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Title: Mark Twain's Letters — Volume 4 (1886-1900)
Author: Twain, Mark
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Mark Twain's Letters — Volume 4 (1886-1900)" ***
MARK TWAIN’S LETTERS 1886-1900
VOLUME IV.
By Mark Twain
ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
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 on***n,
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
*****
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.”
*****
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.”
XXX. 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. HALL,--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 9.30
a.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.
*****
Fragment 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.
XXXIX. 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.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Mark Twain's Letters — Volume 4 (1886-1900)" ***
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