
with him in the cars the other day, and you can make up your mind we had
a good time.
Of course I forgot to go and pay for my hotel car and so secure it, but
the army officers told me an hour ago to rest easy, they would go at
once, at this unholy hour of the night and compel the railways to do
their duty by me, and said "You don't need to request the Army of the
Tennessee to do your desires--you can command its services."
Well, I bummed around that banquet hall from 8 in the evening till 2 in
the morning, talking with people and listening to speeches, and I never
ate a single bite or took a sup of anything but ice water, so if I seem
excited now, it is the intoxication of supreme enthusiasm. By George, it
was a grand night, a historical night.
And now it is a quarter past 6 A.M.--so good bye and God bless you and
the Bays,--[Family word for babies]--my darlings
SAML.
Show it to Joe if you want to--I saw some of his friends here.
Mark Twain's admiration for Robert Ingersoll was very great, and we may
believe that he was deeply impressed by the Chicago speech, when we find
him, a few days later, writing to Ingersoll for a perfect copy to read to
a young girls' club in Hartford. Ingersoll sent the speech, also some of
his books, and the next letter is Mark Twain's acknowledgment.
To Col. Robert G. Ingersoll:
HARTFORD, Dec. 14.
MY DEAR INGERSOLL,--Thank you most heartily for the books--I am devouring
them--they have found a hungry place, and they content it and satisfy it
to a miracle. I wish I could hear you speak these splendid chapters
before a great audience--to read them by myself and hear the boom of the
applause only in the ear of my imagination, leaves a something wanting
--and there is also a still greater lack, your manner, and voice, and
presence.
The Chicago speech arrived an hour too late, but I was all right anyway,
for I found that my memory had been able to correct all the errors.
I read it to the Saturday Club (of young girls) and told them to remember
that it was doubtful if its superior existed in our language.
Truly Yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The reader may remember Mark Twain's Whittier dinner speech of 1877,
and its disastrous effects. Now, in 1879, there was to be another
Atlantic gathering: a breakfast to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, to
which Clemens was invited. He was not eager to accept; it would
naturally recall memories of two years before, but being urged by
both Howells and Warner, he agreed to attend if they would permit
him to speak. Mark Twain never lacked courage and he wanted to
redeem himself. To Howells he wrote:
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Nov. 28, 1879.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--If anybody talks, there, I shall claim the right to say
a word myself, and be heard among the very earliest--else it would be
confoundedly awkward for me--and for the rest, too. But you may read
what I say, beforehand, and strike out whatever you choose.
Of course I thought it wisest not to be there at all; but Warner took the
opposite view, and most strenuously.
Speaking of Johnny's conclusion to become an outlaw, reminds me of
Susie's newest and very earnest longing--to have crooked teeth and
glasses--"like Mamma."
I would like to look into a child's head, once, and see what its
processes are.
Yrs ever,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The matter turned out well. Clemens, once more introduced by
Howells--this time conservatively, it may be said--delivered a
delicate and fitting tribute to Doctor Holmes, full of graceful
humor and grateful acknowledgment, the kind of speech he should have
given at the Whittier dinner of two years before. No reference was
made to his former disaster, and this time he came away covered with
glory, and fully restored in his self-respect.
XX.
LETTERS OF 1880, CHIEFLY TO HOWELLS. "THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER." MARK
TWAIN MUGWUMP SOCIETY
The book of travel,--[A Tramp Abroad.]--which Mark Twain had hoped to
finish in Paris, and later in Elmira, for some reason would not come to
an end. In December, in Hartford, he was still working on it, and he
would seem to have finished it, at last, rather by a decree than by any
natural process of authorship. This was early in January, 1880. To
Howells he reports his difficulties, and his drastic method of ending
them.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Jan. 8, '80.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Am waiting for Patrick to come with the carriage.
Mrs. Clemens and I are starting (without the children) to stay
indefinitely in Elmira. The wear and tear of settling the house broke
her down, and she has been growing weaker and weaker for a fortnight.
All that time--in fact ever since I saw you--I have been fighting a
life-and-death battle with this infernal book and hoping to get done some
day. I required 300 pages of MS, and I have written near 600 since I saw
you--and tore it all up except 288. This I was about to tear up
yesterday and begin again, when Mrs. Perkins came up to the billiard room
and said, "You will never get any woman to do the thing necessary to save
her life by mere persuasion; you see you have wasted your words for three
weeks; it is time to use force; she must have a change; take her home and
leave the children here."
I said, "If there is one death that is painfuller than another, may I get
it if I don't do that thing."
So I took the 288 pages to Bliss and told him that was the very last line
I should ever write on this book. (A book which required 2600 pages of
MS, and I have written nearer four thousand, first and last.)
I am as soary (and flighty) as a rocket, to-day, with the unutterable joy
of getting that Old Man of the Sea off my back, where he has been
roosting for more than a year and a half. Next time I make a contract
before writing the book, may I suffer the righteous penalty and be burnt,
like the injudicious believer.
I am mighty glad you are done your book (this is from a man who, above
all others, feels how much that sentence means) and am also mighty glad
you have begun the next (this is also from a man who knows the felicity
of that, and means straightway to enjoy it.) The Undiscovered starts off
delightfully--I have read it aloud to Mrs. C. and we vastly enjoyed it.
Well, time's about up--must drop a line to Aldrich.
Yrs ever,
MARK.
In a letter which Mark Twain wrote to his brother Orion at this
period we get the first hint of a venture which was to play an
increasingly important part in the Hartford home and fortunes during
the next ten or a dozen years. This was the type-setting machine
investment, which, in the end, all but wrecked Mark Twain's
finances. There is but a brief mention of it in the letter to
Orion, and the letter itself is not worth preserving, but as
references to the "machine" appear with increasing frequency, it
seems proper to record here its first mention. In the same letter
he suggests to his brother that he undertake an absolutely truthful
autobiography, a confession in which nothing is to be withheld. He
cites the value of Casanova's memories, and the confessions of
Rousseau. Of course, any literary suggestion from "Brother Sam" was
gospel to Orion, who began at once piling up manuscript at a great
rate.
Meantime, Mark Twain himself, having got 'A Tramp Abroad' on the
presses, was at work with enthusiasm on a story begun nearly three
years before at Quarry Farm-a story for children-its name, as he
called it then, "The Little Prince and The Little Pauper." He was
presently writing to Howells his delight in the new work.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Mch. 11, '80.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--.....I take so much pleasure in my story that I am loth
to hurry, not wanting to get it done. Did I ever tell you the plot of
it? It begins at 9 a.m., Jan. 27, 1547, seventeen and a half hours
before Henry VIII's death, by the swapping of clothes and place, between
the prince of Wales and a pauper boy of the same age and countenance (and
half as much learning and still more genius and imagination) and after
that, the rightful small King has a rough time among tramps and ruffians
in the country parts of Kent, whilst the small bogus King has a gilded
and worshipped and dreary and restrained and cussed time of it on the
throne--and this all goes on for three weeks--till the midst of the
coronation grandeurs in Westminster Abbey, Feb. 20, when the ragged true
King forces his way in but cannot prove his genuineness--until the bogus
King, by a remembered incident of the first day is able to prove it for
him--whereupon clothes are changed and the coronation proceeds under the
new and rightful conditions.
My idea is to afford a realizing sense of the exceeding severity of the
laws of that day by inflicting some of their penalties upon the King
himself and allowing him a chance to see the rest of them applied to
others--all of which is to account for certain mildnesses which
distinguished Edward VI's reign from those that preceded and followed it.
Imagine this fact--I have even fascinated Mrs. Clemens with this yarn for
youth. My stuff generally gets considerable damning with faint praise
out of her, but this time it is all the other way. She is become the
horseleech's daughter and my mill doesn't grind fast enough to suit her.
This is no mean triumph, my dear sir.
Last night, for the first time in ages, we went to the theatre--to see
Yorick's Love. The magnificence of it is beyond praise. The language is
so beautiful, the passion so fine, the plot so ingenious, the whole thing
so stirring, so charming, so pathetic! But I will clip from the Courant
--it says it right.
And what a good company it is, and how like live people they all acted!
The "thee's" and the "thou's" had a pleasant sound, since it is the
language of the Prince and the Pauper. You've done the country a service
in that admirable work....
Yrs Ever,
MARK.
The play, "Yorick's Love," mentioned in this letter, was one which
Howells had done for Lawrence Barrett.
Onion Clemens, meantime, was forwarding his manuscript, and for once
seems to have won his brother's approval, so much so that Mark Twain
was willing, indeed anxious, that Howells should run the
"autobiography" in the Atlantic. We may imagine how Onion prized
the words of commendation which follow:
To Orion Clemens:
May 6, '80.
MY DEAR BROTHER,--It is a model autobiography.
Continue to develop your character in the same gradual inconspicuous and
apparently unconscious way. The reader, up to this time, may have his
doubts, perhaps, but he can't say decidedly, "This writer is not such a
simpleton as he has been letting on to be." Keep him in that state of
mind. If, when you shall have finished, the reader shall say, "The man
is an ass, but I really don't know whether he knows it or not," your work
will be a triumph.
Stop re-writing. I saw places in your last batch where re-writing had
done formidable injury. Do not try to find those places, else you will
mar them further by trying to better them. It is perilous to revise a
book while it is under way. All of us have injured our books in that
foolish way.
Keep in mind what I told you--when you recollect something which belonged
in an earlier chapter, do not go back, but jam it in where you are.
Discursiveness does not hurt an autobiography in the least.
I have penciled the MS here and there, but have not needed to make any
criticisms or to knock out anything.
The elder Bliss has heart disease badly, and thenceforth his life hangs
upon a thread.
Yr Bro
SAM.
But Howells could not bring himself to print so frank a confession
as Orion had been willing to make. "It wrung my heart," he said,
"and I felt haggard after I had finished it. The writer's soul is
laid bare; it is shocking." Howells added that the best touches in
it were those which made one acquainted with the writer's brother;
that is to say, Mark Twain, and that these would prove valuable
material hereafter--a true prophecy, for Mark Twain's early
biography would have lacked most of its vital incident, and at least
half of its background, without those faithful chapters, fortunately
preserved. Had Onion continued, as he began, the work might have
proved an important contribution to literature, but he went trailing
off into by-paths of theology and discussion where the interest was
lost. There were, perhaps, as many as two thousand pages of it,
which few could undertake to read.
Mark Twain's mind was always busy with plans and inventions, many of
them of serious intent, some semi-serious, others of a purely
whimsical character. Once he proposed a "Modest Club," of which the
first and main qualification for membership was modesty. "At
present," he wrote, "I am the only member; and as the modesty
required must be of a quite aggravated type, the enterprise did seem
for a time doomed to stop dead still with myself, for lack of
further material; but upon reflection I have come to the conclusion
that you are eligible. Therefore, I have held a meeting and voted
to offer you the distinction of membership. I do not know that we
can find any others, though I have had some thought of Hay, Warner,
Twichell, Aldrich, Osgood, Fields, Higginson, and a few more
--together with Mrs. Howells, Mrs. Clemens, and certain others
of the sex."
Howells replied that the only reason he had for not joining the
Modest Club was that he was too modest--too modest to confess his
modesty. "If I could get over this difficulty I should like to
join, for I approve highly of the Club and its object.... It ought
to be given an annual dinner at the public expense. If you think I
am not too modest you may put my name down and I will try to think
the same of you. Mrs. Howells applauded the notion of the club from
the very first. She said that she knew one thing: that she was
modest enough, anyway. Her manner of saying it implied that the
other persons you had named were not, and created a painful
impression in my mind. I have sent your letter and the rules to
Hay, but I doubt his modesty. He will think he has a right to
belong to it as much as you or I; whereas, other people ought only
to be admitted on sufferance."
Our next letter to Howells is, in the main, pure foolery, but we get
in it a hint what was to become in time one of Mask Twain's
strongest interests, the matter of copyright. He had both a
personal and general interest in the subject. His own books were
constantly pirated in Canada, and the rights of foreign authors were
not respected in America. We have already seen how he had drawn a
petition which Holmes, Lowell, Longfellow, and others were to sign,
and while nothing had come of this plan he had never ceased to
formulate others. Yet he hesitated when he found that the proposed
protection was likely to work a hardship to readers of the poorer
class. Once he wrote: "My notions have mightily changed lately....
I can buy a lot of the copyright classics, in paper, at from three
to thirty cents apiece. These things must find their way into the
very kitchens and hovels of the country..... And even if the treaty
will kill Canadian piracy, and thus save me an average of $5,000 a
year, I am down on it anyway, and I'd like cussed well to write an
article opposing the treaty."
To W. D. Howells, in Belmont, Mass.:
Thursday, June 6th, 1880.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--There you stick, at Belmont, and now I'm going to
Washington for a few days; and of course, between you and Providence that
visit is going to get mixed, and you'll have been here and gone again
just about the time I get back. Bother it all, I wanted to astonish you
with a chapter or two from Orion's latest book--not the seventeen which
he has begun in the last four months, but the one which he began last
week.
Last night, when I went to bed, Mrs. Clemens said, "George didn't take
the cat down to the cellar--Rosa says he has left it shut up in the
conservatory." So I went down to attend to Abner (the cat.) About 3 in
the morning Mrs. C. woke me and said, "I do believe I hear that cat in
the drawing-room--what did you do with him?" I answered up with the
confidence of a man who has managed to do the right thing for once, and
said "I opened the conservatory doors, took the library off the alarm,
and spread everything open, so that there wasn't any obstruction between
him and the cellar." Language wasn't capable of conveying this woman's
disgust. But the sense of what she said, was, "He couldn't have done any
harm in the conservatory--so you must go and make the entire house free
to him and the burglars, imagining that he will prefer the coal-bins to
the drawing-room. If you had had Mr. Howells to help you, I should have
admired but not been astonished, because I should know that together you
would be equal to it; but how you managed to contrive such a stately
blunder all by yourself, is what I cannot understand."
So, you see, even she knows how to appreciate our gifts.
Brisk times here.--Saturday, these things happened: Our neighbor Chas.
Smith was stricken with heart disease, and came near joining the
majority; my publisher, Bliss, ditto, ditto; a neighbor's child died;
neighbor Whitmore's sixth child added to his five other cases of measles;
neighbor Niles sent for, and responded; Susie Warner down, abed; Mrs.
George Warner threatened with death during several hours; her son Frank,
whilst imitating the marvels in Barnum's circus bills, thrown from his
aged horse and brought home insensible: Warner's friend Max Yortzburgh,
shot in the back by a locomotive and broken into 32 distinct pieces and
his life threatened; and Mrs. Clemens, after writing all these cheerful
things to Clara Spaulding, taken at midnight, and if the doctor had not
been pretty prompt the contemplated Clemens would have called before his
apartments were ready.
However, everybody is all right, now, except Yortzburg, and he is
mending--that is, he is being mended. I knocked off, during these
stirring times, and don't intend to go to work again till we go away for
the Summer, 3 or 6 weeks hence. So I am writing to you not because I
have anything to say, but because you don't have to answer and I need
something to do this afternoon.....
I have a letter from a Congressman this morning, and he says Congress
couldn't be persuaded to bother about Canadian pirates at a time like
this when all legislation must have a political and Presidential bearing,
else Congress won't look at it. So have changed my mind and my course;
I go north, to kill a pirate. I must procure repose some way, else I
cannot get down to work again.
Pray offer my most sincere and respectful approval to the President--is
approval the proper word? I find it is the one I most value here in the
household and seldomest get.
With our affection to you both.
Yrs ever
MARK.
It was always dangerous to send strangers with letters of
introduction to Mark Twain. They were so apt to arrive at the wrong
time, or to find him in the wrong mood. Howells was willing to risk
it, and that the result was only amusing instead of tragic is the
best proof of their friendship.
To W. D. Howells, in Belmont, Mass.:
June 9, '80.
Well, old practical joker, the corpse of Mr. X----has been here, and I
have bedded it and fed it, and put down my work during 24 hours and tried
my level best to make it do something, or say something, or appreciate
something--but no, it was worse than Lazarus. A kind-hearted,
well-meaning corpse was the Boston young man, but lawsy bless me,
horribly dull company. Now, old man, unless you have great confidence in
Mr. X's judgment, you ought to make him submit his article to you before
he prints it. For only think how true I was to you: Every hour that he
was here I was saying, gloatingly, "O G-- d--- you, when you are in bed
and your light out, I will fix you" (meaning to kill him)...., but then
the thought would follow--" No, Howells sent him--he shall be spared,
he shall be respected he shall travel hell-wards by his own route."
Breakfast is frozen by this time, and Mrs. Clemens correspondingly hot.
Good bye.
Yrs ever,
MARK.
"I did not expect you to ask that man to live with you," Howells
answered. "What I was afraid of was that you would turn him out of
doors, on sight, and so I tried to put in a good word for him.
After this when I want you to board people, I'll ask you. I am
sorry for your suffering. I suppose I have mostly lost my smell for
bores; but yours is preternaturally keen. I shall begin to be
afraid I bore you. (How does that make you feel?)"
In a letter to Twichell--a remarkable letter--when baby Jean Clemens
was about a month old, we get a happy hint of conditions at Quarry
Farm, and in the background a glimpse of Mark Twain's unfailing
tragic reflection.
To Rev. Twichell, in Hartford:
QUARRY FARM, Aug. 29 ['80].
DEAR OLD JOE,--Concerning Jean Clemens, if anybody said he "didn't see no
pints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog," I should think
he was convicting himself of being a pretty poor sort of observer....
I will not go into details; it is not necessary; you will soon be in
Hartford, where I have already hired a hall; the admission fee will be
but a trifle.
It is curious to note the change in the stock-quotation of the Affection
Board brought about by throwing this new security on the market. Four
weeks ago the children still put Mamma at the head of the list right
along, where she had always been. But now:
Jean
Mamma
Motley [a cat]
Fraulein [another]
Papa
That is the way it stands, now Mamma is become No. 2; I have dropped from
No. 4., and am become No. 5. Some time ago it used to be nip and tuck
between me and the cats, but after the cats "developed" I didn't stand
any more show.
I've got a swollen ear; so I take advantage of it to lie abed most of the
day, and read and smoke and scribble and have a good time. Last evening
Livy said with deep concern, "O dear, I believe an abscess is forming in
your ear."
I responded as the poet would have done if he had had a cold in the
head--
"Tis said that abscess conquers love,
But O believe it not."
This made a coolness.
Been reading Daniel Webster's Private Correspondence. Have read a
hundred of his diffuse, conceited, "eloquent," bathotic (or bathostic)
letters written in that dim (no, vanished) Past when he was a student;
and Lord, to think that this boy who is so real to me now, and so booming
with fresh young blood and bountiful life, and sappy cynicisms about
girls, has since climbed the Alps of fame and stood against the sun one
brief tremendous moment with the world's eyes upon him, and then--f-z-t-!
where is he? Why the only long thing, the only real thing about the
whole shadowy business is the sense of the lagging dull and hoary lapse
of time that has drifted by since then; a vast empty level, it seems,
with a formless spectre glimpsed fitfully through the smoke and mist that
lie along its remote verge.
Well, we are all getting along here first-rate; Livy gains strength
daily, and sits up a deal; the baby is five weeks old and--but no more of
this; somebody may be reading this letter 80 years hence. And so, my
friend (you pitying snob, I mean, who are holding this yellow paper in
your hand in 1960,) save yourself the trouble of looking further; I know
how pathetically trivial our small concerns will seem to you, and I will
not let your eye profane them. No, I keep my news; you keep your
compassion. Suffice it you to know, scoffer and ribald, that the little
child is old and blind, now, and once more toothless; and the rest of us
are shadows, these many, many years. Yes, and your time cometh!
MARK.
At the Farm that year Mark Twain was working on The Prince and the
Pauper, and, according to a letter to Aldrich, brought it to an end
September 19th. It is a pleasant letter, worth preserving. The
book by Aldrich here mentioned was 'The Stillwater Tragedy.'
To T. B. Aldrich, in Ponkapog, Mass.:
ELMIRA, Sept. 15, '80.
MY DEAR ALDRICH,--Thank you ever so much for the book--I had already
finished it, and prodigiously enjoyed it, in the periodical of the
notorious Howells, but it hits Mrs. Clemens just right, for she is
having a reading holiday, now, for the first time in same months; so
between-times, when the new baby is asleep and strengthening up for
another attempt to take possession of this place, she is going to read
it. Her strong friendship for you makes her think she is going to like
it.
I finished a story yesterday, myself. I counted up and found it between
sixty and eighty thousand words--about the size of your book. It is for
boys and girls--been at work at it several years, off and on.
I hope Howells is enjoying his journey to the Pacific. He wrote me that
you and Osgood were going, also, but I doubted it, believing he was in
liquor when he wrote it. In my opinion, this universal applause over his
book is going to land that man in a Retreat inside of two months.
I notice the papers say mighty fine things about your book, too.
You ought to try to get into the same establishment with Howells.
But applause does not affect me--I am always calm--this is because I am
used to it.
Well, good-bye, my boy, and good luck to you. Mrs. Clemens asks me to
send her warmest regards to you and Mrs. Aldrich--which I do, and add
those of
Yrs ever
MARK.
While Mark Twain was a journalist in San Francisco, there was a
middle-aged man named Soule, who had a desk near him on the Morning
Call. Soule was in those days highly considered as a poet by his
associates, most of whom were younger and less gracefully poetic.
But Soule's gift had never been an important one. Now, in his old
age, he found his fame still local, and he yearned for wider
recognition. He wished to have a volume of poems issued by a
publisher of recognized standing. Because Mark Twain had been one
of Soule's admirers and a warm friend in the old days, it was
natural that Soule should turn to him now, and equally natural that
Clemens should turn to Howells.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
Sunday, Oct. 2 '80.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Here's a letter which I wrote you to San Francisco the
second time you didn't go there.... I told Soule he needn't write you,
but simply send the MS. to you. O dear, dear, it is dreadful to be an
unrecognized poet. How wise it was in Charles Warren Stoddard to take in
his sign and go for some other calling while still young.
I'm laying for that Encyclopedical Scotchman--and he'll need to lock the
door behind him, when he comes in; otherwise when he hears my proposed
tariff his skin will probably crawl away with him. He is accustomed to
seeing the publisher impoverish the author--that spectacle must be
getting stale to him--if he contracts with the undersigned he will
experience a change in that programme that will make the enamel peel off
his teeth for very surprise--and joy. No, that last is what Mrs. Clemens
thinks--but it's not so. The proposed work is growing, mightily, in my
estimation, day by day; and I'm not going to throw it away for any mere
trifle. If I make a contract with the canny Scot, I will then tell him
the plan which you and I have devised (that of taking in the humor of all
countries)--otherwise I'll keep it to myself, I think. Why should we
assist our fellowman for mere love of God?
Yrs ever
MARK.
One wishes that Howells might have found value enough in the verses
of Frank Soule to recommend them to Osgood. To Clemens he wrote:
"You have touched me in regard to him, and I will deal gently with
his poetry. Poor old fellow! I can imagine him, and how he must
have to struggle not to be hard or sour."
The verdict, however, was inevitable. Soule's graceful verses
proved to be not poetry at all. No publisher of standing could
afford to give them his imprint.
The "Encyclopedical Scotchman" mentioned in the preceding letter was
the publisher Gebbie, who had a plan to engage Howells and Clemens
to prepare some sort of anthology of the world's literature. The
idea came to nothing, though the other plan mentioned--for a library
of humor--in time grew into a book.
Mark Twain's contracts with Bliss for the publication of his books
on the subscription plan had been made on a royalty basis, beginning
with 5 per cent. on 'The Innocents Abroad' increasing to 7 per
cent. on 'Roughing It,' and to 10 per cent. on later books. Bliss
had held that these later percentages fairly represented one half
the profits. Clemens, however, had never been fully satisfied, and
his brother Onion had more than once urged him to demand a specific
contract on the half-profit basis. The agreement for the
publication of 'A Tramp Abroad' was made on these terms. Bliss died
before Clemens received his first statement of sales. Whatever may
have been the facts under earlier conditions, the statement proved
to Mark Twain's satisfaction; at least, that the half-profit
arrangement was to his advantage. It produced another result; it
gave Samuel Clemens an excuse to place his brother Onion in a
position of independence.
To Onion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:
Sunday, Oct 24 '80.
MY DEAR BRO.,--Bliss is dead. The aspect of the balance-sheet is
enlightening. It reveals the fact, through my present contract, (which
is for half the profits on the book above actual cost of paper, printing
and binding,) that I have lost considerably by all this nonsense--sixty
thousand dollars, I should say--and if Bliss were alive I would stay with
the concern and get it all back; for on each new book I would require a
portion of that back pay; but as it is (this in the very strictest
confidence,) I shall probably go to a new publisher 6 or 8 months hence,
for I am afraid Frank, with his poor health, will lack push and drive.
Out of the suspicions you bred in me years ago, has grown this result,
--to wit, that I shall within the twelvemonth get $40,000 out of this
"Tramp" instead Of $20,000. Twenty thousand dollars, after taxes and
other expenses are stripped away, is worth to the investor about $75 a
month--so I shall tell Mr. Perkins to make your check that amount per
month, hereafter, while our income is able to afford it. This ends the
loan business; and hereafter you can reflect that you are living not on
borrowed money but on money which you have squarely earned, and which has
no taint or savor of charity about it--and you can also reflect that the
money you have been receiving of me all these years is interest charged
against the heavy bill which the next publisher will have to stand who
gets a book of mine.
Jean got the stockings and is much obliged; Mollie wants to know whom she
most resembles, but I can't tell; she has blue eyes and brown hair, and
three chins, and is very fat and happy; and at one time or another she
has resembled all the different Clemenses and Langdons, in turn, that
have ever lived.
Livy is too much beaten out with the baby, nights, to write, these times;
and I don't know of anything urgent to say, except that a basket full of
letters has accumulated in the 7 days that I have been whooping and
cursing over a cold in the head--and I must attack the pile this very
minute.
With love from us
Y aff
SAM
$25 enclosed.
On the completion of The Prince and Pauper story, Clemens had
naturally sent it to Howells for consideration. Howells wrote:
"I have read the two P's and I like it immensely, it begins well and
it ends well." He pointed out some things that might be changed or
omitted, and added: "It is such a book as I would expect from you,
knowing what a bottom of fury there is to your fun." Clemens had
thought somewhat of publishing the story anonymously, in the fear
that it would not be accepted seriously over his own signature.
The "bull story" referred to in the next letter is the one later
used in the Joan of Arc book, the story told Joan by "Uncle Laxart,"
how he rode a bull to a funeral.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
Xmas Eve, 1880.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I was prodigiously delighted with what you said about
the book--so, on the whole, I've concluded to publish intrepidly, instead
of concealing the authorship. I shall leave out that bull story.
I wish you had gone to New York. The company was small, and we had a
first-rate time. Smith's an enjoyable fellow. I liked Barrett, too.
And the oysters were as good as the rest of the company. It was worth
going there to learn how to cook them.
Next day I attended to business--which was, to introduce Twichell to Gen.
Grant and procure a private talk in the interest of the Chinese
Educational Mission here in the U. S. Well, it was very funny. Joe had
been sitting up nights building facts and arguments together into a
mighty and unassailable array and had studied them out and got them by
heart--all with the trembling half-hearted hope of getting Grant to add
his signature to a sort of petition to the Viceroy of China; but Grant
took in the whole situation in a jiffy, and before Joe had more than
fairly got started, the old man said: "I'll write the Viceroy a Letter
--a separate letter--and bring strong reasons to bear upon him; I know
him well, and what I say will have weight with him; I will attend to it
right away. No, no thanks--I shall be glad to do it--it will be a labor
of love."
So all Joe's laborious hours were for naught! It was as if he had come
to borrow a dollar, and been offered a thousand before he could unfold
his case....
But it's getting dark. Merry Christmas to all of you.
Yrs Ever,
MARK.
The Chinese Educational Mission, mentioned in the foregoing, was a
thriving Hartford institution, projected eight years before by a
Yale graduate named Yung Wing. The mission was now threatened, and
Yung Wing, knowing the high honor in which General Grant was held in
China, believed that through him it might be saved. Twichell, of
course, was deeply concerned and naturally overjoyed at Grant's
interest. A day or two following the return to Hartford, Clemens
received a letter from General Grant, in which he wrote: "Li Hung
Chang is the most powerful and most influential Chinaman in his
country. He professed great friendship for me when I was there, and
I have had assurances of the same thing since. I hope, if he is
strong enough with his government, that the decision to withdraw the
Chinese students from this country may be changed."
But perhaps Li Hung Chang was experiencing one of his partial
eclipses just then, or possibly he was not interested, for the
Hartford Mission did not survive.
XXI.
LETTERS 1881, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. ASSISTING A YOUNG SCULPTOR.
LITERARY PLANS
With all of Mark Twain's admiration for Grant, he had opposed him as a
third-term President and approved of the nomination of Garfield. He had
made speeches for Garfield during the campaign just ended, and had been
otherwise active in his support. Upon Garfield's election, however, he
felt himself entitled to no special favor, and the single request which
he preferred at length could hardly be classed as, personal, though made
for a "personal friend."
To President-elect James A. Garfield, in Washington:
HARTFORD, Jany. 12, '81.
GEN. GARFIELD
DEAR SIR,--Several times since your election persons wanting office have
asked me "to use my influence" with you in their behalf.
To word it in that way was such a pleasant compliment to me that I never
complied. I could not without exposing the fact that I hadn't any
influence with you and that was a thing I had no mind to do.
It seems to me that it is better to have a good man's flattering estimate
of my influence--and to keep it--than to fool it away with trying to get
him an office. But when my brother--on my wife's side--Mr. Charles J.
Langdon--late of the Chicago Convention--desires me to speak a word for
Mr. Fred Douglass, I am not asked "to use my influence" consequently I am
not risking anything. So I am writing this as a simple citizen. I am
not drawing on my fund of influence at all. A simple citizen may express
a desire with all propriety, in the matter of a recommendation to office,
and so I beg permission to hope that you will retain Mr. Douglass in his
present office of Marshall of the District of Columbia, if such a course
will not clash with your own preferences or with the expediencies and
interest of your administration. I offer this petition with peculiar
pleasure and strong desire, because I so honor this man's high and
blemishless character and so admire his brave, long crusade for the
liberties and elevation of his race.
He is a personal friend of mine, but that is nothing to the point, his
history would move me to say these things without that, and I feel them
too.
With great respect
I am, General,
Yours truly,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Clemens would go out of his way any time to grant favor to the
colored race. His childhood associations were partly accountable
for this, but he also felt that the white man owed the negro a debt
for generations of enforced bondage. He would lecture any time in a
colored church, when he would as likely as not refuse point-blank to
speak for a white congregation. Once, in Elmira, he received a
request, poorly and none too politely phrased, to speak for one of
the churches. He was annoyed and about to send a brief refusal,
when Mrs. Clemens, who was present, said:
"I think I know that church, and if so this preacher is a colored
man; he does not know how to write a polished letter--how should
he?" Her husband's manner changed so suddenly that she added:
"I will give you a motto, and it will be useful to you if you will
adopt it: Consider every man colored until he is proved white."
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Feb. 27, 1881.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I go to West Point with Twichell tomorrow, but shall be
back Tuesday or Wednesday; and then just as soon thereafter as you and
Mrs. Howells and Winny can come you will find us ready and most glad to
see you--and the longer you can stay the gladder we shall be. I am not
going to have a thing to do, but you shall work if you want to. On the
evening of March 10th, I am going to read to the colored folk in the
African Church here (no whites admitted except such as I bring with me),
and a choir of colored folk will sing jubilee songs. I count on a good
time, and shall hope to have you folks there, and Livy. I read in
Twichell's chapel Friday night and had a most rattling high time--but the
thing that went best of all was Uncle Remus's Tar Baby. I mean to try
that on my dusky audience. They've all heard that tale from childhood
--at least the older members have.
I arrived home in time to make a most noble blunder--invited Charley
Warner here (in Livy's name) to dinner with the Gerhardts, and told him
Livy had invited his wife by letter and by word of mouth also. I don't
know where I got these impressions, but I came home feeling as one does
who realizes that he has done a neat thing for once and left no flaws or
loop-holes. Well, Livy said she had never told me to invite Charley and
she hadn't dreamed of inviting Susy, and moreover there wasn't any
dinner, but just one lean duck. But Susy Warner's intuitions were
correct--so she choked off Charley, and staid home herself--we waited
dinner an hour and you ought to have seen that duck when he was done
drying in the oven.
MARK.
Clemens and his wife were always privately assisting worthy and
ambitious young people along the way of achievement. Young actors
were helped through dramatic schools; young men and women were
assisted through college and to travel abroad. Among others Clemens
paid the way of two colored students, one through a Southern
institution and another through the Yale law school.
The mention of the name of Gerhardt in the preceding letter
introduces the most important, or at least the most extensive, of
these benefactions. The following letter gives the beginning of the
story:
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
Private and Confidential.
HARTFORD, Feb. 21, 1881.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Well, here is our romance.
It happened in this way. One morning, a month ago--no, three weeks
--Livy, and Clara Spaulding and I were at breakfast, at 10 A.M., and I
was in an irritable mood, for the barber was up stairs waiting and his
hot water getting cold, when the colored George returned from answering
the bell and said: "There's a lady in the drawing-room wants to see you."
"A book agent!" says I, with heat. "I won't see her; I will die in my
tracks, first."
Then I got up with a soul full of rage, and went in there and bent
scowling over that person, and began a succession of rude and raspy
questions--and without even offering to sit down.
Not even the defendant's youth and beauty and (seeming) timidity were
able to modify my savagery, for a time--and meantime question and answer
were going on. She had risen to her feet with the first question; and
there she stood, with her pretty face bent floorward whilst I inquired,
but always with her honest eyes looking me in the face when it came her
turn to answer.
And this was her tale, and her plea-diffidently stated, but
straight-forwardly; and bravely, and most winningly simply and earnestly:
I put it in my own fashion, for I do not remember her words:
Mr. Karl Gerhardt, who works in Pratt & Whitney's machine shops, has made
a statue in clay, and would I be so kind as to come and look at it, and
tell him if there is any promise in it? He has none to go to, and he
would be so glad.
"O, dear me," I said, "I don't know anything about art--there's nothing I
could tell him."
But she went on, just as earnestly and as simply as before, with her
plea--and so she did after repeated rebuffs; and dull as I am, even I
began by and by to admire this brave and gentle persistence, and to
perceive how her heart of hearts was in this thing, and how she couldn't
give it up, but must carry her point. So at last I wavered, and promised
in general terms that I would come down the first day that fell idle--and
as I conducted her to the door, I tamed more and more, and said I would
come during the very next week--"We shall be so glad--but--but, would you
please come early in the week?--the statue is just finished and we are so
anxious--and--and--we did hope you could come this week--and"--well, I
came down another peg, and said I would come Monday, as sure as death;
and before I got to the dining room remorse was doing its work and I was
saying to myself, "Damnation, how can a man be such a hound? why didn't I
go with her now?" Yes, and how mean I should have felt if I had known
that out of her poverty she had hired a hack and brought it along to
convey me. But luckily for what was left of my peace of mind, I didn't
know that.
Well, it appears that from here she went to Charley Warner's. There was
a better light, there, and the eloquence of her face had a better chance
to do its office. Warner fought, as I had done; and he was in the midst
of an article and very busy; but no matter, she won him completely. He
laid aside his MS and said, "Come, let us go and see your father's
statue. That is--is he your father?" "No, he is my husband." So this
child was married, you see.
This was a Saturday. Next day Warner came to dinner and said "Go!--go
tomorrow--don't fail." He was in love with the girl, and with her
husband too, and said he believed there was merit in the statue. Pretty
crude work, maybe, but merit in it.
Patrick and I hunted up the place, next day; the girl saw us driving up,
and flew down the stairs and received me. Her quarters were the second
story of a little wooden house--another family on the ground floor. The
husband was at the machine shop, the wife kept no servant, she was there
alone. She had a little parlor, with a chair or two and a sofa; and the
artist-husband's hand was visible in a couple of plaster busts, one of
the wife, and another of a neighbor's child; visible also in a couple of
water colors of flowers and birds; an ambitious unfinished portrait of
his wife in oils: some paint decorations on the pine mantel; and an
excellent human ear, done in some plastic material at 16.
Then we went into the kitchen, and the girl flew around, with enthusiasm,
and snatched rag after rag from a tall something in the corner, and
presently there stood the clay statue, life size--a graceful girlish
creature, nude to the waist, and holding up a single garment with one
hand the expression attempted being a modified scare--she was interrupted
when about to enter the bath.
Then this young wife posed herself alongside the image and so remained
--a thing I didn't understand. But presently I did--then I said:
"O, it's you!"
"Yes," she said, "I was the model. He has no model but me. I have stood
for this many and many an hour--and you can't think how it does tire one!
But I don't mind it. He works all day at the shop; and then, nights and
Sundays he works on his statue as long as I can keep up."
She got a big chisel, to use as a lever, and between us we managed to
twist the pedestal round and round, so as to afford a view of the statue
from all points. Well, sir, it was perfectly charming, this girl's
innocence and purity---exhibiting her naked self, as it were, to a
stranger and alone, and never once dreaming that there was the slightest
indelicacy about the matter. And so there wasn't; but it will be many
along day before I run across another woman who can do the like and show
no trace of self-consciousness.
Well, then we sat down, and I took a smoke, and she told me all about her
people in Massachusetts--her father is a physician and it is an old and
respectable family--(I am able to believe anything she says.) And she
told me how "Karl" is 26 years old; and how he has had passionate
longings all his life toward art, but has always been poor and obliged to
struggle for his daily bread; and how he felt sure that if he could only
have one or two lessons in--
"Lessons? Hasn't he had any lessons?"
No. He had never had a lesson.
And presently it was dinner time and "Karl" arrived--a slender young
fellow with a marvelous head and a noble eye--and he was as simple and
natural, and as beautiful in spirit as his wife was. But she had to do
the talking--mainly--there was too much thought behind his cavernous eyes
for glib speech.
I went home enchanted. Told Livy and Clara Spaulding all about the
paradise down yonder where those two enthusiasts are happy with a yearly
expense of $350. Livy and Clara went there next day and came away
enchanted. A few nights later the Gerhardts kept their promise and came
here for the evening. It was billiard night and I had company and so was
not down; but Livy and Clara became more charmed with these children than
ever.
Warner and I planned to get somebody to criticise the statue whose
judgment would be worth something. So I laid for Champney, and after two
failures I captured him and took him around, and he said "this statue is
full of faults--but it has merits enough in it to make up for them"
--whereat the young wife danced around as delighted as a child. When we
came away, Champney said, "I did not want to say too much there, but the
truth is, it seems to me an extraordinary performance for an untrained
hand. You ask if there is promise enough there to justify the Hartford
folk in going to an expense of training this young man. I should say,
yes, decidedly; but still, to make everything safe, you had better get
the judgment of a sculptor."
Warner was in New York. I wrote him, and he said he would fetch up Ward
--which he did. Yesterday they went to the Gerhardts and spent two
hours, and Ward came away bewitched with those people and marveling at
the winning innocence of the young wife, who dropped naturally into
model-attitude beside the statue (which is stark naked from head to heel,
now--G. had removed the drapery, fearing Ward would think he was afraid
to try legs and hips) just as she has always done before.
Livy and I had two long talks with Ward yesterday evening. He spoke
strongly. He said, "if any stranger had told me that this apprentice did
not model that thing from plaster casts, I would not have believed it."
He said "it is full of crudities, but it is full of genius, too. It is
such a statue as the man of average talent would achieve after two years
training in the schools. And the boldness of the fellow, in going
straight to nature! He is an apprentice--his work shows that, all over;
but the stuff is in him, sure. Hartford must send him to Paris--two
years; then if the promise holds good, keep him there three more--and
warn him to study, study, work, work, and keep his name out of the
papers, and neither ask for orders nor accept them when offered."
Well, you see, that's all we wanted. After Ward was gone Livy came out
with the thing that was in her mind. She said, "Go privately and start
the Gerhardts off to Paris, and say nothing about it to any one else."
So I tramped down this morning in the snow-storm--and there was a
stirring time. They will sail a week or ten days from now.
As I was starting out at the front door, with Gerhardt beside me and the
young wife dancing and jubilating behind, this latter cried out
impulsively, "Tell Mrs. Clemens I want to hug her--I want to hug you
both!"
I gave them my old French book and they were going to tackle the
language, straight off.
Now this letter is a secret--keep it quiet--I don't think Livy would mind
my telling you these things, but then she might, you know, for she is a
queer girl.
Yrs ever,
MARK.
Champney was J. Wells Champney, a portrait-painter of distinction;
Ward was the sculptor, J. Q. A. Ward.
The Gerhardts were presently off to Paris, well provided with means
to make their dreams reality; in due time the letters will report
them again.
The Uncle Remus tales of Joel Chandler Harris gave Mark Twain great
pleasure. He frequently read them aloud, not only at home but in
public. Finally, he wrote Harris, expressing his warm appreciation,
and mentioning one of the negro stories of his own childhood, "The
Golden Arm," which he urged Harris to look up and add to his
collection.
"You have pinned a proud feather in Uncle-Remus's cap," replied
Harris. "I do not know what higher honor he could have than to
appear before the Hartford public arm in arm with Mark Twain."
He disclaimed any originality for the stories, adding, "I understand
that my relations toward Uncle Remus are similar to those that exist
between an almanac maker and the calendar." He had not heard the
"Golden Arm" story and asked for the outlines; also for some
publishing advice, out of Mark Twain's long experience.
To Joel Chandler Harris, in Atlanta:
ELMIRA, N.Y., Aug. 10.
MY DEAR MR. HARRIS,--You can argue yourself into the delusion that the
principle of life is in the stories themselves and not in their setting;
but you will save labor by stopping with that solitary convert, for he is
the only intelligent one you will bag. In reality the stories are only
alligator pears--one merely eats them for the sake of the salad-dressing.
Uncle Remus is most deftly drawn, and is a lovable and delightful
creation; he, and the little boy, and their relations with each other,
are high and fine literature, and worthy to live, for their own sakes;
and certainly the stories are not to be credited with them. But enough
of this; I seem to be proving to the man that made the multiplication
table that twice one are two.
I have been thinking, yesterday and to-day (plenty of chance to think, as
I am abed with lumbago at our little summering farm among the solitudes
of the Mountaintops,) and I have concluded that I can answer one of your
questions with full confidence--thus: Make it a subscription book.
Mighty few books that come strictly under the head of literature will
sell by subscription; but if Uncle Remus won't, the gift of prophecy has
departed out of me. When a book will sell by subscription, it will sell
two or three times as many copies as it would in the trade; and the
profit is bulkier because the retail price is greater.....
You didn't ask me for a subscription-publisher. If you had, I should
have recommended Osgood to you. He inaugurates his subscription
department with my new book in the fall.....
Now the doctor has been here and tried to interrupt my yarn about "The
Golden Arm," but I've got through, anyway.
Of course I tell it in the negro dialect--that is necessary; but I have
not written it so, for I can't spell it in your matchless way. It is
marvelous the way you and Cable spell the negro and creole dialects.
Two grand features are lost in print: the weird wailing, the rising and
falling cadences of the wind, so easily mimicked with one's mouth; and
the impressive pauses and eloquent silences, and subdued utterances,
toward the end of the yarn (which chain the attention of the children
hand and foot, and they sit with parted lips and breathless, to be
wrenched limb from limb with the sudden and appalling "You got it").
Old Uncle Dan'l, a slave of my uncle's' aged 60, used to tell us children
yarns every night by the kitchen fire (no other light;) and the last yarn
demanded, every night, was this one. By this time there was but a
ghastly blaze or two flickering about the back-log. We would huddle
close about the old man, and begin to shudder with the first familiar
words; and under the spell of his impressive delivery we always fell a
prey to that climax at the end when the rigid black shape in the twilight
sprang at us with a shout.
When you come to glance at the tale you will recollect it--it is as
common and familiar as the Tar Baby. Work up the atmosphere with your
customary skill and it will "go" in print.
Lumbago seems to make a body garrulous--but you'll forgive it.
Truly yours
S. L. CLEMENS
The "Golden Arm" story was one that Clemens often used in his public
readings, and was very effective as he gave it.
In his sketch, "How to Tell a Story," it appears about as he used to
tell it. Harris, receiving the outlines of the old Missouri tale,
presently announced that he had dug up its Georgia relative, an
interesting variant, as we gather from Mark Twain's reply.
To Joel Chandler Harris, in Atlanta:
HARTFORD, '81.
MY DEAR MR. HARRIS,--I was very sure you would run across that Story
somewhere, and am glad you have. A Drummond light--no, I mean a Brush
light--is thrown upon the negro estimate of values by his willingness to
risk his soul and his mighty peace forever for the sake of a silver
sev'm-punce. And this form of the story seems rather nearer the true
field-hand standard than that achieved by my Florida, Mo., negroes with
their sumptuous arm of solid gold.
I judge you haven't received my new book yet--however, you will in a day
or two. Meantime you must not take it ill if I drop Osgood a hint about
your proposed story of slave life.....
When you come north I wish you would drop me a line and then follow it in
person and give me a day or two at our house in Hartford. If you will,
I will snatch Osgood down from Boston, and you won't have to go there at
all unless you want to. Please to bear this strictly in mind, and don't
forget it.
Sincerely yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
Charles Warren Stoddard, to whom the next letter is written, was one
of the old California literary crowd, a graceful writer of verse and
prose, never quite arriving at the success believed by his friends
to be his due. He was a gentle, irresponsible soul, well loved by
all who knew him, and always, by one or another, provided against
want. The reader may remember that during Mark Twain's great
lecture engagement in London, winter of 1873-74, Stoddard lived with
him, acting as his secretary. At a later period in his life he
lived for several years with the great telephone magnate, Theodore
N. Vail. At the time of this letter, Stoddard had decided that in
the warm light and comfort of the Sandwich Islands he could survive
on his literary earnings.
To Charles Warren Stoddard, in the Sandwich Islands:
HARTFORD, Oct. 26 '81.
MY DEAR CHARLIE,--Now what have I ever done to you that you should not
only slide off to Heaven before you have earned a right to go, but must
add the gratuitous villainy of informing me of it?.....
The house is full of carpenters and decorators; whereas, what we really
need here, is an incendiary. If the house would only burn down, we would
pack up the cubs and fly to the isles of the blest, and shut ourselves up
in the healing solitudes of the crater of Haleakala and get a good rest;
for the mails do not intrude there, nor yet the telephone and the
telegraph. And after resting, we would come down the mountain a piece
and board with a godly, breech-clouted native, and eat poi and dirt and
give thanks to whom all thanks belong, for these privileges, and never
house-keep any more.
I think my wife would be twice as strong as she is, but for this wearing
and wearying slavery of house-keeping. However, she thinks she must
submit to it for the sake of the children; whereas, I have always had a
tenderness for parents too, so, for her sake and mine, I sigh for the
incendiary. When the evening comes and the gas is lit and the wear and
tear of life ceases, we want to keep house always; but next morning we
wish, once more, that we were free and irresponsible boarders.
Work?--one can't you know, to any purpose. I don't really get anything
done worth speaking of, except during the three or four months that we
are away in the Summer. I wish the Summer were seven years long. I keep
three or four books on the stocks all the time, but I seldom add a
satisfactory chapter to one of them at home. Yes, and it is all because
my time is taken up with answering the letters of strangers. It can't be
done through a short hand amanuensis--I've tried that--it wouldn't work
--I couldn't learn to dictate. What does possess strangers to write so
many letters? I never could find that out. However, I suppose I did it
myself when I was a stranger. But I will never do it again.
Maybe you think I am not happy? the very thing that gravels me is that I
am. I don't want to be happy when I can't work; I am resolved that
hereafter I won't be. What I have always longed for, was the privilege
of living forever away up on one of those mountains in the Sandwich
Islands overlooking the sea.
Yours ever
MARK.
That magazine article of yours was mighty good: up to your very best I
think. I enclose a book review written by Howells.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Oct. 26 '81.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I am delighted with your review, and so is Mrs.
Clemens. What you have said, there, will convince anybody that reads it;
a body cannot help being convinced by it. That is the kind of a review
to have; the doubtful man; even the prejudiced man, is persuaded and
succumbs.
What a queer blunder that was, about the baronet. I can't quite see how
I ever made it. There was an opulent abundance of things I didn't know;
and consequently no need to trench upon the vest-pocketful of things I
did know, to get material for a blunder.
Charley Warren Stoddard has gone to the Sandwich Islands permanently.
Lucky devil. It is the only supremely delightful place on earth. It
does seem that the more advantage a body doesn't earn, here, the more of
them God throws at his head. This fellow's postal card has set the
vision of those gracious islands before my mind, again, with not a leaf
withered, nor a rainbow vanished, nor a sun-flash missing from the waves,
and now it will be months, I reckon, before I can drive it away again.
It is beautiful company, but it makes one restless and dissatisfied.
With love and thanks,
Yrs ever,
MARK.
The review mentioned in this letter was of The Prince and the
Pauper. What the queer "blunder" about the baronet was, the present
writer confesses he does not know; but perhaps a careful reader
could find it, at least in the early edition; very likely it was
corrected without loss of time.
Clemens now and then found it necessary to pay a visit to Canada in
the effort to protect his copyright. He usually had a grand time on
these trips, being lavishly entertained by the Canadian literary
fraternity. In November, 1881, he made one of these journeys in the
interest of The Prince and the Pauper, this time with Osgood, who
was now his publisher. In letters written home we get a hint of his
diversions. The Monsieur Frechette mentioned was a Canadian poet of
considerable distinction. "Clara" was Miss Clara Spaulding, of
Elmira, who had accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Clemens to Europe in 1873,
and again in 1878. Later she became Mrs. John B. Staachfield, of
New York City. Her name has already appeared in these letters many
times.
To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:
MONTREAL, Nov. 28 '81.
Livy darling, you and Clara ought to have been at breakfast in the great
dining room this morning. English female faces, distinctive English
costumes, strange and marvelous English gaits--and yet such honest,
honorable, clean-souled countenances, just as these English women almost
always have, you know. Right away--
But they've come to take me to the top of Mount Royal, it being a cold,
dry, sunny, magnificent day. Going in a sleigh.
Yours lovingly,
SAML.
To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:
MONTREAL, Sunday, November 27, 1881.
Livy dear, a mouse kept me awake last night till 3 or 4 o'clock--so I am
lying abed this morning. I would not give sixpence to be out yonder in
the storm, although it is only snow.
[The above paragraph is written in the form of a rebus illustrated with
various sketches.]
There--that's for the children--was not sure that they could read
writing; especially jean, who is strangely ignorant in some things.
I can not only look out upon the beautiful snow-storm, past the vigorous
blaze of my fire; and upon the snow-veiled buildings which I have
sketched; and upon the churchward drifting umbrellas; and upon the
buffalo-clad cabmen stamping their feet and thrashing their arms on the
corner yonder: but I also look out upon the spot where the first white
men stood, in the neighborhood of four hundred years ago, admiring the
mighty stretch of leafy solitudes, and being admired and marveled at by
an eager multitude of naked savages. The discoverer of this region, and
namer of it, Jacques Cartier, has a square named for him in the city. I
wish you were here; you would enjoy your birthday, I think.
I hoped for a letter, and thought I had one when the mail was handed in,
a minute ago, but it was only that note from Sylvester Baxter. You must
write--do you hear?--or I will be remiss myself.
Give my love and a kiss to the children, and ask them to give you my love
and a kiss from
SAML.
To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:
QUEBEC, Sunday. '81.
Livy darling, I received a letter from Monsieur Frechette this morning,
in which certain citizens of Montreal tendered me a public dinner next
Thursday, and by Osgood's advice I accepted it. I would have accepted
anyway, and very cheerfully but for the delay of two days--for I was
purposing to go to Boston Tuesday and home Wednesday; whereas, now I go
to Boston Friday and home Saturday. I have to go by Boston on account of
business.
We drove about the steep hills and narrow, crooked streets of this old
town during three hours, yesterday, in a sleigh, in a driving snow-storm.
The people here don't mind snow; they were all out, plodding around on
their affairs--especially the children, who were wallowing around
everywhere, like snow images, and having a mighty good time. I wish I
could describe the winter costume of the young girls, but I can't. It is
grave and simple, but graceful and pretty--the top of it is a brimless
fur cap. Maybe it is the costume that makes pretty girls seem so
monotonously plenty here. It was a kind of relief to strike a homely
face occasionally.
You descend into some of the streets by long, deep stairways; and in the
strong moonlight, last night, these were very picturesque. I did wish
you were here to see these things. You couldn't by any possibility sleep
in these beds, though, or enjoy the food.
Good night, sweetheart, and give my respects to the cubs.
SAML.
It had been hoped that W. D. Howells would join the Canadian
excursion, but Howells was not very well that autumn. He wrote that
he had been in bed five weeks, "most of the time recovering; so you
see how bad I must have been to begin with. But now I am out of any
first-class pain; I have a good appetite, and I am as abusive and
peremptory as Guiteau." Clemens, returning to Hartford, wrote him a
letter that explains itself.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Dec. 16 '81.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It was a sharp disappointment--your inability to
connect, on the Canadian raid. What a gaudy good time we should have
had!
Disappointed, again, when I got back to Boston; for I was promising
myself half an hour's look at you, in Belmont; but your note to Osgood
showed that that could not be allowed out yet.
The Atlantic arrived an hour ago, and your faultless and delicious Police
Report brought that blamed Joe Twichell powerfully before me. There's a
man who can tell such things himself (by word of mouth,) and has as sure
an eye for detecting a thing that is before his eyes, as any man in the
world, perhaps--then why in the nation doesn't he report himself with a
pen?
One of those drenching days last week, he slopped down town with his
cubs, and visited a poor little beggarly shed where were a dwarf, a fat
woman, and a giant of honest eight feet, on exhibition behind tawdry
show-canvases, but with nobody to exhibit to. The giant had a broom, and
was cleaning up and fixing around, diligently. Joe conceived the idea of
getting some talk out of him. Now that never would have occurred to me.
So he dropped in under the man's elbow, dogged him patiently around,
prodding him with questions and getting irritated snarls in return which
would have finished me early--but at last one of Joe's random shafts
drove the centre of that giant's sympathies somehow, and fetched him.
The fountains of his great deep were broken up, and he rained a flood of
personal history that was unspeakably entertaining.
Among other things it turned out that he had been a Turkish (native)
colonel, and had fought all through the Crimean war--and so, for the
first time, Joe got a picture of the Charge of the Six Hundred that made
him see the living spectacle, the flash of flag and tongue-flame, the
rolling smoke, and hear the booming of the guns; and for the first time
also, he heard the reasons for that wild charge delivered from the mouth
of a master, and realized that nobody had "blundered," but that a cold,
logical, military brain had perceived this one and sole way to win an
already lost battle, and so gave the command and did achieve the victory.
And mind you Joe was able to come up here, days afterwards, and reproduce
that giant's picturesque and admirable history. But dern him, he can't
write it--which is all wrong, and not as it should be.
And he has gone and raked up the MS autobiography (written in 1848,) of
Mrs. Phebe Brown, (author of "I Love to Steal a While Away,") who
educated Yung Wing in her family when he was a little boy; and I came
near not getting to bed at all, last night, on account of the lurid
fascinations of it. Why in the nation it has never got into print, I
can't understand.
But, by jings! the postman will be here in a minute; so, congratulations
upon your mending health, and gratitude that it is mending; and love to
you all.
Yrs Ever
MARK.
Don't answer--I spare the sick.
XXII.
LETTERS, 1882, MAINLY TO HOWELLS. WASTED FURY. OLD SCENES REVISITED.
THE MISSISSIPPI BOOK
A man of Mark Twain's profession and prominence must necessarily be
the subject of much newspaper comment. Jest, compliment, criticism
--none of these things disturbed him, as a rule. He was pleased
that his books should receive favorable notices by men whose opinion
he respected, but he was not grieved by adverse expressions. Jests
at his expense, if well written, usually amused him; cheap jokes
only made him sad; but sarcasms and innuendoes were likely to enrage
him, particularly if he believed them prompted by malice. Perhaps
among all the letters he ever wrote, there is none more
characteristic than this confession of violence and eagerness for
reprisal, followed by his acknowledgment of error and a manifest
appreciation of his own weakness. It should be said that Mark Twain
and Whitelaw Reid were generally very good friends, and perhaps for
the moment this fact seemed to magnify the offense.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Jan. 28 '82.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Nobody knows better than I, that there are times when
swearing cannot meet the emergency. How sharply I feel that, at this
moment. Not a single profane word has issued from my lips this mornin
--I have not even had the impulse to swear, so wholly ineffectual would
swearing have manifestly been, in the circumstances. But I will tell you
about it.
About three weeks ago, a sensitive friend, approaching his revelation
cautiously, intimated that the N. Y. Tribune was engaged in a kind of
crusade against me. This seemed a higher compliment than I deserved; but
no matter, it made me very angry. I asked many questions, and gathered,
in substance, this: Since Reid's return from Europe, the Tribune had
been flinging sneers and brutalities at me with such persistent frequency
"as to attract general remark." I was an angered--which is just as good
an expression, I take it, as an hungered. Next, I learned that Osgood,
among the rest of the "general," was worrying over these constant and
pitiless attacks. Next came the testimony of another friend, that the
attacks were not merely "frequent," but "almost daily." Reflect upon
that: "Almost daily" insults, for two months on a stretch. What would
you have done?
As for me, I did the thing which was the natural thing for me to do, that
is, I set about contriving a plan to accomplish one or the other of two
things: 1. Force a peace; or 2. Get revenge. When I got my plan
finished, it pleased me marvelously. It was in six or seven sections,
each section to be used in its turn and by itself; the assault to begin
at once with No. 1, and the rest to follow, one after the other, to keep
the communication open while I wrote my biography of Reid. I meant to
wind up with this latter great work, and then dismiss the subject for
good.
Well, ever since then I have worked day and night making notes and
collecting and classifying material. I've got collectors at work in
England. I went to New York and sat three hours taking evidence while a
stenographer set it down. As my labors grew, so also grew my
fascination. Malice and malignity faded out of me--or maybe I drove them
out of me, knowing that a malignant book would hurt nobody but the fool
who wrote it. I got thoroughly in love with this work; for I saw that I
was going to write a book which the very devils and angels themselves
would delight to read, and which would draw disapproval from nobody but
the hero of it, (and Mrs. Clemens, who was bitter against the whole
thing.) One part of my plan was so delicious that I had to try my hand
on it right away, just for the luxury of it. I set about it, and sure
enough it panned out to admiration. I wrote that chapter most carefully,
and I couldn't find a fault with it. (It was not for the biography--no,
it belonged to an immediate and deadlier project.)
Well, five days ago, this thought came into my mind (from Mrs. Clemens's):
"Wouldn't it be well to make sure that the attacks have been 'almost
daily'?--and to also make sure that their number and character will
justify me in doing what I am proposing to do?"
I at once set a man to work in New York to seek out and copy every
unpleasant reference which had been made to me in the Tribune from Nov.
1st to date. On my own part I began to watch the current numbers, for I
had subscribed for the paper.
The result arrived from my New York man this morning. O, what a pitiable
wreck of high hopes! The "almost daily" assaults, for two months,
consist of--1. Adverse criticism of P. & P. from an enraged idiot in the
London Atheneum; 2. Paragraph from some indignant Englishman in the Pall
Mall Gazette who pays me the vast compliment of gravely rebuking some
imaginary ass who has set me up in the neighborhood of Rabelais; 3. A
remark of the Tribune's about the Montreal dinner, touched with an almost
invisible satire; 4. A remark of the Tribune's about refusal of Canadian
copyright, not complimentary, but not necessarily malicious--and of
course adverse criticism which is not malicious is a thing which none but
fools irritate themselves about.
There--that is the prodigious bugaboo, in its entirety! Can you conceive
of a man's getting himself into a sweat over so diminutive a provocation?
I am sure I can't. What the devil can those friends of mine have been
thinking about, to spread these 3 or 4 harmless things out into two
months of daily sneers and affronts? The whole offense, boiled down,
amounts to just this: one uncourteous remark of the Tribune about my
book--not me between Nov. 1 and Dec. 20; and a couple of foreign
criticisms (of my writings, not me,) between Nov. 1 and Jan. 26! If I
can't stand that amount of friction, I certainly need reconstruction.
Further boiled down, this vast outpouring of malice amounts to simply
this: one jest from the Tribune (one can make nothing more serious than
that out of it.) One jest--and that is all; for the foreign criticisms do
not count, they being matters of news, and proper for publication in
anybody's newspaper.
And to offset that one jest, the Tribune paid me one compliment Dec. 23,
by publishing my note declining the New York New England dinner, while
merely (in the same breath,) mentioning that similar letters were read
from General Sherman and other men whom we all know to be persons of real
consequence.
Well, my mountain has brought forth its mouse, and a sufficiently small
mouse it is, God knows. And my three weeks' hard work have got to go
into the ignominious pigeon-hole. Confound it, I could have earned ten
thousand dollars with infinitely less trouble. However, I shouldn't have
done it, for I am too lazy, now, in my sere and yellow leaf, to be
willing to work for anything but love..... I kind of envy you people who
are permitted for your righteousness' sake to dwell in a boarding house;
not that I should always want to live in one, but I should like the
change occasionally from this housekeeping slavery to that wild
independence. A life of don't-care-a-damn in a boarding house is what I
have asked for in many a secret prayer. I shall come by and by and
require of you what you have offered me there.
Yours ever,
MARK.
Howells, who had already known something of the gathering storm,
replied: "Your letter was an immense relief to me, for although I
had an abiding faith that you would get sick of your enterprise,
I wasn't easy until I knew that you had given it up."
Joel Chandler Harris appears again in the letters of this period.
Twichell, during a trip South about this time, had called on Harris
with some sort of proposition or suggestion from Clemens that Harris
appear with him in public, and tell, or read, the Remus stories from
the platform. But Harris was abnormally diffident. Clemens later
pronounced him "the shyest full-grown man" he had ever met, and the
word which Twichell brought home evidently did not encourage the
platform idea.
To Joel Chandler Harris, in Atlanta:
HARTFORD, Apl. 2, '82.
Private.
MY DEAR MR. HARRIS,--Jo Twichell brought me your note and told me of his
talk with you. He said you didn't believe you would ever be able to
muster a sufficiency of reckless daring to make you comfortable and at
ease before an audience. Well, I have thought out a device whereby I
believe we can get around that difficulty. I will explain when I see
you.
Jo says you want to go to Canada within a month or six weeks--I forget
just exactly what he did say; but he intimated the trip could be delayed
a while, if necessary. If this is so, suppose you meet Osgood and me in
New Orleans early in May--say somewhere between the 1st and 6th?
It will be well worth your while to do this, because the author who goes
to Canada unposted, will not know what course to pursue [to secure
copyright] when he gets there; he will find himself in a hopeless
confusion as to what is the correct thing to do. Now Osgood is the only
man in America, who can lay out your course for you and tell you exactly
what to do. Therefore, you just come to New Orleans and have a talk with
him.
Our idea is to strike across lots and reach St. Louis the 20th of April
--thence we propose to drift southward, stopping at some town a few
hours or a night, every day, and making notes.
To escape the interviewers, I shall follow my usual course and use a
fictitious name (C. L. Samuel, of New York.) I don't know what Osgood's
name will be, but he can't use his own.
If you see your way to meet us in New Orleans, drop me a line, now, and
as we approach that city I will telegraph you what day we shall arrive
there.
I would go to Atlanta if I could, but shan't be able. We shall go back
up the river to St. Paul, and thence by rail X-lots home.
(I am making this letter so dreadfully private and confidential because
my movements must be kept secret, else I shan't be able to pick up the
kind of book-material I want.)
If you are diffident, I suspect that you ought to let Osgood be your
magazine-agent. He makes those people pay three or four times as much as
an article is worth, whereas I never had the cheek to make them pay more
than double.
Yrs Sincerely
S. L. CLEMENS.
"My backwardness is an affliction," wrote Harris..... "The ordeal
of appearing on the stage would be a terrible one, but my experience
is that when a diffident man does become familiar with his
surroundings he has more impudence than his neighbors. Extremes
meet."
He was sorely tempted, but his courage became as water at the
thought of footlights and assembled listeners. Once in New York he
appears to have been caught unawares at a Tile Club dinner and made
to tell a story, but his agony was such that at the prospect of a
similar ordeal in Boston he avoided that city and headed straight
for Georgia and safety.
The New Orleans excursion with Osgood, as planned by Clemens, proved
a great success. The little party took the steamer Gold Dust from
St. Louis down river toward New Orleans. Clemens was quickly
recognized, of course, and his assumed name laid aside. The author
of "Uncle Remus" made the trip to New Orleans. George W. Cable was
there at the time, and we may believe that in the company of Mark
Twain and Osgood those Southern authors passed two or three
delightful days. Clemens also met his old teacher Bixby in New
Orleans, and came back up the river with him, spending most of his
time in the pilot-house, as in the old days. It was a glorious
trip, and, reaching St. Louis, he continued it northward, stopping
off at Hannibal and Quincy.'
To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:
QUINCY, ILL. May 17, '82.
Livy darling, I am desperately homesick. But I have promised Osgood, and
must stick it out; otherwise I would take the train at once and break for
home.
I have spent three delightful days in Hannibal, loitering around all day
long, examining the old localities and talking with the grey-heads who
were boys and girls with me 30 or 40 years ago. It has been a moving
time. I spent my nights with John and Helen Garth, three miles from
town, in their spacious and beautiful house. They were children with me,
and afterwards schoolmates. Now they have a daughter 19 or 20 years old.
Spent an hour, yesterday, with A. W. Lamb, who was not married when I saw
him last. He married a young lady whom I knew. And now I have been
talking with their grown-up sons and daughters. Lieutenant Hickman, the
spruce young handsomely-uniformed volunteer of 1846, called on me--a
grisly elephantine patriarch of 65 now, his grace all vanished.
That world which I knew in its blossoming youth is old and bowed and
melancholy, now; its soft cheeks are leathery and wrinkled, the fire is
gone out in its eyes, and the spring from its step. It will be dust and
ashes when I come again. I have been clasping hands with the moribund
--and usually they said, "It is for the last time."
Now I am under way again, upon this hideous trip to St. Paul, with a
heart brimming full of thoughts and images of you and Susie and Bay and
the peerless Jean. And so good night, my love.
SAML.
Clemens's trip had been saddened by learning, in New Orleans, the
news of the death of Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh. To Doctor
Brown's son, whom he had known as "Jock," he wrote immediately on
his return to Hartford.
To Mr. John Brown, in Edinburgh
HARTFORD, June 1, 1882.
MY DEAR MR. BROWN,--I was three thousand miles from home, at breakfast in
New Orleans, when the damp morning paper revealed the sorrowful news
among the cable dispatches. There was no place in America, however
remote, or however rich, or poor or high or humble where words of
mourning for your father were not uttered that morning, for his works had
made him known and loved all over the land. To Mrs. Clemens and me,
the loss is personal; and our grief the grief one feels for one who was
peculiarly near and dear. Mrs. Clemens has never ceased to express
regret that we came away from England the last time without going to see
him, and often we have since projected a voyage across the Atlantic for
the sole purpose of taking him by the hand and looking into his kind eyes
once more before he should be called to his rest.
We both thank you greatly for the Edinburgh papers which you sent. My
wife and I join in affectionate remembrances and greetings to yourself
and your aunt, and in the sincere tender of our sympathies.
Faithfully yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Our Susie is still "Megalops." He gave her that name:
Can you spare a photograph of your father? We have none but the one
taken in a group with ourselves.
William Dean Howells, at the age of forty-five, reached what many
still regard his highest point of achievement in American realism.
His novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham, which was running as a Century
serial during the summer of 1882, attracted wide attention, and upon
its issue in book form took first place among his published novels.
Mark Twain, to the end of his life, loved all that Howells wrote.
Once, long afterward, he said: "Most authors give us glimpses of a
radiant moon, but Howells's moon shines and sails all night long."
When the instalments of The Rise of Silas Lapham began to appear, he
overflowed in adjectives, the sincerity of which we need not doubt,
in view of his quite open criticisms of the author's reading
delivery.
To W. D. Howells, in Belmont, Mass.:
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I am in a state of wild enthusiasm over this July
instalment of your story. It's perfectly dazzling--it's masterly
--incomparable. Yet I heard you read it--without losing my balance.
Well, the difference between your reading and your writing is-remarkable.
I mean, in the effects produced and the impression left behind. Why, the
one is to the other as is one of Joe Twichell's yarns repeated by a
somnambulist. Goodness gracious, you read me a chapter, and it is a
gentle, pearly dawn, with a sprinkle of faint stars in it; but by and by
I strike it in print, and shout to myself, "God bless us, how has that
pallid former spectacle been turned into these gorgeous sunset
splendors!"
Well, I don't care how much you read your truck to me, you can't
permanently damage it for me that way. It is always perfectly fresh and
dazzling when I come on it in the magazine. Of course I recognize the
form of it as being familiar--but that is all. That is, I remember it as
pyrotechnic figures which you set up before me, dead and cold, but ready
for the match--and now I see them touched off and all ablaze with
blinding fires. You can read, if you want to, but you don't read worth a
damn. I know you can read, because your readings of Cable and your
repeatings of the German doctor's remarks prove that.
That's the best drunk scene--because the truest--that I ever read. There
are touches in it that I never saw any writer take note of before. And
they are set before the reader with amazing accuracy. How very drunk,
and how recently drunk, and how altogether admirably drunk you must have
been to enable you to contrive that masterpiece!
Why I didn't notice that that religious interview between Marcia and Mrs.
Halleck was so deliciously humorous when you read it to me--but dear me,
it's just too lovely for anything. (Wrote Clark to collar it for the
"Library.")
Hang it, I know where the mystery is, now; when you are reading, you
glide right along, and I don't get a chance to let the things soak home;
but when I catch it in the magazine, I give a page 20 or 30 minutes in
which to gently and thoroughly filter into me. Your humor is so very
subtle, and elusive--(well, often it's just a vanishing breath of perfume
which a body isn't certain he smelt till he stops and takes another
smell) whereas you can smell other
(Remainder obliterated.)
Among Mark Twain's old schoolmates in Hannibal was little Helen
Kercheval, for whom in those early days he had a very tender spot
indeed. But she married another schoolmate, John Garth, who in time
became a banker, highly respected and a great influence. John and
Helen Garth have already been mentioned in the letter of May 17th.
To John Garth, in Hannibal:
HARTFORD, July 3 '82.
DEAR JOHN,--Your letter of June i9 arrived just one day after we ought to
have been in Elmira, N. Y. for the summer: but at the last moment the
baby was seized with scarlet fever. I had to telegraph and countermand
the order for special sleeping car; and in fact we all had to fly around
in a lively way and undo the patient preparations of weeks--rehabilitate
the dismantled house, unpack the trunks, and so on. A couple of days
later, the eldest child was taken down with so fierce a fever that she
was soon delirious--not scarlet fever, however. Next, I myself was
stretched on the bed with three diseases at once, and all of them fatal.
But I never did care for fatal diseases if I could only have privacy and
room to express myself concerning them.
We gave early warning, and of course nobody has entered the house in all
this time but one or two reckless old bachelors--and they probably wanted
to carry the disease to the children of former flames of theirs. The
house is still in quarantine and must remain so for a week or two yet--at
which time we are hoping to leave for Elmira.
Always your friend
S. L. CLEMENS.
By the end of summer Howells was in Europe, and Clemens, in Elmira,
was trying to finish his Mississippi book, which was giving him a
great deal of trouble. It was usually so with his non-fiction
books; his interest in them was not cumulative; he was prone to grow
weary of them, while the menace of his publisher's contract was
maddening. Howells's letters, meant to be comforting, or at least
entertaining, did not always contribute to his peace of mind. The
Library of American Humor which they had planned was an added
burden. Before sailing, Howells had written: "Do you suppose you
can do your share of the reading at Elmira, while you are writing at
the Mississippi book?"
In a letter from London, Howells writes of the good times he is
having over there with Osgood, Hutton, John Hay, Aldrich, and Alma
Tadema, excursioning to Oxford, feasting, especially "at the Mitre
Tavern, where they let you choose your dinner from the joints
hanging from the rafter, and have passages that you lose yourself in
every time you try to go to your room..... Couldn't you and Mrs.
Clemens step over for a little while?..... We have seen lots of
nice people and have been most pleasantly made of; but I would
rather have you smoke in my face, and talk for half a day just for
pleasure, than to go to the best house or club in London." The
reader will gather that this could not be entirely soothing to a man
shackled by a contract and a book that refused to come to an end.
To W. D. Howells, in London:
HARTFORD, CONN. Oct 30, 1882.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I do not expect to find you, so I shan't spend many
words on you to wind up in the perdition of some European dead-letter
office. I only just want to say that the closing installments of the
story are prodigious. All along I was afraid it would be impossible for
you to keep up so splendidly to the end; but you were only, I see now,
striking eleven. It is in these last chapters that you struck twelve.
Go on and write; you can write good books yet, but you can never match
this one. And speaking of the book, I inclose something which has been
happening here lately.
We have only just arrived at home, and I have not seen Clark on our
matters. I cannot see him or any one else, until I get my book finished.
The weather turned cold, and we had to rush home, while I still lacked
thirty thousand words. I had been sick and got delayed. I am going to
write all day and two thirds of the night, until the thing is done, or
break down at it. The spur and burden of the contract are intolerable to
me. I can endure the irritation of it no longer. I went to work at nine
o'clock yesterday morning, and went to bed an hour after midnight.
Result of the day, (mainly stolen from books, tho' credit given,) 9500
words, so I reduced my burden by one third in one day. It was five days
work in one. I have nothing more to borrow or steal; the rest must all
be written. It is ten days work, and unless something breaks, it will be
finished in five. We all send love to you and Mrs. Howells, and all the
family.
Yours as ever,
MARK.
Again, from Villeneuve, on lake Geneva, Howells wrote urging him this
time to spend the winter with them in Florence, where they would write
their great American Comedy of 'Orme's Motor,' "which is to enrich us
beyond the dreams of avarice.... We could have a lot of fun writing it,
and you could go home with some of the good old Etruscan malaria in your
bones, instead of the wretched pinch-beck Hartford article that you are
suffering from now.... it's a great opportunity for you. Besides,
nobody over there likes you half as well as I do."
It should be added that 'Orme's Motor' was the provisional title that
Clemens and Howells had selected for their comedy, which was to be built,
in some measure, at least, around the character, or rather from the
peculiarities, of Orion Clemens. The Cable mentioned in Mark Twain's
reply is, of course, George W. Cable, who only a little while before had
come up from New Orleans to conquer the North with his wonderful tales
and readings.
To W. D. Howells, in Switzerland:
HARTFORD, Nov. 4th, 1882.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Yes, it would be profitable for me to do that, because
with your society to help me, I should swiftly finish this now apparently
interminable book. But I cannot come, because I am not Boss here, and
nothing but dynamite can move Mrs. Clemens away from home in the winter
season.
I never had such a fight over a book in my life before. And the
foolishest part of the whole business is, that I started Osgood to
editing it before I had finished writing it. As a consequence, large
areas of it are condemned here and there and yonder, and I have the
burden of these unfilled gaps harassing me and the thought of the broken
continuity of the work, while I am at the same time trying to build the
last quarter of the book. However, at last I have said with sufficient
positiveness that I will finish the book at no particular date; that I
will not hurry it; that I will not hurry myself; that I will take things
easy and comfortably, write when I choose to write, leave it alone when I
so prefer. The printers must wait, the artists, the canvassers, and all
the rest. I have got everything at a dead standstill, and that is where
it ought to be, and that is where it must remain; to follow any other
policy would be to make the book worse than it already is. I ought to
have finished it before showing to anybody, and then sent it across the
ocean to you to be edited, as usual; for you seem to be a great many
shades happier than you deserve to be, and if I had thought of this thing
earlier, I would have acted upon it and taken the tuck somewhat out of
your joyousness.
In the same mail with your letter, arrived the enclosed from Orme the
motor man. You will observe that he has an office. I will explain that
this is a law office and I think it probably does him as much good to
have a law office without anything to do in it, as it would another man
to have one with an active business attached. You see he is on the
electric light lay now. Going to light the city and allow me to take all
the stock if I want to. And he will manage it free of charge. It never
would occur to this simple soul how much less costly it would be to me,
to hire him on a good salary not to manage it. Do you observe the same
old eagerness, the same old hurry, springing from the fear that if he
does not move with the utmost swiftness, that colossal opportunity will
escape him? Now just fancy this same frantic plunging after vast
opportunities, going on week after week with this same man, during fifty
entire years, and he has not yet learned, in the slightest degree, that
there isn't any occasion to hurry; that his vast opportunity will always
wait; and that whether it waits or flies, he certainly will never catch
it. This immortal hopefulness, fortified by its immortal and unteachable
misjudgment, is the immortal feature of this character, for a play; and
we will write that play. We should be fools else. That staccato
postscript reads as if some new and mighty business were imminent, for it
is slung on the paper telegraphically, all the small words left out.
I am afraid something newer and bigger than the electric light is
swinging across his orbit. Save this letter for an inspiration. I have
got a hundred more.
Cable has been here, creating worshipers on all hands. He is a marvelous
talker on a deep subject. I do not see how even Spencer could unwind a
thought more smoothly or orderly, and do it in a cleaner, clearer,
crisper English. He astounded Twichell with his faculty. You know when
it comes down to moral honesty, limpid innocence, and utterly blemishless
piety, the Apostles were mere policemen to Cable; so with this in mind
you must imagine him at a midnight dinner in Boston the other night,
where we gathered around the board of the Summerset Club; Osgood, full,
Boyle O'Reilly, full, Fairchild responsively loaded, and Aldrich and
myself possessing the floor, and properly fortified. Cable told Mrs.
Clemens when he returned here, that he seemed to have been entertaining
himself with horses, and had a dreamy idea that he must have gone to
Boston in a cattle-car. It was a very large time. He called it an orgy.
And no doubt it was, viewed from his standpoint.
I wish I were in Switzerland, and I wish we could go to Florence; but we
have to leave these delights to you; there is no helping it. We all join
in love to you and all the family.
Yours as ever
MARK.
XXIII.
LETTERS, 1883, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. A GUEST OF THE MARQUIS OF LORNE.
THE HISTORY GAME. A PLAY BY HOWELLS AND MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain, in due season, finished the Mississippi book and placed
it in Osgood's hands for publication. It was a sort of partnership
arrangement in which Clemens was to furnish the money to make the
book, and pay Osgood a percentage for handling it. It was, in fact,
the beginning of Mark Twain's adventures as a publisher.
Howells was not as happy in Florence as he had hoped to be. The
social life there overwhelmed him. In February he wrote: "Our two
months in Florence have been the most ridiculous time that ever even
half-witted people passed. We have spent them in chasing round
after people for whom we cared nothing, and being chased by them.
My story isn't finished yet, and what part of it is done bears the
fatal marks of haste and distraction. Of course, I haven't put pen
to paper yet on the play. I wring my hands and beat my breast when
I think of how these weeks have been wasted; and how I have been
forced to waste them by the infernal social circumstances from which
I couldn't escape."
Clemens, now free from the burden of his own book, was light of
heart and full of ideas and news; also of sympathy and appreciation.
Howells's story of this time was "A Woman's Reason." Governor
Jewell, of this letter, was Marshall Jewell, Governor of Connecticut
from 1871 to 1873. Later, he was Minister to Russia, and in 1874
was United States Postmaster-General.
To W. D. Howells, in Florence:
HARTFORD, March 1st, 1883.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We got ourselves ground up in that same mill, once, in
London, and another time in Paris. It is a kind of foretaste of hell.
There is no way to avoid it except by the method which you have now
chosen. One must live secretly and cut himself utterly off from the
human race, or life in Europe becomes an unbearable burden and work an
impossibility. I learned something last night, and maybe it may
reconcile me to go to Europe again sometime. I attended one of the
astonishingly popular lectures of a man by the name of Stoddard, who
exhibits interesting stereopticon pictures and then knocks the interest
all out of them with his comments upon them. But all the world go there
to look and listen, and are apparently well satisfied. And they ought to
be fully satisfied, if the lecturer would only keep still, or die in the
first act. But he described how retired tradesmen and farmers in Holland
load a lazy scow with the family and the household effects, and then loaf
along the waterways of the low countries all the summer long, paying no
visits, receiving none, and just lazying a heavenly life out in their own
private unpestered society, and doing their literary work, if they have
any, wholly uninterrupted. If you had hired such a boat and sent for us
we should have a couple of satisfactory books ready for the press now
with no marks of interruption, vexatious wearinesses, and other
hellishnesses visible upon them anywhere. We shall have to do this
another time. We have lost an opportunity for the present. Do you
forget that Heaven is packed with a multitude of all nations and that
these people are all on the most familiar how-the-hell-are-you footing
with Talmage swinging around the circle to all eternity hugging the
saints and patriarchs and archangels, and forcing you to do the same
unless you choose to make yourself an object of remark if you refrain?
Then why do you try to get to Heaven? Be warned in time.
We have all read your two opening numbers in the Century, and consider
them almost beyond praise. I hear no dissent from this verdict. I did
not know there was an untouched personage in American life, but I had
forgotten the auctioneer. You have photographed him accurately.
I have been an utterly free person for a month or two; and I do not
believe I ever so greatly appreciated and enjoyed--and realized the
absence of the chains of slavery as I do this time. Usually my first
waking thought in the morning is, "I have nothing to do to-day, I belong
to nobody, I have ceased from being a slave." Of course the highest
pleasure to be got out of freedom, and having nothing to do, is labor.
Therefore I labor. But I take my time about it. I work one hour or four
as happens to suit my mind, and quit when I please. And so these days
are days of entire enjoyment. I told Clark the other day, to jog along
comfortable and not get in a sweat. I said I believed you would not be
able to enjoy editing that library over there, where you have your own
legitimate work to do and be pestered to death by society besides;
therefore I thought if he got it ready for you against your return, that
that would be best and pleasantest.
You remember Governor Jewell, and the night he told about Russia, down in
the library. He was taken with a cold about three weeks ago, and I
stepped over one evening, proposing to beguile an idle hour for him with
a yarn or two, but was received at the door with whispers, and the
information that he was dying. His case had been dangerous during that
day only and he died that night, two hours after I left. His taking off
was a prodigious surprise, and his death has been most widely and
sincerely regretted. Win. E. Dodge, the father-in-law of one of Jewell's
daughters, dropped suddenly dead the day before Jewell died, but Jewell
died without knowing that. Jewell's widow went down to New York, to
Dodge's house, the day after Jewell's funeral, and was to return here day
before yesterday, and she did--in a coffin. She fell dead, of heart
disease, while her trunks were being packed for her return home.
Florence Strong, one of Jewell's daughters, who lives in Detroit, started
East on an urgent telegram, but missed a connection somewhere, and did
not arrive here in time to see her father alive. She was his favorite
child, and they had always been like lovers together. He always sent her
a box of fresh flowers once a week to the day of his death; a custom
which he never suspended even when he was in Russia. Mrs. Strong had
only just reached her Western home again when she was summoned to
Hartford to attend her mother's funeral.
I have had the impulse to write you several times. I shall try to
remember better henceforth.
With sincerest regards to all of you,
Yours as ever,
MARK.
Mark Twain made another trip to Canada in the interest of copyright
--this time to protect the Mississippi book. When his journey was
announced by the press, the Marquis of Lorne telegraphed an
invitation inviting him to be his guest at Rideau Hall, in Ottawa.
Clemens accepted, of course, and was handsomely entertained by the
daughter of Queen Victoria and her husband, then Governor-General of
Canada.
On his return to Hartford he found that Osgood had issued a curious
little book, for which Clemens had prepared an introduction. It was
an absurd volume, though originally issued with serious intent, its
title being The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and
English.'--[The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and
English, by Pedro Caxolino, with an introduction by Mark Twain.
Osgood, Boston, 1883. ]--Evidently the "New Guide" was prepared by
some simple Portuguese soul with but slight knowledge of English
beyond that which could be obtained from a dictionary, and his
literal translation of English idioms are often startling, as, for
instance, this one, taken at random:
"A little learneds are happies enough for to may to satisfy their
fancies on the literature."
Mark Twain thought this quaint book might amuse his royal hostess,
and forwarded a copy in what he considered to be the safe and proper
form.
To Col. De Winton, in Ottawa, Canada:
HARTFORD, June 4, '83.
DEAR COLONEL DE WINTON,--I very much want to send a little book to her
Royal Highness--the famous Portuguese phrase book; but I do not know the
etiquette of the matter, and I would not wittingly infringe any rule of
propriety. It is a book which I perfectly well know will amuse her "some
at most" if she has not seen it before, and will still amuse her "some at
least," even if she has inspected it a hundred times already. So I will
send the book to you, and you who know all about the proper observances
will protect me from indiscretion, in case of need, by putting the said
book in the fire, and remaining as dumb as I generally was when I was up
there. I do not rebind the thing, because that would look as if I
thought it worth keeping, whereas it is only worth glancing at and
casting aside.
Will you please present my compliments to Mrs. De Winton and Mrs.
Mackenzie?--and I beg to make my sincere compliments to you, also, for
your infinite kindnesses to me. I did have a delightful time up there,
most certainly.
Truly yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
P. S. Although the introduction dates a year back, the book is only just
now issued. A good long delay.
S. L. C.
Howells, writing from Venice, in April, manifested special interest
in the play project: "Something that would run like Scheherazade,
for a thousand and one nights," so perhaps his book was going
better. He proposed that they devote the month of October to the
work, and inclosed a letter from Mallory, who owned not only a
religious paper, The Churchman, but also the Madison Square Theater,
and was anxious for a Howells play. Twenty years before Howells had
been Consul to Venice, and he wrote, now: "The idea of my being here
is benumbing and silencing. I feel like the Wandering Jew, or the
ghost of the Cardiff giant."
He returned to America in July. Clemens sent him word of welcome,
with glowing reports of his own undertakings. The story on which he
was piling up MS. was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, begun
seven years before at Quarry Farm. He had no great faith in it
then, and though he had taken it up again in 1880, his interest had
not lasted to its conclusion. This time, however, he was in the
proper spirit, and the story would be finished.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, July 20, '83.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We are desperately glad you and your gang are home
again--may you never travel again, till you go aloft or alow. Charley
Clark has gone to the other side for a run--will be back in August. He
has been sick, and needed the trip very much.
Mrs. Clemens had a long and wasting spell of sickness last Spring, but
she is pulling up, now. The children are booming, and my health is
ridiculous, it's so robust, notwithstanding the newspaper misreports.
I haven't piled up MS so in years as I have done since we came here to
the farm three weeks and a half ago. Why, it's like old times, to step
right into the study, damp from the breakfast table, and sail right in
and sail right on, the whole day long, without thought of running short
of stuff or words.
I wrote 4000 words to-day and I touch 3000 and upwards pretty often, and
don't fall below 1600 any working day. And when I get fagged out, I lie
abed a couple of days and read and smoke, and then go it again for 6 or 7
days. I have finished one small book, and am away along in a big 433
one that I half-finished two or three years ago. I expect to complete it
in a month or six weeks or two months more. And I shall like it, whether
anybody else does or not.
It's a kind of companion to Tom Sawyer. There's a raft episode from it
in second or third chapter of life on the Mississippi.....
I'm booming, these days--got health and spirits to waste--got an
overplus; and if I were at home, we would write a play. But we must do
it anyhow by and by.
We stay here till Sep. 10; then maybe a week at Indian Neck for sea air,
then home.
We are powerful glad you are all back; and send love according.
Yrs Ever
MARK
To Onion Clemens and family, in Keokuk, Id.:
ELMIRA, July 22, '83.
Private.
DEAR MA AND ORION AND MOLLIE,--I don't know that I have anything new to
report, except that Livy is still gaining, and all the rest of us
flourishing. I haven't had such booming working-days for many years.
I am piling up manuscript in a really astonishing way. I believe I shall
complete, in two months, a book which I have been fooling over for
7 years. This summer it is no more trouble to me to write than it is to
lie.
Day before yesterday I felt slightly warned to knock off work for one
day. So I did it, and took the open air. Then I struck an idea for the
instruction of the children, and went to work and carried it out. It
took me all day. I measured off 817 feet of the road-way in our farm
grounds, with a foot-rule, and then divided it up among the English
reigns, from the Conqueror down to 1883, allowing one foot to the year.
I whittled out a basket of little pegs and drove one in the ground at the
beginning of each reign, and gave it that King's name--thus:
I measured all the reigns exactly as many feet to the reign as there were
years in it. You can look out over the grounds and see the little pegs
from the front door--some of them close together, like Richard II,
Richard Cromwell, James II, &c; and some prodigiously wide apart, like
Henry III, Edward III, George III, &c. It gives the children a realizing
sense of the length or brevity of a reign. Shall invent a violent game
to go with it.
And in bed, last night, I invented a way to play it indoors--in a far
more voluminous way, as to multiplicity of dates and events--on a
cribbage board.
Hello, supper's ready.
Love to all.
Good bye.
SAML.
Onion Clemens would naturally get excited over the idea of the game
and its commercial possibilities. Not more so than his brother,
however, who presently employed him to arrange a quantity of
historical data which the game was to teach. For a season, indeed,
interest in the game became a sort of midsummer madness which
pervaded the two households, at Keokuk and at Quarry Farm. Howells
wrote his approval of the idea of "learning history by the running
foot," which was a pun, even if unintentional, for in its out-door
form it was a game of speed as well as knowledge.
Howells adds that he has noticed that the newspapers are exploiting
Mark Twain's new invention of a history game, and we shall presently
see how this happened.
Also, in this letter, Howells speaks of an English nobleman to whom
he has given a letter of introduction. "He seemed a simple, quiet,
gentlemanly man, with a good taste in literature, which he evinced
by going about with my books in his pockets, and talking of yours."
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--How odd it seems, to sit down to write a letter with
the feeling that you've got time to do it. But I'm done work, for this
season, and so have got time. I've done two seasons' work in one, and
haven't anything left to do, now, but revise. I've written eight or nine
hundred MS pages in such a brief space of time that I mustn't name the
number of days; I shouldn't believe it myself, and of course couldn't
expect you to. I used to restrict myself to 4 or 5 hours a day and
5 days in the week, but this time I've wrought from breakfast till
5.15 p.m. six days in the week; and once or twice I smouched a Sunday
when the boss wasn't looking. Nothing is half so good as literature
hooked on Sunday, on the sly.
I wrote you and Twichell on the same night, about the game, and was
appalled to get a note from him saying he was going to print part of my
letter, and was going to do it before I could get a chance to forbid it.
I telegraphed him, but was of course too late.
If you haven't ever tried to invent an indoor historical game, don't.
I've got the thing at last so it will work, I guess, but I don't want any
more tasks of that kind. When I wrote you, I thought I had it; whereas I
was only merely entering upon the initiatory difficulties of it. I might
have known it wouldn't be an easy job, or somebody would have invented a
decent historical game long ago--a thing which nobody had done. I think
I've got it in pretty fair shape--so I have caveated it.
Earl of Onston--is that it? All right, we shall be very glad to receive
them and get acquainted with them. And much obliged to you, too.
There's plenty of worse people than the nobilities. I went up and spent
a week with the Marquis and the Princess Louise, and had as good a time
as I want.
I'm powerful glad you are all back again; and we will come up there if
our little tribe will give us the necessary furlough; and if we can't get
it, you folks must come to us and give us an extension of time. We get
home Sept. 11.
Hello, I think I see Waring coming!
Good-by-letter from Clark, which explains for him.
Love to you all from the
CLEMENSES.
No--it wasn't Waring. I wonder what the devil has become of that man.
He was to spend to-day with us, and the day's most gone, now.
We are enjoying your story with our usual unspeakableness; and I'm right
glad you threw in the shipwreck and the mystery--I like it. Mrs. Crane
thinks it's the best story you've written yet. We--but we always think
the last one is the best. And why shouldn't it be? Practice helps.
P. S. I thought I had sent all our loves to all of you, but Mrs. Clemens
says I haven't. Damn it, a body can't think of everything; but a woman
thinks you can. I better seal this, now--else there'll be more
criticism.
I perceive I haven't got the love in, yet. Well, we do send the love of
all the family to all the Howellses.
S. L. C.
There had been some delay and postponement in the matter of the play
which Howells and Clemens agreed to write. They did not put in the
entire month of October as they had planned, but they did put in a
portion of that month, the latter half, working out their old idea.
In the end it became a revival of Colonel Sellers, or rather a caricature
of that gentle hearted old visionary. Clemens had always complained that
the actor Raymond had never brought out the finer shades of Colonel
Sellers's character, but Raymond in his worst performance never belied
his original as did Howells and Clemens in his dramatic revival. These
two, working together, let their imaginations run riot with disastrous
results. The reader can judge something of this himself, from The
American Claimant the book which Mark Twain would later build from the
play.
But at this time they thought it a great triumph. They had "cracked
their sides" laughing over its construction, as Howells once said, and
they thought the world would do the same over its performance. They
decided to offer it to Raymond, but rather haughtily, indifferently,
because any number of other actors would be waiting for it.
But this was a miscalculation. Raymond now turned the tables. Though
favorable to the idea of a new play, he declared this one did not present
his old Sellers at all, but a lunatic. In the end he returned the MS.
with a brief note. Attempts had already been made to interest other
actors, and would continue for some time.
XXIV
LETTERS, 1884, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. CABLE'S GREAT APRIL FOOL.
"HUCK FINN" IN PRESS. MARK TWAIN FOR CLEVELAND. CLEMENS AND CABLE
Mark Twain had a lingering attack of the dramatic fever that winter.
He made a play of the Prince and Pauper, which Howells pronounced "too
thin and slight and not half long enough." He made another of Tom
Sawyer, and probably destroyed it, for no trace of the MS. exists to-day.
Howells could not join in these ventures, for he was otherwise occupied
and had sickness in his household.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
Jan. 7, '84.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--"O my goodn's", as Jean says. You have now encountered
at last the heaviest calamity that can befall an author. The scarlet
fever, once domesticated, is a permanent member of the family. Money may
desert you, friends forsake you, enemies grow indifferent to you, but the
scarlet fever will be true to you, through thick and thin, till you be
all saved or damned, down to the last one. I say these things to cheer
you.
The bare suggestion of scarlet fever in the family makes me shudder; I
believe I would almost rather have Osgood publish a book for me.
You folks have our most sincere sympathy. Oh, the intrusion of this
hideous disease is an unspeakable disaster.
My billiard table is stacked up with books relating to the Sandwich
Islands: the walls axe upholstered with scraps of paper penciled with
notes drawn from them. I have saturated myself with knowledge of that
unimaginably beautiful land and that most strange and fascinating people.
And I have begun a story. Its hidden motive will illustrate a but-little
considered fact in human nature; that the religious folly you are born in
you will die in, no matter what apparently reasonabler religious folly
may seem to have taken its place meanwhile, and abolished and obliterated
it. I start Bill Ragsdale at 12 years of age, and the heroine at 4, in
the midst of the ancient idolatrous system, with its picturesque and
amazing customs and superstitions, 3 months before the arrival of the
missionaries and the erection of a shallow Christianity upon the ruins of
the old paganism. Then these two will become educated Christians, and
highly civilized.
And then I will jump 15 years, and do Ragsdale's leper business. When we
came to dramatize, we can draw a deal of matter from the story, all ready
to our hand.
Yrs Ever
MARK.
He never finished the Sandwich Islands story which he and Howells
were to dramatize later. His head filled up with other projects,
such as publishing plans, reading-tours, and the like. The
type-setting machine does not appear in the letters of this period,
but it was an important factor, nevertheless. It was costing
several thousand dollars a month for construction and becoming
a heavy drain on Mark Twain's finances. It was necessary to
recuperate, and the anxiety for a profitable play, or some other
adventure that would bring a quick and generous return, grew out
of this need.
Clemens had established Charles L. Webster, his nephew by marriage,
in a New York office, as selling agent for the Mississippi book and
for his plays. He was also planning to let Webster publish the new
book, Huck Finn.
George W. Cable had proven his ability as a reader, and Clemens saw
possibilities in a reading combination, which was first planned to
include Aldrich, and Howells, and a private car.
But Aldrich and Howells did not warm to the idea, and the car was
eliminated from the plan. Cable came to visit Clemens in Hartford,
and was taken with the mumps, so that the reading-trip was
postponed.
The fortunes of the Sellers play were most uncertain and becoming
daily more doubtful. In February, Howells wrote: "If you have got
any comfort in regard to our play I wish you would heave it into my
bosom."
Cable recovered in time, and out of gratitude planned a great
April-fool surprise for his host. He was a systematic man, and did
it in his usual thorough way. He sent a "private and confidential"
suggestion to a hundred and fifty of Mark Twain's friends and
admirers, nearly all distinguished literary men. The suggestion
was that each one of them should send a request for Mark Twain's
autograph, timing it so that it would arrive on the 1st of April.
All seemed to have responded. Mark Twain's writing-table on April
Fool morning was heaped with letters, asking in every ridiculous
fashion for his "valuable autograph." The one from Aldrich was a
fair sample. He wrote: "I am making a collection of autographs of
our distinguished writers, and having read one of your works,
Gabriel Convoy, I would like to add your name to the list."
Of course, the joke in this was that Gabriel Convoy was by Bret
Harte, who by this time was thoroughly detested by Mark Twain. The
first one or two of the letters puzzled the victim; then he
comprehended the size and character of the joke and entered into it
thoroughly. One of the letters was from Bloodgood H. Cutter, the
"Poet Lariat" of Innocents Abroad. Cutter, of course, wrote in
"poetry," that is to say, doggerel. Mark Twain's April Fool was a
most pleasant one.
Rhymed letter by Bloodgood H. Cutter to Mark Twain:
LITTLE NECK, LONG ISLAND.
LONG ISLAND FARMER, TO HIS FRIEND AND PILGRIM BROTHER,
SAMUEL L. CLEMENS, ESQ.
Friends, suggest in each one's behalf
To write, and ask your autograph.
To refuse that, I will not do,
After the long voyage had with you.
That was a memorable time You wrote in prose, I wrote in Rhyme To
describe the wonders of each place, And the queer customs of each race.
That is in my memory yet
For while I live I'll not forget.
I often think of that affair
And the many that were with us there.
As your friends think it for the best
I ask your Autograph with the rest,
Hoping you will it to me send
'Twill please and cheer your dear old friend:
Yours truly,
BLOODGOOD H. CUTTER.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Apl 8, '84.
MY DEAR HOWELLS, It took my breath away, and I haven't recovered it yet,
entirely--I mean the generosity of your proposal to read the proofs of
Huck Finn.
Now if you mean it, old man--if you are in earnest--proceed, in God's
name, and be by me forever blest. I cannot conceive of a rational man
deliberately piling such an atrocious job upon himself; but if there is
such a man and you be that man, why then pile it on. It will cost me a
pang every time I think of it, but this anguish will be eingebusst to me
in the joy and comfort I shall get out of the not having to read the
verfluchtete proofs myself. But if you have repented of your
augenblichlicher Tobsucht and got back to calm cold reason again, I won't
hold you to it unless I find I have got you down in writing somewhere.
Herr, I would not read the proof of one of my books for any fair and
reasonable sum whatever, if I could get out of it.
The proof-reading on the P & P cost me the last rags of my religion.
M.
Howells had written that he would be glad to help out in the reading of
the proofs of Huck Finn, which book Webster by this time had in hand.
Replying to Clemens's eager and grateful acceptance now, he wrote: "It is
all perfectly true about the generosity, unless I am going to read your
proofs from one of the shabby motives which I always find at the bottom
of my soul if I examine it." A characteristic utterance, though we may
be permitted to believe that his shabby motives were fewer and less
shabby than those of mankind in general.
The proofs which Howells was reading pleased him mightily. Once, during
the summer, he wrote: "if I had written half as good a book as Huck Finn
I shouldn't ask anything better than to read the proofs; even as it is,
I don't, so send them on; they will always find me somewhere."
This was the summer of the Blaine-Cleveland campaign. Mark Twain, in
company with many other leading men, had mugwumped, and was supporting
Cleveland. From the next letter we gather something of the aspects of
that memorable campaign, which was one of scandal and vituperation. We
learn, too, that the young sculptor, Karl Gerhardt, having completed a
three years' study in Paris, had returned to America a qualified artist.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, Aug. 21, '84.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--This presidential campaign is too delicious for
anything. Isn't human nature the most consummate sham and lie that was
ever invented? Isn't man a creature to be ashamed of in pretty much all
his aspects? Man, "know thyself "--and then thou wilt despise thyself,
to a dead moral certainty. Take three quite good specimens--Hawley,
Warner, and Charley Clark. Even I do not loathe Blaine more than they
do; yet Hawley is howling for Blaine, Warner and Clark are eating their
daily crow in the paper for him, and all three will vote for him. O
Stultification, where is thy sting, O slave where is thy hickory!
I suppose you heard how a marble monument for which St. Gaudens was
pecuniarily responsible, burned down in Hartford the other day,
uninsured--for who in the world would ever think of insuring a marble
shaft in a cemetery against a fire?--and left St. Gauden out of pocket
$15,000.
It was a bad day for artists. Gerhardt finished my bust that day, and
the work was pronounced admirable by all the kin and friends; but in
putting it in plaster (or rather taking it out) next day it got ruined.
It was four or five weeks hard work gone to the dogs. The news flew, and
everybody on the farm flocked to the arbor and grouped themselves about
the wreck in a profound and moving silence--the farm-help, the colored
servants, the German nurse, the children, everybody--a silence
interrupted at wide intervals by absent-minded ejaculations wising from
unconscious breasts as the whole size of the disaster gradually worked
its way home to the realization of one spirit after another.
Some burst out with one thing, some another; the German nurse put up her
hands and said, "Oh, Schade! oh, schrecklich! "But Gerhardt said
nothing; or almost that. He couldn't word it, I suppose. But he went to
work, and by dark had everything thoroughly well under way for a fresh
start in the morning; and in three days' time had built a new bust which
was a trifle better than the old one--and to-morrow we shall put the
finishing touches on it, and it will be about as good a one as nearly
anybody can make.
Yrs Ever
MARK.
If you run across anybody who wants a bust, be sure and recommend
Gerhardt on my say-so.
But Howells was determinedly for Blaine. "I shall vote for Blaine," he
replied. "I do not believe he is guilty of the things they accuse him
of, and I know they are not proved against him. As for Cleveland, his
private life may be no worse than that of most men, but as an enemy of
that contemptible, hypocritical, lop-sided morality which says a woman
shall suffer all the shame of unchastity and man none, I want to see him
destroyed politically by his past. The men who defend him would take
their wives to the White House if he were president, but if he married
his concubine--'made her an honest woman' they would not go near him. I
can't stand that."
Certainly this was sound logic, in that day, at least. But it left
Clemens far from satisfied.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, Sept. 17, '84.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Somehow I can't seem to rest quiet under the idea of
your voting for Blaine. I believe you said something about the country
and the party. Certainly allegiance to these is well; but as certainly a
man's first duty is to his own conscience and honor--the party or the
country come second to that, and never first. I don't ask you to vote at
all--I only urge you to not soil yourself by voting for Blaine.
When you wrote before, you were able to say the charges against him were
not proven. But you know now that they are proven, and it seems to me
that that bars you and all other honest and honorable men (who are
independently situated) from voting for him.
It is not necessary to vote for Cleveland; the only necessary thing to
do, as I understand it, is that a man shall keep himself clean, (by
withholding his vote for an improper man) even though the party and the
country go to destruction in consequence. It is not parties that make or
save countries or that build them to greatness--it is clean men, clean
ordinary citizens, rank and file, the masses. Clean masses are not made
by individuals standing back till the rest become clean.
As I said before, I think a man's first duty is to his own honor; not to
his country and not to his party. Don't be offended; I mean no offence.
I am not so concerned about the rest of the nation, but--well, good-bye.
Ys Ever
MARK.
There does not appear to be any further discussion of the matter
between Howells and Clemens. Their letters for a time contained no
suggestion of politics.
Perhaps Mark Twain's own political conscience was not entirely clear
in his repudiation of his party; at least we may believe from his
next letter that his Cleveland enthusiasm was qualified by a
willingness to support a Republican who would command his admiration
and honor. The idea of an eleventh-hour nomination was rather
startling, whatever its motive.
To Mr. Pierce, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Oct. 22, '84.
MY DEAR MR. PIERCE,--You know, as well as I do, that the reason the
majority of republicans are going to vote for Blaine is because they feel
that they cannot help themselves. Do not you believe that if Mr. Edmunds
would consent to run for President, on the Independent ticket--even at
this late day--he might be elected?
Well, if he wouldn't consent, but should even strenuously protest and say
he wouldn't serve if elected, isn't it still wise and fair to nominate
him and vote for him? since his protest would relieve him from all
responsibility; and he couldn't surely find fault with people for forcing
a compliment upon him. And do not you believe that his name thus
compulsorily placed at the head of the Independent column would work
absolutely certain defeat to Blain and save the country's honor?
Politicians often carry a victory by springing some disgraceful and
rascally mine under the feet of the adversary at the eleventh hour; would
it not be wholesome to vary this thing for once and spring as formidable
a mine of a better sort under the enemy's works?
If Edmunds's name were put up, I would vote for him in the teeth of all
the protesting and blaspheming he could do in a month; and there are lots
of others who would do likewise.
If this notion is not a foolish and wicked one, won't you just consult
with some chief Independents, and see if they won't call a sudden
convention and whoop the thing through? To nominate Edmunds the 1st of
November, would be soon enough, wouldn't it?
With kindest regards to you and the Aldriches,
Yr Truly
S. L. CLEMENS.
Clemens and Cable set out on their reading-tour in November. They were a
curiously-assorted pair: Cable was of orthodox religion, exact as to
habits, neat, prim, all that Clemens was not. In the beginning Cable
undertook to read the Bible aloud to Clemens each evening, but this part
of the day's program was presently omitted by request. If they spent
Sunday in a town, Cable was up bright and early visiting the various
churches and Sunday-schools, while Mark Twain remained at the hotel, in
bed, reading or asleep.
XXV
THE GREAT YEAR OF 1885. CLEMENS AND CABLE. PUBLICATION OF "HUCK FINN."
THE GRANT MEMOIRS. MARK TWAIN AT FIFTY
The year 1885 was in some respects the most important, certainly the
most pleasantly exciting, in Mark Twain's life. It was the year in
which he entered fully into the publishing business and launched one
of the most spectacular of all publishing adventures, The Personal
Memoirs of General U. S. Grant. Clemens had not intended to do
general publishing when he arranged with Webster to become
sales-agent for the Mississippi book, and later general agent for
Huck Finn's adventures; he had intended only to handle his own
books, because he was pretty thoroughly dissatisfied with other
publishing arrangements. Even the Library of Humor, which Howells,
with Clark, of the Courant, had put together for him, he left with
Osgood until that publisher failed, during the spring of 1885.
Certainly he never dreamed of undertaking anything of the
proportions of the Grant book.
He had always believed that Grant could make a book. More than
once, when they had met, he had urged the General to prepare his
memoirs for publication. Howells, in his 'My Mark Twain', tells of
going with Clemens to see Grant, then a member of the ill-fated firm
of Grant and Ward, and how they lunched on beans, bacon and coffee
brought in from a near-by restaurant. It was while they were eating
this soldier fare that Clemens--very likely abetted by Howells
--especially urged the great commander to prepare his memoirs. But
Grant had become a financier, as he believed, and the prospect of
literary earnings, however large, did not appeal to him.
Furthermore, he was convinced that he was without literary ability
and that a book by him would prove a failure.
But then, by and by, came a failure more disastrous than anything he
had foreseen--the downfall of his firm through the Napoleonic
rascality of Ward. General Grant was utterly ruined; he was left
without income and apparently without the means of earning one. It
was the period when the great War Series was appeasing in the
Century Magazine. General Grant, hard-pressed, was induced by the
editors to prepare one or more articles, and, finding that he could
write them, became interested in the idea of a book. It is
unnecessary to repeat here the story of how the publication of this
important work passed into the hands of Mark Twain; that is to say,
the firm of Charles L. Webster & Co., the details having been fully
given elsewhere.--[See Mark Twain: A Biography, chap. cliv.]--
We will now return for the moment to other matters, as reported in
order by the letters. Clemens and Cable had continued their
reading-tour into Canada, and in February found themselves in
Montreal. Here they were invited by the Toque Bleue Snow-shoe Club
to join in one of their weekly excursions across Mt. Royal. They
could not go, and the reasons given by Mark Twain are not without
interest. The letter is to Mr. George Iles, author of Flame,
Electricity, and the Camera, and many other useful works.
To George Iles, far the Toque Blew Snow-shoe Club,
Montreal:
DETROIT, February 12, 1885.
Midnight, P.S.
MY DEAR ILES,--I got your other telegram a while ago, and answered it,
explaining that I get only a couple of hours in the middle of the day for
social life. I know it doesn't seem rational that a man should have to
lie abed all day in order to be rested and equipped for talking an hour
at night, and yet in my case and Cable's it is so. Unless I get a great
deal of rest, a ghastly dulness settles down upon me on the platform, and
turns my performance into work, and hard work, whereas it ought always to
be pastime, recreation, solid enjoyment. Usually it is just this latter,
but that is because I take my rest faithfully, and prepare myself to do
my duty by my audience.
I am the obliged and appreciative servant of my brethren of the Snow-shoe
Club, and nothing in the world would delight me more than to come to
their house without naming time or terms on my own part--but you see how
it is. My cast iron duty is to my audience--it leaves me no liberty and
no option.
With kindest regards to the Club, and to you,
I am Sincerely yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
In the next letter we reach the end of the Clemens-Cable venture and
get a characteristic summing up of Mark Twain's general attitude
toward the companion of his travels. It must be read only in the
clear realization of Mark Twain's attitude toward orthodoxy, and his
habit of humor. Cable was as rigidly orthodox as Mark Twain was
revolutionary. The two were never anything but the best of friends.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
PHILADA. Feb. 27, '85.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--To-night in Baltimore, to-morrow afternoon and night in
Washington, and my four-months platform campaign is ended at last. It
has been a curious experience. It has taught me that Cable's gifts of
mind are greater and higher than I had suspected. But--
That "But" is pointing toward his religion. You will never, never know,
never divine, guess, imagine, how loathsome a thing the Christian
religion can be made until you come to know and study Cable daily and
hourly. Mind you, I like him; he is pleasant company; I rage and swear
at him sometimes, but we do not quarrel; we get along mighty happily
together; but in him and his person I have learned to hate all religions.
He has taught me to abhor and detest the Sabbath-day and hunt up new and
troublesome ways to dishonor it.
Nat Goodwin was on the train yesterday. He plays in Washington all the
coming week. He is very anxious to get our Sellers play and play it
under changed names. I said the only thing I could do would be to write
to you. Well, I've done it.
Ys Ever
MARK.
Clemens and Webster were often at the house of General Grant during
these early days of 1885, and it must have been Webster who was
present with Clemens on the great occasion described in the
following telegram. It was on the last day and hour of President
Arthur's administration that the bill was passed which placed
Ulysses S. Grant as full General with full pay on the retired list,
and it is said that the congressional clock was set back in order
that this enactment might become a law before the administration
changed. General Grant had by this time developed cancer and was
already in feeble health.
Telegram to Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:
NEW YORK, Mar. 4, 1885.
To MRS. S. L. CLEMENS, We were at General Grant's at noon and a telegram
arrived that the last act of the expiring congress late this morning
retired him with full General's rank and accompanying emoluments. The
effect upon him was like raising the dead. We were present when the
telegram was put in his hand.
S. L. CLEMENS.
Something has been mentioned before of Mark Twain's investments and
the generally unprofitable habit of them. He had a trusting nature,
and was usually willing to invest money on any plausible
recommendation. He was one of thousands such, and being a person of
distinction he now and then received letters of inquiry, complaint,
or condolence. A minister wrote him that he had bought some stocks
recommended by a Hartford banker and advertised in a religious
paper. He added, "After I made that purchase they wrote me that you
had just bought a hundred shares and that you were a 'shrewd' man."
The writer closed by asking for further information. He received
it, as follows:
To the Rev. J----, in Baltimore:
WASHINGTON, Mch. 2,'85.
MY DEAR SIR,--I take my earliest opportunity to answer your favor of Feb.
B---- was premature in calling me a "shrewd man." I wasn't one at that
time, but am one now--that is, I am at least too shrewd to ever again
invest in anything put on the market by B----. I know nothing whatever
about the Bank Note Co., and never did know anything about it. B----
sold me about $4,000 or $5,000 worth of the stock at $110, and I own it
yet. He sold me $10,000 worth of another rose-tinted stock about the
same time. I have got that yet, also. I judge that a peculiarity of
B----'s stocks is that they are of the staying kind. I think you should
have asked somebody else whether I was a shrewd man or not for two
reasons: the stock was advertised in a religious paper, a circumstance
which was very suspicious; and the compliment came to you from a man who
was interested to make a purchaser of you. I am afraid you deserve your
loss. A financial scheme advertised in any religious paper is a thing
which any living person ought to know enough to avoid; and when the
factor is added that M. runs that religious paper, a dead person ought to
know enough to avoid it.
Very Truly Yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
The story of Huck Finn was having a wide success. Webster handled
it skillfully, and the sales were large. In almost every quarter
its welcome was enthusiastic. Here and there, however, could be
found an exception; Huck's morals were not always approved of by
library reading-committees. The first instance of this kind was
reported from Concord; and would seem not to have depressed the
author-publisher.
To Chas. L. Webster, in New York:
Mch 18, '85.
DEAR CHARLEY,--The Committee of the Public Library of Concord, Mass, have
given us a rattling tip-top puff which will go into every paper in the
country. They have expelled Huck from their library as "trash and
suitable only for the slums." That will sell 25,000 copies for us sure.
S. L. C.
Perhaps the Concord Free Trade Club had some idea of making amends
to Mark Twain for the slight put upon his book by their librarians,
for immediately after the Huck Finn incident they notified him of
his election to honorary membership.
Those were the days of "authors' readings," and Clemens and Howells
not infrequently assisted at these functions, usually given as
benefits of one kind or another. From the next letter, written
following an entertainment given for the Longfellow memorial, we
gather that Mark Twain's opinion of Howells's reading was steadily
improving.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, May 5, '85.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--.....Who taught you to read? Observation and thought,
I guess. And practice at the Tavern Club?--yes; and that was the best
teaching of all:
Well, you sent even your daintiest and most delicate and fleeting points
home to that audience--absolute proof of good reading. But you couldn't
read worth a damn a few years ago. I do not say this to flatter. It is
true I looked around for you when I was leaving, but you had already
gone.
Alas, Osgood has failed at last. It was easy to see that he was on the
very verge of it a year ago, and it was also easy to see that he was
still on the verge of it a month or two ago; but I continued to hope--but
not expect that he would pull through. The Library of Humor is at his
dwelling house, and he will hand it to you whenever you want it.
To save it from any possibility of getting mixed up in the failure,
perhaps you had better send down and get it. I told him, the other day,
that an order of any kind from you would be his sufficient warrant for
its delivery to you.
In two days General Grant has dictated 50 pages of foolscap, and thus the
Wilderness and Appomattox stand for all time in his own words. This
makes the second volume of his book as valuable as the first.
He looks mighty well, these latter days.
Yrs Ever
MARK.
"I am exceedingly glad," wrote Howells, "that you approve of my
reading, for it gives me some hope that I may do something on the
platform next winter..... but I would never read within a hundred
miles of you, if I could help it. You simply straddled down to the
footlights and took that house up in the hollow of your hand and
tickled it."
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, July 21, 1885.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--You are really my only author; I am restricted to you,
I wouldn't give a damn for the rest.
I bored through Middlemarch during the past week, with its labored and
tedious analyses of feelings and motives, its paltry and tiresome people,
its unexciting and uninteresting story, and its frequent blinding flashes
of single-sentence poetry, philosophy, wit, and what not, and nearly died
from the overwork. I wouldn't read another of those books for a farm.
I did try to read one other--Daniel Deronda. I dragged through three
chapters, losing flesh all the time, and then was honest enough to quit,
and confess to myself that I haven't any romance literature appetite, as
far as I can see, except for your books.
But what I started to say, was, that I have just read Part II of Indian
Summer, and to my mind there isn't a waste line in it, or one that could
be improved. I read it yesterday, ending with that opinion; and read it
again to-day, ending with the same opinion emphasized. I haven't read
Part I yet, because that number must have reached Hartford after we left;
but we are going to send down town for a copy, and when it comes I am to
read both parts aloud to the family. It is a beautiful story, and makes
a body laugh all the time, and cry inside, and feel so old and so
forlorn; and gives him gracious glimpses of his lost youth that fill him
with a measureless regret, and build up in him a cloudy sense of his
having been a prince, once, in some enchanted far-off land, and of being
an exile now, and desolate--and Lord, no chance ever to get back there
again! That is the thing that hurts. Well, you have done it with
marvelous facility and you make all the motives and feelings perfectly
clear without analyzing the guts out of them, the way George Eliot does.
I can't stand George Eliot and Hawthorne and those people; I see what
they are at a hundred years before they get to it and they just tire me
to death. And as for "The Bostonians," I would rather be damned to John
Bunyan's heaven than read that.
Yrs Ever
MARK
It is as easy to understand Mark Twain's enjoyment of Indian Summer
as his revolt against Daniel Deronda and The Bostonians. He cared
little for writing that did not convey its purpose in the simplest
and most direct terms. It is interesting to note that in thanking
Clemens for his compliment Howells wrote: "What people cannot see is
that I analyze as little as possible; they go on talking about the
analytical school, which I am supposed to belong to, and I want to
thank you for using your eyes..... Did you ever read De Foe's
'Roxana'? If not, then read it, not merely for some of the deepest
insights into the lying, suffering, sinning, well-meaning human
soul, but for the best and most natural English that a book was ever
written in."
General Grant worked steadily on his book, dictating when he could,
making brief notes on slips of paper when he could no longer speak.
Clemens visited him at Mt. McGregor and brought the dying soldier
the comforting news that enough of his books were already sold to
provide generously for his family, and that the sales would
aggregate at least twice as much by the end of the year.
This was some time in July. On the 23d of that month General Grant
died. Immediately there was a newspaper discussion as to the most
suitable place for the great chieftain to lie. Mark Twain's
contribution to this debate, though in the form of an open letter,
seems worthy of preservation here.
To the New York "Sun," on the proper place for Grant's Tomb:
To THE EDITOR OP' THE SUN:--SIR,--The newspaper atmosphere is charged
with objections to New York as a place of sepulchre for General Grant,
and the objectors are strenuous that Washington is the right place. They
offer good reasons--good temporary reasons--for both of these positions.
But it seems to me that temporary reasons are not mete for the occasion.
We need to consider posterity rather than our own generation. We should
select a grave which will not merely be in the right place now, but will
still be in the right place 500 years from now.
How does Washington promise as to that? You have only to hit it in one
place to kill it. Some day the west will be numerically strong enough to
move the seat of government; her past attempts are a fair warning that
when the day comes she will do it. Then the city of Washington will lose
its consequence and pass out of the public view and public talk. It is
quite within the possibilities that, a century hence, people would wonder
and say, "How did your predecessors come to bury their great dead in this
deserted place?"
But as long as American civilisation lasts New York will last. I cannot
but think she has been well and wisely chosen as the guardian of a grave
which is destined to become almost the most conspicuous in the world's
history. Twenty centuries from now New York will still be New York,
still a vast city, and the most notable object in it will still be the
tomb and monument of General Grant.
I observe that the common and strongest objection to New York is that she
is not "national ground." Let us give ourselves no uneasiness about
that. Wherever General Grant's body lies, that is national ground.
S. L. CLEMENS.
ELMIRA, July 27.
The letter that follows is very long, but it seems too important and
too interesting to be omitted in any part. General Grant's early
indulgence in liquors had long been a matter of wide, though not
very definite, knowledge. Every one had heard how Lincoln, on being
told that Grant drank, remarked something to the effect that he
would like to know what kind of whisky Grant used so that he might
get some of it for his other generals. Henry Ward Beecher, selected
to deliver a eulogy on the dead soldier, and doubtless wishing
neither to ignore the matter nor to make too much of it, naturally
turned for information to the publisher of Grant's own memoirs,
hoping from an advance copy to obtain light.
To Henry Ward Beecher,.Brooklyn:
ELMIRA, N. Y. Sept. 11, '85.
MY DEAR MR. BEECHER,--My nephew Webster is in Europe making contracts for
the Memoirs. Before he sailed he came to me with a writing, directed to
the printers and binders, to this effect:
"Honor no order for a sight or copy of the Memoirs while I am absent,
even though it be signed by Mr. Clemens himself."
I gave my permission. There were weighty reasons why I should not only
give my permission, but hold it a matter of honor to not dissolve the
order or modify it at any time. So I did all of that--said the order
should stand undisturbed to the end. If a principal could dissolve his
promise as innocently as he can dissolve his written order unguarded by
his promise, I would send you a copy of the Memoirs instantly. I did not
foresee you, or I would have made an exception.
...........................
My idea gained from army men, is that the drunkenness (and sometimes
pretty reckless spreeing, nights,) ceased before he came East to be Lt.
General. (Refer especially to Gen. Wm. B. Franklin--[If you could see
Franklin and talk with him--then he would unbosom,]) It was while Grant
was still in the West that Mr. Lincoln said he wished he could find out
what brand of whisky that fellow used, so he could furnish it to some of
the other generals. Franklin saw Grant tumble from his horse drunk,
while reviewing troops in New Orleans. The fall gave him a good deal of
a hurt. He was then on the point of leaving for the Chattanooga region.
I naturally put "that and that together" when I read Gen. O. O. Howards's
article in the Christian Union, three or four weeks ago--where he
mentions that the new General arrived lame from a recent accident.
(See that article.) And why not write Howard?
Franklin spoke positively of the frequent spreeing. In camp--in time of
war.
.........................
Captain Grant was frequently threatened by the Commandant of his Oregon
post with a report to the War Department of his conduct unless he
modified his intemperance. The report would mean dismissal from the
service. At last the report had to be made out; and then, so greatly was
the captain beloved, that he was privately informed, and was thus enabled
to rush his resignation to Washington ahead of the report. Did the
report go, nevertheless? I don't know. If it did, it is in the War
Department now, possibly, and seeable. I got all this from a regular
army man, but I can't name him to save me.
The only time General Grant ever mentioned liquor to me was about last
April or possibly May. He said:
"If I could only build up my strength! The doctors urge whisky and
champagne; but I can't take them; I can't abide the taste of any kind of
liquor."
Had he made a conquest so complete that even the taste of liquor was
become an offense? Or was he so sore over what had been said about his
habit that he wanted to persuade others and likewise himself that he
hadn't even ever had any taste for it? It sounded like the latter, but
that's no evidence.
He told me in the fall of '84 that there was something the matter with
his throat, and that at the suggestion of his physicians he had reduced
his smoking to one cigar a day. Then he added, in a casual fashion, that
he didn't care for that one, and seldom smoked it.
I could understand that feeling. He had set out to conquer not the habit
but the inclination--the desire. He had gone at the root, not the trunk.
It's the perfect way and the only true way (I speak from experience.)
How I do hate those enemies of the human race who go around enslaving
God's free people with pledges--to quit drinking instead of to quit
wanting to drink.
But Sherman and Van Vliet know everything concerning Grant; and if you
tell them how you want to use the facts, both of them will testify.
Regular army men have no concealments about each other; and yet they make
their awful statements without shade or color or malice with a frankness
and a child-like naivety, indeed, which is enchanting-and stupefying.
West Point seems to teach them that, among other priceless things not to
be got in any other college in this world. If we talked about our
guild-mates as I have heard Sherman, Grant, Van Vliet and others talk
about theirs--mates with whom they were on the best possible terms--we
could never expect them to speak to us again.
.......................
I am reminded, now, of another matter. The day of the funeral I sat an
hour over a single drink and several cigars with Van Vliet and Sherman
and Senator Sherman; and among other things Gen. Sherman said, with
impatient scorn:
"The idea of all this nonsense about Grant not being able to stand rude
language and indelicate stories! Why Grant was full of humor, and full
of the appreciation of it. I have sat with him by the hour listening to
Jim Nye's yarns, and I reckon you know the style of Jim Nye's histories,
Clemens. It makes me sick--that newspaper nonsense. Grant was no
namby-pamby fool, he was a man--all over--rounded and complete."
I wish I had thought of it! I would have said to General Grant: "Put
the drunkenness in the Memoirs--and the repentance and reform. Trust the
people."
But I will wager there is not a hint in the book. He was sore, there.
As much of the book as I have read gives no hint, as far as I recollect.
The sick-room brought out the points of Gen. Grant's character--some of
them particularly, to wit:
His patience; his indestructible equability of temper; his exceeding
gentleness, kindness, forbearance, lovingness, charity; his loyalty: to
friends, to convictions, to promises, half-promises, infinitesimal
fractions and shadows of promises; (There was a requirement of him which
I considered an atrocity, an injustice, an outrage; I wanted to implore
him to repudiate it; Fred Grant said, "Save your labor, I know him; he is
in doubt as to whether he made that half-promise or not--and, he will
give the thing the benefit of the doubt; he will fulfill that
half-promise or kill himself trying;" Fred Grant was right--he did
fulfill it;) his aggravatingly trustful nature; his genuineness,
simplicity, modesty, diffidence, self-depreciation, poverty in the
quality of vanity-and, in no contradiction of this last, his simple
pleasure in the flowers and general ruck sent to him by Tom, Dick and
Harry from everywhere--a pleasure that suggested a perennial surprise
that he should be the object of so much fine attention--he was the most
lovable great child in the world; (I mentioned his loyalty: you remember
Harrison, the colored body-servant? the whole family hated him, but that
did not make any difference, the General always stood at his back,
wouldn't allow him to be scolded; always excused his failures and
deficiencies with the one unvarying formula, "We are responsible for
these things in his race--it is not fair to visit our fault upon them
--let him alone;" so they did let him alone, under compulsion, until the
great heart that was his shield was taken away; then--well they simply
couldn't stand him, and so they were excusable for determining to
discharge him--a thing which they mortally hated to do, and by lucky
accident were saved from the necessity of doing;) his toughness as a
bargainer when doing business for other people or for his country
(witness his "terms" at Donelson, Vicksburg, etc.; Fred Grant told me his
father wound up an estate for the widow and orphans of a friend in St.
Louis--it took several years; at the end every complication had been
straightened out, and the property put upon a prosperous basis; great
sums had passed through his hands, and when he handed over the papers
there were vouchers to show what had been done with every penny) and his
trusting, easy, unexacting fashion when doing business for himself (at
that same time he was paying out money in driblets to a man who was
running his farm for him--and in his first Presidency he paid every one
of those driblets again (total, $3,000 F. said,) for he hadn't a scrap of
paper to show that he had ever paid them before; in his dealings with me
he would not listen to terms which would place my money at risk and leave
him protected--the thought plainly gave him pain, and he put it from him,
waved it off with his hands, as one does accounts of crushings and
mutilations--wouldn't listen, changed the subject;) and his fortitude!
He was under, sentence of death last spring; he sat thinking, musing,
several days--nobody knows what about; then he pulled himself together
and set to work to finish that book, a colossal task for a dying man.
Presently his hand gave out; fate seemed to have got him checkmated.
Dictation was suggested. No, he never could do that; had never tried it;
too old to learn, now. By and by--if he could only do Appomattox-well.
So he sent for a stenographer, and dictated 9,000 words at a single
sitting!--never pausing, never hesitating for a word, never repeating
--and in the written-out copy he made hardly a correction. He dictated
again, every two or three days--the intervals were intervals of
exhaustion and slow recuperation--and at last he was able to tell me that
he had written more matter than could be got into the book. I then
enlarged the book--had to. Then he lost his voice. He was not quite
done yet, however:--there was no end of little plums and spices to be
stuck in, here and there; and this work he patiently continued, a few
lines a day, with pad and pencil, till far into July, at Mt. McGregor.
One day he put his pencil aside, and said he was done--there was nothing
more to do. If I had been there I could have foretold the shock that
struck the world three days later.
Well, I've written all this, and it doesn't seem to amount to anything.
But I do want to help, if I only could. I will enclose some scraps from
my Autobiography--scraps about General Grant--they may be of some trifle
of use, and they may not--they at least verify known traits of his
character. My Autobiography is pretty freely dictated, but my idea is to
jack-plane it a little before I die, some day or other; I mean the rude
construction and rotten grammar. It is the only dictating I ever did,
and it was most troublesome and awkward work. You may return it to
Hartford.
Sincerely Yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
The old long-deferred Library of Humor came up again for discussion,
when in the fall of 1885 Howells associated himself with Harper &
Brothers. Howells's contract provided that his name was not to
appear on any book not published by the Harper firm. He wrote,
therefore, offering to sell out his interest in the enterprise for
two thousand dollars, in addition to the five hundred which he had
already received--an amount considered to be less than he was to
have received as joint author and compiler. Mark Twain's answer
pretty fully covers the details of this undertaking.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Oct. 18, 1885.
Private.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I reckon it would ruin the book that is, make it
necessary to pigeon-hole it and leave it unpublished. I couldn't publish
it without a very responsible name to support my own on the title page,
because it has so much of my own matter in it. I bought Osgood's rights
for $3,000 cash, I have paid Clark $800 and owe him $700 more, which must
of course be paid whether I publish or not. Yet I fully recognize that I
have no sort of moral right to let that ancient and procrastinated
contract hamper you in any way, and I most certainly won't. So, it is my
decision,--after thinking over and rejecting the idea of trying to buy
permission of the Harpers for $2,500 to use your name, (a proposition
which they would hate to refuse to a man in a perplexed position, and yet
would naturally have to refuse it,) to pigeon-hole the "Library": not
destroy it, but merely pigeon-hole it and wait a few years and see what
new notion Providence will take concerning it. He will not desert us
now, after putting in four licks to our one on this book all this time.
It really seems in a sense discourteous not to call it "Providence's
Library of Humor."
Now that deal is all settled, the next question is, do you need and must
you require that $2,000 now? Since last March, you know, I am carrying a
mighty load, solitary and alone--General Grant's book--and must carry it
till the first volume is 30 days old (Jan. 1st) before the relief money
will begin to flow in. From now till the first of January every dollar
is as valuable to me as it could be to a famishing tramp. If you can
wait till then--I mean without discomfort, without inconvenience--it will
be a large accommodation to me; but I will not allow you to do this favor
if it will discommode you. So, speak right out, frankly, and if you need
the money I will go out on the highway and get it, using violence, if
necessary.
Mind, I am not in financial difficulties, and am not going to be. I am
merely a starving beggar standing outside the door of plenty--obstructed
by a Yale time-lock which is set for Jan. 1st. I can stand it, and stand
it perfectly well; but the days do seem to fool along considerable slower
than they used to.
I am mighty glad you are with the Harpers. I have noticed that good men
in their employ go there to stay.
Yours ever,
MARK.
In the next letter we begin to get some idea of the size of Mark
Twain's first publishing venture, and a brief summary of results may
not be out of place here.
The Grant Life was issued in two volumes. In the early months of
the year when the agents' canvass was just beginning, Mark Twain,
with what seems now almost clairvoyant vision, prophesied a sale of
three hundred thousand sets. The actual sales ran somewhat more
than this number. On February 27, 1886, Charles L. Webster & Co.
paid to Mrs. Grant the largest single royalty check in the history
of book-publishing. The amount of it was two hundred thousand
dollars. Subsequent checks increased the aggregate return to
considerably more than double this figure. In a memorandum made by
Clemens in the midst of the canvass he wrote."
"During 100 consecutive days the sales (i. e., subscriptions) of
General Grant's book averaged 3,000 sets (6,000 single volumes) per
day: Roughly stated, Mrs. Grant's income during all that time was
$5,000 a day."
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HOTEL NORMANDIE
NEW YORK, Dec. 2, '85.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I told Webster, this afternoon, to send you that
$2,000; but he is in such a rush, these first days of publication, that
he may possibly forget it; so I write lest I forget it too. Remind me,
if he should forget. When I postponed you lately, I did it because I
thought I should be cramped for money until January, but that has turned
out to be an error, so I hasten to cut short the postponement.
I judge by the newspapers that you are in Auburndale, but I don't know it
officially.
I've got the first volume launched safely; consequently, half of the
suspense is over, and I am that much nearer the goal. We've bound and
shipped 200,000 books; and by the 10th shall finish and ship the
remaining 125,000 of the first edition. I got nervous and came down to
help hump-up the binderies; and I mean to stay here pretty much all the
time till the first days of March, when the second volume will issue.
Shan't have so much trouble, this time, though, if we get to press pretty
soon, because we can get more binderies then than are to be had in front
of the holidays. One lives and learns. I find it takes 7 binderies four
months to bind 325,000 books.
This is a good book to publish. I heard a canvasser say, yesterday, that
while delivering eleven books he took 7 new subscriptions. But we shall
be in a hell of a fix if that goes on--it will "ball up" the binderies
again.
Yrs ever
MARK.
November 30th that year was Mark Twain's fiftieth birthday, an event
noticed by the newspapers generally, and especially observed by many
of his friends. Warner, Stockton and many others sent letters;
Andrew Lang contributed a fine poem; also Oliver Wendell. Holmes
--the latter by special request of Miss Gilder--for the Critic.
These attentions came as a sort of crowning happiness at the end of
a golden year. At no time in his life were Mark Twain's fortunes
and prospects brighter; he had a beautiful family and a perfect
home. Also, he had great prosperity. The reading-tour with Cable
had been a fine success. His latest book, The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn, had added largely to his fame and income.
The publication of the Grant Memoirs had been a dazzling triumph.
Mark Twain had become recognized, not only as America's most
distinguished author, but as its most envied publisher. And now,
with his fiftieth birthday, had come this laurel from Holmes, last
of the Brahmins, to add a touch of glory to all the rest. We feel
his exaltation in his note of acknowledgment.
To Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Boston:
DEAR MR. HOLMES,--I shall never be able to tell you the half of how proud
you have made me. If I could you would say you were nearly paid for the
trouble you took. And then the family: If I can convey the electrical
surprise and gratitude and exaltation of the wife and the children last
night, when they happened upon that Critic where I had, with artful
artlessness, spread it open and retired out of view to see what would
happen--well, it was great and fine and beautiful to see, and made me
feel as the victor feels when the shouting hosts march by; and if you
also could have seen it you would have said the account was squared. For
I have brought them up in your company, as in the company of a warm and
friendly and beneficent but far-distant sun; and so, for you to do this
thing was for the sun to send down out of the skies the miracle of a
special ray and transfigure me before their faces. I knew what that poem
would be to them; I knew it would raise me up to remote and shining
heights in their eyes, to very fellowship with the chambered Nautilus
itself, and that from that fellowship they could never more dissociate me
while they should live; and so I made sure to be by when the surprise
should come.
Charles Dudley Warner is charmed with the poem for its own felicitous
sake; and so indeed am I, but more because it has drawn the sting of my
fiftieth year; taken away the pain of it, the grief of it, the somehow
shame of it, and made me glad and proud it happened.
With reverence and affection,
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Holmes wrote with his own hand: "Did Miss Gilder tell you I had
twenty-three letters spread out for answer when her suggestion came
about your anniversary? I stopped my correspondence and made my
letters wait until the lines were done."
MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1886-1900
ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
VOLUME IV.
XXVI
LETTERS, 1886-87. JANE CLEMENS'S ROMANCE. UNMAILED LETTERS, ETC.
When Clemens had been platforming with Cable and returned to
Hartford for his Christmas vacation, the Warner and Clemens families
had joined in preparing for him a surprise performance of The Prince
and the Pauper. The Clemens household was always given to
theatricals, and it was about this time that scenery and a stage
were prepared--mainly by the sculptor Gerhardt--for these home
performances, after which productions of The Prince and the Pauper
were given with considerable regularity to audiences consisting of
parents and invited friends. The subject is a fascinating one, but
it has been dwelt upon elsewhere.--[In Mark Twain: A Biography,
chaps. cliii and clx.]--We get a glimpse of one of these occasions
as well as of Mark Twain's financial progress in the next brief
note.
To W. D. Howells; in Boston:
Jan. 3, '86.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--The date set for the Prince and Pauper play is ten
days hence--Jan. 13. I hope you and Pilla can take a train that arrives
here during the day; the one that leaves Boston toward the end of the
afternoon would be a trifle late; the performance would have already
begun when you reached the house.
I'm out of the woods. On the last day of the year I had paid out
$182,000 on the Grant book and it was totally free from debt.
Yrs ever
MARK.
Mark Twain's mother was a woman of sturdy character and with a keen
sense of humor and tender sympathies. Her husband, John Marshall
Clemens, had been a man of high moral character, honored by all who
knew him, respected and apparently loved by his wife. No one would
ever have supposed that during all her years of marriage, and almost
to her death, she carried a secret romance that would only be told
at last in the weary disappointment of old age. It is a curious
story, and it came to light in this curious way:
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, May 19, '86.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--..... Here's a secret. A most curious and pathetic
romance, which has just come to light. Read these things, but don't
mention them. Last fall, my old mother--then 82--took a notion to attend
a convention of old settlers of the Mississippi Valley in an Iowa town.
My brother's wife was astonished; and represented to her the hardships
and fatigues of such a trip, and said my mother might possibly not even
survive them; and said there could be no possible interest for her in
such a meeting and such a crowd. But my mother insisted, and persisted;
and finally gained her point. They started; and all the way my mother
was young again with excitement, interest, eagerness, anticipation. They
reached the town and the hotel. My mother strode with the same eagerness
in her eye and her step, to the counter, and said:
"Is Dr. Barrett of St. Louis, here?"
"No. He was here, but he returned to St. Louis this morning."
"Will he come again?"
"No."
My mother turned away, the fire all gone from her, and said, "Let us go
home."
They went straight back to Keokuk. My mother sat silent and thinking for
many days--a thing which had never happened before. Then one day she
said:
"I will tell you a secret. When I was eighteen, a young medical student
named Barrett lived in Columbia (Ky.) eighteen miles away; and he used to
ride over to see me. This continued for some time. I loved him with my
whole heart, and I knew that he felt the same toward me, though no words
had been spoken. He was too bashful to speak--he could not do it.
Everybody supposed we were engaged--took it for granted we were--but we
were not. By and by there was to be a party in a neighboring town, and
he wrote my uncle telling him his feelings, and asking him to drive me
over in his buggy and let him (Barrett) drive me back, so that he might
have that opportunity to propose. My uncle should have done as he was
asked, without explaining anything to me; but instead, he read me the
letter; and then, of course, I could not go--and did not. He (Barrett)
left the country presently, and I, to stop the clacking tongues, and to
show him that I did not care, married, in a pet. In all these sixty-four
years I have not seen him since. I saw in a paper that he was going to
attend that Old Settlers' Convention. Only three hours before we reached
that hotel, he had been standing there!"
Since then, her memory is wholly faded out and gone; and now she writes
letters to the school-mates who had been dead forty years, and wonders
why they neglect her and do not answer.
Think of her carrying that pathetic burden in her old heart sixty-four
years, and no human being ever suspecting it!
Yrs ever,
MARK.
We do not get the idea from this letter that those two long ago
sweethearts quarreled, but Mark Twain once spoke of their having done so,
and there may have been a disagreement, assuming that there was a
subsequent meeting. It does not matter, now. In speaking of it, Mark
Twain once said: "It is as pathetic a romance as any that has crossed the
field of my personal experience in a long lifetime."--[When Mark Twain:
A Biography was written this letter had not come to light, and the matter
was stated there in accordance with Mark Twain's latest memory of it.]
Howells wrote: "After all, how poor and hackneyed all the inventions are
compared with the simple and stately facts. Who could have imagined such
a heart-break as that? Yet it went along with the fulfillment of
everyday duty and made no more noise than a grave under foot. I doubt if
fiction will ever get the knack of such things."
Jane Clemens now lived with her son Orion and his wife, in Keokuk, where
she was more contented than elsewhere. In these later days her memory
had become erratic, her realization of events about her uncertain, but
there were times when she was quite her former self, remembering clearly
and talking with her old-time gaiety of spirit. Mark Twain frequently
sent her playful letters to amuse her, letters full of such boyish gaiety
as had amused her long years before. The one that follows is a fair
example. It was written after a visit which Clemens and his family had
paid to Keokuk.
To Jane Clemens, in Keokuk:
ELMIRA, Aug. 7, '86.
DEAR MA,--I heard that Molly and Orion and Pamela had been sick, but I
see by your letter that they are much better now, or nearly well. When
we visited you a month ago, it seemed to us that your Keokuk weather was
pretty hot; Jean and Clara sat up in bed at Mrs. McElroy's and cried
about it, and so did I; but I judge by your letter that it has cooled
down, now, so that a person is comparatively comfortable, with his skin
off. Well it did need cooling; I remember that I burnt a hole in my
shirt, there, with some ice cream that fell on it; and Miss Jenkins told
me they never used a stove, but cooked their meals on a marble-topped
table in the drawing-room, just with the natural heat. If anybody else
had told me, I would not have believed it. I was told by the Bishop of
Keokuk that he did not allow crying at funerals, because it scalded the
furniture. If Miss Jenkins had told me that, I would have believed it.
This reminds me that you speak of Dr. Jenkins and his family as if they
were strangers to me. Indeed they are not. Don't you suppose I remember
gratefully how tender the doctor was with Jean when she hurt her arm, and
how quickly he got the pain out of the hurt, whereas I supposed it was
going to last at least an hour? No, I don't forget some things as easily
as I do others.
Yes, it was pretty hot weather. Now here, when a person is going to die,
he is always in a sweat about where he is going to; but in Keokuk of
course they don't care, because they are fixed for everything. It has
set me reflecting, it has taught me a lesson. By and by, when my health
fails, I am going to put all my affairs in order, and bid good-bye to my
friends here, and kill all the people I don't like, and go out to Keokuk
and prepare for death.
They are all well in this family, and we all send love.
Affly Your Son
SAM.
The ways of city officials and corporations are often past
understanding, and Mark Twain sometimes found it necessary to write
picturesque letters of protest. The following to a Hartford
lighting company is a fair example of these documents.
To a gas and electric-lighting company, in Hartford:
GENTLEMEN,--There are but two places in our whole street where lights
could be of any value, by any accident, and you have measured and
appointed your intervals so ingeniously as to leave each of those places
in the centre of a couple of hundred yards of solid darkness. When I
noticed that you were setting one of your lights in such a way that I
could almost see how to get into my gate at night, I suspected that it
was a piece of carelessness on the part of the workmen, and would be
corrected as soon as you should go around inspecting and find it out.
My judgment was right; it is always right, when you axe concerned. For
fifteen years, in spite of my prayers and tears, you persistently kept a
gas lamp exactly half way between my gates, so that I couldn't find
either of them after dark; and then furnished such execrable gas that I
had to hang a danger signal on the lamp post to keep teams from running
into it, nights. Now I suppose your present idea is, to leave us a
little more in the dark.
Don't mind us--out our way; we possess but one vote apiece, and no rights
which you are in any way bound to respect. Please take your electric
light and go to--but never mind, it is not for me to suggest; you will
probably find the way; and any way you can reasonably count on divine
assistance if you lose your bearings.
S. L. CLEMENS.
[Etext Editor's Note: Twain wrote another note to Hartford Gas and
Electric, which he may not have mailed and which Paine does not
include in these volumes:
"Gentleman:--Someday you are going to move me almost to the point
of irritation with your God-damned chuckle headed fashion of
turning off your God-damned gas without giving notice to your
God-damned parishioners--and you did it again last night--"
D.W.]
Frequently Clemens did not send letters of this sort after they were
written. Sometimes he realized the uselessness of such protest,
sometimes the mere writing of them had furnished the necessary
relief, and he put, the letter away, or into the wastebasket, and
wrote something more temperate, or nothing at all. A few such
letters here follow.
Clemens was all the time receiving application from people who
wished him to recommend one article or another; books, plays,
tobacco, and what not. They were generally persistent people,
unable to accept a polite or kindly denial. Once he set down some
remarks on this particular phase of correspondence. He wrote:
I
No doubt Mr. Edison has been offered a large interest in many and many an
electrical project, for the use of his name to float it withal. And no
doubt all men who have achieved for their names, in any line of activity
whatever, a sure market value, have been familiar with this sort of
solicitation. Reputation is a hall-mark: it can remove doubt from pure
silver, and it can also make the plated article pass for pure.
And so, people without a hall-mark of their own are always trying to get
the loan of somebody else's.
As a rule, that kind of a person sees only one side of the case. He sees
that his invention or his painting or his book is--apparently--a trifle
better than you yourself can do, therefore why shouldn't you be willing
to put your hall-mark on it? You will be giving the purchaser his full
money's worth; so who is hurt, and where is the harm? Besides, are you
not helping a struggling fellow-craftsman, and is it not your duty to do
that?
That side is plenty clear enough to him, but he can't and won't see the
other side, to-wit: that you are a rascal if you put your hall-mark upon
a thing which you did not produce yourself, howsoever good it may be.
How simple that is; and yet there are not two applicants in a hundred who
can, be made to see it.
When one receives an application of this sort, his first emotion is an
indignant sense of insult; his first deed is the penning of a sharp
answer. He blames nobody but that other person. That person is a very
base being; he must be; he would degrade himself for money, otherwise it
would not occur to him that you would do such a thing. But all the same,
that application has done its work, and taken you down in your own
estimation. You recognize that everybody hasn't as high an opinion of
you as you have of yourself; and in spite of you there ensues an interval
during which you are not, in your own estimation as fine a bird as you
were before.
However, being old and experienced, you do not mail your sharp letter,
but leave it lying a day. That saves you. For by that time you have
begun to reflect that you are a person who deals in exaggerations--and
exaggerations are lies. You meant yours to be playful, and thought you
made them unmistakably so. But you couldn't make them playfulnesses to a
man who has no sense of the playful and can see nothing but the serious
side of things. You rattle on quite playfully, and with measureless
extravagance, about how you wept at the tomb of Adam; and all in good
time you find to your astonishment that no end of people took you at your
word and believed you. And presently they find out that you were not in
earnest. They have been deceived; therefore, (as they argue--and there
is a sort of argument in it,) you are a deceiver. If you will deceive in
one way, why shouldn't you in another? So they apply for the use of your
trade-mark. You are amazed and affronted. You retort that you are not
that kind of person. Then they are amazed and affronted; and wonder
"since when?"
By this time you have got your bearings. You realize that perhaps there
is a little blame on both sides. You are in the right frame, now. So
you write a letter void of offense, declining. You mail this one; you
pigeon-hole the other.
That is, being old and experienced, you do, but early in your career, you
don't: you mail the first one.
II
An enthusiast who had a new system of musical notation, wrote to me and
suggested that a magazine article from me, contrasting the absurdities of
the old system with the simplicities of his new one, would be sure to
make a "rousing hit." He shouted and shouted over the marvels wrought by
his system, and quoted the handsome compliments which had been paid it by
famous musical people; but he forgot to tell me what his notation was
like, or what its simplicities consisted in. So I could not have written
the article if I had wanted to--which I didn't; because I hate strangers
with axes to grind. I wrote him a courteous note explaining how busy I
was--I always explain how busy I am--and casually drooped this remark:
"I judge the X-X notation to be a rational mode of representing music, in
place of the prevailing fashion, which was the invention of an idiot."
Next mail he asked permission to print that meaningless remark.
I answered, no--courteously, but still, no; explaining that I could not
afford to be placed in the attitude of trying to influence people with a
mere worthless guess. What a scorcher I got, next mail! Such irony!
such sarcasm, such caustic praise of my superhonorable loyalty to the
public! And withal, such compassion for my stupidity, too, in not being
able to understand my own language. I cannot remember the words of this
letter broadside, but there was about a page used up in turning this idea
round and round and exposing it in different lights.
Unmailed Answer:
DEAR SIR,--What is the trouble with you? If it is your viscera, you
cannot have them taken out and reorganized a moment too soon. I mean,
if they are inside. But if you are composed of them, that is another
matter. Is it your brain? But it could not be your brain. Possibly it
is your skull: you want to look out for that. Some people, when they get
an idea, it pries the structure apart. Your system of notation has got
in there, and couldn't find room, without a doubt that is what the
trouble is. Your skull was not made to put ideas in, it was made to
throw potatoes at.
Yours Truly.
Mailed Answer:
DEAR SIR,--Come, come--take a walk; you disturb the children.
Yours Truly.
There was a day, now happily nearly over, when certain newspapers made a
practice of inviting men distinguished in any walk of life to give their
time and effort without charge to express themselves on some subject of
the day, or perhaps they were asked to send their favorite passages in
prose or verse, with the reasons why. Such symposiums were "features"
that cost the newspapers only the writing of a number of letters,
stationery, and postage. To one such invitation Mark Twain wrote two
replies. They follow herewith:
Unmailed Answer:
DEAR SIR,--I have received your proposition--which you have imitated from
a pauper London periodical which had previously imitated the idea of this
sort of mendicancy from seventh-rate American journalism, where it
originated as a variation of the inexpensive "interview."
Why do you buy Associated Press dispatches? To make your paper the more
salable, you answer. But why don't you try to beg them? Why do you
discriminate? I can sell my stuff; why should I give it to you? Why
don't you ask me for a shirt? What is the difference between asking me
for the worth of a shirt and asking me for the shirt itself? Perhaps you
didn't know you were begging. I would not use that argument--it makes
the user a fool. The passage of poetry--or prose, if you will--which has
taken deepest root in my thought, and which I oftenest return to and
dwell upon with keenest no matter what, is this: That the proper place
for journalists who solicit literary charity is on the street corner with
their hats in their hands.
Mailed Answer:
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of recent date is received, but I am obliged by
press of work to decline.
The manager of a traveling theatrical company wrote that he had
taken the liberty of dramatizing Tom Sawyer, and would like also the
use of the author's name--the idea being to convey to the public
that it was a Mark Twain play. In return for this slight favor the
manager sent an invitation for Mark Twain to come and see the play
--to be present on the opening night, as it were, at his (the
manager's) expense. He added that if the play should be a go in the
cities there might be some "arrangement" of profits. Apparently
these inducements did not appeal to Mark Twain. The long unmailed
reply is the more interesting, but probably the briefer one that
follows it was quite as effective.
Unmailed Answer:
HARTFORD, Sept. 8, '87.
DEAR SIR,--And so it has got around to you, at last; and you also have
"taken the liberty." You are No. 1365. When 1364 sweeter and better
people, including the author, have "tried" to dramatize Tom Sawyer and
did not arrive, what sort of show do you suppose you stand? That is a
book, dear sir, which cannot be dramatized. One might as well try to
dramatize any other hymn. Tom Sawyer is simply a hymn, put into prose
form to give it a worldly air.
Why the pale doubt that flitteth dim and nebulous athwart the forecastle
of your third sentence? Have no fears. Your piece will be a Go.
It will go out the back door on the first night. They've all done it
--the 1364. So will 1365. Not one of us ever thought of the simple
device of half-soling himself with a stove-lid. Ah, what suffering a
little hindsight would have saved us. Treasure this hint.
How kind of you to invite me to the funeral. Go to; I have attended a
thousand of them. I have seen Tom Sawyer's remains in all the different
kinds of dramatic shrouds there are. You cannot start anything fresh.
Are you serious when you propose to pay my expence--if that is the
Susquehannian way of spelling it? And can you be aware that I charge a
hundred dollars a mile when I travel for pleasure? Do you realize that
it is 432 miles to Susquehanna? Would it be handy for you to send me the
$43,200 first, so I could be counting it as I come along; because
railroading is pretty dreary to a sensitive nature when there's nothing
sordid to buck at for Zeitvertreib.
Now as I understand it, dear and magnanimous 1365, you are going to
recreate Tom Sawyer dramatically, and then do me the compliment to put me
in the bills as father of this shady offspring. Sir, do you know that
this kind of a compliment has destroyed people before now? Listen.
Twenty-four years ago, I was strangely handsome. The remains of it are
still visible through the rifts of time. I was so handsome that human
activities ceased as if spellbound when I came in view, and even
inanimate things stopped to look--like locomotives, and district
messenger boys and so-on. In San Francisco, in the rainy season I was
often mistaken for fair weather. Upon one occasion I was traveling in
the Sonora region, and stopped for an hour's nooning, to rest my horse
and myself. All the town came out to look. The tribes of Indians
gathered to look. A Piute squaw named her baby for me,--a voluntary
compliment which pleased me greatly. Other attentions were paid me.
Last of all arrived the president and faculty of Sonora University and
offered me the post of Professor of Moral Culture and the Dogmatic
Humanities; which I accepted gratefully, and entered at once upon my
duties. But my name had pleased the Indians, and in the deadly kindness
of their hearts they went on naming their babies after me. I tried to
stop it, but the Indians could not understand why I should object to so
manifest a compliment. The thing grew and grew and spread and spread and
became exceedingly embarrassing. The University stood it a couple of
years; but then for the sake of the college they felt obliged to call a
halt, although I had the sympathy of the whole faculty. The president
himself said to me, "I am as sorry as I can be for you, and would still
hold out if there were any hope ahead; but you see how it is: there are a
hundred and thirty-two of them already, and fourteen precincts to hear
from. The circumstance has brought your name into most wide and
unfortunate renown. It causes much comment--I believe that that is not
an over-statement. Some of this comment is palliative, but some of it
--by patrons at a distance, who only know the statistics without the
explanation,--is offensive, and in some cases even violent. Nine
students have been called home. The trustees of the college have been
growing more and more uneasy all these last months--steadily along with
the implacable increase in your census--and I will not conceal from you
that more than once they have touched upon the expediency of a change in
the Professorship of Moral Culture. The coarsely sarcastic editorial in
yesterday's Alta, headed Give the Moral Acrobat a Rest--has brought
things to a crisis, and I am charged with the unpleasant duty of
receiving your resignation."
I know you only mean me a kindness, dear 1365, but it is a most deadly
mistake. Please do not name your Injun for me. Truly Yours.
Mailed Answer:
NEW YORK, Sept. 8. 1887.
DEAR SIR,--Necessarily I cannot assent to so strange a proposition. And
I think it but fair to warn you that if you put the piece on the stage,
you must take the legal consequences.
Yours respectfully,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Before the days of international copyright no American author's
books were pirated more freely by Canadian publishers than those of
Mark Twain. It was always a sore point with him that these books,
cheaply printed, found their way into the United States, and were
sold in competition with his better editions. The law on the
subject seemed to be rather hazy, and its various interpretations
exasperating. In the next unmailed letter Mark Twain relieves
himself to a misguided official. The letter is worth reading today,
if for no other reason, to show the absurdity of copyright
conditions which prevailed at that time.
Unmailed Letter to H. C. Christiancy, on book Piracy:
HARTFORD, Dec. 18, '87.
H. C. CHRISTIANCY, ESQ.
DEAR SIR,--As I understand it, the position of the U. S. Government is
this: If a person be captured on the border with counterfeit bonds in his
hands--bonds of the N. Y. Central Railway, for instance--the procedure in
his case shall be as follows:
1. If the N. Y. C. have not previously filed in the several police
offices along the border, proof of ownership of the originals of the
bonds, the government officials must collect a duty on the counterfeits,
and then let them go ahead and circulate in this country.
2. But if there is proof already on file, then the N. Y. C. may pay the
duty and take the counterfeits.
But in no case will the United States consent to go without its share of
the swag. It is delicious. The biggest and proudest government on earth
turned sneak-thief; collecting pennies on stolen property, and pocketing
them with a greasy and libidinous leer; going into partnership with
foreign thieves to rob its own children; and when the child escapes the
foreigner, descending to the abysmal baseness of hanging on and robbing
the infant all alone by itself! Dear sir, this is not any more
respectable than for a father to collect toll on the forced prostitution
of his own daughter; in fact it is the same thing. Upon these terms,
what is a U. S. custom house but a "fence?" That is all it is: a
legalized trader in stolen goods.
And this nasty law, this filthy law, this unspeakable law calls itself a
"regulation for the protection of owners of copyright!" Can sarcasm go
further than that? In what way does it protect them? Inspiration itself
could not furnish a rational answer to that question. Whom does it
protect, then? Nobody, as far as I can see, but the foreign thief
--sometimes--and his fellow-footpad the U. S. government, all the time.
What could the Central Company do with the counterfeit bonds after it had
bought them of the star spangled banner Master-thief? Sell them at a
dollar apiece and fetch down the market for the genuine hundred-dollar
bond? What could I do with that 20-cent copy of "Roughing It" which the
United States has collared on the border and is waiting to release to me
for cash in case I am willing to come down to its moral level and help
rob myself? Sell it at ten or fifteen cents--duty added--and destroy the
market for the original $3,50 book? Who ever did invent that law? I
would like to know the name of that immortal jackass.
Dear sir, I appreciate your courtesy in stretching your authority in the
desire to do me a kindness, and I sincerely thank you for it. But I have
no use for that book; and if I were even starving for it I would not pay
duty on in either to get it or suppress it. No doubt there are ways in
which I might consent to go into partnership with thieves and fences,
but this is not one of them. This one revolts the remains of my
self-respect; turns my stomach. I think I could companion with a
highwayman who carried a shot-gun and took many risks; yes, I think
I should like that if I were younger; but to go in with a big rich
government that robs paupers, and the widows and orphans of paupers and
takes no risk--why the thought just gags me.
Oh, no, I shall never pay any duties on pirated books of mine. I am much
too respectable for that--yet awhile. But here--one thing that grovels
me is this: as far as I can discover--while freely granting that the
U. S. copyright laws are far and away the most idiotic that exist
anywhere on the face of the earth--they don't authorize the government to
admit pirated books into this country, toll or no toll. And so I think
that that regulation is the invention of one of those people--as a rule,
early stricken of God, intellectually--the departmental interpreters of
the laws, in Washington. They can always be depended on to take any
reasonably good law and interpret the common sense all out of it. They
can be depended on, every time, to defeat a good law, and make it
inoperative--yes, and utterly grotesque, too, mere matter for laughter
and derision. Take some of the decisions of the Post-office Department,
for instance--though I do not mean to suggest that that asylum is any
worse than the others for the breeding and nourishing of incredible
lunatics--I merely instance it because it happens to be the first to come
into my mind. Take that case of a few years ago where the P. M. General
suddenly issued an edict requiring you to add the name of the State after
Boston, New York, Chicago, &c, in your superscriptions, on pain of having
your letter stopped and forwarded to the dead-letter office; yes, and I
believe he required the county, too. He made one little concession in
favor of New York: you could say "New York City," and stop there; but if
you left off the "city," you must add "N. Y." to your "New York." Why,
it threw the business of the whole country into chaos and brought
commerce almost to a stand-still. Now think of that! When that man goes
to--to--well, wherever he is going to--we shan't want the microscopic
details of his address. I guess we can find him.
Well, as I was saying, I believe that this whole paltry and ridiculous
swindle is a pure creation of one of those cabbages that used to be at
the head of one of those Retreats down there--Departments, you know--and
that you will find it so, if you will look into it. And moreover--but
land, I reckon we are both tired by this time.
Truly Yours,
MARK TWAIN.
XXVII
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS OF 1887. LITERARY ARTICLES. PEACEFUL DAYS AT THE
FARM. FAVORITE READING. APOLOGY TO MRS. CLEVELAND, ETC.
We have seen in the preceding chapter how unknown aspirants in one field
or another were always seeking to benefit by Mark Twain's reputation.
Once he remarked, "The symbol of the human race ought to be an ax; every
human being has one concealed about him somewhere." He declared when a
stranger called on him, or wrote to him, in nine cases out of ten he
could distinguish the gleam of the ax almost immediately. The following
letter is closely related to those of the foregoing chapter, only that
this one was mailed--not once, but many times, in some form adapted to
the specific applicant. It does not matter to whom it was originally
written, the name would not be recognized.
To Mrs. T. Concerning unearned credentials, etc.
HARTFORD, 1887.
MY DEAR MADAM,--It is an idea which many people have had, but it is of no
value. I have seen it tried out many and many a time. I have seen a
lady lecturer urged and urged upon the public in a lavishly complimentary
document signed by Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes and some others of
supreme celebrity, but--there was nothing in her and she failed. If
there had been any great merit in her she never would have needed those
men's help and (at her rather mature age,) would never have consented to
ask for it.
There is an unwritten law about human successes, and your sister must bow
to that law, she must submit to its requirements. In brief this law is:
1. No occupation without an apprenticeship.
2. No pay to the apprentice.
This law stands right in the way of the subaltern who wants to be a
General before he has smelt powder; and it stands (and should stand) in
everybody's way who applies for pay or position before he has served his
apprenticeship and proved himself. Your sister's course is perfectly
plain. Let her enclose this letter to Maj. J. B. Pond, and offer to
lecture a year for $10 a week and her expenses, the contract to be
annullable by him at any time, after a month's notice, but not annullable
by her at all. The second year, he to have her services, if he wants
them, at a trifle under the best price offered her by anybody else.
She can learn her trade in those two years, and then be entitled to
remuneration--but she can not learn it in any less time than that, unless
she is a human miracle.
Try it, and do not be afraid. It is the fair and right thing. If she
wins, she will win squarely and righteously, and never have to blush.
Truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Howells wrote, in February, offering to get a publisher to take the
Library of Humor off Mark Twain's hands. Howells had been paid
twenty-six hundred dollars for the work on it, and his conscience
hurt him when he reflected that the book might never be used. In
this letter he also refers to one of the disastrous inventions in
which Clemens had invested--a method of casting brass dies for
stamping book-covers and wall-paper. Howells's purpose was to
introduce something of the matter into his next story. Mark Twain's
reply gives us a light on this particular invention.
HARTFORD, Feb. 15, '87.
DEAR HOWELLS,--I was in New York five days ago, and Webster mentioned the
Library, and proposed to publish it a year or a year and half hence.
I have written him your proposition to-day. (The Library is part of the
property of the C. L. W. & Co. firm.)
I don't remember what that technical phrase was, but I think you will
find it in any Cyclopedia under the head of "Brass." The thing I best
remember is, that the self-styled "inventor" had a very ingenious way of
keeping me from seeing him apply his invention: the first appointment was
spoiled by his burning down the man's shop in which it was to be done,
the night before; the second was spoiled by his burning down his own shop
the night before. He unquestionably did both of these things. He really
had no invention; the whole project was a blackmailing swindle, and cost
me several thousand dollars.
The slip you sent me from the May "Study" has delighted Mrs. Clemens and
me to the marrow. To think that thing might be possible to many; but to
be brave enough to say it is possible to you only, I certainly believe.
The longer I live the clearer I perceive how unmatchable, how
unapproachable, a compliment one pays when he says of a man "he has the
courage (to utter) his convictions." Haven't you had reviewers talk Alps
to you, and then print potato hills?
I haven't as good an opinion of my work as you hold of it, but I've
always done what I could to secure and enlarge my good opinion of it.
I've always said to myself, "Everybody reads it and that's something--it
surely isn't pernicious, or the most acceptable people would get pretty
tired of it." And when a critic said by implication that it wasn't high
and fine, through the remark "High and fine literature is wine" I
retorted (confidentially, to myself,) "yes, high and fine literature is
wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water."
You didn't tell me to return that proof-slip, so I have pasted it into my
private scrap-book. None will see it there. With a thousand thanks.
Ys Ever
MARK.
Our next letter is an unmailed answer, but it does not belong with
the others, having been withheld for reasons of quite a different
sort. Jeanette Gilder, then of the Critic, was one of Mark Twain's
valued friends. In the comment which he made, when it was shown to
him twenty-two years later, he tells us why he thinks this letter
was not sent. The name, "Rest-and-be-Thankful," was the official
title given to the summer place at Elmira, but it was more often
known as "Quarry Farm."
To Jeannette Gilder (not mailed):
HARTFORD, May 14, '87.
MY DEAR MISS GILDER,--We shall spend the summer at the same old place-the
remote farm called "Rest-and-be-Thankful," on top of the hills three
miles from Elmira, N. Y. Your other question is harder to answer. It is
my habit to keep four or five books in process of erection all the time,
and every summer add a few courses of bricks to two or three of them; but
I cannot forecast which of the two or three it is going to be. It takes
seven years to complete a book by this method, but still it is a good
method: gives the public a rest. I have been accused of "rushing into
print" prematurely, moved thereto by greediness for money; but in truth
I have never done that. Do you care for trifles of information? (Well,
then, "Tom Sawyer" and "The Prince and the Pauper" were each on the
stocks two or three years, and "Old Times on the Mississippi" eight.)
One of my unfinished books has been on the stocks sixteen years; another
seventeen. This latter book could have been finished in a day, at any
time during the past five years. But as in the first of these two
narratives all the action takes place in Noah's ark, and as in the other
the action takes place in heaven, there seemed to be no hurry, and so I
have not hurried. Tales of stirring adventure in those localities do not
need to be rushed to publication lest they get stale by waiting. In
twenty-one years, with all my time at my free disposal I have written and
completed only eleven books, whereas with half the labor that a
journalist does I could have written sixty in that time. I do not
greatly mind being accused of a proclivity for rushing into print, but
at the same time I don't believe that the charge is really well founded.
Suppose I did write eleven books, have you nothing to be grateful for?
Go to---remember the forty-nine which I didn't write.
Truly Yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
Notes (added twenty-two years later):
Stormfield, April 30, 1909. It seems the letter was not sent. I
probably feared she might print it, and I couldn't find a way to say so
without running a risk of hurting her. No one would hurt Jeannette
Gilder purposely, and no one would want to run the risk of doing it
unintentionally. She is my neighbor, six miles away, now, and I must
ask her about this ancient letter.
I note with pride and pleasure that I told no untruths in my unsent
answer. I still have the habit of keeping unfinished books lying around
years and years, waiting. I have four or five novels on hand at present
in a half-finished condition, and it is more than three years since I
have looked at any of them. I have no intention of finishing them.
I could complete all of them in less than a year, if the impulse should
come powerfully upon me: Long, long ago money-necessity furnished that
impulse once, ("Following the Equator"), but mere desire for money has
never furnished it, so far as I remember. Not even money-necessity was
able to overcome me on a couple of occasions when perhaps I ought to have
allowed it to succeed. While I was a bankrupt and in debt two offers
were made me for weekly literary contributions to continue during a year,
and they would have made a debtless man of me, but I declined them, with
my wife's full approval, for I had known of no instance where a man had
pumped himself out once a week and failed to run "emptyings" before the
year was finished.
As to that "Noah's Ark" book, I began it in Edinburgh in 1873;--[This is
not quite correct. The "Noah's Ark" book was begun in Buffalo in 1870.]
I don't know where the manuscript is now. It was a Diary, which
professed to be the work of Shem, but wasn't. I began it again several
months ago, but only for recreation; I hadn't any intention of carrying
it to a finish
--or even to the end of the first chapter, in fact.
As to the book whose action "takes place in Heaven." That was a small
thing, ("Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.") It lay in my
pigeon-holes 40 years, then I took it out and printed it in Harper's
Monthly last year.
S. L. C.
In the next letter we get a pretty and peaceful picture of
"Rest-and-be-Thankful." These were Mark Twain's balmy days. The
financial drain of the type-machine was heavy but not yet exhausting, and
the prospect of vast returns from it seemed to grow brighter each day.
His publishing business, though less profitable, was still prosperous,
his family life was ideal. How gratefully, then, he could enter into the
peace of that "perfect day."
To Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Ia.:
ON THE HILL NEAR ELMIRA, July 10, '87.
DEAR MOLLIE,--This is a superb Sunday for weather--very cloudy, and the
thermometer as low as 65. The city in the valley is purple with shade,
as seen from up here at the study. The Cranes are reading and loafing in
the canvas-curtained summer-house 50 yards away on a higher (the highest)
point; the cats are loafing over at "Ellerslie" which is the children's
estate and dwellinghouse in their own private grounds (by deed from Susie
Crane) a hundred yards from the study, amongst the clover and young oaks
and willows. Livy is down at the house, but I shall now go and bring her
up to the Cranes to help us occupy the lounges and hammocks--whence a
great panorama of distant hill and valley and city is seeable. The
children have gone on a lark through the neighboring hills and woods.
It is a perfect day indeed.
With love to you all.
SAM.
Two days after this letter was written we get a hint of what was the
beginning of business trouble--that is to say, of the failing health of
Charles L. Webster. Webster was ambitious, nervous, and not robust.
He had overworked and was paying the penalty. His trouble was
neurasthenia, and he was presently obliged to retire altogether from the
business. The "Sam and Mary" mentioned were Samuel Moffet and his wife.
To Mrs. Pamela Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y.
ELMIRA, July 12, '87
MY DEAR SISTER,--I had no idea that Charley's case was so serious.
I knew it was bad, and persistent, but I was not aware of the full size
of the matter.
I have just been writing to a friend in Hartford' who treated what I
imagine was a similar case surgically last fall, and produced a permanent
cure. If this is a like case, Charley must go to him.
If relief fails there, he must take the required rest, whether the
business can stand it or not.
It is most pleasant to hear such prosperous accounts of Sam and Mary,
I do not see how Sam could well be more advantageously fixed. He can
grow up with that paper, and achieve a successful life.
It is not all holiday here with Susie and Clara this time. They have to
put in some little time every day on their studies. Jean thinks she is
studying too, but I don't know what it is unless it is the horses; she
spends the day under their heels in the stables--and that is but a
continuation of her Hartford system of culture.
With love from us all to you all.
Affectionately
SAM.
Mark Twain had a few books that he read regularly every year or two.
Among these were 'Pepys's Diary', Suetonius's 'Lives of the Twelve
Caesars', and Thomas Carlyle's 'French Revolution'. He had a passion for
history, biography, and personal memoirs of any sort. In his early life
he had cared very little for poetry, but along in the middle eighties he
somehow acquired a taste for Browning and became absorbed in it.
A Browning club assembled as often as once a week at the Clemens home in
Hartford to listen to his readings of the master. He was an impressive
reader, and he carefully prepared himself for these occasions, indicating
by graduated underscorings, the exact values he wished to give to words
and phrases. Those were memorable gatherings, and they must have
continued through at least two winters. It is one of the puzzling phases
of Mark Twain's character that, notwithstanding his passion for direct
and lucid expression, he should have found pleasure in the poems of
Robert Browning.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, Aug. 22, '87.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--How stunning are the changes which age makes in a man
while he sleeps. When I finished Carlyle's French Revolution in 1871,
I was a Girondin; every time I have read it since, I have read it
differently being influenced and changed, little by little, by life and
environment (and Taine and St. Simon): and now I lay the book down once
more, and recognize that I am a Sansculotte!--And not a pale,
characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat. Carlyle teaches no such gospel
so the change is in me--in my vision of the evidences.
People pretend that the Bible means the same to them at 50 that it did at
all former milestones in their journey. I wonder how they can lie so.
It comes of practice, no doubt. They would not say that of Dickens's or
Scott's books. Nothing remains the same. When a man goes back to look
at the house of his childhood, it has always shrunk: there is no instance
of such a house being as big as the picture in memory and imagination
call for. Shrunk how? Why, to its correct dimensions: the house hasn't
altered; this is the first time it has been in focus.
Well, that's loss. To have house and Bible shrink so, under the
disillusioning corrected angle, is loss-for a moment. But there are
compensations. You tilt the tube skyward and bring planets and comets
and corona flames a hundred and fifty thousand miles high into the field.
Which I see you have done, and found Tolstoi. I haven't got him in focus
yet, but I've got Browning . . . .
Ys Ever
MARK.
Mention has been made already of Mark Twain's tendency to
absentmindedness. He was always forgetting engagements, or getting
them wrong. Once he hurried to an afternoon party, and finding the
mistress of the house alone, sat down and talked to her comfortably
for an hour or two, not remembering his errand at all. It was only
when he reached home that he learned that the party had taken place
the week before. It was always dangerous for him to make
engagements, and he never seemed to profit by sorrowful experience.
We, however, may profit now by one of his amusing apologies.
To Mrs. Grover Cleveland, in Washington:
HARTFORD, Nov. 6, 1887.
MY DEAR MADAM,--I do not know how it is in the White House, but in this
house of ours whenever the minor half of the administration tries to run
itself without the help of the major half it gets aground. Last night
when I was offered the opportunity to assist you in the throwing open the
Warner brothers superb benefaction in Bridgeport to those fortunate
women, I naturally appreciated the honor done me, and promptly seized my
chance. I had an engagement, but the circumstances washed it out of my
mind. If I had only laid the matter before the major half of the
administration on the spot, there would have been no blunder; but I never
thought of that. So when I did lay it before her, later, I realized once
more that it will not do for the literary fraction of a combination to
try to manage affairs which properly belong in the office of the business
bulk of it. I suppose the President often acts just like that: goes and
makes an impossible promise, and you never find it out until it is next
to impossible to break it up and set things straight again. Well, that
is just our way, exactly-one half of the administration always busy
getting the family into trouble, and the other half busy getting it out
again. And so we do seem to be all pretty much alike, after all. The
fact is, I had forgotten that we were to have a dinner party on that
Bridgeport date--I thought it was the next day: which is a good deal of
an improvement for me, because I am more used to being behind a day or
two than ahead. But that is just the difference between one end of this
kind of an administration and the other end of it, as you have noticed,
yourself--the other end does not forget these things. Just so with a
funeral; if it is the man's funeral, he is most always there, of course
--but that is no credit to him, he wouldn't be there if you depended on
him to remember about it; whereas, if on the other hand--but I seem to
have got off from my line of argument somehow; never mind about the
funeral. Of course I am not meaning to say anything against funerals
--that is, as occasions--mere occasions--for as diversions I don't think
they amount to much But as I was saying--if you are not busy I will look
back and see what it was I was saying.
I don't seem to find the place; but anyway she was as sorry as ever
anybody could be that I could not go to Bridgeport, but there was no help
for it. And I, I have been not only sorry but very sincerely ashamed of
having made an engagement to go without first making sure that I could
keep it, and I do not know how to apologize enough for my heedless breach
of good manners.
With the sincerest respect,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Samuel Clemens was one of the very few authors to copyright a book
in England before the enactment of the international copyright law.
As early as 1872 he copyrighted 'Roughing It' in England, and
piratical publishers there respected his rights. Finally, in 1887,
the inland revenue office assessed him with income tax, which he
very willingly paid, instructing his London publishers, Chatto &
Windus, to pay on the full amount he had received from them. But
when the receipt for his taxes came it was nearly a yard square with
due postage of considerable amount. Then he wrote:
To Mr. Chatto, of Chatto & Windus, in London:
HARTFORD, Dec. 5, '87.
MY DEAR CHATTO,--Look here, I don't mind paying the tax, but don't you
let the Inland Revenue Office send me any more receipts for it, for the
postage is something perfectly demoralizing. If they feel obliged to
print a receipt on a horse-blanket, why don't they hire a ship and send
it over at their own expense?
Wasn't it good that they caught me out with an old book instead of a new
one? The tax on a new book would bankrupt a body. It was my purpose to
go to England next May and stay the rest of the year, but I've found that
tax office out just in time. My new book would issue in March, and they
would tax the sale in both countries. Come, we must get up a compromise
somehow. You go and work in on the good side of those revenue people and
get them to take the profits and give me the tax. Then I will come over
and we will divide the swag and have a good time.
I wish you to thank Mr. Christmas for me; but we won't resist. The
country that allows me copyright has a right to tax me.
Sincerely Yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
Another English tax assessment came that year, based on the report
that it was understood that he was going to become an English
resident, and had leased Buckenham Hall, Norwich, for a year.
Clemens wrote his publishers: "I will explain that all that about
Buckenham Hall was an English newspaper's mistake. I was not in
England, and if I had been I wouldn't have been at Buckenham Hall,
anyway, but at Buckingham Palace, or I would have endeavored to find
out the reason why." Clemens made literature out of this tax
experience. He wrote an open letter to Her Majesty Queen Victoria.
Such a letter has no place in this collection. It was published in
the "Drawer" of Harper's Magazine, December, 1887, and is now
included in the uniform edition of his works under the title of,
"A Petition to the Queen of England."
From the following letter, written at the end of the year, we gather
that the type-setter costs were beginning to make a difference in
the Clemens economies.
To Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia:
HARTFORD, Dec. 18, '87.
DEAR PAMELA,--will you take this $15 and buy some candy or some other
trifle for yourself and Sam and his wife to remember that we remember
you, by?
If we weren't a little crowded this year by the typesetter, I'd send a
check large enough to buy a family Bible or some other useful thing like
that. However we go on and on, but the type-setter goes on forever--at
$3,000 a month; which is much more satisfactory than was the case the
first seventeen months, when the bill only averaged $2,000, and promised
to take a thousand years. We'll be through, now, in 3 or 4 months, I
reckon, and then the strain will let up and we can breathe freely once
more, whether success ensues or failure.
Even with a type-setter on hand we ought not to be in the least scrimped
--but it would take a long letter to explain why and who is to blame.
All the family send love to all of you and best Christmas wishes for your
prosperity.
Affectionately,
SAM.
XXVIII
LETTERS,1888. A YALE DEGREE. WORK ON "THE YANKEE." ON INTERVIEWING,
ETC.
Mark Twain received his first college degree when he was made Master
of Arts by Yale, in June, 1888. Editor of the Courant, Charles H.
Clarke, was selected to notify him of his new title. Clarke was an
old friend to whom Clemens could write familiarly.
To Charles H. Clarke, in Hartford:
ELMIRA, July 2, '88.
MY DEAR CHARLES,--Thanks for your thanks, and for your initiation
intentions. I shall be ready for you. I feel mighty proud of that
degree; in fact, I could squeeze the truth a little closer and say vain
of it. And why shouldn't I be?--I am the only literary animal of my
particular subspecies who has ever been given a degree by any College in
any age of the world, as far as I know.
Sincerely Yours
S. L. Clemens M. A.
Reply: Charles H. Clarke to S. L Clemens:
MY DEAR FRIEND, You are "the only literary animal of your particular
subspecies" in existence and you've no cause for humility in the fact.
Yale has done herself at least as much credit as she has done you, and
"Don't you forget it."
C. H. C.
With the exception of his brief return to the river in 1882. Mark
Twain had been twenty-seven years away from pilots and piloting.
Nevertheless, he always kept a tender place in his heart for the old
times and for old river comrades. Major "Jack" Downing had been a
Mississippi pilot of early days, but had long since retired from the
river to a comfortable life ashore, in an Ohio town. Clemens had
not heard from him for years when a letter came which invited the
following answer.
To Major "Jack" Downing, in Middleport Ohio:
ELMIRA, N. Y.[no month] 1888.
DEAR MAJOR,--And has it come to this that the dead rise up and speak?
For I supposed that you were dead, it has been so long since I heard your
name.
And how young you've grown! I was a mere boy when I knew you on the
river, where you had been piloting for 35 years, and now you are only a
year and a half older than I am! I mean to go to Hot Springs myself and
get 30 or 40 years knocked off my age. It's manifestly the place that
Ponce de Leon was striking for, but the poor fellow lost the trail.
Possibly I may see you, for I shall be in St. Louis a day or two in
November. I propose to go down the river and "note the changes" once
more before I make the long crossing, and perhaps you can come there.
Will you? I want to see all the boys that are left alive.
And so Grant Marsh, too, is flourishing yet? A mighty good fellow, and
smart too. When we were taking that wood flat down to the Chambers,
which was aground, I soon saw that I was a perfect lubber at piloting
such a thing. I saw that I could never hit the Chambers with it, so I
resigned in Marsh's favor, and he accomplished the task to my admiration.
We should all have gone to the mischief if I had remained in authority.
I always had good judgement, more judgement than talent, in fact.
No; the nom de plume did not originate in that way. Capt. Sellers used
the signature, "Mark Twain," himself, when he used to write up the
antiquities in the way of river reminiscences for the New Orleans
Picayune. He hated me for burlesquing them in an article in the True
Delta; so four years later when he died, I robbed the corpse--that is I
confiscated the nom de plume. I have published this vital fact 3,000
times now. But no matter, it is good practice; it is about the only fact
that I can tell the same way every time. Very glad, indeed, to hear from
you Major, and shall be gladder still to see you in November.
Truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
He did not make the journey down the river planned for that year.
He had always hoped to make another steamboat trip with Bixby, but
one thing and another interfered and he did not go again.
Authors were always sending their books to Mark Twain to read, and
no busy man was ever more kindly disposed toward such offerings,
more generously considerate of the senders. Louis Pendleton was a
young unknown writer in 1888, but Clemens took time to read his
story carefully, and to write to him about it a letter that cost
precious time, thought, and effort. It must have rejoiced the young
man's heart to receive a letter like that, from one whom all young
authors held supreme.
To Louis Pendleton, in Georgia:
ELMIRA, N. Y., Aug. 4, '88.
MY DEAR SIR,--I found your letter an hour ago among some others which had
lain forgotten a couple of weeks, and I at once stole time enough to read
Ariadne. Stole is the right word, for the summer "Vacation" is the only
chance I get for work; so, no minute subtracted from work is borrowed, it
is stolen. But this time I do not repent. As a rule, people don't send
me books which I can thank them for, and so I say nothing--which looks
uncourteous. But I thank you. Ariadne is a beautiful and satisfying
story; and true, too--which is the best part of a story; or indeed of any
other thing. Even liars have to admit that, if they are intelligent
liars; I mean in their private [the word conscientious written but
erased] intervals. (I struck that word out because a man's private
thought can never be a lie; what he thinks, is to him the truth, always;
what he speaks--but these be platitudes.)
If you want me to pick some flaws--very well--but I do it unwillingly.
I notice one thing--which one may notice also in my books, and in all
books whether written by man or God: trifling carelessness of statement
or Expression. If I think that you meant that she took the lizard from
the water which she had drawn from the well, it is evidence--it is almost
proof--that your words were not as clear as they should have been. True,
it is only a trifling thing; but so is mist on a mirror. I would have
hung the pail on Ariadne's arm. You did not deceive me when you said
that she carried it under her arm, for I knew she didn't; still it was
not your right to mar my enjoyment of the graceful picture. If the pail
had been a portfolio, I wouldn't be making these remarks. The engraver
of a fine picture revises, and revises, and revises--and then revises,
and revises, and revises; and then repeats. And always the charm of that
picture grows, under his hand. It was good enough before--told its
story, and was beautiful. True: and a lovely girl is lovely, with
freckles; but she isn't at her level best with them.
This is not hypercriticism; you have had training enough to know that.
So much concerning exactness of statement. In that other not-small
matter--selection of the exact single word--you are hard to catch.
Still, I should hold that Mrs. Walker considered that there was no
occasion for concealment; that "motive" implied a deeper mental search
than she expended on the matter; that it doesn't reflect the attitude of
her mind with precision. Is this hypercriticism? I shan't dispute it.
I only say, that if Mrs. Walker didn't go so far as to have a motive, I
had to suggest that when a word is so near the right one that a body
can't quite tell whether it is or isn't, it's good politics to strike it
out and go for the Thesaurus. That's all. Motive may stand; but you
have allowed a snake to scream, and I will not concede that that was the
best word.
I do not apologize for saying these things, for they are not said in the
speck-hunting spirit, but in the spirit of want-to-help-if-I-can. They
would be useful to me if said to me once a month, they may be useful to
you, said once.
I save the other stories for my real vacation--which is nine months long,
to my sorrow. I thank you again.
Truly Yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
In the next letter we get a sidelight on the type-setting machine,
the Frankenstein monster that was draining their substance and
holding out false hopes of relief and golden return. The program
here outlined was one that would continue for several years yet,
with the end always in sight, but never quite attained.
To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Ia.:
Oct. 3, '88.
Private.
Saturday 29th, by a closely calculated estimate, there were 85 days' work
to do on the machine.
We can use 4 men, but not constantly. If they could work constantly it
would complete the machine in 21 days, of course. They will all be on
hand and under wages, and each will get in all the work there is
opportunity for, but by how much they can reduce the 85 days toward the
21 days, nobody can tell.
To-day I pay Pratt & Whitney $10,000. This squares back indebtedness and
everything to date. They began about May or April or March 1886--along
there somewhere, and have always kept from a dozen to two dozen
master-hands on the machine.
That outgo is done; 4 men for a month or two will close up that leak and
caulk it. Work on the patents is also kind of drawing toward a
conclusion.
Love to you both. All well here.
And give our love to Ma if she can get the idea.
SAM.
Mark Twain that year was working pretty steadily on 'The Yankee at
King Arthur's Court', a book which he had begun two years before.
He had published nothing since the Huck Finn story, and his company
was badly in need of a new book by an author of distinction. Also
it was highly desirable to earn money for himself; wherefore he set
to work to finish the Yankee story. He had worked pretty steadily
that summer in his Elmira study, but on his return to Hartford found
a good deal of confusion in the house, so went over to Twichell's,
where carpenter work was in progress. He seems to have worked there
successfully, though what improvement of conditions he found in that
numerous, lively household, over those at home it would be difficult
to say.
To Theodore W. Crane, at Quarry Farm, Elmira, N. Y.
Friday, Oct.,5, '88.
DEAR THEO,--I am here in Twichell's house at work, with the noise of the
children and an army of carpenters to help. Of course they don't help,
but neither do they hinder. It's like a boiler-factory for racket, and
in nailing a wooden ceiling onto the room under me the hammering tickles
my feet amazingly sometimes, and jars my table a good deal; but I never
am conscious of the racket at all, and I move my feet into position of
relief without knowing when I do it. I began here Monday morning, and
have done eighty pages since. I was so tired last night that I thought I
would lie abed and rest, to-day; but I couldn't resist. I mean to try to
knock off tomorrow, but it's doubtful if I do. I want to finish the day
the machine finishes, and a week ago the closest calculations for that
indicated Oct. 22--but experience teaches me that their calculations will
miss fire, as usual.
The other day the children were projecting a purchase, Livy and I to
furnish the money--a dollar and a half. Jean discouraged the idea. She
said: "We haven't got any money. Children, if you would think, you would
remember the machine isn't done."
It's billiards to-night. I wish you were here.
With love to you both
S. L. C.
P. S. I got it all wrong. It wasn't the children, it was Marie. She
wanted a box of blacking, for the children's shoes. Jean reproved her
--and said:
"Why, Marie, you mustn't ask for things now. The machine isn't done."
S. L. C.
The letter that follows is to another of his old pilot friends, one
who was also a schoolmate, Will Bowen, of Hannibal. There is today
no means of knowing the occasion upon which this letter was written,
but it does not matter; it is the letter itself that is of chief
value.
To Will Bowen, in Hannibal, Mo.:
HARTFORD, Nov 4, '88.
DEAR WILL,--I received your letter yesterday evening, just as I was
starting out of town to attend a wedding, and so my mind was privately
busy, all the evening, in the midst of the maelstrom of chat and chaff
and laughter, with the sort of reflections which create themselves,
examine themselves, and continue themselves, unaffected by surroundings
--unaffected, that is understood, by the surroundings, but not
uninfluenced by them. Here was the near presence of the two supreme
events of life: marriage, which is the beginning of life, and death which
is the end of it. I found myself seeking chances to shirk into corners
where I might think, undisturbed; and the most I got out of my thought,
was this: both marriage and death ought to be welcome: the one promises
happiness, doubtless the other assures it. A long procession of people
filed through my mind--people whom you and I knew so many years ago--so
many centuries ago, it seems like-and these ancient dead marched to the
soft marriage music of a band concealed in some remote room of the house;
and the contented music and the dreaming shades seemed in right accord
with each other, and fitting. Nobody else knew that a procession of the
dead was passing though this noisy swarm of the living, but there it was,
and to me there was nothing uncanny about it; Rio, they were welcome
faces to me. I would have liked to bring up every creature we knew in
those days--even the dumb animals--it would be bathing in the fabled
Fountain of Youth.
We all feel your deep trouble with you; and we would hope, if we might,
but your words deny us that privilege. To die one's self is a thing that
must be easy, and of light consequence, but to lose a part of one's self
--well, we know how deep that pang goes, we who have suffered that
disaster, received that wound which cannot heal.
Sincerely your friend
S. L. CLEMENS.
His next is of quite a different nature. Evidently the typesetting
conditions had alarmed Orion, and he was undertaking some economies
with a view of retrenchment. Orion was always reducing economy to
science. Once, at an earlier date, he recorded that he had figured
his personal living expenses down to sixty cents a week, but
inasmuch as he was then, by his own confession, unable to earn the
sixty cents, this particular economy was wasted. Orion was a trial,
certainly, and the explosion that follows was not without excuse.
Furthermore, it was not as bad as it sounds. Mark Twain's rages
always had an element of humor in them, a fact which no one more
than Orion himself would appreciate. He preserved this letter,
quietly noting on the envelope, "Letter from Sam, about ma's nurse."
Letter to Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:
NOV. 29, '88.
Jesus Christ!--It is perilous to write such a man. You can go crazy on
less material than anybody that ever lived. What in hell has produced
all these maniacal imaginings? You told me you had hired an attendant
for ma. Now hire one instantly, and stop this nonsense of wearing Mollie
and yourself out trying to do that nursing yourselves. Hire the
attendant, and tell me her cost so that I can instruct Webster & Co. to
add it every month to what they already send. Don't fool away any more
time about this. And don't write me any more damned rot about "storms,"
and inability to pay trivial sums of money and--and--hell and damnation!
You see I've read only the first page of your letter; I wouldn't read the
rest for a million dollars.
Yr
SAM.
P. S. Don't imagine that I have lost my temper, because I swear. I
swear all day, but I do not lose my temper. And don't imagine that I am
on my way to the poorhouse, for I am not; or that I am uneasy, for I am
not; or that I am uncomfortable or unhappy--for I never am. I don't know
what it is to be unhappy or uneasy; and I am not going to try to learn
how, at this late day.
SAM.
Few men were ever interviewed oftener than Mark Twain, yet he never
welcomed interviewers and was seldom satisfied with them. "What I
say in an interview loses it character in print," he often remarked,
"all its life and personality. The reporter realizes this himself,
and tries to improve upon me, but he doesn't help matters any."
Edward W. Bok, before he became editor of the Ladies Home Journal,
was conducting a weekly syndicate column under the title of "Bok's
Literary Leaves." It usually consisted of news and gossip of
writers, comment, etc., literary odds and ends, and occasional
interviews with distinguished authors. He went up to Hartford one
day to interview Mark Twain. The result seemed satisfactory to Bok,
but wishing to be certain that it would be satisfactory to Clemens,
he sent him a copy for approval. The interview was not returned;
in the place of it came a letter-not altogether disappointing, as
the reader may believe.
To Edward W. Bok, in New York:
MY DEAR MR. BOK,--No, no. It is like most interviews, pure twaddle and
valueless.
For several quite plain and simple reasons, an "interview" must, as a
rule, be an absurdity, and chiefly for this reason--It is an attempt to
use a boat on land or a wagon on water, to speak figuratively. Spoken
speech is one thing, written speech is quite another. Print is the
proper vehicle for the latter, but it isn't for the former. The moment
"talk" is put into print you recognize that it is not what it was when
you heard it; you perceive that an immense something has disappeared from
it. That is its soul. You have nothing but a dead carcass left on your
hands. Color, play of feature, the varying modulations of the voice, the
laugh, the smile, the informing inflections, everything that gave that
body warmth, grace, friendliness and charm and commended it to your
affections--or, at least, to your tolerance--is gone and nothing is left
but a pallid, stiff and repulsive cadaver.
Such is "talk" almost invariably, as you see it lying in state in an
"interview". The interviewer seldom tries to tell one how a thing was
said; he merely puts in the naked remark and stops there. When one
writes for print his methods are very different. He follows forms which
have but little resemblance to conversation, but they make the reader
understand what the writer is trying to convey. And when the writer is
making a story and finds it necessary to report some of the talk of his
characters observe how cautiously and anxiously he goes at that risky and
difficult thing. "If he had dared to say that thing in my presence,"
said Alfred, "taking a mock heroic attitude, and casting an arch glance
upon the company, blood would have flowed."
"If he had dared to say that thing in my presence," said Hawkwood, with
that in his eye which caused more than one heart in that guilty
assemblage to quake, "blood would have flowed."
"If he had dared to say that thing in my presence," said the paltry
blusterer, with valor on his tongue and pallor on his lips, "blood would
have flowed."
So painfully aware is the novelist that naked talk in print conveys no
meaning that he loads, and often overloads, almost every utterance of his
characters with explanations and interpretations. It is a loud
confession that print is a poor vehicle for "talk"; it is a recognition
that uninterpreted talk in print would result in confusion to the reader,
not instruction.
Now, in your interview, you have certainly been most accurate; you have
set down the sentences I uttered as I said them. But you have not a word
of explanation; what my manner was at several points is not indicated.
Therefore, no reader can possibly know where I was in earnest and where I
was joking; or whether I was joking altogether or in earnest altogether.
Such a report of a conversation has no value. It can convey many
meanings to the reader, but never the right one. To add interpretations
which would convey the right meaning is a something which would require
--what? An art so high and fine and difficult that no possessor of it
would ever be allowed to waste it on interviews.
No; spare the reader, and spare me; leave the whole interview out; it is
rubbish. I wouldn't talk in my sleep if I couldn't talk better than
that.
If you wish to print anything print this letter; it may have some value,
for it may explain to a reader here and there why it is that in
interviews, as a rule, men seem to talk like anybody but themselves.
Very sincerely yours,
MARK TWAIN.
XXIX
LETTERS, 1889. THE MACHINE. DEATH OF MR. CRANE.
CONCLUSION OF THE YANKEE
In January, 1889, Clemens believed, after his long seven years of
waiting, fruition had come in the matter of the type machine. Paige, the
inventor, seemed at last to have given it its finishing touches. The
mechanical marvel that had cost so much time, mental stress, and a
fortune in money, stood complete, responsive to the human will and touch
--the latest, and one of the greatest, wonders of the world. To George
Standring, a London printer and publisher, Clemens wrote: "The machine is
finished!" and added, "This is by far the most marvelous invention ever
contrived by man. And it is not a thing of rags and patches; it is made
of massive steel, and will last a century."
In his fever of enthusiasm on that day when he had actually seen it in
operation, he wrote a number of exuberant letters. They were more or
less duplicates, but as the one to his brother is of fuller detail and
more intimate than the others, it has been selected for preservation
here.
To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk:
HARTFORD, Jan. 5, '89.
DEAR ORION,--At 12.20 this afternoon a line of movable types was spaced
and justified by machinery, for the first time in the history of the
world! And I was there to see. It was done automatically--instantly
--perfectly. This is indeed the first line of movable types that ever
was perfectly spaced and perfectly justified on this earth.
This was the last function that remained to be tested--and so by long
odds the most amazing and extraordinary invention ever born of the brain
of man stands completed and perfect. Livy is down stairs celebrating.
But it's a cunning devil, is that machine!--and knows more than any man
that ever lived. You shall see. We made the test in this way. We set
up a lot of random letters in a stick--three-fourths of a line; then
filled out the line with quads representing 14 spaces, each space to be
35/1000 of an inch thick. Then we threw aside the quads and put the
letters into the machine and formed them into 15 two-letter words,
leaving the words separated by two-inch vacancies. Then we started up
the machine slowly, by hand, and fastened our eyes on the space-selecting
pins. The first pin-block projected its third pin as the first word came
traveling along the race-way; second block did the same; but the third
block projected its second pin!
"Oh, hell! stop the machine--something wrong--it's going to set a
30/1000 space!"
General consternation. "A foreign substance has got into the spacing
plates." This from the head mathematician.
"Yes, that is the trouble," assented the foreman.
Paige examined. "No--look in, and you can see that there's nothing of
the kind." Further examination. "Now I know what it is--what it must
be: one of those plates projects and binds. It's too bad--the first
test is a failure." A pause. "Well, boys, no use to cry. Get to work
--take the machine down.--No--Hold on! don't touch a thing! Go right
ahead! We are fools, the machine isn't. The machine knows what it's
about. There is a speck of dirt on one of those types, and the machine
is putting in a thinner space to allow for it!"
That was just it. The machine went right ahead, spaced the line,
justified it to a hair, and shoved it into the galley complete and
perfect! We took it out and examined it with a glass. You could not
tell by your eye that the third space was thinner than the others, but
the glass and the calipers showed the difference. Paige had always said
that the machine would measure invisible particles of dirt and allow for
them, but even he had forgotten that vast fact for the moment.
All the witnesses made written record of the immense historical birth
--the first justification of a line of movable type by machinery--and
also set down the hour and the minute. Nobody had drank anything, and
yet everybody seemed drunk. Well-dizzy, stupefied, stunned.
All the other wonderful inventions of the human brain sink pretty nearly
into commonplace contrasted with this awful mechanical miracle.
Telephones, telegraphs, locomotives, cotton gins, sewing machines,
Babbage calculators, jacquard looms, perfecting presses, Arkwright's
frames--all mere toys, simplicities! The Paige Compositor marches alone
and far in the lead of human inventions.
In two or three weeks we shall work the stiffness out of her joints and
have her performing as smoothly and softly as human muscles, and then we
shall speak out the big secret and let the world come and gaze.
Return me this letter when you have read it.
SAM.
Judge of the elation which such a letter would produce in Keokuk!
Yet it was no greater than that which existed in Hartford--for a
time.
Then further delays. Before the machine got "the stiffness out of
her joints" that "cunning devil" manifested a tendency to break the
types, and Paige, who was never happier than when he was pulling
things to pieces and making improvements, had the type-setter apart
again and the day of complete triumph was postponed.
There was sadness at the Elmira farm that spring. Theodore Crane,
who had long been in poor health, seemed to grow daily worse. In
February he had paid a visit to Hartford and saw the machine in
operation, but by the end of May his condition was very serious.
Remembering his keen sense of humor, Clemens reported to him
cheering and amusing incidents.
To Mrs. Theodore Crane. in Elmira, N. Y.:
HARTFORD, May 28, '89.
Susie dear, I want you to tell this to Theodore. You know how
absent-minded Twichell is, and how desolate his face is when he is in
that frame. At such times, he passes the word with a friend on the
street and is not aware of the meeting at all. Twice in a week, our
Clara had this latter experience with him within the past month. But the
second instance was too much for her, and she woke him up, in his tracks,
with a reproach. She said:
"Uncle Joe, why do you always look as if you were just going down into
the grave, when you meet a person on the street?"--and then went on to
reveal to him the funereal spectacle which he presented on such
occasions. Well, she has met Twichell three times since then, and would
swim the Connecticut to avoid meeting him the fourth. As soon as he
sights her, no matter how public the place nor how far off she is, he
makes a bound into the air, heaves arms and legs into all sorts of
frantic gestures of delight, and so comes prancing, skipping and
pirouetting for her like a drunken Indian entering heaven.
With a full invoice of love from us all to you and Theodore.
S. L. C.
The reference in the next to the "closing sentence" in a letter
written by Howells to Clemens about this time, refers to a
heart-broken utterance of the former concerning his daughter
Winnie, who had died some time before. She had been a gentle
talented girl, but never of robust health. Her death had followed
a long period of gradual decline.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Judy 13, '89.
DEAR HOWELLS,--I came on from Elmira a day or two ago, where I left a
house of mourning. Mr. Crane died, after ten months of pain and two
whole days of dying, at the farm on the hill, the 3rd inst: A man who had
always hoped for a swift death. Mrs. Crane and Mrs. Clemens and the
children were in a gloom which brought back to me the days of nineteen
years ago, when Mr. Langdon died. It is heart-breaking to see Mrs.
Crane. Many a time, in the past ten days, the sight of her has reminded
me, with a pang, of the desolation which uttered itself in the closing
sentence of your last letter to me. I do see that there is an argument
against suicide: the grief of the worshipers left behind; the awful
famine in their hearts, these are too costly terms for the release.
I shall be here ten days yet, and all alone: nobody in the house but the
servants. Can't Mrs. Howells spare you to me? Can't you come and stay
with me? The house is cool and pleasant; your work will not be
interrupted; we will keep to ourselves and let the rest of the world do
the same; you can have your choice of three bedrooms, and you will find
the Children's schoolroom (which was built for my study,) the perfection
of a retired and silent den for work. There isn't a fly or a mosquito on
the estate. Come--say you will.
With kindest regards to Mrs. Howells, and Pilla and John,
Yours Ever
MARK.
Howells was more hopeful. He wrote: "I read something in a strange book,
The Physical Theory of Another Life, that consoles a little; namely, we
see and feel the power of Deity in such fullness that we ought to infer
the infinite justice and Goodness which we do not see or feel." And a
few days later, he wrote: "I would rather see and talk with you than any
other man in the world outside my own blood."
A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court was brought to an end that
year and given to the artist and printer. Dan Beard was selected for the
drawings, and was given a free hand, as the next letter shows.
To Fred J. Hall, Manager Charles L. Webster & Co.:
[Charles L. Webster, owing to poor health, had by this time retired
from the firm.]
ELMIRA, July 20, '89.
DEAR MR. HALL,--Upon reflection--thus: tell Beard to obey his own
inspiration, and when he sees a picture in his mind put that picture on
paper, be it humorous or be it serious. I want his genius to be wholly
unhampered, I shan't have fears as to the result. They will be better
pictures than if I mixed in and tried to give him points on his own
trade.
Send this note and he'll understand.
Yr
S. L. C.
Clemens had made a good choice in selecting Beard for the
illustrations. He was well qualified for the work, and being of a
socialistic turn of mind put his whole soul into it. When the
drawings were completed, Clemens wrote: "Hold me under permanent
obligations. What luck it was to find you! There are hundreds of
artists that could illustrate any other book of mine, but there was
only one who could illustrate this one. Yes, it was a fortunate
hour that I went netting for lightning bugs and caught a meteor.
Live forever!"
Clemens, of course, was anxious for Howells to read The Yankee, and
Mrs. Clemens particularly so. Her eyes were giving her trouble that
summer, so that she could not read the MS. for herself, and she had
grave doubts as to some of its chapters. It may be said here that
the book to-day might have been better if Mrs. Clemens had been able
to read it. Howells was a peerless critic, but the revolutionary
subject-matter of the book so delighted him that he was perhaps
somewhat blinded to its literary defects. However, this is
premature. Howells did not at once see the story. He had promised
to come to Hartford, but wrote that trivial matters had made his
visit impossible. From the next letter we get the situation at this
time. The "Mr. Church" mentioned was Frederick S. Church, the
well-known artist.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, July 24, '89.
DEAR HOWELLS,--I, too, was as sorry as I could be; yes, and desperately
disappointed. I even did a heroic thing: shipped my book off to New York
lest I should forget hospitality and embitter your visit with it. Not
that I think you wouldn't like to read it, for I think you would; but not
on a holiday that's not the time. I see how you were situated--another
familiarity of Providence and wholly wanton intrusion--and of course we
could not help ourselves. Well, just think of it: a while ago, while
Providence's attention was absorbed in disordering some time-tables so as
to break up a trip of mine to Mr. Church's on the Hudson, that Johnstown
dam got loose. I swear I was afraid to pray, for fear I should laugh.
Well, I'm not going to despair; we'll manage a meet yet.
I expect to go to Hartford again in August and maybe remain till I have
to come back here and fetch the family. And, along there in August, some
time, you let on that you are going to Mexico, and I will let on that I
am going to Spitzbergen, and then under cover of this clever stratagem we
will glide from the trains at Worcester and have a time. I have noticed
that Providence is indifferent about Mexico and Spitzbergen.
Ys Ever
MARK.
Possibly Mark Twain was not particularly anxious that Howells should
see his MS., fearing that he might lay a ruthless hand on some of
his more violent fulminations and wild fancies. However this may
be, further postponement was soon at an end. Mrs. Clemens's eyes
troubled her and would not permit her to read, so she requested that
the Yankee be passed upon by soberminded critics, such as Howells
and Edmund Clarence Stedman. Howells wrote that even if he hadn't
wanted to read the book for its own sake, or for the author's sake,
he would still want to do it for Mrs. Clemens's. Whereupon the
proofs were started in his direction.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, Aug. 24, '89.
DEAR HOWELLS,--If you should be moved to speak of my book in the Study,
I shall be glad and proud--and the sooner it gets in, the better for the
book; though I don't suppose you can get it in earlier than the November
number--why, no, you can't get it in till a month later than that. Well,
anyway I don't think I'll send out any other press copy--except perhaps
to Stedman. I'm not writing for those parties who miscall themselves
critics, and I don't care to have them paw the book at all. It's my
swan-song, my retirement from literature permanently, and I wish to pass
to the cemetery unclodded.
I judge that the proofs have begun to reach you about this time, as I had
some (though not revises,) this morning. I'm sure I'm going to be
charmed with Beard's pictures. Observe his nice take-off of Middle-Age
art-dinner-table scene.
Ys sincerely
MARK.
Howells's approval of the Yankee came almost in the form of exultant
shouts, one after reading each batch of proof. First he wrote:
"It's charming, original, wonderful! good in fancy and sound to the
core in morals." And again, "It's a mighty great book, and it makes
my heart burn with wrath. It seems God did not forget to put a soul
into you. He shuts most literary men off with a brain, merely."
Then, a few days later: "The book is glorious--simply noble; what
masses of virgin truth never touched in print before!" and, finally,
"Last night I read your last chapter. As Stedman says of the whole
book, it's titanic."
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Sept. 22, '89.
DEAR HOWELLS,--It is immensely good of you to grind through that stuff
for me; but it gives peace to Mrs. Clemens's soul; and I am as grateful
to you as a body can be. I am glad you approve of what I say about the
French Revolution. Few people will. It is odd that even to this day
Americans still observe that immortal benefaction through English and
other monarchical eyes, and have no shred of an opinion about it that
they didn't get at second-hand.
Next to the 4th of July and its results, it was the noblest and the
holiest thing and the most precious that ever happened in this earth.
And its gracious work is not done yet--not anywhere in the remote
neighborhood of it.
Don't trouble to send me all the proofs; send me the pages with your
corrections on them, and waste-basket the rest. We issue the book
Dec. 10; consequently a notice that appears Dec. 20 will be just in good
time.
I am waiting to see your Study set a fashion in criticism. When that
happens--as please God it must--consider that if you lived three
centuries you couldn't do a more valuable work for this country, or a
humaner.
As a rule a critic's dissent merely enrages, and so does no good; but by
the new art which you use, your dissent must be as welcome as your
approval, and as valuable. I do not know what the secret of it is,
unless it is your attitude--man courteously reasoning with man and
brother, in place of the worn and wearisome critical attitude of all this
long time--superior being lecturing a boy.
Well, my book is written--let it go. But if it were only to write over
again there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me; and
they keep multiplying and multiplying; but now they can't ever be said.
And besides, they would require a library--and a pen warmed up in hell.
Ys Ever
MARK.
The type-setting machine began to loom large in the background.
Clemens believed it perfected by this time. Paige had got it
together again and it was running steadily--or approximately so
--setting type at a marvelous speed and with perfect accuracy. In
time an expert operator would be able to set as high as eight
thousand ems per hour, or about ten times as much as a good
compositor could set and distribute by hand. Those who saw it were
convinced--most of them--that the type-setting problem was solved by
this great mechanical miracle. If there were any who doubted, it
was because of its marvelously minute accuracy which the others only
admired. Such accuracy, it was sometimes whispered, required
absolutely perfect adjustment, and what would happen when the great
inventor--"the poet in steel," as Clemens once called him--was no
longer at hand to supervise and to correct the slightest variation.
But no such breath of doubt came to Mark Twain; he believed the
machine as reliable as a constellation.
But now there was need of capital to manufacture and market the
wonder. Clemens, casting about in his mind, remembered Senator
Jones, of Nevada, a man of great wealth, and his old friend, Joe
Goodman, of Nevada, in whom Jones had unlimited confidence. He
wrote to Goodman, and in this letter we get a pretty full exposition
of the whole matter as it stood in the fall of 1889. We note in
this communication that Clemens says that he has been at the machine
three years and seven months, but this was only the period during
which he had spent the regular monthly sum of three thousand
dollars. His interest in the invention had begun as far back as
1880.
To Joseph T. Goodman, in Nevada:
Private. HARTFORD, Oct. 7, '89.
DEAR JOE,-I had a letter from Aleck Badlam day before yesterday,
and in answering him I mentioned a matter which I asked him to consider
a secret except to you and John McComb,--[This is Col. McComb, of the
Alta-California, who had sent Mark Twain on the Quaker City
excursion]--as I am not ready yet to get into the newspapers.
I have come near writing you about this matter several times, but it
wasn't ripe, and I waited. It is ripe, now. It is a type-setting
machine which I undertook to build for the inventor (for a consideration).
I have been at it three years and seven months without losing a day, at a
cost of $3,000 a month, and in so private a way that Hartford has known
nothing about it. Indeed only a dozen men have known of the matter.
I have reported progress from time to time to the proprietors of the
N. Y. Sun, Herald, Times, World, Harper Brothers and John F. Trow; also
to the proprietors of the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe. Three
years ago I asked all these people to squelch their frantic desire to
load up their offices with the Mergenthaler (N. Y. Tribune) machine, and
wait for mine and then choose between the two. They have waited--with no
very gaudy patience--but still they have waited; and I could prove to
them to-day that they have not lost anything by it. But I reserve the
proof for the present--except in the case of the N. Y. Herald; I sent an
invitation there the other day--a courtesy due a paper which ordered
$240,000 worth of our machines long ago when it was still in a crude
condition. The Herald has ordered its foreman to come up here next
Thursday; but that is the only invitation which will go out for some
time yet.
The machine was finished several weeks ago, and has been running ever
since in the machine shop. It is a magnificent creature of steel, all of
Pratt & Whitney's super-best workmanship, and as nicely adjusted and as
accurate as a watch. In construction it is as elaborate and complex as
that machine which it ranks next to, by every right--Man--and in
performance it is as simple and sure.
Anybody can set type on it who can read--and can do it after only 15
minutes' instruction. The operator does not need to leave his seat at
the keyboard; for the reason that he is not required to do anything but
strike the keys and set type--merely one function; the spacing,
justifying, emptying into the galley, and distributing of dead matter is
all done by the machine without anybody's help--four functions.
The ease with which a cub can learn is surprising. Day before yesterday
I saw our newest cub set, perfectly space and perfectly justify 2,150 ems
of solid nonpareil in an hour and distribute the like amount in the same
hour--and six hours previously he had never seen the machine or its
keyboard. It was a good hour's work for 3-year veterans on the other
type-setting machines to do. We have 3 cubs. The dean of the trio is a
school youth of 18. Yesterday morning he had been an apprentice on the
machine 16 working days (8-hour days); and we speeded him to see what he
could do in an hour. In the hour he set 5,900 ems solid nonpareil, and
the machine perfectly spaced and justified it, and of course distributed
the like amount in the same hour. Considering that a good fair
compositor sets 700 and distributes 700 in the one hour, this boy did the
work of about 8 x a compositors in that hour. This fact sends all other
type-setting machines a thousand miles to the rear, and the best of them
will never be heard of again after we publicly exhibit in New York.
We shall put on 3 more cubs. We have one school boy and two compositors,
now,--and we think of putting on a type writer, a stenographer, and
perhaps a shoemaker, to show that no special gifts or training are
required with this machine. We shall train these beginners two or three
months--or until some one of them gets up to 7,000 an hour--then we will
show up in New York and run the machine 24 hours a day 7 days in the
week, for several months--to prove that this is a machine which will
never get out of order or cause delay, and can stand anything an anvil
can stand. You know there is no other typesetting machine that can run
two hours on a stretch without causing trouble and delay with its
incurable caprices.
We own the whole field--every inch of it--and nothing can dislodge us.
Now then, above is my preachment, and here follows the reason and purpose
of it. I want you to run over here, roost over the machine a week and
satisfy yourself, and then go to John P. Jones or to whom you please, and
sell me a hundred thousand dollars' worth of this property and take ten
per cent in cash or the "property" for your trouble--the latter, if you
are wise, because the price I ask is a long way short of the value.
What I call "property" is this. A small part of my ownership consists of
a royalty of $500 on every machine marketed under the American patents.
My selling-terms are, a permanent royalty of one dollar on every
American-marketed machine for a thousand dollars cash to me in hand paid.
We shan't market any fewer than 5,000 machines in 15 years--a return of
fifteen thousand dollars for one thousand. A royalty is better than
stock, in one way--it must be paid, every six months, rain or shine; it
is a debt, and must be paid before dividends are declared. By and by,
when we become a stock company I shall buy these royalties back for stock
if I can get them for anything like reasonable terms.
I have never borrowed a penny to use on the machine, and never sold a
penny's worth of the property until the machine was entirely finished and
proven by the severest tests to be what she started out to be--perfect,
permanent, and occupying the position, as regards all kindred machines,
which the City of Paris occupies as regards the canvas-backs of the
mercantile marine.
It is my purpose to sell two hundred dollars of my royalties at the above
price during the next two months and keep the other $300.
Mrs. Clemens begs Mrs. Goodman to come with you, and asks pardon for not
writing the message herself--which would be a pathetically-welcome
spectacle to me; for I have been her amanuensis for 8 months, now, since
her eyes failed her. Yours as always
MARK.
While this letter with its amazing contents is on its way to
astonish Joe Goodman, we will consider one of quite a different,
but equally characteristic sort. We may assume that Mark Twain's
sister Pamela had been visiting him in Hartford and was now making
a visit in Keokuk.
To Mrs. Moffett, in Keokuk:
HARTFORD, Oct 9, '89.
DEAR PAMELA,--An hour after you left I was suddenly struck with a
realizing sense of the utter chuckle-headedness of that notion of mine:
to send your trunk after you. Land! it was idiotic. None but a lunatic
would, separate himself from his baggage.
Well, I am soulfully glad the baggage fetcher saved me from consummating
my insane inspiration. I met him on the street in the afternoon and paid
him again. I shall pay him several times more, as opportunity offers.
I declined the invitation to banquet with the visiting South American
Congress, in a polite note explaining that I had to go to New York today.
I conveyed the note privately to Patrick; he got the envelope soiled,
and asked Livy to put on a clean one. That is why I am going to the
banquet; also why I have disinvited the boys I thought I was going to
punch billiards with, upstairs to-night.
Patrick is one of the injudiciousest people I ever struck. And I am the
other.
Your Brother
SAM.
The Yankee was now ready for publication, and advance sheets were
already in the reviewers' hands. Just at this moment the Brazilian
monarchy crumbled, and Clemens was moved to write Sylvester Baxter,
of the Boston Herald, a letter which is of special interest in its
prophecy of the new day, the dawn of which was even nearer than he
suspected.
DEAR MR. BAXTER, Another throne has gone down, and I swim in oceans of
satisfaction. I wish I might live fifty years longer; I believe I should
see the thrones of Europe selling at auction for old iron. I believe I
should really see the end of what is surely the grotesquest of all the
swindles ever invented by man-monarchy. It is enough to make a graven
image laugh, to see apparently rational people, away down here in this
wholesome and merciless slaughter-day for shams, still mouthing empty
reverence for those moss-backed frauds and scoundrelisms, hereditary
kingship and so-called "nobility." It is enough to make the monarchs and
nobles themselves laugh--and in private they do; there can be no question
about that. I think there is only one funnier thing, and that is the
spectacle of these bastard Americans--these Hamersleys and Huntingtons
and such--offering cash, encumbered by themselves, for rotten carcases
and stolen titles. When our great brethren the disenslaved Brazilians
frame their Declaration of Independence, I hope they will insert this
missing link: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all monarchs
are usurpers, and descendants of usurpers; for the reason that no throne
was ever set up in this world by the will, freely exercised, of the only
body possessing the legitimate right to set it up--the numerical mass of
the nation."
You already have the advance sheets of my forthcoming book in your hands.
If you will turn to about the five hundredth page, you will find a state
paper of my Connecticut Yankee in which he announces the dissolution of
King Arthur's monarchy and proclaims the English Republic. Compare it
with the state paper which announces the downfall of the Brazilian
monarchy and proclaims the Republic of the United States of Brazil, and
stand by to defend the Yankee from plagiarism. There is merely a
resemblance of ideas, nothing more. The Yankee's proclamation was
already in print a week ago. This is merely one of those odd
coincidences which are always turning up. Come, protect the Yank from
that cheapest and easiest of all charges--plagiarism. Otherwise, you
see, he will have to protect himself by charging approximate and
indefinite plagiarism upon the official servants of our majestic twin
down yonder, and then there might be war, or some similar annoyance.
Have you noticed the rumor that the Portuguese throne is unsteady, and
that the Portuguese slaves are getting restive? Also, that the head
slave-driver of Europe, Alexander III, has so reduced his usual monthly
order for chains that the Russian foundries are running on only half time
now? Also that other rumor that English nobility acquired an added
stench the other day--and had to ship it to India and the continent
because there wasn't any more room for it at home? Things are working.
By and by there is going to be an emigration, may be. Of course we shall
make no preparation; we never do. In a few years from now we shall have
nothing but played-out kings and dukes on the police, and driving the
horse-cars, and whitewashing fences, and in fact overcrowding all the
avenues of unskilled labor; and then we shall wish, when it is too late,
that we had taken common and reasonable precautions and drowned them at
Castle Garden.
There followed at this time a number of letters to Goodman, but as
there is much of a sameness in them, we need not print them all.
Clemens, in fact, kept the mails warm with letters bulging with
schemes for capitalization, and promising vast wealth to all
concerned. When the letters did not go fast enough he sent
telegrams. In one of the letters Goodman is promised "five hundred
thousand dollars out of the profits before we get anything
ourselves." One thing we gather from these letters is that Paige
has taken the machine apart again, never satisfied with its
perfection, or perhaps getting a hint that certain of its
perfections were not permanent. A letter at the end of November
seems worth preserving here.
To Joseph T. Goodman, in California:
HARTFORD, Nov. 29, '89.
DEAR JOE, Things are getting into better and more flexible shape every
day. Papers are now being drawn which will greatly simplify the raising
of capital; I shall be in supreme command; it will not be necessary for
the capitalist to arrive at terms with anybody but me. I don't want to
dicker with anybody but Jones. I know him; that is to say, I want to
dicker with you, and through you with Jones. Try to see if you can't be
here by the 15th of January.
The machine was as perfect as a watch when we took her apart the other
day; but when she goes together again the 15th of January we expect her
to be perfecter than a watch.
Joe, I want you to sell some royalties to the boys out there, if you can,
for I want to be financially strong when we go to New York. You know the
machine, and you appreciate its future enormous career better than any
man I know. At the lowest conceivable estimate (2,000 machines a year,)
we shall sell 34,000 in the life of the patent--17 years.
All the family send love to you--and they mean it, or they wouldn't say
it.
Yours ever
MARK.
The Yankee had come from the press, and Howells had praised it in
the "Editor's Study" in Harper's Magazine. He had given it his
highest commendation, and it seems that his opinion of it did not
change with time. "Of all fanciful schemes of fiction it pleases me
most," he in one place declared, and again referred to it as
"a greatly imagined and symmetrically developed tale."
In more than one letter to Goodman, Clemens had urged him to come
East without delay. "Take the train, Joe, and come along," he wrote
early in December. And we judge from the following that Joe had
decided to come.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Dec. 23, '89.
DEAR HOWELLS,--The magazine came last night, and the Study notice is just
great. The satisfaction it affords us could not be more prodigious if
the book deserved every word of it; and maybe it does; I hope it does,
though of course I can't realize it and believe it. But I am your
grateful servant, anyway and always.
I am going to read to the Cadets at West Point Jan. 11. I go from here
to New York the 9th, and up to the Point the 11th. Can't you go with me?
It's great fun. I'm going to read the passages in the "Yankee" in which
the Yankee's West Point cadets figure--and shall covertly work in a
lecture on aristocracy to those boys. I am to be the guest of the
Superintendent, but if you will go I will shake him and we will go to the
hotel. He is a splendid fellow, and I know him well enough to take that
liberty.
And won't you give me a day or two's visit toward the end of January?
For two reasons: the machine will be at work again by that time, and we
want to hear the rest of the dream-story; Mrs. Clemens keeps speaking
about it and hankering for it. And we can have Joe Goodman on hand again
by that time, and I want you to get to know him thoroughly. It's well
worth it. I am going to run up and stay over night with you as soon as I
can get a chance.
We are in the full rush of the holidays now, and an awful rush it is,
too. You ought to have been here the other day, to make that day perfect
and complete. All alone I managed to inflict agonies on Mrs: Clemens,
whereas I was expecting nothing but praises. I made a party call the day
after the party--and called the lady down from breakfast to receive it.
I then left there and called on a new bride, who received me in her
dressing-gown; and as things went pretty well, I stayed to luncheon.
The error here was, that the appointed reception-hour was 3 in the
afternoon, and not at the bride's house but at her aunt's in another part
of the town. However, as I meant well, none of these disasters
distressed me.
Yrs ever
MARK.
The Yankee did not find a very hearty welcome in England. English
readers did not fancy any burlesque of their Arthurian tales, or
American strictures on their institutions. Mark Twain's publishers
had feared this, and asked that the story be especially edited for
the English edition. Clemens, however, would not listen to any
suggestions of the sort.
To Messrs. Chatto & Windus, in London, Eng.:
GENTLEMEN,--Concerning The Yankee, I have already revised the story
twice; and it has been read critically by W. D. Howells and Edmund
Clarence Stedman, and my wife has caused me to strike out several
passages that have been brought to her attention, and to soften others.
Furthermore, I have read chapters of the book in public where Englishmen
were present and have profited by their suggestions.
Now, mind you, I have taken all this pains because I wanted to say a
Yankee mechanic's say against monarchy and its several natural props,
and yet make a book which you would be willing to print exactly as it
comes to you, without altering a word.
We are spoken of (by Englishmen) as a thin-skinned people. It is you who
are thin-skinned. An Englishman may write with the most brutal frankness
about any man or institution among us and we republish him without
dreaming of altering a line or a word. But England cannot stand that
kind of a book written about herself. It is England that is
thin-skinned. It causeth me to smile when I read the modifications of my
language which have been made in my English editions to fit them for the
sensitive English palate.
Now, as I say, I have taken laborious pains to so trim this book of
offense that you might not lack the nerve to print it just as it stands.
I am going to get the proofs to you just as early as I can. I want you
to read it carefully. If you can publish it without altering a single
word, go ahead. Otherwise, please hand it to J. R. Osgood in time for
him to have it published at my expense.
This is important, for the reason that the book was not written for
America; it was written for England. So many Englishmen have done their
sincerest best to teach us something for our betterment that it seems to
me high time that some of us should substantially recognize the good
intent by trying to pry up the English nation to a little higher level of
manhood in turn.
Very truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The English nation, at least a considerable portion of it, did not wish
to be "pried up to a higher level of manhood" by a Connecticut Yankee.
The papers pretty generally denounced the book as coarse; in fact, a
vulgar travesty. Some of the critics concluded that England, after all,
had made a mistake in admiring Mark Twain. Clemens stood this for a time
and then seems to have decided that something should be done. One of the
foremost of English critics was his friend and admirer; he would state
the case to him fully and invite his assistance.
To Andrew Lang, in London:
[First page missing.]
1889
They vote but do not print. The head tells you pretty promptly whether
the food is satisfactory or not; and everybody hears, and thinks the
whole man has spoken. It is a delusion. Only his taste and his smell
have been heard from--important, both, in a way, but these do not build
up the man; and preserve his life and fortify it.
The little child is permitted to label its drawings "This is a cow this
is a horse," and so on. This protects the child. It saves it from the
sorrow and wrong of hearing its cows and its horses criticized as
kangaroos and work benches. A man who is white-washing a fence is doing
a useful thing, so also is the man who is adorning a rich man's house
with costly frescoes; and all of us are sane enough to judge these
performances by standards proper to each. Now, then, to be fair, an
author ought to be allowed to put upon his book an explanatory line:
"This is written for the Head;" "This is written for the Belly and the
Members." And the critic ought to hold himself in honor bound to put
away from him his ancient habit of judging all books by one standard, and
thenceforth follow a fairer course.
The critic assumes, every time, that if a book doesn't meet the
cultivated-class standard, it isn't valuable. Let us apply his law all
around: for if it is sound in the case of novels, narratives, pictures,
and such things, it is certainly sound and applicable to all the steps
which lead up to culture and make culture possible. It condemns the
spelling book, for a spelling book is of no use to a person of culture;
it condemns all school books and all schools which lie between the
child's primer and Greek, and between the infant school and the
university; it condemns all the rounds of art which lie between the cheap
terra cotta groups and the Venus de Medici, and between the chromo and
the Transfiguration; it requires Whitcomb Riley to sing no more till he
can sing like Shakespeare, and it forbids all amateur music and will
grant its sanction to nothing below the "classic."
Is this an extravagant statement? No, it is a mere statement of fact.
It is the fact itself that is extravagant and grotesque. And what is the
result? This--and it is sufficiently curious: the critic has actually
imposed upon the world the superstition that a painting by Raphael is
more valuable to the civilizations of the earth than is a chromo; and the
august opera than the hurdy-gurdy and the villagers' singing society; and
Homer than the little everybody's-poet whose rhymes are in all mouths
today and will be in nobody's mouth next generation; and the Latin
classics than Kipling's far-reaching bugle-note; and Jonathan Edwards
than the Salvation Army; and the Venus de Medici than the plaster-cast
peddler; the superstition, in a word, that the vast and awful comet that
trails its cold lustre through the remote abysses of space once a century
and interests and instructs a cultivated handful of astronomers is worth
more to the world than the sun which warms and cheers all the nations
every day and makes the crops to grow.
If a critic should start a religion it would not have any object but to
convert angels: and they wouldn't need it. The thin top crust of
humanity--the cultivated--are worth pacifying, worth pleasing, worth
coddling, worth nourishing and preserving with dainties and delicacies,
it is true; but to be caterer to that little faction is no very dignified
or valuable occupation, it seems to me; it is merely feeding the
over-fed, and there must be small satisfaction in that. It is not that
little minority who are already saved that are best worth trying to
uplift, I should think, but the mighty mass of the uncultivated who are
underneath. That mass will never see the Old Masters--that sight is for
the few; but the chromo maker can lift them all one step upward toward
appreciation of art; they cannot have the opera, but the hurdy-gurdy and
the singing class lift them a little way toward that far light; they will
never know Homer, but the passing rhymester of their day leaves them
higher than he found them; they may never even hear of the Latin
classics, but they will strike step with Kipling's drum-beat, and they
will march; for all Jonathan Edwards's help they would die in their
slums, but the Salvation Army will beguile some of them up to pure air
and a cleaner life; they know no sculpture, the Venus is not even a name
to them, but they are a grade higher in the scale of civilization by the
ministrations of the plaster-cast than they were before it took its place
upon then mantel and made it beautiful to their unexacting eyes.
Indeed I have been misjudged, from the very first. I have never tried in
even one single instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes.
I was not equipped for it, either by native gifts or training. And I
never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger
game--the masses. I have seldom deliberately tried to instruct them,
but have done my best to entertain them. To simply amuse them would have
satisfied my dearest ambition at any time; for they could get instruction
elsewhere, and I had two chances to help to the teacher's one: for
amusement is a good preparation for study and a good healer of fatigue
after it. My audience is dumb, it has no voice in print, and so I cannot
know whether I have won its approbation or only got its censure.
Yes, you see, I have always catered for the Belly and the Members, but
have been served like the others--criticized from the culture-standard
--to my sorrow and pain; because, honestly, I never cared what became of
the cultured classes; they could go to the theatre and the opera--they
had no use for me and the melodeon.
And now at last I arrive at my object and tender my petition, making
supplication to this effect: that the critics adopt a rule recognizing
the Belly and the Members, and formulate a standard whereby work done for
them shall be judged. Help me, Mr. Lang; no voice can reach further than
yours in a case of this kind, or carry greater weight of authority.
Lang's reply was an article in the Illustrated London News on "The
Art of Mark Twain." Lang had no admiration to express for the
Yankee, which he confessed he had not cared to read, but he
glorified Huck Finn to the highest. "I can never forget, nor be
ungrateful for the exquisite pleasure with which I read Huckleberry
Finn for the first time, years ago," he wrote; "I read it again last
night, deserting Kenilworth for Huck. I never laid it down till I
had finished it."
Lang closed his article by referring to the story of Huck as the
"great American novel which had escaped the eyes of those who
watched to see this new planet swim into their ken."
LETTERS, 1890, CHIEFLY TO JOS. T. GOODMAN. THE GREAT MACHINE ENTERPRISE
Dr. John Brown's son, whom Mark Twain and his wife had known in 1873
as "Jock," sent copies of Dr. John Brown and His Sister Isabella, by
E. T. McLaren. It was a gift appreciated in the Clemens home.
To Mr. John Brown, in Edinburgh, Scotland:
HARTFORD, Feby 11, 1890.
DEAR MR. BROWN,--Both copies came, and we are reading and re-reading the
one, and lending the other, to old time adorers of "Rab and his Friends."
It is an exquisite book; the perfection of literary workmanship. It says
in every line, "Don't look at me, look at him"--and one tries to be good
and obey; but the charm of the painter is so strong that one can't keep
his entire attention on the developing portrait, but must steal
side-glimpses of the artist, and try to divine the trick of her
felicitous brush. In this book the doctor lives and moves just as he
was. He was the most extensive slave-holder of his time, and the
kindest; and yet he died without setting one of his bondmen free.
We all send our very, very kindest regards.
Sincerely yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
If Mark Twain had been less interested in the type-setting machine
he might possibly have found a profit that winter in the old Sellers
play, which he had written with Howells seven years before. The
play had eventually been produced at the Lyceum Theatre in New York,
with A. P. Burbank in the leading role, and Clemens and Howells as
financial backers. But it was a losing investment, nor did it pay
any better when Clemens finally sent Burbank with it on the road.
Now, however, James A. Herne, a well-known actor and playwright,
became interested in the idea, after a discussion of the matter with
Howells, and there seemed a probability that with changes made under
Herne's advisement the play might be made sensible and successful.
But Mark Twain's greater interest was now all in the type-machine,
and certainly he had no money to put into any other venture. His
next letter to Goodman is illuminating--the urgency of his need for
funds opposed to that conscientiousness which was one of the most
positive forces of Mark Twain's body spiritual. The Mr. Arnot of
this letter was an Elmira capitalist.
To Jos. T. Goodman, in California:
HARTFORD, March 31, '90.
DEAR JOE,--If you were here, I should say, "Get you to Washington and beg
Senator Jones to take the chances and put up about ten or "--no, I
wouldn't. The money would burn a hole in my pocket and get away from me
if the furnisher of it were proceeding upon merely your judgment and mine
and without other evidence. It is too much of a responsibility.
But I am in as close a place to-day as ever I was; $3,000 due for the
last month's machine-expenses, and the purse empty. I notified Mr. Arnot
a month ago that I should want $5,000 to-day, and his check arrived last
night; but I sent it back to him, because when he bought of me on the 9th
of December I said that I would not draw upon him for 3 months, and that
before that date Senator Jones would have examined the machine and
approved, or done the other thing. If Jones should arrive here a week or
ten days from now (as he expects to do,) and should not approve, and
shouldn't buy any royalties, my deal with Arnot would not be
symmetrically square, and then how could I refund? The surest way was to
return his check.
I have talked with the madam, and here is the result. I will go down to
the factory and notify Paige that I will scrape together $6,000 to meet
the March and April expenses, and will retire on the 30th of April and
return the assignment to him if in the meantime I have not found
financial relief.
It is very rough; for the machine does at last seem perfect, and just a
bird to go! I think she's going to be good for 8,000 ems an hour in the
hands of a good ordinary man after a solid year's practice. I may be in
error, but I most solidly believe it.
There's an improved Mergenthaler in New York; Paige and Davis and I
watched it two whole afternoons.
With the love of us all,
MARK.
Arnot wrote Clemens urging him to accept the check for five thousand
dollars in this moment of need. Clemens was probably as sorely
tempted to compromise with his conscience as he had ever been in his
life, but his resolution field firm.
To M. H. Arnot, in Elmira, N. Y.:
MR. M. H. ARNOT
DEAR SIR,--No--no, I could not think of taking it, with you unsatisfied;
and you ought not to be satisfied until you have made personal
examination of the machine and had a consensus of testimony of
disinterested people, besides. My own perfect knowledge of what is
required of such a machine, and my perfect knowledge of the fact that
this is the only machine that can meet that requirement, make it
difficult for me to realize that a doubt is possible to less well-posted
men; and so I would have taken your money without thinking, and thus
would have done a great wrong to you and a great one to myself. And now
that I go back over the ground, I remember that where I said I could get
along 3 months without drawing on you, that delay contemplated a visit
from you to the machine in the interval, and your satisfaction with its
character and prospects. I had forgotten all that. But I remember it
now; and the fact that it was not "so nominated in the bond" does not
alter the case or justify me in making my call so prematurely. I do not
know that you regarded all that as a part of the bargain--for you were
thoroughly and magnanimously unexacting--but I so regarded it,
notwithstanding I have so easily managed to forget all about it.
You so gratified me, and did me so much honor in bonding yourself to me
in a large sum, upon no evidence but my word and with no protection but
my honor, that my pride in that is much stronger than my desire to reap a
money advantage from it.
With the sincerest appreciation I am Truly yours
S L. CLEMENS.
P. S. I have written a good many words and yet I seem to have failed to
say the main thing in exact enough language--which is, that the
transaction between us is not complete and binding until you shall have
convinced yourself that the machine's character and prospects are
satisfactory.
I ought to explain that the grippe delayed us some weeks, and that we
have since been waiting for Mr. Jones. When he was ready, we were not;
and now we have been ready more than a month, while he has been kept in
Washington by the Silver bill. He said the other day that to venture out
of the Capitol for a day at this time could easily chance to hurt him if
the bill came up for action, meantime, although it couldn't hurt the
bill, which would pass anyway. Mrs. Jones said she would send me two or
three days' notice, right after the passage of the bill, and that they
would follow as soon as I should return word that their coming would not
inconvenience us. I suppose I ought to go to New York without waiting
for Mr. Jones, but it would not be wise to go there without money.
The bill is still pending.
The Mergenthaler machine, like the Paige, was also at this time in
the middle stages of experimental development. It was a slower
machine, but it was simpler, less expensive, occupied less room.
There was not so much about it to get out of order; it was not so
delicate, not so human. These were immense advantages.
But no one at this time could say with certainty which typesetter
would reap the harvest of millions. It was only sure that at least
one of them would, and the Mergenthaler people were willing to trade
stock for stock with the Paige company in order to insure financial
success for both, whichever won. Clemens, with a faith that never
faltered, declined this offer, a decision that was to cost him
millions.
Winter and spring had gone and summer had come, but still there had
been no financial conclusion with Jones, Mackay, and the other rich
Californians who were to put up the necessary million for the
machine's manufacture. Goodman was spending a large part of his
time traveling back and forth between California and Washington,
trying to keep business going at both ends. Paige spent most of his
time working out improvements for the type-setter, delicate
attachments which complicated its construction more and more.
To Joe T. Goodman, in Washington:
HARTFORD, June 22, '90.
DEAR JOE,--I have been sitting by the machine 2 hours, this afternoon,
and my admiration of it towers higher than ever. There is no sort of
mistake about it, it is the Big Bonanza. In the 2 hours, the time lost
by type-breakage was 3 minutes.
This machine is totally without a rival. Rivalry with it is impossible.
Last Friday, Fred Whitmore (it was the 28th day of his apprenticeship on
the machine) stacked up 49,700 ems of solid nonpareil in 8 hours, and the
type-breaking delay was only 6 minutes for the day.
I claim yet, as I have always claimed, that the machine's market (abroad
and here together,) is today worth $150,000,000 without saying anything
about the doubling and trebling of this sum that will follow within the
life of the patents. Now here is a queer fact: I am one of the
wealthiest grandees in America--one of the Vanderbilt gang, in fact--and
yet if you asked me to lend you a couple of dollars I should have to ask
you to take my note instead.
It makes me cheerful to sit by the machine: come up with Mrs. Goodman and
refresh yourself with a draught of the same.
Ys ever
MARK.
The machine was still breaking the types now and then, and no doubt
Paige was itching to take it to pieces, and only restrained by force
from doing so. He was never thoroughly happy unless he was taking
the machine apart or setting it up again. Finally, he was allowed
to go at it--a disasterous permission, for it was just then that
Jones decided to steal a day or two from the Silver Bill and watch
the type-setter in operation. Paige already had it in parts when
this word came from Goodman, and Jones's visit had to be called off.
His enthusiasm would seem to have weakened from that day. In July,
Goodman wrote that both Mackay and Jones had become somewhat
diffident in the matter of huge capitalization. He thought it
partly due, at least, to "the fatal delays that have sicklied over
the bloom of original enthusiasm." Clemens himself went down to
Washington and perhaps warmed Jones with his eloquence; at least,
Jones seemed to have agreed to make some effort in the matter a
qualified promise, the careful word of a wary politician and
capitalist. How many Washington trips were made is not certain, but
certainly more than one. Jones would seem to have suggested forms
of contracts, but if he came to the point of signing any there is no
evidence of it to-day.
Any one who has read Mark Twain's, "A Connecticut Yankee in King
Arthur's Court," has a pretty good idea of his opinion of kings in
general, and tyrants in particular. Rule by "divine right," however
liberal, was distasteful to him; where it meant oppression it
stirred him to violence. In his article, "The Czar's Soliloquy," he
gave himself loose rein concerning atrocities charged to the master
of Russia, and in a letter which he wrote during the summer of 1890,
he offered a hint as to remedies. The letter was written by
editorial request, but was never mailed. Perhaps it seemed too
openly revolutionary at the moment.
Yet scarcely more than a quarter of a century was needed to make it
"timely." Clemens and his family were spending some weeks in the
Catskills when it was written.
An unpublished letter on the Czar.
ONTEORA, 1890.
TO THE EDITOR OF FREE RUSSIA,--I thank you for the compliment of your
invitation to say something, but when I ponder the bottom paragraph on
your first page, and then study your statement on your third page, of the
objects of the several Russian liberation-parties, I do not quite know
how to proceed. Let me quote here the paragraph referred to:
"But men's hearts are so made that the sight of one voluntary victim for
a noble idea stirs them more deeply than the sight of a crowd submitting
to a dire fate they cannot escape. Besides, foreigners could not see so
clearly as the Russians how much the Government was responsible for the
grinding poverty of the masses; nor could they very well realize the
moral wretchedness imposed by that Government upon the whole of educated
Russia. But the atrocities committed upon the defenceless prisoners are
there in all their baseness, concrete and palpable, admitting of no
excuse, no doubt or hesitation, crying out to the heart of humanity
against Russian tyranny. And the Tzar's Government, stupidly confident
in its apparently unassailable position, instead of taking warning from
the first rebukes, seems to mock this humanitarian age by the aggravation
of brutalities. Not satisfied with slowly killing its prisoners, and
with burying the flower of our young generation in the Siberian desserts,
the Government of Alexander III. resolved to break their spirit by
deliberately submitting them to a regime of unheard-of brutality and
degradation."
When one reads that paragraph in the glare of George Kennan's
revelations, and considers how much it means; considers that all earthly
figures fail to typify the Czar's government, and that one must descend
into hell to find its counterpart, one turns hopefully to your statement
of the objects of the several liberation-parties--and is disappointed.
Apparently none of them can bear to think of losing the present hell
entirely, they merely want the temperature cooled down a little.
I now perceive why all men are the deadly and uncompromising enemies of
the rattlesnake: it is merely because the rattlesnake has not speech.
Monarchy has speech, and by it has been able to persuade men that it
differs somehow from the rattlesnake, has something valuable about it
somewhere, something worth preserving, something even good and high and
fine, when properly "modified," something entitling it to protection from
the club of the first comer who catches it out of its hole. It seems a
most strange delusion and not reconcilable with our superstition that man
is a reasoning being. If a house is afire, we reason confidently that it
is the first comer's plain duty to put the fire out in any way he can
--drown it with water, blow it up with dynamite, use any and all means to
stop the spread of the fire and save the rest of the city. What is the
Czar of Russia but a house afire in the midst of a city of eighty
millions of inhabitants? Yet instead of extinguishing him, together with
his nest and system, the liberation-parties are all anxious to merely
cool him down a little and keep him.
It seems to me that this is illogical--idiotic, in fact. Suppose you had
this granite-hearted, bloody-jawed maniac of Russia loose in your house,
chasing the helpless women and little children--your own. What would you
do with him, supposing you had a shotgun? Well, he is loose in your
house-Russia. And with your shotgun in your hand, you stand trying to
think up ways to "modify" him.
Do these liberation-parties think that they can succeed in a project
which has been attempted a million times in the history of the world and
has never in one single instance been successful--the "modification" of a
despotism by other means than bloodshed? They seem to think they can.
My privilege to write these sanguinary sentences in soft security was
bought for me by rivers of blood poured upon many fields, in many lands,
but I possess not one single little paltry right or privilege that come
to me as a result of petition, persuasion, agitation for reform, or any
kindred method of procedure. When we consider that not even the most
responsible English monarch ever yielded back a stolen public right until
it was wrenched from them by bloody violence, is it rational to suppose
that gentler methods can win privileges in Russia?
Of course I know that the properest way to demolish the Russian throne
would be by revolution. But it is not possible to get up a revolution
there; so the only thing left to do, apparently, is to keep the throne
vacant by dynamite until a day when candidates shall decline with thanks.
Then organize the Republic. And on the whole this method has some large
advantages; for whereas a revolution destroys some lives which cannot
well be spared, the dynamite way doesn't. Consider this: the
conspirators against the Czar's life are caught in every rank of life,
from the low to the high. And consider: if so many take an active part,
where the peril is so dire, is this not evidence that the sympathizers
who keep still and do not show their hands, are countless for multitudes?
Can you break the hearts of thousands of families with the awful Siberian
exodus every year for generations and not eventually cover all Russia
from limit to limit with bereaved fathers and mothers and brothers and
sisters who secretly hate the perpetrator of this prodigious crime and
hunger and thirst for his life? Do you not believe that if your wife or
your child or your father was exiled to the mines of Siberia for some
trivial utterances wrung from a smarting spirit by the Czar's intolerable
tyranny, and you got a chance to kill him and did not do it, that you
would always be ashamed to be in your own society the rest of your life?
Suppose that that refined and lovely Russian lady who was lately stripped
bare before a brutal soldiery and whipped to death by the Czar's hand in
the person of the Czar's creature had been your wife, or your daughter or
your sister, and to-day the Czar should pass within reach of your hand,
how would you feel--and what would you do? Consider, that all over vast
Russia, from boundary to boundary, a myriad of eyes filled with tears
when that piteous news came, and through those tears that myriad of eyes
saw, not that poor lady, but lost darlings of their own whose fate her
fate brought back with new access of grief out of a black and bitter past
never to be forgotten or forgiven.
If I am a Swinburnian--and clear to the marrow I am--I hold human nature
in sufficient honor to believe there are eighty million mute Russians
that are of the same stripe, and only one Russian family that isn't.
MARK TWAIN.
Type-setter matters were going badly. Clemens still had faith in
Jones, and he had lost no grain of faith in the machine. The money
situation, however, was troublesome. With an expensive
establishment, and work of one sort or another still to be done on
the machine, his income would not reach. Perhaps Goodman had
already given up hope, for he does not seem to have returned from
California after the next letter was written--a colorless letter
--in which we feel a note of resignation. The last few lines are
sufficient.
To Joe T. Goodman, in California:
DEAR JOE,--...... I wish you could get a day off and make those two or
three Californians buy those privileges, for I'm going to need money
before long.
I don't know where the Senator is; but out on the Coast I reckon.
I guess we've got a perfect machine at last. We never break a type, now,
and the new device for enabling the operator to touch the last letters
and justify the line simultaneously works, to a charm.
With love to you both,
MARK
The year closed gloomily enough. The type-setter seemed to be
perfected, but capital for its manufacture was not forthcoming.
The publishing business of Charles L. Webster & Co. was returning
little or no profit. Clemens's mother had died in Keokuk at the end
of October, and his wife's mother, in Elmira a month later. Mark
Twain, writing a short business letter to his publishing manager,
Fred J. Ball, closed it: "Merry Xmas to you!--and I wish to God I
could have one myself before I die."
XXXI
LETTERS, 1891, TO HOWELLS, MRS. CLEMENS AND OTHERS.
RETURN TO LITERATURE. AMERICAN CLAIMANT. LEAVING HARTFORD.
EUROPE. DOWN THE RHINE
Clemens was still not without hope in the machine, at the beginning of
the new year (1891) but it was a hope no longer active, and it presently
became a moribund. Jones, on about the middle of February, backed out
altogether, laying the blame chiefly on Mackay and the others, who, he
said, had decided not to invest. Jones "let his victim down easy" with
friendly words, but it was the end, for the present, at least, of machine
financiering.
It was also the end of Mark Twain's capital. His publishing business was
not good. It was already in debt and needing more money. There was just
one thing for him to do and he did it at once, not stopping to cry over
spilt milk, but with good courage and the old enthusiasm that never
failed him, he returned to the trade of authorship. He dug out
half-finished articles and stories, finished them and sold them, and
within a week after the Jones collapse he was at work on a novel based an
the old Sellers idea, which eight years before he and Howells had worked
into a play. The brief letter in which he reported this news to Howells
bears no marks of depression, though the writer of it was in his
fifty-sixth year; he was by no means well, and his financial prospects
were anything but golden.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Feb. 24, '91
DEAR HOWELLS,--Mrs. Clemens has been sick abed for near two weeks, but is
up and around the room now, and gaining. I don't know whether she has
written Mrs. Howells or not--I only know she was going to--and will yet,
if she hasn't. We are promising ourselves a whole world of pleasure in
the visit, and you mustn't dream of disappointing us.
Does this item stir an interest in you? Began a novel four days ago, and
this moment finished chapter four. Title of the book
"Colonel Mulberry Sellers.
American Claimant
Of the
Great Earldom of Rossmore'
in the
Peerage of Great Britain."
Ys Ever
MARK.
Probably Mark Twain did not return to literary work reluctantly. He had
always enjoyed writing and felt now that he was equipped better than ever
for authorship, at least so far as material was concerned. There exists
a fragmentary copy of a letter to some unknown correspondent, in which he
recites his qualifications. It bears evidence of having been written
just at this time and is of unusual interest at this point.
Fragment of Letter to -------, 1891:
. . . . I confine myself to life with which I am familiar when
pretending to portray life. But I confined myself to the boy-life out on
the Mississippi because that had a peculiar charm for me, and not because
I was not familiar with other phases of life. I was a soldier two weeks
once in the beginning of the war, and was hunted like a rat the whole
time. Familiar? My splendid Kipling himself hasn't a more burnt-in,
hard-baked, and unforgetable familiarity with that death-on-the-pale-
horse-with-hell-following-after, which is a raw soldier's first fortnight
in the field--and which, without any doubt, is the most tremendous
fortnight and the vividest he is ever going to see.
Yes, and I have shoveled silver tailings in a quartz-mill a couple of
weeks, and acquired the last possibilities of culture in that direction.
And I've done "pocket-mining" during three months in the one little patch
of ground in the whole globe where Nature conceals gold in pockets--or
did before we robbed all of those pockets and exhausted, obliterated,
annihilated the most curious freak Nature ever indulged in. There are
not thirty men left alive who, being told there was a pocket hidden on
the broad slope of a mountain, would know how to go and find it, or have
even the faintest idea of how to set about it; but I am one of the
possible 20 or 30 who possess the secret, and I could go and put my hand
on that hidden treasure with a most deadly precision.
And I've been a prospector, and know pay rock from poor when I find it
--just with a touch of the tongue. And I've been a silver miner and know
how to dig and shovel and drill and put in a blast. And so I know the
mines and the miners interiorly as well as Bret Harte knows them
exteriorly.
And I was a newspaper reporter four years in cities, and so saw the
inside of many things; and was reporter in a legislature two sessions
and the same in Congress one session, and thus learned to know personally
three sample bodies of the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and
the cowardliest hearts that God makes.
And I was some years a Mississippi pilot, and familiarly knew all the
different kinds of steam-boatmen--a race apart, and not like other folk.
And I was for some years a traveling "jour" printer, and wandered from
city to city--and so I know that sect familiarly.
And I was a lecturer on the public platform a number of seasons and was a
responder to toasts at all the different kinds of banquets--and so I know
a great many secrets about audiences--secrets not to be got out of books,
but only acquirable by experience.
And I watched over one dear project of mine for years, spent a fortune on
it, and failed to make it go--and the history of that would make a large
book in which a million men would see themselves as in a mirror; and they
would testify and say, Verily, this is not imagination; this fellow has
been there--and after would cast dust upon their heads, cursing and
blaspheming.
And I am a publisher, and did pay to one author's widow (General Grant's)
the largest copyright checks this world has seen--aggregating more than
L80,000 in the first year.
And I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.
Now then; as the most valuable capital or culture or education usable in
the building of novels is personal experience I ought to be well equipped
for that trade.
I surely have the equipment, a wide culture, and all of it real, none of
it artificial, for I don't know anything about books.
[No signature.]
Clemens for several years had been bothered by rheumatism in his
shoulder. The return now to the steady use of the pen aggravated
his trouble, and at times he was nearly disabled. The phonograph
for commercial dictation had been tried experimentally, and Mark
Twain was always ready for any innovation.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Feb. 28, '91.
DEAR HOWELLS,--Won't you drop-in at the Boylston Building (New
England Phonograph Co) and talk into a phonograph in an ordinary
conversation-voice and see if another person (who didn't hear you do it)
can take the words from the thing without difficulty and repeat them to
you. If the experiment is satisfactory (also make somebody put in a
message which you don't hear, and see if afterward you can get it out
without difficulty) won't you then ask them on what terms they will rent
me a phonograph for 3 months and furnish me cylinders enough to carry
75,000 words. 175 cylinders, ain't it?
I don't want to erase any of them. My right arm is nearly disabled by
rheumatism, but I am bound to write this book (and sell 100,000 copies of
it--no, I mean a million--next fall) I feel sure I can dictate the book
into a phonograph if I don't have to yell. I write 2,000 words a day; I
think I can dictate twice as many.
But mind, if this is going to be too much trouble to you--go ahead and do
it, all the same.
Ys ever
MARK.
Howells, always willing to help, visited the phonograph place, and a
few days later reported results. He wrote: "I talked your letter
into a fonograf in my usual tone at my usual gait of speech. Then
the fonograf man talked his answer in at his wonted swing and swell.
Then we took the cylinder to a type-writer in the next room, and she
put the hooks into her ears and wrote the whole out. I send you the
result. There is a mistake of one word. I think that if you have
the cheek to dictate the story into the fonograf, all the rest is
perfectly easy. It wouldn't fatigue me to talk for an hour as I
did."
Clemens did not find the phonograph entirely satisfactory, at least
not for a time, and he appears never to have used it steadily. His
early experience with it, however, seems interesting.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Apl. 4, '91.
DEAR HOWELLS,--I'm ashamed. It happened in this way. I was proposing to
acknowledge the receipt of the play and the little book per phonograph,
so that you could see that the instrument is good enough for mere
letter-writing; then I meant to add the fact that you can't write
literature with it, because it hasn't any ideas and it hasn't any gift
for elaboration, or smartness of talk, or vigor of action, or felicity of
expression, but is just matter-of-fact, compressive, unornamental, and as
grave and unsmiling as the devil.
I filled four dozen cylinders in two sittings, then found I could have
said about as much with the pen and said it a deal better. Then I
resigned.
I believe it could teach one to dictate literature to a phonographer--and
some time I will experiment in that line.
The little book is charmingly written, and it interested me. But it
flies too high for me. Its concretest things are filmy abstractions to
me, and when I lay my grip on one of them and open my hand, I feel as
embarrassed as I use to feel when I thought I had caught a fly. I'm
going to try to mail it back to you to-day--I mean I am going to charge
my memory. Charging my memory is one of my chief industries ....
With our loves and our kindest regards distributed among you according to
the proprieties.
Yrs ever
MARK.
P. S.--I'm sending that ancient "Mental Telegraphy" article to Harper's
--with a modest postscript. Probably read it to you years ago.
S. L. C.
The "little book" mentioned in this letter was by Swedenborg, an
author in whom the Boston literary set was always deeply interested.
"Mental Telegraphy" appeared in Harper's Magazine, and is now
included in the Uniform Edition of Mark Twain's books. It was
written in 1878.
Joe Goodman had long since returned to California, it being clear
that nothing could be gained by remaining in Washington. On receipt
of the news of the type-setter's collapse he sent a consoling word.
Perhaps he thought Clemens would rage over the unhappy circumstance,
and possibly hold him in some measure to blame. But it was
generally the smaller annoyances of life that made Mark Twain rage;
the larger catastrophes were likely to stir only his philosophy.
The Library of American Literature, mentioned in the following
letter, was a work in many volumes, edited by Edmund Clarence
Stedman and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson.
To Joe T. Goodman:
April [?] 1891.
DEAR JOE, Well, it's all right, anyway. Diplomacy couldn't have saved
it--diplomacy of mine--at that late day. I hadn't any diplomacy in
stock, anyway. In order to meet Jones's requirements I had to surrender
the old contract (a contract which made me boss of the situation and gave
me the whip-hand of Paige) and allow the new one to be drafted and put in
its place. I was running an immense risk, but it was justified by
Jones's promises--promises made to me not merely once but every time I
tallied with him. When February arrived, I saw signs which were mighty
plain reading. Signs which meant that Paige was hoping and praying that
Jones would go back on me--which would leave Paige boss, and me robbed
and out in the cold. His prayers were answered, and I am out in the
cold. If I ever get back my nine-twentieths interest, it will be by
law-suit--which will be instituted in the indefinite future, when the
time comes.
I am at work again--on a book. Not with a great deal of spirit, but with
enough--yes, plenty. And I am pushing my publishing house. It has
turned the corner after cleaning $50,000 a year for three consecutive
years, and piling every cent of it into one book--Library of American
Literature--and from next January onward it will resume dividends. But
I've got to earn $50,000 for it between now and then--which I will do if
I keep my health. This additional capital is needed for that same book,
because its prosperity is growing so great and exacting.
It is dreadful to think of you in ill health--I can't realize it; you are
always to me the same that you were in those days when matchless health.
and glowing spirits and delight in life were commonplaces with us. Lord
save us all from old age and broken health and a hope-tree that has lost
the faculty of putting out blossoms.
With love to you both from us all.
MARK.
Mark Twain's residence in Hartford was drawing rapidly to a close.
Mrs. Clemens was poorly, and his own health was uncertain. They
believed that some of the European baths would help them.
Furthermore, Mark Twain could no longer afford the luxury of his
Hartford home. In Europe life could be simpler and vastly cheaper.
He was offered a thousand dollars apiece for six European letters,
by the McClure syndicate and W. M. Laffan, of the Sun. This would
at least give him a start on the other side. The family began
immediately their sad arrangements for departure.
To Fred J. Hall (manager Chas. L. Webster & Co.), N. Y.:
HARTFORD, Apl. 14, '91.
DEAR MR. HALL,--Privately--keep it to yourself--as you, are already
aware, we are going to Europe in June, for an indefinite stay. We shall
sell the horses and shut up the house. We wish to provide a place for
our coachman, who has been with us a 21 years, and is sober, active,
diligent, and unusually bright and capable. You spoke of hiring a
colored man as engineer and helper in the packing room. Patrick would
soon learn that trade and be very valuable. We will cease to need him by
the middle or end of June. Have you made irrevocable arrangements with
the colored man, or would you prefer to have Patrick, if he thinks he
would like to try?
I have not said anything to him about it yet.
Yours
S. L. C.
It was to be a complete breaking up of their beautiful
establishment. Patrick McAleer, George the butler, and others of
their household help had been like members of the family. We may
guess at the heartbreak of it all, even though the letters remain
cheerful.
Howells, strangely enough, seems to have been about the last one to
be told of their European plans; in fact, he first got wind of it
from the papers, and wrote for information. Likely enough Clemens
had not until then had the courage to confess.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, May 20, '91.
DEAR HOWELLS,--For her health's sake Mrs. Clemens must try baths
somewhere, and this it is that has determined us to go to Europe.
The water required seems to be provided at a little obscure and
little-visited nook up in the hills back of the Rhine somewhere and you
get to it by Rhine traffic-boat and country stage-coach. Come, get "sick
or sorry enough" and join us. We shall be a little while at that bath,
and the rest of the summer at Annecy (this confidential to you) in Haute
Savoie, 22 miles from Geneva. Spend the winters in Berlin. I don't know
how long we shall be in Europe--I have a vote, but I don't cast it. I'm
going to do whatever the others desire, with leave to change their mind,
without prejudice, whenever they want to. Travel has no longer, any
charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to see except
heaven and hell, and I have only a vague curiosity as concerns one of
those.
I found I couldn't use the play--I had departed too far from its lines
when I came to look at it. I thought I might get a great deal of
dialogue out of it, but I got only 15 loosely written pages--they saved
me half a days work. It was the cursing phonograph. There was abundance
of good dialogue, but it couldn't befitted into the new conditions of the
story.
Oh, look here--I did to-day what I have several times in past years
thought of doing: answered an interviewing proposition from a rich
newspaper with the reminder that they had not stated the terms; that my
time was all occupied with writing, at good pay, and that as talking was
harder work I should not care to venture it unless I knew the pay was
going to be proportionately higher. I wish I had thought of this the
other day when Charley Stoddard turned a pleasant Englishman loose on me
and I couldn't think of any rational excuse.
Ys Ever
MARK.
Clemens had finished his Sellers book and had disposed of the serial
rights to the McClure syndicate. The house in Hartford was closed
early in June, and on the 6th the family, with one maid, Katie
Leary, sailed on the Gascogne. Two weeks later they had begun a
residence abroad which was to last for more than nine years.
It was not easy to get to work in Europe. Clemens's arm remained
lame, and any effort at writing brought suffering. The Century
Magazine proposed another set of letters, but by the end of July he
had barely begun on those promised to McClure and Laffan. In
August, however, he was able to send three: one from Aix about the
baths there, another from Bayreuth concerning the Wagner festival,
and a third from Marienbad, in Bohemia, where they rested for a
time. He decided that he would arrange for no more European letters
when the six were finished, but would gather material for a book.
He would take a courier and a kodak and go tramping again in some
fashion that would be interesting to do and to write.
The idea finally matured when he reached Switzerland and settled the
family at the Hotel Beau Rivage, Ouchy, Lausanne, facing Lake Leman.
He decided to make a floating trip down the Rhone, and he engaged
Joseph Very, a courier that had served him on a former European
trip, to accompany him. The courier went over to Bourget and bought
for five dollars a flat-bottomed boat and engaged its owner as their
pilot. It was the morning of September 20, when they began their
floating-trip down the beautiful historic river that flows through
the loveliest and most romantic region of France. He wrote daily to
Mrs. Clemens, and his letters tell the story of that drowsy, happy
experience better than the notes made with a view to publication.
Clemens had arrived at Lake Bourget on the evening before the
morning of their start and slept on the Island of Chatillon, in an
old castle of the same name. Lake Bourget connects with the Rhone
by a small canal.
Letters and Memoranda to Mrs. Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:
Sept. 20, 1891.
Sunday, 11 a.m.
On the lake Bourget--just started. The castle of Chatillon high overhead
showing above the trees. It was a wonderfully still place to sleep in.
Beside us there was nobody in it but a woman, a boy and a dog. A Pope
was born in the room I slept in. No, he became a Pope later.
The lake is smooth as glass--a brilliant sun is shining.
Our boat is comfortable and shady with its awning.
11.20 We have crossed the lake and are entering the canal. Shall
presently be in the Rhone.
Noon. Nearly down to the Rhone. Passing the village of Chanaz.
3.15 p. m. Sunday. We have been in the Rhone 3 hours. It is
unimaginably still and reposeful and cool and soft and breezy. No rowing
or work of any kind to do--we merely float with the current--we glide
noiseless and swift--as fast as a London cab-horse rips along--8 miles an
hour--the swiftest current I've ever boated in. We have the entire river
to ourselves--nowhere a boat of any kind.
Good bye Sweetheart
S. L. C.
PORT DE GROLEE, Monday, 4.15 p.m.
[Sept. 21, 1891]
Name of the village which we left five minutes ago.
We went ashore at 5 p. m. yesterday, dear heart, and walked a short mile
to St. Geuix, a big village, and took quarters at the principal inn; had
a good dinner and afterwards along walk out of town on the banks of the
Guiers till 7.30.
Went to bed at 8.30 and continued to make notes and read books and
newspapers till midnight. Slept until 8, breakfasted in bed, and lay
till noon, because there had been a very heavy rain in the night and the
day was still dark and lowering. But at noon the sun broke through and
in 15 minutes we were tramping toward the river. Got afloat at 1 p. m.
but at 2.40 we had to rush suddenly ashore and take refuge in the above
village. Just as we got ourselves and traps safely housed in the inn,
the rain let go and came down in great style. We lost an hour and a half
there, but we are off again, now, with bright sunshine.
I wrote you yesterday my darling, and shall expect to write you every
day.
Good-day, and love to all of you.
SAML.
ON THE RHONE BELOW VILLEBOIS,
Tuesday noon.
Good morning, sweetheart. Night caught us yesterday where we had to take
quarters in a peasant's house which was occupied by the family and a lot
of cows and calves--also several rabbits.--[His word for fleas.]--The
latter had a ball, and I was the ball-room; but they were very friendly
and didn't bite.
The peasants were mighty kind and hearty, and flew around and did their
best to make us comfortable. This morning I breakfasted on the shore in
the open air with two sociable dogs and a cat. Clean cloth, napkin and
table furniture, white sugar, a vast hunk of excellent butter, good
bread, first class coffee with pure milk, fried fish just caught.
Wonderful that so much cleanliness should come out of such a phenomenally
dirty house.
An hour ago we saw the Falls of the Rhone, a prodigiously rough and
dangerous looking place; shipped a little water but came to no harm.
It was one of the most beautiful pieces of piloting and boat-management
I ever saw. Our admiral knew his business.
We have had to run ashore for shelter every time it has rained
heretofore, but Joseph has been putting in his odd time making a
water-proof sun-bonnet for the boat, and now we sail along dry although
we had many heavy showers this morning.
With a word of love to you all and particularly you,
SAML.
ON THE RHONE, BELOW VIENNA.
I salute you, my darling. Your telegram reached me in Lyons last night
and was very pleasant news indeed.
I was up and shaved before 8 this morning, but we got delayed and didn't
sail from Lyons till 10.30--an hour and a half lost. And we've lost
another hour--two of them, I guess--since, by an error. We came in sight
of Vienne at 2 o'clock, several miles ahead, on a hill, and I proposed to
walk down there and let the boat go ahead of us. So Joseph and I got out
and struck through a willow swamp along a dim path, and by and by came
out on the steep bank of a slough or inlet or something, and we followed
that bank forever and ever trying to get around the head of that slough.
Finally I noticed a twig standing up in the water, and by George it had a
distinct and even vigorous quiver to it! I don't know when I have felt
so much like a donkey. On an island! I wanted to drown somebody, but I
hadn't anybody I could spare. However, after another long tramp we found
a lonely native, and he had a scow and soon we were on the mainland--yes,
and a blamed sight further from Vienne than we were when we started.
Notes--I make millions of them; and so I get no time to write to you. If
you've got a pad there, please send it poste-restante to Avignon. I may
not need it but I fear I shall.
I'm straining to reach St. Pierre de Boef, but it's going to be a close
fit, I reckon.
AFLOAT, Friday, 3 p.m., '91.
Livy darling, we sailed from St. Pierre de Boef six hours ago, and are
now approaching Tournon, where we shall not stop, but go on and make
Valence, a City Of 25,000 people. It's too delicious, floating with the
swift current under the awning these superb sunshiny days in deep peace
and quietness. Some of these curious old historical towns strangely
persuade me, but it is so lovely afloat that I don't stop, but view them
from the outside and sail on. We get abundance of grapes and peaches for
next to nothing.
Joseph is perfect. He is at his very best--and never was better in his
life. I guess he gets discouraged and feels disliked and in the way when
he is lying around--but here he is perfection, and brim full of useful
alacrities and helps and ingenuities.
When I woke up an hour ago and heard the clock strike 4, I said "I seem
to have been asleep an immensely long time; I must have gone to bed
mighty early; I wonder what time I did go to bed." And I got up and lit
a candle and looked at my watch to see.
AFLOAT
2 HOURS BELOW BOURG ST. ANDEOL.
Monday, 11 a.m., Sept. 28.
Livy darling, I didn't write yesterday. We left La Voulte in a driving
storm of cold rain--couldn't write in it--and at 1 p. m. when we were
not thinking of stopping, we saw a picturesque and mighty ruin on a high
hill back of a village, and I was seized with a desire to explore it; so
we landed at once and set out with rubbers and umbrella, sending the boat
ahead to St. Andeol, and we spent 3 hours clambering about those cloudy
heights among those worn and vast and idiotic ruins of a castle built by
two crusaders 650 years ago. The work of these asses was full of
interest, and we had a good time inspecting, examining and scrutinizing
it. All the hills on both sides of the Rhone have peaks and precipices,
and each has its gray and wasted pile of mouldy walls and broken towers.
The Romans displaced the Gauls, the Visigoths displaced the Romans, the
Saracens displaced the Visigoths, the Christians displaced the Saracens,
and it was these pious animals who built these strange lairs and cut each
other's throats in the name and for the glory of God, and robbed and
burned and slew in peace and war; and the pauper and the slave built
churches, and the credit of it went to the Bishop who racked the money
out of them. These are pathetic shores, and they make one despise the
human race.
We came down in an hour by rail, but I couldn't get your telegram till
this morning, for it was Sunday and they had shut up the post office to
go to the circus. I went, too. It was all one family--parents and 5
children--performing in the open air to 200 of these enchanted villagers,
who contributed coppers when called on. It was a most gay and strange
and pathetic show. I got up at 7 this morning to see the poor devils
cook their poor breakfast and pack up their sordid fineries.
This is a 9 k-m. current and the wind is with us; we shall make Avignon
before 4 o'clock. I saw watermelons and pomegranates for sale at St.
Andeol.
With a power of love, Sweetheart,
SAML.
HOTEL D'EUROPE, AVIGNON,
Monday, 6 p.m., Sept. 28.
Well, Livy darling, I have been having a perfect feast of letters for an
hour, and I thank you and dear Clam with all my heart. It's like hearing
from home after a long absence.
It is early to be in bed, but I'm always abed before 9, on this voyage;
and up at 7 or a trifle later, every morning. If I ever take such a trip
again, I will have myself called at the first tinge of dawn and get to
sea as soon after as possible. The early dawn on the water-nothing can
be finer, as I know by old Mississippi experience. I did so long for you
and Sue yesterday morning--the most superb sunrise!--the most marvelous
sunrise! and I saw it all from the very faintest suspicion of the coming
dawn all the way through to the final explosion of glory. But it had
interest private to itself and not to be found elsewhere in the world;
for between me and it, in the far distant-eastward, was a silhouette
mountain-range in which I had discovered, the previous afternoon, a most
noble face upturned to the sky, and mighty form out stretched, which I
had named Napoleon Dreaming of Universal Empire--and now, this prodigious
face, soft, rich, blue, spirituelle, asleep, tranquil, reposeful, lay
against that giant conflagration of ruddy and golden splendors all rayed
like a wheel with the upstreaming and far-reaching lances of the sun. It
made one want to cry for delight, it was so supreme in its unimaginable
majesty and beauty.
We had a curious experience today. A little after I had sealed and
directed my letter to you, in which I said we should make Avignon before
4, we got lost. We ceased to encounter any village or ruin mentioned in
our "particularizes" and detailed Guide of the Rhone--went drifting along
by the hour in a wholly unknown land and on an uncharted river! Confound
it, we stopped talking and did nothing but stand up in the boat and
search the horizons with the glass and wonder what in the devil had
happened. And at last, away yonder at 5 o'clock when some east towers
and fortresses hove in sight we couldn't recognize them for Avignon--yet
we knew by the broken bridge that it was Avignon.
Then we saw what the trouble was--at some time or other we had drifted
down the wrong side of an island and followed a sluggish branch of the
Rhone not frequented in modern times. We lost an hour and a half by it
and missed one of the most picturesque and gigantic and history-sodden
masses of castellated medieval ruin that Europe can show.
It was dark by the time we had wandered through the town and got the
letters and found the hotel--so I went to bed.
We shall leave here at noon tomorrow and float down to Arles, arriving
about dark, and there bid good bye to the boat, the river-trip finished.
Between Arles and Nimes (and Avignon again,) we shall be till Saturday
morning--then rail it through on that day to Ouchy, reaching the hotel at
11 at night if the train isn't late.
Next day (Sunday) if you like, go to Basel, and Monday to Berlin. But I
shall be at your disposal, to do exactly as you desire and prefer.
With no end of love to all of you and twice as much to you,
sweetheart,
SAML.
I believe my arm is a trifle better than it was when I started.
The mention in the foregoing letter of the Napoleon effigy is the
beginning of what proved to be a rather interesting episode. Mark
Twain thought a great deal of his discovery, as he called it--the
giant figure of Napoleon outlined by the distant mountain range.
In his note-book he entered memoranda telling just where it was to
be seen, and added a pencil sketch of the huge profile. But then he
characteristically forgot all about it, and when he recalled the
incident ten years later, he could not remember the name of the
village, Beauchastel, from which the great figure could be seen;
also, that he had made a record of the place.
But he was by this time more certain than ever that his discovery
was a remarkable one, which, if known, would become one of the great
natural wonders, such as Niagara Falls. Theodore Stanton was
visiting him at the time, and Clemens urged him, on his return to
France, to make an excursion to the Rhone and locate the Lost
Napoleon, as he now called it. But Clemens remembered the wonder as
being somewhere between Arles and Avignon, instead of about a
hundred miles above the last-named town. Stanton naturally failed
to find it, and it remained for the writer of these notes, motoring
up the Rhone one September day, exactly twenty-two years after the
first discovery, to re-locate the vast reclining figure of the first
consul of France, "dreaming of Universal Empire." The re-discovery
was not difficult--with Mark Twain's memoranda as a guide--and it
was worth while. Perhaps the Lost Napoleon is not so important a
natural wonder as Mark Twain believed, but it is a striking picture,
and on a clear day the calm blue face outlined against the sky will
long hold the traveler's attention.
To Clara Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:
AFLOAT, 11.20 a.m., Sept. 29, Tuesday.
DEAR OLD BEN,--The vast stone masses and huge towers of the ancient papal
palace of Avignon are projected above an intervening wooded island a mile
up the river behind me--for we are already on our way to Arles. It is a
perfectly still morning, with a brilliant sun, and very hot--outside; but
I am under cover of the linen hood, and it is cool and shady in here.
Please tell mamma I got her very last letter this morning, and I perceive
by it that I do not need to arrive at Ouchy before Saturday midnight.
I am glad, because I couldn't do the railroading I am proposing to do
during the next two or three days and get there earlier. I could put in
the time till Sunday midnight, but shall not venture it without
telegraphic instructions from her to Nimes day after tomorrow, Oct. 1,
care Hotel Manivet.
The only adventures we have is in drifting into rough seas now and then.
They are not dangerous, but they go thro' all the motions of it.
Yesterday when we shot the Bridge of the Holy Spirit it was probably in
charge of some inexperienced deputy spirit for the day, for we were
allowed to go through the wrong arch, which brought us into a tourbillon
below which tried to make this old scow stand on its head. Of course I
lost my temper and blew it off in a way to be heard above the roar of the
tossing waters. I lost it because the admiral had taken that arch in
deference to my opinion that it was the best one, while his own judgment
told him to take the one nearest the other side of the river. I could
have poisoned him I was so mad to think I had hired such a turnip.
A boatman in command should obey nobody's orders but his own, and yield
to nobody's suggestions.
It was very sweet of you to write me, dear, and I thank you ever so much.
With greatest love and kisses,
PAPA.
To Mrs. Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:
ARLES, Sept. 30, noon.
Livy darling, I hain't got no time to write today, because I am sight
seeing industriously and imagining my chapter.
Bade good-bye to the river trip and gave away the boat yesterday evening.
We had ten great days in her.
We reached here after dark. We were due about 4.30, counting by
distance, but we couldn't calculate on such a lifeless current as we
found.
I love you, sweetheart.
SAML.
It had been a long time since Clemens had written to his old friend
Twichell, but the Rhone trip must have reminded him of those days
thirteen years earlier, when, comparatively young men, he and
Twichell were tramping through the Black Forest and scaling Gemmi
Pass. He sent Twichell a reminder of that happy time.
To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, in Hartford, Conn:
NIMES, Oct. 1, '91.
DEAR JOE,--I have been ten days floating down the Rhone on a raft, from
Lake Bourget, and a most curious and darling kind of a trip it has been.
You ought to have been along--I could have made room for you easily--and
you would have found that a pedestrian tour in Europe doesn't begin with
a raft-voyage for hilarity and mild adventure, and intimate contact with
the unvisited native of the back settlements, and extinction from the
world and newspapers, and a conscience in a state of coma, and lazy
comfort, and solid happiness. In fact there's nothing that's so lovely.
But it's all over. I gave the raft away yesterday at Arles, and am
loafing along back by short stages on the rail to Ouchy-Lausanne where
the tribe are staying.
Love to you all
MARK.
The Clemenses settled in Berlin for the winter, at 7 Kornerstrasse,
and later at the Hotel Royal. There had been no permanent
improvement in Mark Twain's arm and he found writing difficult.
Some of the letters promised to Laffan and McClure were still
unfinished.
Young Hall, his publishing manager in America, was working hard to
keep the business afloat, and being full of the optimism of his
years did not fail to make as good a showing as he could. We may
believe his letters were very welcome to Clemens and his wife, who
found little enough in the general prospect to comfort them.
To Mr. Hall, in New York:
BERLIN, Nov. 27, '91.
DEAR MR. HALL,--That kind of a statement is valuable. It came this
morning. This is the first time since the business began that I have had
a report that furnished the kind of information I wanted, and was really
enlightening and satisfactory. Keep it up. Don't let it fall into
desuetude.
Everything looks so fine and handsome with the business, now, that I feel
a great let-up from depression. The rewards of your long and patient
industry are on their way, and their arrival safe in port, presently,
seems assured.
By George, I shall be glad when the ship comes in!
My arm is so much better that I was able to make a speech last night to
250 Americans. But when they threw my portrait on the screen it was a
sorrowful reminder, for it was from a negative of 15 years ago, and
hadn't a gray hair in it. And now that my arm is better, I have stolen a
couple of days and finished up a couple of McClure letters that have been
lying a long time.
I shall mail one of them to you next Tuesday--registered. Lookout for
it.
I shall register and mail the other one (concerning the "Jungfrau") next
Friday look out for it also, and drop me a line to let me know they have
arrived.
I shall write the 6th and last letter by and by when I have studied
Berlin sufficiently.
Yours in a most cheerful frame of mind, and with my and all the family's
Thanksgiving greetings and best wishes,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Postscript by Mrs. Clemens written on Mr. Clemens's letter:
DEAR MR. HALL,--This is my birthday and your letter this morning was a
happy addition to the little gifts on the breakfast table. I thought of
going out and spending money for something unnecessary after it came, but
concluded perhaps I better wait a little longer.
Sincerely yours
O. L. CLEMENS.
"The German Chicago" was the last of the six McClure letters and was
finished that winter in Berlin. It is now included in the Uniform
Edition of Mark Twain's works, and is one of the best descriptive
articles of the German capital ever written. He made no use of the
Rhone notes further than to put them together in literary form.
They did not seem to him to contain enough substance to warrant
publication. A letter to Hall, written toward the end of December,
we find rather gloomy in tone, though he is still able to extract
comfort and even cheerfulness from one of Mr. Hall's reports.
Memorandum to Fred J. Hall, in New York:
Among the MSS I left with you are a few that have a recent look and are
written on rather stiff pale green paper. If you will have those
type-writered and keep the originals and send me the copies (one per
mail, not two.) I'll see if I can use them.
But tell Howells and other inquirers that my hopes of writing anything
are very slender--I seem to be disabled for life.
Drop McClure a line and tell him the same. I can't dare to make an
engagement now for even a single letter.
I am glad Howells is on a magazine, but sorry he gave up the Study.
I shall have to go on a magazine myself if this L. A. L. continues to
hold my nose down to the grind-stone much longer.
I'm going to hold my breath, now, for 30 days--then the annual statement
will arrive and I shall know how we feel! Merry Xmas to you from us all.
Sincerely,
S. L. C.
P. S. Just finished the above and finished raging at the eternal German
tax-gatherer, and so all the jubilant things which I was going to say
about the past year's business got knocked out of me. After writing this
present letter I was feeling blue about Huck Finn, but I sat down and
overhauled your reports from now back to last April and compared them
with the splendid Oct.-Nov. business, and went to bed feeling refreshed
and fine, for certainly it has been a handsome year. Now rush me along
the Annual Report and let's see how we feel!
S. L. C.
XXXII
LETTERS, 1892, CHIEFLY TO MR. HALL AND MRS. CRANE. IN BERLIN, MENTONE,
BAD-NAUHEIM, FLORENCE
Mark Twain was the notable literary figure in Berlin that winter, the
center of every great gathering. He was entertained by the Kaiser, and
shown many special attentions by Germans of every rank. His books were
as well known in Berlin as in New York, and at court assemblies and
embassies he was always a chief center of interest.
He was too popular for his own good; the gaiety of the capital told on
him. Finally, one night, after delivering a lecture in a hot room, he
contracted a severe cold, driving to a ball at General von Versen's, and
a few days later was confined to his bed with pneumonia. It was not a
severe attack, but it was long continued. He could write some letters
and even work a little, but he was not allowed to leave his bed for many
weeks, a condition which he did not find a hardship, for no man ever
enjoyed the loose luxury of undress and the comfort of pillows more than
Mark Twain. In a memorandum of that time he wrote: "I am having a
booming time all to myself."
Meantime, Hall, in America, was sending favorable reports of the
publishing business, and this naturally helped to keep up his spirits.
He wrote frequently to Hall, of course, but the letters for the most part
are purely of a business nature and of little interest to the general
reader.
To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
HOTEL ROYAL, BERLIN, Feb. 12.
DEAR MR. HALL,--Daly wants to get the stage rights of the "American
Claimant." The foundation from which I wrote the story is a play of the
same name which has been in A. P. Burbank's hands 5 or 6 years. That
play cost me some money (helping Burbank stage it) but has never brought
me any. I have written Burbank (Lotos Club) and asked him to give me
back his rights in the old play so that I can treat with Daly and utilize
this chance to even myself up. Burbank is a lovely fellow, and if he
objects I can't urge him. But you run in at the Lotos and see him; and
if he relinquishes his claim, then I would like you to conduct the
business with Daly; or have Whitford or some other lawyer do it under
your supervision if you prefer.
This morning I seem to have rheumatism in my right foot.
I am ordered south by the doctor and shall expect to be well enough to
start by the end of this month.
[No signature.]
It is curious, after Clemens and Howells had tried so hard and so
long to place their "Sellers" Play, that now, when the story
appeared in book form, Augustin Daly should have thought it worth
dramatizing. Daly and Clemens were old friends, and it would seem
that Daly could hardly have escaped seeing the play when it was
going the rounds. But perhaps there is nothing more mysterious in
the world than the ways and wants of theatrical managers. The
matter came to nothing, of course, but the fact that Daly should
have thought a story built from an old discarded play had a play in
it seems interesting.
Clemens and his wife were advised to leave the cold of Berlin as
soon as he was able to travel. This was not until the first of
March, when, taking their old courier, Joseph Very, they left the
children in good hands and journeyed to the south of France.
To Susy Clemens, in Berlin:
MENTONE, Mch 22, '92.
SUSY DEAR,--I have been delighted to note your easy facility with your
pen and proud to note also your literary superiorities of one kind and
another--clearness of statement, directness, felicity of expression,
photographic ability in setting forth an incident--style--good style--no
barnacles on it in the way of unnecessary, retarding words (the Shipman
scrapes off the barnacles when he wants his racer to go her best gait and
straight to the buoy.) You should write a letter every day, long or short
--and so ought I, but I don't.
Mamma says, tell Clara yes, she will have to write a note if the fan
comes back mended.
We couldn't go to Nice to-day--had to give it up, on various accounts
--and this was the last chance. I am sorry for Mamma--I wish she could
have gone. She got a heavy fall yesterday evening and was pretty stiff
and lame this morning, but is working it off trunk packing.
Joseph is gone to Nice to educate himself in Kodaking--and to get the
pictures mounted which Mamma thinks she took here; but I noticed she
didn't take the plug out, as a rule. When she did, she took nine
pictures on top of each other--composites.
With lots of love.
PAPA.
In the course of their Italian wanderings they reached Florence,
where they were so comfortable and well that they decided to engage
a villa for the next winter. Through Prof. Willard Fiske, they
discovered the Villa Viviani, near Settignano, an old palace
beautifully located on the hilltops east of Florence, commanding a
wonderful view of the ancient city. Clemens felt that he could work
there, and time proved that he was right.
For the summer, however, they returned to Germany, and located at
Bad-Nauheim. Clemens presently decided to make a trip to America to
give some personal attention to business matters. For one thing,
his publishing-house, in spite of prosperity, seemed constantly to
be requiring more capital, and then a Chicago company had been
persuaded by Paige to undertake the manufacture of the type-setter.
It was the beginning of a series of feverish trips which he would
make back and forth across the ocean during the next two years.
To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
BAD-NAUHEIM, June 11, '92.
Saturday.
DEAR MR. HALL,--If this arrives before I do, let it inform you that I am
leaving Bremen for New York next Tuesday in the "Havel."
If you can meet me when the ship arrives, you can help me to get away
from the reporters; and maybe you can take me to your own or some other
lodgings where they can't find me.
But if the hour is too early or too late for you, I shall obscure myself
somewhere till I can come to the office.
Yours sincerely
S. L. C.
Nothing of importance happened in America. The new Paige company
had a factory started in Chicago and expected to manufacture fifty
machines as a beginning. They claimed to have capital, or to be
able to command it, and as the main control had passed from
Clemens's hands, he could do no more than look over the ground and
hope for the best. As for the business, about all that he could do
was to sign certain notes necessary to provide such additional
capital as was needed, and agree with Hall that hereafter they would
concentrate their efforts and resist further temptation in the way
of new enterprise. Then he returned to Bad-Nauheim and settled down
to literature. This was the middle of July, and he must have worked
pretty steadily, for he presently had a variety of MSS. ready to
offer.
To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
Aug. 10, '92.
DEAR MR. HALT,--I have dropped that novel I wrote you about, because I
saw a more effective way of using the main episode--to wit: by telling it
through the lips of Huck Finn. So I have started Huck Finn and Tom
Sawyer (still 15 years old) and their friend the freed slave Jim around
the world in a stray balloon, with Huck as narrator, and somewhere after
the end of that great voyage he will work in the said episode and then
nobody will suspect that a whole book has been written and the globe
circumnavigated merely to get that episode in an effective (and at the
same time apparently unintentional) way. I have written 12,000 words of
this narrative, and find that the humor flows as easily as the adventures
and surprises--so I shall go along and make a book of from 50,000 to
100,000 words.
It is a story for boys, of course, and I think will interest any boy
between 8 years and 80.
When I was in New York the other day Mrs. Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas,
wrote and, offered me $5,000 for (serial right) a story for boys 50,000
words long. I wrote back and declined, for I had other matter in my
mind, then.
I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so
that it will not only interest boys but will also strongly interest any
man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.
Now this story doesn't need to be restricted to a Childs magazine--it is
proper enough for any magazine, I should think, or for a syndicate. I
don't swear it, but I think so.
Proposed title of the story, "New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
[No signature.]
The "novel" mentioned in the foregoing was The Extraordinary Twins,
a story from which Pudd'nhead Wilson would be evolved later. It was
a wildly extravagant farce--just the sort of thing that now and then
Mark Twain plunged into with an enthusiasm that had to work itself
out and die a natural death, or mellow into something worth while.
Tom Sawyer Abroad, as the new Huck story was finally called, was
completed and disposed of to St. Nicholas for serial publication.
The Twichells were in Europe that summer, and came to Bad-Nauheim.
The next letter records a pleasant incident. The Prince of Wales of
that day later became King Edward VII.
To Mr. and Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa.:
Private. BAD-NAUHEIM, Aug. 23, '92.
DEAR ORION AND MOLLIE,--("Private" because no newspaper-man or other
gossip must get hold of it)
Livy is getting along pretty well, and the doctor thinks another summer
here will cure her.
The Twichell's have been here four days and we have had good times with
them. Joe and I ran over to Homburg, the great pleasure resort,
Saturday, to dine with some friends, and in the morning I went walking in
the promenade and met the British Ambassador to the Court of Berlin, and
he introduced me to the Prince of Wales, and I found him a most unusually
comfortable and unembarrassing Englishman to talk with--quick to see the
obscurest point, and equipped with a laugh which is spontaneous and
catching. Am invited by a near friend of his to meet him at dinner day
after tomorrow, and there could be a good time, but the brass band will
smash the talk and spoil everything.
We are expecting to move to Florence ten or twelve days hence, but if
this hot weather continues we shall wait for cooler. I take Clara to
Berlin for the winter-music, mainly, with German and French added. Thus
far, Jean is our only glib French scholar.
We all send love to you all and to Pamela and Sam's family, and Annie.
SAM
Clemens and family left Bad-Nauheim for Italy by way of Switzerland.
In September Mrs. Clemens's sister, Mrs. Crane, who had been with
them in Europe during the first year, had now returned to America.
Mrs. Clemens had improved at the baths, though she had by no means
recovered her health. We get a general report of conditions from
the letter which Clemens wrote Mrs. Crane from Lucerne, Switzerland,
where the party rested for several days. The "Phelps" mentioned in
this letter was William Walter Phelps, United States Minister to
Germany. The Phelps and Clemens families had been much associated
in Berlin. "Mason" was Frank Mason, Consul General at Frankfort,
and in later years at Paris. "Charlie and Ida" were Charles and
Mrs. Langdon, of Elmira.
To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira, N. Y.:
LUCERNE, Sept. 18, '92.
DEAR AUNT SUE,--Imagine how I felt to find that you had actually gone off
without filling my traveling ink stand which you gave me! I found it out
yesterday. Livy advised me to write you about it.
I have been driving this pen hard. I wrote 280 pages on a yarn called
"Tom Sawyer Abroad," then took up the "Twins" again, destroyed the last
half of the manuscript and re-wrote it in another form, and am going to
continue it and finish it in Florence. "Tom Sawyer" seems rather pale to
the family after the extravagances of the Twins, but they came to like it
after they got used to it.
We remained in Nauheim a little too long. If we had left there four or
five days earlier we should have made Florence in 3 days; but by the time
we got started Livy had got smitten with what we feared might be
erysipelas--greatly swollen neck and face, and unceasing headaches. We
lay idle in Frankfort 4 days, doctoring. We started Thursday and made
Bale. Hard trip, because it was one of those trains that gets tired
every seven minutes and stops to rest three quarters of an hour. It took
us 3 1/2 hours to get here, instead of the regulation 2.20. We reached
here Friday evening and will leave tomorrow (Tuesday) morning. The rest
has made the headaches better. We shall pull through to Milan tomorrow
if possible. Next day we shall start at 10 a. m., and try to make
Bologna, 5 hours. Next day (Thursday) Florence, D. V. Next year we will
walk, for these excursions have got to be made over again. I've got
seven trunks, and I undertook to be courier because I meant to express
them to Florence direct, but we were a couple of days too late. All
continental roads had issued a peremptory order that no baggage should
travel a mile except in the company of the owner. (All over Europe
people are howling; they are separated from their baggage and can't get
it forwarded to them) I have to re-ship my trunks every day. It is very
amusing--uncommonly so. There seemed grave doubts about our being able
to get these trunks over the Italian frontier, but I've got a very
handsome note from the Frankfort Italian Consul General addressed to all
Italian Customs Officers, and we shall get through if anybody does.
The Phelpses came to Frankfort and we had some great times--dinner at his
hotel, the Masons, supper at our inn--Livy not in it. She was merely
allowed a glimpse, no more. Of course, Phelps said she was merely
pretending to be ill; was never looking so well and fine.
The children are all right. They paddle around a little, and drive-so do
we all. Lucerne seems to be pretty full of tourists. The Fleulen boat
went out crowded yesterday morning.
The Paris Herald has created a public interest by inoculating one of its
correspondents with cholera. A man said yesterday he wished to God they
would inoculate all of them. Yes, the interest is quite general and
strong, and much hope is felt.
Livy says, I have said enough bad things, and better send all our loves
to you and Charley and Ida and all the children and shut up. Which I do
--and shut up.
S. L. C.
They reached Florence on the 26th, and four days later we find
Clemens writing again to Mrs. Crane, detailing everything at length.
Little comment on this letter is required; it fully explains itself.
Perhaps a word of description from one of his memoranda will not be
out of place. Of the villa he wrote: "It is a plain, square
building, like a box, and is painted light green and has green
window-shutters. It stands in a commanding position on the
artificial terrace of liberal dimensions, which is walled around
with masonry. From the walls the vineyards and olive groves of the
estate slant away toward the valley.... Roses overflow the
retaining walls and the battered and mossy stone urn on the
gate-post, in pink and yellow cataracts, exactly as they do on the
drop-curtains in the theaters. The house is a very fortress for
strength."
The Mrs. Ross in this letter was Janet Ross, daughter of Lady Duff
Gordon, remembered to-day for her Egyptian letters. The Ross castle
was but a little distance away.
To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira:
VILLA VIVIANI, SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE.
Sept. 30, 1892
DEAR SUE,--We have been in the house several days, and certainly it is a
beautiful place,--particularly at this moment, when the skies are a deep
leaden color, the domes of Florence dim in the drizzling rain, and
occasional perpendicular coils of lightning quivering intensely in the
black sky about Galileo's Tower. It is a charming panorama, and the most
conspicuous towers and domes down in the city look to-day just as they
looked when Boccaccio and Dante used to contemplate them from this
hillock five and six hundred years ago.
The Mademoiselle is a great help to Livy in the housekeeping, and is a
cheery and cheerful presence in the house. The butler is equipped with a
little French, and it is this fact that enables the house to go--but it
won't go well until the family get some sort of facility with the Italian
tongue, for the cook, the woman-of-all-work and the coachman understand
only that. It is a stubborn and devilish language to learn, but Jean and
the others will master it. Livy's German Nauheim girl is the worst off
of anybody, as there is no market for her tongue at all among the help.
With the furniture in and the curtains up the house is very pretty, and
not unhomelike. At mid-night last night we heard screams up stairs--Susy
had set the lofty window curtains afire with a candle. This sounds kind
of frightful, whereas when you come to think of it, a burning curtain or
pile of furniture hasn't any element of danger about it in this fortress.
There isn't any conceivable way to burn this house down, or enable a
conflagration on one floor to climb to the next.
Mrs. Ross laid in our wood, wine and servants for us, and they are
excellent. She had the house scoured from Cellar to rook the curtains
washed and put up, all beds pulled to pieces, beaten, washed and put
together again, and beguiled the Marchese into putting a big porcelain
stove in the vast central hall. She is a wonderful woman, and we don't
quite see how or when we should have gotten under way without her.
Observe our address above--the post delivers letters daily at the house.
Even with the work and fuss of settling the house Livy has improved--and
the best is yet to come. There is going to be absolute seclusion here
--a hermit life, in fact. We (the rest of us) shall run over to the
Ross's frequently, and they will come here now and then and see Livy
--that is all. Mr. Fiske is away--nobody knows where--and the work on
his house has been stopped and his servants discharged. Therefore we
shall merely go Rossing--as far as society is concerned--shan't circulate
in Florence until Livy shall be well enough to take a share in it.
This present house is modern. It is not much more than two centuries
old; but parts of it, and also its foundations are of high antiquity.
The fine beautiful family portraits--the great carved ones in the large
ovals over the doors of the big hall--carry one well back into the past.
One of them is dated 1305--he could have known Dante, you see. Another
is dated 1343--he could have known Boccaccio and spent his afternoons in
Fiesole listening to the Decameron tales. Another is dated 1463
--he could have met Columbus.....
Evening. The storm thundered away until night, and the rain came down in
floods. For awhile there was a partial break, which furnished about such
a sunset as will be exhibited when the Last Day comes and the universe
tumbles together in wreck and ruin. I have never seen anything more
spectacular and impressive.
One person is satisfied with the villa, anyway. Jean prefers it to all
Europe, save Venice. Jean is eager to get at the Italian tongue again,
now, and I see that she has forgotten little or nothing of what she
learned of it in Rome and Venice last spring.
I am the head French duffer of the family. Most of the talk goes over my
head at the table. I catch only words, not phrases. When Italian comes
to be substituted I shall be even worse off than I am now, I suppose.
This reminds me that this evening the German girl said to Livy, "Man hat
mir gesagt loss Sie una candella verlaught habe"--unconsciously dropping
in a couple of Italian words, you see. So she is going to join the
polyglots, too, it appears. They say it is good entertainment to hear
her and the butler talk together in their respective tongues, piecing out
and patching up with the universal sign-language as they go along. Five
languages in use in the house (including the sign-language-hardest-worked
of them all) and yet with all this opulence of resource we do seem to
have an uncommonly tough time making ourselves understood.
What we lack is a cat. If we only had Germania! That was the most
satisfactory all-round cat I have seen yet. Totally ungermanic in the
raciness of his character and in the sparkle of his mind and the
spontaneity of his movements. We shall not look upon his like again....
S. L. C.
Clemens got well settled down to work presently. He found the
situation, the climate, the background, entirely suited to literary
production, and in a little while he had accomplished more than at
any other time since his arrival in Europe. From letters to Mrs.
Crane and to Mr. Hall we learn something of his employments and his
satisfaction.
To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira:
VILLA VIVIANI
SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE. Oct. 22, '92.
DEAR SUE,--We are getting wonted. The open fires have driven away the
cold and the doubt, and now a cheery spirit pervades the place. Livy and
the Kings and Mademoiselle having been taking their tea a number of
times, lately, on the open terrace with the city and the hills and the
sunset for company. I stop work, a few minutes, as a rule, when the sun
gets down to the hilltops west of Florence, and join the tea-group to
wonder and exclaim. There is always some new miracle in the view, a new
and exquisite variation in the show, a variation which occurs every 15
minutes between dawn and night. Once early in the morning, a multitude
of white villas not before perceived, revealed themselves on the far
hills; then we recognized that all those great hills are snowed thick
with them, clear to the summit.
The variety of lovely effects, the infinitude of change, is something not
to be believed by any who has not seen it. No view that I am acquainted
with in the world is at all comparable to this for delicacy, charm,
exquisiteness, dainty coloring, and bewildering rapidity of change. It
keeps a person drunk with pleasure all the time. Sometimes Florence
ceases to be substantial, and becomes just a faint soft dream, with domes
and towers of air, and one is persuaded that he might blow it away with a
puff of his breath.
Livy is progressing admirably. This is just the place for her.
[Remainder missing.]
To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
Dec. 12, '92.
DEAR MR. HALL,--November check received.
I have lent the Californian's Story to Arthur Stedman for his Author Club
Book, so your suggestion that my new spring-book bear that name arrives
too late, as he probably would not want us to use that story in a book of
ours until the Author book had had its run. That is for him to decide
--and I don't want him hampered at all in his decision. I, for my part,
prefer the "$1,000,000 Banknote and Other Stories" by Mark Twain as a
title, but above my judgment I prefer yours. I mean this--it is not
taffy.
I told Arthur to leave out the former squib or paragraph and use only the
Californian's Story. Tell him this is because I am going to use that in
the book I am now writing.
I finished "Those Extraordinary Twins" night before last makes 60 or
80,000 words--haven't counted.
The last third of it suits me to a dot. I begin, to-day, to entirely
recast and re-write the first two-thirds--new plan, with two minor
characters, made very prominent, one major character cropped out, and the
Twins subordinated to a minor but not insignificant place.
The minor character will now become the chiefest, and I will name the
story after him--"Puddn'head Wilson."
Merry Xmas to you, and great prosperity and felicity!
S. L. CLEMENS.
XXXIII
LETTERS, 1893, TO MR. HALL, MRS. CLEMENS, AND OTHERS. FLORENCE.
BUSINESS TROUBLES. "PUDD'NHEAD WILSON." "JOAN OF ARC."
AT THE PLAYERS, NEW YORK
The reader may have suspected that young Mr. Hall in New York was having
his troubles. He was by this time one-third owner in the business of
Charles L. Webster & Co., as well as its general manager. The business
had been drained of its capital one way and another-partly by the
publication of unprofitable books; partly by the earlier demands of the
typesetter, but more than all by the manufacturing cost and agents'
commissions demanded by L. A. L.; that is to say, the eleven large
volumes constituting the Library of American Literature, which Webster
had undertaken to place in a million American homes. There was plenty of
sale for it--indeed, that was just the trouble; for it was sold on
payments--small monthly payments--while the cost of manufacture and the
liberal agents' commissions were cash items, and it would require a
considerable period before the dribble of collections would swell into a
tide large enough to satisfy the steady outflow of expense. A sale of
twenty-five sets a day meant prosperity on paper, but unless capital
could be raised from some other source to make and market those books
through a period of months, perhaps even years, to come, it meant
bankruptcy in reality. It was Hall's job, with Clemens to back him, to
keep their ship afloat on these steadily ebbing financial waters. It was
also Hall's affair to keep Mark Twain cheerful, to look pleasant himself,
and to show how they were steadily getting rich because orders were
pouring in, though a cloud that resembled bankruptcy loomed always a
little higher upon the horizon. If Hall had not been young and an
optimist, he would have been frightened out of his boots early in the
game. As it was, he made a brave steady fight, kept as cheerful and
stiff an upper lip as possible, always hoping that something would
happen--some grand sale of his other books, some unexpected inflow from
the type-setter interests--anything that would sustain his ship until the
L. A. L. tide should turn and float it into safety.
Clemens had faith in Hall and was fond of him. He never found fault with
him; he tried to accept his encouraging reports at their face value. He
lent the firm every dollar of his literary earnings not absolutely needed
for the family's support; he signed new notes; he allowed Mrs. Clemens to
put in such remnants of her patrimony as the type-setter had spared.
The situation in 1893 was about as here outlined. The letters to Hall of
that year are frequent and carry along the story. To any who had formed
the idea that Mark Twain was irascible, exacting, and faultfinding, they
will perhaps be a revelation.
To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
FLORENCE, Jan. 1, '93.
DEAR MR. HALL,--Yours of Dec. 19 is to hand, and Mrs. Clemens is deeply
distressed, for she thinks I have been blaming you or finding fault with
you about something. But most surely that cannot be. I tell her that
although I am prone to write hasty and regrettable things to other
people, I am not a bit likely to write such things to you. I can't
believe I have done anything so ungrateful. If I have, pile coals of
fire on my head, for I deserve it!
I wonder if my letter of credit isn't an encumbrance? Do you have to
deposit the whole amount it calls for? If that is so, it is an
encumbrance, and we must withdraw it and take the money out of soak.
I have never made drafts upon it except when compelled, because I thought
you deposited nothing against it, and only had to put up money that I
drew upon it; that therefore the less I drew the easier it would be for
you.
I am dreadfully sorry I didn't know it would be a help to you to let my
monthly check pass over a couple of months. I could have stood that by
drawing what is left of Mrs. Clemens's letter of credit, and we would
have done it cheerfully.
I will write Whitmore to send you the "Century" check for $1,000, and you
can collect Mrs. Dodge's $2,000 (Whitmore has power of attorney which I
think will enable him to endorse it over to you in my name.) If you need
that $3,000 put it in the business and use it, and send Whitmore the
Company's note for a year. If you don't need it, turn it over to Mr.
Halsey and let him invest it for me.
I've a mighty poor financial head, and I may be all wrong--but tell me if
I am wrong in supposing that in lending my own firm money at 6 per cent I
pay 4 of it myself and so really get only a per cent? Now don't laugh if
that is stupid.
Of course my friend declined to buy a quarter interest in the L. A. L.
for $200,000. I judged he would. I hoped he would offer $100,000, but
he didn't. If the cholera breaks out in America, a few months hence, we
can't borrow or sell; but if it doesn't we must try hard to raise
$100,000. I wish we could do it before there is a cholera scare.
I have been in bed two or three days with a cold, but I got up an hour
ago, and I believe I am all right again.
How I wish I had appreciated the need of $100,000 when I was in New York
last summer! I would have tried my best to raise it. It would make us
able to stand 1,000 sets of L. A. L. per month, but not any more, I
guess.
You have done magnificently with the business, and we must raise the
money somehow, to enable you to reap the reward of all that labor.
Sincerely Yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
"Whitmore," in this letter, was F. G. Whitmore, of Hartford, Mark Twain's
financial agent. The money due from Mrs. Dodge was a balance on Tom
Sawyer Abroad, which had been accepted by St. Nicholas. Mr. Halsey was a
down-town broker.
Clemens, who was growing weary of the constant demands of L. A. L., had
conceived the idea that it would be well to dispose of a portion of it
for enough cash to finance its manufacture.
We don't know who the friend was to whom he offered a quarter interest
for the modest sum of two hundred thousand dollars. But in the next
letter we discover designs on a certain very canny Scotchman of Skibo.
To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
FLORENCE, Jan. 28, '92.
DEAR MR. HALL,--I want to throw out a suggestion and see what you think
of it. We have a good start, and solid ground under us; we have a
valuable reputation; our business organization is practical, sound and
well-devised; our publications are of a respect-worthy character and of a
money-breeding species. Now then I think that the association with us of
some one of great name and with capital would give our business a
prodigious impetus--that phrase is not too strong.
As I look at it, it is not money merely that is needed; if that were all,
the firm has friends enough who would take an interest in a paying
venture; we need some one who has made his life a success not only from a
business standpoint, but with that achievement back of him, has been
great enough to make his power felt as a thinker and a literary man. It
is a pretty usual thing for publishers to have this sort of partners.
Now you see what a power Carnegie is, and how far his voice reaches in
the several lines I speak of. Do you know him? You do by correspondence
or purely business talks about his books--but personally, I mean? so that
it would not be an intrusion for you to speak to him about this desire of
mine--for I would like you to put it before him, and if you fail to
interest him in it, you will probably get at least some valuable
suggestions from him. I'll enclose a note of introduction--you needn't
use it if you don't need to.
Yours S. L. C.
P. S. Yes, I think I have already acknowledged the Dec. $1,000 and the
Jan. $500--and if another $500 was mailed 3 days ago there's no hiatus.
I think I also reminded you that the new letter of credit does not cover
the unexpended balance of the old one but falls considerably short of it.
Do your best with Carnegie, and don't wait to consider any of my
intermediate suggestions or talks about our raising half of the $200,000
ourselves. I mean, wait for nothing. To make my suggestion available I
should have to go over and see Arnot, and I don't want to until I can
mention Carnegie's name to him as going in with us.
My book is type-written and ready for print--"Pudd'nhead Wilson-a Tale."
(Or, "Those Extraordinary Twins," if preferable.)
It makes 82,500 words--12,000 more than Huck Finn. But I don't know what
to do with it. Mrs. Clemens thinks it wouldn't do to go to the Am. Pub.
Co. or anywhere outside of our own house; we have no subscription
machinery, and a book in the trade is a book thrown away, as far as
money-profit goes. I am in a quandary. Give me a lift out of it.
I will mail the book to you and get you to examine it and see if it is
good or if it is bad. I think it is good, and I thought the Claimant
bad, when I saw it in print; but as for real judgment, I think I am
destitute of it.
I am writing a companion to the Prince and Pauper, which is half done and
will make 200,000 words; and I have had the idea that if it were gotten
up in handsome style, with many illustrations and put at a high enough
price maybe the L. A. L. canvassers would take it and run it with that
book. Would they? It could be priced anywhere from $4 up to $10,
according to how it was gotten up, I suppose.
I don't want it to go into a magazine.
S. L. C.
I am having several short things type-"writered." I will send them to
you presently. I like the Century and Harper's, but I don't know that I
have any business to object to the Cosmopolitan if they pay as good
rates. I suppose a man ought to stick to one magazine, but that may be
only superstition. What do you think?
S. L. C.
"The companion to The Prince and the Pauper," mentioned in this
letter, was the story of Joan of Arc, perhaps the most finished of
Mark Twain's literary productions. His interest in Joan had been
first awakened when, as a printer's apprentice in Hannibal, he had
found blowing along the street a stray leaf from some printed story
of her life. That fragment of history had pictured Joan in prison,
insulted and mistreated by ruffians. It had aroused all the
sympathy and indignation in the boy, Sam Clemens; also, it had
awakened his interest in history, and, indeed, in all literature.
His love for the character of Joan had grown with the years, until
in time he had conceived the idea of writing her story. As far back
as the early eighties he had collected material for it, and had
begun to make the notes. One thing and another had interfered, and
he had found no opportunity for such a story. Now, however, in
Florence, in the ancient villa, and in the quiet garden, looking
across the vineyards and olive groves to the dream city along the
Arno, he felt moved to take up the tale of the shepherd girl of
France, the soldier maid, or, as he called her, "The noble child,
the most innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable the ages have
produced." His surroundings and background would seem to have been
perfect, and he must have written with considerable ease to have
completed a hundred thousand words in a period of not more than six
weeks.
Perhaps Hall did not even go to see Carnegie; at all events nothing
seems to have come of the idea. Once, at a later time, Mask Twain
himself mentioned the matter to Carnegie, and suggested to him that
it was poor financiering to put all of one's eggs into one basket,
meaning into iron. But Carnegie answered, "That's a mistake; put
all your eggs into one basket and watch that basket."
It was March when Clemens felt that once more his presence was
demanded in America. He must see if anything could be realized from
the type-setter or L. A. L.
To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
March 13, '93.
DEAR MR. HALL,--I am busy getting ready to sail the 22d, in the Kaiser
Wilhelm II.
I send herewith 2 magazine articles.
The Story contains 3,800 to 4,000 words.
The "Diary" contains 3,800 words.
Each would make about 4 pages of the Century.
The Diary is a gem, if I do say it myself that shouldn't.
If the Cosmopolitan wishes to pay $600 for either of them or $1,200 for
both, gather in the check, and I will use the money in America instead of
breaking into your treasury.
If they don't wish to trade for either, send the articles to the Century,
without naming a price, and if their check isn't large enough I will call
and abuse them when I come.
I signed and mailed the notes yesterday.
Yours
S. L. C.
Clemens reached New York on the 3d of April and made a trip to
Chicago, but accomplished nothing, except to visit the World's Fair
and be laid up with a severe cold. The machine situation had not
progressed. The financial stringency of 1893 had brought everything
to a standstill. The New York bank would advance Webster & Co. no
more money. So disturbed were his affairs, so disordered was
everything, that sometimes he felt himself as one walking amid
unrealities. A fragment of a letter to Mrs. Crane conveys this:
"I dreamed I was born and grew up and was a pilot on the Mississippi
and a miner and a journalist in Nevada and a pilgrim in the Quaker
City, and had a wife and children and went to live in a villa at
Florence--and this dream goes on and on and sometimes seems so real
that I almost believe it is real. I wonder if it is? But there is
no way to tell, for if one applies tests they would be part of the
dream, too, and so would simply aid the deceit. I wish I knew
whether it is a dream or real."
He saw Warner, briefly, in America; also Howells, now living in New
York, but he had little time for visiting. On May 13th he sailed
again for Europe on the Kaiser Wilhelm II. On the night before
sailing he sent Howells a good-by word.
To W. D. Howells, in New York City:
MURRAY HILL HOTEL, NEW YORE, May 12, 1893.
Midnight.
DEAR HOWELLS--I am so sorry I missed you.
I am very glad to have that book for sea entertainment, and I thank you
ever so much for it.
I've had a little visit with Warner at last; I was getting afraid I
wasn't going to have a chance to see him at all. I forgot to tell you
how thoroughly I enjoyed your account of the country printing office, and
how true it all was and how intimately recognizable in all its details.
But Warner was full of delight over it, and that reminded me, and I am
glad, for I wanted to speak of it.
You have given me a book; Annie Trumbull has sent me her book; I bought a
couple of books; Mr. Hall gave me a choice German book; Laflan gave me
two bottles of whisky and a box of cigars--I go to sea nobly equipped.
Good-bye and all good fortune attend you and yours--and upon you all I
leave my benediction.
MARK.
Mention has already been made of the Ross home being very near to
Viviani, and the association of the Ross and Clemens families.
There was a fine vegetable garden on the Ross estate, and it was in
the interest of it that the next letter was written to the Secretary
of Agriculture.
To Hon. J. Sterling Morton, in Washington, D. C.:
Editorial Department Century Magazine, Union Square,
NEW YORK, April 6, 1893.
TO THE HON. J. STERLING MORTON,--Dear Sir: Your petitioner, Mark Twain,
a poor farmer of Connecticut--indeed, the poorest one there, in the
opinion of many-desires a few choice breeds of seed corn (maize), and in
return will zealously support the Administration in all ways honorable
and otherwise.
To speak by the card, I want these things to hurry to Italy to an English
lady. She is a neighbor of mine outside of Florence, and has a great
garden and thinks she could raise corn for her table if she had the right
ammunition. I myself feel a warm interest in this enterprise, both on
patriotic grounds and because I have a key to that garden, which I got
made from a wax impression. It is not very good soil, still I think she
can grow enough for one table and I am in a position to select the table.
If you are willing to aid and abet a countryman (and Gilder thinks you
are,) please find the signature and address of your petitioner below.
Respectfully and truly yours.
MARK TWAIN,
67 Fifth Avenue, New York.
P. S.--A handful of choice (Southern) watermelon seeds would pleasantly
add to that lady's employments and give my table a corresponding lift.
His idea of business values had moderated considerably by the time
he had returned to Florence. He was not hopeless yet, but he was
clearly a good deal disheartened--anxious for freedom.
To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
FLORENCE May 30, '93
DEAR MR. HALL,--You were to cable me if you sold any machine royalties
--so I judge you have not succeeded.
This has depressed me. I have been looking over the past year's letters
and statements and am depressed still more.
I am terribly tired of business. I am by nature and disposition unfitted
for it and I want to get out of it. I am standing on the Mount Morris
volcano with help from the machine a long way off--doubtless a long way
further off than the Connecticut Co. imagines.
Now here is my idea for getting out.
The firm owes Mrs. Clemens and me--I do not know quite how much, but it
is about $170,000 or $175,000, I suppose (I make this guess from the
documents here, whose technicalities confuse me horribly.)
The firm owes other sums, but there is stock and cash assets to cover the
entire indebtedness and $116,679.20 over. Is that it? In addition we
have the L. A. L. plates and copyright, worth more than $130,000--is
that correct?
That is to say, we have property worth about $250,000 above indebtedness,
I suppose--or, by one of your estimates, $300,000? The greater part of
the first debts to me is in notes paying 6 percent. The rest (the old
$70,000 or whatever it is) pays no interest.
Now then, will Harper or Appleton, or Putnam give me $200,000 for those
debts and my two-thirds interest in the firm? (The firm of course taking
the Mount Morris and all such obligations off my hands and leaving me
clear of all responsibility.)
I don't want much money. I only want first class notes--$200,000 worth
of them at 6 per cent, payable monthly;--yearly notes, renewable annually
for 3 years, with $5,000 of the principal payable at the beginning and
middle of each year. After that, the notes renewable annually and
(perhaps) a larger part of the principal payable semi-annually.
Please advise me and suggest alterations and emendations of the above
scheme, for I need that sort of help, being ignorant of business and not
able to learn a single detail of it.
Such a deal would make it easy for a big firm to pour in a big cash
capital and jump L. A. L. up to enormous prosperity. Then your one-third
would be a fortune--and I hope to see that day!
I enclose an authority to use with Whitmore in case you have sold any
royalties. But if you can't make this deal don't make any. Wait a
little and see if you can't make the deal. Do make the deal if you
possibly can. And if any presence shall be necessary in order to
complete it I will come over, though I hope it can be done without that.
Get me out of business!
And I will be yours forever gratefully,
S. L. CLEMENS.
My idea is, that I am offering my 2/3 of L. A. L. and the business for
thirty or forty thousand dollars. Is that it?
P. S. S. The new firm could retain my books and reduce them to a
10 percent royalty. S. L. C.
To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
VILLA VIVIANI, SETTIGNANO (FLORENCE)
June 9, '93.
DEAR JOE,--The sea voyage set me up and I reached here May 27 in
tolerable condition--nothing left but weakness, cough all gone.
Old Sir Henry Layard was here the other day, visiting our neighbor Janet
Ross, daughter of Lady Duff Gordon, and since then I have been reading
his account of the adventures of his youth in the far East. In a
footnote he has something to say about a sailor which I thought might
interest you--viz:
"This same quartermaster was celebrated among the English in Mesopotamia
for an entry which he made in his log-book-after a perilous storm; 'The
windy and watery elements raged. Tears and prayers was had recourse to,
but was of no manner of use. So we hauled up the anchor and got round
the point.'"
There--it isn't Ned Wakeman; it was before his day.
With love,
MARK.
They closed Villa Viviani in June and near the end of the month
arrived in Munich in order that Mrs. Clemens might visit some of the
German baths. The next letter is written by her and shows her deep
sympathy with Hall in his desperate struggle. There have been few
more unselfish and courageous women in history than Mark Twain's
wife.
From Mrs. Clemens to Mr. Hall, in New York:
June 27th 1893
MUNICH.
DEAR MR. HALL,--Your letter to Mr. Clemens of June 16th has just reached
here; as he has gone to Berlin for Clara I am going to send you just a
line in answer to it.
Mr. Clemens did not realize what trouble you would be in when his letter
should reach you or he would not have sent it just then. I hope you will
not worry any more than you can help. Do not let our interests weigh on
you too heavily. We both know you will, as you always have, look in
every way to the best interests of all.
I think Mr. Clemens is right in feeling that he should get out of
business, that he is not fitted for it; it worries him too much.
But he need be in no haste about it, and of course, it would be the very
farthest from his desire to imperil, in the slightest degree, your
interests in order to save his own.
I am sure that I voice his wish as well as mine when I say that he would
simply like you to bear in mind the fact that he greatly desires to be
released from his present anxiety and worry, at a time when it shall not
endanger your interest or the safety of the business.
I am more sorry than I can express that this letter of Mr. Clemens'
should have reached you when you were struggling under such terrible
pressure. I hope now that the weight is not quite so heavy. He would
not have written you about the money if he had known that it was an
inconvenience for you to send it. He thought the book-keeper whose duty
it is to forward it had forgotten.
We can draw on Mr. Langdon for money for a few weeks until things are a
little easier with you. As Mr. Clemens wrote you we would say "do not
send us any more money at present" if we were not afraid to do so. I
will say, however, do not trouble yourself if for a few weeks you are not
able to send the usual amount.
Mr. Clemens and I have the greatest possible desire, not to increase in
any way your burdens, and sincerely wish we might aid you.
I trust my brother may be able, in his talk with you, to throw some
helpful light on the situation.
Hoping you will see a change for the better and begin to reap the fruit
of your long and hard labor.
Believe me
Very Cordially yours
OLIVIA L. CLEMENS.
Hall, naturally, did not wish to be left alone with the business. He
realized that his credit would suffer, both at the bank and with the
public, if his distinguished partner should retire. He wrote, therefore,
proposing as an alternate that they dispose of the big subscription set
that was swamping them. It was a good plan--if it would work--and we
find Clemens entering into it heartily.
To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
MUNICH, July 3, '93.
DEAR MR. HALL,--You make a suggestion which has once or twice flitted
dimly through my mind heretofore to wit, sell L. A. L.
I like that better than the other scheme, for it is no doubt feasible,
whereas the other is perhaps not.
The firm is in debt, but L. A. L. is free--and not only free but has
large money owing to it. A proposition to sell that by itself to a big
house could be made without embarrassment we merely confess that we
cannot spare capital from the rest of the business to run it on the huge
scale necessary to make it an opulent success.
It will be selling a good thing--for somebody; and it will be getting rid
of a load which we are clearly not able to carry. Whoever buys will have
a noble good opening--a complete equipment, a well organized business,
a capable and experienced manager, and enterprise not experimental but
under full sail, and immediately able to pay 50 per cent a year on every
dollar the publisher shall actually invest in it--I mean in making and
selling the books.
I am miserably sorry to be adding bothers and torments to the over-supply
which you already have in these hideous times, but I feel so troubled,
myself, considering the dreary fact that we are getting deeper and deeper
in debt and the L. A. L. getting to be a heavier and heavier burden all
the time, that I must bestir myself and seek a way of relief.
It did not occur to me that in selling out I would injure you--for that I
am not going to do. But to sell L. A. L. will not injure you it will put
you in better shape.
Sincerely Yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
July 8, '92.
DEAR MR. HALL,--I am sincerely glad you are going to sell L. A. L. I am
glad you are shutting off the agents, and I hope the fatal book will be
out of our hands before it will be time to put them on again. With
nothing but our non-existent capital to work with the book has no value
for us, rich a prize as it will be to any competent house that gets it.
I hope you are making an effort to sell before you discharge too many
agents, for I suppose the agents are a valuable part of the property.
We have been stopping in Munich for awhile, but we shall make a break for
some country resort in a few days now.
Sincerely Yours
S. L. C.
July 8
P. S. No, I suppose I am wrong in suggesting that you wait a moment
before discharging your L. A. L. agents--in fact I didn't mean that.
I judge your only hope of salvation is in discharging them all at once,
since it is their commissions that threaten to swamp us. It is they who
have eaten up the $14,000 I left with you in such a brief time, no doubt.
I feel panicky.
I think the sale might be made with better advantage, however, now, than
later when the agents have got out of the purchaser's reach.
S. L. C.
P. S. No monthly report for many months.
Those who are old enough to remember the summer of 1893 may recall
it as a black financial season. Banks were denying credit,
businesses were forced to the wall. It was a poor time to float any
costly enterprise. The Chicago company who was trying to build the
machines made little progress. The book business everywhere was
bad. In a brief note following the foregoing letters Clemens wrote
Hall:
"It is now past the middle of July and no cablegram to say the
machine is finished. We are afraid you are having miserable days
and worried nights, and we sincerely wish we could relieve you, but
it is all black with us and we don't know any helpful thing to say
or do."
He inclosed some kind of manuscript proposition for John Brisben
Walker, of the Cosmopolitan, with the comment: "It is my ingenious
scheme to protect the family against the alms-house for one more
year--and after that--well, goodness knows! I have never felt so
desperate in my life--and good reason, for I haven't got a penny to
my name, and Mrs. Clemens hasn't enough laid up with Langdon to keep
us two months."
It was like Mark Twain, in the midst of all this turmoil, to project
an entirely new enterprise; his busy mind was always visioning
success in unusual undertakings, regardless of immediate conditions
and the steps necessary to achievement.
To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
July 26, '93.
DEAR MR. HALL,--..... I hope the machine will be finished this month;
but it took me four years and cost me $100,000 to finish the other
machine after it was apparently entirely complete and setting type like a
house-afire.
I wonder what they call "finished." After it is absolutely perfect it
can't go into a printing-office until it has had a month's wear, running
night and day, to get the bearings smooth, I judge.
I may be able to run over about mid-October. Then if I find you relieved
of L. A. L. we will start a magazine inexpensive, and of an entirely
unique sort. Arthur Stedman and his father editors of it. Arthur could
do all the work, merely submitting it to his father for approval.
The first number should pay--and all subsequent ones--25 cents a number.
Cost of first number (20,000 copies) $2,000. Give most of them away,
sell the rest. Advertising and other expenses--cost unknown. Send one
to all newspapers--it would get a notice--favorable, too.
But we cannot undertake it until L. A. L, is out of the way. With our
hands free and some capital to spare, we could make it hum.
Where is the Shelley article? If you have it on hand, keep it and I will
presently tell you what to do with it.
Don't forget to tell me.
Yours Sincerely
S. L. C.
The Shelley article mentioned in this letter was the "Defense of
Harriet Sheller," one of the very best of his essays. How he could
have written this splendid paper at a time of such distraction
passes comprehension. Furthermore, it is clear that he had revised,
indeed rewritten, the long story of Pudd'nhead Wilson.
To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
July 30, '93.
DEAR MR. HALL,--This time "Pudd'nhead Wilson" is a success! Even Mrs.
Clemens, the most difficult of critics, confesses it, and without
reserves or qualifications. Formerly she would not consent that it be
published either before or after my death. I have pulled the twins apart
and made two individuals of them; I have sunk them out of sight, they are
mere flitting shadows, now, and of no importance; their story has
disappeared from the book. Aunt Betsy Hale has vanished wholly, leaving
not a trace behind; aunt Patsy Cooper and her daughter Rowena have almost
disappeared--they scarcely walk across the stage. The whole story is
centered on the murder and the trial; from the first chapter the movement
is straight ahead without divergence or side-play to the murder and the
trial; everything that is done or said or that happens is a preparation
for those events. Therefore, 3 people stand up high, from beginning to
end, and only 3--Pudd'nhead, "Tom" Driscoll, and his nigger mother,
Roxana; none of the others are important, or get in the way of the story
or require the reader's attention. Consequently, the scenes and episodes
which were the strength of the book formerly are stronger than ever, now.
When I began this final reconstruction the story contained 81,500 words,
now it contains only 58,000. I have knocked out everything that delayed
the march of the story--even the description of a Mississippi steamboat.
There's no weather in, and no scenery--the story is stripped for flight!
Now, then what is she worth? The amount of matter is but 3,000 words
short of the American Claimant, for which the syndicate paid $12,500.
There was nothing new in that story, but the finger-prints in this one
is virgin ground--absolutely fresh, and mighty curious and interesting
to everybody.
I don't want any more syndicating--nothing short of $20,000, anyway, and
that I can't get--but won't you see how much the Cosmopolitan will stand?
Do your best for me, for I do not sleep these nights, for visions of the
poor-house.
This in spite of the hopeful tone of yours of 11th to Langdon (just
received) for in me hope is very nearly expiring. Everything does look
so blue, so dismally blue!
By and by I shall take up the Rhone open-boat voyage again, but not now
--we are going to be moving around too much. I have torn up some of it,
but still have 15,000 words that Mrs. Clemens approves of, and that I
like. I may go at it in Paris again next winter, but not unless I know I
can write it to suit me.
Otherwise I shall tackle Adam once more, and do him in a kind of a
friendly and respectful way that will commend him to the Sunday schools.
I've been thinking out his first life-days to-day and framing his
childish and ignorant impressions and opinions for him.
Will ship Pudd'nhead in a few days. When you get it cable
Mark Twain
Care Brownship, London
Received.
I mean to ship "Pudd'nhead Wilson" to you-say, tomorrow. It'll furnish
me hash for awhile I reckon. I am almost sorry it is finished; it was
good entertainment to work at it, and kept my mind away from things.
We leave here in about ten days, but the doctors have changed our plans
again. I think we shall be in Bohemia or thereabouts till near the end
of September, then go to Paris and take a rest.
Yours Sincerely
S. L. C.
P. S. Mrs. Clemens has come in since, and read your letter and is deeply
distressed. She thinks that in some letter of mine I must have
reproached you. She says it is wonderful that you have kept the ship
afloat in this storm that has seen fleets and fleets go down; that from
what she learns of the American business-situation from her home letters
you have accomplished a marvel in the circumstances, and that she cannot
bear to have a word said to you that shall voice anything but praise and
the heartiest appreciation--and not the shadow of a reproach will she
allow.
I tell her I didn't reproach you and never thought of such a thing. And
I said I would break open my letter and say so.
Mrs. Clemens says I must tell you not to send any money for a month or
two--so that you may be afforded what little relief is in our power.
All right--I'm willing; (this is honest) but I wish Brer Chatto would
send along his little yearly contribution. I dropped him a line about
another matter a week ago--asked him to subscribe for the Daily News for
me--you see I wanted to remind him in a covert way that it was pay-up
time--but doubtless I directed the letter to you or some one else, for I
don't hear from him and don't get any Daily News either.
To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
Aug. 6, '93.
DEAR MR. HALL,--I am very sorry--it was thoughtless in me. Let the
reports go. Send me once a month two items, and two only:
Cash liabilities--(so much)
Cash assets--(so much)
I can perceive the condition of the business at a glance, then, and that
will be sufficient.
Here we never see a newspaper, but even if we did I could not come
anywhere near appreciating or correctly estimating the tempest you have
been buffeting your way through--only the man who is in it can do that
--but I have tried not to burden you thoughtlessly or wantonly. I have
been wrought and unsettled in mind by apprehensions, and that is a thing
that is not helpable when one is in a strange land and sees his resources
melt down to a two months' supply and can't see any sure daylight beyond.
The bloody machine offered but a doubtful outlook--and will still offer
nothing much better for a long time to come; for when Davis's "three
weeks" is up there's three months' tinkering to follow I guess. That is
unquestionably the boss machine of the world, but is the toughest one on
prophets, when it is in an incomplete state, that has ever seen the
light. Neither Davis nor any other man can foretell with any
considerable approach to certainty when it will be ready to get down to
actual work in a printing office.
[No signature.]
Three days after the foregoing letter was written he wrote, briefly:
"Great Scott but it's a long year-for you and me! I never knew the
almanac to drag so. At least since I was finishing that other
machine.
"I watch for your letters hungrily--just as I used to watch for the
cablegram saying the machine's finished; but when 'next week
certainly' swelled into 'three weeks sure' I recognized the old
familiar tune I used to hear so much. Ward don't know what
sick-heartedness is--but he is in a way to find out."
Always the quaint form of his humor, no matter how dark the way.
We may picture him walking the floor, planning, scheming, and
smoking--always smoking--trying to find a way out. It was not the
kind of scheming that many men have done under the circumstances;
not scheming to avoid payment of debts, but to pay them.
To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
Aug. 14, '93
DEAR MR. HALL,--I am very glad indeed if you and Mr. Langdon are able to
see any daylight ahead. To me none is visible. I strongly advise that
every penny that comes in shall be applied to paying off debts. I may be
in error about this, but it seems to me that we have no other course
open. We can pay a part of the debts owing to outsiders--none to the
Clemenses. In very prosperous times we might regard our stock and
copyrights as assets sufficient, with the money owing to us, to square up
and quit even, but I suppose we may not hope for such luck in the present
condition of things.
What I am mainly hoping for, is to save my royalties. If they come into
danger I hope you will cable me, so that I can come over and try to save
them, for if they go I am a beggar.
I would sail to-day if I had anybody to take charge of my family and help
them through the difficult journeys commanded by the doctors. I may be
able to sail ten days hence; I hope so, and expect so.
We can never resurrect the L. A. L. I would not spend any more money on
that book. You spoke, a while back, of trying to start it up again as a
preparation to disposing of it, but we are not in shape to venture that,
I think. It would require more borrowing, and we must not do that.
Yours Sincerely
S. L. C.
Aug. 16. I have thought, and thought, but I don't seem to arrive in any
very definite place. Of course you will not have an instant's safety
until the bank debts are paid. There is nothing to be thought of but to
hand over every penny as fast as it comes in--and that will be slow
enough! Or could you secure them by pledging part of our cash assets
and--
I am coming over, just as soon as I can get the family moved and settled.
S. L. C.
Two weeks following this letter he could endure the suspense no
longer, and on August 29th sailed once more for America. In New
York, Clemens settled down at the Players Club, where he could live
cheaply, and undertook some literary work while he was casting about
for ways and means to relieve the financial situation. Nothing
promising occurred, until one night at the Murray Hill Hotel he was
introduced by Dr. Clarence C. Rice to Henry H. Rogers, of the
Standard Oil group of financiers. Rogers had a keen sense of humor
and had always been a great admirer of Mark Twain's work. It was a
mirthful evening, and certainly an eventful one in Mark Twain's
life. A day or two later Doctor Rice asked the millionaire to
interest himself a little in Clemens's business affairs, which he
thought a good deal confused. Just what happened is not remembered
now, but from the date of the next letter we realize that a
discussion of the matter by Clemens and Rogers must have followed
pretty promptly.
To Mrs. Clemens, in Europe:
Oct. 18, '93.
DEAR, DEAR SWEETHEART,--I don't seem to get even half a chance to write
you, these last two days, and yet there's lots to say.
Apparently everything is at last settled as to the giveaway of L. A. L.,
and the papers will be signed and the transfer made to-morrow morning.
Meantime I have got the best and wisest man in the whole Standard Oil
group of mufti-millionaires a good deal interested in looking into the
type-setter (this is private, don't mention it.) He has been searching
into that thing for three weeks, and yesterday he said to me, "I find the
machine to be all you represented it--I have here exhaustive reports from
my own experts, and I know every detail of its capacity, its immense
value, its construction, cost, history, and all about its inventor's
character. I know that the New York Co. and the Chicago Co. are both
stupid, and that they are unbusinesslike people, destitute of money and
in a hopeless boggle."
Then he told me the scheme he had planned, then said: "If I can arrange
with these people on this basis--it will take several weeks to find out
--I will see to it that they get the money they need. Then the thing will
move right along and your royalties will cease to be waste paper. I will
post you the minute my scheme fails or succeeds. In the meantime, you
stop walking the floor. Go off to the country and try to be gay. You
may have to go to walking again, but don't begin till I tell you my
scheme has failed." And he added: "Keep me posted always as to where you
are--for if I need you and can use you--I want to know where to put my
hand on you."
If I should even divulge the fact that the Standard Oil is merely talking
remotely about going into the type-setter, it would send my royalties up.
With worlds and worlds of love and kisses to you all,
SAML.
With so great a burden of care shifted to the broad financial shoulders
of H. H. Rogers, Mark Twain's spirits went ballooning, soaring toward the
stars. He awoke, too, to some of the social gaieties about him, and
found pleasure in the things that in the hour of his gloom had seemed
mainly mockery. We find him going to a Sunday evening at Howells's, to
John Mackay's, and elsewhere.
To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
Dec. 2, '93.
LIVY DARLING,--Last night at John Mackay's the dinner consisted of soup,
raw oysters, corned beef and cabbage, and something like a custard.
I ate without fear or stint, and yet have escaped all suggestion of
indigestion. The men present were old gray Pacific-coasters whom I knew
when I and they were young and not gray. The talk was of the days when
we went gypsying a long time ago--thirty years. Indeed it was a talk of
the dead. Mainly that. And of how they looked, and the harum-scarum
things they did and said. For there were no cares in that life, no aches
and pains, and not time enough in the day (and three-fourths of the
night) to work off one's surplus vigor and energy. Of the mid-night
highway robbery joke played upon me with revolvers at my head on the
windswept and desolate Gold Hill Divide, no witness is left but me, the
victim. All the friendly robbers are gone. These old fools last night
laughed till they cried over the particulars of that old forgotten crime.
John Mackay has no family here but a pet monkey--a most affectionate and
winning little devil. But he makes trouble for the servants, for he is
full of curiosity and likes to take everything out of the drawers and
examine it minutely; and he puts nothing back. The examinations of
yesterday count for nothing to-day--he makes a new examination every day.
But he injures nothing.
I went with Laffan to the Racquet Club the other night and played,
billiards two hours without starting up any rheumatism. I suppose it was
all really taken out of me in Berlin.
Richard Harding Davis spoke yesterday of Clara's impersonations at Mrs.
Van Rensselaer's here and said they were a wonderful piece of work.
Livy dear, I do hope you are comfortable, as to quarters and food at the
Hotel Brighton. But if you're not don't stay there. Make one more
effort--don't give it up. Dear heart, this is from one who loves you
--which is Saml.
It was decided that Rogers and Clemens should make a trip to Chicago
to investigate personally the type-setter situation there. Clemens
reports the details of the excursion to Mrs. Clemens in a long
subdivided letter, most of which has no general interest and is here
omitted. The trip, as a whole, would seem to have been
satisfactory. The personal portions of the long Christmas letter
may properly be preserved.
To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
THE PLAYERS, Xmas, 1893.
No. 1.
Merry Xmas, my darling, and all my darlings! I arrived from Chicago
close upon midnight last night, and wrote and sent down my Christmas
cablegram before undressing: "Merry Xmas! Promising progress made in
Chicago." It would get to the telegraph office toward 8 this morning and
reach you at luncheon.
I was vaguely hoping, all the past week, that my Xmas cablegram would be
definite, and make you all jump with jubilation; but the thought always
intruded itself, "You are not going out there to negotiate with a man,
but with a louse. This makes results uncertain."
I was asleep as Christmas struck upon the clock at mid night, and didn't
wake again till two hours ago. It is now half past 10 Xmas morning; I
have had my coffee and bread, and shan't get out of bed till it is time
to dress for Mrs. Laflan's Christmas dinner this evening--where I shall
meet Bram Stoker and must make sure about that photo with Irving's
autograph. I will get the picture and he will attend to the rest. In
order to remember and not forget--well, I will go there with my dress
coat wrong side out; it will cause remark and then I shall remember.
No. 2 and 3.
I tell you it was interesting! The Chicago campaign, I mean. On the way
out Mr. Rogers would plan out the campaign while I walked the floor and
smoked and assented. Then he would close it up with a snap and drop it
and we would totally change the subject and take up the scenery, etc.
(Here follows the long detailed report of the Chicago conference, of
interest only to the parties directly concerned.)
No. 4.
We had nice tripe, going and coming. Mr. Rogers had telegraphed the
Pennsylvania Railroad for a couple of sections for us in the fast train
leaving at 2 p. m. the 22nd. The Vice President telegraphed back that
every berth was engaged (which was not true--it goes without saying) but
that he was sending his own car for us. It was mighty nice and
comfortable. In its parlor it had two sofas, which could become beds at
night. It had four comfortably-cushioned cane arm-chairs. It had a very
nice bedroom with a wide bed in it; which I said I would take because I
believed I was a little wider than Mr. Rogers--which turned out to be
true; so I took it. It had a darling back-porch--railed, roofed and
roomy; and there we sat, most of the time, and viewed the scenery and
talked, for the weather was May weather, and the soft dream-pictures of
hill and river and mountain and sky were clear and away beyond anything I
have ever seen for exquisiteness and daintiness.
The colored waiter knew his business, and the colored cook was a finished
artist. Breakfasts: coffee with real cream; beefsteaks, sausage, bacon,
chops, eggs in various ways, potatoes in various--yes, and quite
wonderful baked potatoes, and hot as fire. Dinners--all manner of
things, including canvas-back duck, apollinaris, claret, champagne, etc.
We sat up chatting till midnight, going and coming; seldom read a line,
day or night, though we were well fixed with magazines, etc.; then I
finished off with a hot Scotch and we went to bed and slept till 9.30a.m.
I honestly tried to pay my share of hotel bills, fees, etc., but I was
not allowed--and I knew the reason why, and respected the motive. I will
explain when I see you, and then you will understand.
We were 25 hours going to Chicago; we were there 24 hours; we were 30
hours returning. Brisk work, but all of it enjoyable. We insisted on
leaving the car at Philadelphia so that our waiter and cook (to whom Mr.
R. gave $10 apiece,) could have their Christmas-eve at home.
Mr. Rogers's carriage was waiting for us in Jersey City and deposited me
at the Players. There--that's all. This letter is to make up for the
three letterless days. I love you, dear heart, I love you all.
SAML.
XXXIV
LETTERS 1894. A WINTER IN NEW YORK. BUSINESS FAILURE.
END OF THE MACHINE
The beginning of the new year found Mark Twain sailing buoyantly on a
tide of optimism. He believed that with H. H. Rogers as his financial
pilot he could weather safely any storm or stress. He could divert
himself, or rest, or work, and consider his business affairs with
interest and amusement, instead of with haggard anxiety. He ran over to
Hartford to see an amateur play; to Boston to give a charity reading; to
Fair Haven to open the library which Mr. Rogers had established there; he
attended gay dinners, receptions, and late studio parties, acquiring the
name of the "Belle of New York." In the letters that follow we get the
echo of some of these things. The Mrs. Rice mentioned in the next brief
letter was the wife of Dr. Clarence C. Rice, who had introduced
H. H. Rogers to Mark Twain.
To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
Jan. 12, '94
Livy darling, I came down from Hartford yesterday with Kipling, and he
and Hutton and I had the small smoking compartment to ourselves and found
him at last at his ease, and not shy. He was very pleasant company
indeed. He is to be in the city a week, and I wish I could invite him to
dinner, but it won't do. I should be interrupted by business, of course.
The construction of a contract that will suit Paige's lawyer (not Paige)
turns out to be very difficult. He is embarrassed by earlier advice to
Paige, and hates to retire from it and stultify himself. The
negotiations are being conducted, by means of tedious long telegrams and
by talks over the long-distance telephone. We keep the wires loaded.
Dear me, dinner is ready. So Mrs. Rice says.
With worlds of love,
SAML.
Clemens and Oliver Wendell Holmes had met and become friends soon after
the publication of Innocents Abroad, in 1869. Now, twenty-five years
later, we find a record of what without doubt was their last meeting.
It occurred at the home of Mrs. James T. Field.
To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
BOSTON, Jan. 25, '94.
Livy darling, I am caught out worse this time than ever before, in the
matter of letters. Tuesday morning I was smart enough to finish and mail
my long letter to you before breakfast--for I was suspecting that I would
not have another spare moment during the day. It turned out just so.
In a thoughtless moment I agreed to come up here and read for the poor.
I did not reflect that it would cost me three days. I could not get
released. Yesterday I had myself called at 8 and ran out to Mr. Rogers's
house at 9, and talked business until half past 10; then caught 11
o'clock train and arrived here at 6; was shaven and dressed by 7 and
ready for dinner here in Mrs. Field's charming house.
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes never goes out now (he is in his 84th year,)
but he came out this time-said he wanted to "have a time" once more with
me.
Mrs. Fields said Aldrich begged to come and went away crying because she
wouldn't let him. She allowed only her family (Sarah Orne Jewett and
sister) to be present, because much company would overtax Dr. Holmes.
Well, he was just delightful! He did as brilliant and beautiful talking
(and listening) as ever he did in his life, I guess. Fields and Jewett
said he hadn't been in such splendid form in years. He had ordered his
carriage for 9.
The coachman sent in for him at 9; but he said, "Oh, nonsense!--leave
glories and grandeurs like these? Tell him to go away and come in an
hour!"
At 10 he was called for again, and Mrs. Fields, getting uneasy, rose, but
he wouldn't go--and so we rattled ahead the same as ever. Twice more
Mrs. Fields rose, but he wouldn't go--and he didn't go till half past 10
--an unwarrantable dissipation for him in these days. He was
prodigiously complimentary about some of my books, and is having
Pudd'nhead read to him. I told him you and I used the Autocrat as a
courting book and marked it all through, and that you keep it in the
sacred green box with the love letters, and it pleased him.
Good-bye, my dear darling, it is 15 minutes to dinner and I'm not dressed
yet. I have a reception to-night and will be out very late at that place
and at Irving's Theatre where I have a complimentary box. I wish you
were all here.
SAML.
In the next letter we meet James J. Corbett--"Gentleman Jim," as he
was sometimes called--the champion pugilist of that day.
The Howells incident so amusingly dramatized will perhaps be more
appreciated if the reader remembers that Mark Twain himself had at
intervals been a mind-healing enthusiast. Indeed, in spite of his
strictures on Mrs. Eddy, his interest in the subject of mind-cure
continued to the end of his life.
To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
Sunday, 9.30 a. m.
Livy dear, when we got out to the house last night, Mrs. Rogers, who is
up and around, now, didn't want to go down stairs to dinner, but Mr. R.
persuaded her and we had a very good time indeed. By 8 o'clock we were
down again and bought a fifteen-dollar box in the Madison Square Garden
(Rogers bought it, not I,) then he went and fetched Dr. Rice while I
(went) to the Players and picked up two artists--Reid and Simmons--and
thus we filled 5 of the 6 seats. There was a vast multitude of people in
the brilliant place. Stanford White came along presently and invited me
to go to the World-Champion's dressing room, which I was very glad to do.
Corbett has a fine face and is modest and diffident, besides being the
most perfectly and beautifully constructed human animal in the world.
I said:
"You have whipped Mitchell, and maybe you will whip Jackson in June--but
you are not done, then. You will have to tackle me."
He answered, so gravely that one might easily have thought him in
earnest:
"No--I am not going to meet you in the ring. It is not fair or right to
require it. You might chance to knock me out, by no merit of your own,
but by a purely accidental blow; and then my reputation would be gone and
you would have a double one. You have got fame enough and you ought not
to want to take mine away from me."
Corbett was for a long time a clerk in the Nevada Bank in San Francisco.
There were lots of little boxing matches, to entertain the crowd: then at
last Corbett appeared in the ring and the 8,000 people present went mad
with enthusiasm. My two artists went mad about his form. They said they
had never seen anything that came reasonably near equaling its perfection
except Greek statues, and they didn't surpass it.
Corbett boxed 3 rounds with the middle-weight Australian champion--oh,
beautiful to see!--then the show was over and we struggled out through a
perfect wash of humanity. When we reached the street I found I had left
my arctics in the box. I had to have them, so Simmons said he would go
back and get them, and I didn't dissuade him. I couldn't see how he was
going to make his way a single yard into that solid oncoming wave of
people--yet he must plow through it full 50 yards. He was back with the
shoes in 3 minutes!
How do you reckon he accomplished that miracle? By saying:
"Way, gentlemen, please--coming to fetch Mr. Corbett's overshoes."
The word flew from mouth to mouth, the Red Sea divided, and Simmons
walked comfortably through and back, dry shod. Simmons (this was
revealed to me under seal of secrecy by Reid) is the hero of "Gwen," and
he and Gwen's author were once engaged to marry. This is "fire-escape"
Simmons, the inveterate talker, you know: "Exit--in case of Simmons."
I had an engagement at a beautiful dwelling close to the Players for
10.30; I was there by 10.45. Thirty cultivated and very musical ladies
and gentlemen present--all of them acquaintances and many of them
personal friends of mine. That wonderful Hungarian Band was there (they
charge $500 for an evening.) Conversation and Band until midnight; then a
bite of supper; then the company was compactly grouped before me and I
told about Dr. B. E. Martin and the etchings, and followed it with the
Scotch-Irish Christening. My, but the Martin is a darling story! Next,
the head tenor from the Opera sang half a dozen great songs that set the
company wild, yes, mad with delight, that nobly handsome young Damrosch
accompanying on the piano.
Just a little pause--then the Band burst out into an explosion of weird
and tremendous dance music, a Hungarian celebrity and his wife took the
floor--I followed; I couldn't help it; the others drifted in, one by one,
and it was Onteora over again.
By half past 4 I had danced all those people down--and yet was not tired;
merely breathless. I was in bed at 5, and asleep in ten minutes. Up at
9 and presently at work on this letter to you. I think I wrote until 2
or half past. Then I walked leisurely out to Mr. Rogers's (it is called
3 miles but it is short of it) arriving at 3.30, but he was out
--to return at 5.30--(and a person was in, whom I don't particularly like)
--so I didn't stay, but dropped over and chatted with the Howellses until
6.
First, Howells and I had a chat together. I asked about Mrs. H. He said
she was fine, still steadily improving, and nearly back to her old best
health. I asked (as if I didn't know):
"What do you attribute this strange miracle to?"
"Mind-cure--simply mind-cure."
"Lord, what a conversion! You were a scoffer three months ago."
"I? I wasn't."
"You were. You made elaborate fun of me in this very room."
"I did not, Clemens."
"It's a lie, Howells, you did."
I detailed to him the conversation of that time--with the stately
argument furnished by Boyesen in the fact that a patient had actually
been killed by a mind-curist; and Howells's own smart remark that when
the mind-curist is done with you, you have to call in a "regular" at last
because the former can't procure you a burial permit.
At last he gave in--he said he remembered that talk, but had now been a
mind-curist so long it was difficult for him to realize that he had ever
been anything else.
Mrs. H. came skipping in, presently, the very person, to a dot, that she
used to be, so many years ago.
Mrs. H. said: "People may call it what they like, but it is just
hypnotism, and that's all it is--hypnotism pure and simple. Mind-cure!
--the idea! Why, this woman that cured me hasn't got any mind. She's a
good creature, but she's dull and dumb and illiterate and--"
"Now Eleanor!"
"I know what I'm talking about!--don't I go there twice a week? And Mr.
Clemens, if you could only see her wooden and satisfied face when she
snubs me for forgetting myself and showing by a thoughtless remark that
to me weather is still weather, instead of being just an abstraction and
a superstition--oh, it's the funniest thing you ever saw! A-n-d-when she
tilts up her nose-well, it's--it's--Well it's that kind of a nose that--"
"Now Eleanor!--the woman is not responsible for her nose--" and so-on and
so-on. It didn't seem to me that I had any right to be having this feast
and you not there.
She convinced me before she got through, that she and William James are
right--hypnotism and mind-cure are the same thing; no difference between
them. Very well; the very source, the very center of hypnotism is Paris.
Dr. Charcot's pupils and disciples are right there and ready to your hand
without fetching poor dear old Susy across the stormy sea. Let Mrs.
Mackay (to whom I send my best respects), tell you whom to go to to learn
all you need to learn and how to proceed. Do, do it, honey. Don't lose
a minute.
.....At 11 o'clock last night Mr. Rogers said:
"I am able to feel physical fatigue--and I feel it now. You never show
any, either in your eyes or your movements; do you ever feel any?"
I was able to say that I had forgotten what that feeling was like. Don't
you remember how almost impossible it was for me to tire myself at the
Villa? Well, it is just so in New York. I go to bed unfatigued at 3,
I get up fresh and fine six hours later. I believe I have taken only one
daylight nap since I have been here.
When the anchor is down, then I shall say:
"Farewell--a long farewell--to business! I will never touch it again!"
I will live in literature, I will wallow in it, revel in it, I will swim
in ink! Joan of Arc--but all this is premature; the anchor is not down
yet.
To-morrow (Tuesday) I will add a P. S. if I've any to add; but, whether
or no, I must mail this to morrow, for the mail steamer goes next day.
5.30 p. m. Great Scott, this is Tuesday! I must rush this letter into
the mail instantly.
Tell that sassy Ben I've got her welcome letter, and I'll write her as
soon as I get a daylight chance. I've most time at night, but I'd
druther write daytimes.
SAML.
The Reid and Simmons mentioned in the foregoing were Robert Reid and
Edward Simmons, distinguished painter--the latter a brilliant,
fluent, and industrious talker. The title; "Fire-escape Simmons,"
which Clemens gives him, originated when Oliver Herford, whose
quaint wit has so long delighted New-Yorkers, one day pinned up by
the back door of the Players the notice: "Exit in case of Simmons."
Gwen, a popular novel of that day, was written by Blanche Willis
Howard.
"Jamie" Dodge, in the next letter, was the son of Mrs. Mary Mapes
Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas.
To Clara Clemens, in Paris:
MR. ROGERS'S OFFICE, Feb. 5, '94.
Dear Benny--I was intending to answer your letter to-day, but I am away
down town, and will simply whirl together a sentence or two for
good-fellowship. I have bought photographs of Coquelin and Jane Hading
and will ask them to sign them. I shall meet Coquelin tomorrow night,
and if Hading is not present I will send her picture to her by somebody.
I am to breakfast with Madame Nordica in a few days, and meantime I hope
to get a good picture of her to sign. She was of the breakfast company
yesterday, but the picture of herself which she signed and gave me does
not do her majestic beauty justice.
I am too busy to attend to the photo-collecting right, because I have to
live up to the name which Jamie Dodge has given me--the "Belle of New
York"--and it just keeps me rushing. Yesterday I had engagements to
breakfast at noon, dine at 3, and dine again at 7. I got away from the
long breakfast at 2 p. m., went and excused myself from the 3 o'clock
dinner, then lunched with Mrs. Dodge in 58th street, returned to the
Players and dressed, dined out at 9, and was back at Mrs. Dodge's at
10 p. m. where we had magic-lantern views of a superb sort, and a lot of
yarns until an hour after midnight, and got to bed at 2 this morning
--a good deal of a gain on my recent hours. But I don't get tired; I
sleep as sound as a dead person, and always wake up fresh and strong
--usually at exactly 9.
I was at breakfast lately where people of seven separate nationalities
sat and the seven languages were going all the time. At my side sat
a charming gentleman who was a delightful and active talker, and
interesting. He talked glibly to those folks in all those seven
languages and still had a language to spare! I wanted to kill him, for
very envy.
I greet you with love and kisses.
PAPA.
To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
Feb.--.
Livy dear, last night I played billiards with Mr. Rogers until 11, then
went to Robert Reid's studio and had a most delightful time until 4 this
morning. No ladies were invited this time. Among the people present
were--
Coquelin;
Richard Harding Davis;
Harrison, the great out-door painter;
Wm. H. Chase, the artist;
Bettini, inventor of the new phonograph.
Nikola Tesla, the world-wide illustrious electrician; see article about
him in Jan. or Feb. Century.
John Drew, actor;
James Barnes, a marvelous mimic; my, you should see him!
Smedley the artist;
Zorn the artist;
Zogbaum the artist;
Reinhart the artist;
Metcalf the artist;
Ancona, head tenor at the Opera;
Oh, a great lot of others. Everybody there had done something and was in
his way famous.
Somebody welcomed Coquelin in a nice little French speech; John Drew did
the like for me in English, and then the fun began. Coquelin did some
excellent French monologues--one of them an ungrammatical Englishman
telling a colorless historiette in French. It nearly killed the fifteen
or twenty people who understood it.
I told a yarn, Ancona sang half a dozen songs, Barnes did his darling
imitations, Harding Davis sang the hanging of Danny Deever, which was of
course good, but he followed it with that most fascinating (for what
reason I don't know) of all Kipling's poems, "On the Road to Mandalay,"
sang it tenderly, and it searched me deeper and charmed me more than the
Deever.
Young Gerrit Smith played some ravishing dance music and we all danced
about an hour. There couldn't be a pleasanter night than that one was.
Some of those people complained of fatigue but I don't seem to know what
the sense of fatigue is.
Coquelin talks quite good English now. He said:
"I have a brother who has the fine mind--ah, a charming and delicate
fancy, and he knows your writings so well, and loves them--and that is
the same with me. It will stir him so when I write and tell him I have
seen you!"
Wasn't that nice? We talked a good deal together. He is as winning as
his own face. But he wouldn't sign that photograph for Clara. "That?
No! She shall have a better one. I will send it to you."
He is much driven, and will forget it, but Reid has promised to get the
picture for me, and I will try and keep him reminded.
Oh, dear, my time is all used up and your letters are not answered.
Mama, dear, I don't go everywhere--I decline most things. But there are
plenty that I can't well get out of.
I will remember what you say and not make my yarning too common.
I am so glad Susy has gone on that trip and that you are trying the
electric. May you both prosper. For you are mighty dear to me and in my
thoughts always.
SAML.
The affairs of the Webster Publishing Company were by this time
getting into a very serious condition indeed. The effects of the
panic of the year before could not be overcome. Creditors were
pressing their claims and profits were negligible. In the following
letter we get a Mark Twain estimate of the great financier who so
cheerfully was willing to undertake the solving of Mark Twain's
financial problems.
To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
THE PLAYERS, Feb. 15, '94. 11.30 p. m.
Livy darling, Yesterday I talked all my various matters over with Mr.
Rogers and we decided that it would be safe for me to leave here the 7th
of March, in the New York. So his private secretary, Miss Harrison,
wrote and ordered a berth for me and then I lost no time in cabling you
that I should reach Southampton March 14, and Paris the 15th. Land, but
it made my pulses leap, to think I was going to see you again!.....
One thing at a time. I never fully laid Webster's disastrous condition
before Mr. Rogers until to-night after billiards. I did hate to burden
his good heart and over-worked head with it, but he took hold with
avidity and said it was no burden to work for his friends, but a
pleasure. We discussed it from various standpoints, and found it a
sufficiently difficult problem to solve; but he thinks that after he has
slept upon it and thought it over he will know what to suggest.
You must not think I am ever rude with Mr. Rogers, I am not. He is not
common clay, but fine--fine and delicate--and that sort do not call out
the coarsenesses that are in my sort. I am never afraid of wounding him;
I do not need to watch myself in that matter. The sight of him is peace.
He wants to go to Japan--it is his dream; wants to go with me--which
means, the two families--and hear no more about business for awhile, and
have a rest. And he needs it. But it is like all the dreams of all busy
men--fated to remain dreams.
You perceive that he is a pleasant text for me. It is easy to write
about him. When I arrived in September, lord how black the prospect was
--how desperate, how incurably desperate! Webster and Co had to have a
small sum of money or go under at once. I flew to Hartford--to my
friends--but they were not moved, not strongly interested, and I was
ashamed that I went. It was from Mr. Rogers, a stranger, that I got the
money and was by it saved. And then--while still a stranger--he set
himself the task of saving my financial life without putting upon me (in
his native delicacy) any sense that I was the recipient of a charity,
a benevolence--and he has accomplished that task; accomplished it at a
cost of three months of wearing and difficult labor. He gave that time
to me--time which could not be bought by any man at a hundred thousand
dollars a month--no, nor for three times the money.
Well, in the midst of that great fight, that long and admirable fight,
George Warner came to me and said:
"There is a splendid chance open to you. I know a man--a prominent man
--who has written a book that will go like wildfire; a book that arraigns
the Standard Oil fiends, and gives them unmitigated hell, individual by
individual. It is the very book for you to publish; there is a fortune
in it, and I can put you in communication with the author."
I wanted to say:
"The only man I care for in the world; the only man I would give a damn
for; the only man who is lavishing his sweat and blood to save me and
mine from starvation and shame, is a Standard Oil fiend. If you know me,
you know whether I want the book or not."
But I didn't say that. I said I didn't want any book; I wanted to get
out of the publishing business and out of all business, and was here for
that purpose and would accomplish it if I could.
But there's enough. I shall be asleep by 3, and I don't need much sleep,
because I am never drowsy or tired these days. Dear, dear Susy my
strength reproaches me when I think of her and you, my darling.
SAML.
But even so able a man as Henry Rogers could not accomplish the
impossible. The affairs of the Webster Company were hopeless, the
business was not worth saving. By Mr. Rogers's advice an assignment
was made April, 18, 1894. After its early spectacular success less
than ten years had brought the business to failure. The publication
of the Grant memoirs had been its only great achievement.
Clemens would seem to have believed that the business would resume,
and for a time Rogers appears to have comforted him in his hope, but
we cannot believe that it long survived. Young Hall, who had made
such a struggle for its salvation, was eager to go on, but he must
presently have seen the futility of any effort in that direction.
Of course the failure of Mark Twain's firm made a great stir in the
country, and it is easy to understand that loyal friends would rally
in his behalf.
To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
April 22, '94.
Dear old darling, we all think the creditors are going to allow us to
resume business; and if they do we shall pull through and pay the debts.
I am prodigiously glad we made an assignment. And also glad that we did
not make it sooner. Earlier we should have made a poor showing; but now
we shall make a good one.
I meet flocks of people, and they all shake me cordially by the hand and
say "I was so sorry to hear of the assignment, but so glad you did it.
It was around, this long time, that the concern was tottering, and all
your friends were afraid you would delay the assignment too long."
John Mackay called yesterday, and said, "Don't let it disturb you, Sam
--we all have to do it, at one time or another; it's nothing to be
ashamed of."
One stranger out in New York State sent me a dollar bill and thought
he would like to get up a dollar-subscription for me. And Poultney
Bigelow's note came promptly, with his check for $1,000. I had been
meeting him every day at the Club and liking him better and better all
the time. I couldn't take his money, of course, but I thanked him
cordially for his good will.
Now and then a good and dear Joe Twichell or Susy Warner condoles with me
and says "Cheer up--don't be downhearted," and some other friend says,
"I am glad and surprised to see how cheerful you are and how bravely you
stand it"--and none of them suspect what a burden has been lifted from me
and how blithe I am inside. Except when I think of you, dear heart--then
I am not blithe; for I seem to see you grieving and ashamed, and dreading
to look people in the face. For in the thick of the fight there is
cheer, but you are far away and cannot hear the drums nor see the
wheeling squadrons. You only seem to see rout, retreat, and dishonored
colors dragging in the dirt--whereas none of these things exist. There
is temporary defeat, but no dishonor--and we will march again. Charley
Warner said to-day, "Sho, Livy isn't worrying. So long as she's got you
and the children she doesn't care what happens. She knows it isn't her
affair." Which didn't convince me.
Good bye my darling, I love you and all of the kids--and you can tell
Clara I am not a spitting gray kitten.
SAML.
Clemens sailed for Europe as soon as his affairs would permit him
to go. He must get settled where he could work comfortably.
Type-setter prospects seemed promising, but meantime there was
need of funds.
He began writing on the ship, as was his habit, and had completed
his article on Fenimore Cooper by the time he reached London. In
August we find him writing to Mr. Rogers from Etretat, a little
Norman watering-place.
To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
ETRETAT, (NORMANDIE)
CHALET DES ABRIS
Aug. 25, '94.
DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I find the Madam ever so much better in health and
strength. The air is superb and soothing and wholesome, and the Chalet
is remote from noise and people, and just the place to write in. I shall
begin work this afternoon.
Mrs. Clemens is in great spirits on, account of the benefit which she has
received from the electrical treatment in Paris and is bound to take it
up again and continue it all the winter, and of course I am perfectly
willing. She requires me to drop the lecture platform out of my mind and
go straight ahead with Joan until the book is finished. If I should have
to go home for even a week she means to go with me--won't consent to be
separated again--but she hopes I won't need to go.
I tell her all right, "I won't go unless you send, and then I must."
She keeps the accounts; and as she ciphers it we can't get crowded for
money for eight months yet. I didn't know that. But I don't know much
anyway.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The reader may remember that Clemens had written the first half of
his Joan of Arc book at the Villa Viviani, in Florence, nearly two
years before. He had closed the manuscript then with the taking of
Orleans, and was by no means sure that he would continue the story
beyond that point. Now, however, he was determined to reach the
tale's tragic conclusion.
To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
ETRETAT,
Sunday, Sept. 9, '94.
DEAR MR. ROGERS, I drove the quill too hard, and I broke down--in my
head. It has now been three days since I laid up. When I wrote you a
week ago I had added 10,000 words or thereabout to Joan. Next day I
added 1,500 which was a proper enough day's work though not a full one;
but during Tuesday and Wednesday I stacked up an aggregate of 6,000
words--and that was a very large mistake. My head hasn't been worth a
cent since.
However, there's a compensation; for in those two days I reached and
passed--successfully--a point which I was solicitous about before I ever
began the book: viz., the battle of Patay. Because that would naturally
be the next to the last chapter of a work consisting of either two books
or one. In the one case one goes right along from that point (as I shall
do now); in the other he would add a wind-up chapter and make the book
consist of Joan's childhood and military career alone.
I shall resume work to-day; and hereafter I will not go at such an
intemperate' rate. My head is pretty cobwebby yet.
I am hoping that along about this time I shall hear that the machine is
beginning its test in the Herald office. I shall be very glad indeed to
know the result of it. I wish I could be there.
Sincerely yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
Rouen, where Joan met her martyrdom, was only a short distance away,
and they halted there en route to Paris, where they had arranged to
spend the winter. The health of Susy Clemens was not good, and they
lingered in Rouen while Clemens explored the old city and
incidentally did some writing of another sort. In a note to Mr.
Rogers he said: "To put in my odd time I am writing some articles
about Paul Bourget and his Outre-Mer chapters--laughing at them and
at some of our oracular owls who find them important. What the hell
makes them important, I should like to know!"
He was still at Rouen two weeks later and had received encouraging
news from Rogers concerning the type-setter, which had been placed
for trial in the office of the Chicago Herald. Clemens wrote: "I
can hardly keep from sending a hurrah by cable. I would certainly
do it if I wasn't superstitious." His restraint, though wise, was
wasted the end was near.
To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
PARIS, Dec. 22; '94.
DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I seemed to be entirely expecting your letter, and also
prepared and resigned; but Lord, it shows how little we know ourselves
and how easily we can deceive ourselves. It hit me like a thunder-clap.
It knocked every rag of sense out of my head, and I went flying here and
there and yonder, not knowing what I was doing, and only one clearly
defined thought standing up visible and substantial out of the crazy
storm-drift that my dream of ten years was in desperate peril, and out of
the 60,000 or 90,000 projects for its rescue that came floating through
my skull, not one would hold still long enough for me to examine it and
size it up. Have you ever been like that? Not so much so, I reckon.
There was another clearly defined idea--I must be there and see it die.
That is, if it must die; and maybe if I were there we might hatch up some
next-to-impossible way to make it take up its bed and take a walk.
So, at the end of four hours I started, still whirling and walked over to
the rue Scribe--4 P. M.--and asked a question or two and was told I
should be running a big risk if I took the 9 P. M. train for London and
Southampton; "better come right along at 6.52 per Havre special and step
aboard the New York all easy and comfortable." Very! and I about two
miles from home, with no packing done.
Then it occurred to me that none of these salvation-notions that were
whirl-winding through my head could be examined or made available unless
at least a month's time could be secured. So I cabled you, and said to
myself that I would take the French steamer tomorrow (which will be
Sunday).
By bedtime Mrs. Clemens had reasoned me into a fairly rational and
contented state of mind; but of course it didn't last long. So I went on
thinking--mixing it with a smoke in the dressing room once an hour--until
dawn this morning. Result--a sane resolution; no matter what your answer
to my cable might be, I would hold still and not sail until I should get
an answer to this present letter which I am now writing, or a cable
answer from you saying "Come" or "Remain."
I have slept 6 hours, my pond has clarified, and I find the sediment of
my 70,000 projects to be of this character:
[Several pages of suggestions for reconstructing the machine follow.]
Don't say I'm wild. For really I'm sane again this morning.
......................
I am going right along with Joan, now, and wait untroubled till I hear
from you. If you think I can be of the least use, cable me "Come."
I can write Joan on board ship and lose no time. Also I could discuss my
plan with the publisher for a deluxe Joan, time being an object, for some
of the pictures could be made over here cheaply and quickly, but would
cost much time and money in America.
......................
If the meeting should decide to quit business Jan. 4, I'd like to have
Stoker stopped from paying in any more money, if Miss Harrison doesn't
mind that disagreeable job. And I'll have to write them, too, of course.
With love,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The "Stoker" of this letter was Bram Stoker, long associated with
Sir Henry Irving. Irving himself had also taken stock in the
machine. The address, 169 Rue de l'Universite, whence these letters
are written, was the beautiful studio home of the artist Pomroy
which they had taken for the winter.
To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
PARIS, Dec. 27, '94.
DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Notwithstanding your heart is "old and hard," you make
a body choke up. I know you "mean every word you say" and I do take it
"in the same spirit in which you tender it." I shall keep your regard
while we two live--that I know; for I shall always remember what you have
done for me, and that will insure me against ever doing anything that
could forfeit it or impair it. I am 59 years old; yet I never had a
friend before who put out a hand and tried to pull me ashore when he
found me in deep waters.
It is six days or seven days ago that I lived through that despairing
day, and then through a night without sleep; then settled down next day
into my right mind (or thereabouts,) and wrote you. I put in the rest of
that day till 7 P. M. plenty comfortably enough writing a long chapter
of my book; then went to a masked ball blacked up as Uncle Remus, taking
Clara along; and we had a good time. I have lost no day since and
suffered no discomfort to speak of, but drove my troubles out of my mind
and had good success in keeping them out--through watchfulness. I have
done a good week's work and put the book a good way ahead in the Great
Trial, which is the difficult part which requires the most thought and
carefulness. I cannot see the end of the Trial yet, but I am on the
road. I am creeping surely toward it.
"Why not leave them all to me." My business bothers? I take you by the
hand! I jump at the chance!
I ought to be ashamed and I am trying my best to be ashamed--and yet I do
jump at the chance in spite of it. I don't want to write Irving and I
don't want to write Stoker. It doesn't seem as if I could. But I can
suggest something for you to write them; and then if you see that I am
unwise, you can write them something quite different. Now this is my
idea:
1. To return Stoker's $100 to him and keep his stock.
2. And tell Irving that when luck turns with me I will make good to
him what the salvage from the dead Co. fails to pay him of his $500.
P. S. Madam says No, I must face the music. So I enclose my effort to
be used if you approve, but not otherwise.
There! Now if you will alter it to suit your judgment and bang away, I
shall be eternally obliged.
We shall try to find a tenant for our Hartford house; not an easy matter,
for it costs heavily to live in. We can never live in it again; though
it would break the family's hearts if they could believe it.
Nothing daunts Mrs. Clemens or makes the world look black to her--which
is the reason I haven't drowned myself.
We all send our deepest and warmest greetings to you and all of yours and
a Happy New Year!
S. L. CLEMENS.
Enclosure:
MY DEAR STOKER,--I am not dating this because it is not to be mailed at
present.
When it reaches you it will mean that there is a hitch in my
machine-enterprise--a hitch so serious as to make it take to itself the
aspect of a dissolved dream. This letter, then, will contain cheque for
the $100 which you have paid. And will you tell Irving for me--I can't
get up courage enough to talk about this misfortune myself, except to
you, whom by good luck I haven't damaged yet that when the wreckage
presently floats ashore he will get a good deal of his $500 back; and a
dab at a time I will make up to him the rest.
I'm not feeling as fine as I was when I saw you there in your home.
Please remember me kindly to Mrs. Stoker. I gave up that London
lecture-project entirely. Had to--there's never been a chance since
to find the time.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
XXXV
LETTERS, 1895-96, TO H. H. ROGERS AND OTHERS. FINISHING "JOAN OF ARC."
THE TRIP AROUND THE WORLD. DEATH OF SUSY CLEMENS
To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
[No date.]
DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Yours of Dec. 21 has arrived, containing the circular
to stockholders and I guess the Co. will really quit--there doesn't seem
to be any other wise course.
There's one thing which makes it difficult for me to soberly realize that
my ten year dream is actually dissolved; and that is, that it reveries my
horoscope. The proverb says, "Born lucky, always lucky," and I am very
superstitious. As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It was usual for
one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or
in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned condition 9 times
before I learned to swim, and was considered to be a cat in disguise.
When the "Pennsylvania" blew up and the telegraph reported my brother as
fatally injured (with 60 others) but made no mention of me, my uncle said
to my mother "It means that Sam was somewhere else, after being on that
boat a year and a half--he was born lucky." Yes, I was somewhere else.
I am so superstitious that I have always been afraid to have business
dealings with certain relatives and friends of mine because they were
unlucky people. All my life I have stumbled upon lucky chances of large
size, and whenever they were wasted it was because of my own stupidity
and carelessness. And so I have felt entirely certain that that machine
would turn up trumps eventually. It disappointed me lots of times, but I
couldn't shake off the confidence of a life-time in my luck.
Well, whatever I get out of the wreckage will be due to good luck--the
good luck of getting you into the scheme--for, but for that, there
wouldn't be any wreckage; it would be total loss.
I wish you had been in at the beginning. Then we should have had the
good luck to step promptly ashore.
Miss Harrison has had a dream which promises me a large bank account,
and I want her to go ahead and dream it twice more, so as to make the
prediction sure to be fulfilled.
I've got a first rate subject for a book. It kept me awake all night,
and I began it and completed it in my mind. The minute I finish Joan
I will take it up.
Love and Happy New Year to you all.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
This was about the end of the machine interests so far as Clemens
was concerned. Paige succeeded in getting some new people
interested, but nothing important happened, or that in any way
affected Mark Twain. Characteristically he put the whole matter
behind him and plunged into his work, facing comparative poverty and
a burden of debts with a stout heart. The beginning of the new year
found him really poorer in purse than he had ever been in his life,
but certainly not crushed, or even discouraged--at least, not
permanently--and never more industrious or capable.
To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
PARIS, Jan. 23, '95.
DEAR MR. ROGERS,--After I wrote you, two or three days ago I thought I
would make a holiday of the rest of the day--the second deliberate
holiday since I had the gout. On the first holiday I wrote a tale of
about 6,000 words, which was 3 days' work in one; and this time I did
8,000 before midnight. I got nothing out of that first holiday but the
recreation of it, for I condemned the work after careful reading and some
revision; but this time I fared better--I finished the Huck Finn tale
that lies in your safe, and am satisfied with it.
The Bacheller syndicate (117 Tribune Building) want a story of 5,000
words (lowest limit of their London agent) for $1,000 and offer to plank
the check on delivery, and it was partly to meet that demand that I took
that other holiday. So as I have no short story that suits me (and can't
and shan't make promises), the best I can do is to offer the longer one
which I finished on my second holiday--"Tom Sawyer, Detective."
It makes 27 or 28,000 words, and is really written for grown folks,
though I expect young folk to read it, too. It transfers to the banks of
the Mississippi the incidents of a strange murder which was committed in
Sweden in old times.
I'll refer applicants for a sight of the story to you or Miss Harrison.
--[Secretary to Mr. Rogers.]
Yours sincerely,
S. L. CLEMENS.
To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
Apr. 29, '95.
DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Your felicitous delightful letter of the 15th arrived
three days ago, and brought great pleasure into the house.
There is one thing that weighs heavily on Mrs. Clemens and me. That is
Brusnahan's money. If he is satisfied to have it invested in the Chicago
enterprise, well and good; if not, we would like to have the money paid
back to him. I will give him as many months to decide in as he pleases
--let him name 6 or 10 or 12--and we will let the money stay where it is
in your hands till the time is up. Will Miss Harrison tell him so? I
mean if you approve. I would like him to have a good investment, but
would meantime prefer to protect him against loss.
At 6 minutes past 7, yesterday evening, Joan of Arc was burned at the
stake.
With the long strain gone, I am in a sort of physical collapse today, but
it will be gone tomorrow. I judged that this end of the book would be
hard work, and it turned out so. I have never done any work before that
cost so much thinking and weighing and measuring and planning and
cramming, or so much cautious and painstaking execution. For I wanted
the whole Rouen trial in, if it could be got in in such a way that the
reader's interest would not flag--in fact I wanted the reader's interest
to increase; and so I stuck to it with that determination in view--with
the result that I have left nothing out but unimportant repetitions.
Although it is mere history--history pure and simple--history stripped
naked of flowers, embroideries, colorings, exaggerations, invention--the
family agree that I have succeeded. It was a perilous thing to try in a
tale, but I never believed it a doubtful one--provided I stuck strictly
to business and didn't weaken and give up: or didn't get lazy and skimp
the work. The first two-thirds of the book were easy; for I only needed
to keep my historical road straight; therefore I used for reference only
one French history and one English one--and shoveled in as much fancy
work and invention on both sides of the historical road as I pleased.
But on this last third I have constantly used five French sources and
five English ones and I think no telling historical nugget in any of them
has escaped me.
Possibly the book may not sell, but that is nothing--it was written for
love.
There--I'm called to see company. The family seldom require this of me,
but they know I am not working today.
Yours sincerely,
S. L. CLEMENS.
"Brusnahan," of the foregoing letter, was an employee of the New
York Herald, superintendent of the press-room--who had invested some
of his savings in the type-setter.
In February Clemens returned to New York to look after matters
connected with his failure and to close arrangements for a
reading-tour around the world. He was nearly sixty years old, and
time had not lessened his loathing for the platform. More than
once, however, in earlier years, he had turned to it as a
debt-payer, and never yet had his burden been so great as now. He
concluded arrangements with Major Pond to take him as far as the
Pacific Coast, and with R. S. Smythe, of Australia, for the rest of
the tour. In April we find him once more back in Paris preparing
to bring the family to America, He had returned by way of London,
where he had visited Stanley the explorer--an old friend.
To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
Sunday, Apr.7,'95.
DEAR MR. ROGERS,--..... Stanley is magnificently housed in London, in a
grand mansion in the midst of the official world, right off Downing
Street and Whitehall. He had an extraordinary assemblage of brains and
fame there to meet me--thirty or forty (both sexes) at dinner, and more
than a hundred came in, after dinner. Kept it up till after midnight.
There were cabinet ministers, ambassadors, admirals, generals, canons,
Oxford professors, novelists, playwrights, poets, and a number of people
equipped with rank and brains. I told some yarns and made some speeches.
I promised to call on all those people next time I come to London, and
show them the wife and the daughters. If I were younger and very strong
I would dearly love to spend a season in London--provided I had no work
on hand, or no work more exacting than lecturing. I think I will lecture
there a month or two when I return from Australia.
There were many delightful ladies in that company. One was the wife of
His Excellency Admiral Bridge, Commander-in Chief of the Australian
Station, and she said her husband was able to throw wide all doors to me
in that part of the world and would be glad to do it, and would yacht me
and my party around, and excursion us in his flag-ship and make us have a
great time; and she said she would write him we were coming, and we would
find him ready. I have a letter from her this morning enclosing a letter
of introduction to the Admiral. I already know the Admiral commanding in
the China Seas and have promised to look in on him out there. He sleeps
with my books under his pillow. P'raps it is the only way he can sleep.
According to Mrs. Clemens's present plans--subject to modification, of
course--we sail in May; stay one day, or two days in New York, spend
June, July and August in Elmira and prepare my lectures; then lecture in
San Francisco and thereabouts during September and sail for Australia
before the middle of October and open the show there about the middle of
November. We don't take the girls along; it would be too expensive and
they are quite willing to remain behind anyway.
Mrs. C. is feeling so well that she is not going to try the New York
doctor till we have gone around the world and robbed it and made the
finances a little easier.
With a power of love to you all,
S. L. CLEMENS.
There would come moments of depression, of course, and a week later
he wrote: "I am tired to death all the time:" To a man of less
vitality, less vigor of mind and body, it is easy to believe that
under such circumstances this condition would have remained
permanent. But perhaps, after all, it was his comic outlook on
things in general that was his chief life-saver.
To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE, Apr. 29, '95.
DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I have been hidden an hour or two, reading proof of
Joan and now I think I am a lost child. I can't find anybody on the
place. The baggage has all disappeared, including the family. I reckon
that in the hurry and bustle of moving to the hotel they forgot me. But
it is no matter. It is peacefuller now than I have known it for days and
days and days.
In these Joan proofs which I have been reading for the September Harper
I find a couple of tip-top platform readings--and I mean to read them on
our trip. If the authorship is known by then; and if it isn't, I will
reveal it. The fact is, there is more good platform-stuff in Joan than
in any previous book of mine, by a long sight.
Yes, every danged member of the tribe has gone to the hotel and left me
lost. I wonder how they can be so careless with property. I have got to
try to get there by myself now.
All the trunks are going over as luggage; then I've got to find somebody
on the dock who will agree to ship 6 of them to the Hartford Customhouse.
If it is difficult I will dump them into the river. It is very careless
of Mrs. Clemens to trust trunks and things to me.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
By the latter part of May they were at Quarry Farm, and Clemens,
laid up there with a carbuncle, was preparing for his long tour.
The outlook was not a pleasant one. To Mr. Rogers he wrote: "I
sha'n't be able to stand on the platform before we start west. I
sha'n't get a single chance to practice my reading; but will have to
appear in Cleveland without the essential preparation. Nothing in
this world can save it from being a shabby, poor disgusting
performance. I've got to stand; I can't do it and talk to a house,
and how in the nation am I going to sit? Land of Goshen, it's this
night week! Pray for me."
The opening at Cleveland July 15th appears not to have been much of
a success, though from another reason, one that doubtless seemed
amusing to him later.
To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
(Forenoon)
CLEVELAND, July 16, '95.
DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Had a roaring success at the Elmira reformatory Sunday
night. But here, last night, I suffered defeat--There were a couple of
hundred little boys behind me on the stage, on a lofty tier of benches
which made them the most conspicuous objects in the house. And there was
nobody to watch them or keep them quiet. Why, with their scufflings and
horse-play and noise, it was just a menagerie. Besides, a concert of
amateurs had been smuggled into the program (to precede me,) and their
families and friends (say ten per cent of the audience) kept encoring
them and they always responded. So it was 20 minutes to 9 before I got
the platform in front of those 2,600 people who had paid a dollar apiece
for a chance to go to hell in this fashion.
I got started magnificently, but inside of half an hour the scuffling
boys had the audience's maddened attention and I saw it was a gone case;
so I skipped a third of my program and quit. The newspapers are kind,
but between you and me it was a defeat. There ain't going to be any more
concerts at my lectures. I care nothing for this defeat, because it was
not my fault. My first half hour showed that I had the house, and I
could have kept it if I hadn't been so handicapped.
Yours sincerely,
S. L. CLEMENS.
P. S. Had a satisfactory time at Petoskey. Crammed the house and turned
away a crowd. We had $548 in the house, which was $300 more than it had
ever had in it before. I believe I don't care to have a talk go off
better than that one did.
Mark Twain, on this long tour, was accompanied by his wife and his
daughter Clara--Susy and Jean Clemens remaining with their aunt at
Quarry Farm. The tour was a financial success from the start.
By the time they were ready to sail from Vancouver five thousand
dollars had been remitted to Mr. Rogers against that day of
settlement when the debts of Webster & Co. were to be paid. Perhaps
it should be stated here that a legal settlement had been arranged
on a basis of fifty cents on the dollar, but neither Clemens nor his
wife consented to this as final. They would pay in full.
They sailed from Vancouver August 23, 1895. About the only letter
of this time is an amusing note to Rudyard Kipling, written at the
moment of departure.
To Rudyard Kipling, in England:
August, 1895.
DEAR KIPLING,--It is reported that you are about to visit India. This
has moved me to journey to that far country in order that I may unload
from my conscience a debt long due to you. Years ago you came from India
to Elmira to visit me, as you said at the time. It has always been my
purpose to return that visit and that great compliment some day. I shall
arrive next January and you must be ready. I shall come riding my ayah
with his tusks adorned with silver bells and ribbons and escorted by a
troop of native howdahs richly clad and mounted upon a herd of wild
bungalows; and you must be on hand with a few bottles of ghee, for I
shall be thirsty.
Affectionately,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Clemens, platforming in Australia, was too busy to write letters.
Everywhere he was welcomed by great audiences, and everywhere
lavishly entertained. He was beset by other carbuncles, but would
seem not to have been seriously delayed by them. A letter to his
old friend Twichell carries the story.
To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
FRANK MOELLER'S MASONIC HOTEL,
NAPIER, NEW ZEALAND,
November 29, '95.
DEAR JOE,--Your welcome letter of two months and five days ago has just
arrived, and finds me in bed with another carbuncle. It is No. 3. Not a
serious one this time. I lectured last night without inconvenience, but
the doctors thought best to forbid to-night's lecture. My second one
kept me in bed a week in Melbourne.
.....We are all glad it is you who is to write the article, it delights
us all through.
I think it was a good stroke of luck that knocked me on my back here at
Napier, instead of some hotel in the centre of a noisy city. Here we
have the smooth and placidly-complaining sea at our door, with nothing
between us and it but 20 yards of shingle--and hardly a suggestion of
life in that space to mar it or make a noise. Away down here fifty-five
degrees south of the Equator this sea seems to murmur in an unfamiliar
tongue--a foreign tongue--tongue bred among the ice-fields of the
Antarctic--a murmur with a note of melancholy in it proper to the vast
unvisited solitudes it has come from. It was very delicious and solacing
to wake in the night and find it still pulsing there. I wish you were
here--land, but it would be fine!
Livy and Clara enjoy this nomadic life pretty well; certainly better than
one could have expected they would. They have tough experiences, in the
way of food and beds and frantic little ships, but they put up with the
worst that befalls with heroic endurance that resembles contentment.
No doubt I shall be on the platform next Monday. A week later we shall
reach Wellington; talk there 3 nights, then sail back to Australia. We
sailed for New Zealand October 30.
Day before yesterday was Livy's birthday (under world time), and tomorrow
will be mine. I shall be 60--no thanks for it.
I and the others send worlds and worlds of love to all you dear ones.
MARK.
The article mentioned in the foregoing letter was one which Twichell
had been engaged by Harper's Magazine to write concerning the home
life and characteristics of Mark Twain. By the time the Clemens
party had completed their tour of India--a splendid, triumphant
tour, too full of work and recreation for letter-writing--and had
reached South Africa, the article had appeared, a satisfactory one,
if we may judge by Mark Twain's next.
This letter, however, has a special interest in the account it gives
of Mark Twain's visit to the Jameson raiders, then imprisoned at
Pretoria.
To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC,
The Queen's Birthday, '96.
(May 24)
DEAR OLD JOE,--Harper for May was given to me yesterday in Johannesburg
by an American lady who lives there, and I read your article on me while
coming up in the train with her and an old friend and fellow-Missourian
of mine, Mrs. John Hays Hammond, the handsome and spirited wife of the
chief of the 4 Reformers, who lies in prison here under a 15-year
sentence, along with 50 minor Reformers who are in for 1 and 5-year
terms. Thank you a thousand times Joe, you have praised me away above my
deserts, but I am not the man to quarrel with you for that; and as for
Livy, she will take your very hardiest statements at par, and be grateful
to you to the bottom of her heart. Between you and Punch and Brander
Matthews, I am like to have my opinion of myself raised sufficiently
high; and I guess the children will be after you, for it is the study of
their lives to keep my self-appreciation down somewhere within bounds.
I had a note from Mrs. Rev. Gray (nee Tyler) yesterday, and called on her
to-day. She is well.
Yesterday I was allowed to enter the prison with Mrs. Hammond. A Boer
guard was at my elbow all the time, but was courteous and polite, only
he barred the way in the compound (quadrangle or big open court) and
wouldn't let me cross a white mark that was on the ground--the
"death-line" one of the prisoners called it. Not in earnest, though, I
think. I found that I had met Hammond once when he was a Yale senior and
a guest of Gen. Franklin's. I also found that I had known Capt. Mein
intimately 32 years ago. One of the English prisoners had heard me
lecture in London 23 years ago. After being introduced in turn to all
the prisoners, I was allowed to see some of the cells and examine their
food, beds, etc. I was told in Johannesburg that Hammond's salary of
$150,000 a year is not stopped, and that the salaries of some of the
others are still continued. Hammond was looking very well indeed, and I
can say the same of all the others. When the trouble first fell upon
them it hit some of them very hard; several fell sick (Hammond among
them), two or three had to be removed to the hospital, and one of the
favorites lost his mind and killed himself, poor fellow, last week. His
funeral, with a sorrowing following of 10,000, took the place of the
public demonstration the Americans were getting up for me.
These prisoners are strong men, prominent men, and I believe they are all
educated men. They are well off; some of them are wealthy. They have a
lot of books to read, they play games and smoke, and for awhile they will
be able to bear up in their captivity; but not for long, not for very
long, I take it. I am told they have times of deadly brooding and
depression. I made them a speech--sitting down. It just happened so.
I don't prefer that attitude. Still, it has one advantage--it is only a
talk, it doesn't take the form of a speech. I have tried it once before
on this trip. However, if a body wants to make sure of having "liberty,"
and feeling at home, he had better stand up, of course. I advised them
at considerable length to stay where they were--they would get used to it
and like it presently; if they got out they would only get in again
somewhere else, by the look of their countenances; and I promised to go
and see the President and do what I could to get him to double their
jail-terms.
We had a very good sociable time till the permitted time was up and a
little over, and we outsiders had to go. I went again to-day, but the
Rev. Mr. Gray had just arrived, and the warden, a genial, elderly Boer
named Du Plessis--explained that his orders wouldn't allow him to admit
saint and sinner at the same time, particularly on a Sunday. Du Plessis
--descended from the Huguenot fugitives, you see, of 200 years ago
--but he hasn't any French left in him now--all Dutch.
It gravels me to think what a goose I was to make Livy and Clara remain
in Durban; but I wanted to save them the 30-hour railway trip to
Johannesburg. And Durban and its climate and opulent foliage were so
lovely, and the friends there were so choice and so hearty that I
sacrificed myself in their interests, as I thought. It is just the
beginning of winter, and although the days are hot, the nights are cool.
But it's lovely weather in these regions, too; and the friends are as
lovely as the weather, and Johannesburg and Pretoria are brimming with
interest. I talk here twice more, then return to Johannesburg next
Wednesday for a fifth talk there; then to the Orange Free State capital,
then to some town on the way to Port Elizabeth, where the two will join
us by sea from Durban; then the gang will go to Kimberley and presently
to the Cape--and so, in the course of time, we shall get through and sail
for England; and then we will hunt up a quiet village and I will write
and Livy edit, for a few months, while Clara and Susy and Jean study
music and things in London.
We have had noble good times everywhere and every day, from Cleveland,
July 15, to Pretoria, May 24, and never a dull day either on sea or land,
notwithstanding the carbuncles and things. Even when I was laid up 10
days at Jeypore in India we had the charmingest times with English
friends. All over India the English well, you will never know how good
and fine they are till you see them.
Midnight and after! and I must do many things to-day, and lecture
tonight.
A world of thanks to you, Joe dear, and a world of love to all of you.
MARK.
Perhaps for readers of a later day a word as to what constituted the
Jameson raid would not be out of place here. Dr. Leander Starr
Jameson was an English physician, located at Kimberley. President
Kruger (Oom Paul), head of the South African Republic, was one of
his patients; also, Lobengula, the Matabele chief. From Lobengula
concessions were obtained which led to the formation of the South
African Company. Jameson gave up his profession and went in for
conquest, associating himself with the projects of Cecil Rhodes.
In time he became administrator of Rhodesia. By the end of 1894.
he was in high feather, and during a visit to England was feted as
a sort of romantic conqueror of the olden time. Perhaps this turned
his head; at all events at the end of 1895 came the startling news
that "Dr. Jim," as he was called, at the head of six hundred men,
had ridden into the Transvaal in support of a Rhodes scheme for an
uprising at Johannesburg. The raid was a failure. Jameson, and
those other knights of adventure, were captured by the forces of
"Oom Paul," and some of them barely escaped execution. The Boer
president handed them over to the English Government for punishment,
and they received varying sentences, but all were eventually
released. Jameson, later, became again prominent in South-African
politics, but there is no record of any further raids.
.........................
The Clemens party sailed from South Africa the middle of July, 1896,
and on the last day of the month reached England. They had not
planned to return to America, but to spend the winter in or near
London in some quiet place where Clemens could write the book of his
travels.
The two daughters in America, Susy and Jean, were expected to arrive
August 12th, but on that day there came, instead, a letter saying
that Susy Clemens was not well enough to sail. A cable inquiry was
immediately sent, but the reply when it came was not satisfactory,
and Mrs. Clemens and Clara sailed for America without further delay.
This was on August 15th. Three days later, in the old home at
Hartford, Susy Clemens died of cerebral fever. She had been
visiting Mrs. Charles Dudley Warner, but by the physician's advice
had been removed to the comfort and quiet of her own home, only a
few steps away.
Mark Twain, returning from his triumphant tour of the world in the
hope that soon, now, he might be free from debt, with his family
happily gathered about him, had to face alone this cruel blow.
There was no purpose in his going to America; Susy would be buried
long before his arrival. He awaited in England the return of his
broken family. They lived that winter in a quiet corner of Chelsea,
No. 23 Tedworth Square.
To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, in Hartford, Conn.:
Permanent address:
% CHATTO & WINDUS
111 T. MARTIN'S LANE, LONDON,
Sept. 27, '96.
Through Livy and Katy I have learned, dear old Joe, how loyally you stood
poor Susy's friend, and mine, and Livy's: how you came all the way down,
twice, from your summer refuge on your merciful errands to bring the
peace and comfort of your beloved presence, first to that poor child, and
again to the broken heart of her poor desolate mother. It was like you;
like your good great heart, like your matchless and unmatchable self.
It was no surprise to me to learn that you stayed by Susy long hours,
careless of fatigue and heat, it was no surprise to me to learn that you
could still the storms that swept her spirit when no other could; for she
loved you, revered you, trusted you, and "Uncle Joe" was no empty phrase
upon her lips! I am grateful to you, Joe, grateful to the bottom of my
heart, which has always been filled with love for you, and respect and
admiration; and I would have chosen you out of all the world to take my
place at Susy's side and Livy's in those black hours.
Susy was a rare creature; the rarest that has been reared in Hartford in
this generation. And Livy knew it, and you knew it, and Charley Warner
and George, and Harmony, and the Hillyers and the Dunhams and the
Cheneys, and Susy and Lilly, and the Bunces, and Henry Robinson and Dick
Burton, and perhaps others. And I also was of the number, but not in the
same degree--for she was above my duller comprehension. I merely knew
that she was my superior in fineness of mind, in the delicacy and
subtlety of her intellect, but to fully measure her I was not competent.
I know her better now; for I have read her private writings and sounded
the deeps of her mind; and I know better, now, the treasure that was mine
than I knew it when I had it. But I have this consolation: that dull as
I was, I always knew enough to be proud when she commended me or my work
--as proud as if Livy had done it herself--and I took it as the accolade
from the hand of genius. I see now--as Livy always saw--that she had
greatness in her; and that she herself was dimly conscious of it.
And now she is dead--and I can never tell her.
God bless you Joe--and all of your house.
S. L. C.
To Mr. Henry C. Robinson, Hartford, Conn.:
LONDON, Sept. 28, '96.
It is as you say, dear old friend, "the pathos of it" yes, it was a
piteous thing--as piteous a tragedy as any the year can furnish. When we
started westward upon our long trip at half past ten at night, July 14,
1895, at Elmira, Susy stood on the platform in the blaze of the electric
light waving her good-byes to us as the train glided away, her mother
throwing back kisses and watching her through her tears. One year, one
month, and one week later, Clara and her mother having exactly completed
the circuit of the globe, drew up at that platform at the same hour of
the night, in the same train and the same car--and again Susy had come a
journey and was near at hand to meet them. She was waiting in the house
she was born in, in her coffin.
All the circumstances of this death were pathetic--my brain is worn to
rags rehearsing them. The mere death would have been cruelty enough,
without overloading it and emphasizing it with that score of harsh and
wanton details. The child was taken away when her mother was within
three days of her, and would have given three decades for sight of her.
In my despair and unassuageable misery I upbraid myself for ever parting
with her. But there is no use in that. Since it was to happen it would
have happened.
With love
S. L. C.
The life at Tedworth Square that winter was one of almost complete
privacy. Of the hundreds of friends which Mark Twain had in London
scarcely half a dozen knew his address. He worked steadily on his
book of travels, 'Following the Equator', and wrote few letters
beyond business communications to Mr. Rogers. In one of these he
said, "I am appalled! Here I am trying to load you up with work
again after you have been dray-horsing over the same tiresome ground
for a year. It's too bad, and I am ashamed of it."
But late in November he sent a letter of a different sort--one that
was to have an important bearing on the life of a girl today of
unique and world-wide distinction.
To Mrs. H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
For and in behalf of Helen Keller,
stone blind and deaf, and formerly dumb.
DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--Experience has convinced me that when one wishes to
set a hard-worked man at something which he mightn't prefer to be
bothered with, it is best to move upon him behind his wife. If she can't
convince him it isn't worth while for other people to try.
Mr. Rogers will remember our visit with that astonishing girl at Lawrence
Hutton's house when she was fourteen years old. Last July, in Boston,
when she was 16 she underwent the Harvard examination for admission to
Radcliffe College. She passed without a single condition. She was
allowed the same amount of time that is granted to other applicants, and
this was shortened in her case by the fact that the question papers had
to be read to her. Yet she scored an average of 90 as against an average
of 78 on the part of the other applicants.
It won't do for America to allow this marvelous child to retire from her
studies because of poverty. If she can go on with them she will make a
fame that will endure in history for centuries. Along her special lines
she is the most extraordinary product of all the ages.
There is danger that she must retire from the struggle for a College
degree for lack of support for herself and for Miss Sullivan, (the
teacher who has been with her from the start--Mr. Rogers will remember
her.) Mrs. Hutton writes to ask me to interest rich Englishmen in her
case, and I would gladly try, but my secluded life will not permit it.
I see nobody. Nobody knows my address. Nothing but the strictest hiding
can enable me to write my long book in time.
So I thought of this scheme: Beg you to lay siege to your husband and get
him to interest himself and Mess. John D. and William Rockefeller and the
other Standard Oil chiefs in Helen's case; get them to subscribe an
annual aggregate of six or seven hundred or a thousand dollars--and agree
to continue this for three or four years, until she has completed her
college course. I'm not trying to limit their generosity--indeed no,
they may pile that Standard Oil, Helen Keller College Fund as high as
they please, they have my consent.
Mrs. Hutton's idea is to raise a permanent fund the interest upon which
shall support Helen and her teacher and put them out of the fear of want.
I shan't say a word against it, but she will find it a difficult and
disheartening job, and meanwhile what is to become of that miraculous
girl?
No, for immediate and sound effectiveness, the thing is for you to plead
with Mr. Rogers for this hampered wonder of your sex, and send him
clothed with plenary powers to plead with the other chiefs--they have
spent mountains of money upon the worthiest benevolences, and I think
that the same spirit which moved them to put their hands down through
their hearts into their pockets in those cases will answer "Here!" when
its name is called in this one. 638
There--I don't need to apologize to you or to H. H. for this appeal that
I am making; I know you too well for that.
Good-bye with love to all of you
S. L. CLEMENS.
Laurence Hutton is on the staff of Harper's Monthly--close by, and handy
when wanted.
The plea was not made in vain. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers interested
themselves most liberally in Helen Keller's fortune, and certainly
no one can say that any of those who contributed to her success ever
had reason for disappointment.
In his letter of grateful acknowledgment, which follows, Clemens
also takes occasion to thank Mr. Rogers for his further efforts in
the matter of his own difficulties. This particular reference
concerns the publishing, complications which by this time had arisen
between the American Publishing Company, of Hartford, and the house
in Franklin Square.
LONDON, Dec. 22, '96.
DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--It is superb! And I am beyond measure grateful to you
both. I knew you would be interested in that wonderful girl, and that
Mr. Rogers was already interested in her and touched by her; and I was
sure that if nobody else helped her you two would; but you have gone far
and away beyond the sum I expected--may your lines fall in pleasant
places here and Hereafter for it!
The Huttons are as glad and grateful as they can be, and I am glad for
their sakes as well as for Helen's.
I want to thank Mr. Rogers for crucifying himself again on the same old
cross between Bliss and Harper; and goodness knows I hope he will come to
enjoy it above all other dissipations yet, seeing that it has about it
the elements of stability and permanency. However, at any time that he
says sign, we're going to do it.
Ever sincerely Yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
XXXVI
LETTERS 1897. LONDON, SWITZERLAND, VIENNA
Mark Twain worked steadily on his book that sad winter and managed to
keep the gloom out of his chapters, though it is noticeable that
'Following the Equator' is more serious than his other books of travel.
He wrote few letters, and these only to his three closest friends,
Howells, Twichell, and Rogers. In the letter to Twichell, which follows,
there is mention of two unfinished manuscripts which he expects to
resume. One of these was a dream story, enthusiastically begun, but
perhaps with insufficient plot to carry it through, for it never reached
conclusion. He had already tried it in one or two forms and would begin
it again presently. The identity of the other tale is uncertain.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
LONDON, Jan. 19, '97.
DEAR JOE,--Do I want you to write to me? Indeed I do. I do not want
most people to write, but I do want you to do it. The others break my
heart, but you will not. You have a something divine in you that is not
in other men. You have the touch that heals, not lacerates. And you
know the secret places of our hearts. You know our life--the outside of
it--as the others do--and the inside of it--which they do not. You have
seen our whole voyage. You have seen us go to sea, a cloud of sail--and
the flag at the peak; and you see us now, chartless, adrift--derelicts;
battered, water-logged, our sails a ruck of rags, our pride gone. For it
is gone. And there is nothing in its place. The vanity of life was all
we had, and there is no more vanity left in us. We are even ashamed of
that we had; ashamed that we trusted the promises of life and builded
high--to come to this!
I did know that Susy was part of us; I did not know that she could go
away; I did not know that she could go away, and take our lives with her,
yet leave our dull bodies behind. And I did not know what she was. To
me she was but treasure in the bank; the amount known, the need to look
at it daily, handle it, weigh it, count it, realize it, not necessary;
and now that I would do it, it is too late; they tell me it is not there,
has vanished away in a night, the bank is broken, my fortune is gone, I
am a pauper. How am I to comprehend this? How am I to have it? Why am
I robbed, and who is benefited?
Ah, well, Susy died at home. She had that privilege. Her dying eyes
rested upon nothing that was strange to them, but only upon things which
they had known and loved always and which had made her young years glad;
and she had you, and Sue, and Katy, and John, and Ellen. This was happy
fortune--I am thankful that it was vouchsafed to her. If she had died in
another house-well, I think I could not have borne that. To us, our
house was not unsentient matter--it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to
see us with; and approvals, and solicitudes, and deep sympathies; it was
of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the
peace of its benediction. We never came home from an absence that its
face did not light up and speak out its eloquent welcome--and we could
not enter it unmoved. And could we now, oh, now, in spirit we should
enter it unshod.
I am trying to add to the "assets" which you estimate so generously.
No, I am not. The thought is not in my mind. My purpose is other. I am
working, but it is for the sake of the work--the "surcease of sorrow"
that is found there. I work all the days, and trouble vanishes away when
I use that magic. This book will not long stand between it and me, now;
but that is no matter, I have many unwritten books to fly to for my
preservation; the interval between the finishing of this one and the
beginning of the next will not be more than an hour, at most.
Continuances, I mean; for two of them are already well along--in fact
have reached exactly the same stage in their journey: 19,000 words each.
The present one will contain 180,000 words--130,000 are done. I am well
protected; but Livy! She has nothing in the world to turn to; nothing
but housekeeping, and doing things for the children and me. She does not
see people, and cannot; books have lost their interest for her. She sits
solitary; and all the day, and all the days, wonders how it all happened,
and why. We others were always busy with our affairs, but Susy was her
comrade--had to be driven from her loving persecutions--sometimes at 1 in
the morning. To Livy the persecutions were welcome. It was heaven to
her to be plagued like that. But it is ended now. Livy stands so in
need of help; and none among us all could help her like you.
Some day you and I will walk again, Joe, and talk. I hope so. We could
have such talks! We are all grateful to you and Harmony--how grateful it
is not given to us to say in words. We pay as we can, in love; and in
this coin practicing no economy.
Good bye, dear old Joe!
MARK.
The letters to Mr. Rogers were, for the most part, on matters of
business, but in one of them he said: "I am going to write with all
my might on this book, and follow it up with others as fast as I can
in the hope that within three years I can clear out the stuff that
is in me waiting to be written, and that I shall then die in the
promptest kind of a way and no fooling around." And in one he
wrote: "You are the best friend ever a man had, and the surest."
To W. D. Howells, in New York
LONDON, Feb. 23, '97.
DEAR HOWELLS,-I find your generous article in the Weekly, and I want to
thank you for its splendid praises, so daringly uttered and so warmly.
The words stir the dead heart of me, and throw a glow of color into a
life which sometimes seems to have grown wholly wan. I don't mean that I
am miserable; no--worse than that--indifferent. Indifferent to nearly
everything but work. I like that; I enjoy it, and stick to it. I do it
without purpose and without ambition; merely for the love of it.
This mood will pass, some day--there is history for it. But it cannot
pass until my wife comes up out of the submergence. She was always so
quick to recover herself before, but now there is no rebound, and we are
dead people who go through the motions of life. Indeed I am a mud image,
and it will puzzle me to know what it is in me that writes, and has
comedy-fancies and finds pleasure in phrasing them. It is a law of our
nature, of course, or it wouldn't happen; the thing in me forgets the
presence of the mud image and goes its own way, wholly unconscious of it
and apparently of no kinship with it. I have finished my book, but I go
on as if the end were indefinitely away--as indeed it is. There is no
hurry--at any rate there is no limit.
Jean's spirits are good; Clara's are rising. They have youth--the only
thing that was worth giving to the race.
These are sardonic times. Look at Greece, and that whole shabby muddle.
But I am not sorry to be alive and privileged to look on. If I were not
a hermit I would go to the House every day and see those people scuffle
over it and blether about the brotherhood of the human race. This has
been a bitter year for English pride, and I don't like to see England
humbled--that is, not too much. We are sprung from her loins, and it
hurts me. I am for republics, and she is the only comrade we've got, in
that. We can't count France, and there is hardly enough of Switzerland
to count. Beneath the governing crust England is sound-hearted--and
sincere, too, and nearly straight. But I am appalled to notice that the
wide extension of the surface has damaged her manners, and made her
rather Americanly uncourteous on the lower levels.
Won't you give our love to the Howellses all and particular?
Sincerely yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
The travel-book did not finish easily, and more than once when he
thought it completed he found it necessary to cut and add and
change. The final chapters were not sent to the printer until the
middle of May, and in a letter to Mr. Rogers he commented: "A
successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out
of it." Clemens was at the time contemplating a uniform edition of
his books, and in one of his letters to Mr. Rogers on the matter he
wrote, whimsically, "Now I was proposing to make a thousand sets at
a hundred dollars a set, and do the whole canvassing myself..... I
would load up every important jail and saloon in America with de
luxe editions of my books. But Mrs. Clemens and the children object
to this, I do not know why." And, in a moment of depression: "You
see the lightning refuses to strike me--there is where the defect
is. We have to do our own striking as Barney Barnato did. But
nobody ever gets the courage until he goes crazy."
They went to Switzerland for the summer to the village of Weggis, on
Lake Lucerne--"The charmingest place we ever lived in," he declared,
"for repose, and restfulness, and superb scenery." It was here that
he began work on a new story of Tom and Huck, and at least upon one
other manuscript. From a brief note to Mr. Rogers we learn
something of his employments and economies.
To Henry H. Rogers, in New York:
LUCERNE, August the something or other, 1897.
DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I am writing a novel, and am getting along very well
with it.
I believe that this place (Weggis, half an hour from Lucerne,) is the
loveliest in the world, and the most satisfactory. We have a small house
on the hillside all to ourselves, and our meals are served in it from the
inn below on the lake shore. Six francs a day per head, house and food
included. The scenery is beyond comparison beautiful. We have a row
boat and some bicycles, and good roads, and no visitors. Nobody knows we
are here. And Sunday in heaven is noisy compared to this quietness.
Sincerely yours
S. L. C.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
LUCERNE, Aug. 22, '97.
DEAR JOE,--Livy made a noble find on the Lucerne boat the other day on
one of her shopping trips--George Williamson Smith--did I tell you about
it? We had a lovely time with him, and such intellectual refreshment as
we had not tasted in many a month.
And the other night we had a detachment of the jubilee Singers--6. I had
known one of them in London 24 years ago. Three of the 6 were born in
slavery, the others were children of slaves. How charming they were--in
spirit, manner, language, pronunciation, enunciation, grammar, phrasing,
matter, carriage, clothes--in every detail that goes to make the real
lady and gentleman, and welcome guest. We went down to the village hotel
and bought our tickets and entered the beer-hall, where a crowd of German
and Swiss men and women sat grouped at round tables with their beer mugs
in front of them--self-contained and unimpressionable looking people, an
indifferent and unposted and disheartened audience--and up at the far end
of the room sat the Jubilees in a row. The Singers got up and stood--the
talking and glass jingling went on. Then rose and swelled out above
those common earthly sounds one of those rich chords the secret of whose
make only the Jubilees possess, and a spell fell upon that house. It was
fine to see the faces light up with the pleased wonder and surprise of
it. No one was indifferent any more; and when the singers finished, the
camp was theirs. It was a triumph. It reminded me of Launcelot riding
in Sir Kay's armor and astonishing complacent Knights who thought they
had struck a soft thing. The Jubilees sang a lot of pieces. Arduous and
painstaking cultivation has not diminished or artificialized their music,
but on the contrary--to my surprise--has mightily reinforced its
eloquence and beauty. Away back in the beginning--to my mind--their
music made all other vocal music cheap; and that early notion is
emphasized now. It is utterly beautiful, to me; and it moves me
infinitely more than any other music can. I think that in the Jubilees
and their songs America has produced the perfectest flower of the ages;
and I wish it were a foreign product, so that she would worship it and
lavish money on it and go properly crazy over it.
Now, these countries are different: they would do all that, if it were
native. It is true they praise God, but that is merely a formality, and
nothing in it; they open out their whole hearts to no foreigner.
The musical critics of the German press praise the Jubilees with great
enthusiasm--acquired technique etc, included.
One of the jubilee men is a son of General Joe Johnson, and was educated
by him after the war. The party came up to the house and we had a
pleasant time.
This is paradise, here--but of course we have got to leave it by and by.
The 18th of August--[Anniversary of Susy Clemens's death.]--has come and
gone, Joe--and we still seem to live.
With love from us all.
MARK.
Clemens declared he would as soon spend his life in Weggis "as
anywhere else in the geography," but October found them in Vienna
for the winter, at the Hotel Metropole. The Austrian capital was
just then in a political turmoil, the character of which is hinted
in the following:
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
HOTEL METROPOLE,
VIENNA, Oct. 23, '97.
DEAR JOE,--We are gradually getting settled down and wonted. Vienna is
not a cheap place to live in, but I have made one small arrangement
which: has a distinctly economical aspect. The Vice Consul made the
contract for me yesterday-to-wit: a barber is to come every morning 8.30
and shave me and keep my hair trimmed for $2.50 a month. I used to pay
$1.50 per shave in our house in Hartford.
Does it suggest to you reflections when you reflect that this is the most
important event which has happened to me in ten days--unless I count--in
my handing a cabman over to the police day before yesterday, with the
proper formalities, and promised to appear in court when his case comes
up.
If I had time to run around and talk, I would do it; for there is much
politics agoing, and it would be interesting if a body could get the hang
of it. It is Christian and Jew by the horns--the advantage with the
superior man, as usual--the superior man being the Jew every time and in
all countries. Land, Joe, what chance would the Christian have in a
country where there were 3 Jews to 10 Christians! Oh, not the shade of a
shadow of a chance. The difference between the brain of the average
Christian and that of the average Jew--certainly in Europe--is about the
difference between a tadpole's and an Archbishop's. It's a marvelous,
race--by long odds the most marvelous that the world has produced, I
suppose.
And there's more politics--the clash between Czech and Austrian. I wish
I could understand these quarrels, but of course I can't.
With the abounding love of us all
MARK.
In Following the Equator there was used an amusing picture showing
Mark Twain on his trip around the world. It was a trick photograph
made from a picture of Mark Twain taken in a steamer-chair, cut out
and combined with a dilapidated negro-cart drawn by a horse and an
ox. In it Clemens appears to be sitting luxuriously in the end of
the disreputable cart. His companions are two negroes. To the
creator of this ingenious effect Mark Twain sent a characteristic
acknowledgment.
To T. S. Frisbie
VIENNA, Oct. 25, '97.
MR. T. S. FRISBIE,--Dear Sir: The picture has reached me, and has moved
me deeply. That was a steady, sympathetic and honorable team, and
although it was not swift, and not showy, it pulled me around the globe
successfully, and always attracted its proper share of attention, even in
the midst of the most costly and fashionable turnouts. Princes and dukes
and other experts were always enthused by the harness and could hardly
keep from trying to buy it. The barouche does not look as fine, now, as
it did earlier-but that was before the earthquake.
The portraits of myself and uncle and nephew are very good indeed, and
your impressionist reproduction of the palace of the Governor General of
India is accurate and full of tender feeling.
I consider that this picture is much more than a work of art. How much
more, one cannot say with exactness, but I should think two-thirds more.
Very truly yours
MARK TWAIN.
Following the Equator was issued by subscription through Mark
Twain's old publishers, the Blisses, of Hartford. The sale of it
was large, not only on account of the value of the book itself, but
also because of the sympathy of the American people with Mark
Twain's brave struggle to pay his debts. When the newspapers began
to print exaggerated stories of the vast profits that were piling
up, Bliss became worried, for he thought it would modify the
sympathy. He cabled Clemens for a denial, with the following
result:
To Frank E. Bliss, in Hartford:
VIENNA, Nov. 4, 1897.
DEAR BLISS,--Your cablegram informing me that a report is in circulation
which purports to come from me and which says I have recently made
$82,000 and paid all my debts has just reached me, and I have cabled
back my regret to you that it is not true. I wrote a letter--a private
letter--a short time ago, in which I expressed the belief that I should
be out of debt within the next twelvemonth. If you make as much as usual
for me out of the book, that belief will crystallize into a fact, and I
shall be wholly out of debt. I am encoring you now.
It is out of that moderate letter that the Eighty-Two Thousand-Dollar
mare's nest has developed. But why do you worry about the various
reports? They do not worry me. They are not unfriendly, and I don't see
how they can do any harm. Be patient; you have but a little while to
wait; the possible reports are nearly all in. It has been reported that
I was seriously ill--it was another man; dying--it was another man; dead
--the other man again. It has been reported that I have received a
legacy it was another man; that I am out of debt--it was another man; and
now comes this $82,000--still another man. It has been reported that I
am writing books--for publication; I am not doing anything of the kind.
It would surprise (and gratify) me if I should be able to get another
book ready for the press within the next three years. You can see,
yourself, that there isn't anything more to be reported--invention is
exhausted. Therefore, don't worry, Bliss--the long night is breaking.
As far as I can see, nothing remains to be reported, except that I have
become a foreigner. When you hear it, don't you believe it. And don't
take the trouble to deny it. Merely just raise the American flag on our
house in Hartford, and let it talk.
Truly yours,
MARK TWAIN.
P. S. This is not a private letter. I am getting tired of private
letters.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
VIENNA
HOTEL METROPOLE, NOV. 19, '97.
DEAR JOE,--Above is our private (and permanent) address for the winter.
You needn't send letters by London.
I am very much obliged for Forrest's Austro-Hungarian articles. I have
just finished reading the first one: and in it I find that his opinion
and Vienna's are the same, upon a point which was puzzling me--the
paucity (no, the absence) of Austrian Celebrities. He and Vienna both
say the country cannot afford to allow great names to grow up; that the
whole safety and prosperity of the Empire depends upon keeping things
quiet; can't afford to have geniuses springing up and developing ideas
and stirring the public soul. I am assured that every time a man finds
himself blooming into fame, they just softly snake him down and relegate
him to a wholesome obscurity. It is curious and interesting.
Three days ago the New York World sent and asked a friend of mine
(correspondent of a London daily) to get some Christmas greetings from
the celebrities of the Empire. She spoke of this. Two or three bright
Austrians were present. They said "There are none who are known all over
the world! none who have achieved fame; none who can point to their work
and say it is known far and wide in the earth: there are no names;
Kossuth (known because he had a father) and Lecher, who made the 12 hour
speech; two names-nothing more. Every other country in the world,
perhaps, has a giant or two whose heads are away up and can be seen, but
ours. We've got the material--have always had it--but we have to
suppress it; we can't afford to let it develop; our political salvation
depends upon tranquillity--always has."
Poor Livy! She is laid up with rheumatism; but she is getting along now.
We have a good doctor, and he says she will be out of bed in a couple of
days, but must stay in the house a week or ten.
Clara is working faithfully at her music, Jean at her usual studies, and
we all send love.
MARK.
Mention has already been made of the political excitement in Vienna.
The trouble between the Hungarian and German legislative bodies
presently became violent. Clemens found himself intensely
interested, and was present in one of the galleries when it was
cleared by the police. All sorts of stories were circulated as to
what happened to him, one of which was cabled to America. A letter
to Twichell sets forth what really happened.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
HOTEL METROPOLE,
VIENNA, Dec. 10, '97.
DEAR JOE,--Pond sends me a Cleveland paper with a cablegram from here in
it which says that when the police invaded the parliament and expelled
the 11 members I waved my handkerchief and shouted 'Hoch die Deutschen!'
and got hustled out. Oh dear, what a pity it is that one's adventures
never happen! When the Ordner (sergeant-at-arms) came up to our gallery
and was hurrying the people out, a friend tried to get leave for me to
stay, by saying, "But this gentleman is a foreigner--you don't need to
turn him out--he won't do any harm."
"Oh, I know him very well--I recognize him by his pictures; and I should
be very glad to let him stay, but I haven't any choice, because of the
strictness of the orders."
And so we all went out, and no one was hustled. Below, I ran across the
London Times correspondent, and he showed me the way into the first
gallery and I lost none of the show. The first gallery had not
misbehaved, and was not disturbed.
. . . We cannot persuade Livy to go out in society yet, but all the
lovely people come to see her; and Clara and I go to dinner parties, and
around here and there, and we all have a most hospitable good time.
Jean's woodcarving flourishes, and her other studies.
Good-bye Joe--and we all love all of you.
MARK.
Clemens made an article of the Austrian troubles, one of the best
things he ever wrote, and certainly one of the clearest elucidations
of the Austro-Hungarian confusions. It was published in Harper's
Magazine, and is now included in his complete works.
Thus far none of the Webster Company debts had been paid--at least,
none of importance. The money had been accumulating in Mr. Rogers's
hands, but Clemens was beginning to be depressed by the heavy
burden. He wrote asking for relief.
Part of a letter to H. H. Rogers, in New York:
DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I throw up the sponge. I pull down the flag. Let us
begin on the debts. I cannot bear the weight any longer. It totally
unfits me for work. I have lost three entire months now. In that time I
have begun twenty magazine articles and books--and flung every one of
them aside in turn. The debts interfered every time, and took the spirit
out of any work. And yet I have worked like a bond slave and wasted no
time and spared no effort----
Rogers wrote, proposing a plan for beginning immediately upon the debts.
Clemens replied enthusiastically, and during the next few weeks wrote
every few days, expressing his delight in liquidation.
Extracts from letters to H. H. Rogers, in New York:
. . . We all delighted with your plan. Only don't leave B--out.
Apparently that claim has been inherited by some women--daughters, no
doubt. We don't want to see them lose any thing. B----- is an ass, and
disgruntled, but I don't care for that. I am responsible for the money
and must do the best I can to pay it..... I am writing hard--writing for
the creditors.
Dec. 29.
Land we are glad to see those debts diminishing. For the first time in
my life I am getting more pleasure out of paying money out than pulling
it in.
Jan. 2.
Since we have begun to pay off the debts I have abundant peace of mind
again--no sense of burden. Work is become a pleasure again--it is not
labor any longer.
March 7.
Mrs. Clemens has been reading the creditors' letters over and over again
and thanks you deeply for sending them, and says it is the only really
happy day she has had since Susy died.
XXXVII
LETTERS, 1898, TO HOWELLS AND TWICHELL. LIFE IN VIENNA. PAYMENT OF THE
DEBTS. ASSASSINATION OF THE EMPRESS
The end of January saw the payment of the last of Mark Twain's debts.
Once more he stood free before the world--a world that sounded his
praises. The latter fact rather amused him. "Honest men must be pretty
scarce," he said, "when they make so much fuss over even a defective
specimen." When the end was in sight Clemens wrote the news to Howells
in a letter as full of sadness as of triumph.
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
HOTEL METROPOLE,
VIENNA, Jan. 22, '98.
DEAR HOWELLS,--Look at those ghastly figures. I used to write it
"Hartford, 1871." There was no Susy then--there is no Susy now. And how
much lies between--one long lovely stretch of scented fields, and
meadows, and shady woodlands, and suddenly Sahara! You speak of the
glorious days of that old time--and they were. It is my quarrel--that
traps like that are set. Susy and Winnie given us, in miserable sport,
and then taken away.
About the last time I saw you I described to you the culminating disaster
in a book I was going to write (and will yet, when the stroke is further
away)--a man's dead daughter brought to him when he had been through all
other possible misfortunes--and I said it couldn't be done as it ought to
be done except by a man who had lived it--it must be written with the
blood out of a man's heart. I couldn't know, then, how soon I was to be
made competent. I have thought of it many a time since. If you were
here I think we could cry down each other's necks, as in your dream.
For we are a pair of old derelicts drifting around, now, with some of our
passengers gone and the sunniness of the others in eclipse.
I couldn't get along without work now. I bury myself in it up to the
ears. Long hours--8 and 9 on a stretch, sometimes. And all the days,
Sundays included. It isn't all for print, by any means, for much of it
fails to suit me; 50,000 words of it in the past year. It was because of
the deadness which invaded me when Susy died. But I have made a change
lately--into dramatic work--and I find it absorbingly entertaining.
I don't know that I can write a play that will play: but no matter, I'll
write half a dozen that won't, anyway. Dear me, I didn't know there was
such fun in it. I'll write twenty that won't play. I get into immense
spirits as soon as my day is fairly started. Of course a good deal of
this friskiness comes of my being in sight of land--on the Webster & Co.
debts, I mean. (Private.) We've lived close to the bone and saved every
cent we could, and there's no undisputed claim, now, that we can't cash.
I have marked this "private" because it is for the friends who are
attending to the matter for us in New York to reveal it when they want to
and if they want to. There are only two claims which I dispute and which
I mean to look into personally before I pay them. But they are small.
Both together they amount to only $12,500. I hope you will never get the
like of the load saddled onto you that was saddled onto me 3 years ago.
And yet there is such a solid pleasure in paying the things that I reckon
maybe it is worth while to get into that kind of a hobble, after all.
Mrs. Clemens gets millions of delight out of it; and the children have
never uttered one complaint about the scrimping, from the beginning.
We all send you and all of you our love.
MARK.
Howells wrote: "I wish you could understand how unshaken you are,
you old tower, in every way; your foundations are struck so deep
that you will catch the sunshine of immortal years, and bask in the
same light as Cervantes and Shakespeare."
The Clemens apartments at the Metropole became a sort of social
clearing-house of the Viennese art and literary life, much more like
an embassy than the home of a mere literary man. Celebrities in
every walk of life, persons of social and official rank, writers for
the press, assembled there on terms hardly possible in any other
home in Vienna. Wherever Mark Twain appeared in public he was a
central figure. Now and then he read or spoke to aid some benefit,
and these were great gatherings attended by members of the royal
family. It was following one such event that the next letter was
written.
(Private)
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
HOTEL METROPOLE,
VIENNA, Feb. 3, '98.
DEAR JOE, There's that letter that I began so long ago--you see how
it is: can't get time to finish anything. I pile up lots of work,
nevertheless. There may be idle people in the world, but I'm not one of
them. I say "Private" up there because I've got an adventure to tell,
and you mustn't let a breath of it get out. First I thought I would lay
it up along with a thousand others that I've laid up for the same
purpose--to talk to you about, but--those others have vanished out of my
memory; and that must not happen with this.
The other night I lectured for a Vienna charity; and at the end of it
Livy and I were introduced to a princess who is aunt to the heir apparent
of the imperial throne--a beautiful lady, with a beautiful spirit, and
very cordial in her praises of my books and thanks to me for writing
them; and glad to meet me face to face and shake me by the hand--just the
kind of princess that adorns a fairy tale and makes it the prettiest tale
there is.
Very well, we long ago found that when you are noticed by supremacies,
the correct etiquette is to go, within a couple of days, and pay your
respects in the quite simple form of writing your name in the Visitors'
Book kept in the office of the establishment. That is the end of it, and
everything is squared up and ship-shape.
So at noon today Livy and I drove to the Archducal palace, and got by the
sentries all right, and asked the grandly-uniformed porter for the book
and said we wished to write our names in it. And he called a servant in
livery and was sending us up stairs; and said her Royal Highness was out
but would soon be in. Of course Livy said "No--no--we only want the
book;" but he was firm, and said, "You are Americans?"
"Yes."
"Then you are expected, please go up stairs."
"But indeed we are not expected--please let us have the book and--"
"Her Royal Highness will be back in a very little while--she commanded me
to tell you so--and you must wait."
Well, the soldiers were there close by--there was no use trying to
resist--so we followed the servant up; but when he tried to beguile us
into a drawing-room, Livy drew the line; she wouldn't go in. And she
wouldn't stay up there, either. She said the princess might come in at
any moment and catch us, and it would be too infernally ridiculous for
anything. So we went down stairs again--to my unspeakable regret. For
it was too darling a comedy to spoil. I was hoping and praying the
princess would come, and catch us up there, and that those other
Americans who were expected would arrive, and be taken for impostors by
the portier, and shot by the sentinels--and then it would all go into the
papers, and be cabled all over the world, and make an immense stir and be
perfectly lovely. And by that time the princess would discover that we
were not the right ones, and the Minister of War would be ordered out,
and the garrison, and they would come for us, and there would be another
prodigious time, and that would get cabled too, and--well, Joe, I was in
a state of perfect bliss. But happily, oh, so happily, that big portier
wouldn't let us out--he was sorry, but he must obey orders--we must go
back up stairs and wait. Poor Livy--I couldn't help but enjoy her
distress. She said we were in a fix, and how were we going to explain,
if the princess should arrive before the rightful Americans came? We
went up stairs again--laid off our wraps, and were conducted through one
drawing room and into another, and left alone there and the door closed
upon us.
Livy was in a state of mind! She said it was too theatrically
ridiculous; and that I would never be able to keep my mouth shut; that I
would be sure to let it out and it would get into the papers--and she
tried to make me promise--"Promise what?" I said--"to be quiet about
this? Indeed I won't--it's the best thing that ever happened; I'll tell
it, and add to it; and I wish Joe and Howells were here to make it
perfect; I can't make all the rightful blunders myself--it takes all
three of us to do justice to an opportunity like this. I would just like
to see Howells get down to his work and explain, and lie, and work his
futile and inventionless subterfuges when that princess comes raging in
here and wanting to know." But Livy could not hear fun--it was not a
time to be trying to be funny--we were in a most miserable and shameful
situation, and if--
Just then the door spread wide and our princess and 4 more, and 3 little
princes flowed in! Our princess, and her sister the Archduchess Marie
Therese (mother to the imperial Heir and to the young girl Archduchesses
present, and aunt to the 3 little princes)--and we shook hands all around
and sat down and had a most sociable good time for half an hour--and by
and by it turned out that we were the right ones, and had been sent for
by a messenger who started too late to catch us at the hotel. We were
invited for 2 o'clock, but we beat that arrangement by an hour and a
half.
Wasn't it a rattling good comedy situation? Seems a kind of pity we were
the right ones. It would have been such nuts to see the right ones come,
and get fired out, and we chatting along comfortably and nobody
suspecting us for impostors.
We send lots and lots of love.
MARK.
The reader who has followed these pages has seen how prone Mark
Twain was to fall a victim to the lure of a patent-right--how he
wasted several small fortunes on profitless contrivances, and one
large one on that insatiable demon of intricacy and despair, the
Paige type-setter. It seems incredible that, after that experience
and its attending disaster, he should have been tempted again. But
scarcely was the ink dry on the receipts from his creditors when he
was once more borne into the clouds on the prospect of millions,
perhaps even billions, to be made from a marvelous carpet-pattern
machine, the invention of Sczezepanik, an Austrian genius. That
Clemens appreciated his own tendencies is shown by the parenthetic
line with which he opens his letter on the subject to Mr. Rogers.
Certainly no man was ever a more perfect prototype of Colonel
Sellers than the creator of that lovely, irrepressible visionary.
To Mr. Rogers, in New York:
March 24, '98.
DEAR MR. ROGERS,--(I feel like Col. Sellers).
Mr. Kleinberg [agent for Sczezepanik] came according to appointment, at
8.30 last night, and brought his English-speaking Secretary. I asked
questions about the auxiliary invention (which I call "No. 2 ") and got
as good an idea of it as I could. It is a machine. It automatically
punches the holes in the jacquard cards, and does it with mathematical
accuracy. It will do for $1 what now costs $3. So it has value, but
"No. 2" is the great thing(the designing invention.) It saves $9 out of
$10 and the jacquard looms must have it.
Then I arrived at my new project, and said to him in substance, this:
"You are on the point of selling the No. 2 patents to Belgium, Italy,
etc. I suggest that you stop those negotiations and put those people off
two or three months. They are anxious now, they will not be less anxious
then--just the reverse; people always want a thing that is denied them.
"So far as I know, no great world-patent has ever yet been placed in the
grip of a single corporation. This is a good time to begin.
"We have to do a good deal of guess-work here, because we cannot get hold
of just the statistics we want. Still, we have some good statistics--and
I will use those for a test.
"You say that of the 1500 Austrian textile factories, 800 use the
jacquard. Then we will guess that of the 4,000 American factories 2,000
use the jacquard and must have our No. 2.
"You say that a middle-sized Austrian factory employs from 20 to 30
designers and pays them from 800 to 3,000 odd florins a year--(a florin
is 2 francs). Let us call the average wage 1500 florins ($600).
"Let us apply these figures (the low wages too) to the 2,000 American
factories--with this difference, to guard against over-guessing; that
instead of allowing for 20 to 30 designers to a middle-sized factory, we
allow only an average of 10 to each of the 2,000 factories--a total of
20,000 designers. Wages at $600, a total of $12,000,000. Let us
consider that No. 2 will reduce this expense to $2,000,000 a year. The
saving is $5,000,000 per each of the $200,000,000 of capital employed in
the jacquard business over there.
"Let us consider that in the countries covered by this patent, an
aggregate of $1,500,000,000 of capital is employed in factories requiring
No. 2.
"The saving (as above) is $75,000,000 a year. The Company holding in its
grip all these patents would collar $50,000,000 of that, as its share.
Possibly more.
"Competition would be at an end in the Jacquard business, on this planet.
Price-cutting would end. Fluctuations in values would cease. The
business would be the safest and surest in the world; commercial panics
could not seriously affect it; its stock would be as choice an investment
as Government bonds. When the patents died the Company would be so
powerful that it could still keep the whole business in its hands. Would
you like to grant me the privilege of placing the whole jacquard business
of the world in the grip of a single Company? And don't you think that
the business would grow-grow like a weed?"
"Ach, America--it is the country of the big! Let me get my breath--then
we will talk."
So then we talked--talked till pretty late. Would Germany and England
join the combination? I said the Company would know how to persuade
them.
Then I asked for a Supplementary Option, to cover the world, and we
parted.
I am taking all precautions to keep my name out of print in connection
with this matter. And we will now keep the invention itself out of print
as well as we can. Descriptions of it have been granted to the "Dry
Goods Economist" (New York) and to a syndicate of American papers. I
have asked Mr. Kleinberg to suppress these, and he feels pretty sure he
can do it.
With love,
S. L. C.
If this splendid enthusiasm had not cooled by the time a reply came
from Mr. Rogers, it must have received a sudden chill from the
letter which he inclosed--the brief and concise report from a
carpet-machine expert, who said: "I do not feel that it would be of
any value to us in our mills, and the number of jacquard looms in
America is so limited that I am of the opinion that there is no
field for a company to develop the invention here. A cursory
examination of the pamphlet leads me to place no very high value
upon the invention, from a practical standpoint."
With the receipt of this letter carpet-pattern projects would seem
to have suddenly ceased to be a factor in Mark Twain's calculations.
Such a letter in the early days of the type-machine would have saved
him a great sum in money and years of disappointment. But perhaps
he would not have heeded it then.
The year 1898 brought the Spanish-American War. Clemens was
constitutionally against all wars, but writing to Twichell, whose
son had enlisted, we gather that this one was an exception.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
KALTENLEUTGEBEN, NEAR VIENNA,
June 17, '98.
DEAR JOE,--You are living your war-days over again in Dave, and it must
be a strong pleasure, mixed with a sauce of apprehension--enough to make
it just schmeck, as the Germans say. Dave will come out with two or
three stars on his shoulder-straps if the war holds, and then we shall
all be glad it happened.
We started with Bull Run, before. Dewey and Hobson have introduced an
improvement on the game this time.
I have never enjoyed a war-even in written history--as I am enjoying this
one. For this is the worthiest one that was ever fought, so far as my
knowledge goes. It is a worthy thing to fight for one's freedom; it is
another sight finer to fight for another man's. And I think this is the
first time it has been done.
Oh, never mind Charley Warner, he would interrupt the raising of Lazarus.
He would say, the will has been probated, the property distributed, it
will be a world of trouble to settle the rows--better leave well enough
alone; don't ever disturb anything, where it's going to break the soft
smooth flow of things and wobble our tranquillity.
Company! (Sh! it happens every day--and we came out here to be quiet.)
Love to you all.
MARK.
They were spending the summer at Kaltenleutgeben, a pleasant village
near Vienna, but apparently not entirely quiet. Many friends came
out from Vienna, including a number of visiting Americans. Clemens,
however, appears to have had considerable time for writing, as we
gather from the next to Howells.
To W. D. Howells, in America:
KALTENLEUTGEBEN, BEI WIEN,
Aug. 16, '98.
DEAR HOWELLS,--Your letter came yesterday. It then occurred to me that I
might have known (per mental telegraph) that it was due; for a couple of
weeks ago when the Weekly came containing that handsome reference to me I
was powerfully moved to write you; and my letter went on writing itself
while I was at work at my other literature during the day. But next day
my other literature was still urgent--and so on and so on; so my letter
didn't get put into ink at all. But I see now, that you were writing,
about that time, therefore a part of my stir could have come across the
Atlantic per mental telegraph. In 1876 or '75 I wrote 40,000 words of a
story called "Simon Wheeler" wherein the nub was the preventing of an
execution through testimony furnished by mental telegraph from the other
side of the globe. I had a lot of people scattered about the globe who
carried in their pockets something like the old mesmerizer-button, made
of different metals, and when they wanted to call up each other and have
a talk, they "pressed the button" or did something, I don't remember
what, and communication was at once opened. I didn't finish the story,
though I re-began it in several new ways, and spent altogether 70,000
words on it, then gave it up and threw it aside.
This much as preliminary to this remark: some day people will be able to
call each other up from any part of the world and talk by mental
telegraph--and not merely by impression, the impression will be
articulated into words. It could be a terrible thing, but it won't be,
because in the upper civilizations everything like sentimentality (I was
going to say sentiment) will presently get materialized out of people
along with the already fading spiritualities; and so when a man is called
who doesn't wish to talk he will be like those visitors you mention: "not
chosen"--and will be frankly damned and shut off.
Speaking of the ill luck of starting a piece of literary work wrong-and
again and again; always aware that there is a way, if you could only
think it out, which would make the thing slide effortless from the pen
--the one right way, the sole form for you, the other forms being for men
whose line those forms are, or who are capabler than yourself: I've had
no end of experience in that (and maybe I am the only one--let us hope
so.) Last summer I started 16 things wrong--3 books and 13 mag.
articles--and could only make 2 little wee things, 1500 words altogether,
succeed:--only that out of piles and stacks of diligently-wrought MS.,
the labor of 6 weeks' unremitting effort. I could make all of those
things go if I would take the trouble to re-begin each one half a dozen
times on a new plan. But none of them was important enough except one:
the story I (in the wrong form) mapped out in Paris three or four years
ago and told you about in New York under seal of confidence--no other
person knows of it but Mrs. Clemens--the story to be called "Which was
the Dream?"
A week ago I examined the MS--10,000 words--and saw that the plan was a
totally impossible one-for me; but a new plan suggested itself, and
straightway the tale began to slide from the pen with ease and
confidence. I think I've struck the right one this time. I have already
put 12,000 words of it on paper and Mrs. Clemens is pretty outspokenly
satisfied with it-a hard critic to content. I feel sure that all of the
first half of the story--and I hope three-fourths--will be comedy; but by
the former plan the whole of it (except the first 3 chapters) would have
been tragedy and unendurable, almost. I think I can carry the reader a
long way before he suspects that I am laying a tragedy-trap. In the
present form I could spin 16 books out of it with comfort and joy; but I
shall deny myself and restrict it to one. (If you should see a little
short story in a magazine in the autumn called "My Platonic Sweetheart"
written 3 weeks ago) that is not this one. It may have been a
suggester, though.
I expect all these singular privacies to interest you, and you are not to
let on that they don't.
We are leaving, this afternoon, for Ischl, to use that as a base for the
baggage, and then gad around ten days among the lakes and mountains to
rest-up Mrs. Clemens, who is jaded with housekeeping. I hope I can get a
chance to work a little in spots--I can't tell. But you do it--therefore
why should you think I can't?
[Remainder missing.]
The dream story was never completed. It was the same that he had
worked on in London, and perhaps again in Switzerland. It would be
tried at other times and in other forms, but it never seemed to
accommodate itself to a central idea, so that the good writing in it
eventually went to waste. The short story mentioned, "My Platonic
Sweetheart," a charming, idyllic tale, was not published during Mark
Twain's lifetime. Two years after his death it appeared in Harper's
Magazine.
The assassination of the Empress of Austria at Geneva was the
startling event of that summer. In a letter to Twichell Clemens
presents the tragedy in a few vivid paragraphs. Later he treated it
at some length in a magazine article which, very likely because of
personal relations with members of the Austrian court, he withheld
from print. It has since been included in a volume of essays, What
Is Man, etc.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
KALTENLEUTGEBEN, Sep. 13, '98.
DEAR JOE,--You are mistaken; people don't send us the magazines. No
--Harper, Century and McClure do; an example I should like to recommend to
other publishers. And so I thank you very much for sending me Brander's
article. When you say "I like Brander Matthews; he impresses me as a man
of parts and power," I back you, right up to the hub--I feel the same
way--. And when you say he has earned your gratitude for cuffing me for
my crimes against the Leather stockings and the Vicar, I ain't making any
objection. Dern your gratitude!
His article is as sound as a nut. Brander knows literature, and loves
it; he can talk about it and keep his temper; he can state his case so
lucidly and so fairly and so forcibly that you have to agree with him,
even when you don't agree with him; and he can discover and praise such
merits as a book has, even when they are half a dozen diamonds scattered
through an acre of mud. And so he has a right to be a critic.
To detail just the opposite of the above invoice is to describe me. I
haven't any right to criticise books, and I don't do it except when I
hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden
me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I
have to stop every time I begin.
That good and unoffending lady the Empress is killed by a mad-man, and I
am living in the midst of world-history again. The Queen's jubilee last
year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by the police, and now this murder,
which will still be talked of and described and painted a thousand years
from now. To have a personal friend of the wearer of the crown burst in
at the gate in the deep dusk of the evening and say in a voice broken
with tears, "My God the Empress is murdered," and fly toward her home
before we can utter a question-why, it brings the giant event home to
you, makes you a part of it and personally interested; it is as if your
neighbor Antony should come flying and say "Caesar is butchered--the head
of the world is fallen!"
Of course there is no talk but of this. The mourning is universal and
genuine, the consternation is stupefying. The Austrian Empire is being
draped with black. Vienna will be a spectacle to see, by next Saturday,
when the funeral cortege marches. We are invited to occupy a room in the
sumptuous new hotel (the "Krantz" where we are to live during the Fall
and Winter) and view it, and we shall go.
Speaking of Mrs. Leiter, there is a noble dame in Vienna, about whom they
retail similar slanders. She said in French--she is weak in French--that
she had been spending a Sunday afternoon in a gathering of the
"demimonde." Meaning the unknown land, that mercantile land, that
mysterious half-world which underlies the aristocracy. But these
Malaproperies are always inventions--they don't happen.
Yes, I wish we could have some talks; I'm full to the eye-lids. Had a
noble good one with Parker and Dunham--land, but we were grateful for
that visit!
Yours with all our loves.
MARK.
[Inclosed with the foregoing.]
Among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must
concede high rank to the German Emperor's. He justly describes it as a
"deed unparalleled for ruthlessness," and then adds that it was "ordained
from above."
I think this verdict will not be popular "above." A man is either a free
agent or he isn't. If a man is a free agent, this prisoner is
responsible for what he has done; but if a man is not a free agent, if
the deed was ordained from above, there is no rational way of making this
prisoner even partially responsible for it, and the German court cannot
condemn him without manifestly committing a crime. Logic is logic; and
by disregarding its laws even Emperors as capable and acute as William II
can be beguiled into making charges which should not be ventured upon
except in the shelter of plenty of lightning-rods.
MARK.
The end of the year 1898 found Mark Twain once more in easy, even
luxurious, circumstances. The hard work and good fortune which had
enabled him to pay his debts had, in the course of another year,
provided what was comparative affluence: His report to Howells is
characteristic and interesting.
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN, L. NEVER MARKT 6
Dec. 30, '98.
DEAR HOWELLS,--I begin with a date--including all the details--though I
shall be interrupted presently by a South-African acquaintance who is
passing through, and it may be many days before I catch another leisure
moment. Note how suddenly a thing can become habit, and how
indestructible the habit is, afterward! In your house in Cambridge a
hundred years ago, Mrs. Howells said to me, "Here is a bunch of your
letters, and the dates are of no value, because you don't put any in
--the years, anyway." That remark diseased me with a habit which has cost
me worlds of time and torture and ink, and millions of vain efforts and
buckets of tears to break it, and here it is yet--I could easier get rid
of a virtue.....
I hope it will interest you (for I have no one else who would much care
to know it) that here lately the dread of leaving the children in
difficult circumstances has died down and disappeared and I am now having
peace from that long, long nightmare, and can sleep as well as anyone.
Every little while, for these three years, now, Mrs. Clemens has come
with pencil and paper and figured up the condition of things (she keeps
the accounts and the bank-book) and has proven to me that the clouds were
lifting, and so has hoisted my spirits temporarily and kept me going till
another figuring-up was necessary. Last night she figured up for her own
satisfaction, not mine, and found that we own a house and furniture in
Hartford; that my English and American copyrights pay an income which
represents a value of $200,000; and that we have $107,000 cash in the
bank. I have been out and bought a box of 6-cent cigars; I was smoking
4 1/2 centers before.
At the house of an English friend, on Christmas Eve, we saw the
Mouse-Trap played and well played. I thought the house would kill itself
with laughter. By George they played with life! and it was most
devastatingly funny. And it was well they did, for they put us Clemenses
in the front seat, and if they played it poorly I would have assaulted
them. The head young man and girl were Americans, the other parts were
taken by English, Irish and Scotch girls. Then there was a
nigger-minstrel show, of the genuine old sort, and I enjoyed that, too,
for the nigger-show was always a passion of mine. This one was created
and managed by a Quaker doctor from Philada., (23 years old) and he was
the middle man. There were 9 others--5 Americans from 5 States and a
Scotchman, 2 Englishmen and an Irishman--all post-graduate-medical young
fellows, of course--or, it could be music; but it would be bound to be
one or the other.
It's quite true--I don't read you "as much as I ought," nor anywhere near
half as much as I want to; still I read you all I get a chance to.
I saved up your last story to read when the numbers should be complete,
but before that time arrived some other admirer of yours carried off the
papers. I will watch admirers of yours when the Silver Wedding journey
begins, and that will not happen again. The last chance at a bound book
of yours was in London nearly two years ago--the last volume of your
short things, by the Harpers. I read the whole book twice through and
some of the chapters several times, and the reason that that was as far
as I got with it was that I lent it to another admirer of yours and he is
admiring it yet. Your admirers have ways of their own; I don't know
where they get them.
Yes, our project is to go home next autumn if we find we can afford to
live in New York. We've asked a friend to inquire about flats and
expenses. But perhaps nothing will come of it. We do afford to live
in the finest hotel in Vienna, and have 4 bedrooms, a dining-room, a
drawing-room, 3 bath-rooms and 3 Vorzimmers, (and food) but we couldn't
get the half of it in New York for the same money ($600 a month).
Susy hovers about us this holiday week, and the shadows fall all about us
of
"The days when we went gipsying
A long time ago."
Death is so kind, so benignant, to whom he loves; but he goes by us
others and will not look our way. We saw the "Master of Palmyra" last
night. How Death, with the gentleness and majesty, made the human
grand-folk around him seem little and trivial and silly!
With love from all of us to all of you.
MARK.
XXXVIII
LETTERS, 1899, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. VIENNA. LONDON. A SUMMER IN
SWEDEN
The beginning of 1899 found the Clemens family still in Vienna, occupying
handsome apartments at the Hotel Krantz. Their rooms, so often thronged
with gay and distinguished people, were sometimes called the "Second
Embassy." Clemens himself was the central figure of these assemblies.
Of all the foreign visitors in the Austrian capital he was the most
notable. Everywhere he was surrounded by a crowd of listeners--his
sayings and opinions were widely quoted.
A project for world disarmament promulgated by the Czar of Russia would
naturally interest Mark Twain, and when William T. Stead, of the Review
of Reviews, cabled him for an opinion on the matter, he sent at first a
brief word and on the same day followed it with more extended comment.
The great war which has since devastated the world gives to this incident
an added interest.
To Wm. T. Stead, in London:
No. 1.
VIENNA, Jan. 9.
DEAR MR. STEAD,-The Czar is ready to disarm: I am ready to disarm.
Collect the others, it should not be much of a task now.
MARK TWAIN.
To Wm. T. Stead, in London:
No. 2.
DEAR MR. STEAD,--Peace by compulsion. That seems a better idea than the
other. Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should
not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and
history seems to show that that cannot be done. Can't we reduce the
armaments little by little--on a pro rata basis--by concert of the
powers? Can't we get four great powers to agree to reduce their strength
10 per cent a year and thrash the others into doing likewise? For, of
course, we cannot expect all of the powers to be in their right minds at
one time. It has been tried. We are not going to try to get all of them
to go into the scheme peaceably, are we? In that case I must withdraw my
influence; because, for business reasons, I must preserve the outward
signs of sanity. Four is enough if they can be securely harnessed
together. They can compel peace, and peace without compulsion would be
against nature and not operative. A sliding scale of reduction of 10 per
cent a year has a sort of plausible look, and I am willing to try that if
three other powers will join. I feel sure that the armaments are now
many times greater than necessary for the requirements of either peace or
war. Take wartime for instance. Suppose circumstances made it necessary
for us to fight another Waterloo, and that it would do what it did
before--settle a large question and bring peace. I will guess that
400,000 men were on hand at Waterloo (I have forgotten the figures).
In five hours they disabled 50,000 men. It took them that tedious, long
time because the firearms delivered only two or three shots a minute.
But we would do the work now as it was done at Omdurman, with shower
guns, raining 600 balls a minute. Four men to a gun--is that the number?
A hundred and fifty shots a minute per man. Thus a modern soldier is 149
Waterloo soldiers in one. Thus, also, we can now retain one man out of
each 150 in service, disband the others, and fight our Waterloos just as
effectively as we did eighty-five years ago. We should do the same
beneficent job with 2,800 men now that we did with 400,000 then. The
allies could take 1,400 of the men, and give Napoleon 1,400 and then whip
him.
But instead what do we see? In war-time in Germany, Russia and France,
taken together we find about 8 million men equipped for the field. Each
man represents 149 Waterloo men, in usefulness and killing capacity.
Altogether they constitute about 350 million Waterloo men, and there are
not quite that many grown males of the human race now on this planet.
Thus we have this insane fact--that whereas those three countries could
arm 18,000 men with modern weapons and make them the equals of 3 million
men of Napoleon's day, and accomplish with them all necessary war work,
they waste their money and their prosperity creating forces of their
populations in piling together 349,982,000 extra Waterloo equivalents
which they would have no sort of use for if they would only stop drinking
and sit down and cipher a little.
Perpetual peace we cannot have on any terms, I suppose; but I hope we can
gradually reduce the war strength of Europe till we get it down to where
it ought to be--20,000 men, properly armed. Then we can have all the
peace that is worth while, and when we want a war anybody can afford it.
VIENNA, January 9.
P. S.--In the article I sent the figures are wrong--"350 million" ought
to be 450 million; "349,982,000" ought to be 449,982,000, and the remark
about the sum being a little more than the present number of males on the
planet--that is wrong, of course; it represents really one and a half the
existing males.
Now and then one of Mark Twain's old comrades still reached out to
him across the years. He always welcomed such letters--they came as
from a lost land of romance, recalled always with tenderness. He
sent light, chaffing replies, but they were never without an
undercurrent of affection.
To Major "Jack" Downing, in Middleport, Ohio:
HOTEL KRANTZ, WEIN, I, NEUER MART 6,
Feb. 26, 1899.
DEAR MAJOR,--No: it was to Bixby that I was apprenticed. He was to teach
me the river for a certain specified sum. I have forgotten what it was,
but I paid it. I steered a trip for Bart Bowen, of Keokuk, on the A. T.
Lacy, and I was partner with Will Bowen on the A. B. Chambers (one trip),
and with Sam Bowen a whole summer on a small Memphis packet.
The newspaper report you sent me is incorrect. Bixby is not 67: he is
97. I am 63 myself, and I couldn't talk plain and had just begun to walk
when I apprenticed myself to Bixby who was then passing himself off for
57 and successfully too, for he always looked 60 or 70 years younger than
he really was. At that time he was piloting the Mississippi on a Potomac
commission granted him by George Washington who was a personal friend of
his before the Revolution. He has piloted every important river in
America, on that commission, he has also used it as a passport in Russia.
I have never revealed these facts before. I notice, too, that you are
deceiving the people concerning your age. The printed portrait which you
have enclosed is not a portrait of you, but a portrait of me when I was
19. I remember very well when it was common for people to mistake Bixby
for your grandson. Is it spreading, I wonder--this disposition of pilots
to renew their youth by doubtful methods? Beck Jolly and Joe Bryan--they
probably go to Sunday school now--but it will not deceive.
Yes, it is as you say. All of the procession but a fraction has passed.
It is time for us all to fall in.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN I. NEUER MARKT 6
April 2, '99.
DEAR HOWELLS,--I am waiting for the April Harper, which is about due now;
waiting, and strongly interested. You are old enough to be a weary man,
with paling interests, but you do not show it. You do your work in the
same old delicate and delicious and forceful and searching and perfect
way. I don't know how you can--but I suspect. I suspect that to you
there is still dignity in human life, and that Man is not a joke--a poor
joke--the poorest that was ever contrived. Since I wrote my Bible, (last
year)--["What Is Man."]--which Mrs. Clemens loathes, and shudders over,
and will not listen to the last half nor allow me to print any part of
it, Man is not to me the respect-worthy person he was before; and so I
have lost my pride in him, and can't write gaily nor praisefully about
him any more. And I don't intend to try. I mean to go on writing, for
that is my best amusement, but I shan't print much. (for I don't wish to
be scalped, any more than another.)
April 5. The Harper has come. I have been in Leipzig with your party,
and then went on to Karlsbad and saw Mrs. Marsh's encounter with the
swine with the toothpick and the other manners--["Their Silver Wedding
Journey."]--At this point Jean carried the magazine away.
Is it imagination, or--Anyway I seem to get furtive and fleeting glimpses
which I take to be the weariness and condolence of age; indifference to
sights and things once brisk with interest; tasteless stale stuff which
used to be champagne; the boredom of travel: the secret sigh behind the
public smile, the private What-in-hell-did-I-come-for!
But maybe that is your art. Maybe that is what you intend the reader to
detect and think he has made a Columbus-discovery. Then it is well done,
perfectly done. I wrote my last travel book--[Following the Equator.]
--in hell; but I let on, the best I could, that it was an excursion
through heaven. Some day I will read it, and if its lying cheerfulness
fools me, then I shall believe it fooled the reader. How I did loathe
that journey around the world!--except the sea-part and India.
Evening. My tail hangs low. I thought I was a financier--and I bragged
to you. I am not bragging, now. The stock which I sold at such a fine
profit early in January, has never ceased to advance, and is now worth
$60,000 more than I sold it for. I feel just as if I had been spending
$20,000 a month, and I feel reproached for this showy and unbecoming
extravagance.
Last week I was going down with the family to Budapest to lecture, and to
make a speech at a banquet. Just as I was leaving here I got a telegram
from London asking for the speech for a New York paper. I (this is
strictly private) sent it. And then I didn't make that speech, but
another of a quite different character--a speech born of something
which the introducer said. If that said speech got cabled and printed,
you needn't let on that it was never uttered.
That was a darling night, and those Hungarians were lively people. We
were there a week and had a great time. At the banquet I heard their
chief orator make a most graceful and easy and beautiful and delicious
speech--I never heard one that enchanted me more--although I did not
understand a word of it, since it was in Hungarian. But the art of it!
--it was superlative.
They are wonderful English scholars, these people; my lecture audience
--all Hungarians--understood me perfectly--to judge by the effects. The
English clergyman told me that in his congregation are 150 young English
women who earn their living teaching their language; and that there are.
others besides these.
For 60 cents a week the telephone reads the morning news to you at home;
gives you the stocks and markets at noon; gives you lessons in 3 foreign
languages during 3 hours; gives you the afternoon telegrams; and at night
the concerts and operas. Of course even the clerks and seamstresses and
bootblacks and everybody else are subscribers.
(Correction. Mrs. Clemens says it is 60 cents a month.)
I am renewing my youth. I made 4 speeches at one banquet here last
Saturday night. And I've been to a lot of football matches.
Jean has been in here examining the poll for the Immortals ("Literature,"
March 24,) in the hope, I think, that at last she should find me at the
top and you in second place; and if that is her ambition she has suffered
disappointment for the third time--and will never fare any better, I
hope, for you are where you belong, by every right. She wanted to know
who it is that does the voting, but I was not able to tell her. Nor when
the election will be completed and decided.
Next Morning. I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every
morning--well knowing that I shall find in it the usual depravities and
basenesses and hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization, and
cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of the
human race. I cannot seem to get my prayers answered, yet I do not
despair.
(Escaped from) 5 o'clock tea. ('sh!) Oh, the American girl in Europe!
Often she is creditable, but sometimes she is just shocking. This one,
a minute ago--19, fat-face, raspy voice, pert ways, the self-complacency
of God; and with it all a silly laugh (embarrassed) which kept breaking
out through her chatter all along, whereas there was no call for it, for
she said nothing that was funny. "Spose so many 've told y' how they
'njoyed y'r chapt'r on the Germ' tongue it's bringin' coals to Newcastle
Kehe! say anything 'bout it Ke-hehe! Spent m' vacation 'n Russia, 'n
saw Tolstoi; he said--" It made me shudder.
April 12. Jean has been in here with a copy of Literature, complaining
that I am again behind you in the election of the 10 consecrated members;
and seems troubled about it and not quite able to understand it. But I
have explained to her that you are right there on the ground, inside the
pool-booth, keeping game--and that that makes a large difference in these
things.
13th. I have been to the Knustausstellung with Mrs. Clemens. The office
of art seems to be to grovel in the dirt before Emperors and this and
that and the other damned breed of priests.
Yrs ever
MARK.
Howells and Clemens were corresponding regularly again, though not
with the frequency of former years. Perhaps neither of them was
bubbling over with things to say; perhaps it was becoming yearly
less attractive to pick up a pen and write, and then, of course,
there was always the discouragement of distance. Once Howells
wrote: "I know this will find you in Austria before I can well turn
round, but I must make believe you are in Kennebunkport before I can
begin it." And in another letter: "It ought to be as pleasant to
sit down and write to you as to sit down and talk to you, but it
isn't..... The only reason why I write is that I want another
letter from you, and because I have a whole afternoon for the job.
I have the whole of every afternoon, for I cannot work later than
lunch. I am fagged by that time, and Sunday is the only day that
brings unbearable leisure. I hope you will be in New York another
winter; then I shall know what to do with these foretastes of
eternity."
Clemens usually wrote at considerable length, for he had a good deal
to report of his life in the Austrian capital, now drawing to a
close.
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
May 12, 1899.
DEAR HOWELLS,--7.15 p. m. Tea (for Mr. and Mrs. Tower, who are leaving
for Russia) just over; nice people and rather creditable to the human
race: Mr. and Mrs. Tower; the new Minister and his wife; the Secretary of
Legation; the Naval (and Military) Attach; several English ladies; an
Irish lady; a Scotch lady; a particularly nice young Austrian baron who
wasn't invited but came and went supposing it was the usual thing and
wondered at the unusually large gathering; two other Austrians and
several Americans who were also in his fix; the old Baronin Langeman,
the only Austrian invited; the rest were Americans. It made just a
comfortable crowd in our parlor, with an overflow into Clara's through
the folding doors. I don't enjoy teas, and am daily spared them by Mrs.
Clemens, but this was a pleasant one. I had only one accident. The old
Baronin Langeman is a person I have a strong fondness for, for we
violently disagree on some subjects and as violently agree on others
--for instance, she is temperance and I am not: she has religious beliefs
and feelings and I have none; (she's a Methodist!) she is a democrat and
so am I; she is woman's rights and so am I; she is laborers' rights and
approves trades unions and strikes, and that is me. And so on. After
she was gone an English lady whom I greatly like, began to talk sharply
against her for contributing money, time, labor, and public expression of
favor to a strike that is on (for an 11-hour day) in the silk factories
of Bohemia--and she caught me unprepared and betrayed me into over-warm
argument. I am sorry: for she didn't know anything about the subject,
and I did; and one should be gentle with the ignorant, for they are the
chosen of God.
(The new Minister is a good man, but out of place. The Sec. of Legation
is a good man, but out of place. The Attache is a good man, but out of
place. Our government for displacement beats the new White Star ship;
and her possible is 17,200 tons.)
May 13, 4 p. m. A beautiful English girl and her handsome English
husband came up and spent the evening, and she certainly is a bird.
English parents--she was born and reared in Roumania and couldn't talk
English till she was 8 or 10. She came up clothed like the sunset, and
was a delight to look at. (Roumanian costume.).....
Twenty-four young people have gone out to the Semmering to-day (and
to-morrow) and Mrs. Clemens and an English lady and old Leschetitzky and
his wife have gone to chaperon them. They gave me a chance to go, but
there are no snow mountains that I want to look at. Three hours out,
three hours back, and sit up all night watching the young people dance;
yelling conversationally and being yelled at, conversationally, by new
acquaintances, through the deafening music, about how I like Vienna, and
if it's my first visit, and how long we expect to stay, and did I see the
foot-washing, and am I writing a book about Vienna, and so on. The terms
seemed too severe. Snow mountains are too dear at the price ....
For several years I have been intending to stop writing for print as
soon as I could afford it. At last I can afford it, and have put the
pot-boiler pen away. What I have been wanting is a chance to write a
book without reserves--a book which should take account of no one's
feelings, and no one's prejudices, opinions, beliefs, hopes, illusions,
delusions; a book which should say my say, right out of my heart, in the
plainest language and without a limitation of any sort. I judged that
that would be an unimaginable luxury, heaven on earth.
It is under way, now, and it is a luxury! an intellectual drunk: Twice I
didn't start it right; and got pretty far in, both times, before I found
it out. But I am sure it is started right this time. It is in
tale-form. I believe I can make it tell what I think of Man, and how he
is constructed, and what a shabby poor ridiculous thing he is, and how
mistaken he is in his estimate of his character and powers and qualities
and his place among the animals.
So far, I think I am succeeding. I let the madam into the secret day
before yesterday, and locked the doors and read to her the opening
chapters. She said--
"It is perfectly horrible--and perfectly beautiful!"
"Within the due limits of modesty, that is what I think."
I hope it will take me a year or two to write it, and that it will turn
out to be the right vessel to contain all the abuse I am planning to dump
into it.
Yours ever
MARK.
The story mentioned in the foregoing, in which Mark Twain was to
give his opinion of man, was The Mysterious Stranger. It was not
finished at the time, and its closing chapter was not found until
after his death. Six years later (1916) it was published serially
in Harper's Magazine, and in book form.
The end of May found the Clemens party in London, where they were
received and entertained with all the hospitality they had known in
earlier years. Clemens was too busy for letter-writing, but in the
midst of things he took time to report to Howells an amusing
incident of one of their entertainments.
To W. D. Howells, in America:
LONDON, July 3, '99
DEAR HOWELLS,--..... I've a lot of things to write you, but it's no use
--I can't get time for anything these days. I must break off and write a
postscript to Canon Wilberforce before I go to bed. This afternoon he
left a luncheon-party half an hour ahead of the rest, and carried off my
hat (which has Mark Twain in a big hand written in it.) When the rest of
us came out there was but one hat that would go on my head--it fitted
exactly, too. So wore it away. It had no name in it, but the Canon was
the only man who was absent. I wrote him a note at 8 p.m.; saying that
for four hours I had not been able to take anything that did not belong
to me, nor stretch a fact beyond the frontiers of truth, and my family
were getting alarmed. Could he explain my trouble? And now at 8.30 p.m.
comes a note from him to say that all the afternoon he has been
exhibiting a wonder-compelling mental vivacity and grace of expression,
etc., etc., and have I missed a hat? Our letters have crossed.
Yours ever
MARK.
News came of the death of Robert Ingersoll. Clemens had been always
one of his most ardent admirers, and a warm personal friend. To
Ingersoll's niece he sent a word of heartfelt sympathy.
To Miss Eva Farrell, in New York:
30 WELLINGTON COURT, ALBERT GATE.
DEAR MISS FARRELL,--Except my daughter's, I have not grieved for any
death as I have grieved for his. His was a great and beautiful spirit,
he was a man--all man from his crown to his foot soles. My reverence for
him was deep and genuine; I prized his affection for me and returned it
with usury.
Sincerely Yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Clemens and family decided to spend the summer in Sweden, at Sauna,
in order to avail themselves of osteopathic treatment as practised
by Heinrick Kellgren. Kellgren's method, known as the "Swedish
movements," seemed to Mark Twain a wonderful cure for all ailments,
and he heralded the discovery far and wide. He wrote to friends far
and near advising them to try Kellgren for anything they might
happen to have. Whatever its beginning, any letter was likely to
close with some mention of the new panacea.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, traveling in Europe:
SANNA, Sept. 6, '99.
DEAR JOE,--I've no business in here--I ought to be outside. I shall
never see another sunset to begin with it this side of heaven. Venice?
land, what a poor interest that is! This is the place to be. I have
seen about 60 sunsets here; and a good 40 of them were clear and away
beyond anything I had ever imagined before for dainty and exquisite and
marvellous beauty and infinite change and variety. America? Italy? The
tropics? They have no notion of what a sunset ought to be. And this
one--this unspeakable wonder! It discounts all the rest. It brings the
tears, it is so unutterably beautiful.
If I had time, I would say a word about this curative system here. The
people actually do several of the great things the Christian Scientists
pretend to do. You wish to advise with a physician about it? Certainly.
There is no objection. He knows next to something about his own trade,
but that will not embarrass him in framing a verdict about this one.
I respect your superstitions--we all have them. It would be quite
natural for the cautious Chinaman to ask his native priest to instruct
him as to the value of the new religious specialty which the Western
missionary is trying to put on the market, before investing in it. (He
would get a verdict.)
Love to you all!
Always Yours
MARK.
Howells wrote that he was going on a reading-tour-dreading it, of
course-and asking for any advice that Clemens felt qualified to
give. Naturally, Clemens gave him the latest he had in stock,
without realizing, perhaps, that he was recommending an individual
practice which few would be likely to imitate. Nevertheless, what
he says is interesting.
To W. D. Howells, in America:
SANNA, SWEDEN, Sept. 26, '99.
DEAR HOWELLS,--Get your lecture by heart--it will pay you. I learned a
trick in Vienna--by accident--which I wish I had learned years ago. I
meant to read from a Tauchnitz, because I knew I hadn't well memorized
the pieces; and I came on with the book and read a few sentences, then
remembered that the sketch needed a few words of explanatory
introduction; and so, lowering the book and now and then unconsciously
using it to gesture with, I talked the introduction, and it happened to
carry me into the sketch itself, and then I went on, pretending that I
was merely talking extraneous matter and would come to the sketch
presently. It was a beautiful success. I knew the substance of the
sketch and the telling phrases of it; and so, the throwing of the rest of
it into informal talk as I went along limbered it up and gave it the snap
and go and freshness of an impromptu. I was to read several pieces, and
I played the same game with all of them, and always the audience thought
I was being reminded of outside things and throwing them in, and was
going to hold up the book and begin on the sketch presently--and so I
always got through the sketch before they were entirely sure that it had
begun. I did the same thing in Budapest and had the same good time over
again. It's a new dodge, and the best one that was ever invented. Try
it. You'll never lose your audience--not even for a moment. Their
attention is fixed, and never wavers. And that is not the case where one
reads from book or MS., or where he stands up without a note and frankly
exposes the fact, by his confident manner and smooth phrasing, that he is
not improvising, but reciting from memory. And in the heat of telling a
thing that is memorised in substance only, one flashes out the happiest
suddenly-begotten phrases every now and then! Try it. Such a phrase has
a life and sparkle about it that twice as good a one could not exhibit if
prepared beforehand, and it "fetches" an audience in such an enthusing
and inspiring and uplifting way that that lucky phrase breeds another
one, sure.
Your September instalment--["Their Silver Wedding journey."]--was
delicious--every word of it. You haven't lost any of your splendid art.
Callers have arrived.
With love
MARK.
"Yes," wrote Howells, "if I were a great histrionic artist like you
I would get my poor essays by heart, and recite them, but being what
I am I should do the thing so lifelessly that I had better recognise
their deadness frankly and read them."
From Vienna Clemens had contributed to the Cosmopolitan, then owned
by John Brisben Walker, his first article on Christian Science. It
was a delicious bit of humor and found such enthusiastic
appreciation that Walker was moved to send an additional $200 check
in payment for it. This brought prompt acknowledgment.
To John Brisben Walker, in Irvington, N. Y.:
LONDON, Oct. 19, '99
DEAR MR. WALKER,--By gracious but you have a talent for making a man feel
proud and good! To say a compliment well is a high art--and few possess
it. You know how to do it, and when you confirm its sincerity with a
handsome cheque the limit is reached and compliment can no higher go.
I like to work for you: when you don't approve an article you say so,
recognizing that I am not a child and can stand it; and when you approve
an article I don't have to dicker with you as if I raised peanuts and you
kept a stand; I know I shall get every penny the article is worth.
You have given me very great pleasure, and I thank you for it.
Sincerely Yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
On the same day he sent word to Howells of the good luck which now
seemed to be coming his way. The Joan of Arc introduction was the
same that today appears in his collected works under the title of
Saint Joan of Arc.
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
LONDON, Oct. 19, '99.
DEAR HOWELLS,--My, it's a lucky day!--of the sort when it never rains but
it pours. I was to write an introduction to a nobler book--the English
translation of the Official Record (unabridged) of the Trials and
Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, and make a lot of footnotes. I wrote the
introduction in Sweden, and here a few days ago I tore loose from a tale
I am writing, and took the MS book and went at the grind of note-making
--a fearful job for a man not used to it. This morning brought a note
from my excellent friend Murray, a rich Englishman who edits the
translation, saying, "Never mind the notes--we'll make the translators
do them." That was comfort and joy.
The same mail brought a note from Canon Wilberforce, asking me to talk
Joan of Arc in his drawing-room to the Dukes and Earls and M. P.'s
--(which would fetch me out of my seclusion and into print, and I
couldn't have that,) and so of course I must run down to the Abbey and
explain--and lose an hour. Just then came Murray and said "Leave that to
me--I'll go and do the explaining and put the thing off 3 months; you
write a note and tell him I am coming."
(Which I did, later.) Wilberforce carried off my hat from a lunch party
last summer, and in to-day's note he said he wouldn't steal my new hat
this time. In my note I said I couldn't make the drawing-room talk, now
--Murray would explain; and added a P. S.: "You mustn't think it is
because I am afraid to trust my hat in your reach again, for I assure you
upon honor it isn't. I should bring my old one."
I had suggested to Murray a fortnight ago, that he get some big guns to
write introductory monographs for the book.
Miss X, Joan's Voices and Prophecies.
The Lord Chief Justice of England, the legal prodigies which she
performed before her judges.
Lord Roberts, her military genius.
Kipling, her patriotism.
And so on. When he came this morning he said he had captured Miss X;
that Lord Roberts and Kipling were going to take hold and see if they
could do monographs worthy of the book. He hadn't run the others to
cover yet, but was on their track. Very good news. It is a grand book,
and is entitled to the best efforts of the best people. As for me, I
took pains with my Introduction, and I admit that it is no slouch of a
performance.
Then I came down to Chatto's, and found your all too beautiful letter,
and was lifted higher than ever. Next came letters from America properly
glorifying my Christian Science article in the Cosmopolitan (and one
roundly abusing it,) and a letter from John Brisben Walker enclosing $200
additional pay for the article (he had already paid enough, but I didn't
mention that--which wasn't right of me, for this is the second time he
has done such a thing, whereas Gilder has done it only once and no one
else ever.) I make no prices with Walker and Gilder--I can trust them.
And last of all came a letter from M-. How I do wish that man was in
hell. Even-the briefest line from that idiot puts me in a rage.
But on the whole it has been a delightful day, and with M----in hell it
would have been perfect. But that will happen, and I can wait.
Ah, if I could look into the inside of people as you do, and put it on
paper, and invent things for them to do and say, and tell how they said
it, I could writs a fine and readable book now, for I've got a prime
subject. I've written 30,000 words of it and satisfied myself that the
stuff is there; so I am going to discard that MS and begin all over again
and have a good time with it.
Oh, I know how you feel! I've been in hell myself. You are there
tonight. By difference in time you are at luncheon, now--and not eating
it. Nothing is so lonesome as gadding around platforming. I have
declined 45 lectures to-day-England and Scotland. I wanted the money,
but not the torture: Good luck to you!--and repentance.
With love to all of you
MARK.
LETTERS OF 1900, MAINLY TO TWICHELL. THE BOER WAR. BOXER TROUBLES.
THE RETURN TO AMERICA
The New Year found Clemens still in London, chiefly interested in
osteopathy and characteristically glorifying the practice at the expense
of other healing methods.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
LONDON, Jan. 8, 1900.
DEAR JOE,--Mental Telepathy has scored another. Mental Telegraphy will
be greatly respected a century hence.
By the accident of writing my sister and describing to her the remarkable
cures made by Kellgren with his hands and without drugs, I brought upon
myself a quite stunning surprise; for she wrote to me that she had been
taking this very treatment in Buffalo--and that it was an American
invention.
Well, it does really turn out that Dr. Still, in the middle of Kansas, in
a village, began to experiment in 1874, only five years after Kellgren
began the same work obscurely in the village of Gotha, in Germany. Dr.
Still seems to be an honest man; therefore I am persuaded that Kellgren
moved him to his experiments by Mental Telegraphy across six hours of
longitude, without need of a wire. By the time Still began to
experiment, Kellgren had completed his development of the principles of
his system and established himself in a good practice in London--1874
--and was in good shape to convey his discovery to Kansas, Mental
Telegraphically.
Yes, I was greatly surprised to find that my mare's nest was much in
arrears: that this new science was well known in America under the name
of Osteopathy. Since then, I find that in the past 3 years it has got
itself legalized in 14 States in spite of the opposition of the
physicians; that it has established 20 Osteopathic schools and colleges;
that among its students are 75 allopathic physicians; that there is a
school in Boston and another in Philadelphia, that there are about 100
students in the parent college (Dr. Still's at Kirksville, Missouri,) and
that there are about 2,000 graduates practicing in America. Dear me,
there are not 30 in Europe. Europe is so sunk in superstitions and
prejudices that it is an almost impossible thing to get her to do
anything but scoff at a new thing--unless it come from abroad; as witness
the telegraph, dentistry, &c.
Presently the Osteopath will come over here from America and will soon
make himself a power that must be recognized and reckoned with; and then,
25 years from now, England will begin to claim the invention and tell all
about its origin, in the Cyclopedia B-----as in the case of the
telegraph, applied anaesthetics and the other benefactions which she
heaped her abuse upon when her inventors first offered them to her.
I cannot help feeling rather inordinately proud of America for the gay
and hearty way in which she takes hold of any new thing that comes along
and gives it a first rate trial. Many an ass in America, is getting a
deal of benefit out of X-Science's new exploitation of an age-old healing
principle--faith, combined with the patient's imagination--let it boom
along! I have no objection. Let them call it by what name they choose,
so long as it does helpful work among the class which is numerically
vastly the largest bulk of the human race, i.e. the fools, the idiots,
the pudd'nheads.
We do not guess, we know that 9 in 10 of the species are pudd'nheads.
We know it by various evidences; and one of them is, that for ages the
race has respected (and almost venerated) the physician's grotesque
system--the emptying of miscellaneous and harmful drugs into a person's
stomach to remove ailments which in many cases the drugs could not reach
at all; in many cases could reach and help, but only at cost of damage to
some other part of the man; and in the remainder of the cases the drug
either retarded the cure, or the disease was cured by nature in spite of
the nostrums. The doctor's insane system has not only been permitted to
continue its follies for ages, but has been protected by the State and
made a close monopoly--an infamous thing, a crime against a free-man's
proper right to choose his own assassin or his own method of defending
his body against disease and death.
And yet at the same time, with curious and senile inconsistency, the
State has allowed the man to choose his own assassin--in one detail--the
patent-medicine detail--making itself the protector of that perilous
business, collecting money out of it, and appointing no committee of
experts to examine the medicines and forbid them when extra dangerous.
Really, when a man can prove that he is not a jackass, I think he is in
the way to prove that he is no legitimate member of the race.
I have by me a list of 52 human ailments--common ones--and in this list I
count 19 which the physician's art cannot cure. But there isn't one
which Osteopathy or Kellgren cannot cure, if the patient comes early.
Fifteen years ago I had a deep reverence for the physician and the
surgeon. But 6 months of closely watching the Kellgren business has
revolutionized all that, and now I have neither reverence nor respect for
the physician's trade, and scarcely any for the surgeon's,--I am
convinced that of all quackeries, the physician's is the grotesquest and
the silliest. And they know they are shams and humbugs. They have taken
the place of those augurs who couldn't look each other in the face
without laughing.
See what a powerful hold our ancient superstitions have upon us: two
weeks ago, when Livy committed an incredible imprudence and by
consequence was promptly stricken down with a heavy triple attack
--influenza, bronchitis, and a lung affected--she recognized the gravity
of the situation, and her old superstitions rose: she thought she ought
to send for a doctor--Think of it--the last man in the world I should
want around at such a time. Of course I did not say no--not that I was
indisposed to take the responsibility, for I was not, my notion of a
dangerous responsibility being quite the other way--but because it is
unsafe to distress a sick person; I only said we knew no good doctor, and
it could not be good policy to choose at hazard; so she allowed me to
send for Kellgren. To-day she is up and around--cured. It is safe to
say that persons hit in the same way at the same time are in bed yet, and
booked to stay there a good while, and to be in a shackly condition and
afraid of their shadows for a couple of years or more to come.
It will be seen by the foregoing that Mark Twain's interest in the
Kellgren system was still an ardent one. Indeed, for a time he gave most
of his thought to it, and wrote several long appreciations, perhaps with
little idea of publication, but merely to get his enthusiasm physically
expressed. War, however, presently supplanted medicine--the Boer
troubles in South Africa and the Boxer insurrection in China. It was a
disturbing, exciting year.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
WELLINGTON COURT, KNIGHTSBRIDGE,
Jan. 25, 1900.
DEAR HOWELLS,--If you got half as much as Pond prophesied, be content and
praise God--it has not happened to another. But I am sorry he didn't go
with you; for it is marvelous to hear him yarn. He is good company,
cheery and hearty, and his mill is never idle. Your doing a lecture tour
was heroic. It was the highest order of grit, and you have a right to be
proud of yourself. No mount of applause or money or both could save it
from being a hell to a man constituted as you are. It is that even to
me, who am made of coarser stuff.
I knew the audiences would come forward and shake hands with you--that
one infallible sign of sincere approval. In all my life, wherever it
failed me I left the hall sick and ashamed, knowing what it meant.
Privately speaking, this is a sordid and criminal war, and in every way
shameful and excuseless. Every day I write (in my head) bitter magazine
articles about it, but I have to stop with that. For England must not
fall; it would mean an inundation of Russian and German political
degradations which would envelop the globe and steep it in a sort of
Middle-Age night and slavery which would last till Christ comes again.
Even wrong--and she is wrong--England must be upheld. He is an enemy of
the human race who shall speak against her now. Why was the human race
created? Or at least why wasn't something creditable created in place of
it. God had his opportunity. He could have made a reputation. But no,
He must commit this grotesque folly--a lark which must have cost him a
regret or two when He came to think it over and observe effects. For a
giddy and unbecoming caprice there has been nothing like it till this
war. I talk the war with both sides--always waiting until the other man
introduces the topic. Then I say "My head is with the Briton, but my
heart and such rags of morals as I have are with the Boer--now we will
talk, unembarrassed and without prejudice." And so we discuss, and have
no trouble.
Jan. 26.
It was my intention to make some disparaging remarks about the human
race; and so I kept this letter open for that purpose, and for the
purpose of telling my dream, wherein the Trinity were trying to guess a
conundrum, but I can do better--for I can snip out of the "Times" various
samples and side-lights which bring the race down to date, and expose it
as of yesterday. If you will notice, there is seldom a telegram in a
paper which fails to show up one or more members and beneficiaries of our
Civilization as promenading in his shirt-tail, with the rest of his
regalia in the wash.
I love to see the holy ones air their smug pieties and admire them and
smirk over them, and at the same moment frankly and publicly show their
contempt for the pieties of the Boer--confidently expecting the approval
of the country and the pulpit, and getting it.
I notice that God is on both sides in this war; thus history repeats
itself. But I am the only person who has noticed this; everybody here
thinks He is playing the game for this side, and for this side only.
With great love to you all
MARK.
One cannot help wondering what Mark Twain would have thought of
human nature had he lived to see the great World War, fought mainly
by the Christian nations who for nearly two thousand years had been
preaching peace on earth and goodwill toward men. But his opinion
of the race could hardly have been worse than it was. And nothing
that human beings could do would have surprised him.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
LONDON, Jan. 27, 1900.
DEAR JOE,--Apparently we are not proposing to set the Filipinos free and
give their islands to them; and apparently we are not proposing to hang
the priests and confiscate their property. If these things are so, the
war out there has no interest for me.
I have just been examining chapter LXX of "Following the Equator," to see
if the Boer's old military effectiveness is holding out. It reads
curiously as if it had been written about the present war.
I believe that in the next chapter my notion of the Boer was rightly
conceived. He is popularly called uncivilized, I do not know why.
Happiness, food, shelter, clothing, wholesale labor, modest and rational
ambitions, honesty, kindliness, hospitality, love of freedom and
limitless courage to fight for it, composure and fortitude in time of
disaster, patience in time of hardship and privation, absence of noise
and brag in time of victory, contentment with a humble and peaceful life
void of insane excitements--if there is a higher and better form of
civilization than this, I am not aware of it and do not know where to
look for it. I suppose we have the habit of imagining that a lot of
artistic, intellectual and other artificialities must be added, or it
isn't complete. We and the English have these latter; but as we lack the
great bulk of these others, I think the Boer civilization is the best of
the two. My idea of our civilization is that it is a shabby poor thing
and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogancies, meannesses, and
hypocrisies. As for the word, I hate the sound of it, for it conveys a
lie; and as for the thing itself, I wish it was in hell, where it
belongs.
Provided we could get something better in the place of it. But that is
not possible, perhaps. Poor as it is, it is better than real savagery,
therefore we must stand by it, extend it, and (in public) praise it.
And so we must not utter any hateful word about England in these days,
nor fail to hope that she will win in this war, for her defeat and fall
would be an irremediable disaster for the mangy human race.... Naturally,
then, I am for England; but she is profoundly in the wrong, Joe, and no
(instructed) Englishman doubts it. At least that is my belief.
Maybe I managed to make myself misunderstood, as to the Osteopathists.
I wanted to know how the men impress you. As to their Art, I know fairly
well about that, and should not value Hartford's opinion of it; nor a
physician's; nor that of another who proposed to enlighten me out of his
ignorance. Opinions based upon theory, superstition and ignorance are
not very precious.
Livy and the others are off for the country for a day or two.
Love to you all
MARK.
The next letter affords a pleasant variation. Without doubt it was
written on realizing that good nature and enthusiasm had led him
into indiscretion. This was always happening to him, and letters
like this are not infrequent, though generally less entertaining.
To Mr. Ann, in London:
WELLINGTON COURT, Feb. 23, '00.
DEAR MR. ANN,--Upon sober second thought, it won't do!--I withdraw that
letter. Not because I said anything in it which is not true, for I
didn't; but because when I allow my name to be used in forwarding a
stock-scheme I am assuming a certain degree of responsibility as toward
the investor, and I am not willing to do that. I have another objection,
a purely selfish one: trading upon my name, whether the enterprise scored
a success or a failure would damage me. I can't afford that; even the
Archbishop of Canterbury couldn't afford it, and he has more character to
spare than I have. (Ah, a happy thought! If he would sign the letter
with me that would change the whole complexion of the thing, of course.
I do not know him, yet I would sign any commercial scheme that he would
sign. As he does not know me, it follows that he would sign anything
that I would sign. This is unassailable logic--but really that is all
that can be said for it.)
No, I withdraw the letter. This virgin is pure up to date, and is going
to remain so.
Ys sincerely,
S. L. C.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
WELLINGTON COURT,
KNIGHTSBRIDGE, Mch. 4, '00.
DEAR JOE,--Henry Robinson's death is a sharp wound to me, and it goes
very deep. I had a strong affection for him, and I think he had for me.
Every Friday, three-fourths of the year for 16 years he was of the
billiard-party in our house. When we come home, how shall we have
billiard-nights again--with no Ned Bunce and no Henry Robinson?
I believe I could not endure that. We must find another use for that
room. Susy is gone, George is gone, Libby Hamersley, Ned Bunce, Henry
Robinson. The friends are passing, one by one; our house, where such
warm blood and such dear blood flowed so freely, is become a cemetery.
But not in any repellent sense. Our dead are welcome there; their life
made it beautiful, their death has hallowed it, we shall have them with
us always, and there will be no parting.
It was a moving address you made over Ward Cheney--that fortunate, youth!
Like Susy, he got out of life all that was worth the living, and got his
great reward before he had crossed the tropic frontier of dreams and
entered the Sahara of fact. The deep consciousness of Susy's good
fortune is a constant comfort to me.
London is happy-hearted at last. The British victories have swept the
clouds away and there are no uncheerful faces. For three months the
private dinner parties (we go to no public ones) have been Lodges of
Sorrow, and just a little depressing sometimes; but now they are smiley
and animated again. Joe, do you know the Irish gentleman and the Irish
lady, the Scotch gentleman and the Scotch lady? These are darlings,
every one. Night before last it was all Irish--24. One would have to
travel far to match their ease and sociability and animation and sparkle
and absence of shyness and self-consciousness.
It was American in these fine qualities. This was at Mr. Lecky's. He is
Irish, you know. Last night it was Irish again, at Lady Gregory's. Lord
Roberts is Irish; and Sir William Butler; and Kitchener, I think; and a
disproportion of the other prominent Generals are of Irish and Scotch
breed-keeping up the traditions of Wellington, and Sir Colin Campbell of
the Mutiny. You will have noticed that in S. A. as in the Mutiny, it is
usually the Irish and the Scotch that are placed in the fore-front of the
battle. An Irish friend of mine says this is because the Kelts are
idealists, and enthusiasts, with age-old heroisms to emulate and keep
bright before the world; but that the low-class Englishman is dull and
without ideals, fighting bull-doggishly while he has a leader, but losing
his head and going to pieces when his leader falls--not so with the Kelt.
Sir Wm. Butler said "the Kelt is the spear-head of the British lance."
Love to you all.
MARK.
The Henry Robinson mentioned in the foregoing letter was Henry C.
Robinson, one-time Governor of Connecticut, long a dear and intimate
friend of the Clemens household. "Lecky" was W. E. H. Lecky, the
Irish historian whose History of European Morals had been, for many
years, one of Mark Twain's favorite books:
In July the Clemenses left the small apartment at 30 Wellington
Court and established a summer household a little way out of London,
at Dollis Hill. To-day the place has been given to the public under
the name of Gladstone Park, so called for the reason that in an
earlier time Gladstone had frequently visited there. It was a
beautiful spot, a place of green grass and spreading oaks. In a
letter in which Mrs. Clemens wrote to her sister she said: "It is
simply divinely beautiful and peaceful; the great, old trees are
beyond everything. I believe nowhere in the world do you find such
trees as in England." Clemens wrote to Twichell: "From the house
you can see little but spacious stretches of hay-fields and green
turf..... Yet the massed, brick blocks of London are reachable in
three minutes on a horse. By rail we can be in the heart of London,
in Baker Street, in seventeen minutes--by a smart train in five."
Mail, however, would seem to have been less prompt.
To the Editor of the Times, in London:
SIR,--It has often been claimed that the London postal service was
swifter than that of New York, and I have always believed that the claim
was justified. But a doubt has lately sprung up in my mind. I live
eight miles from Printing House Square; the Times leaves that point at 4
o'clock in the morning, by mail, and reaches me at 5 in the afternoon,
thus making the trip in thirteen hours.
It is my conviction that in New York we should do it in eleven.
C.
DOLLIS HILL, N. W.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
DOLLIS HILL HOUSE, KILBURN, N. W.
LONDON, Aug. 12, '00.
DEAR JOE,--The Sages Prof. Fiske and Brander Matthews were out here to
tea a week ago and it was a breath of American air to see them. We
furnished them a bright day and comfortable weather--and they used it all
up, in their extravagant American way. Since then we have sat by coal
fires, evenings.
We shall sail for home sometime in October, but shall winter in New York
where we can have an osteopath of good repute to continue the work of
putting this family in proper condition.
Livy and I dined with the Chief Justice a month ago and he was as
well-conditioned as an athlete.
It is all China, now, and my sympathies are with the Chinese. They have
been villainously dealt with by the sceptred thieves of Europe, and I
hope they will drive all the foreigners out and keep them out for good.
I only wish it; of course I don't really expect it.
Why, hang it, it occurs to me that by the time we reach New York you
Twichells will be invading Europe and once more we shall miss the
connection. This is thoroughly exasperating. Aren't we ever going to
meet again?
With no end of love from all of us,
MARK.
P. S. Aug. 18.
DEAR JOE,--It is 7.30 a. m. I have been waking very early, lately. If
it occurs once more, it will be habit; then I will submit and adopt it.
This is our day of mourning. It is four years since Susy died; it is
five years and a month that I saw her alive for the last time-throwing
kisses at us from the railway platform when we started West around the
world.
Sometimes it is a century; sometimes it was yesterday.
With love
MARK.
We discover in the foregoing letter that the long European residence
was drawing to an end. More than nine years had passed since the
closing of the Hartford house--eventful years that had seen failure,
bereavement, battle with debt, and rehabilitated fortunes. All the
family were anxious to get home--Mark Twain most anxious of all.
They closed Dollis Hill House near the end of September, and put up
for a brief period at a family hotel, an amusing picture of which
follows.
To J. Y. M. MacAlister, in London:
Sep. 1900.
MY DEAR MACALISTER,--We do really start next Saturday. I meant to sail
earlier, but waited to finish some studies of what are called Family
Hotels. They are a London specialty, God has not permitted them to exist
elsewhere; they are ramshackle clubs which were dwellings at the time of
the Heptarchy. Dover and Albemarle Streets are filled with them. The
once spacious rooms are split up into coops which afford as much
discomfort as can be had anywhere out of jail for any money. All the
modern inconveniences are furnished, and some that have been obsolete for
a century. The prices are astonishingly high for what you get. The
bedrooms are hospitals for incurable furniture. I find it so in this
one. They exist upon a tradition; they represent the vanishing home-like
inn of fifty years ago, and are mistaken by foreigners for it. Some
quite respectable Englishmen still frequent them through inherited habit
and arrested development; many Americans also, through ignorance and
superstition. The rooms are as interesting as the Tower of London, but
older I think. Older and dearer. The lift was a gift of William the
Conqueror, some of the beds are prehistoric. They represent geological
periods. Mine is the oldest. It is formed in strata of Old Red
Sandstone, volcanic tufa, ignis fatuus, and bicarbonate of hornblende,
superimposed upon argillaceous shale, and contains the prints of
prehistoric man. It is in No. 149. Thousands of scientists come to see
it. They consider it holy. They want to blast out the prints but
cannot. Dynamite rebounds from it.
Finished studies and sail Saturday in Minnehaha.
Yours ever affectionately,
MARK TWAIN.
They sailed for New York October 6th, and something more than a week
later America gave them a royal welcome. The press, far and wide,
sounded Mark Twain's praises once more; dinners and receptions were
offered on every hand; editors and lecture agents clamored for him.
The family settled in the Earlington Hotel during a period of
house-hunting. They hoped eventually to return to Hartford, but
after a brief visit paid by Clemens alone to the old place he wrote:
To Sylvester Baxter, in Boston:
NEW YORK, Oct. 26, 1900.
DEAR MR. BAXTER,--It was a great pleasure to me to renew the other days
with you, and there was a pathetic pleasure in seeing Hartford and the
house again; but I realize that if we ever enter the house again to live,
our hearts will break. I am not sure that we shall ever be strong enough
to endure that strain.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Mr. and Mrs. Rogers wished to have them in their neighborhood, but
the houses there were not suitable, or were too expensive. Through
Mr. Frank Doubleday they eventually found, at 14 West Tenth Street,
a large residence handsomely furnished, and this they engaged for
the winter. "We were lucky to get this big house furnished," he
wrote MacAlister in London. "There was not another one in town
procurable that would answer us, but this one is all right--space
enough in it for several families, the rooms all old-fashioned,
great size."
The little note that follows shows that Mark Twain had not entirely
forgotten the days of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
To a Neighbor on West Tenth Street, New York:
Nov. 30.
DEAR MADAM,--I know I ought to respect my duty and perform it, but I am
weak and faithless where boys are concerned, and I can't help secretly
approving pretty bad and noisy ones, though I do object to the kind that
ring door-bells. My family try to get me to stop the boys from holding
conventions on the front steps, but I basely shirk out of it, because I
think the boys enjoy it.
My wife has been complaining to me this evening about the boys on the
front steps and under compulsion I have made some promises. But I am
very forgetful, now that I am old, and my sense of duty is getting
spongy.
Very truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1901-1906
ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
VOLUME V.
XL
LETTERS OF 1901, CHIEFLY TO TWICHELL. MARK TWAIN AS A REFORMER.
SUMMER AT SARANAC. ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY
An editorial in the Louisville Courier-Journal, early in 1901, said:
"A remarkable transformation, or rather a development, has taken
place in Mark Twain. The genial humorist of the earlier day is now
a reformer of the vigorous kind, a sort of knight errant who does
not hesitate to break a lance with either Church or State if he
thinks them interposing on that broad highway over which he believes
not a part but the whole of mankind has the privilege of passing in
the onward march of the ages."
Mark Twain had begun "breaking the lance" very soon after his return
from Europe. He did not believe that he could reform the world, but
at least he need not withhold his protest against those things which
stirred his wrath. He began by causing the arrest of a cabman who
had not only overcharged but insulted him; he continued by writing
openly against the American policy in the Philippines, the
missionary propaganda which had resulted in the Chinese uprising and
massacre, and against Tammany politics. Not all of his efforts were
in the line of reform; he had become a sort of general spokesman
which the public flocked to hear, whatever the subject. On the
occasion of a Lincoln Birthday service at Carnegie Hall he was
chosen to preside, and he was obliged to attend more dinners than
were good for his health. His letters of this period were mainly
written to his old friend Twichell, in Hartford. Howells, who lived
in New York, he saw with considerable frequency.
In the letter which follows the medicine which Twichell was to take
was Plasmon, an English proprietary remedy in which Mark Twain had
invested--a panacea for all human ills which osteopathy could not
reach.
To Rev. Joseph Twichell, in Hartford:
14 W. 10TH ST. Jan. 23, '01.
DEAR JOE,--Certainly. I used to take it in my coffee, but it settled to
the bottom in the form of mud, and I had to eat it with a spoon; so I
dropped the custom and took my 2 teaspoonfuls in cold milk after
breakfast. If we were out of milk I shoveled the dry powder into my
mouth and washed it down with water. The only essential is to get it
down, the method is not important.
No, blame it, I can't go to the Alumni dinner, Joe. It takes two days,
and I can't spare the time. Moreover I preside at the Lincoln birthday
celebration in Carnegie Hall Feb. 11 and I must not make two speeches so
close together. Think of it--two old rebels functioning there--I as
President, and Watterson as Orator of the Day! Things have changed
somewhat in these 40 years, thank God.
Look here--when you come down you must be our guest--we've got a roomy
room for you, and Livy will make trouble if you go elsewhere. Come
straight to 14 West 10th.
Jan. 24. Livy says Amen to that; also, can you give us a day or two's
notice, so the room will be sure to be vacant?
I'm going to stick close to my desk for a month, now, hoping to write a
small book.
Ys Ever
MARK
The letter which follows is a fair sample of Mark Twain's private
violence on a subject which, in public print, he could only treat
effectively by preserving his good humor. When he found it
necessary to boil over, as he did, now and then, for relief, he
always found a willing audience in Twichell. The mention of his
"Private Philosophy" refers to 'What Is Man?', privately published
in 1906; reissued by his publishers in 1916.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
14 W. 10th Jan. 29, '01.
DEAR JOE,--I'm not expecting anything but kicks for scoffing, and am
expecting a diminution of my bread and butter by it, but if Livy will let
me I will have my say. This nation is like all the others that have been
spewed upon the earth--ready to shout for any cause that will tickle its
vanity or fill its pocket. What a hell of a heaven it will be, when they
get all these hypocrites assembled there!
I can't understand it! You are a public guide and teacher, Joe, and are
under a heavy responsibility to men, young and old; if you teach your
people--as you teach me--to hide their opinions when they believe the
flag is being abused and dishonored, lest the utterance do them and a
publisher a damage, how do you answer for it to your conscience? You are
sorry for me; in the fair way of give and take, I am willing to be a
little sorry for you.
However, I seem to be going counter to my own Private Philosophy--which
Livy won't allow me to publish--because it would destroy me. But I hope
to see it in print before I die. I planned it 15 years ago, and wrote it
in '98. I've often tried to read it to Livy, but she won't have it; it
makes her melancholy. The truth always has that effect on people. Would
have, anyway, if they ever got hold of a rag of it--Which they don't.
You are supposing that I am supposing that I am moved by a Large
Patriotism, and that I am distressed because our President has blundered
up to his neck in the Philippine mess; and that I am grieved because this
great big ignorant nation, which doesn't know even the A B C facts of the
Philippine episode, is in disgrace before the sarcastic world--drop that
idea! I care nothing for the rest--I am only distressed and troubled
because I am befouled by these things. That is all. When I search
myself away down deep, I find this out. Whatever a man feels or thinks
or does, there is never any but one reason for it--and that is a selfish
one.
At great inconvenience, and expense of precious time I went to the chief
synagogue the other night and talked in the interest of a charity school
of poor Jew girls. I know--to the finest, shades--the selfish ends that
moved me; but no one else suspects. I could give you the details if I
had time. You would perceive how true they are.
I've written another article; you better hurry down and help Livy squelch
it.
She's out pottering around somewhere, poor housekeeping slave; and Clara
is in the hands of the osteopath, getting the bronchitis pulled and
hauled out of her. It was a bad attack, and a little disquieting. It
came day before yesterday, and she hasn't sat up till this afternoon.
She is getting along satisfactorily, now.
Lots of love to you all.
MARK
Mark Twain's religion had to do chiefly with humanity in its present
incarnation, and concerned itself very little with any possible
measure of reward or punishment in some supposed court of the
hereafter. Nevertheless, psychic investigation always interested
him, and he was good-naturedly willing to explore, even hoping,
perhaps, to be convinced that individuality continues beyond death.
The letter which follows indicates his customary attitude in
relation to spiritualistic research. The experiments here
mentioned, however, were not satisfactory.
To Mrs. Charles McQuiston:
DOBBS FERRY, N. Y.
March 26, 1901.
DEAR MRS. McQUISTON,--I have never had an experience which moved me to
believe the living can communicate with the dead, but my wife and I have
experimented in the matter when opportunity offered and shall continue to
do so.
I enclose a letter which came this morning--the second from the same
source. Mrs. K----is a Missourian, and lately she discovered, by
accident, that she was a remarkable hypnotiser. Her best subject is a
Missouri girl, Miss White, who is to come here soon and sustain strictly
scientific tests before professors at Columbia University. Mrs. Clemens
and I intend to be present. And we shall ask the pair to come to our
house to do whatever things they can do. Meantime, if you thought well
of it, you might write her and arrange a meeting, telling her it is by my
suggestion and that I gave you her address.
Someone has told me that Mrs. Piper is discredited. I cannot be sure,
but I think it was Mr. Myers, President of the London Psychical Research
Society--we heard of his death yesterday. He was a spiritualist. I am
afraid he was a very easily convinced man. We visited two mediums whom
he and Andrew Lang considered quite wonderful, but they were quite
transparent frauds.
Mrs. Clemens corrects me: One of those women was a fraud, the other not a
fraud, but only an innocent, well-meaning, driveling vacancy.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
In Mark Twain's Bermuda chapters entitled Idle Notes of an Idle
Excursion he tells of an old sea captain, one Hurricane Jones, who
explained biblical miracles in a practical, even if somewhat
startling, fashion. In his story of the prophets of Baal, for
instance, the old captain declared that the burning water was
nothing more nor less than petroleum. Upon reading the "notes,"
Professor Phelps of Yale wrote that the same method of explaining
miracles had been offered by Sir Thomas Browne.
Perhaps it may be added that Captain Hurricane Jones also appears in
Roughing It, as Captain Ned Blakely.
To Professor William Lyon Phelps;
YALE UNIVERSITY,
NEW YORK, April 24, 1901.
MY DEAR SIR,--I was not aware that old Sir Thomas had anticipated that
story, and I am much obliged to you for furnishing me the paragraph.
t is curious that the same idea should leave entered two heads so unlike
as the head of that wise old philosopher and that of Captain Ned Wakeman,
a splendidly uncultured old sailor, but in his own opinion a thinker by
divine right. He was an old friend of mine of many years' standing;
I made two or three voyages with him, and found him a darling in many
ways. The petroleum story was not told to me; he told it to Joe
Twichell, who ran across him by accident on a sea voyage where I think
the two were the only passengers. A delicious pair, and admirably mated,
they took to each other at once and became as thick as thieves. Joe was
passing under a fictitious name, and old Wakeman didn't suspect that he
was a parson; so he gave his profanity full swing, and he was a master of
that great art. You probably know Twichell, and will know that that is a
kind of refreshment which he is very capable of enjoying.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
For the summer Clemens and his family found a comfortable lodge in
the Adirondacks--a log cabin called "The Lair"--on Saranac Lake.
Soon after his arrival there he received an invitation to attend the
celebration of Missouri's eightieth anniversary. He sent the
following letter:
To Edward L. Dimmitt, in St. Louis:
AMONG THE ADIRONDACK LAKES, July 19, 1901.
DEAR MR. DIMMITT,--By an error in the plans, things go wrong end first in
this world, and much precious time is lost and matters of urgent
importance are fatally retarded. Invitations which a brisk young fellow
should get, and which would transport him with joy, are delayed and
impeded and obstructed until they are fifty years overdue when they reach
him.
It has happened again in this case.
When I was a boy in Missouri I was always on the lookout for invitations
but they always miscarried and went wandering through the aisles of time;
and now they are arriving when I am old and rheumatic and can't travel
and must lose my chance.
I have lost a world of delight through this matter of delaying
invitations. Fifty years ago I would have gone eagerly across the world
to help celebrate anything that might turn up. IT would have made no
difference to me what it was, so that I was there and allowed a chance to
make a noise.
The whole scheme of things is turned wrong end to. Life should begin
with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its
capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages. As things are now, when in
youth a dollar would bring a hundred pleasures, you can't have it. When
you are old, you get it and there is nothing worth buying with it then.
It's an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity
to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without
the capacity.
I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along.
I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is
no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities
proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and
inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way
and imminent as indicated above.
Yours is a great and memorable occasion, and as a son of Missouri I
should hold it a high privilege to be there and share your just pride in
the state's achievements; but I must deny myself the indulgence, while
thanking you earnestly for the prized honor you have done me in asking me
to be present.
Very truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
In the foregoing Mark Twain touches upon one of his favorite
fancies: that life should begin with old age and approach strong
manhood, golden youth, to end at last with pampered and beloved
babyhood. Possibly he contemplated writing a story with this idea
as the theme, but He seems never to have done so.
The reader who has followed these letters may remember Yung Wing,
who had charge of the Chinese educational mission in Hartford, and
how Mark Twain, with Twichell, called on General Grant in behalf of
the mission. Yung Wing, now returned to China, had conceived the
idea of making an appeal to the Government of the United States for
relief of his starving countrymen.
To J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
AMPERSAND, N. Y., July 28, '01.
DEAR JOE,--As you say, it is impracticable--in my case, certainly. For
me to assist in an appeal to that Congress of land-thieves and liars
would be to bring derision upon it; and for me to assist in an appeal for
cash to pass through the hands of those missionaries out there, of any
denomination, Catholic or Protestant, wouldn't do at all. They wouldn't
handle money which I had soiled, and I wouldn't trust them with it,
anyway. They would devote it to the relief of suffering--I know
that--but the sufferers selected would be converts. The
missionary-utterances exhibit no humane feeling toward the others, but in
place of it a spirit of hate and hostility. And it is natural; the Bible
forbids their presence there, their trade is unlawful, why shouldn't
their characters be of necessity in harmony with--but never mind, let it
go, it irritates me.
Later.... I have been reading Yung Wing's letter again. It may be that
he is over-wrought by his sympathies, but it may not be so. There may be
other reasons why the missionaries are silent about the Shensi-2-year
famine and cannibalism. It may be that there are so few Protestant
converts there that the missionaries are able to take care of them. That
they are not likely to largely concern themselves about Catholic converts
and the others, is quite natural, I think.
That crude way of appealing to this Government for help in a cause which
has no money in it, and no politics, rises before me again in all its
admirable innocence! Doesn't Yung Wing know us yet? However, he has
been absent since '96 or '97. We have gone to hell since then. Kossuth
couldn't raise 30 cents in Congress, now, if he were back with his moving
Magyar-Tale.
I am on the front porch (lower one--main deck) of our little bijou of a
dwelling-house. The lake-edge (Lower Saranac) is so nearly under me that
I can't see the shore, but only the water, small-pored with
rain-splashes--for there is a heavy down-pour. It is charmingly like
sitting snuggled up on a ship's deck with the stretching sea all around
--but very much more satisfactory, for at sea a rain-storm is depressing,
while here of course the effect engendered is just a deep sense of
comfort and contentment. The heavy forest shuts us solidly in on three
sides there are no neighbors. There are beautiful little tan-colored
impudent squirrels about. They take tea, 5 p. m., (not invited) at the
table in the woods where Jean does my typewriting, and one of them has
been brave enough to sit upon Jean's knee with his tail curved over his
back and munch his food. They come to dinner, 7 p. m., on the front
porch (not invited). They all have the one name--Blennerhasset, from
Burr's friend--and none of them answers to it except when hungry.
We have been here since June 21st. For a little while we had some warm
days--according to the family's estimate; I was hardly discommoded
myself. Otherwise the weather has been of the sort you are familiar with
in these regions: cool days and cool nights. We have heard of the hot
wave every Wednesday, per the weekly paper--we allow no dailies to
intrude. Last week through visitors also--the only ones we have had
--Dr. Root and John Howells.
We have the daily lake-swim; and all the tribe, servants included (but
not I) do a good deal of boating; sometimes with the guide, sometimes
without him--Jean and Clara are competent with the oars. If we live
another year, I hope we shall spend its summer in this house.
We have taken the Appleton country seat, overlooking the Hudson, at
Riverdale, 25 minutes from the Grand Central Station, for a year,
beginning Oct. 1, with option for another year. We are obliged to be
close to New York for a year or two.
Aug. 3rd. I go yachting a fortnight up north in a 20-knot boat 225 feet
long, with the owner, (Mr. Rogers), Tom Reid, Dr. Rice, Col. A. G. Paine
and one or two others. Judge Howland would go, but can't get away from
engagements; Professor Sloane would go, but is in the grip of an illness.
Come--will you go? If you can manage it, drop a post-card to me c/o H.H.
Rogers, 26 Broadway. I shall be in New York a couple of days before we
sail--July 31 or Aug. 1, perhaps the latter,--and I think I shall stop at
the Hotel Grosvenor, cor. 10th St and 5th ave.
We all send you and the Harmonies lots and gobs of love.
MARK
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
AMPERSAND, N. Y., Aug. 28.
DEAR JOE,--Just a word, to scoff at you, with your extravagant suggestion
that I read the biography of Phillips Brooks--the very dullest book that
has been printed for a century. Joe, ten pages of Mrs. Cheney's masterly
biography of her fathers--no, five pages of it--contain more meat, more
sense, more literature, more brilliancy, than that whole basketful of
drowsy rubbish put together. Why, in that dead atmosphere even Brooks
himself is dull--he wearied me; oh how he wearied me!
We had a noble good time in the Yacht, and caught a Chinese missionary
and drowned him.
Love from us all to you all.
MARK.
The assassination of President McKinley occurred September 6, 1901.
Such an event would naturally stir Mark Twain to comment on human
nature in general. His letter to Twichell is as individual as it is
sound in philosophy. At what period of his own life, or under what
circumstances, he made the long journey with tragic intent there is
no means of knowing now. There is no other mention of it elsewhere
in the records that survive him.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
AMPERSAND, Tuesday, (Sept. 10, 1901)
DEAR JOE,--It is another off day, but tomorrow I shall resume work to a
certainty, and bid a long farewell to letter-scribbling.
The news of the President looks decidedly hopeful, and we are all glad,
and the household faces are much improved, as to cheerfulness. Oh, the
talk in the newspapers! Evidently the Human Race is the same old Human
Race. And how unjust, and unreflectingly discriminating, the talkers
are. Under the unsettling effects of powerful emotion the talkers are
saying wild things, crazy things--they are out of themselves, and do not
know it; they are temporarily insane, yet with one voice they declare
the assassin sane--a man who has been entertaining fiery and reason
--debauching maggots in his head for weeks and months. Why, no one is
sane, straight along, year in and year out, and we all know it. Our
insanities are of varying sorts, and express themselves in varying forms
--fortunately harmless forms as a rule--but in whatever form they occur
an immense upheaval of feeling can at any time topple us distinctly over
the sanity-line for a little while; and then if our form happens to be of
the murderous kind we must look out--and so must the spectator.
This ass with the unpronounceable name was probably more insane than
usual this week or two back, and may get back upon his bearings by and
by, but he was over the sanity-border when he shot the President. It is
possible that it has taken him the whole interval since the murder of the
King of Italy to get insane enough to attempt the President's life.
Without a doubt some thousands of men have been meditating the same act
in the same interval, but new and strong interests have intervened and
diverted their over-excited minds long enough to give them a chance to
settle, and tranquilize, and get back upon a healthy level again. Every
extraordinary occurrence unsettles the heads of hundreds of thousands of
men for a few moments or hours or days. If there had been ten kings
around when Humbert fell they would have been in great peril for a day or
more--and from men in whose presence they would have been quite safe
after the excess of their excitement had had an interval in which to cool
down. I bought a revolver once and travelled twelve hundred miles to
kill a man. He was away. He was gone a day. With nothing else to do,
I had to stop and think--and did. Within an hour--within half of it
--I was ashamed of myself--and felt unspeakably ridiculous. I do not
know what to call it if I was not insane. During a whole week my head
was in a turmoil night and day fierce enough and exhausting enough to
upset a stronger reason than mine.
All over the world, every day, there are some millions of men in that
condition temporarily. And in that time there is always a moment
--perhaps only a single one when they would do murder if their man was at
hand. If the opportunity comes a shade too late, the chances are that it
has come permanently too late. Opportunity seldom comes exactly at the
supreme moment. This saves a million lives a day in the world--for sure.
No Ruler is ever slain but the tremendous details of it are ravenously
devoured by a hundred thousand men whose minds dwell, unaware, near the
temporary-insanity frontier--and over they go, now! There is a day--two
days--three--during which no Ruler would be safe from perhaps the half of
them; and there is a single moment wherein he would not be safe from any
of them, no doubt.
It may take this present shooting-case six months to breed another
ruler-tragedy, but it will breed it. There is at least one mind
somewhere which will brood, and wear, and decay itself to the
killing-point and produce that tragedy.
Every negro burned at the stake unsettles the excitable brain of another
one--I mean the inflaming details of his crime, and the lurid
theatricality of his exit do it--and the duplicate crime follows; and
that begets a repetition, and that one another one and so on. Every
lynching-account unsettles the brains of another set of excitable white
men, and lights another pyre--115 lynchings last year, 102 inside of 8
months this year; in ten years this will be habit, on these terms.
Yes, the wild talk you see in the papers! And from men who are sane when
not upset by overwhelming excitement. A U. S. Senator-Cullom--wants this
Buffalo criminal lynched! It would breed other lynchings--of men who are
not dreaming of committing murders, now, and will commit none if Cullom
will keep quiet and not provide the exciting cause.
And a District Attorney wants a law which shall punish with death
attempts upon a President's life--this, mind you, as a deterrent.
It would have no effect--or the opposite one. The lunatic's mind-space
is all occupied--as mine was--with the matter in hand; there is no room
in it for reflections upon what may happen to him. That comes after the
crime.
It is the noise the attempt would make in the world that would breed the
subsequent attempts, by unsettling the rickety minds of men who envy the
criminal his vast notoriety--his obscure name tongued by stupendous Kings
and Emperors--his picture printed everywhere, the trivialest details of
his movements, what he eats, what he drinks; how he sleeps, what he says,
cabled abroad over the whole globe at cost of fifty thousand dollars a
day--and he only a lowly shoemaker yesterday!--like the assassin of the
President of France--in debt three francs to his landlady, and insulted
by her--and to-day she is proud to be able to say she knew him
"as familiarly as you know your own brother," and glad to stand till she
drops and pour out columns and pages of her grandeur and her happiness
upon the eager interviewer.
Nothing will check the lynchings and ruler-murder but absolute silence
--the absence of pow-pow about them. How are you going to manage that?
By gagging every witness and jamming him into a dungeon for life; by
abolishing all newspapers; by exterminating all newspaper men; and by
extinguishing God's most elegant invention, the Human Race. It is quite
simple, quite easy, and I hope you will take a day off and attend to it,
Joe. I blow a kiss to you, and am
Lovingly Yours,
MARK.
When the Adirondack summer ended Clemens settled for the winter in
the beautiful Appleton home at Riverdale-on-the-Hudson. It was a
place of wide-spreading grass and shade-a house of ample room. They
were established in it in time for Mark Twain to take an active
interest in the New York elections and assist a ticket for good
government to defeat Tammany Hall.
XLI
LETTERS OF 1902. RIVERDALE. YORK HARBOR. ILLNESS OF MRS. CLEMENS
The year 1902 was an eventful one for Mark Twain. In April he received a
degree of LL.D. from the University of Missouri and returned to his
native State to accept it. This was his last journey to the Mississippi
River. During the summer Mrs. Clemens's health broke down and illnesses
of one sort or another visited other members of the family. Amid so much
stress and anxiety Clemens had little time or inclination for work. He
wrote not many letters and mainly somber ones. Once, by way of
diversion, he worked out the idea of a curious club--which he formed--its
members to be young girls--girls for the most part whom he had never
seen. They were elected without their consent from among those who wrote
to him without his consent, and it is not likely that any one so chosen
declined membership. One selection from his letters to the French
member, Miss Helene Picard, of St.-Die, France, will explain the club and
present a side of Mask Twain somewhat different from that found in most
of his correspondence.
To Miss Picard, in St.-Die, France:
RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON, February 22, 1902.
DEAR MISS HELENE,--If you will let me call you so, considering that my
head is white and that I have grownup daughters. Your beautiful letter
has given me such deep pleasure! I will make bold to claim you for a
friend and lock you up with the rest of my riches; for I am a miser who
counts his spoil every day and hoards it secretly and adds to it when he
can, and is grateful to see it grow.
Some of that gold comes, like yourself, in a sealed package, and I can't
see it and may never have the happiness; but I know its value without
that, and by what sum it increases my wealth.
I have a Club, a private Club, which is all my own. I appoint the
Members myself, and they can't help themselves, because I don't allow
them to vote on their own appointment and I don't allow them to resign!
They are all friends whom I have never seen (save one), but who have
written friendly letters to me.
By the laws of my Club there can be only one Member in each country, and
there can be no male Member but myself. Some day I may admit males, but
I don't know--they are capricious and inharmonious, and their ways
provoke me a good deal. It is a matter which the Club shall decide.
I have made four appointments in the past three or four months: You as
Member for France, a young Highland girl as Member for Scotland, a
Mohammedan girl as Member for Bengal, and a dear and bright young niece
of mine as Member for the United States--for I do not represent a country
myself, but am merely Member at Large for the Human Race.
You must not try to resign, for the laws of the Club do not allow that.
You must console yourself by remembering that you are in the best of
company; that nobody knows of your membership except myself--that no
Member knows another's name, but only her country; that no taxes are
levied and no meetings held (but how dearly I should like to attend
one!).
One of my Members is a Princess of a royal house, another is the daughter
of a village book-seller on the continent of Europe. For the only
qualification for Membership is intellect and the spirit of good will;
other distinctions, hereditary or acquired, do not count.
May I send you the Constitution and Laws of the Club? I shall be so
pleased if I may. It is a document which one of my daughters typewrites
for me when I need one for a new Member, and she would give her eyebrows
to know what it is all about, but I strangle her curiosity by saying:
"There are much cheaper typewriters than you are, my dear, and if you try
to pry into the sacred mysteries of this Club one of your prosperities
will perish sure."
My favorite? It is "Joan of Arc." My next is "Huckleberry Finn," but
the family's next is "The Prince and the Pauper." (Yes, you are right
--I am a moralist in disguise; it gets me into heaps of trouble when I
go thrashing around in political questions.)
I wish you every good fortune and happiness and I thank you so much for
your letter.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Early in the year Clemens paid a visit to Twichell in Hartford, and
after one of their regular arguments on theology and the moral
accountability of the human race, arguments that had been going on
between them for more than thirty years--Twichell lent his visitor
Freedom of the Will, by Jonathan Edwards, to read on the way home.
The next letter was the result.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON.
Feb. '02.
DEAR JOE,--"After compliments."--[Meaning "What a good time you gave me;
what a happiness it was to be under your roof again; etc., etc." See
opening sentence of all translations of letters passing between Lord
Roberts and Indian princes and rulers.]--From Bridgeport to New York;
thence to home; and continuously until near midnight I wallowed and
reeked with Jonathan in his insane debauch; rose immediately refreshed
and fine at 10 this morning, but with a strange and haunting sense of
having been on a three days' tear with a drunken lunatic. It is years
since I have known these sensations. All through the book is the glaze
of a resplendent intellect gone mad--a marvelous spectacle. No, not all
through the book--the drunk does not come on till the last third, where
what I take to be Calvinism and its God begins to show up and shine red
and hideous in the glow from the fires of hell, their only right and
proper adornment. By God I was ashamed to be in such company.
Jonathan seems to hold (as against the Arminian position) that the Man
(or his Soul or his Will) never creates an impulse itself, but is moved
to action by an impulse back of it. That's sound!
Also, that of two or more things offered it, it infallibly chooses the
one which for the moment is most pleasing to ITSELF. Perfectly correct!
An immense admission for a man not otherwise sane.
Up to that point he could have written chapters III and IV of my
suppressed "Gospel." But there we seem to separate. He seems to concede
the indisputable and unshakable dominion of Motive and Necessity (call
them what he may, these are exterior forces and not under the man's
authority, guidance or even suggestion)--then he suddenly flies the logic
track and (to all seeming) makes the man and not these exterior forces
responsible to God for the man's thoughts, words and acts. It is frank
insanity.
I think that when he concedes the autocratic dominion of Motive and
Necessity he grants, a third position of mine--that a man's mind is a
mere machine--an automatic machine--which is handled entirely from the
outside, the man himself furnishing it absolutely nothing: not an ounce
of its fuel, and not so much as a bare suggestion to that exterior
engineer as to what the machine shall do, nor how it shall do it nor
when.
After that concession, it was time for him to get alarmed and shirk--for
he was pointing straight for the only rational and possible next-station
on that piece of road the irresponsibility of man to God.
And so he shirked. Shirked, and arrived at this handsome result:
Man is commanded to do so-and-so. It has been ordained from the
beginning of time that some men shan't and others can't.
These are to be blamed: let them be damned.
I enjoy the Colonel very much, and shall enjoy the rest of him with an
obscene delight.
Joe, the whole tribe shout love to you and yours!
MARK.
We have not heard of Joe Goodman since the trying days of '90 and
'91, when he was seeking to promote the fortunes of the type-setting
machine. Goodman, meantime, who had in turn been miner, printer,
publisher, and farmer; had been devoting his energies and genius to
something entirely new: he had been translating the prehistoric
Mayan inscriptions of Yucatan, and with such success that his work
was elaborately published by an association of British scientists.
In due time a copy of this publication came to Clemens, who was full
of admiration of the great achievement.
To J. T. Goodman, in California:
RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON,
June 13, '02.
DEAR JOE,--I am lost in reverence and admiration! It is now twenty-four
hours that I have been trying to cool down and contemplate with quiet
blood this extraordinary spectacle of energy, industry, perseverance,
pluck, analytical genius, penetration, this irruption of thunders and
fiery splendors from a fair and flowery mountain that nobody had supposed
was a sleeping volcano, but I seem to be as excited as ever. Yesterday
I read as much as half of the book, not understanding a word but
enchanted nevertheless--partly by the wonder of it all, the study, the
erudition, the incredible labor, the modesty, the dignity, the majestic
exclusiveness of the field and its lofty remoteness from things and
contacts sordid and mean and earthy, and partly by the grace and beauty
and limpidity of the book's unsurpassable English. Science, always great
and worshipful, goes often in hodden grey, but you have clothed her in
garments meet for her high degree.
You think you get "poor pay" for your twenty years? No, oh no. You have
lived in a paradise of the intellect whose lightest joys were beyond the
reach of the longest purse in Christendom, you have had daily and nightly
emancipation from the world's slaveries and gross interests, you have
received a bigger wage than any man in the land, you have dreamed a
splendid dream and had it come true, and to-day you could not afford to
trade fortunes with anybody--not even with another scientist, for he must
divide his spoil with his guild, whereas essentially the world you have
discovered is your own and must remain so.
It is all just magnificent, Joe! And no one is prouder or gladder than
Yours always
MARK.
At York Harbor, Maine, where they had taken a cottage for the
summer--a pretty place, with Howells not far distant, at Kittery
Point--Mrs. Clemens's health gave way. This was at a period when
telegraphic communication was far from reliable. The old-time
Western Union had fallen from grace; its "system" no longer
justified the best significance of that word. The new day of
reorganization was coming, and it was time for it. Mark Twain's
letter concerning the service at York Harbor would hardly be
warranted today, but those who remember conditions of that earlier
time will agree that it was justified then, and will appreciate its
satire.
To the President of The Western Union, in New York:
"THE PINES"
YORK HARBOR, MAINE.
DEAR SIR,--I desire to make a complaint, and I bring it to you, the head
of the company, because by experience I know better than to carry it to a
subordinate.
I have been here a month and a half, and by testimony of friends,
reinforced by personal experience I now feel qualified to claim as an
established fact that the telegraphic service here is the worst in the
world except that Boston.
These services are actually slower than was the New York and Hartford
service in the days when I last complained to you--which was fifteen or
eighteen years ago, when telegraphic time and train time between the
mentioned points was exactly the same, to-wit, three hours and a half.
Six days ago--it was that raw day which provoked so much comment--my
daughter was on her way up from New York, and at noon she telegraphed me
from New Haven asking that I meet her with a cloak at Portsmouth. Her
telegram reached me four hours and a quarter later--just 15 minutes too
late for me to catch my train and meet her.
I judge that the telegram traveled about 200 miles. It is the best
telegraphic work I have seen since I have been here, and I am mentioning
it in this place not as a complaint but as a compliment. I think a
compliment ought always to precede a complaint, where one is possible,
because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous
and gentle reception.
Still, there is a detail or two connected with this matter which ought
perhaps to be mentioned. And now, having smoothed the way with the
compliment, I will venture them. The head corpse in the York Harbor
office sent me that telegram altho (1) he knew it would reach me too late
to be of any value; (2) also, that he was going to send it to me by his
boy; (3) that the boy would not take the trolley and come the 2 miles in
12 minutes, but would walk; (4) that he would be two hours and a quarter
on the road; (5) and that he would collect 25 cents for transportation,
for a telegram which the he knew to be worthless before he started it.
From these data I infer that the Western Union owes me 75 cents; that is
to say, the amount paid for combined wire and land transportation
--a recoup provided for in the printed paragraph which heads the
telegraph-blank.
By these humane and Christian stages we now arrive at the complaint
proper. We have had a grave case of illness in the family, and a
relative was coming some six hundred miles to help in the sick-room
during the convalescing period. It was an anxious time, of course,
and I wrote and asked to be notified as to the hour of the expected
arrival of this relative in Boston or in York Harbor. Being afraid of
the telegraph--which I think ought not to be used in times of hurry and
emergency--I asked that the desired message be brought to me by some
swift method of transportation. By the milkman, if he was coming this
way. But there are always people who think they know more than you do,
especially young people; so of course the young fellow in charge of this
lady used the telegraph. And at Boston, of all places! Except York
Harbor.
The result was as usual; let me employ a statelier and exacter term, and
say, historical.
The dispatch was handed to the h. c. of the Boston office at 9 this
morning. It said, "Shall bring A. S. to you eleven forty-five this
morning." The distance traveled by the dispatch is forty or fifty miles,
I suppose, as the train-time is five minutes short of two hours, and the
trains are so slow that they can't give a W. U. telegram two hours and
twenty minutes start and overtake it.
As I have said, the dispatch was handed in at Boston at 9. The expected
visitors left Boston at 9.40, and reached my house at 12 noon, beating
the telegram 2 solid hours, and 5 minutes over.
The boy brought the telegram. It was bald-headed with age, but still
legible. The boy was prostrate with travel and exposure, but still
alive, and I went out to condole with him and get his last wishes and
send for the ambulance. He was waiting to collect transportation before
turning his passing spirit to less serious affairs. I found him
strangely intelligent, considering his condition and where he is getting
his training. I asked him at what hour the telegram was handed to the
h. c. in Boston. He answered brightly, that he didn't know.
I examined the blank, and sure enough the wary Boston h. c. had
thoughtfully concealed that statistic. I asked him at what hour it had
started from Boston. He answered up as brightly as ever, and said he
didn't know.
I examined the blank, and sure enough the Boston h. c. had left that
statistic out in the cold, too. In fact it turned out to be an official
concealment--no blank was provided for its exposure. And none required
by the law, I suppose. "It is a good one-sided idea," I remarked;
"They can take your money and ship your telegram next year if they want
to--you've no redress. The law ought to extend the privilege to all of
us."
The boy looked upon me coldly.
I asked him when the telegram reached York Harbor. He pointed to some
figures following the signature at the bottom of the blank--"12.14."
I said it was now 1.45 and asked--
"Do you mean that it reached your morgue an hour and a half ago?"
He nodded assent.
"It was at that time half an hour too late to be of any use to me, if I
wanted to go and meet my people--which was the case--for by the wording
of the message you can see that they were to arrive at the station at
11.45. Why did, your h. c. send me this useless message? Can't he read?
Is he dead?"
"It's the rules."
"No, that does not account for it. Would he have sent it if it had been
three years old, I in the meantime deceased, and he aware of it?"
The boy didn't know.
"Because, you know, a rule which required him to forward to the cemetery
to-day a dispatch due three years ago, would be as good a rule as one
which should require him to forward a telegram to me to-day which he knew
had lost all its value an hour or two before he started it. The
construction of such a rule would discredit an idiot; in fact an idiot
--I mean a common ordinary Christian idiot, you understand--would be
ashamed of it, and for the sake of his reputation wouldn't make it. What
do you think?"
He replied with much natural brilliancy that he wasn't paid for thinking.
This gave me a better opinion of the commercial intelligence pervading
his morgue than I had had before; it also softened my feelings toward
him, and also my tone, which had hitherto been tinged with bitterness.
"Let bygones be bygones," I said, gently, "we are all erring creatures,
and mainly idiots, but God made us so and it is dangerous to criticise."
Sincerely
S. L. CLEMENS.
One day there arrived from Europe a caller with a letter of
introduction from Elizabeth, Queen of Rumania, better known as
Carmen Sylva. The visitor was Madam Hartwig, formerly an American
girl, returning now, because of reduced fortunes, to find profitable
employment in her own land. Her husband, a man of high principle,
had declined to take part in an "affair of honor," as recognized by
the Continental code; hence his ruin. Elizabeth of Rumania was one
of the most loved and respected of European queens and an author of
distinction. Mark Twain had known her in Vienna. Her letter to him
and his own letter to the public (perhaps a second one, for its date
is two years later) follow herewith.
From Carmen Sylva to Mark Twain:
BUCAREST, May 9, 1902.
HONORED MASTER,--If I venture to address you on behalf of a poor lady,
who is stranded in Bucarest I hope not to be too disagreeable.
Mrs. Hartwig left America at the age of fourteen in order to learn to
sing which she has done thoroughly. Her husband had quite a brilliant
situation here till he refused to partake 'dans une afaire onereuse',
so it seems. They haven't a penny and each of them must try to find a
living. She is very nice and pleasant and her school is so good that she
most certainly can give excellent singing lessons.
I beg your pardon for being a bore to one I so deeply love and admire,
to whom I owe days and days of forgetfulness of self and troubles and the
intensest of all joys: Hero-worship! People don't always realize what a
happiness that is! God bless you for every beautiful thought you poured
into my tired heart and for every smile on a weary way!
CARMEN SYLVA.
From Mark Twain to the Public:
Nov. 16, '04.
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,--I desire to recommend Madame Hartwig to my
friends and the public as a teacher of singing and as a concert-vocalist.
She has lived for fifteen years at the court of Roumania, and she brought
with her to America an autograph letter in which her Majesty the Queen of
Roumania cordially certified her to me as being an accomplished and
gifted singer and teacher of singing, and expressed a warm hope that her
professional venture among us would meet with success; through absence in
Europe I have had no opportunity to test the validity of the Queen's
judgment in the matter, but that judgment is the utterance of an entirely
competent authority--the best that occupies a throne, and as good as any
that sits elsewhere, as the musical world well knows--and therefore back
it without hesitation, and endorse it with confidence.
I will explain that the reason her Majesty tried to do her friend a
friendly office through me instead of through someone else was, not that
I was particularly the right or best person for the office, but because I
was not a stranger. It is true that I am a stranger to some of the
monarchs--mainly through their neglect of their opportunities--but such
is not the case in the present instance. The latter fact is a high
compliment to me, and perhaps I ought to conceal it. Some people would.
MARK TWAIN.
Mrs. Clemens's improvement was scarcely perceptible. It was not
until October that they were able to remove her to Riverdale, and
then only in a specially arranged invalid-car. At the end of the
long journey she was carried to her room and did not leave it again
for many months.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
RIVERDALE, N. Y., Oct. 31, '02.
DEAR JOE,--It is ten days since Susy [Twichell] wrote that you were laid
up with a sprained shoulder, since which time we have had no news about
it. I hope that no news is good news, according to the proverb; still,
authoritative confirmation of it will be gladly received in this family,
if some of you will furnish it. Moreover, I should like to know how and
where it happened. In the pulpit, as like as not, otherwise you would
not be taking so much pains to conceal it. This is not a malicious
suggestion, and not a personally-invented one: you told me yourself,
once, that you threw artificial power and impressiveness into places in
your sermons where needed, by "banging the bible"--(your own words.)
You have reached a time of life when it is not wise to take these risks.
You would better jump around. We all have to change our methods as the
infirmities of age creep upon us. Jumping around will be impressive now,
whereas before you were gray it would have excited remark.
Poor Livy drags along drearily. It must be hard times for that turbulent
spirit. It will be a long time before she is on her feet again. It is a
most pathetic case. I wish I could transfer it to myself. Between
ripping and raging and smoking and reading, I could get a good deal of a
holiday out of it.
Clara runs the house smoothly and capably. She is discharging a
trial-cook today and hiring another.
A power of love to you all!
MARK.
Such was the state of Mrs. Clemens's health that visitors were excluded
from the sick room, and even Clemens himself was allowed to see her no
more than a few moments at a time. These brief, precious visits were the
chief interests of his long days. Occasionally he was allowed to send
her a few lines, reporting his occupations, and these she was sometimes
permitted to answer. Only one of his notes has been preserved, written
after a day, now rare, of literary effort. Its signature, the letter Y,
stands for "Youth," always her name for him.
To Mrs. Clemens:
DEAR HEART,--I've done another full day's work, and finished before 4.
I have been reading and dozing since and would have had a real sleep a
few minutes ago but for an incursion to bring me a couple of unimportant
letters. I've stuck to the bed all day and am getting back my lost
ground. Next time I will be strictly careful and make my visit very
short--just a kiss and a rush. Thank you for your dear, dear note; you
who are my own and only sweetheart.
Sleep well!
Y.
XLII
LETTERS OF 1903. TO VARIOUS PERSONS. HARD DAYS AT RIVERDALE.
LAST SUMMER AT ELMIRA. THE RETURN TO ITALY
The reader may perhaps recall that H. H. Rogers, some five or six years
earlier, had taken charge of the fortunes of Helen Keller, making it
possible for her to complete her education. Helen had now written her
first book--a wonderful book--'The Story of My Life', and it had been
successfully published. For a later generation it may be proper to
explain that the Miss Sullivan, later Mrs. Macy, mentioned in the letter
which follows, was the noble woman who had devoted her life to the
enlightenment of this blind, dumb girl--had made it possible for her to
speak and understand, and, indeed, to see with the eyes of luminous
imagination.
The case of plagiarism mentioned in this letter is not now remembered,
and does not matter, but it furnished a text for Mark Twain, whose
remarks on the subject in general are eminently worth while.
To Helen Keller, in Wrentham, Mass.:
RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON,
ST. PATRICK'S DAY, '03.
DEAR HELEN,--I must steal half a moment from my work to say how glad I am
to have your book, and how highly I value it, both for its own sake and
as a remembrances of an affectionate friendship which has subsisted
between us for nine years without a break, and without a single act of
violence that I can call to mind. I suppose there is nothing like it in
heaven; and not likely to be, until we get there and show off. I often
think of it with longing, and how they'll say, "There they come--sit
down in front!" I am practicing with a tin halo. You do the same. I was
at Henry Rogers's last night, and of course we talked of you. He is not
at all well; you will not like to hear that; but like you and me, he is
just as lovely as ever.
I am charmed with your book-enchanted. You are a wonderful creature,
the most wonderful in the world--you and your other half together
--Miss Sullivan, I mean, for it took the pair of you to make a complete
and perfect whole. How she stands out in her letters! her brilliancy,
penetration, originality, wisdom, character, and the fine literary
competencies of her pen--they are all there.
Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was
that "plagiarism" farce! As if there was much of anything in any human
utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernal, the soul--let
us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable
material of all human utterances--is plagiarism. For substantially all
ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million
outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and
satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas
there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little
discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his
temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. When
a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten centuries
and ten thousand men--but we call it his speech, and really some
exceedingly small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It
is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's battle, in some degree, and we
call it his; but there are others that contributed. It takes a thousand
men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a
photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing--and the last man
gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite--that
is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine
parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure
and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do
that.
Then why don't we unwittingly reproduce the phrasing of a story, as well
as the story itself? It can hardly happen--to the extent of fifty words
except in the case of a child: its memory-tablet is not lumbered with
impressions, and the actual language can have graving-room there, and
preserve the language a year or two, but a grown person's memory-tablet
is a palimpsest, with hardly a bare space upon which to engrave a phrase.
It must be a very rare thing that a whole page gets so sharply printed
upon a man's mind, by a single reading, that it will stay long enough to
turn up some time or other and be mistaken by him for his own. No doubt
we are constantly littering our literature with disconnected sentences
borrowed from books at some unremembered time and now imagined to be our
own, but that is about the most we can do. In 1866 I read Dr. Holmes's
poems, in the Sandwich Islands. A year and a half later I stole his
dictation, without knowing it, and used it to dedicate my "Innocents
Abroad" with. Then years afterwards I was talking with Dr. Holmes about
it. He was not an ignorant ass--no, not he: he was not a collection of
decayed human turnips, like your "Plagiarism Court;" and so when I said,
"I know now where I stole it, but whom did you steal it from," he said,
"I don't remember; I only know I stole it from somebody, because I have
never originated anything altogether myself, nor met anybody who had."
To think of those solemn donkeys breaking a little child's heart with
their ignorant rubbish about plagiarism! I couldn't sleep for
blaspheming about it last night. Why, their whole lives, their whole
histories, all their learning, all their thoughts, all their opinions
were one solid ruck of plagiarism, and they didn't know it and never
suspected it. A gang of dull and hoary pirates piously setting
themselves the task of disciplining and purifying a kitten that they
think they've caught filching a chop! Oh, dam--
But you finish it, dear, I am running short of vocabulary
today. Ever lovingly your friend,
MARK.
(Edited and modified by Clara Clemens, deputy to her mother, who for more
than 7 months has been ill in bed and unable to exercise her official
function.)
The burden of the Clemens household had fallen almost entirely upon
Clara Clemens. In addition to supervising its customary affairs,
she also shouldered the responsibility of an unusual combination of
misfortunes, for besides the critical condition of her mother, her
sister, Jean Clemens, was down with pneumonia, no word of which must
come to Mrs. Clemens. Certainly it was a difficult position. In
some account of it, which he set down later, Clemens wrote: "It was
fortunate for us all that Clara's reputation for truthfulness was so
well established in her mother's mind. It was our daily protection
from disaster. The mother never doubted Clara's word. Clara could
tell her large improbabilities without exciting any suspicion,
whereas if I tried to market even a small and simple one the case
would have been different. I was never able to get a reputation
like Clara's."
The accumulation of physical ailments in the Clemens home had
somewhat modified Mark Twain's notion of medical practice. He was
no longer radical; he had become eclectic. It is a good deal of a
concession that he makes to Twichell, after those earlier letters
from Sweden, in which osteopathy had been heralded as the anodyne
for all human ills.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
DEAR JOE,--Livy does really make a little progress these past 3 or 4
days, progress which is visible to even the untrained eye. The
physicians are doing good work with her, but my notion is, that no art of
healing is the best for all ills. I should distribute the ailments
around: surgery cases to the surgeons; lupus to the actinic-ray
specialist; nervous prostration to the Christian Scientist; most ills to
the allopath and the homeopath; (in my own particular case) rheumatism,
gout and bronchial attacks to the osteopathist.
Mr. Rogers was to sail southward this morning--and here is this weather!
I am sorry. I think it's a question if he gets away tomorrow.
Ys Ever
MARK.
It was through J. Y. M. MacAlister, to whom the next letter is
written, that Mark Twain had become associated with the Plasmon
Company, which explains the reference to "shares." He had seen much
of MacAlister during the winter at Tedworth Square, and had grown
fond of him. It is a characteristic letter, and one of interesting
fact.
To J. Y. M. MacAlister, in London:
RIVERDALE, NEW YORK.
April, 7, '03.
DEAR MACALISTER,--Yours arrived last night, and God knows I was glad to
get it, for I was afraid I had blundered into an offence in some way and
forfeited your friendship--a kind of blunder I have made so many times in
my life that I am always standing in a waiting and morbid dread of its
occurrence.
Three days ago I was in condition--during one horribly long night--to
sympathetically roast with you in your "hell of troubles." During that
night I was back again where I was in the black days when I was buried
under a mountain of debt. I called the daughters to me in private
council and paralysed them with the announcement, "Our outgo has
increased in the past 8 months until our expenses are now 125 per cent.
greater than our income."
It was a mistake. When I came down in the morning a gray and aged wreck,
and went over the figures again, I found that in some unaccountable way
(unaccountable to a business man but not to me) I had multiplied the
totals by 2. By God I dropped 75 years on the floor where I stood.
Do you know it affected me as one is affected when he wakes out of a
hideous dream and finds that it was only a dream. It was a great comfort
and satisfaction to me to call the daughters to a private meeting of the
Board again and say, "You need not worry any more; our outgo is only a
third more than our income; in a few months your mother will be out of
her bed and on her feet again--then we shall drop back to normal and be
all right."
Certainly there is a blistering and awful reality about a well-arranged
unreality. It is quite within the possibilities that two or three nights
like that night of mine could drive a man to suicide. He would refuse to
examine the figures; they would revolt him so, and he could go to his
death unaware that there was nothing serious about them. I cannot get
that night out of my head, it was so vivid, so real, so ghastly. In any
other year of these 33 the relief would have been simple: go where you
can cut your cloth to fit your income. You can't do that when your wife
can't be moved, even from one room to the next.
Clam spells the trained nurse afternoons; I am allowed to see Mrs.
Clemens 20 minutes twice a day and write her two letters a day provided I
put no news in them. No other person ever sees her except the physician
and now and then a nerve-specialist from New York. She saw there was
something the matter that morning, but she got no facts out of me. But
that is nothing--she hasn't had anything but lies for 8 months. A fact
would give her a relapse.
The doctor and a specialist met in conspiracy five days ago, and in their
belief she will by and by come out of this as good as new, substantially.
They ordered her to Italy for next winter--which seems to indicate that
by autumn she will be able to undertake the voyage. So Clara is writing
a Florence friend to take a look round among the villas for us in the
regions near that city. It seems early to do this, but Joan Bergheim
thought it would be wise.
He and his wife lunched with us here yesterday. They have been abroad in
Havana 4 months, and they sailed for England this morning.
I am enclosing an order for half of my (your) Founders shares. You are
not to refuse them this time, though you have done it twice before. They
are yours, not mine, and for your family's sake if not your own you
cannot in these cloudy days renounce this property which is so clearly
yours and theirs. You have been generous long enough; be just, now to
yourself. Mr. Rogers is off yachting for 5 or 6 weeks--I'll get them
when he returns. The head of the house joins me in warmest greetings and
remembrances to you and Mrs. MacAlister.
Ever yours,
Mark.
May 8. Great Scott! I never mailed this letter! I addressed it, put
"Registered" on it--then left it lying unsealed on the arm of my chair,
and rushed up to my bed quaking with a chill. I've never been out of the
bed since--oh, bronchitis, rheumatism, two sets of teeth aching, land,
I've had a dandy time for 4 weeks. And to-day--great guns, one of the
very worst! . . .
I'm devilish sorry, and I do apologise--for although I am not as slow as
you are about answering letters, as a rule, I see where I'm standing this
time.
Two weeks ago Jean was taken down again--this time with measles, and I
haven't been able to go to her and she hasn't been able to come to me.
But Mrs. Clemens is making nice progress, and can stand alone a moment or
two at a time.
Now I'll post this.
MARK
The two letters that follow, though written only a few days apart,
were separated in their arrival by a period of seven years. The
second letter was, in some way, mislaid and not mailed; and it was
not until after the writer of it was dead that it was found and
forwarded.
Mark Twain could never get up much enthusiasm for the writings of
Scott. His praise of Quentin Durward is about the only approval he
ever accorded to the works of the great romanticist.
To Brander Matthews, in New York:
NEW YORK CITY, May 4, '03.
DEAR BRANDER,--I haven't been out of my bed for four weeks, but--well, I
have been reading, a good deal, and it occurs to me to ask you to sit
down, some time or other when you have 8 or 9 months to spare, and jot me
down a certain few literary particulars for my help and elevation. Your
time need not be thrown away, for at your further leisure you can make
Colombian lectures out of the results and do your students a good turn.
1. Are there in Sir Walter's novels passages done in good English
--English which is neither slovenly or involved?
2. Are there passages whose English is not poor and thin and
commonplace, but is of a quality above that?
3. Are there passages which burn with real fire--not punk, fox-fire,
make believe?
4. Has he heroes and heroines who are not cads and cadesses?
5. Has he personages whose acts and talk correspond with their
characters as described by him?
6. Has he heroes and heroines whom the reader admires, admires, and
knows why?
7. Has he funny characters that are funny, and humorous passages that
are humorous?
8. Does he ever chain the reader's interest, and make him reluctant to
lay the book down?
9. Are there pages where he ceases from posing, ceases from admiring the
placid flood and flow of his own dilutions, ceases from being artificial,
and is for a time, long or short, recognizably sincere and in earnest?
10. Did he know how to write English, and didn't do it because he didn't
want to?
11. Did he use the right word only when he couldn't think of another
one, or did he run so much to wrong because he didn't know the right one
when he saw it?
13. Can you read him? and keep your respect for him? Of course a
person could in his day--an era of sentimentality and sloppy romantics
--but land! can a body do it today?
Brander, I lie here dying, slowly dying, under the blight of Sir Walter.
I have read the first volume of Rob Roy, and as far as chapter XIX of Guy
Mannering, and I can no longer hold my head up nor take my nourishment.
Lord, it's all so juvenile! so artificial, so shoddy; and such wax
figures and skeletons and spectres. Interest? Why, it is impossible to
feel an interest in these bloodless shams, these milk-and-water humbugs.
And oh, the poverty of the invention! Not poverty in inventing
situations, but poverty in furnishing reasons for them. Sir Walter
usually gives himself away when he arranges for a situation--elaborates,
and elaborates, and elaborates, till if you live to get to it you don't
believe in it when it happens.
I can't find the rest of Rob Roy, I can't stand any more Mannering--I do
not know just what to do, but I will reflect, and not quit this great
study rashly. He was great, in his day, and to his proper audience; and
so was God in Jewish times, for that matter, but why should either of
them rank high now? And do they?--honest, now, do they? Dam'd if I
believe it.
My, I wish I could see you and Leigh Hunt!
Sincerely Yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
To Brander Matthews, in New York:
RIVERDALE, May 8,'03 (Mailed June, 1910).
DEAR BRANDER,--I'm still in bed, but the days have lost their dulness
since I broke into Sir Walter and lost my temper. I finished Guy
Mannering--that curious, curious book, with its mob of squalid shadows
jabbering around a single flesh-and-blood being--Dinmont; a book crazily
put together out of the very refuse of the romance-artist's stage
properties--finished it and took up Quentin Durward, and finished that.
It was like leaving the dead to mingle with the living: it was like
withdrawing from the infant class in the College of journalism to sit
under the lectures in English literature in Columbia University.
I wonder who wrote Quentin Durward?
Yrs ever
MARK.
In 1903, preparations were going on for a great world's fair, to be
held in St. Louis, and among other features proposed was a World's
Literary Convention, with a week to be set apart in honor of Mark
Twain, and a special Mark Twain Day in it, on which the National
Association would hold grand services in honor of the distinguished
Missourian. A letter asking his consent to the plan brought the
following reply.
To T. F. Gatts, of Missouri:
NEW YORK, May 30, 1903.
DEAR MR. GATTS,--It is indeed a high compliment which you offer me in
naming an association after me and in proposing the setting apart of a
Mark Twain day at the great St. Louis fair, but such compliments are not
proper for the living; they are proper and safe for the dead only. I
value the impulse which moves you to tender me these honors. I value it
as highly as any one can, and am grateful for it, but I should stand in a
sort of terror of the honors themselves. So long as we remain alive we
are not safe from doing things which, however righteously and honorably
intended, can wreck our repute and extinguish our friendships.
I hope that no society will be named for me while I am still alive, for I
might at some time or other do something which would cause its members to
regret having done me that honor. After I shall have joined the dead I
shall follow the customs of those people and be guilty of no conduct that
can wound any friend; but until that time shall come I shall be a
doubtful quantity like the rest of our race.
Very truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The National Mark Twain Association did not surrender easily. Mr.
Gatts wrote a second letter full of urgent appeal. If Mark Twain
was tempted, we get no hint of it in his answer.
To T. F. Gatts, of Missouri:
NEW YORK, June 8, 1903.
DEAR MR. GATTS,--While I am deeply touched by the desire of my friends of
Hannibal to confer these great honors upon me, I must still forbear to
accept them. Spontaneous and unpremeditated honors, like those which
came to me at Hannibal, Columbia, St. Louis and at the village stations
all down the line, are beyond all price and are a treasure for life in
the memory, for they are a free gift out of the heart and they come
without solicitations; but I am a Missourian and so I shrink from
distinctions which have to be arranged beforehand and with my privity,
for I then became a party to my own exalting. I am humanly fond of
honors that happen but chary of those that come by canvass and intention.
With sincere thanks to you and your associates for this high compliment
which you have been minded to offer me, I am,
Very truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
We have seen in the letter to MacAlister that Mark Twain's wife had
been ordered to Italy and plans were in progress for an
establishment there. By the end of June Mrs. Clemens was able to
leave Riverdale, and she made the journey to Quarry Farm, Elmira,
where they would remain until October, the month planned for their
sailing. The house in Hartford had been sold; and a house which,
prior to Mrs. Clemens's breakdown they had bought near Tarrytown
(expecting to settle permanently on the Hudson) had been let. They
were going to Europe for another indefinite period.
At Quarry Farm Mrs. Clemens continued to improve, and Clemens, once
more able to work, occupied the study which Mrs. Crane had built for
him thirty years before, and where Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and the
Wandering Prince had been called into being.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford, Conn.:
QUARRY FARM, ELMIRA, N. Y.,
July 21, '03.
DEAR JOE,--That love-letter delighted Livy beyond any like utterance
received by her these thirty years and more. I was going to answer it
for her right away, and said so; but she reserved the privilege to
herself. I judge she is accumulating Hot Stuff--as George Ade would say.
. . .
Livy is coming along: eats well, sleeps some, is mostly very gay, not
very often depressed; spends all day on the porch, sleeps there a part of
the night, makes excursions in carriage and in wheel-chair; and, in the
matter of superintending everything and everybody, has resumed business
at the old stand.
Did you ever go house-hunting 3,000 miles away? It costs three months of
writing and telegraphing to pull off a success. We finished 3 or 4 days
ago, and took the Villa Papiniano (dam the name, I have to look at it a
minutes after writing it, and then am always in doubt) for a year by
cable. Three miles outside of Florence, under Fiesole--a darling
location, and apparently a choice house, near Fiske.
There's 7 in our gang. All women but me. It means trunks and things.
But thanks be! To-day (this is private) comes a most handsome voluntary
document with seals and escutcheons on it from the Italian Ambassador
(who is a stranger to me) commanding the Customs people to keep their
hands off the Clemens's things. Now wasn't it lovely of him? And wasn't
it lovely of me to let Livy take a pencil and edit my answer and knock a
good third of it out?
And that's a nice ship--the Irene! new--swift--13,000 tons--rooms up in
the sky, open to sun and air--and all that. I was desperately troubled
for Livy--about the down-cellar cells in the ancient "Latin."
The cubs are in Riverdale, yet; they come to us the first week in August.
With lots and lots of love to you all,
MARK.
The arrangement for the Villa Papiniano was not completed, after
all, and through a good friend, George Gregory Smith, a resident of
Florence, the Villa Quarto, an ancient home of royalty, on the hills
west of Florence, was engaged. Smith wrote that it was a very
beautiful place with a south-eastern exposure, looking out toward
Valombrosa and the Chianti Hills. It had extensive grounds and
stables, and the annual rental for it all was two thousand dollars a
year. It seemed an ideal place, in prospect, and there was great
hope that Mrs. Clemens would find her health once more in the
Italian climate which she loved.
Perhaps at this point, when Mark Twain is once more leaving America,
we may offer two letters from strangers to him--letters of
appreciation--such as he was constantly receiving from those among
the thousands to whom he had given happiness. The first is from
Samuel Merwin, one day to become a popular novelist, then in the
hour of his beginnings.
To Mark Twain, from Samuel Merwin:
PLAINFIELD, N. J.
August 4, 1903.
DEAR MR. CLEMENS,--For a good many years I have been struggling with the
temptation to write you and thank you for the work you have done; and
to-day I seem to be yielding.
During the past two years I have been reading through a group of writers
who seem to me to represent about the best we have--Sir Thomas Malory,
Spenser, Shakespeare, Boswell, Carlyle, Le Sage. In thinking over one
and then another, and then all of them together, it was plain to see why
they were great men and writers: each brought to his time some new blood,
new ideas,--turned a new current into the stream. I suppose there have
always been the careful, painstaking writers, the men who are always
taken so seriously by their fellow craftsmen. It seems to be the
unconventional man who is so rare--I mean the honestly unconventional
man, who has to express himself in his own big way because the
conventional way isn't big enough, because ne needs room and freedom.
We have a group of the more or less conventional men now--men of dignity
and literary position. But in spite of their influence and of all the
work they have done, there isn't one of them to whom one can give one's
self up without reservation, not one whose ideas seem based on the deep
foundation of all true philosophy,--except Mark Twain.
I hope this letter is not an impertinence. I have just been turning
about, with my head full of Spenser and Shakespeare and "Gil Blas,"
looking for something in our own present day literature to which I could
surrender myself as to those five gripping old writings. And nothing
could I find until I took up "Life on the Mississippi," and "Huckleberry
Finn," and, just now, the "Connecticut Yankee." It isn't the first time
I have read any of these three, and it's because I know it won't be the
last, because these books are the only ones written in my lifetime that
claim my unreserved interest and admiration and, above all, my feelings,
that I've felt I had to write this letter.
I like to think that "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" will be looked
upon, fifty or a hundred years from now, as the picture of buoyant,
dramatic, human American life. I feel, deep in my own heart, pretty sure
that they will be. They won't be looked on then as the work of a
"humorist" any more than we think of Shakespeare as a humorist now.
I don't mean by this to set up a comparison between Mark Twain and
Shakespeare: I don't feel competent to do it; and I'm not at all sure
that it could be done until Mark Twain's work shall have its fair share
of historical perspective. But Shakespeare was a humorist and so, thank
Heaven! is Mark Twain. And Shakespeare plunged deep into the deep, sad
things of life; and so, in a different way (but in a way that has more
than once brought tears to my eyes) has Mark Twain. But after all, it
isn't because of any resemblance for anything that was ever before
written that Mark Twain's books strike in so deep: it's rather because
they've brought something really new into our literature--new, yet old as
Adam and Eve and the Apple. And this achievement, the achievement of
putting something into literature that was not there before, is, I should
think, the most that any writer can ever hope to do. It is the one mark
of distinction between the "lonesome" little group of big men and the
vast herd of medium and small ones. Anyhow, this much I am sure of--to
the young man who hopes, however feebly, to accomplish a little
something, someday, as a writer, the one inspiring example of our time is
Mark Twain.
Very truly yours,
SAMUEL MERWIN.
Mark Twain once said he could live a month on a good compliment, and from
his reply, we may believe this one to belong in, that class.
To Samuel Merwin, in Plainfield, N. J.:
Aug. 16, '03.
DEAR MR. MERWIN,--What you have said has given me deep pleasure--indeed I
think no words could be said that could give me more.
Very sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The next "compliment" is from one who remains unknown, for she
failed to sign her name in full. But it is a lovely letter, and
loses nothing by the fact that the writer of it was willing to
remain in obscurity.
To Mark Twain, from Margaret M----:
PORTLAND, OREGON
Aug. 18, 1903.
MY DEAR, DEAR MARK TWAIN,--May a little girl write and tell you how
dearly she loves and admires your writings? Well, I do and I want to
tell you your ownself. Don't think me too impertinent for indeed I don't
mean to be that! I have read everything of yours that I could get and
parts that touch me I have read over and over again. They seem such dear
friends to me, so like real live human beings talking and laughing,
working and suffering too! One cannot but feel that it is your own life
and experience that you have painted. So do not wonder that you seem a
dear friend to me who has never even seen you. I often think of you as
such in my own thoughts. I wonder if you will laugh when I tell you I
have made a hero of you? For when people seem very sordid and mean and
stupid (and it seems as if everybody was) then the thought will come like
a little crumb of comfort "well, Mark Twain isn't anyway." And it does
really brighten me up.
You see I have gotten an idea that you are a great, bright spirit of
kindness and tenderness. One who can twist everybody's-even your
own-faults and absurdities into hearty laughs. Even the person mocked
must laugh! Oh, Dear! How often you have made me laugh! And yet as
often you have struck something infinite away down deep in my heart so
that I want to cry while half laughing!
So this all means that I want to thank you and to tell you. "God always
love Mark Twain!" is often my wish. I dearly love to read books, and I
never tire of reading yours; they always have a charm for me. Good-bye,
I am afraid I have not expressed what I feel. But at least I have tried.
Sincerely yours.
MARGARET M.----
Clemens and family left Elmira October the 5th for New York City.
They remained at the Hotel Grosvenor until their sailing date,
October 24th. A few days earlier, Mr. Frank Doubleday sent a volume
of Kipling's poems and de Blowitz's Memoirs for entertainment on the
ship. Mark Twain's acknowledgment follows.
To F. N. Doubleday, in New York:
THE GROSVENOR,
October 12, '03.
DEAR DOUBLEDAY,--The books came--ever so many thanks. I have been
reading "The Bell Buoy" and "The Old Men" over and over again--my custom
with Kipling's work-and saving up the rest for other leisurely and
luxurious meals. A bell-buoy is a deeply impressive fellow-being.
In these many recent trips up and down the Sound in the Kanawha
--[Mr. Rogers's yacht.]--he has talked to me nightly, sometimes in his
pathetic and melancholy way, sometimes with his strenuous and urgent
note, and I got his meaning--now I have his words! No one but Kipling
could do this strong and vivid thing. Some day I hope to hear the poem
chanted or sung--with the bell-buoy breaking in, out of the distance.
"The Old Men," delicious, isn't it? And so comically true. I haven't
arrived there yet, but I suppose I am on the way....
Yours ever,
MARK.
P. S. Your letter has arrived. It makes me proud and glad--what Kipling
says. I hope Fate will fetch him to Florence while we are there.
I would rather see him than any other man.
We've let the Tarrytown house for a year. Man, you would never have
believed a person could let a house in these times. That one's for sale,
the Hartford one is sold. When we buy again may we--may I--be damned....
I've dipped into Blowitz and find him quaintly and curiously interesting.
I think he tells the straight truth, too. I knew him a little, 23 years
ago.
The appreciative word which Kipling had sent Doubleday was: "I love
to think of the great and God-like Clemens. He is the biggest man
you have on your side of the water by a damn sight, and don't you
forget it. Cervantes was a relation of his."
XLIII
LETTERS OF 1904. TO VARIOUS PERSONS. LIFE IN VILLA QUARTO. DEATH OF
MRS. CLEMENS. THE RETURN TO AMERICA
Mrs. Clemens stood the voyage to Italy very well and, in due time, the
family were installed in the Villa Reale di Quarto, the picturesque old
Palace of Cosimo, a spacious, luxurious place, even if not entirely
cheerful or always comfortable during the changeable Tuscan winter.
Congratulated in a letter from MacAlister in being in the midst of
Florentine sunshine, he answered: "Florentine sunshine? Bless you, there
isn't any. We have heavy fogs every morning, and rain all day. This
house is not merely large, it is vast--therefore I think it must always
lack the home feeling."
Neither was their landlady, the American wife of an Italian count, all
that could be desired. From a letter to Twichell, however, we learn that
Mark Twain's work was progressing well.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
VILLA DI QUARTO,
FLORENCE, Jan. 7, '04.
DEAR JOE,--. . . I have had a handsome success, in one way, here.
I left New York under a sort of half promise to furnish to the Harper
magazines 30,000 words this year. Magazining is difficult work because
every third page represents 2 pages that you have put in the fire;
(because you are nearly sure to start wrong twice) and so when you have
finished an article and are willing to let it go to print it represents
only 10 cents a word instead of 30.
But this time I had the curious (and unprecedented) luck to start right
in each case. I turned out 37,000 words in 25 working days; and the
reason I think I started right every time is, that not only have I
approved and accepted the several articles, but the court of last resort
(Livy) has done the same.
On many of the between-days I did some work, but only of an idle and not
necessarily necessary sort, since it will not see print until I am dead.
I shall continue this (an hour per day) but the rest of the year I expect
to put in on a couple of long books (half-completed ones.) No more
magazine-work hanging over my head.
This secluded and silent solitude this clean, soft air and this
enchanting view of Florence, the great valley and the snow-mountains that
frame it are the right conditions for work. They are a persistent
inspiration. To-day is very lovely; when the afternoon arrives there
will be a new picture every hour till dark, and each of them divine--or
progressing from divine to diviner and divinest. On this (second) floor
Clara's room commands the finest; she keeps a window ten feet high wide
open all the time and frames it in. I go in from time to time, every day
and trade sass for a look. The central detail is a distant and stately
snow-hump that rises above and behind blackforested hills, and its
sloping vast buttresses, velvety and sun-polished with purple shadows
between, make the sort of picture we knew that time we walked in
Switzerland in the days of our youth.
I wish I could show your letter to Livy--but she must wait a week or so
for it. I think I told you she had a prostrating week of tonsilitis a
month ago; she has remained very feeble ever since, and confined to the
bed of course, but we allow ourselves to believe she will regain the lost
ground in another month. Her physician is Professor Grocco--she could
not have a better. And she has a very good trained nurse.
Love to all of you from all of us. And to all of our dear Hartford
friends.
MARK
P. S. 3 days later.
Livy is as remarkable as ever. The day I wrote you--that night, I mean
--she had a bitter attack of gout or rheumatism occupying the whole left
arm from shoulder to fingers, accompanied by fever. The pains racked her
50 or 60 hours; they have departed, now--and already she is planning a
trip to Egypt next fall, and a winter's sojourn there! This is life in
her yet.
You will be surprised that I was willing to do so much magazine-writing
--a thing I have always been chary about--but I had good reasons. Our
expenses have been so prodigious for a year and a half, and are still so
prodigious, that Livy was worrying altogether too much about them, and
doing a very dangerous amount of lying awake on their account. It was
necessary to stop that, and it is now stopped.
Yes, she is remarkable, Joe. Her rheumatic attack set me to cursing and
swearing, without limit as to time or energy, but it merely concentrated
her patience and her unconquerable fortitude. It is the difference
between us. I can't count the different kinds of ailments which have
assaulted her in this fiendish year and a half--and I forgive none of
them--but here she comes up again as bright and fresh and enterprising as
ever, and goes to planning about Egypt, with a hope and a confidence
which are to me amazing.
Clara is calling for me--we have to go into town and pay calls.
MARK.
In Florence, that winter, Clemens began dictating to his secretary
some autobiographical chapters. This was the work which was "not to
see print until I am dead." He found it a pleasant, lazy occupation
and wrote his delight in it to Howells in a letter which seems not
to have survived. In his reply, Howells wrote: "You do stir me
mightily with the hope of dictating and I will try it when I get the
chance. But there is the tempermental difference. You are dramatic
and unconscious; you count the thing more than yourself; I am cursed
with consciousness to the core, and can't say myself out; I am
always saying myself in, and setting myself above all that I say, as
of more worth. Lately I have felt as if I were rotting with
egotism. I don't admire myself; I am sick of myself; but I can't
think of anything else. Here I am at it now, when I ought to be
rejoicing with you at the blessing you have found .... I'd like,
immensely, to read your autobiography. You always rather bewildered
me by your veracity, and I fancy you may tell the truth about
yourself. But all of it? The black truth which we all know of
ourselves in our hearts, or only the whity-brown truth of the
pericardium, or the nice, whitened truth of the shirtfront? Even
you won't tell the black heart's--truth. The man who could do it
would be famed to the last day the sun shone upon."
We gather from Mark Twain's answer that he was not deceiving himself
in the matter of his confessions.
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE,
March 14, '04.
DEAR HOWELLS,--Yes, I set up the safeguards, in the first day's
dictating; taking this position: that an autobiography is the truest of
all books; for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the
truth, shirkings of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, with
hardly an instance of plain straight truth, the remorseless truth is
there, between the lines, where the author is raking dust upon it, the
result being that the reader knows the author in spite of his wily
diligences.
The summer in England! you can't ask better luck than that. Then you
will run over to Florence; we shall all be hungry to see you-all. We are
hunting for another villa, (this one is plenty large enough but has no
room in it) but even if we find it I am afraid it will be months before
we can move Mrs. Clemens. Of course it will. But it comforts us to let
on that we think otherwise, and these pretensions help to keep hope alive
in her.
Good-bye, with love, Amen.
Yours ever
MARK.
News came of the death of Henry M. Stanley, one of Mark Twain's
oldest friends. Clemens once said that he had met Stanley in St.
Louis where he (Clemens) had delivered a lecture which Stanley had
reported. In the following letter he fixes the date of their
meeting as early in 1867, which would be immediately after Mark
Twain's return from California, and just prior to the Quaker City
excursion--a fact which is interesting only because it places the
two men together when each was at the very beginning of a great
career.
To Lady Stanley, in England:
VILLA DI QUARTO, FIRENZE, May 11, '04.
DEAR LADY STANLEY,--I have lost a dear and honored friend--how fast they
fall about me now, in my age! The world has lost a tried and proved
hero. And you--what have you lost? It is beyond estimate--we who know
you, and what he was to you, know that. How far he stretches across my
life! I knew him when his work was all before him five years before the
great day that he wrote his name far-away up on the blue of the sky for
the world to see and applaud and remember; I have known him as friend and
intimate ever since. It is 37 years. I have known no other friend and
intimate so long, except John Hay--a friendship which dates from the same
year and the same half of it, the first half of 1867. I grieve with you
and with your family, dear Lady Stanley, it is all I can do; but that I
do out of my heart. It would be we, instead of I, if Mrs. Clemens knew,
but in all these 20 months that she has lain a prisoner in her bed we
have hidden from her all things that could sadden her. Many a friend is
gone whom she still asks about and still thinks is living.
In deepest sympathy I beg the privilege of signing myself
Your friend,
S. L. CLEMENS.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
VILLA DI QUARTO, May 11, '04
DEAR JOE,--Yours has this moment arrived--just as I was finishing a note
to poor Lady Stanley. I believe the last country-house visit we paid in
England was to Stanley's. Lord, how my friends and acquaintances fall
about me now, in my gray-headed days! Vereschagin, Mommsen, Dvorak,
Lenbach, Jokai--all so recently, and now Stanley. I had known Stanley 37
years. Goodness, who is it I haven't known! As a rule the necrologies
find me personally interested--when they treat of old stagers. Generally
when a man dies who is worth cabling, it happens that I have run across
him somewhere, some time or other.
Oh, say! Down by the Laurentian Library there's a marble image that has
been sitting on its pedestal some 450 Years, if my dates are right
--Cosimo I. I've seen the back of it many a time, but not the front; but
yesterday I twisted my head around after we had driven by, and the
profane exclamation burst from my mouth before I could think: "there's
Chauncey Depew!"
I mean to get a photo of it--and use it if it confirms yesterday's
conviction. That's a very nice word from the Catholic Magazine and I am
glad you sent it. I mean to show it to my priest--we are very fond of
him. He is a stealing man, and is also learnedly scientific. He
invented the thing which records the seismatic disturbances, for the
peoples of the earth. And he's an astronomer and has an observatory of
his own.
Ah, many's the cry I have, over reflecting that maybe we could have had
Young Harmony for Livy, and didn't have wit enough to think of it.
Speaking of Livy reminds me that your inquiry arrives at a good time
(unberufen) It has been weeks (I don't know how many!) since we could
have said a hopeful word, but this morning Katy came the minute the
day-nurse came on watch and said words of a strange and long-forgotten
sound: "Mr. Clemens, Mrs. Clemens is really and truly better!--anybody
can see it; she sees it herself; and last night at 9 o'clock she said
it."
There--it is heart-warming, it is splendid, it is sublime; let us enjoy
it, let us make the most of it today--and bet not a farthing on tomorrow.
The tomorrows have nothing for us. Too many times they have breathed the
word of promise to our ear and broken it to our hope. We take no
tomorrow's word any more.
You've done a wonder, Joe: you've written a letter that can be sent in to
Livy--that doesn't often happen, when either a friend or a stranger
writes. You did whirl in a P. S. that wouldn't do, but you wrote it on a
margin of a page in such a way that I was able to clip off the margin
clear across both pages, and now Livy won't perceive that the sheet isn't
the same size it used to was. It was about Aldrich's son, and I came
near forgetting to remove it. It should have been written on a loose
strip and enclosed. That son died on the 5th of March and Aldrich wrote
me on the night before that his minutes were numbered. On the 18th Livy
asked after that patient, and I was prepared, and able to give her a
grateful surprise by telling her "the Aldriches are no longer uneasy
about him."
I do wish I could have been present and heard Charley Clark. When he
can't light up a dark place nobody can.
With lots of love to you all.
MARK.
Mrs. Clemens had her bad days and her good days-days when there
seemed no ray of light, and others that seemed almost to promise
recovery. The foregoing letter to Twichell, and the one which
follows, to Richard Watson Gilder, reflect the hope and fear that
daily and hourly alternated at Villa Quarto
To Richard Watson Gilder, in New York:
VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE,
May 12, '04.
DEAR GILDER,--A friend of ours (the Baroness de Nolda) was here this
afternoon and wanted a note of introduction to the Century, for she has
something to sell to you in case you'll want to make her an offer after
seeing a sample of the goods. I said "With pleasure: get the goods
ready, send the same to me, I will have Jean type-write them, then I will
mail them to the Century and tonight I will write the note to Mr. Gilder
and start it along. Also write me a letter embodying what you have been
saying to me about the goods and your proposed plan of arranging and
explaining them, and I will forward that to Gilder too."
As to the Baroness. She is a German; 30 years old; was married at 17; is
very pretty-indeed I might say very pretty; has a lot of sons (5) running
up from seven to 12 years old. Her husband is a Russian. They live half
the time in Russia and the other half in Florence, and supply population
alternately to the one country and then to the other. Of course it is a
family that speaks languages. This occurs at their table--I know it by
experience: It is Babel come again. The other day, when no guests were
present to keep order, the tribes were all talking at once, and 6
languages were being traded in; at last the littlest boy lost his temper
and screamed out at the top of his voice, with angry sobs: "Mais,
vraiment, io non capisco gar nichts."
The Baroness is a little afraid of her English, therefore she will write
her remarks in French--I said there's a plenty of translators in New
York. Examine her samples and drop her a line.
For two entire days, now, we have not been anxious about Mrs. Clemens
(unberufen). After 20 months of bed-ridden solitude and bodily misery
she all of a sudden ceases to be a pallid shrunken shadow, and looks
bright and young and pretty. She remains what she always was, the most
wonderful creature of fortitude, patience, endurance and recuperative
power that ever was. But ah, dear, it won't last; this fiendish malady
will play new treacheries upon her, and I shall go back to my prayers
again--unutterable from any pulpit!
With love to you and yours,
S. L. C.
May 13 10 A.M. I have just paid one of my pair of permitted 2 minutes
visits per day to the sick room. And found what I have learned to
expect--retrogression, and that pathetic something in the eye which
betrays the secret of a waning hope.
The year of the World's Fair had come, and an invitation from Gov.
Francis, of Missouri, came to Mark Twain in Florence, personally
inviting him to attend the great celebration and carry off first
prize. We may believe that Clemens felt little in the spirit of
humor, but to such an invitation he must send a cheerful, even if
disappointing, answer.
To Gov. Francis, of Missouri:
VILLA DI QUARTO, FIRENZE,
May 26, 1904.
DEAR GOVERNOR FRANCIS,--It has been a dear wish of mine to exhibit myself
at the Great Fair and get a prize, but circumstances beyond my control
have interfered, and I must remain in Florence. Although I have never
taken prizes anywhere else I used to take them at school in Missouri half
a century ago, and I ought to be able to repeat, now, if I could have a
chance. I used to get the medal for good spelling, every week, and I
could have had the medal for good conduct if there hadn't been so much
curruption in Missouri in those days; still, I got it several times by
trading medals and giving boot. I am willing to give boot now, if
--however, those days are forever gone by in Missouri, and perhaps it is
better so. Nothing ever stops the way it was in this changeable world.
Although I cannot be at the Fair, I am going to be represented there
anyway, by a portrait, by Professor Gelli. You will find it excellent.
Good judges here say it is better than the original. They say it has all
the merits of the original and keeps still, besides. It sounds like
flattery, but it is just true.
I suppose you will get a prize, because you have created the most
prodigious and in all ways most wonderful Fair the planet has ever seen.
Very well, you have indeed earned it: and with it the gratitude of the
State and the nation.
Sincerely yours,
MARK TWAIN
It was only a few days after the foregoing was written that death
entered Villa Quarto--unexpectedly at last--for with the first June
days Mrs. Clemens had seemed really to improve. It was on Sunday,
June 5th, that the end came. Clemens, with his daughter Jean, had
returned from a long drive, during which they had visited a Villa
with the thought of purchase. On their return they were told that
their patient had been better that afternoon than for three months.
Yet it was only a few hours later that she left them, so suddenly
and quietly that even those near her did not at first realize that
she was gone.
To W. D. Howells, in New York.
VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE,
June 6, '94. [1904]
DEAR HOWELLS,--Last night at 9.20 I entered Mrs. Clemens's room to say
the usual goodnight--and she was dead--tho' no one knew it. She had been
cheerfully talking, a moment before. She was sitting up in bed--she had
not lain down for months--and Katie and the nurse were supporting her.
They supposed she had fainted, and they were holding the oxygen pipe to
her mouth, expecting to revive her. I bent over her and looked in her
face, and I think I spoke--I was surprised and troubled that she did not
notice me. Then we understood, and our hearts broke. How poor we are
today!
But how thankful I am that her persecutions are ended. I would not call
her back if I could.
Today, treasured in her worn old Testament, I found a dear and gentle
letter from you, dated Far Rockaway, Sept. 13, 1896, about our poor
Susy's death. I am tired and old; I wish I were with Livy.
I send my love-and hers-to you all.
S. L. C.
In a letter to Twichell he wrote: "How sweet she was in death; how
young, how beautiful, how like her dear, girlish self cf thirty
years ago; not a gray hair showing."
The family was now without plans for the future until they
remembered the summer home of R. W. Gilder, at Tyringham,
Massachusetts, and the possibility of finding lodgment for
themselves in that secluded corner of New England. Clemens wrote
without delay, as follows:
To R. W. Gilder, in New York:
VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE,
June 7, '04.
DEAR GILDER FAMILY,--I have been worrying and worrying to know what to
do: at last I went to the girls with an idea: to ask the Gilders to get
us shelter near their summer home. It was the first time they have not
shaken their heads. So to-morrow I will cable to you and shall hope to
be in time.
An, hour ago the best heart that ever beat for me and mine went silent
out of this house, and I am as one who wanders and has lost his way. She
who is gone was our head, she was our hands. We are now trying to make
plans--we: we who have never made a plan before, nor ever needed to. If
she could speak to us she would make it all simple and easy with a word,
and our perplexities would vanish away. If she had known she was near to
death she would have told us where to go and what to do: but she was not
suspecting, neither were we. (She had been chatting cheerfully a moment
before, and in an instant she was gone from us and we did not know it.
We were not alarmed, we did not know anything had happened. It was a
blessed death--she passed away without knowing it.) She was all our
riches and she is gone: she was our breath, she was our life and now we
are nothing.
We send you our love--and with it the love of you that was in her heart
when she died.
S. L. CLEMENS.
Howells wrote his words of sympathy, adding: "The character which
now remains a memory was one of the most perfect ever formed on the
earth," and again, after having received Clemens's letter: "I cannot
speak of your wife's having kept that letter of mine where she did.
You know how it must humiliate a man in his unworthiness to have
anything of his so consecrated. She hallowed what she touched, far
beyond priests."
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
VILLA DI QUARTO, '04.
June 12, 6 p. m.
DEAR HOWELLS,--We have to sit and hold our hands and wait--in the silence
and solitude of this prodigious house; wait until June 25, then we go to
Naples and sail in the Prince Oscar the 26th. There is a ship 12 days
earlier (but we came in that one.) I see Clara twice a day--morning and
evening--greeting--nothing more is allowed. She keeps her bed, and says
nothing. She has not cried yet. I wish she could cry. It would break
Livy's heart to see Clara. We excuse ourselves from all the friends that
call--though of course only intimates come. Intimates--but they are not
the old old friends, the friends of the old, old times when we laughed.
Shall we ever laugh again? If I could only see a dog that I knew in the
old times! and could put my arms around his neck and tell him all,
everything, and ease my heart.
Think-in 3 hours it will be a week!--and soon a month; and by and by a
year. How fast our dead fly from us.
She loved you so, and was always as pleased as a child with any notice
you took of her.
Soon your wife will be with you, oh fortunate man! And John, whom mine
was so fond of. The sight of him was such a delight to her. Lord, the
old friends, how dear they are.
S. L. C.
To Rev. J. R. Twichell, in Hartford:
VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE,
June 18, '04.
DEAR JOE,--It is 13 days. I am bewildered and must remain so for a time
longer. It was so sudden, so unexpected. Imagine a man worth a hundred
millions who finds himself suddenly penniless and fifty million in debt
in his old age.
I was richer than any other person in the world, and now I am that pauper
without peer. Some day I will tell you about it, not now.
MARK.
A tide of condolence flowed in from all parts of the world. It was
impossible to answer all. Only a few who had been their closest
friends received a written line, but the little printed
acknowledgment which was returned was no mere formality. It was a
heartfelt, personal word.
They arrived in America in July, and were accompanied by Twichell to
Elmira, and on the 14th Mrs. Clemens was laid to rest by the side of
Susy and little Langdon. R. W. Gilder had arranged for them to
occupy, for the summer, a cottage on his place at Tyringham, in the
Berkshire Hills. By November they were at the Grosvenor, in New
York, preparing to establish themselves in a house which they had
taken on the corner of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue--Number 21.
To F. N. Doubleday, in New York:
DEAR DOUBLEDAY,--I did not know you were going to England: I would have
freighted you with such messages of homage and affection to Kipling.
And I would have pressed his hand, through you, for his sympathy with
me in my crushing loss, as expressed by him in his letter to Gilder.
You know my feeling for Kipling and that it antedates that expression.
I was glad that the boys came here to invite me to the house-warming and
I think they understood why a man in the shadow of a calamity like mine
could not go.
It has taken three months to repair and renovate our house--corner of 9th
and 5th Avenue, but I shall be in it in io or 15 days hence. Much of the
furniture went into it today (from Hartford). We have not seen it for 13
years. Katy Leary, our old housekeeper, who has been in our service more
than 24 years, cried when she told me about it to-day. She said "I had
forgotten it was so beautiful, and it brought Mrs. Clemens right back to
me--in that old time when she was so young and lovely."
Jean and my secretary and the servants whom we brought from Italy because
Mrs. Clemens liked them so well, are still keeping house in the Berkshire
hills--and waiting. Clara (nervously wrecked by her mother's death) is
in the hands of a specialist in 69th St., and I shall not be allowed to
have any communication with her--even telephone--for a year. I am in
this comfortable little hotel, and still in bed--for I dasn't budge till
I'm safe from my pet devil, bronchitis.
Isn't it pathetic? One hour and ten minutes before Mrs. Clemens died I
was saying to her "To-day, after five months search, I've found the villa
that will content you: to-morrow you will examine the plans and give it
your consent and I will buy it." Her eyes danced with pleasure, for she
longed for a home of her own. And there, on that morrow, she lay white
and cold. And unresponsive to my reverent caresses--a new thing to me
and a new thing to her; that had not happened before in five and thirty
years.
I am coming to see you and Mrs. Doubleday by and bye. She loved and
honored Mrs. Doubleday and her work.
Always yours,
MARK.
It was a presidential year and the air was thick with politics.
Mark Twain was no longer actively interested in the political
situation; he was only disheartened by the hollowness and pretense
of office-seeking, and the methods of office-seekers in general.
Grieved that Twichell should still pin his faith to any party when
all parties were so obviously venal and time-serving, he wrote in
outspoken and rather somber protest.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
THE GROSVENOR, Nov. 4, '04.
Oh, dear! get out of that sewer--party politics--dear Joe. At least
with your mouth. We hail only two men who could make speeches for their
parties and preserve their honor and their dignity. One of them is dead.
Possibly there were four. I am sorry for John Hay; sorry and ashamed.
And yet I know he couldn't help it. He wears the collar, and he had to
pay the penalty. Certainly he had no more desire to stand up before a
mob of confiding human incapables and debauch them than you had.
Certainly he took no more real pleasure in distorting history, concealing
facts, propagating immoralities, and appealing to the sordid side of
human nature than did you; but he was his party's property, and he had to
climb away down and do it.
It is interesting, wonderfully interesting--the miracles which
party-politics can do with a man's mental and moral make-up. Look at
McKinley, Roosevelt, and yourself: in private life spotless in character;
honorable, honest, just, humane, generous; scorning trickeries,
treacheries, suppressions of the truth, mistranslations of the meanings
of facts, the filching of credit earned by another, the condoning of
crime, the glorifying of base acts: in public political life the reverse
of all this.
McKinley was a silverite--you concealed it. Roosevelt was a silverite
--you concealed it. Parker was a silverite--you publish it. Along with
a shudder and a warning: "He was unsafe then. Is he any safer now?"
Joe, even I could be guilty of such a thing as that--if I were in
party-politics; I really believe it.
Mr. Cleveland gave the country the gold standard; by implication you
credit the matter to the Republican party.
By implication you prove the whole annual pension-scoop, concealing the
fact that the bulk of the money goes to people who in no way deserve it.
You imply that all the batteners upon this bribery-fund are Republicans.
An indiscreet confession, since about half of them must have been
Democrats before they were bought.
You as good as praise Order 78. It is true you do not shout, and you do
not linger, you only whisper and skip--still, what little you do in the
matter is complimentary to the crime.
It means, if it means anything, that our outlying properties will all be
given up by the Democrats, and our flag hauled down. All of them? Not
only the properties stolen by Mr. McKinley and Mr. Roosevelt, but the
properties honestly acquired? Joe, did you believe that hardy statement
when you made it? Yet you made it, and there it stands in permanent
print. Now what moral law would suffer if we should give up the stolen
ones? But--
"You know our standard-bearer. He will maintain all that we have
gained"--by whatever process. Land, I believe you!
By George, Joe, you are as handy at the game as if you had been in
training for it all your life. Your campaign Address is built from the
ground up upon the oldest and best models. There isn't a paragraph in it
whose facts or morals will wash--not even a sentence, I believe.
But you will soon be out of this. You didn't want to do it--that is
sufficiently apparent, thanks be!--but you couldn't well get out of it.
In a few days you will be out of it, and then you can fumigate yourself
and take up your legitimate work again and resume your clean and
wholesome private character once more and be happy--and useful.
I know I ought to hand you some guff, now, as propitiation and apology
for these reproaches, but on the whole I believe I won't.
I have inquired, and find that Mitsikuri does not arrive here until
to-morrow night. I shall watch out, and telephone again, for I greatly
want to see him.
Always Yours,
MARK.
P. S.--Nov, 4. I wish I could learn to remember that it is unjust and
dishonorable to put blame upon the human race for any of its acts. For
it did not make itself, it did not make its nature, it is merely a
machine, it is moved wholly by outside influences, it has no hand in
creating the outside influences nor in choosing which of them it will
welcome or reject, its performance is wholly automatic, it has no more
mastership nor authority over its mind than it has over its stomach,
which receives material from the outside and does as it pleases with it,
indifferent to it's proprietor's suggestions, even, let alone his
commands; wherefore, whatever the machine does--so called crimes and
infamies included--is the personal act of its Maker, and He, solely, is
responsible. I wish I could learn to pity the human race instead of
censuring it and laughing at it; and I could, if the outside influences
of old habit were not so strong upon my machine. It vexes me to catch
myself praising the clean private citizen Roosevelt, and blaming the
soiled President Roosevelt, when I know that neither praise nor blame is
due to him for any thought or word or deed of his, he being merely a
helpless and irresponsible coffee-mill ground by the hand of God.
Through a misunderstanding, Clemens, something more than a year
earlier, had severed his connection with the Players' Club, of which
he had been one of the charter members. Now, upon his return to New
York, a number of his friends joined in an invitation to him to
return. It was not exactly a letter they sent, but a bit of an old
Scotch song--
"To Mark Twain
from
The Clansmen.
Will ye no come back again,
Will ye no come back again?
Better lo'ed ye canna be.
Will ye no come back again?"
Those who signed it were David Monroe, of the North American Review;
Robert Reid, the painter, and about thirty others of the Round Table
Group, so called because its members were accustomed to lunching at
a large round table in a bay window of the Player dining-room. Mark
Twain's reply was prompt and heartfelt. He wrote:
To Robt. Reid and the Others:
WELL-BELOVED,--Surely those lovely verses went to Prince Charley's heart,
if he had one, and certainly they have gone to mine. I shall be glad and
proud to come back again after such a moving and beautiful compliment as
this from comrades whom I have loved so long. I hope you can poll the
necessary vote; I know you will try, at any rate. It will be many months
before I can foregather with you, for this black border is not
perfunctory, not a convention; it symbolizes the loss of one whose memory
is the only thing I worship.
It is not necessary for me to thank you--and words could not deliver what
I feel, anyway. I will put the contents of your envelope in the small
casket where I keep the things which have become sacred to me.
S. L. C.
A year later, Mark Twain did "come back again," as an honorary life
member, and was given a dinner of welcome by those who had signed the
lines urging his return.
XLIV
LETTERS OF 1905. TO TWICHELL, MR. DUNEKA AND OTHERS.
POLITICS AND HUMANITY. A SUMMER AT DUBLIN. MARK TWAIN AT 70
In 1884 Mark Twain had abandoned the Republican Party to vote for
Cleveland. He believed the party had become corrupt, and to his
last day it was hard for him to see anything good in Republican
policies or performance. He was a personal friend of Thedore
Roosevelt's but, as we have seen in a former letter, Roosevelt the
politician rarely found favor in his eyes. With or without
justification, most of the President's political acts invited his
caustic sarcasm and unsparing condemnation. Another letter to
Twichell of this time affords a fair example.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
Feb. 16, '05.
DEAR JOE,--I knew I had in me somewhere a definite feeling about the
President if I could only find the words to define it with. Here they
are, to a hair--from Leonard Jerome: "For twenty years I have loved
Roosevelt the man and hated Roosevelt the statesman and politician."
It's mighty good. Every time, in 25 years, that I have met Roosevelt the
man, a wave of welcome has streaked through me with the hand-grip;
but whenever (as a rule) I meet Roosevelt the statesman and politician,
I find him destitute of morals and not respectworthy. It is plain that
where his political self and his party self are concerned he has nothing
resembling a conscience; that under those inspirations he is naively
indifferent to the restraints of duty and even unaware of them; ready to
kick the Constitution into the back yard whenever it gets in the way; and
whenever he smells a vote, not only willing but eager to buy it, give
extravagant rates for it and pay the bill not out of his own pocket or
the party's, but out of the nation's, by cold pillage. As per Order 78
and the appropriation of the Indian trust funds.
But Roosevelt is excusable--I recognize it and (ought to) concede it.
We are all insane, each in his own way, and with insanity goes
irresponsibility. Theodore the man is sane; in fairness we ought to keep
in mind that Theodore, as statesman and politician, is insane and
irresponsible.
Do not throw these enlightenments aside, but study them, let them raise
you to higher planes and make you better. You taught me in my callow
days, let me pay back the debt now in my old age out of a thesaurus with
wisdom smelted from the golden ores of experience.
Ever yours for sweetness and light
MARK.
The next letter to Twichell takes up politics and humanity in
general, in a manner complimentary to neither. Mark Twain was never
really a pessimist, but he had pessimistic intervals, such as come
to most of us in life's later years, and at such times he let
himself go without stint concerning "the damned human race," as he
called it, usually with a manifest sense of indignation that he
should be a member of it. In much of his later writing
--A Mysterious Stranger for example--he said his say with but small
restraint, and certainly in his purely intellectual moments he was
likely to be a pessimist of the most extreme type, capably damning
the race and the inventor of it. Yet, at heart, no man loved his
kind more genuinely, or with deeper compassion, than Mark Twain,
perhaps for its very weaknesses. It was only that he had intervals
--frequent intervals, and rather long ones--when he did not admire
it, and was still more doubtful as to the ways of providence.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
March 14, '05.
DEAR JOE,--I have a Puddn'head maxim:
"When a man is a pessimist before 48 he knows too much; if he is an
optimist after it, he knows too little."
It is with contentment, therefore, that I reflect that I am better and
wiser than you. Joe, you seem to be dealing in "bulks," now; the "bulk"
of the farmers and U. S. Senators are "honest." As regards purchase and
sale with money? Who doubts it? Is that the only measure of honesty?
Aren't there a dozen kinds of honesty which can't be measured by the
money-standard? Treason is treason--and there's more than one form of
it; the money-form is but one of them. When a person is disloyal to any
confessed duty, he is plainly and simply dishonest, and knows it; knows
it, and is privately troubled about it and not proud of himself. Judged
by this standard--and who will challenge the validity of it?--there isn't
an honest man in Connecticut, nor in the Senate, nor anywhere else. I do
not even except myself, this time.
Am I finding fault with you and the rest of the populace? No--I assure
you I am not. For I know the human race's limitations, and this makes it
my duty--my pleasant duty--to be fair to it. Each person in it is honest
in one or several ways, but no member of it is honest in all the ways
required by--by what? By his own standard. Outside of that, as I look
at it, there is no obligation upon him.
Am I honest? I give you my word of honor (private) I am not. For seven
years I have suppressed a book which my conscience tells me I ought to
publish. I hold it a duty to publish it. There are other difficult
duties which I am equal to, but I am not equal to that one. Yes, even I
am dishonest. Not in many ways, but in some. Forty-one, I think it is.
We are certainly all honest in one or several ways--every man in the
world--though I have reason to think I am the only one whose black-list
runs so light. Sometimes I feel lonely enough in this lofty solitude.
Yes, oh, yes, I am not overlooking the "steady progress from age to age
of the coming of the kingdom of God and righteousness." "From age to
age"--yes, it describes that giddy gait. I (and the rocks) will not live
to see it arrive, but that is all right--it will arrive, it surely will.
But you ought not to be always ironically apologizing for the Deity. If
that thing is going to arrive, it is inferable that He wants it to
arrive; and so it is not quite kind of you, and it hurts me, to see you
flinging sarcasms at the gait of it. And yet it would not be fair in me
not to admit that the sarcasms are deserved. When the Deity wants a
thing, and after working at it for "ages and ages" can't show even a
shade of progress toward its accomplishment, we--well, we don't laugh,
but it is only because we dasn't. The source of "righteousness"--is in
the heart? Yes. And engineered and directed by the brain? Yes. Well,
history and tradition testify that the heart is just about what it was in
the beginning; it has undergone no shade of change. Its good and evil
impulses and their consequences are the same today that they were in Old
Bible times, in Egyptian times, in Greek times, in Middle Age times, in
Twentieth Century times. There has been no change.
Meantime, the brain has undergone no change. It is what it always was.
There are a few good brains and a multitude of poor ones. It was so in
Old Bible times and in all other times--Greek, Roman, Middle Ages and
Twentieth Century. Among the savages--all the savages--the average brain
is as competent as the average brain here or elsewhere. I will prove it
to you, some time, if you like. And there are great brains among them,
too. I will prove that also, if you like.
Well, the 19th century made progress--the first progress after "ages and
ages"--colossal progress. In what? Materialities. Prodigious
acquisitions were made in things which add to the comfort of many and
make life harder for as many more. But the addition to righteousness?
Is that discoverable? I think not. The materialities were not invented
in the interest of righteousness; that there is more righteousness in the
world because of them than there, was before, is hardly demonstrable, I
think. In Europe and America, there is a vast change (due to them) in
ideals--do you admire it? All Europe and all America, are feverishly
scrambling for money. Money is the supreme ideal--all others take tenth
place with the great bulk of the nations named. Money-lust has always
existed, but not in the history of the world was it ever a craze, a
madness, until your time and mine. This lust has rotted these nations;
it has made them hard, sordid, ungentle, dishonest, oppressive.
Did England rise against the infamy of the Boer war? No--rose in favor
of it. Did America rise against the infamy of the Phillipine war? No
--rose in favor of it. Did Russia rise against the infamy of the present
war? No--sat still and said nothing. Has the Kingdom of God advanced in
Russia since the beginning of time?
Or in Europe and America, considering the vast backward step of the
money-lust? Or anywhere else? If there has been any progress toward
righteousness since the early days of Creation--which, in my ineradicable
honesty, I am obliged to doubt--I think we must confine it to ten per
cent of the populations of Christendom, (but leaving, Russia, Spain and
South America entirely out.) This gives us 320,000,000 to draw the ten
per cent from. That is to say, 32,000,000 have advanced toward
righteousness and the Kingdom of God since the "ages and ages" have been
flying along, the Deity sitting up there admiring. Well, you see it
leaves 1,200,000,000 out of the race. They stand just where they have
always stood; there has been no change.
N. B. No charge for these informations. Do come down soon, Joe.
With love,
MARK.
St. Clair McKelway, of The Brooklyn Eagle, narrowly escaped injuries
in a railway accident, and received the following. Clemens and
McKelway were old friends.
To St. Clair McKelway, in Brooklyn:
21 FIFTH AVE. Sunday Morning.
April 30, 1905.
DEAR McKELWAY, Your innumerable friends are grateful, most grateful.
As I understand the telegrams, the engineer of your train had never seen
a locomotive before. Very well, then, I am once more glad that there is
an Ever-watchful Providence to foresee possible results and send Ogdens
and McIntyres along to save our friends.
The Government's Official report, showing that our railways killed twelve
hundred persons last year and injured sixty thousand convinces me that
under present conditions one Providence is not enough to properly and
efficiently take care of our railroad business. But it is
characteristically American--always trying to get along short-handed and
save wages.
I am helping your family congratulate themselves, and am your friend as
always.
S. L. CLEMENS.
Clemens did not spend any more summers at Quarry Farm. All its
associations were beautiful and tender, but they could only sadden
him. The life there had been as of another world, sunlit, idyllic,
now forever vanished. For the summer of 1905 he leased the Copley
Green house at Dublin, New Hampshire, where there was a Boston
colony of writing and artistic folk, including many of his long-time
friends. Among them was Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who
wrote a hearty letter of welcome when he heard the news. Clemens
replied in kind.
To Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in Boston:
21 FIFTH AVE. Sunday, March 26, z9o.5.
DEAR COL. HIGGINSON,--I early learned that you would be my neighbor in
the Summer and I rejoiced, recognizing in you and your family a large
asset. I hope for frequent intercourse between the two households. I
shall have my youngest daughter with me. The other one will go from the
rest-cure in this city to the rest-cure in Norfolk Conn and we shall not
see her before autumn. We have not seen her since the middle of October.
Jean (the youngest daughter) went to Dublin and saw the house and came
back charmed with it. I know the Thayers of old--manifestly there is no
lack of attractions up there. Mrs. Thayer and I were shipmates in a wild
excursion perilously near 40 years ago.
You say you "send with this" the story. Then it should be here but it
isn't, when I send a thing with another thing, the other thing goes but
the thing doesn't, I find it later--still on the premises. Will you look
it up now and send it?
Aldrich was here half an hour ago, like a breeze from over the fields,
with the fragrance still upon his spirit. I am tired of waiting for that
man to get old.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. C.
Mark Twain was in his seventieth year, old neither in mind nor body,
but willing to take life more quietly, to refrain from travel and
gay events. A sort of pioneers' reunion was to be held on the
Pacific Coast, and a letter from Robert Fulton, of Reno, Nevada,
invited Clemens to attend. He did not go, but he sent a letter that
we may believe was the next best thing to those who heard it read.
To Robert Fulton, in Reno, Nevada:
IN THE MOUNTAINS,
May 24, 1905.
DEAR MR. FULTON,--I remember, as if it were yesterday, that when I
disembarked from the overland stage in front of the Ormsby in Carson City
in August, 1861, I was not expecting to be asked to come again. I was
tired, discouraged, white with alkali dust, and did not know anybody;
and if you had said then, "Cheer up, desolate stranger, don't be
down-hearted--pass on, and come again in 1905," you cannot think how
grateful I would have been and how gladly I would have closed the
contract. Although I was not expecting to be invited, I was watching out
for it, and was hurt and disappointed when you started to ask me and
changed it to, "How soon are you going away?"
But you have made it all right, now, the wound is closed. And so I thank
you sincerely for the invitation; and with you, all Reno, and if I were a
few years younger I would accept it, and promptly. I would go. I would
let somebody else do the oration, but, as for me, I would talk
--just talk. I would renew my youth; and talk--and talk--and talk
--and have the time of my life! I would march the unforgotten and
unforgettable antiques by, and name their names, and give them reverent
Hailand-farewell as they passed: Goodman, McCarthy, Gillis, Curry,
Baldwin, Winters, Howard, Nye, Stewart; Neely Johnson, Hal Clayton,
North, Root,--and my brother, upon whom be peace!--and then the
desperadoes, who made life a joy and the "Slaughter-house" a precious
possession: Sam Brown, Farmer Pete, Bill Mayfield, Six-fingered Jake,
Jack Williams and the rest of the crimson discipleship--and so on and so
on. Believe me, I would start a resurrection it would do you more good
to look at than the next one will, if you go on the way you are doing
now.
Those were the days! those old ones. They will come no more. Youth will
come no more. They were so full to the brim with the wine of life; there
have been no others like them. It chokes me up to think of them. Would
you like me to come out there and cry? It would not beseem my white
head.
Good-bye. I drink to you all. Have a good time--and take an old man's
blessing.
MARK TWAIN.
A few days later he was writing to H. H. Bancroft, of San Francisco,
who had invited him for a visit in event of his coming to the Coast.
Henry James had just been there for a week and it was hoped that
Howells would soon follow.
To H. H. Bancroft, in San Francisco:
UP IN NEW HAMPSHIRE,
May 27, 1905.
DEAR MR. BANCROFT,--I thank you sincerely for the tempting hospitalities
which you offer me, but I have to deny myself, for my wandering days are
over, and it is my desire and purpose to sit by the fire the rest of my
remnant of life and indulge myself with the pleasure and repose of work
--work uninterrupted and unmarred by duties or excursions.
A man who like me, is going to strike 70 on the 30th of next November has
no business to be flitting around the way Howells does--that shameless
old fictitious butter fly. (But if he comes, don't tell him I said it,
for it would hurt him and I wouldn't brush a flake of powder from his
wing for anything. I only say it in envy of his indestructible youth,
anyway. Howells will be 88 in October.) With thanks again,
Sincerely yours,
S. L. C.
Clemens found that the air of the New Hampshire hills agreed with
him and stimulated him to work. He began an entirely new version of
The Mysterious Stranger, of which he already had a bulky and nearly
finished manuscript, written in Vienna. He wrote several hundred
pages of an extravaganza entitled, Three Thousand Years Among the
Microbes, and then, having got his superabundant vitality reduced
(it was likely to expend itself in these weird mental exploits),
he settled down one day and wrote that really tender and beautiful
idyl, Eve's Diary, which he had begun, or at least planned, the
previous summer at Tyringham. In a letter to Mr. Frederick A.
Duneka, general manager of Harper & Brothers, he tells something of
the manner of the story; also his revised opinion of Adam's Diary,
written in '93, and originally published as a souvenir of Niagara
Falls.
To Frederick A. Duneka, in New York:
DUBLIN, July 16, '05.
DEAR MR. DUNEKA,--I wrote Eve's Diary, she using Adam's Diary as her
(unwitting and unconscious) text, of course, since to use any other text
would have been an imbecility--then I took Adam's Diary and read it. It
turned my stomach. It was not literature; yet it had been literature
once--before I sold it to be degraded to an advertisement of the Buffalo
Fair. I was going to write and ask you to melt the plates and put it out
of print.
But this morning I examined it without temper, and saw that if I
abolished the advertisement it would be literature again.
So I have done it. I have struck out 700 words and inserted 5 MS pages
of new matter (650 words), and now Adam's Diary is dam good--sixty times
as good as it ever was before.
I believe it is as good as Eve's Diary now--no, it's not quite that good,
I guess, but it is good enough to go in the same cover with Eve's. I'm
sure of that.
I hate to have the old Adam go out any more--don't put it on the presses
again, let's put the new one in place of it; and next Xmas, let us bind
Adam and Eve in one cover. They score points against each other--so, if
not bound together, some of the points would not be perceived.....
P. S. Please send another Adam's Diary, so that I can make 2 revised
copies. Eve's Diary is Eve's love-Story, but we will not name it that.
Yrs ever,
MARK.
The peace-making at Portsmouth between Japan and Russia was not
satisfactory to Mark Twain, who had fondly hoped there would be no
peace until, as he said, "Russian liberty was safe. One more battle
would have abolished the waiting chains of millions upon millions of
unborn Russians and I wish it could have been fought." He set down
an expression of his feelings for the Associated Press, and it
invited many letters. Charles Francis Adams wrote, "It attracted my
attention because it so exactly expresses the views I have myself
all along entertained."
Clemens was invited by Colonel George Harvey to dine with the
Russian emissaries, Baron Rosen and Sergius Witte. He declined, but
his telegram so pleased Witte that he asked permission to publish
it, and announced that he would show it to the Czar.
Telegram. To Col. George Harvey, in New York:
TO COLONEL HARVEY,--I am still a cripple, otherwise I should be more than
glad of this opportunity to meet the illustrious magicians who came here
equipped with nothing but a pen, and with it have divided the honors of
the war with the sword. It is fair to presume that in thirty centuries
history will not get done admiring these men who attempted what the world
regarded as impossible and achieved it.
Witte would not have cared to show the Czar the telegram in its
original form, which follows.
Telegram (unsent). To Col. George Harvey, in New York:
TO COLONEL HARVEY,--I am still a cripple, otherwise I should be more than
glad of this opportunity to meet those illustrious magicians who with the
pen have annulled, obliterated, and abolished every high achievement of
the Japanese sword and turned the tragedy of a tremendous war into a gay
and blithesome comedy. If I may, let me in all respect and honor salute
them as my fellow-humorists, I taking third place, as becomes one who was
not born to modesty, but by diligence and hard work is acquiring it.
MARK.
Nor still another unsent form, perhaps more characteristic than
either of the foregoing.
Telegram (unsent). To Col. George Harvey, in New York:
DEAR COLONEL,--No, this is a love-feast; when you call a lodge of sorrow
send for me.
MARK.
To Mrs. Crane, Quarry Farm:
DUBLIN, Sept. 24, '05.
Susy dear, I have had a lovely dream. Livy, dressed in black, was
sitting up in my bed (here) at my right and looking as young and sweet as
she used to do when she was in health. She said: "what is the name of
your sweet sister?" I said, "Pamela." "Oh, yes, that is it, I thought
it was--" (naming a name which has escaped me) "Won't you write it down for
me?" I reached eagerly for a pen and pad--laid my hands upon both--then
said to myself, "It is only a dream," and turned back sorrowfully and
there she was, still. The conviction flamed through me that our lamented
disaster was a dream, and this a reality. I said, "How blessed it is,
how blessed it is, it was all a dream, only a dream!" She only smiled
and did not ask what dream I meant, which surprised me. She leaned her
head against mine and I kept saying, "I was perfectly sure it was a
dream, I never would have believed it wasn't."
I think she said several things, but if so they are gone from my memory.
I woke and did not know I had been dreaming. She was gone. I wondered
how she could go without my knowing it, but I did not spend any thought
upon that, I was too busy thinking of how vivid and real was the dream
that we had lost her and how unspeakably blessed it was to find that it
was not true and that she was still ours and with us.
S. L. C.
One day that summer Mark Twain received a letter from the actress,
Minnie Maddern Fiske, asking him to write something that would aid
her in her crusade against bull-fighting. The idea appealed to him;
he replied at once.
To Mrs. Fiske:
DEAR MRS. FISKE,--I shall certainly write the story. But I may not get
it to suit me, in which case it will go in the fire. Later I will try
again--and yet again--and again. I am used to this. It has taken me
twelve years to write a short story--the shortest one I ever wrote, I
think.--[Probably "The Death Disk."]--So do not be discouraged; I will
stick to this one in the same way. Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
He did not delay in his beginning, and a few weeks later was sending
word to his publisher about it.
To Frederick A. Duneka, in New York:
Oct. 2, '05.
DEAR MR. DUNEKA,--I have just finished a short story which I "greatly
admire," and so will you--"A Horse's Tale"--about 15,000 words, at a
rough guess. It has good fun in it, and several characters, and is
lively. I shall finish revising it in a few days or more, then Jean will
type it.
Don't you think you can get it into the Jan. and Feb. numbers and issue
it as a dollar booklet just after the middle of Jan. when you issue the
Feb. number?
It ought to be ably illustrated.
Why not sell simultaneous rights, for this once, to the Ladies' Home
Journal or Collier's, or both, and recoup yourself?--for I would like to
get it to classes that can't afford Harper's. Although it doesn't
preach, there's a sermon concealed in it.
Yr sincerely,
MARK.
Five days later he added some rather interesting facts concerning
the new story.
To F. A. Duneka, in New York:
Oct. 7, 1906. ['05]
DEAR MR. DUNEKA,--..... I've made a poor guess as to number of words.
I think there must be 20,000. My usual page of MS. contains about 130
words; but when I am deeply interested in my work and dead to everything
else, my hand-writing shrinks and shrinks until there's a great deal more
than 130 on a page--oh, yes, a deal more. Well, I discover, this
morning, that this tale is written in that small hand.
This strong interest is natural, for the heroine is my daughter, Susy,
whom we lost. It was not intentional--it was a good while before I found
it out.
So I am sending you her picture to use--and to reproduce with
photographic exactness the unsurpassable expression and all. May you
find an artist who has lost an idol!
Take as good care of the picture as you can and restore it to me when I
come.
I hope you will illustrate this tale considerably. Not humorous
pictures. No. When they are good (or bad) one's humor gets no chance to
play surprises on the reader. A humorous subject illustrated seriously
is all right, but a humorous artist is no fit person for such work. You
see, the humorous writer pretends to absolute seriousness (when he knows
his trade) then for an artist--to step in and give his calculated gravity
all away with a funny picture--oh, my land! It gives me the dry gripes
just to think of it. It would be just about up to the average comic
artist's intellectual level to make a funny picture of the horse kicking
the lungs out of a trader. Hang it, the remark is funny--because the
horse is not aware of it but the fact is not humorous, it is tragic and
it is no subject for a humorous picture.
Could I be allowed to sit in judgment upon the pictures before they are
accepted--at least those in which Cathy may figure?
This is not essential. It is but a suggestion, and it is hereby
withdrawn, if it would be troublesome or cause delay.
I hope you will reproduce the cat-pile, full page. And save the photo
for me in as good condition as possible. When Susy and Clara were little
tots those cats had their profoundest worship, and there is no duplicate
of this picture. These cats all had thundering names, or inappropriate
ones--furnished by the children with my help. One was named Buffalo
Bill.
Are you interested in coincidences?
After discovering, about the middle of the book, that Cathy was Susy
Clemens, I put her picture with my MS., to be reproduced. After the book
was finished it was discovered that Susy had a dim model of Soldier Boy
in her arms; I had forgotten all about that toy.
Then I examined the cat-picture and laid it with the MS. for
introduction; but it was not until yesterday that I remembered that one
of the cats was named Buffalo Bill.
Sincerely yours,
MARK.
The reference in this letter to shrinkage of his hand-writing with
the increasing intensity of his interest, and the consequent
addition of the number of words to the page, recalls another fact,
noted by Mr. Duneka, viz.: that because of his terse Anglo-Saxon
diction, Mark Twain could put more words on a magazine page than any
other writer. It is hardly necessary to add that he got more force
into what he put on the page for the same reason.
There was always a run of reporters at Mark Twain's New York home.
His opinion was sought for on every matter of public interest, and
whatever happened to him in particular was considered good for at
least half a column of copy, with his name as a catch-line at the
top. When it was learned that he was to spend the summer in New
Hampshire, the reporters had all wanted to find out about it. Now
that the summer was ending, they began to want to know how he had
liked it, what work he had done and what were his plans for another
year. As they frequently applied to his publishers for these
details it was finally suggested to him that he write a letter
furnishing the required information. His reply, handed to Mr.
Duneka, who was visiting him at the moment, is full of interest.
Mem. for Mr. Duneka:
DUBLIN, Oct. 9, 1905.
.....As to the other matters, here are the details.
Yes, I have tried a number of summer homes, here and in Europe together.
Each of these homes had charms of its own; charms and delights of its
own, and some of them--even in Europe had comforts. Several of them had
conveniences, too. They all had a "view."
It is my conviction that there should always be some water in a view
--a lake or a river, but not the ocean, if you are down on its level. I
think that when you are down on its level it seldom inflames you with an
ecstasy which you could not get out of a sand-flat. It is like being on
board ship, over again; indeed it is worse than that, for there's three
months of it. On board ship one tires of the aspects in a couple of
days, and quits looking. The same vast circle of heaving humps is spread
around you all the time, with you in the centre of it and never gaining
an inch on the horizon, so far as you can see; for variety, a flight of
flying-fish, mornings; a flock of porpoises throwing summersaults
afternoons; a remote whale spouting, Sundays; occasional phosphorescent
effects, nights; every other day a streak of black smoke trailing along
under the horizon; on the one single red letter day, the illustrious
iceberg. I have seen that iceberg thirty-four times in thirty-seven
voyages; it is always the same shape, it is always the same size, it
always throws up the same old flash when the sun strikes it; you may set
it on any New York door-step of a June morning and light it up with a
mirror-flash; and I will engage to recognize it. It is artificial, and
it is provided and anchored out by the steamer companies. I used to like
the sea, but I was young then, and could easily get excited over any kind
of monotony, and keep it up till the monotonies ran out, if it was a
fortnight.
Last January, when we were beginning to inquire about a home for this
summer, I remembered that Abbott Thayer had said, three years before,
that the New Hampshire highlands was a good place. He was right--it was
a good place. Any place that is good for an artist in paint is good for
an artist in morals and ink. Brush is here, too; so is Col. T. W.
Higginson; so is Raphael Pumpelly; so is Mr. Secretary Hitchcock; so is
Henderson; so is Learned; so is Summer; so is Franklin MacVeigh; so is
Joseph L. Smith; so is Henry Copley Greene, when I am not occupying his
house, which I am doing this season. Paint, literature, science,
statesmanship, history, professorship, law, morals,--these are all
represented here, yet crime is substantially unknown.
The summer homes of these refugees are sprinkled, a mile apart, among the
forest-clad hills, with access to each other by firm smooth country roads
which are so embowered in dense foliage that it is always twilight in
there, and comfortable. The forests are spider-webbed with these good
roads, they go everywhere; but for the help of the guide-boards, the
stranger would not arrive anywhere.
The village--Dublin--is bunched together in its own place, but a good
telephone service makes its markets handy to all those outliars. I have
spelt it that way to be witty. The village executes orders on, the
Boston plan--promptness and courtesy.
The summer homes are high-perched, as a rule, and have contenting
outlooks. The house we occupy has one. Monadnock, a soaring double
hump, rises into the sky at its left elbow--that is to say, it is close
at hand. From the base of the long slant of the mountain the valley
spreads away to the circling frame of the hills, and beyond the frame the
billowy sweep of remote great ranges rises to view and flows, fold upon
fold, wave upon wave, soft and blue and unwordly, to the horizon fifty
miles away. In these October days Monadnock and the valley and its
framing hills make an inspiring picture to look at, for they are
sumptuously splashed and mottled and be-torched from sky-line to sky-line
with the richest dyes the autumn can furnish; and when they lie flaming
in the full drench of the mid-afternoon sun, the sight affects the
spectator physically, it stirs his blood like military music.
These summer homes are commodious, well built, and well furnished--facts
which sufficiently indicate that the owners built them to live in
themselves. They have furnaces and wood fireplaces, and the rest of the
comforts and conveniences of a city home, and can be comfortably occupied
all the year round.
We cannot have this house next season, but I have secured Mrs. Upton's
house which is over in the law and science quarter, two or three miles
from here, and about the same distance from the art, literary, and
scholastic groups. The science and law quarter has needed improving,
this good while.
The nearest railway-station is distant something like an hour's drive; it
is three hours from there to Boston, over a branch line. You can go to
New York in six hours per branch lines if you change cars every time you
think of it, but it is better to go to Boston and stop over and take the
trunk line next day, then you do not get lost.
It is claimed that the atmosphere of the New Hampshire highlands is
exceptionally bracing and stimulating, and a fine aid to hard and
continuous work. It is a just claim, I think. I came in May, and
wrought 35 successive days without a break. It is possible that I could
not have done it elsewhere. I do not know; I have not had any
disposition to try it, before. I think I got the disposition out of the
atmosphere, this time. I feel quite sure, in fact, that that is where it
came from.
I am ashamed to confess what an intolerable pile of manuscript I ground
out in the 35 days, therefore I will keep the number of words to myself.
I wrote the first half of a long tale--"The Adventures of a Microbe" and
put it away for a finish next summer, and started another long tale--"The
Mysterious Stranger;" I wrote the first half of it and put it with the
other for a finish next summer. I stopped, then. I was not tired, but I
had no books on hand that needed finishing this year except one that was
seven years old. After a little I took that one up and finished it. Not
for publication, but to have it ready for revision next summer.
Since I stopped work I have had a two months' holiday. The summer has
been my working time for 35 years; to have a holiday in it (in America)
is new for me. I have not broken it, except to write "Eve's Diary" and
"A Horse's Tale"--short things occupying the mill 12 days.
This year our summer is 6 months long and ends with November and the
flight home to New York, but next year we hope and expect to stretch it
another month and end it the first of December.
[No signature.]
The fact that he was a persistent smoker was widely known, and many
friends and admirers of Mark Twain sent him cigars, most of which he
could not use, because they were too good. He did not care for
Havana cigars, but smoked the fragrant, inexpensive domestic tobacco
with plenty of "pep" in it, as we say today. Now and then he had an
opportunity to head off some liberal friend, who wrote asking
permission to contribute to his cigar collection, as instance the
following.
To Rev. L. M. Powers, in Haverhill, Mass.:
Nov. 9, 1905.
DEAR MR. POWERS,--I should accept your hospitable offer at once but for
the fact I couldn't do it and remain honest. That is to say if I allowed
you to send me what you believe to be good cigars it would distinctly
mean that I meant to smoke them, whereas I should do nothing of the kind.
I know a good cigar better than you do, for I have had 60 years
experience.
No, that is not what I mean; I mean I know a bad cigar better than
anybody else; I judge by the price only; if it costs above 5 cents I know
it to be either foreign or half-foreign, and unsmokeable. By me. I have
many boxes of Havana cigars, of all prices from 20 cts apiece up to 1.66
apiece; I bought none of them, they were all presents, they are an
accumulation of several years. I have never smoked one of them and never
shall, I work them off on the visitor. You shall have a chance when you
come.
Pessimists are born not made; optimists are born not made; but no man is
born either pessimist wholly or optimist wholly, perhaps; he is
pessimistic along certain lines and optimistic along certain others.
That is my case.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
In spite of all the fine photographs that were made of him, there
recurred constantly among those sent him to be autographed a print
of one which, years before, Sarony had made and placed on public
sale. It was a good photograph, mechanically and even artistically,
but it did not please Mark Twain. Whenever he saw it he recalled
Sarony with bitterness and severity. Once he received an inquiry
concerning it, and thus feelingly expressed himself.
To Mr. Row (no address):
21 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK,
November 14, 1905.
DEAR MR. ROW,--That alleged portrait has a private history. Sarony was
as much of an enthusiast about wild animals as he was about photography;
and when Du Chaillu brought the first Gorilla to this country in 1819 he
came to me in a fever of excitement and asked me if my father was of
record and authentic. I said he was; then Sarony, without any abatement
of his excitement asked if my grandfather also was of record and
authentic. I said he was. Then Sarony, with still rising excitement and
with joy added to it, said he had found my great grandfather in the
person of the gorilla, and had recognized him at once by his resemblance
to me. I was deeply hurt but did not reveal this, because I knew Saxony
meant no offense for the gorilla had not done him any harm, and he was
not a man who would say an unkind thing about a gorilla wantonly. I went
with him to inspect the ancestor, and examined him from several points of
view, without being able to detect anything more than a passing
resemblance. "Wait," said Sarony with confidence, "let me show you."
He borrowed my overcoat--and put it on the gorilla. The result was
surprising. I saw that the gorilla while not looking distinctly like me
was exactly what my great grand father would have looked like if I had
had one. Sarong photographed the creature in that overcoat, and spread
the picture about the world. It has remained spread about the world ever
since. It turns up every week in some newspaper somewhere or other. It
is not my favorite, but to my exasperation it is everybody else's.
Do you think you could get it suppressed for me? I will pay the limit.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The year 1905 closed triumphantly for Mark Twain. The great
"Seventieth Birthday" dinner planned by Colonel George Harvey is
remembered to-day as the most notable festival occasion in New York
literary history. Other dinners and ovations followed. At seventy
he had returned to the world, more beloved, more honored than ever
before.
XLV
LETTERS, 1906, TO VARIOUS PERSONS. THE FAREWELL LECTURE. A SECOND
SUMMER IN DUBLIN. BILLIARDS AND COPYRIGHT
MARK TWAIN at "Pier Seventy," as he called it, paused to look
backward and to record some memoirs of his long, eventful past. The
Autobiography dictations begun in Florence were resumed, and daily
he traveled back, recalling long-ago scenes and all-but-forgotten
places. He was not without reminders. Now and again there came
some message that brought back the old days--the Tom Sawyer and Huck
Finn days--or the romance of the river that he never recalled other
than with tenderness and a tone of regret that it was gone. An
invitation to the golden wedding of two ancient friends moved and
saddened him, and his answer to it conveys about all the story of
life.
To Mr. and Mrs. Gordon:
21 FIFTH AVENUE,
Jan. 24, '06.
DEAR GORDONS,--I have just received your golden-wedding "At Home" and am
trying to adjust my focus to it and realize how much it means. It is
inconceivable! With a simple sweep it carries me back over a stretch of
time measurable only in astronomical terms and geological periods.
It brings before me Mrs. Gordon, young, round-limbed, handsome; and with
her the Youngbloods and their two babies, and Laura Wright, that
unspoiled little maid, that fresh flower of the woods and the prairies.
Forty-eight years ago!
Life was a fairy-tale, then, it is a tragedy now. When I was 43 and John
Hay 41 he said life was a tragedy after 40, and I disputed it. Three
years ago he asked me to testify again: I counted my graves, and there
was nothing for me to say.
I am old; I recognize it but I don't realize it. I wonder if a person
ever really ceases to feel young--I mean, for a whole day at a time. My
love to you both, and to all of us that are left.
MARK.
Though he used very little liquor of any kind, it was Mark Twain's
custom to keep a bottle of Scotch whiskey with his collection of
pipes and cigars and tobacco on a little table by his bed-side.
During restless nights he found a small quantity of it conducive to
sleep. Andrew Carnegie, learning of this custom, made it his
business to supply Scotch of his own special importation. The first
case came, direct from Scotland. When it arrived Clemens sent this
characteristic acknowledgment.
To Andrew Carnegie, in Scotland:
21 FIFTH AVE. Feb. 10, '06.
DEAR ST. ANDREW,--The whisky arrived in due course from over the water;
last week one bottle of it was extracted from the wood and inserted into
me, on the instalment plan, with this result: that I believe it to be the
best, smoothest whisky now on the planet. Thanks, oh, thanks: I have
discarded Peruna.
Hoping that you three are well and happy and will be coming back before
the winter sets in.
I am,
Sincerely yours,
MARK.
It must have been a small bottle to be consumed by him in a week, or
perhaps he had able assistance. The next brief line refers to the
manuscript of his article, "Saint Joan of Arc," presented to the
museum at Rouen.
To Edward E. Clarke:
21 FIFTH AVE., Feb., 1906.
DEAR SIR,--I have found the original manuscript and with great pleasure I
transmit it herewith, also a printed copy.
It is a matter of great pride to me to have any word of mine concerning
the world's supremest heroine honored by a place in that Museum.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The series of letters which follows was prepared by Mark Twain and
General Fred Grant, mainly with a view of advertising the lecture
that Clemens had agreed to deliver for the benefit of the Robert
Fulton Monument Association. It was, in fact, to be Mark Twain's
"farewell lecture," and the association had really proposed to pay
him a thousand dollars for it. The exchange of these letters,
however, was never made outside of Mark Twain's bed-room. Propped
against the pillows, pen in hand, with General Grant beside him,
they arranged the series with the idea of publication. Later the
plan was discarded, so that this pleasant foolery appears here for
the first, time.
PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
(Correspondence)
Telegram
Army Headquarters (date)
MARK TWAIN, New York,--Would you consider a proposal to talk at Carnegie
Hall for the benefit of the Robert Fulton Monument Association, of which
you are a Vice President, for a fee of a thousand dollars?
F. D. GRANT,
President,
Fulton Monument Association.
Telegraphic Answer:
MAJOR-GENERAL F. D. GRANT, Army Headquarters,--I shall be glad to do it,
but I must stipulate that you keep the thousand dollars and add it to the
Monument fund as my contribution.
CLEMENS.
Letters:
DEAR MR. CLEMENS,--You have the thanks of the Association, and the terms
shall be as you say. But why give all of it? Why not reserve a portion
--why should you do this work wholly without compensation?
Truly yours
FRED. D. GRANT.
MAJOR GENERAL GRANT, Army Headquarters.
DEAR GENERAL,--Because I stopped talking for pay a good many years ago,
and I could not resume the habit now without a great deal of personal
discomfort. I love to hear myself talk, because I get so much
instruction and moral upheaval out of it, but I lose the bulk of this joy
when I charge for it. Let the terms stand.
General, if I have your approval, I wish to use this good occasion to
retire permanently from the platform.
Truly yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
DEAR MR. CLEMENS,--Certainly. But as an old friend, permit me to say,
Don't do that. Why should you?--you are not old yet.
Yours truly,
FRED D. GRANT.
DEAR GENERAL,--I mean the pay-platform; I shan't retire from the
gratis-platform until after I am dead and courtesy requires me to keep
still and not disturb the others.
What shall I talk about? My idea is this: to instruct the audience about
Robert Fulton, and..... Tell me--was that his real name, or was it his
nom de plume? However, never mind, it is not important--I can skip it,
and the house will think I knew all about it, but forgot. Could you find
out for me if he was one of the Signers of the Declaration, and which
one? But if it is any trouble, let it alone, I can skip it. Was he out
with Paul Jones? Will you ask Horace Porter? And ask him if he brought
both of them home. These will be very interesting facts, if they can be
established. But never mind, don't trouble Porter, I can establish them
anyway. The way I look at it, they are historical gems--gems of the very
first water.
Well, that is my idea, as I have said: first, excite the audience with a
spoonful of information about Fulton, then quiet down with a barrel of
illustration drawn by memory from my books--and if you don't say anything
the house will think they never heard of it before, because people don't
really read your books, they only say they do, to keep you from feeling
bad. Next, excite the house with another spoonful of Fultonian fact,
then tranquilize them again with another barrel of illustration. And so
on and so on, all through the evening; and if you are discreet and don't
tell them the illustrations don't illustrate anything, they won't notice
it and I will send them home as well-informed about Robert Fulton as I am
myself. Don't be afraid; I know all about audiences, they believe
everything you say, except when you are telling the truth.
Truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
P.S. Mark all the advertisements "Private and Confidential," otherwise
the people will not read them.
M. T.
DEAR MR. CLEMENS,--How long shall you talk? I ask in order that we may
be able to say when carriages may be called.
Very Truly yours,
HUGH GORDON MILLER,
Secretary.
DEAR MR. MILLER,--I cannot say for sure. It is my custom to keep on
talking till I get the audience cowed. Sometimes it takes an hour and
fifteen minutes, sometimes I can do it in an hour.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Mem. My charge is 2 boxes free. Not the choicest--sell the choicest,
and give me any 6-seat boxes you please.
S. L. C.
I want Fred Grant (in uniform) on the stage; also the rest of the
officials of the Association; also other distinguished people--all the
attractions we can get. Also, a seat for Mr. Albert Bigelow Paine, who
may be useful to me if he is near me and on the front.
S. L. C.
The seat chosen for the writer of these notes was to be at the front
of the stage in order that the lecturer might lean over now and then
and pretend to be asking information concerning Fulton. I was not
entirely happy in the thought of this showy honor, and breathed more
freely when this plan was abandoned and the part assigned to General
Grant.
The lecture was given in Carnegie Hall, which had been gayly
decorated for the occasion. The house was more than filled, and a
great sum of money was realized for the fund.
It was that spring that Gorky and Tchaikowski, the Russian
revolutionists, came to America hoping to arouse interest in their
cause. The idea of the overthrow of the Russian dynasty was
pleasant to Mark Twain. Few things would have given him greater
comfort than to have known that a little more than ten years would
see the downfall of Russian imperialism. The letter which follows
was a reply to an invitation from Tchaikowski, urging him to speak
at one of the meetings.
DEAR MR. TCHAIKOWSKI,--I thank you for the honor of the invitation, but
I am not able to accept it, because on Thursday evening I shall be
presiding at a meeting whose object is to find remunerative work for
certain classes of our blind who would gladly support themselves if they
had the opportunity.
My sympathies are with the Russian revolution, of course. It goes
without saying. I hope it will succeed, and now that I have talked with
you I take heart to believe it will. Government by falsified promises;
by lies, by treacheries, and by the butcher-knife for the aggrandizement
of a single family of drones and its idle and vicious kin has been borne
quite long enough in Russia, I should think, and it is to be hoped that
the roused nation, now rising in its strength, will presently put an end
to it and set up the republic in its place. Some of us, even of the
white headed, may live to see the blessed day when Czars and Grand Dukes
will be as scarce there as I trust they are in heaven.
Most sincerely yours,
MARK TWAIN.
There came another summer at Dublin, New Hampshire, this time in the
fine Upton residence on the other slope of Monadnock, a place of
equally beautiful surroundings, and an even more extended view.
Clemens was at this time working steadily on his so-called
Autobiography, which was not that, in fact, but a series of
remarkable chapters, reminiscent, reflective, commentative, written
without any particular sequence as to time or subject-matter. He
dictated these chapters to a stenographer, usually in the open air,
sitting in a comfortable rocker or pacing up and down the long
veranda that faced a vast expanse of wooded slope and lake and
distant blue mountains. It became one of the happiest occupations
of his later years.
To W. D. Howells, in Maine:
DUBLIN, Sunday, June 17, '06.
DEAR HOWELLS,--..... The dictating goes lazily and pleasantly on. With
intervals. I find that I have been at it, off and on, nearly two hours a
day for 155 days, since Jan. 9. To be exact I've dictated 75 hours in 80
days and loafed 75 days. I've added 60,000 words in the month that I've
been here; which indicates that I've dictated during 20 days of that
time--40 hours, at an average of 1,500 words an hour. It's a plenty, and
I am satisfied.
There's a good deal of "fat" I've dictated, (from Jan. 9) 210,000 words,
and the "fat" adds about 50,000 more.
The "fat" is old pigeon-holed things, of the years gone by, which I or
editors didn't das't to print. For instance, I am dumping in the little
old book which I read to you in Hartford about 30 years ago and which you
said "publish--and ask Dean Stanley to furnish an introduction; he'll do
it." ("Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.") It reads quite to suit
me, without altering a word, now that it isn't to see print until I am
dead.
To-morrow I mean to dictate a chapter which will get my heirs and assigns
burnt alive if they venture to print it this side of 2006 A.D.--which I
judge they won't. There'll be lots of such chapters if I live 3 or 4
years longer. The edition of A.D. 2006 will make a stir when it comes
out. I shall be hovering around taking notice, along with other dead
pals. You are invited.
MARK.
His tendency to estimate the measure of the work he was doing, and
had completed, must have clung to him from his old printer days.
The chapter which was to get his heirs and assigns burned alive was
on the orthodox God, and there was more than one such chapter. In
the next letter he refers to two exquisite poems by Howells, and the
writer of these notes recalls his wonderful reading of them aloud.
'In Our Town' was a collection of short stories then recently issued
by William Allen White. Howells had recommended them.
To W. D. Howells, in Maine:
21 FIFTH AVE., Tuesday Eve.
DEAR HOWELLS,--It is lovely of you to say those beautiful things--I don't
know how to thank you enough. But I love you, that I know.
I read "After the Wedding" aloud and we felt all the pain of it and the
truth. It was very moving and very beautiful--would have been
over-comingly moving, at times, but for the haltings and pauses compelled
by the difficulties of MS--these were a protection, in that they
furnished me time to brace up my voice, and get a new start. Jean wanted
to keep the MS for another reading-aloud, and for "keeps," too, I
suspected, but I said it would be safest to write you about it.
I like "In Our Town," particularly that Colonel, of the Lookout Mountain
Oration, and very particularly pages 212-16. I wrote and told White so.
After "After the Wedding" I read "The Mother" aloud and sounded its human
deeps with your deep-sea lead. I had not read it before, since it was
first published.
I have been dictating some fearful things, for 4 successive mornings--for
no eye but yours to see until I have been dead a century--if then. But
I got them out of my system, where they had been festering for years--and
that was the main thing. I feel better, now.
I came down today on business--from house to house in 12 1/2 hours, and
expected to arrive dead, but am neither tired nor sleepy.
Yours as always
MARK.
To William Allen White, in Emporia, Kans.:
DUBLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE,
June 24, 1906.
DEAR MR. WHITE,--Howells told me that "In Our Town" was a charming book,
and indeed it is. All of it is delightful when read one's self, parts of
it can score finely when subjected to the most exacting of tests--the
reading aloud. Pages 197 and 216 are of that grade. I have tried them a
couple of times on the family, and pages 212 and 216 are qualified to
fetch any house of any country, caste or color, endowed with those riches
which are denied to no nation on the planet--humor and feeling.
Talk again--the country is listening.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Witter Bynner, the poet, was one of the editors of McClure's
Magazine at this time, but was trying to muster the courage to give
up routine work for verse-making and the possibility of poverty.
Clemens was fond of Bynner and believed in his work. He did not
advise him, however, to break away entirely from a salaried
position--at least not immediately; but one day Bynner did so, and
reported the step he had taken, with some doubt as to the answer he
would receive.
To Witter Bynner, in New York:
DUBLIN, Oct. 5, 1906.
DEAR POET,--You have certainly done right for several good reasons; at
least, of them, I can name two:
1. With your reputation you can have your freedom and yet earn your
living. 2. if you fall short of succeeding to your wish, your
reputation will provide you another job. And so in high approval I
suppress the scolding and give you the saintly and fatherly pat instead.
MARK TWAIN.
On another occasion, when Bynner had written a poem to Clara
Clemens, her father pretended great indignation that the first poem
written by Bynner to any one in his household should not be to him,
and threatened revenge. At dinner shortly after he produced from
his pocket a slip of paper on which he had set down what he said was
"his only poem." He read the lines that follow:
"Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: It might have been.
Ah, say not so! as life grows longer, leaner, thinner,
We recognize, O God, it might have Bynner!"
He returned to New York in October and soon after was presented by
Mrs. H. H. Rogers with a handsome billiard-table.
He had a passion for the game, but had played comparatively little
since the old Hartford days of fifteen years before, when a group of
his friends used to assemble on Friday nights in the room at the top
of the house for long, strenuous games and much hilarity. Now the
old fever all came back; the fascinations of the game superseded
even his interest in the daily dictations.
To Mrs. H. H. Rogers, in New York:
21 FIFTH AVENUE, Monday, Nov., 1906.
DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--The billiard table is better than the doctors. It is
driving out the heartburn in a most promising way. I have a billiardist
on the premises, and I walk not less than ten miles every day with the
cue in my hand. And the walking is not the whole of the exercise, nor
the most health-giving part of it, I think. Through the multitude of the
positions and attitudes it brings into play every muscle in the body and
exercises them all.
The games begin right after luncheon, daily, and continue until midnight,
with 2 hours' intermission for dinner and music. And so it is 9 hours'
exercise per day, and 10 or 12 on Sunday. Yesterday and last night it
was 12--and I slept until 8 this morning without waking. The billiard
table, as a Sabbath breaker can beat any coal-breaker in Pennsylvania,
and give it 30 in, the game. If Mr. Rogers will take to daily billiards
he can do without doctors and the massageur, I think.
We are really going to build a house on my farm, an hour and a half from
New York. It is decided. It is to be built by contract, and is to come
within $25,000.
With love and many thanks.
S. L. C.
P.S. Clara is in the sanitarium--till January 28 when her western
concert tour will begin. She is getting to be a mighty competent singer.
You must know Clara better; she is one of the very finest and completest
and most satisfactory characters I have ever met. Others knew it before,
but I have always been busy with other matters.
The "billiardist on the premises" was the writer of these notes,
who, earlier in the year, had become his biographer, and, in the
course of time, his daily companion and friend. The farm mentioned
was one which he had bought at Redding, Connecticut, where, later,
he built the house known as "Stormfield."
Henry Mills Alden, for nearly forty years editor of Harper's
Magazine, arrived at his seventieth birthday on November 11th that
year, and Harper & Brothers had arranged to give him a great dinner
in the offices of Franklin Square, where, for half a century, he had
been an active force. Mark Twain, threatened with a cold, and
knowing the dinner would be strenuous, did not feel able to attend,
so wrote a letter which, if found suitable, could be read at the
gathering.
To Mr. Henry Alden:
ALDEN,--dear and ancient friend--it is a solemn moment. You have now
reached the age of discretion. You have been a long time arriving. Many
years ago you docked me on an article because the subject was too old;
later, you docked me on an article because the subject was too new; later
still, you docked me on an article because the subject was betwixt and
between. Once, when I wrote a Letter to Queen Victoria, you did not put
it in the respectable part of the Magazine, but interred it in that
potter's field, the Editor's Drawer. As a result, she never answered it.
How often we recall, with regret, that Napoleon once shot at a magazine
editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember, with
charity, that his intentions were good.
You will reform, now, Alden. You will cease from these economies, and
you will be discharged. But in your retirement you will carry with you
the admiration and earnest good wishes of the oppressed and toiling
scribes. This will be better than bread. Let this console you when the
bread fails.
You will carry with you another thing, too--the affection of the scribes;
for they all love you in spite of your crimes. For you bear a kind heart
in your breast, and the sweet and winning spirit that charms away all
hostilities and animosities, and makes of your enemy your friend and
keeps him so. You have reigned over us thirty-six years, and, please
God, you shall reign another thirty-six--"and peace to Mahmoud on his
golden throne!"
Always yours
MARK
A copyright bill was coming up in Washington and a delegation of
authors went down to work for it. Clemens was not the head of the
delegation, but he was the most prominent member of it, as well as
the most useful. He invited the writer to accompany him, and
elsewhere I have told in detail the story of that excursion,--[See
Mark Twain; A Biography, chap. ccli,]--which need be but briefly
touched upon here.
His work was mainly done aside from that of the delegation. They
had him scheduled for a speech, however, which he made without notes
and with scarcely any preparation. Meantime he had applied to
Speaker Cannon for permission to allow him on the floor of the
House, where he could buttonhole the Congressmen. He was not
eligible to the floor without having received the thanks of
Congress, hence the following letter:
To Hon. Joseph Cannon, House of Representatives:
Dec. 7, 1906.
DEAR UNCLE JOSEPH,--Please get me the thanks of the Congress--not next
week but right away. It is very necessary. Do accomplish this for your
affectionate old friend right away; by persuasion, if you can, by
violence if you must, for it is imperatively necessary that I get on the
floor for two or three hours and talk to the members, man by man, in
behalf of the support, encouragement and protection of one of the
nation's most valuable assets and industries--its literature. I have
arguments with me, also a barrel, with liquid in it.
Give me a chance. Get me the thanks of Congress. Don't wait for others;
there isn't time. I have stayed away and let Congress alone for
seventy-one years and I am entitled to thanks. Congress knows it
perfectly well and I have long felt hurt that this quite proper and
earned expression of gratitude has been merely felt by the House and
never publicly uttered. Send me an order on the Sergeant-at-Arms quick.
When shall I come? With love and a benediction.
MARK TWAIN.
This was mainly a joke. Mark Twain did not expect any "thanks," but
he did hope for access to the floor, which once, in an earlier day,
had been accorded him. We drove to the Capitol and he delivered his
letter to "Uncle Joe" by hand. "Uncle Joe" could not give him the
privilege of the floor; the rules had become more stringent. He
declared they would hang him if he did such a thing. He added that
he had a private room down-stairs, where Mark Twain might establish
headquarters, and that he would assign his colored servant, Neal, of
long acquaintanceship with many of the members, to pass the word
that Mark Twain was receiving.
The result was a great success. All that afternoon members of
Congress poured into the Speaker's room and, in an atmosphere blue
with tobacco smoke, Mark Twain talked the gospel of copyright to his
heart's content.
The bill did not come up for passage that session, but Mark Twain
lived to see his afternoon's lobbying bring a return. In 1909,
Champ Clark, and those others who had gathered around him that
afternoon, passed a measure that added fourteen years to the
copyright term.
The next letter refers to a proposed lobby of quite a different
sort.
To Helen Keller, in Wrentham, Mass.:
21 FIFTH AVENUE,
Dec. 23, '06.
DEAR HELEN KELLER,--. . . You say, "As a reformer, you know that
ideas must be driven home again and again."
Yes, I know it; and by old experience I know that speeches and documents
and public meetings are a pretty poor and lame way of accomplishing it.
Last year I proposed a sane way--one which I had practiced with success
for a quarter of a century--but I wasn't expecting it to get any
attention, and it didn't.
Give me a battalion of 200 winsome young girls and matrons, and let me
tell them what to do and how to do it, and I will be responsible for
shining results. If I could mass them on the stage in front of the
audience and instruct them there, I could make a public meeting take hold
of itself and do something really valuable for once. Not that the real
instruction would be done there, for it wouldn't; it would be previously
done privately, and merely repeated there.
But it isn't going to happen--the good old way will be stuck to: there'll
be a public meeting: with music, and prayer, and a wearying report, and a
verbal description of the marvels the blind can do, and 17 speeches--then
the call upon all present who are still alive, to contribute. This hoary
program was invented in the idiot asylum, and will never be changed. Its
function is to breed hostility to good causes.
Some day somebody will recruit my 200--my dear beguilesome Knights of the
Golden Fleece--and you will see them make good their ominous name.
Mind, we must meet! not in the grim and ghastly air of the platform,
mayhap, but by the friendly fire--here at 21.
Affectionately your friend,
S. L. CLEMENS.
They did meet somewhat later that winter in the friendly parlors of
No. 21, and friends gathered in to meet the marvelous blind girl and
to pay tribute to Miss Sullivan (Mrs. Macy) for her almost
incredible achievement.
MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1907-1910
ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
VOLUME VI.
XLVI
LETTERS 1907-08. A DEGREE FROM OXFORD. THE NEW HOME AT REDDING
The author, J. Howard Moore, sent a copy of his book, The Universal
Kinship, with a letter in which he said: "Most humorists have no
anxiety except to glorify themselves and add substance to their
pocket-books by making their readers laugh. You have shown, on many
occasions, that your mission is not simply to antidote the
melancholy of a world, but includes a real and intelligent concern
for the general welfare of your fellowman."
The Universal Kinship was the kind of a book that Mark Twain
appreciated, as his acknowledgment clearly shows.
To Mr. J. Howard Moore:
Feb. 2, '07.
DEAR MR. MOORE, The book has furnished me several days of deep pleasure
and satisfaction; it has compelled my gratitude at the same time, since
it saves me the labor of stating my own long-cherished opinions and
reflections and resentments by doing it lucidly and fervently and
irascibly for me.
There is one thing that always puzzles me: as inheritors of the mentality
of our reptile ancestors we have improved the inheritance by a thousand
grades; but in the matter of the morals which they left us we have gone
backward as many grades. That evolution is strange, and to me
unaccountable and unnatural. Necessarily we started equipped with their
perfect and blemishless morals; now we are wholly destitute; we have no
real, morals, but only artificial ones--morals created and preserved by
the forced suppression of natural and hellish instincts. Yet we are dull
enough to be vain of them. Certainly we are a sufficiently comical
invention, we humans.
Sincerely Yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Mark Twain's own books were always being excommunicated by some
librarian, and the matter never failed to invite the attention and
amusement of the press, and the indignation of many correspondents.
Usually the books were Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, the morals of which
were not regarded as wholly exemplary. But in 1907 a small library,
in a very small town, attained a day's national notoriety by putting
the ban on Eve's Diary, not so much on account of its text as for
the chaste and exquisite illustrations by Lester Ralph. When the
reporters came in a troop to learn about it, the author said: "I
believe this time the trouble is mainly with the pictures. I did
not draw them. I wish I had--they are so beautiful."
Just at this time, Dr. William Lyon Phelps, of Yale, was giving a
literary talk to the Teachers' Club, of Hartford, dwelling on the
superlative value of Mark Twain's writings for readers old and
young. Mrs. F. G. Whitmore, an old Hartford friend, wrote Clemens
of the things that Phelps had said, as consolation for Eve's latest
banishment. This gave him a chance to add something to what he had
said to the reporters.
To Mrs. Whitmore, in Hartford:
Feb. 7, 1907.
DEAR MRS. WHITMORE,--But the truth is, that when a Library expels a book
of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected
youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it
delights me and doesn't anger me. But even if it angered me such words
as those of Professor Phelps would take the sting all out. Nobody
attaches weight to the freaks of the Charlton Library, but when a man
like Phelps speaks, the world gives attention. Some day I hope to meet
him and thank him for his courage for saying those things out in public.
Custom is, to think a handsome thing in private but tame it down in the
utterance.
I hope you are all well and happy; and thereto I add my love.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
In May, 1907, Mark Twain was invited to England to receive from
Oxford the degree of Literary Doctor. It was an honor that came to
him as a sort of laurel crown at the end of a great career, and
gratified him exceedingly. To Moberly Bell, of the London Times,
he expressed his appreciation. Bell had been over in April and
Clemens believed him concerned in the matter.
To Moberly Bell, in London:
21 FIFTH AVENUE, May 3, '07
DEAR MR. BELL,--Your hand is in it! and you have my best thanks.
Although I wouldn't cross an ocean again for the price of the ship that
carried me, I am glad to do it for an Oxford degree. I shall plan to
sail for England a shade before the middle of June, so that I can have a
few days in London before the 26th.
Sincerely,
S. L. CLEMENS.
He had taken a house at Tuxedo for the summer, desiring to be near
New York City, and in the next letter he writes Mr. Rogers
concerning his London plans. We discover, also, in this letter that
he has begun work on the Redding home and the cost is to come
entirely out of the autobiographical chapters then running in the
North American Review. It may be of passing interest to note here
that he had the usual house-builder's fortune. He received thirty
thousand dollars for the chapters; the house cost him nearly double
that amount.
To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
TUXEDO PARK,
May 29, '07.
DEAR ADMIRAL,--Why hang it, I am not going to see you and Mrs. Rogers at
all in England! It is a great disappointment. I leave there a month
from now--June 29. No, I shall see you; for by your itinerary you are
most likely to come to London June 21st or along there. So that is very
good and satisfactory. I have declined all engagements but two--Whitelaw
Reid (dinner) June 21, and the Pilgrims (lunch), June 25. The Oxford
ceremony is June 26. I have paid my return passage in the
Minne-something, but it is just possible that I may want to stay in
England a week or two longer--I can't tell, yet. I do very much want
to meet up with the boys for the last time.
I have signed the contract for the building of the house on my
Connecticut farm and specified the cost limit, and work has been begun.
The cost has to all come out of a year's instalments of Autobiography in
the N. A. Review.
Clara, is winning her way to success and distinction with sure and steady
strides. By all accounts she is singing like a bird, and is not afraid
on the concert stage any more.
Tuxedo is a charming place; I think it hasn't its equal anywhere.
Very best wishes to you both.
S. L. C.
The story of Mark Twain's extraordinary reception and triumph in
England has been told.--[Mark Twain; A Biography, chaps. cclvi-
cclix]--It was, in fact, the crowning glory of his career. Perhaps
one of the most satisfactory incidents of his sojourn was a dinner
given to him by the staff of Punch, in the historic offices at 10
Bouverie Street where no other foreign visitor had been thus
honored--a notable distinction. When the dinner ended, little joy
Agnew, daughter of the chief editor, entered and presented to the
chief guest the original drawing of a cartoon by Bernard Partridge,
which had appeared on the front page of Punch. In this picture the
presiding genius of the paper is offering to Mark Twain health, long
life, and happiness from "The Punch Bowl."
A short time after his return to America he received a pretty
childish letter from little Miss Agnew acknowledging a photograph he
had sent her, and giving a list of her pets and occupations. Such a
letter always delighted Mark Twain, and his pleasure in this one is
reflected in his reply.
To Miss Joy Agnew, in London:
TUXEDO PARK, NEW YORK.
Unto you greetings and salutation and worship, you dear, sweet little
rightly-named Joy! I can see you now almost as vividly as I saw you that
night when you sat flashing and beaming upon those sombre swallow-tails.
"Fair as a star when only one
Is shining in the sky."
Oh, you were indeed the only one--there wasn't even the remotest chance
of competition with you, dear! Ah, you are a decoration, you little
witch!
The idea of your house going to the wanton expense of a flower garden!
--aren't you enough? And what do you want to go and discourage the other
flowers for? Is that the right spirit? is it considerate? is it kind?
How do you suppose they feel when you come around--looking the way you
look? And you so pink and sweet and dainty and lovely and supernatural?
Why, it makes them feel embarrassed and artificial, of course; and in my
opinion it is just as pathetic as it can be. Now then you want to
reform--dear--and do right.
Well certainly you are well off, Joy:
3 bantams;
3 goldfish;
3 doves;
6 canaries;
2 dogs;
1 cat;
All you need, now, to be permanently beyond the reach of want, is one
more dog--just one more good, gentle, high principled, affectionate,
loyal dog who wouldn't want any nobler service than the golden privilege
of lying at your door, nights, and biting everything that came along--and
I am that very one, and ready to come at the dropping of a hat.
Do you think you could convey my love and thanks to your "daddy" and Owen
Seaman and those other oppressed and down-trodden subjects of yours, you
darling small tyrant?
On my knees! These--with the kiss of fealty from your other subject--
MARK TWAIN
Elinor Glyn, author of Three Weeks and other erotic tales, was in
America that winter and asked permission to call on Mark Twain. An
appointment was made and Clemens discussed with her, for an hour or
more, those crucial phases of life which have made living a complex
problem since the days of Eve in Eden. Mrs. Glyn had never before
heard anything like Mark Twain's wonderful talk, and she was anxious
to print their interview. She wrote what she could remember of it
and sent it to him for approval. If his conversation had been
frank, his refusal was hardly less so.
To Mrs. Elinor Glyn, in New York:
Jan. 22, '08.
DEAR MRS. GLYN, It reads pretty poorly--I get the sense of it, but it is
a poor literary job; however, it would have to be that because nobody can
be reported even approximately, except by a stenographer.
Approximations, synopsized speeches, translated poems, artificial flowers
and chromos all have a sort of value, but it is small. If you had put
upon paper what I really said it would have wrecked your type-machine.
I said some fetid, over-vigorous things, but that was because it was a
confidential conversation. I said nothing for print. My own report of
the same conversation reads like Satan roasting a Sunday school. It, and
certain other readable chapters of my autobiography will not be published
until all the Clemens family are dead--dead and correspondingly
indifferent. They were written to entertain me, not the rest of the
world. I am not here to do good--at least not to do it intentionally.
You must pardon me for dictating this letter; I am sick a-bed and not
feeling as well as I might.
Sincerely Yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Among the cultured men of England Mark Twain had no greater admirer,
or warmer friend, than Andrew Lang. They were at one on most
literary subjects, and especially so in their admiration of the life
and character of Joan of Arc. Both had written of her, and both
held her to be something almost more than mortal. When, therefore,
Anatole France published his exhaustive biography of the maid of
Domremy, a book in which he followed, with exaggerated minuteness
and innumerable footnotes, every step of Joan's physical career at
the expense of her spiritual life, which he was inclined to cheapen,
Lang wrote feelingly, and with some contempt, of the performance,
inviting the author of the Personal Recollections to come to the
rescue of their heroine. "Compare every one of his statements with
the passages he cites from authorities, and make him the laughter of
the world" he wrote. "If you are lazy about comparing I can make
you a complete set of what the authorities say, and of what this
amazing novelist says that they say. When I tell you that he thinks
the Epiphany (January 6, Twelfth Night) is December 25th--Christmas
Day-you begin to see what an egregious ass he is. Treat him like
Dowden, and oblige"--a reference to Mark Twain's defense of Harriet
Shelley, in which he had heaped ridicule on Dowden's Life of the
Poet--a masterly performance; one of the best that ever came from
Mark Twain's pen.
Lang's suggestion would seem to have been a welcome one.
To Andrew Lang, in London:
NEW YORK, April 25, 1908.
DEAR MR. LANG,--I haven't seen the book nor any review of it, but only
not very-understandable references to it--of a sort which discomforted
me, but of course set my interest on fire. I don't want to have to read
it in French--I should lose the nice shades, and should do a lot of gross
misinterpreting, too. But there'll be a translation soon, nicht wahr?
I will wait for it. I note with joy that you say: "If you are lazy about
comparing, (which I most certainly am), I can make you a complete set of
what the authorities say, and of what this amazing novelist says that
they say."
Ah, do it for me! Then I will attempt the article, and (if I succeed in
doing it to my satisfaction,) will publish it. It is long since I
touched a pen (3 1/2 years), and I was intending to continue this happy
holiday to the gallows, but--there are things that could beguile me to
break this blessed Sabbath.
Yours very sincerely,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Certainly it is an interesting fact that an Englishman--one of the
race that burned Joan--should feel moved to defend her memory
against the top-heavy perversions of a distinguished French author.
But Lang seems never to have sent the notes. The copying would have
been a tremendous task, and perhaps he never found the time for it.
We may regret to-day that he did not, for Mark Twain's article on
the French author's Joan would have been at least unique.
Samuel Clemens could never accustom himself to the loss of his wife.
From the time of her death, marriage-which had brought him his
greatest joy in life-presented itself to him always with the thought
of bereavement, waiting somewhere just behind. The news of an
approaching wedding saddened him and there was nearly always a
somber tinge in his congratulations, of which the following to a
dear friend is an example:
To Father Fitz-Simon, in Washington:
June 5, '08.
DEAR FATHER FITZ-SIMON,--Marriage--yes, it is the supreme felicity of
life, I concede it. And it is also the supreme tragedy of life. The
deeper the love the surer the tragedy. And the more disconsolating when
it comes.
And so I congratulate you. Not perfunctorily, not lukewarmly, but with a
fervency and fire that no word in the dictionary is strong enough to
convey. And in the same breath and with the same depth and sincerity,
I grieve for you. Not for both of you and not for the one that shall go
first, but for the one that is fated to be left behind. For that one
there is no recompense.--For that one no recompense is possible.
There are times--thousands of times--when I can expose the half of my
mind, and conceal the other half, but in the matter of the tragedy of
marriage I feel too deeply for that, and I have to bleed it all out or
shut it all in. And so you must consider what I have been through, and
am passing through and be charitable with me.
Make the most of the sunshine! and I hope it will last long--ever so
long.
I do not really want to be present; yet for friendship's sake and because
I honor you so, I would be there if I could.
Most sincerely your friend,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The new home at Redding was completed in the spring of 1908, and on
the 18th of June, when it was entirely fitted and furnished, Mark
Twain entered it for the first time. He had never even seen the
place nor carefully examined plans which John Howells had made for
his house. He preferred the surprise of it, and the general
avoidance of detail. That he was satisfied with the result will be
seen in his letters. He named it at first "Innocence at Home";
later changing this title to "Stormfield."
The letter which follows is an acknowledgment of an interesting
souvenir from the battle-field of Tewksbury (1471), and some relics
of the Cavalier and Roundhead Regiments encamped at Tewksbury in
1643.
To an English admirer:
INNOCENCE AT HOME, REDDING, CONNECTICUT,
Aug. 15, '08.
DEAR SIR,--I highly prize the pipes, and shall intimate to people that
"Raleigh" smoked them, and doubtless he did. After a little practice I
shall be able to go further and say he did; they will then be the most
interesting features of my library's decorations. The Horse-shoe is
attracting a good deal of attention, because I have intimated that the
conqueror's horse cast it; it will attract more when I get my hand in and
say he cast it, I thank you for the pipes and the shoe; and also for the
official guide, which I read through at a single sitting. If a person
should say that about a book of mine I should regard it as good evidence
of the book's interest.
Very truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
In his philosophy, What Is Man?, and now and again in his other
writings, we find Mark Twain giving small credit to the human mind
as an originator of ideas. The most original writer of his time, he
took no credit for pure invention and allowed none to others. The
mind, he declared, adapted, consciously or unconsciously; it did not
create. In a letter which follows he elucidates this doctrine. The
reference in it to the "captain" and to the kerosene, as the reader
may remember, have to do with Captain "Hurricane" Jones and his
theory of the miracles of "Isaac and of the prophets of Baal," as
expounded in Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion.
By a trick of memory Clemens gives The Little Duke as his suggestion
for The Prince and the Pauper; he should have written The Prince and
the Page, by the same author.
To Rev. F. Y. Christ, in New York:
REDDING, CONN., Aug., '08.
DEAR SIR,--You say "I often owe my best sermons to a suggestion received
in reading or from other exterior sources." Your remark is not quite in
accordance with the facts. We must change it to--"I owe all my thoughts,
sermons and ideas to suggestions received from sources outside of myself."
The simplified English of this proposition is--"No man's brains ever
originated an idea." It is an astonishing thing that after all these
ages the world goes on thinking the human brain machinery can originate a
thought.
It can't. It never has done it. In all cases, little and big, the
thought is born of a suggestion; and in all cases the suggestions come to
the brain from the outside. The brain never acts except from exterior
impulse.
A man can satisfy himself of the truth of this by a single process,--let
him examine every idea that occurs to him in an hour; a day; in a week
--in a lifetime if he please. He will always find that an outside
something suggested the thought, something which he saw with his eyes or
heard with his ears or perceived by his touch--not necessarily to-day,
nor yesterday, nor last year, nor twenty years ago, but sometime or
other. Usually the source of the suggestion is immediately traceable,
but sometimes it isn't.
However, if you will examine every thought that occurs to you for the
next two days, you will find that in at least nine cases out of ten you
can put your finger on the outside suggestion--And that ought to convince
you that No. 10 had that source too, although you cannot at present hunt
it down and find it.
The idea of writing to me would have had to wait a long time if it waited
until your brain originated it. It was born of an outside suggestion
--Sir Thomas and my old Captain.
The hypnotist thinks he has invented a new thing--suggestion. This is
very sad. I don't know where my captain got his kerosene idea. (It was
forty-one years ago, and he is long ago dead.) But I know that it didn't
originate in his head, but it was born from a suggestion from the
outside.
Yesterday a guest said, "How did you come to think of writing 'The Prince
and the Pauper?'" I didn't. The thought came to me from the outside
--suggested by that pleasant and picturesque little history-book, Charlotte
M. Yonge's "Little Duke," I doubt if Mrs. Burnett knows whence came to
her the suggestion to write "Little Lord Fauntleroy," but I know; it came
to her from reading "The Prince and the Pauper." In all my life I have
never originated an idea, and neither has she, nor anybody else.
Man's mind is a clever machine, and can work up materials into ingenious
fancies and ideas, but it can't create the material; none but the gods
can do that. In Sweden I saw a vast machine receive a block of wood, and
turn it into marketable matches in two minutes. It could do everything
but make the wood. That is the kind of machine the human mind is. Maybe
this is not a large compliment, but it is all I can afford.....
Your friend and well-wisher
S. L. CLEMENS.
To Mrs. H. H. Rogers, in Fair Hawn, Mass.:
REDDING, CONN, Aug. 12, 1908.
DEAR MRS. ROGERS, I believe I am the wellest man on the planet to-day,
and good for a trip to Fair Haven (which I discussed with the Captain of
the New Bedford boat, who pleasantly accosted me in the Grand Central
August 5) but the doctor came up from New York day before yesterday, and
gave positive orders that I must not stir from here before frost. It is
because I was threatened with a swoon, 10 or 12 days ago, and went to New
York a day or two later to attend my nephew's funeral and got horribly
exhausted by the heat and came back here and had a bilious collapse. In
24 hours I was as sound as a nut again, but nobody believes it but me.
This is a prodigiously satisfactory place, and I am so glad I don't have
to go back to the turmoil and rush of New York. The house stands high
and the horizons are wide, yet the seclusion is perfect. The nearest
public road is half a mile away, so there is nobody to look in, and I
don't have to wear clothes if I don't want to. I have been down stairs
in night-gown and slippers a couple of hours, and have been photographed
in that costume; but I will dress, now, and behave myself.
That doctor had half an idea that there is something the matter with my
brain. . . Doctors do know so little and they do charge so much for
it. I wish Henry Rogers would come here, and I wish you would come with
him. You can't rest in that crowded place, but you could rest here, for
sure! I would learn bridge, and entertain you, and rob you.
With love to you both,
Ever yours,
S. L. C.
In the foregoing letter we get the first intimation of Mark Twain's
failing health. The nephew who had died was Samuel E. Moffett, son
of Pamela Clemens. Moffett, who was a distinguished journalist--an
editorial writer on Collier's Weekly, a man beloved by all who knew
him--had been drowned in the surf off the Jersey beach.
To W. D. Howells, Kittery Point, Maine:
Aug. 12, '08.
DEAR HOWELLS,--Won't you and Mrs. Howells and Mildred come and give us as
many days as you can spare, and examine John's triumph? It is the most
satisfactory house I am acquainted with, and the most satisfactorily
situated.
But it is no place to work in, because one is outside of it all the time,
while the sun and the moon are on duty. Outside of it in the loggia,
where the breezes blow and the tall arches divide up the scenery and
frame it.
It's a ghastly long distance to come, and I wouldn't travel such a
distance to see anything short of a memorial museum, but if you can't
come now you can at least come later when you return to New York, for the
journey will be only an hour and a half per express-train. Things are
gradually and steadily taking shape inside the house, and nature is
taking care of the outside in her ingenious and wonderful fashion--and
she is competent and asks no help and gets none. I have retired from New
York for good, I have retired from labor for good, I have dismissed my
stenographer and have entered upon a holiday whose other end is in the
cemetery.
Yours ever,
MARK.
From a gentleman in Buffalo Clemens one day received a letter
inclosing an incompleted list of the world's "One Hundred Greatest
Men," men who had exerted "the largest visible influence on the life
and activities of the race." The writer asked that Mark Twain
examine the list and suggest names, adding "would you include Jesus,
as the founder of Christianity, in the list?"
To the list of statesmen Clemens added the name of Thomas Paine; to
the list of inventors, Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. The
question he answered in detail.
To-----------, Buffalo, N. Y.
Private. REDDING, CONN, Aug. 28, '08.
DEAR SIR,--By "private," I mean don't print any remarks of mine.
..................
I like your list.
The "largest visible influence."
These terms require you to add Jesus. And they doubly and trebly require
you to add Satan. From A.D. 350 to A.D. 1850 these gentlemen exercised a
vaster influence over a fifth part of the human race than was exercised
over that fraction of the race by all other influences combined.
Ninety-nine hundredths of this influence proceeded from Satan, the
remaining fraction of it from Jesus. During those 1500 years the fear of
Satan and Hell made 99 Christians where love of God and Heaven landed
one. During those 1500 years, Satan's influence was worth very nearly a
hundred times as much to the business as was the influence of all the
rest of the Holy Family put together.
You have asked me a question, and I have answered it seriously and
sincerely. You have put in Buddha--a god, with a following, at one time,
greater than Jesus ever had: a god with perhaps a little better evidence
of his godship than that which is offered for Jesus's. How then, in
fairness, can you leave Jesus out? And if you put him in, how can you
logically leave Satan out? Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but
it is the lightning that does the work.
Very truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The "Children's Theatre" of the next letter was an institution of
the New York East Side in which Mark Twain was deeply interested.
The children were most, if not all, of Hebrew parentage, and the
performances they gave, under the direction of Alice M. Herts, were
really remarkable. It seemed a pity that lack of funds should have
brought this excellent educational venture to an untimely end.
The following letter was in reply to one inclosing a newspaper
clipping reporting a performance of The Prince and the Pauper, given
by Chicago school children.
To Mrs. Hookway, in Chicago:
Sept., 1908.
DEAR MRS. HOOKWAY,--Although I am full of the spirit of work this
morning, a rarity with me lately--I must steal a moment or two for a
word in person: for I have been reading the eloquent account in the
Record-Herald and am pleasurably stirred, to my deepest deeps. The
reading brings vividly back to me my pet and pride. The Children's
Theatre of the East side, New York. And it supports and re-affirms what
I have so often and strenuously said in public that a children's theatre
is easily the most valuable adjunct that any educational institution for
the young can have, and that no otherwise good school is complete without
it.
It is much the most effective teacher of morals and promoter of good
conduct that the ingenuity of man has yet devised, for the reason that
its lessons are not taught wearily by book and by dreary homily, but by
visible and enthusing action; and they go straight to the heart, which is
the rightest of right places for them. Book morals often get no further
than the intellect, if they even get that far on their spectral and
shadowy pilgrimage: but when they travel from a Children's Theatre they
do not stop permanently at that halfway house, but go on home.
The children's theatre is the only teacher of morals and conduct and high
ideals that never bores the pupil, but always leaves him sorry when the
lesson is over. And as for history, no other teacher is for a moment
comparable to it: no other can make the dead heroes of the world rise up
and shake the dust of the ages from their bones and live and move and
breathe and speak and be real to the looker and listener: no other can
make the study of the lives and times of the illustrious dead a delight,
a splendid interest, a passion; and no other can paint a history-lesson
in colors that will stay, and stay, and never fade.
It is my conviction that the children's theatre is one of the very, very
great inventions of the twentieth century; and that its vast educational
value--now but dimly perceived and but vaguely understood--will presently
come to be recognized. By the article which I have been reading I find
the same things happening in the Howland School that we have become
familiar with in our Children's Theatre (of which I am President, and
sufficiently vain of the distinction.) These things among others;
1. The educating history-study does not stop with the little players,
but the whole school catches the infection and revels in it.
2. And it doesn't even stop there; the children carry it home and infect
the family with it--even the parents and grandparents; and the whole
household fall to studying history, and bygone manners and customs and
costumes with eager interest. And this interest is carried along to the
studying of costumes in old book-plates; and beyond that to the selecting
of fabrics and the making of clothes. Hundreds of our children learn,
the plays by listening without book, and by making notes; then the
listener goes home and plays the piece--all the parts! to the family.
And the family are glad and proud; glad to listen to the explanations and
analyses, glad to learn, glad to be lifted to planes above their dreary
workaday lives. Our children's theatre is educating 7,000 children--and
their families. When we put on a play of Shakespeare they fall to
studying it diligently; so that they may be qualified to enjoy it to the
limit when the piece is staged.
3. Your Howland School children do the construction-work,
stage-decorations, etc. That is our way too. Our young folks do
everything that is needed by the theatre, with their own hands;
scene-designing, scene-painting, gas-fitting, electric work,
costume-designing--costume making, everything and all things indeed--and
their orchestra and its leader are from their own ranks.
The article which I have been reading, says--speaking of the historical
play produced by the pupils of the Howland School--
"The question naturally arises, What has this drama done for those who so
enthusiastically took part?--The touching story has made a year out of
the Past live for the children as could no chronology or bald statement
of historical events; it has cultivated the fancy and given to the
imagination strength and purity; work in composition has ceased to be
drudgery, for when all other themes fall flat a subject dealing with some
aspect of the drama presented never fails to arouse interest and a rapid
pushing of pens over paper."
That is entirely true. The interest is not confined to the drama's
story, it spreads out all around the period of the story, and gives to
all the outlying and unrelated happenings of that period a fascinating
interest--an interest which does not fade out with the years, but remains
always fresh, always inspiring, always welcome. History-facts dug by the
job, with sweat and tears out of a dry and spiritless text-book--but
never mind, all who have suffered know what that is. . .
I remain, dear madam,
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Mark Twain had a special fondness for cats. As a boy he always
owned one and it generally had a seat beside him at the table.
There were cats at Quarry Farm and at Hartford, and in the house at
Redding there was a gray mother-cat named Tammany, of which he was
especially fond. Kittens capering about were his chief delight.
In a letter to a Chicago woman he tells how those of Tammany
assisted at his favorite game.
To Mrs. Mabel Larkin Patterson, in Chicago:
REDDING, CONNECTICUT,
Oct. 2, '08.
DEAR MRS. PATTERSON,--The contents of your letter are very pleasant and
very welcome, and I thank you for them, sincerely. If I can find a
photograph of my "Tammany" and her kittens, I will enclose it in this.
One of them likes to be crammed into a corner-pocket of the billiard
table--which he fits as snugly as does a finger in a glove and then he
watches the game (and obstructs it) by the hour, and spoils many a shot
by putting out his paw and changing the direction of a passing ball.
Whenever a ball is in his arms, or so close to him that it cannot be
played upon without risk of hurting him, the player is privileged to
remove it to anyone of the 3 spots that chances to be vacant.
Ah, no, my lecturing days are over for good and all.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The letter to Howells which follows was written a short time before
the passage of the copyright extension bill, which rendered Mark
Twain's new plan, here mentioned, unneeded--at least for the time.
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
Monday, Oct. 26, '08.
Oh, I say! Where are you hiding, and why are you hiding? You promised
to come here and you didn't keep your word. (This sounds like
astonishment--but don't be misled by that.)
Come, fire up again on your fiction-mill and give us another good
promise. And this time keep it--for it is your turn to be astonished.
Come and stay as long as you possibly can. I invented a new copyright
extension scheme last Friday, and sat up all night arranging its details.
It will interest you. Yesterday I got it down on paper in as compact a
form as I could. Harvey and I have examined the scheme, and to-morrow or
next day he will send me a couple of copyright-experts to arrange about
getting certain statistics for me.
Authors, publishers and the public have always been damaged by the
copyright laws. The proposed amendment will advantage all three--the
public most of all. I think Congress will pass it and settle the vexed
question permanently.
I shall need your assent and the assent of about a dozen other authors.
Also the assent of all the large firms of the 300 publishers. These
authors and publishers will furnish said assent I am sure. Not even the
pirates will be able to furnish a serious objection, I think.
Come along. This place seemed at its best when all around was
summer-green; later it seemed at its best when all around was burning
with the autumn splendors; and now once more it seems at its best, with
the trees naked and the ground a painter's palette.
Yours ever,
MARK.
Clemens was a great admirer of the sea stories of W. W. Jacobs and
generally kept one or more of this author's volumes in reach of his
bed, where most of his reading was done. The acknowledgment that
follows was sent when he had finished Salthaven.
To W. W. Jacobs, in England:
REDDING, CONN,
Oct. 28, '08.
DEAR MR. JACOBS,--It has a delightful look. I will not venture to say
how delightful, because the words would sound extravagant, and would
thereby lose some of their strength and to that degree misrepresent me.
It is my conviction that Dialstone Lane holds the supremacy over all
purely humorous books in our language, but I feel about Salthaven as the
Cape Cod poet feels about Simon Hanks:
"The Lord knows all things, great and small,
With doubt he's not perplexed:
'Tis Him alone that knows it all
But Simon Hanks comes next."
The poet was moved by envy and malice and jealousy, but I am not: I place
Salthaven close up next to Dialstone because I think it has a fair and
honest right to that high position. I have kept the other book moving;
I shall begin to hand this one around now.
And many thanks to you for remembering me.
This house is out in the solitudes of the woods and the hills, an hour
and a half from New York, and I mean to stay in it winter and summer the
rest of my days. I beg you to come and help occupy it a few days the
next time you visit the U.S.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
One of the attractions of Stormfield was a beautiful mantel in the
billiard room, presented by the Hawaiian Promotion Committee. It
had not arrived when the rest of the house was completed, but came
in time to be set in place early in the morning of the owner's
seventy-third birthday. It was made of a variety of Hawaiian woods,
and was the work of a native carver, F. M. Otremba. Clemens was
deeply touched by the offering from those "western isles"--the
memory of which was always so sweet to him.
To Mr. Wood, in Hawaii:
Nov. 30, '08.
DEAR MR. WOOD,--The beautiful mantel was put in its place an hour ago,
and its friendly "Aloha" was the first uttered greeting my 73rd birthday
received. It is rich in color, rich in quality, and rich in decoration,
therefore it exactly harmonizes with the taste for such things which was
born in me and which I have seldom been able to indulge to my content.
It will be a great pleasure to me, daily renewed, to have under my eye
this lovely reminder of the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored
in any ocean, and I beg to thank the Committee for providing me that
pleasure.
Sincerely Yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
XLVII
LETTERS, 1909. TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. LIFE AT STORMFIELD. COPYRIGHT
EXTENSION. DEATH OF JEAN CLEMENS
Clemens remained at Stormfield all that winter. New York was sixty
miles away and he did not often care to make the journey. He was
constantly invited to this or that public gathering, or private
party, but such affairs had lost interest for him. He preferred the
quiet of his luxurious home with its beautiful outlook, while for
entertainment he found the billiard afternoons sufficient. Guests
came from the city, now and again, for week-end visits, and if he
ever was restless or lonely he did not show it.
Among the invitations that came was one from General O. O. Howard
asking him to preside at a meeting to raise an endowment fund for a
Lincoln Memorial University at Cumberland Gap, Tennessee. Closing
his letter, General Howard said, "Never mind if you did fight on the
other side."
To General O. O. Howard:
STORMFIELD, REDDING, CONNECTICUT,
Jan, 12, '09.
DEAR GENERAL HOWARD,--You pay me a most gratifying compliment in asking
me to preside, and it causes me very real regret that I am obliged to
decline, for the object of the meeting appeals strongly to me, since that
object is to aid in raising the $500,000 Endowment Fund for Lincoln
Memorial University. The Endowment Fund will be the most fitting of all
the memorials the country will dedicate to the memory of Lincoln,
serving, as it will, to uplift his very own people.
I hope you will meet with complete success, and I am sorry I cannot be
there to witness it and help you rejoice. But I am older than people
think, and besides I live away out in the country and never stir from
home, except at geological intervals, to fill left-over engagements in
mesozoic times when I was younger and indiscreeter.
You ought not to say sarcastic things about my "fighting on the other
side." General Grant did not act like that. General Grant paid me
compliments. He bracketed me with Zenophon--it is there in his Memoirs
for anybody to read. He said if all the confederate soldiers had
followed my example and adopted my military arts he could never have
caught enough of them in a bunch to inconvenience the Rebellion. General
Grant was a fair man, and recognized my worth; but you are prejudiced,
and you have hurt my feelings.
But I have an affection for you, anyway.
MARK TWAIN.
One of Mark Twain's friends was Henniker-Heaton, the so-called
"Father of Penny Postage" between England and America. When, after
long years of effort, he succeeded in getting the rate established,
he at once bent his energies in the direction of cheap cable service
and a letter from him came one day to Stormfield concerning his new
plans. This letter happened to be over-weight, which gave Mark
Twain a chance for some amusing exaggerations at his expense.
To Henniker-Heaton, in London:
STORMFIELD, REDDING, CONNECTICUT,
Jan. 18, 1909.
DEAR HENNIKER-HEATON,--I do hope you will succeed to your heart's desire
in your cheap-cablegram campaign, and I feel sure you will. Indeed your
cheap-postage victory, achieved in spite of a quarter-century of
determined opposition, is good and rational prophecy that you will.
Wireless, not being as yet imprisoned in a Chinese wall of private cash
and high-placed and formidable influence, will come to your aid and make
your new campaign briefer and easier than the other one was.
Now then, after uttering my serious word, am I privileged to be frivolous
for a moment? When you shall have achieved cheap telegraphy, are you
going to employ it for just your own selfish profit and other people's
pecuniary damage, the way you are doing with your cheap postage? You get
letter-postage reduced to 2 cents an ounce, then you mail me a 4-ounce
letter with a 2-cent stamp on it, and I have to pay the extra freight at
this end of the line. I return your envelope for inspection. Look at
it. Stamped in one place is a vast "T," and under it the figures "40,"
and under those figures appears an "L," a sinister and suspicious and
mysterious L. In another place, stamped within a circle, in offensively
large capitals, you find the words "DUE 8 CENTS." Finally, in the midst
of a desert space up nor-noreastard from that circle you find a figure
"3" of quite unnecessarily aggressive and insolent magnitude--and done
with a blue pencil, so as to be as conspicuous as possible. I inquired
about these strange signs and symbols of the postman. He said they were
P. O. Department signals for his instruction.
"Instruction for what?"
"To get extra postage."
"Is it so? Explain. Tell me about the large T and the 40.
"It's short for Take 40--or as we postmen say, grab 40"
Go on, please, while I think up some words to swear with."
"Due 8 means, grab 8 more."
"Continue."
"The blue-pencil 3 was an afterthought. There aren't any stamps for
afterthoughts; the sums vary, according to inspiration, and they whirl in
the one that suggests itself at the last moment. Sometimes they go
several times higher than this one. This one only means hog 3 cents
more. And so if you've got 51 cents about you, or can borrow it--"
"Tell me: who gets this corruption?"
"Half of it goes to the man in England who ships the letter on short
postage, and the other half goes to the P.O.D. to protect cheap postage
from inaugurating a deficit."
"-------------------"
"I can't blame you; I would say it myself in your place, if these ladies
were not present. But you see I'm only obeying orders, I can't help
myself."
"Oh, I know it; I'm not blaming you. Finally, what does that L stand
for?"
"Get the money, or give him L. It's English, you know."
"Take it and go. It's the last cent I've got in the world--."
After seeing the Oxford pageant file by the grand stand, picture after
picture, splendor after splendor, three thousand five hundred strong, the
most moving and beautiful and impressive and historically-instructive
show conceivable, you are not to think I would miss the London pageant of
next year, with its shining host of 15,000 historical English men and
women dug from the misty books of all the vanished ages and marching in
the light of the sun--all alive, and looking just as they were used to
look! Mr. Lascelles spent yesterday here on the farm, and told me all
about it. I shall be in the middle of my 75th year then, and interested
in pageants for personal and prospective reasons.
I beg you to give my best thanks to the Bath Club for the offer of its
hospitalities, but I shall not be able to take advantage of it, because I
am to be a guest in a private house during my stay in London.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
It was in 1907 that Clemens had seen the Oxford Pageant--during the
week when he had been awarded his doctor's degree. It gave him the
greatest delight, and he fully expected to see the next one, planned
for 1910.
In the letter to Howells which follows we get another glimpse of
Mark Twain's philosophy of man, the irresponsible machine.
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
STORMFIELD, REDDING, CONN.,
Jan. 18, '09.
DEAR HOWELLS,--I have to write a line, lazy as I am, to say how your Poe
article delighted me; and to say that I am in agreement with
substantially all you say about his literature. To me his prose is
unreadable--like Jane Austin's. No, there is a difference. I could read
his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It
seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.
Another thing: you grant that God and circumstances sinned against Poe,
but you also grant that he sinned against himself--a thing which he
couldn't do and didn't do.
It is lively up here now. I wish you could come.
Yrs ever,
MARK
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
STORMFIELD, REDDING, CONNECTICUT,
3 in the morning, Apl. 17, '09.
[Written with pencil].
My pen has gone dry and the ink is out of reach. Howells, Did you write
me day-before-day before yesterday, or did I dream it? In my mind's eye
I most vividly see your hand-write on a square blue envelop in the
mailpile. I have hunted the house over, but there is no such letter.
Was it an illusion?
I am reading Lowell's letter, and smoking. I woke an hour ago and am
reading to keep from wasting the time. On page 305, vol. I. I have
just margined a note:
"Young friend! I like that! You ought to see him now."
It seemed startlingly strange to hear a person call you young. It was a
brick out of a blue sky, and knocked me groggy for a moment. Ah me, the
pathos of it is, that we were young then. And he--why, so was he, but he
didn't know it. He didn't even know it 9 years later, when we saw him
approaching and you warned me, saying, "Don't say anything about age--he
has just turned fifty, and thinks he is old and broods over it."
[Well, Clara did sing! And you wrote her a dear letter.]
Time to go to sleep.
Yours ever,
MARK.
To Daniel Kiefer:
[No date.]
DANL KIEFER ESQ. DEAR SIR,--I should be far from willing to have a
political party named after me.
I would not be willing to belong to a party which allowed its members to
have political aspirations or to push friends forward for political
preferment.
Yours very truly,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The copyright extension, for which the author had been working so
long, was granted by Congress in 1909, largely as the result of that
afternoon in Washington when Mark Twain had "received" in "Uncle
Joe" Cannon's private room, and preached the gospel of copyright
until the daylight faded and the rest of the Capitol grew still.
Champ Clark was the last to linger that day and they had talked far
into the dusk. Clark was powerful, and had fathered the bill. Now
he wrote to know if it was satisfactory.
To Champ Clark, in Washington:
STORMFIELD, REDDING, CONN., June 5, '09.
DEAR CHAMP CLARK--Is the new copyright law acceptable to me?
Emphatically, yes! Clark, it is the only sane, and clearly defined, and
just and righteous copyright law that has ever existed in the United
States. Whosoever will compare it with its predecessors will have no
trouble in arriving at that decision.
The bill which was before the committee two years ago when I was down
there was the most stupefying jumble of conflicting and apparently
irreconcilable interests that was ever seen; and we all said "the case is
hopeless, absolutely hopeless--out of this chaos nothing can be built."
But we were in error; out of that chaotic mass this excellent bill has
been instructed; the warring interests have been reconciled, and the
result is as comely and substantial a legislative edifice as lifts its
domes and towers and protective lightning rods out of the statute book,
I think. When I think of that other bill, which even the Deity couldn't
understand, and of this one which even I can understand, I take off my
hat to the man or men who devised this one. Was it R. U. Johnson? Was
it the Author's League? Was it both together? I don't know, but I take
off my hat, anyway. Johnson has written a valuable article about the new
law--I enclose it.
At last--at last and for the first time in copyright history we are ahead
of England! Ahead of her in two ways: by length of time and by fairness
to all interests concerned. Does this sound like shouting? Then I must
modify it: all we possessed of copyright-justice before the fourth of
last March we owed to England's initiative.
Truly Yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Because Mark Twain amused himself with certain aspects of Christian
Science, and was critical of Mrs. Eddy, there grew up a wide
impression that he jeered at the theory of mental healing; when, as
a matter of fact, he was one of its earliest converts, and never
lost faith in its power. The letter which follows is an excellent
exposition of his attitude toward the institution of Christian
Science and the founder of the church in America.
To J. Wylie Smith, Glasgow, Scotland:
"STORMFIELD," August 7, 1909
DEAR SIR,--My view of the matter has not changed. To wit, that Christian
Science is valuable; that it has just the same value now that it had when
Mrs. Eddy stole it from Quimby; that its healing principle (its most
valuable asset) possesses the same force now that it possessed a million
years ago before Quimby was born; that Mrs. Eddy. . . organized that
force, and is entitled to high credit for that. Then, with a splendid
sagacity she hitched it to. . . a religion, the surest of all ways to
secure friends for it, and support. In a fine and lofty way
--figuratively speaking--it was a tramp stealing a ride on the lightning
express. Ah, how did that ignorant village-born peasant woman know the
human being so well? She has no more intellect than a tadpole--until it
comes to business then she is a marvel! Am I sorry I wrote the book?
Most certainly not. You say you have 500 (converts) in Glasgow. Fifty
years from now, your posterity will not count them by the hundred, but by
the thousand. I feel absolutely sure of this.
Very truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Clemens wrote very little for publication that year, but he enjoyed
writing for his own amusement, setting down the things that boiled,
or bubbled, within him: mainly chapters on the inconsistencies of
human deportment, human superstition and human creeds. The "Letters
from the Earth" referred to in the following, were supposed to have
been written by an immortal visitant from some far realm to a
friend, describing the absurdities of mankind. It is true, as he
said, that they would not do for publication, though certainly the
manuscript contains some of his mgt delicious writing. Miss
Wallace, to whom the next letter is written, had known Mark Twain in
Bermuda, and, after his death, published a dainty volume entitled
Mark Twain in the Happy Island.
"STORMFIELD," REDDING, CONNECTICUT,
Nov. 13, '09.
DEAR BETSY,--I've been writing "Letters from the Earth," and if you will
come here and see us I will--what? Put the MS in your hands, with the
places to skip marked? No. I won't trust you quite that far. I'll read
messages to you. This book will never be published--in fact it couldn't
be, because it would be felony to soil the mails with it, for it has much
Holy Scripture in it of the kind that . . . can't properly be read
aloud, except from the pulpit and in family worship. Paine enjoys it,
but Paine is going to be damned one of these days, I suppose.
The autumn splendors passed you by? What a pity. I wish you had been
here. It was beyond words! It was heaven and hell and sunset and
rainbows and the aurora all fused into one divine harmony, and you
couldn't look at it and keep the tears back. All the hosannahing strong
gorgeousnesses have gone back to heaven and hell and the pole, now, but
no matter; if you could look out of my bedroom window at this moment, you
would choke up; and when you got your voice you would say: This is not
real, this is a dream. Such a singing together, and such a whispering
together, and such a snuggling together of cosy soft colors, and such
kissing and caressing, and such pretty blushing when the sun breaks out
and catches those dainty weeds at it--you remember that weed-garden of
mine?--and then--then the far hills sleeping in a dim blue trance--oh,
hearing about it is nothing, you should be here to see it.
Good! I wish I could go on the platform and read. And I could, if it
could be kept out of the papers. There's a charity-school of 400 young
girls in Boston that I would give my ears to talk to, if I had some more;
but--oh, well, I can't go, and it's no use to grieve about it.
This morning Jean went to town; also Paine; also the butler; also Katy;
also the laundress. The cook and the maid, and the boy and the
roustabout and Jean's coachman are left--just enough to make it lonesome,
because they are around yet never visible. However, the Harpers are
sending Leigh up to play billiards; therefore I shall survive.
Affectionately,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Early in June that year, Clemens had developed unmistakable symptoms
of heart trouble of a very serious nature. It was angina pectoris,
and while to all appearances he was as well as ever and usually felt
so, he was periodically visited by severe attacks of acute "breast
pains" which, as the months passed, increased in frequency and
severity. He was alarmed and distressed--not on his own account,
but because of his daughter Jean--a handsome girl, who had long been
subject to epileptic seizures. In case of his death he feared that
Jean would be without permanent anchorage, his other daughter,
Clara--following her marriage to Ossip Gabrilowitsch in October
--having taken up residence abroad.
This anxiety was soon ended. On the morning of December 24th, jean
Clemens was found dead in her apartment. She was not drowned in her
bath, as was reported, but died from heart exhaustion, the result of
her malady and the shock of cold water.
[Questionable diagnosis! D.W.]
The blow to her father was terrible, but heavy as it was, one may
perhaps understand that her passing in that swift, painless way must
have afforded him a measure of relief.
To Mrs. Gabrilowitsch, in Europe:
REDDING, CONN.,
Dec. 29, '09.
O, Clara, Clara dear, I am so glad she is out of it and safe--safe! I am
not melancholy; I shall never be melancholy again, I think. You see, I
was in such distress when I came to realize that you were gone far away
and no one stood between her and danger but me--and I could die at any
moment, and then--oh then what would become of her! For she was wilful,
you know, and would not have been governable.
You can't imagine what a darling she was, that last two or three days;
and how fine, and good, and sweet, and noble-and joyful, thank Heaven!
--and how intellectually brilliant. I had never been acquainted with
Jean before. I recognized that.
But I mustn't try to write about her--I can't. I have already poured my
heart out with the pen, recording that last day or two.
I will send you that--and you must let no one but Ossip read it.
Good-bye.
I love you so!
And Ossip.
FATHER.
The writing mentioned in the last paragraph was his article 'The Death of
Jean,' his last serious writing, and one of the world's most beautiful
examples of elegiac prose.--[Harper's Magazine, Dec., 1910,] and later in
the volume, 'What Is Man and Other Essays.'
XLVIII
LETTERS OF 1910. LAST TRIP TO BERMUDA. LETTERS TO PAINE.
THE LAST LETTER
Mark Twain had returned from a month's trip to Bermuda a few days
before Jean died. Now, by his physician's advice, he went back to
those balmy islands. He had always loved them, since his first trip
there with Twichell thirty-three years earlier, and at "Bay House,"
the residence of Vice-Consul Allen, where he was always a welcome
guest, he could have the attentions and care and comforts of a home.
Taking Claude, the butler, as his valet, he sailed January 5th, and
presently sent back a letter in which he said, "Again I am leading
the ideal life, and am immeasurably content."
By his wish, the present writer and his family were keeping the
Stormfield house open for him, in order that he might be able to
return to its comforts at any time. He sent frequent letters--one
or two by each steamer--but as a rule they did not concern matters
of general interest. A little after his arrival, however, he wrote
concerning an incident of his former visit--a trivial matter--but
one which had annoyed him. I had been with him in Bermuda on the
earlier visit, and as I remember it, there had been some slight
oversight on his part in the matter of official etiquette--something
which doubtless no one had noticed but himself.
To A. B. Paine, in Redding:
BAY HOUSE, Jan. 11, 1910.
DEAR PAINE,--. . . There was a military lecture last night at the
Officer's Mess, prospect, and as the lecturer honored me with a special
and urgent invitation and said he wanted to lecture to me particularly,
I being "the greatest living master of the platform-art," I naturally
packed Helen and her mother into the provided carriage and went.
As soon as we landed at the door with the crowd the Governor came to me
at once and was very cordial, and apparently as glad to see me as he said
he was. So that incident is closed. And pleasantly and entirely
satisfactorily. Everything is all right, now, and I am no longer in a
clumsy and awkward situation.
I "met up" with that charming Colonel Chapman, and other officers of the
regiment, and had a good time.
Commandant Peters of the "Carnegie" will dine here tonight and arrange a
private visit for us to his ship, the crowd to be denied access.
Sincerely Yours,
S. L. C.
"Helen" of this letter was Mr. and Mrs. Allen's young daughter,
a favorite companion of his walks and drives. "Loomis" and "Lark,"
mentioned in the letters which follow, were Edward E. Loomis--his
nephew by marriage--named by Mark Twain as one of the trustees of
his estate, and Charles T. Lark, Mark Twain's attorney.
To A. B. Paine, in Redding:
HAMILTON, Jan. 21, '10.
DEAR PAINE,--Thanks for your letter, and for its contenting news of the
situation in that foreign and far-off and vaguely-remembered country
where you and Loomis and Lark and other beloved friends are.
I have a letter from Clara this morning. She is solicitous, and wants me
well and watchfully taken care of. My, she ought to see Helen and her
parents and Claude administer that trust!
Also she says: "I hope to hear from you or Mr. Paine very soon."
I am writing her, and I know you will respond to your part of her prayer.
She is pretty desolate now, after Jean's emancipation--the only kindness
God ever did that poor unoffending child in all her hard life.
Ys ever
S. L. C.
Send Clara a copy of Howells's gorgeous letter. I want a copy of my
article that he is speaking of.
The "gorgeous letter" was concerning Mark Twain's article, "The
Turning-point in My Life" which had just appeared in one of the
Harper publications. Howells wrote of it, "While your wonderful
words are warm in my mind yet, I want to tell you what you know
already: that you never wrote anything greater, finer, than that
turning-point paper of yours."
From the early Bermuda letters we may gather that Mark Twain's days
were enjoyable enough, and that his malady was not giving him
serious trouble, thus far. Near the end of January he wrote: "Life
continues here the same as usual. There isn't a flaw in it. Good
times, good home, tranquil contentment all day and every day,
without a break. I shouldn't know how to go about bettering my
situation." He did little in the way of literary work, probably
finding neither time nor inclination for it. When he wrote at all
it was merely to set down some fanciful drolleries with no thought
of publication.
To Prof. William Lyon Phelps, Yale College:
HAMILTON, March 12.
DEAR PROFESSOR PHELPS,--I thank you ever so much for the book--[Professor
Phelps's Essays on Modern Novelists.]--which I find charming--so charming
indeed, that I read it through in a single night, and did not regret the
lost night's sleep. I am glad if I deserve what you have said about me:
and even if I don't I am proud and well contented, since you think I
deserve it.
Yes, I saw Prof. Lounsbury, and had a most pleasant time with him. He
ought to have staid longer in this little paradise--partly for his own
sake, but mainly for mine.
I knew my poor Jean had written you. I shall not have so dear and sweet
a secretary again.
Good health to you, and all good fortune attend you.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
He would appear to have written not many letters besides those to
Mrs. Gabrilowitsch and to Stormfield, but when a little girl sent
him a report of a dream, inspired by reading The Prince and the
Pauper, he took the time and trouble to acknowledge it, realizing,
no doubt, that a line from him would give the child happiness.
To Miss Sulamith, in New York:
"BAY HOUSE," BERMUDA, March 21, 1910.
DEAR MISS SULAMITH,--I think it is a remarkable dream for a girl of 13 to
have dreamed, in fact for a person of any age to have dreamed, because it
moves by regular grade and sequence from the beginning to the end, which
is not the habit of dreams. I think your report of it is a good piece of
work, a clear and effective statement of the vision.
I am glad to know you like the "Prince and the Pauper" so well and I
believe with you that the dream is good evidence of that liking. I think
I may say, with your sister that I like myself best when I am serious.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Through February, and most of March, letters and reports from him
were about the same. He had begun to plan for his return, and
concerning amusements at Stormfield for the entertainment of the
neighbors, and for the benefit of the library which he had founded
soon after his arrival in Redding. In these letters he seldom
mentioned the angina pains that had tortured him earlier. But once,
when he sent a small photograph of himself, it seemed to us that his
face had become thin and that he had suffered. Certainly his next
letter was not reassuring.
To A. B. Paine, in Redding:
DEAR PAINE,--We must look into the magic-lantern business. Maybe the
modern lantern is too elaborate and troublesome for back-settlement use,
but we can inquire. We must have some kind of a show at "Stormfield" to
entertain the countryside with.
We are booked to sail in the "Bermudian" April 23rd, but don't tell
anybody, I don't want it known. I may have to go sooner if the pain in
my breast doesn't mend its ways pretty considerably. I don't want to die
here for this is an unkind place for a person in that condition. I
should have to lie in the undertaker's cellar until the ship would remove
me and it is dark down there and unpleasant.
The Colliers will meet me on the pier and I may stay with them a week or
two before going home. It all depends on the breast pain--I don't want
to die there. I am growing more and more particular about the place.
With love,
S. L. C.
This letter had been written by the hand of his "secretary," Helen
Allen: writing had become an effort to him. Yet we did not suspect
how rapidly the end was approaching and only grew vaguely alarmed.
A week later, however, it became evident that his condition was
critical.
DEAR PAINE,--. . . . I have been having a most uncomfortable time for
the past 4 days with that breast-pain, which turns out to be an affection
of the heart, just as I originally suspected. The news from New York is
to the effect that non-bronchial weather has arrived there at last,
therefore if I can get my breast trouble in traveling condition I may
sail for home a week or two earlier than has heretofore been proposed:
Yours as ever
S. L. CLEMENS,
(per H. S. A.)
In this letter he seems to have forgotten that his trouble had been
pronounced an affection of the heart long before he left America,
though at first it had been thought that it might be gastritis.
The same mail brought a letter from Mr. Allen explaining fully the
seriousness of his condition. I sailed immediately for Bermuda,
arriving there on the 4th of April. He was not suffering at the
moment, though the pains came now with alarming frequency and
violence. He was cheerful and brave. He did not complain. He gave
no suggestion of a man whose days were nearly ended.
A part of the Stormfield estate had been a farm, which he had given
to Jean Clemens, where she had busied herself raising some live
stock and poultry. After her death he had wished the place to be
sold and the returns devoted to some memorial purpose. The sale had
been made during the winter and the price received had been paid in
cash. I found him full of interest in all affairs, and anxious to
discuss the memorial plan. A day or two later he dictated the
following letter-the last he would ever send.
It seemed fitting that this final word from one who had so long
given happiness to the whole world should record a special gift to
his neighbors.
To Charles T. Lark, in New York:
HAMILTON, BERMUDA.
April 6, 1910.
DEAR MR. LARK,--I have told Paine that I want the money derived from the
sale of the farm, which I had given, but not conveyed, to my daughter
Jean, to be used to erect a building for the Mark Twain Library of
Redding, the building to be called the Jean L. Clemens Memorial Building.
I wish to place the money $6,000.00 in the hands of three trustees,
--Paine and two others: H. A. Lounsbury and William E. Hazen, all of
Redding, these trustees to form a building Committee to decide on the
size and plan of the building needed and to arrange for and supervise the
work in such a manner that the fund shall amply provide for the building
complete, with necessary furnishings, leaving, if possible, a balance
remaining, sufficient for such repairs and additional furnishings as may
be required for two years from the time of completion.
Will you please draw a document covering these requirements and have it
ready by the time I reach New York (April 14th).
Very sincerely,
S. L. CLEMENS.
We sailed on the 12th of April, reaching New York on the 14th,
as he had planned. A day or two later, Mr. and Mrs. Gabrilowitsch,
summoned from Italy by cable, arrived. He suffered very little
after reaching Stormfield, and his mind was comparatively clear up
to the last day. On the afternoon of April 21st he sank into a
state of coma, and just at sunset he died. Three days later, at
Elmira, New York, he was laid beside Mrs. Clemens and those others
who had preceded him.
THE LAST DAY AT STORMFIELD
By BLISS CARMAN.
At Redding, Connecticut,
The April sunrise pours
Over the hardwood ridges
Softening and greening now
In the first magic of Spring.
The wild cherry-trees are in bloom,
The bloodroot is white underfoot,
The serene early light flows on,
Touching with glory the world,
And flooding the large upper room
Where a sick man sleeps.
Slowly he opens his eyes,
After long weariness, smiles,
And stretches arms overhead,
While those about him take heart.
With his awakening strength,
(Morning and spring in the air,
The strong clean scents of earth,
The call of the golden shaft,
Ringing across the hills)
He takes up his heartening book,
Opens the volume and reads,
A page of old rugged Carlyle,
The dour philosopher
Who looked askance upon life,
Lurid, ironical, grim,
Yet sound at the core.
But weariness returns;
He lays the book aside
With his glasses upon the bed,
And gladly sleeps. Sleep,
Blessed abundant sleep,
Is all that he needs.
And when the close of day
Reddens upon the hills
And washes the room with rose,
In the twilight hush
The Summoner comes to him
Ever so gently, unseen,
Touches him on the shoulder;
And with the departing sun
Our great funning friend is gone.
How he has made us laugh!
A whole generation of men
Smiled in the joy of his wit.
But who knows whether he was not
Like those deep jesters of old
Who dwelt at the courts of Kings,
Arthur's, Pendragon's, Lear's,
Plying the wise fool's trade,
Making men merry at will,
Hiding their deeper thoughts
Under a motley array,--
Keen-eyed, serious men,
Watching the sorry world,
The gaudy pageant of life,
With pity and wisdom and love?
Fearless, extravagant, wild,
His caustic merciless mirth
Was leveled at pompous shams.
Doubt not behind that mask
There dwelt the soul of a man,
Resolute, sorrowing, sage,
As sure a champion of good
As ever rode forth to fray.
Haply--who knows?--somewhere
In Avalon, Isle of Dreams,
In vast contentment at last,
With every grief done away,
While Chaucer and Shakespeare wait,
And Moliere hangs on his words,
And Cervantes not far off
Listens and smiles apart,
With that incomparable drawl
He is jesting with Dagonet now.
APPENDIX X
A CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF MARK TWAIN'S WORK
PUBLISHED AND OTHERWISE--FROM 1851-1910
BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
Note 1.--This is not a detailed bibliography, but merely a general list
of Mark Twain's literary undertakings, in the order of performance,
showing when, and usually where, the work was done, when and where first
published, etc. An excellent Mark Twain bibliography has been compiled
by Mr. Merle Johnson, to whom acknowledgments are due for important
items.
Note 2.--Only a few of the more important speeches are noted. Volumes
that are merely collections of tales or articles are not noted.
Note 3.--Titles are shortened to those most commonly in use, as "Huck
Finn" or "Huck" for "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
Names of periodicals are abbreviated.
The initials U. E. stand for the "Uniform Edition" of Mark Twain's
works.
1851.
Edited the Hannibal Journal during the absence of the owner and editor,
Orion Clemens.
Wrote local items for the Hannibal Journal.
Burlesque of a rival editor in the Hannibal Journal.
Wrote two sketches for The Sat. Eve. Post (Philadelphia).
To MARY IN H-l. Hannibal Journal.
1852-53.
JIM WOLFE AND THE FIRE--Hannibal Journal.
Burlesque of a rival editor in the Hannibal Journal.
1853.
Wrote obituary poems--not published.
Wrote first letters home.
1855-56.
First after-dinner speech; delivered at a printers' banquet in Keokuk,
Iowa.
Letters from Cincinnati, November 16, 1856, signed "Snodgrass"--
Saturday Post (Keokuk).
1857.
Letters from Cincinnati, March 16, 1857, signed "Snodgrass"--Saturday
Post (Keokuk).
1858.
Anonymous contributions to the New Orleans Crescent and probably to St.
Louis papers.
1859.
Burlesque of Capt. Isaiah Sellers--True Delta (New Orleans), May 8 or 9.
1861.
Letters home, published in The Gate City (Keokuk).
1862.
Letters and sketches, signed "Josh," for the Territorial Enterprise
(Virginia City, Nevada).
REPORT OF THE LECTURE OF PROF. PERSONAL PRONOUN--Enterprise.
REPORT OF A FOURTH OF JULY ORATION--Enterprise.
THE PETRIFIED MAN--Enterprise.
Local news reporter for the Enterprise from August.
1863.
Reported the Nevada Legislature for the Enterprise.
First used the name "Mark Twain," February 2.
ADVICE TO THE UNRELIABLE--Enterprise.
CURING A COLD--Enterprise. U. E.
INFORMATION FOR THE MILLION--Enterprise.
ADVICE TO GOOD LITTLE GIRLS--Enterprise.
THE DUTCH NICK MASSACRE--Enterprise.
Many other Enterprise sketches.
THE AGED PILOT MAN (poem)--" ROUGHING IT." U. E.
1864.
Reported the Nevada Legislature for the Enterprise.
Speech as "Governor of the Third House."
Letters to New York Sunday Mercury.
Local reporter on the San Francisco Call.
Articles and sketches for the Golden Era.
Articles and sketches for the Californian.
Daily letters from San Francisco to the Enterprise.
(Several of the Era and Californian sketches appear in SKETCHES NEW AND
OLD. U. E.)
1865.
Notes for the Jumping Frog story; Angel's Camp, February.
Sketches etc., for the Golden Era and Californian.
Daily letter to the Enterprise.
THE JUMPING FROG (San Francisco)Saturday Press. New York,
November 18. U. E.
1866.
Daily letter to the Enterprise.
Sandwich Island letters to the Sacramento Union.
Lecture on the Sandwich Islands, San Francisco, October 2.
FORTY-THREE DAYS IN AN OPEN BOAT--Harper's Magazine, December (error in
signature made it Mark Swain).
1867.
Letters to Alta California from New York.
JIM WOLFE AND THE CATS--N. Y. Sunday Mercury.
THE JUMPING FROG--book, published by Charles Henry Webb, May 1. U. E.
Lectured at Cooper Union, May, '66.
Letters to Alta California and New York Tribune from the Quaker City--
Holy Land excursion.
Letter to New York Herald on the return from the Holy Land.
After-dinner speech on "Women" (Washington).
Began arrangement for the publication of THE INNOCENTS ABROAD.
1868.
Newspaper letters, etc., from Washington, for New York Citizen, Tribune,
Herald, and other papers and periodicals.
Preparing Quaker City letters (in Washington and San Francisco) for book
publication.
CAPTAIN WAKEMAN'S (STORMFIELD'S) VISIT TO HEAVEN (San Francisco),
published Harper's Magazine, December, 1907-January, 1908 (also book,
Harpers).
Lectured in California and Nevada on the "Holy Land," July 2.
S'CAT! Anonymous article on T. K. Beecher (Elmira), published in local
paper.
Lecture-tour, season 1868-69.
1869.
THE INNOCENTS ABROAD--book (Am. Pub. Co.), July 20. U. E.
Bought one-third ownership in the Buffalo Express.
Contributed editorials, sketches, etc., to the Express.
Contributed sketches to Packard's Monthly, Wood's Magazine, etc.
Lecture-tour, season 1869-70.
1870.
Contributed various matter to Buffalo Express.
Contributed various matter under general head of "MEMORANDA" to Galaxy
Magazine, May to April, '71.
ROUGHING IT begun in September (Buffalo).
SHEM'S DIARY (Buffalo) (unfinished).
GOD, ANCIENT AND MODERN (unpublished).
1871.
MEMORANDA continued in Galaxy to April.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND FIRST ROMANCE--[THE FIRST ROMANCE had appeared in the
Express in 1870. Later included in SKETCHES.]--booklet (Sheldon & Co.).
U. E.
ROUGHING IT finished (Quarry Farm).
Ruloff letter--Tribune.
Wrote several sketches and lectures (Quarry Farm).
Western play (unfinished).
Lecture-tour, season 1871-72.
1872.
ROUGHING IT--book (Am. Pub. Co.), February. U. E.
THE MARK TWAIN SCRAP-BOOK invented (Saybrook, Connecticut).
TOM SAWYER begun as a play (Saybrook, Connecticut).
A few unimportant sketches published in "Practical jokes," etc.
Began a book on England (London).
1873.
Letters on the Sandwich Islands-Tribune, January 3 and 6.
THE GILDED AGE (with C. D. Warner)--book (Am. Pub. Co), December. U. E.
THE LICENSE OF THE PRESS--paper for The Monday Evening Club.
Lectured in London, October 18 and season 1873-74.
1874.
TOM SAWYER continued (in the new study at Quarry Farm).
A TRUE STORY (Quarry Farm)-Atlantic, November. U. E.
FABLES (Quarry Farm). U. E.
COLONEL SELLERS--play (Quarry Farm) performed by John T. Raymond.
UNDERTAKER'S LOVE-STORY (Quarry Farm) (unpublished).
OLD TIMES ON THE MISSISSIPPI (Hartford) Atlantic, January to July, 1875.
Monarchy letter to Mrs. Clemens, dated 1935 (Boston).
1875.
UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE--paper for The Monday Evening Club.
SKETCHES NEW AND OLD--book (Am. Pub. Co.), July. U. E.
TOM SAWYER concluded (Hartford).
THE CURIOUS REP. OF GONDOUR--Atlantic, October (unsigned).
PUNCH, CONDUCTOR, PUNCH--Atlantic, February, 1876. U. E.
THE SECOND ADVENT (unfinished).
THE MYSTERIOUS CHAMBER (unfinished).
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A DAMN FOOL (unfinished).
Petition for International Copyright.
1876.
Performed in THE LOAN OF THE LOVER as Peter Spuyk (Hartford).
CARNIVAL OF CRIME--paper for The Monday Evening Club--Atlantic, June.
U. E.
HUCK FINN begun (Quarry Farm).
CANVASSER'S STORY (Quarry Farm)--Atlantic, December. U. E.
"1601" (Quarry Farm), privately printed. [And not edited by Livy. D.W.]
AH SIN (with Bret Harte)--play, (Hartford).
TOM SAWYER--book (Am. Pub. Co.), December. U. E.
Speech on "The Weather," New England Society, December 22.
1877.
LOVES OF ALONZO FITZ-CLARENCE, ETC. (Quarry Farm)--Atlantic.
IDLE EXCURSION (Quarry Farm)--Atlantic, October, November, December.
U. E.
SIMON WHEELER, DETECTIVE--play (Quarry Farm) (not produced).
PRINCE AND PAUPER begun (Quarry Farm).
Whittier birthday speech (Boston), December.
1878.
MAGNANIMOUS INCIDENT (Hartford)--Atlantic, May. U. E.
A TRAMP ABROAD (Heidelberg and Munich).
MENTAL TELEGRAPHY--Harper's Magazine, December, 1891. U. E.
GAMBETTA DUEL--Atlantic, February, 1879 (included in TRAMP). U. E.
REV. IN PITCAIRN--Atlantic, March, 1879. U. E.
STOLEN WHITE ELEPHANT--book (Osgood & Co.), 1882. U. E.
(The three items last named were all originally a part of the TRAMP
ABROAD.)
1879.
A TRAMP ABROAD continued (Paris, Elmira, and Hartford).
Adam monument scheme (Elmira).
Speech on "The Babies" (Grant dinner, Chicago), November.
Speech on "Plagiarism" (Holmes breakfast, Boston), December.
1880.
PRINCE AND PAUPER concluded (Hartford and Elmira).
HUCK FINN continued (Quarry Farm, Elmira).
A CAT STORY (Quarry Farm) (unpublished).
A TRAMP ABROAD--book (Am. Pub. Co.), March 13. U. E.
EDWARD MILLS AND GEO. BENTON (Hartford)--Atlantic, August. U. E.
MRS. McWILLIAMS AND THE LIGHTNING (Hartford)--Atlantic, September. U. E.
1881.
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE--Century, November. U. E.
A BIOGRAPHY OF -----(unfinished).
PRINCE AND PAUPER--book (Osgood R; CO.), December.
BURLESQUE ETIQUETTE (unfinished). [Included in LETTERS FROM THE EARTH
D.W.]
1882.
LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI (Elmira and Hartford).
1883.
LIFE ON THE Mississippi--book (Osgood R CO.), May. U. E.
WHAT Is HAPPINESS?--paper for The Monday Evening Club.
Introduction to Portuguese conversation book (Hartford).
HUCK FINN concluded (Quarry Farm).
HISTORY GAME (Quarry Farm).
AMERICAN CLAIMANT (with W. D. Howells)--play (Hartford), produced by
A. P. Burbank.
Dramatized TOM SAWYER and PRINCE AND PAUPER (not produced).
1884.
Embarked in publishing with Charles L. Webster.
THE CARSON FOOTPRINTS--the San Franciscan.
HUCK FINN--book (Charles L. Webster & Co.), December. U. E.
Platform-readings with George W. Cable, season '84-'85.
1885.
Contracted for General Grant's Memoirs.
A CAMPAIGN THAT FAILED--Century, December. U. E.
THE UNIVERSAL TINKER--Century, December (open letter signed X. Y. Z.
Letter on the government of children--Christian Union.)
KIDITCHIN (children's poem).
1886.
Introduced Henry M. Stanley (Boston).
CONNECTICUT YANKEE begun (Hartford).
ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT--Century, April, 1887.
LUCK--Harper's, August, 1891.
GENERAL GRANT AND MATTHEW ARNOLD--Army and Navy dinner speech.
1887.
MEISTERSCHAFT--play (Hartford)-Century, January, 1888. U. E.
KNIGHTS OF LABOR--essay (not published).
To THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND--Harper's Magazine, December. U. E.
CONSISTENCY--paper for The Monday Evening Club.
1888.
Introductory for "Unsent Letters" (unpublished).
Master of Arts degree from Yale.
Yale Alumni address (unpublished).
Copyright controversy with Brander Matthews--Princeton Review.
Replies to Matthew Arnold's American criticisms (unpublished).
YANKEE continued (Elmira and Hartford).
Introduction of Nye and Riley (Boston).
1889.
A MAJESTIC LITERARY FOSSIL Harper's Magazine, February, 1890. U. E.
HUCK AND TOM AMONG THE INDIANS (unfinished).
Introduction to YANKEE (not used).
LETTER To ELSIE LESLIE--St Nicholas, February, 1890.
CONNECTICUT YANKEE--book (Webster & Co.), December. U. E.
1890.
Letter to Andrew Lang about English Criticism.
(No important literary matters this year. Mark Twain engaged
promoting the Paige typesetting-machine.)
1891.
AMERICAN CLAIMANT (Hartford) syndicated; also book (Webster & Co.), May,
1892. U. E.
European letters to New York Sun.
DOWN THE RHONE (unfinished).
KORNERSTRASSE (unpublished).
1892.
THE GERMAN CHICAGO (Berlin--Sun.) U. E.
ALL KINDS OF SHIPS (at sea). U. E.
Tom SAWYER ABROAD (Nauheim)--St. Nicholas, November, '93, to April, '94.
U. E.
THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS (Nauheim). U. E.
PUDD'NHEAD WILSON (Nauheim and Florence)--Century, December, '93, to
June, '94 U. E.
$100,000 BANK-NOTE (Florence)--Century, January, '93. U. E.
1893.
JOAN OF ARC begun (at Villa Viviani, Florence) and completed up to the
raising of the Siege of Orleans.
CALIFORNIAN'S TALE (Florence) Liber Scriptorum, also Harper's.
ADAM'S DIARY (Florence)--Niagara Book, also Harper's.
ESQUIMAU MAIDEN'S ROMANCE--Cosmopolitan, November. U. E.
IS HE LIVING OR IS HE DEAD?--Cosmopolitan, September. U. E.
TRAVELING WITH A REFORMER--Cosmopolitan, December. U. E.
IN DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY (Florence)--N. A.--Rev., July, '94. U. E.
FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENSES--[This may not have been written
until early in 1894.]--(Players, New York)--N. A. Rev., July,'95 U. E.
1894.
JOAN OF ARC continued (Etretat and Paris).
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US (Etretat)--N. A. Rev., January, '95 U. E.
TOM SAWYER ABROAD--book (Webster & Co.), April. U. E.
PUDD'NHEAD WILSON--book (Am. Pub. Co.), November. U. E.
The failure of Charles L. Webster & Co., April 18.
THE DERELICT--poem (Paris) (unpublished).
1895.
JOAN OF ARC finished (Paris), January 28, Harper's Magazine, April to
December.
MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN--Harper's, September. U. E.
A LITTLE NOTE TO PAUL BOURGET. U. E.
Poem to Mrs. Beecher (Elmira) (not published). U. E.
Lecture-tour around the world, begun at Elmira, July 14, ended July 31.
1896.
JOAN OF ARC--book (Harpers) May. U. E.
TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE, and other stories-book (Harpers), November.
FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR begun (23 Tedworth Square, London).
1897.
FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR--book (Am. Pub. Co.), November.
QUEEN'S JUBILEE (London), newspaper syndicate; book privately printed.
JAMES HAMMOND TRUMBULL--Century, November.
WHICH WAS WHICH? (London and Switzerland) (unfinished).
TOM AND HUCK (Switzerland) (unfinished).
HELLFIRE HOTCHKISS (Switzerland) (unfinished).
IN MEMORIAM--poem (Switzerland)-Harper's Magazine. U. E.
Concordia Club speech (Vienna).
STIRRING TIMES IN AUSTRIA (Vienna)--Harper's Magazine, March, 1898. U. E.
1898.
THE AUSTRIAN EDISON KEEPING SCHOOL AGAIN (Vienna)Century, August. U. E.
AT THE APPETITE CURE (Vienna)--Cosmopolitan, August. U. E.
FROM THE LONDON TIMES, 1904 (Vienna)--Century, November. U. E.
ABOUT PLAY-ACTING (Vienna)--Forum, October. U. E.
CONCERNING THE JEWS (Vienna)--Harper's Magazine, September, '99. U. E.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND MRS. EDDY (Vienna)--Cosmopolitan, October. U. E.
THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG (Vienna)--Harper's Magazine, December,
'99 U. E.
Autobiographical chapters (Vienna); some of them used in the N. A. Rev.,
1906-07.
WHAT IS MAN? (Kaltenleutgeben)--book (privately printed), August, 1906.
ASSASSINATION OF AN EMPRESS (Kaltenleutgeben) (unpublished).
THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER (unfinished).
Translations of German plays (unproduced).
1899.
DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES (Vienna)--Forum, March. U. E.
MY LITERARY DEBUT (Vienna)--Century, December. U. E.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE (Vienna)--N. A. Rev., December, 1902, January and
February, 1903.
Translated German plays (Vienna) (unproduced).
Collaborated with Siegmund Schlesinger on plays (Vienna) (unfinished).
Planned a postal-check scheme (Vienna).
Articles about the Kellgren treatment (Sanna, Sweden) (unpublished).
ST. JOAN OF ARC (London)--Harper's Magazine, December, 1904. U. E.
MY FIRST LIE, AND How I GOT OUT OF IT (London)--New York World. U. E.
Articles on South African War (London) (unpublished)
Uniform Edition of Mark Twain's works (Am. Pub. Co.).
1900.
TWO LITTLE TALES (London)--Century, November, 1901. U. E.
Spoke on "Copyright" before the House of Lords.
Delivered many speeches in London and New York.
1901.
TO THE PERSON SITTING IN DARKNESS (14 West Tenth Street, New York)--
N. A. Rev., February.
TO MY MISSIONARY CRITICS (14 West Tenth Street, New York)--N. A. Rev.,
April.
DOUBLE-BARREL DETECTIVE STORY (Saranac Lake, "The Lair") Harper's
Magazine, January and February, 1902.
Lincoln Birthday Speech, February 11.
Many other speeches.
PLAN FOR CASTING VOTE PARTY (Riverdale) (unpublished).
THE STUPENDOUS PROCESSION (Riverdale) (unpublished).
ANTE-MORTEM OBITUARIES--Harper's Weekly.
Received degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale.
1902.
DOES THE RACE OF MAN LOVE A LORD? (Riverdale)--N. A. Rev., April. U. E.
FIVE BOONS of LIFE (Riverdale)--Harper's Weekly, July 5. U. E.
WHY NOT ABOLISH IT? (Riverdale)--Harper's Weekly, July 5.
DEFENSE OF GENERAL FUNSTON (Riverdale)--N. A. Rev., May.
IF I COULD BE THERE (Riverdale unpublished).
Wrote various articles, unfinished or unpublished.
Received degree of LL.D. from the University of Missouri, June.
THE BELATED PASSPORT (York Harbor)--Harper's Weekly, December 6. U. E.
WAS IT HEAVEN? OR HELL? (York Harbor)--Harper's Magazine, December. U. E.
Poem (Riverdale and York Harbor) (unpublished)
Sixty-seventh Birthday speech (New York), November 27.
1903.
MRS. EDDY IN ERROR (Riverdale)--N. A. Rev., April.
INSTRUCTIONS IN ART (Riverdale)-Metropolitan, April and May.
EDDYPUS, and other C. S. articles (unfinished).
A DOG'S TALE (Elmira)--Harper's Magazine, December. U. E.
ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER (Florence)--Harper's Weekly, January 21, 1904.
U. E.
ITALIAN WITH GRAMMAR (Florence)--Harper's Magazine, August, U. E.
THE $30,000 BEQUEST (Florence)--Harper's Weekly, December 10, 1904. U. E.
1904.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Florence)--portions published, N. A. Rev. and Harper's
Weekly.
CONCERNING COPYRIGHT (Tyringham, Massachusetts)--N. A. Rev., January,
1905.
TSARS SOLILOQUY (21 Fifth Avenue, New York)--N. A. Rev., March, 1905.
ADAM'S DIARY--book (Harpers), April.
1905.
LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY (21 Fifth Avenue, New York)--pamphlet, P. R. Warren
Company.
THE WAR PRAYER (21 Fifth Avenue, New York) (unpublished).
EVE'S DIARY (Dublin, New Hampshire)--Harper's Magazine, December.
3,000 YEARS AMONG THE MICROBES (unfinished).
INTERPRETING THE DEITY (Dublin New Hampshire) (unpublished).
A HORSE'S TALE (Dublin, New Hampshire)-Harper's Magazine,
August and September, 1906.
Seventieth Birthday speech.
W. D. HOWELLS (21 Fifth Avenue, New York)-Harper's Magazine, July, 1906.
1906.
Autobiography dictation (21 Fifth Avenue, New York; and Dublin, New
Hampshire)--selections published, N. A. Rev., 1906 and 1907.
Many speeches.
Farewell lecture, Carnegie Hall, April 19.
WHAT IS MAN?--book (privately printed).
Copyright speech (Washington), December.
1907.
Autobiography dictations (27 Fifth Avenue, New York; and Tuxedo).
Degree of Doctor of Literature conferred by Oxford, June 26.
Made many London speeches.
Begum of Bengal speech (Liverpool).
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE--book (Harpers), February. U. E.
CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT To HEAVEN--book (Harpers).
1908.
Autobiography dictations (21 Fifth Avenue, New York; and Redding,
Connecticut).
Lotos Club and other speeches.
Aldrich memorial speech.
1909.
IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?--book (Harpers), April.
A FABLE--Harper's Magazine December.
Copyright documents (unpublished).
Address to St. Timothy School.
MARJORIE FLEMING (Stormfield)--Harper's Bazar, December.
THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE (Stormfield)--Harper's Bazar, February, 1910
BESSIE DIALOGUE (unpublished).
LETTERS FROM THE EARTH (unfinished).
THE DEATH OF JEAN--Harper's, December, 1910.
THE INTERNATIONAL LIGHTNING TRUST (unpublished).
1910.
VALENTINES TO HELEN AND OTHERS (not published).
ADVICE TO PAINE (not published).
