Mark Twain: A Biography. Volume I, Part 2: 1866-1875

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Title: Mark Twain: A Biography. Volume I, Part 2: 1866-1875
Author: Paine, Albert Bigelow
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Mark Twain: A Biography. Volume I, Part 2: 1866-1875" ***

MARK TWAIN A BIOGRAPHY

THE PERSONAL AND LITERARY LIFE OF SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS

BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

CONTENTS

VOLUME I, Part 2: 1866-1875

LIV.
THE LECTURER

LV.
HIGHWAY ROBBERY

LVI.
BACK TO THE STATES

LVII.
OLD FRIENDS AND NEW PLANS

LVIII.
A NEW BOOK AND A LECTURE

LIX.
THE FIRST BOOK

LX.
THE INNOCENTS AT SEA

LXI.
THE INNOCENTS ABROAD

LXII.
THE RETURN OF THE PILGRIMS

LXIII.
IN WASHINGTON—A PUBLISHING PROPOSITION

LXIV.
OLIVIA LANGDON

LXV.
A CONTRACT WITH ELISHA BLISS, JR.

LXVI.
BACK TO SAN FRANCISCO

LXVII.
A VISIT TO ELMIRA

LXVIII.
THE REV. “JOE” TWICHELL.

LXIX.
A LECTURE TOUR

LXX.
INNOCENTS AT HOME—AND “THE INNOCENTS ABROAD”

LXXI.
THE GREAT BOOK OF TRAVEL.

LXXII.
THE PURCHASE OF A PAPER.

LXXIII.
THE FIRST MEETING WITH HOWELLS

LXXIV.
THE WEDDING-DAY

LXXV.
AS TO DESTINY

LXXVI.
ON THE BUFFALO “EXPRESS”

LXXVII.
THE “GALAXY”

LXXVIII.
THE PRIMROSE PATH

LXXIX.
THE OLD HUMAN STORY

LXXX.
LITERARY PROJECTS

LXXXI.
SOME FURTHER LITERARY MATTERS

LXXXII.
THE WRITING OF “ROUGHING IT”

LXXXIII.
LECTURING DAYS

LXXXIV.
"ROUGHING IT”.

LXXXV.
A BIRTH, A DEATH, AND A VOYAGE

LXXXVI.
ENGLAND

LXXXVII.
THE BOOK THAT WAS NEVER WRITTEN

LXXXVIII.
"THE GILDED AGE”

LXXXIX.
PLANNING A NEW HOME

XC.
A LONG ENGLISH HOLIDAY

XCI.
A LONDON LECTURE

XCII.
FURTHER LONDON LECTURE TRIUMPHS

XCIII.
THE REAL COLONEL SELLERS-GOLDEN DAYS

XCIV.
BEGINNING “TOM SAWYER”

XCV.
AN “ATLANTIC” STORY AND A PLAY

XCVI.
THE NEW HOME

XCVII.
THE WALK TO BOSTON

XCVIII.
"OLD TIMES ON THE MISSISSIPPI”

XCIX.
A TYPEWRITER, AND A JOKE ON ALDRICH

C.
RAYMOND, MENTAL TELEGRAPHY, ETC.

CI.
CONCLUDING “TOM SAWYER”—MARK TWAIN's “EDITORS”

CII.
"SKETCHES NEW AND OLD”

CIII.
"ATLANTIC” DAYS

CIV.
MARK TWAIN AND HIS WIFE

VOLUME I, Part 2: 1866-1875

LIV. THE LECTURER

It was not easy to take up the daily struggle again, but it was
necessary.—[Clemens once declared he had been so blue at this
period that one morning he put a loaded pistol to his head, but
found he lacked courage to pull the trigger.]—Out of the ruck of
possibilities (his brain always thronged with plans) he
constructed three or four resolves. The chief of these was the
trip around the world; but that lay months ahead, and in the mean
time ways and means must be provided. Another intention was to
finish the Hornet article, and forward it to Harper's Magazine—a
purpose carried immediately into effect. To his delight the
article found acceptance, and he looked forward to the day of its
publication as the beginning of a real career. He intended to
follow it up with a series on the islands, which in due time
might result in a book and an income. He had gone so far as to
experiment with a dedication for the book—an inscription to his
mother, modified later for use in 'The Innocents Abroad'. A third
plan of action was to take advantage of the popularity of the
Hawaiian letters, and deliver a lecture on the same subject. But
this was a fearsome prospect—he trembled when he thought of it.
As Governor of the Third House he had been extravagantly received
and applauded, but in that case the position of public
entertainer had been thrust upon him. To come forward now,
offering himself in the same capacity, was a different matter. He
believed he could entertain, but he lacked the courage to declare
himself; besides, it meant a risk of his slender capital. He
confided his situation to Col. John McComb, of the Alta
California, and was startled by McComb's vigorous endorsement.

“Do it, by all means!” urged McComb. “It will be a grand
success—I know it! Take the largest house in town, and charge a
dollar a ticket.”

Frightened but resolute, he went to the leading theater manager
the same Tom Maguire of his verses—and was offered the new
opera-house at half rates. The next day this advertisement
appeared:

MAGUIRE'S ACADEMY OF MUSIC PINE STREET, NEAR MONTGOMERY
THE SANDWICH ISLANDS
MARK TWAIN
(HONOLULU CORRESPONDENT OF THE SACRAMENTO UNION) WILL DELIVER A
LECTURE ON THE SANDWICH ISLANDS
AT THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC ON TUESDAY EVENING, OCT. 2d
(1866)
In which passing mention will be made of Harris, Bishop Staley, the
American missionaries, etc., and the absurd customs and
characteristics of the natives duly discussed and described. The
great volcano of Kilauea will also receive proper attention.
A SPLENDID ORCHESTRA is in town, but has not been
engaged ALSO A DEN OF FEROCIOUS WILD BEASTS will be
on exhibition in the next block MAGNIFICENT FIREWORKS
were in contemplation for this occasion, but the idea has been
abandoned A GRAND TORCHLIGHT PROCESSION may be expected; in fact, the
public are privileged to expect whatever they please.
Dress Circle, $1.00 Family Circle, 50c Doors open at 7
o'clock The Trouble to begin at 8 o'clock

The story of that first lecture, as told in Roughing It, is a
faithful one, and need only be summarized here.

Expecting to find the house empty, he found it packed from the
footlights to the walls. Sidling out from the wings—wobbly-kneed
and dry of tongue—he was greeted by a murmur, a roar, a very
crash of applause that frightened away his remaining vestiges of
courage. Then, came reaction—these were his friends, and he began
to talk to them. Fear melted away, and as tide after tide of
applause rose and billowed and came breaking at his feet, he knew
something of the exaltation of Monte Cristo when he declared “The
world is mine!”

It was a vast satisfaction to have succeeded. It was particularly
gratifying at this time, for he dreaded going back into newspaper
harness. Also; it softened later the disappointment resulting
from another venture; for when the December Harper appeared, with
his article, the printer and proof-reader had somehow converted
Mark Twain into “Mark Swain,” and his literary dream perished.

As to the literary value of his lecture, it was much higher than
had, been any portion of his letters, if we may judge from its
few remaining fragments. One of these—a part of the description
of the great volcano Haleakala, on the island of Maui—is a fair
example of his eloquence.

It is somewhat more florid than his later description of the same
scene in Roughing It, which it otherwise resembles; and we may
imagine that its poetry, with the added charm of its delivery,
held breathless his hearers, many of whom believed that no purer
eloquence had ever been uttered or written.

It is worth remembering, too, that in this lecture, delivered so
long ago, he advocated the idea of American ownership of these
islands, dwelling at considerable length on his reasons for this
ideal. —[For fragmentary extracts from this first lecture of Mark
Twain and news comment, see Appendix D, end of last
volume.]—There was a gross return from his venture of more than
$1,200, but with his usual business insight, which was never
foresight, he had made an arrangement by which, after paying
bills and dividing with his manager, he had only about one-third
of, this sum left. Still, even this was prosperity and triumph.
He had acquired a new and lucrative profession at a bound. The
papers lauded him as the “most piquant and humorous writer and
lecturer on the Coast since the days of the lamented John
Phoenix.” He felt that he was on the highroad at last.

Denis McCarthy, late of the Enterprise, was in San Francisco, and
was willing to become his manager. Denis was capable and honest,
and Clemens was fond of him. They planned a tour of the near-by
towns, beginning with Sacramento, extending it later even to the
mining camps, such as Red Dog and Grass Valley; also across into
Nevada, with engagements at Carson City, Virginia, and Gold Hill.
It was an exultant and hilarious excursion—that first lecture
tour made by Denis McCarthy and Mark Twain. Success traveled with
them everywhere, whether the lecturer looked across the
footlights of some pretentious “opera-house” or between the two
tallow candles of some camp “academy.” Whatever the building, it
was packed, and the returns were maximum.

Those who remember him as a lecturer in that long-ago time say
that his delivery was more quaint, his drawl more exaggerated,
even than in later life; that his appearance and movements on the
stage were natural, rather than graceful; that his manuscript,
which he carried under his arm, looked like a ruffled hen. It
was, in fact, originally written on sheets of manila paper, in
large characters, so that it could be read easily by dim light,
and it was doubtless often disordered.

There was plenty of amusing experience on this tour. At one
place, when the lecture was over, an old man came to him and
said:

“Be them your natural tones of eloquence?”

At Grass Valley there was a rival show, consisting of a lady
tight-rope walker and her husband. It was a small place, and the
tight-rope attraction seemed likely to fail. The lady's husband
had formerly been a compositor on the Enterprise, so that he felt
there was a bond of brotherhood between him and Mark Twain.

“Look here,” he said. “Let's combine our shows. I'll let my wife
do the tight-rope act outside and draw a crowd, and you go inside
and lecture.”

The arrangement was not made.

Following custom, the lecturer at first thought it necessary to
be introduced, and at each place McCarthy had to skirmish around
and find the proper person. At Red Dog, on the Stanislaus, the
man selected failed to appear, and Denis had to provide another
on short notice. He went down into the audience and captured an
old fellow, who ducked and dodged but could not escape. Denis led
him to the stage, a good deal frightened.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “this is the celebrated Mark
Twain from the celebrated city of San Francisco, with his
celebrated lecture about the celebrated Sandwich Islands.”

That was as far as he could go; but it was far enough. Mark Twain
never had a better introduction. The audience was in a shouting
humor from the start.

Clemens himself used to tell of an introduction at another camp,
where his sponsor said:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I know only two things about this man: the
first is that he's never been in jail, and the second is I don't
know why.”

But this is probably apocryphal; there is too much “Mark Twain”
in it.

When he reached Virginia, Goodman said to him:

“Sam, you do not need anybody to introduce you. There's a piano
on the stage in the theater. Have it brought out in sight, and
when the curtain rises you be seated at the piano, playing and
singing that song of yours, 'I Had an Old Horse Whose Name Was
Methusalem,' and don't seem to notice that the curtain is up at
first; then be surprised when you suddenly find out that it is
up, and begin talking, without any further preliminaries.”

This proved good advice, and the lecture, thus opened, started
off with general hilarity and applause.

LV. HIGHWAY ROBBERY

His Nevada, lectures were bound to be immensely successful. The
people regarded him as their property over there, and at Carson
and Virginia the houses overflowed. At Virginia especially his
friends urged and begged him to repeat the entertainment, but he
resolutely declined.

“I have only one lecture yet,” he said. “I cannot bring myself to
give it twice in the same town.”

But that irresponsible imp, Steve Gillis, who was again in
Virginia, conceived a plan which would make it not only necessary
for him to lecture again, but would supply him with a subject.
Steve's plan was very simple: it was to relieve the lecturer of
his funds by a friendly highway robbery, and let an account of
the adventure furnish the new lecture.

In 'Roughing It' Mark Twain has given a version of this mock
robbery which is correct enough as far as it goes; but important
details are lacking. Only a few years ago (it was April, 1907),
in his cabin on jackass Hill, with Joseph Goodman and the writer
of this history present, Steve Gillis made his “death-bed”
confession as is here set down:

“Mark's lecture was given in Piper's Opera House, October 30,
1866. The Virginia City people had heard many famous lectures
before, but they were mere sideshows compared with Mark's. It
could have been run to crowded houses for a week. We begged him
to give the common people a chance; but he refused to repeat
himself. He was going down to Carson, and was coming back to talk
in Gold Hill about a week later, and his agent, Denis McCarthy,
and I laid a plan to have him robbed on the Divide between Gold
Hill and Virginia, after the Gold Hill lecture was over and he
and Denis would be coming home with the money. The Divide was a
good lonely place, and was famous for its hold-ups. We got City
Marshal George Birdsall into it with us, and took in Leslie
Blackburn, Pat Holland, Jimmy Eddington, and one or two more of
Sam's old friends. We all loved him, and would have fought for
him in a moment. That's the kind of friends Mark had in Nevada.
If he had any enemies I never heard of them.

“We didn't take in Dan de Quille, or Joe here, because Sam was
Joe's guest, and we were afraid he would tell him. We didn't take
in Dan because we wanted him to write it up as a genuine robbery
and make a big sensation. That would pack the opera-house at two
dollars a seat to hear Mark tell the story.

“Well, everything went off pretty well. About the time Mark was
finishing his lecture in Gold Hill the robbers all went up on the
Divide to wait, but Mark's audience gave him a kind of reception
after his lecture, and we nearly froze to death up there before
he came along. By and by I went back to see what was the matter.
Sam and Denis were coming, and carrying a carpet-sack about half
full of silver between them. I shadowed them and blew a
policeman's whistle as a signal to the boys when the lecturers
were within about a hundred yards of the place. I heard Sam say
to Denis:

“'I'm glad they've got a policeman on the Divide. They never had
one in my day.'

“Just about that time the boys, all with black masks on and
silver dollars at the sides of their tongues to disguise their
voices, stepped out and stuck six-shooters at Sam and Denis and
told them to put up their hands. The robbers called each other
'Beauregard' and 'Stonewall Jackson.' Of course Denis's hands
went up, and Mark's, too, though Mark wasn't a bit scared or
excited. He talked to the robbers in his regular fashion. He
said:

“'Don't flourish those pistols so promiscuously. They might go
off by accident.'

“They told him to hand over his watch and money; but when he
started to take his hands down they made him put them up again.
Then he asked how they expected him to give them his valuables
with his hands up in the sky. He said his treasures didn't lie in
heaven. He told them not to take his watch, which was the one
Sandy Baldwin and Theodore Winters had given him as Governor of
the Third House, but we took it all the same.

“Whenever he started to put his hands down we made him put them
up again. Once he said:

“'Don't you fellows be so rough. I was tenderly reared.'

“Then we told him and Denis to keep their hands up for fifteen
minutes after we were gone—this was to give us time to get back
to Virginia and be settled when they came along. As we were going
away Mark called:

“'Say, you forgot something.'

“'What is it?'

“Why, the carpet-bag.'

“He was cool all the time. Senator Bill Stewart, in his
Autobiography, tells a great story of how scared Mark was, and
how he ran; but Stewart was three thousand miles from Virginia by
that time, and later got mad at Mark because he made a joke about
him in 'Roughing It'.

“Denis wanted to take his hands down pretty soon after we were
gone, but Mark said:

“'No, Denis, I'm used to obeying orders when they are given in
that convincing way; we'll just keep our hands up another fifteen
minutes or so for good measure.'

“We were waiting in a big saloon on C Street when Mark and Denis
came along. We knew they would come in, and we expected Mark
would be excited; but he was as unruffled as a mountain lake. He
told us they had been robbed, and asked me if I had any money. I
gave him a hundred dollars of his own money, and he ordered
refreshments for everybody. Then we adjourned to the Enterprise
office, where he offered a reward, and Dan de Quille wrote up the
story and telegraphed it to the other newspapers. Then somebody
suggested that Mark would have to give another lecture now, and
that the robbery would make a great subject. He entered right
into the thing, and next day we engaged Piper's Opera House, and
people were offering five dollars apiece for front seats. It
would have been the biggest thing that ever came to Virginia if
it had come off. But we made a mistake, then, by taking Sandy
Baldwin into the joke. We took in Joe here, too, and gave him the
watch and money to keep, which made it hard for Joe afterward.
But it was Sandy Baldwin that ruined us. He had Mark out to
dinner the night before the show was to come off, and after he
got well warmed up with champagne he thought it would be a smart
thing to let Mark into what was really going on.

“Mark didn't see it our way. He was mad clear through.”

At this point Joseph Goodman took up the story. He said:

“Those devils put Sam's money, watch, keys, pencils, and all his
things into my hands. I felt particularly mean at being made
accessory to the crime, especially as Sam was my guest, and I had
grave doubts as to how he would take it when he found out the
robbery was not genuine.

“I felt terribly guilty when he said:

“'Joe, those d—n thieves took my keys, and I can't get into my
trunk. Do you suppose you could get me a key that would fit my
trunk?'

“I said I thought I could during the day, and after Sam had gone
I took his own key, put it in the fire and burnt it to make it
look black. Then I took a file and scratched it here and there,
to make it look as if I had been fitting it to the lock, feeling
guilty all the time, like a man who is trying to hide a murder.
Sam did not ask for his key that day, and that evening he was
invited to judge Baldwin's to dinner. I thought he looked pretty
silent and solemn when he came home; but he only said:

“'Joe, let's play cards; I don't feel sleepy.'

“Steve here, and two or three of the other boys who had been
active in the robbery, were present, and they did not like Sam's
manner, so they excused themselves and left him alone with me. We
played a good while; then he said:

“'Joe, these cards are greasy. I have got some new ones in my
trunk. Did you get that key to-day?'

“I fished out that burnt, scratched-up key with fear and
trembling. But he didn't seem to notice it at all, and presently
returned with the cards. Then we played, and played, and
played—till one o'clock—two o'clock—Sam hardly saying a word, and
I wondering what was going to happen. By and by he laid down his
cards and looked at me, and said:

“'Joe, Sandy Baldwin told me all about that robbery to-night.
Now, Joe, I have found out that the law doesn't recognize a joke,
and I am going to send every one of those fellows to the
penitentiary.'

“He said it with such solemn gravity, and such vindictiveness,
that I believed he was in dead earnest.

“I know that I put in two hours of the hardest work I ever did,
trying to talk him out of that resolution. I used all the
arguments about the boys being his oldest friends; how they all
loved him, and how the joke had been entirely for his own good; I
pleaded with him, begged him to reconsider; I went and got his
money and his watch and laid them on the table; but for a time it
seemed hopeless. And I could imagine those fellows going behind
the bars, and the sensation it would make in California; and just
as I was about to give it up he said:

“'Well, Joe, I'll let it pass—this time; I'll forgive them again;
I've had to do it so many times; but if I should see Denis
McCarthy and Steve Gillis mounting the scaffold to-morrow, and I
could save them by turning over my hand, I wouldn't do it!'

“He canceled the lecture engagement, however, next morning, and
the day after left on the Pioneer Stage, by the way of Donner
Lake, for California. The boys came rather sheepishly to see him
off; but he would make no show of relenting. When they introduced
themselves as Beauregard, Stonewall Jackson, etc., he merely
said:

“'Yes, and you'll all be behind the bars some day. There's been a
good deal of robbery around here lately, and it's pretty clear
now who did it.' They handed him a package containing the masks
which the robbers had worn. He received it in gloomy silence; but
as the stage drove away he put his head out of the window, and
after some pretty vigorous admonition resumed his old smile, and
called out: 'Good-by, friends; good-by, thieves; I bear you no
malice.' So the heaviest joke was on his tormentors after all.”

This is the story of the famous Mark Twain robbery direct from
headquarters. It has been garbled in so many ways that it seems
worth setting down in full. Denis McCarthy, who joined him
presently in San Francisco, received a little more punishment
there.

“What kind of a trip did you boys have?” a friend asked of them.

Clemens, just recovering from a cold which the exposure on the
Divide had given him, smiled grimly:

“Oh, pretty good, only Denis here mistook it for a spree.”

He lectured again in San Francisco, this time telling the story
of his Overland trip in 1861, and he did the daring thing of
repeating three times the worn-out story of Horace Greeley's ride
with Hank Monk, as given later in 'Roughing It'. People were
deadly tired of that story out there, and when he told it the
first time, with great seriousness, they thought he must be
failing mentally. They did not laugh—they only felt sorry. He
waited a little, as if expecting a laugh, and presently led
around to it and told it again. The audience was astonished still
more, and pitied him thoroughly. He seemed to be waiting
pathetically in the dead silence for their applause, then went on
with his lecture; but presently, with labored effort, struggled
around to the old story again, and told it for the third time.
The audience suddenly saw the joke then, and became vociferous
and hysterical in their applause; but it was a narrow escape. He
would have been hysterical himself if the relief had not came
when it did. —[A side-light on the Horace Greeley story and on
Mr. Greeley's eccentricities is furnished by Mr. Goodman:

When I was going East in 1869 I happened to see Hank Monk just
before I started. “Mr. Goodman,” he said, “you tell Horace
Greeley that I want to come East, and ask him to send me a pass.”
“All right, Hank,” I said, “I will.” It happened that when I got
to New York City one of the first men I met was Greeley. “Mr.
Greeley,” said, “I have a message for you from Hank Monk.”
Greeley bristled and glared at me. “That—rascal?” he said, “He
has done me more injury than any other man in America.”]

LVI. BACK TO THE STATES

In the mean time Clemens had completed his plan for sailing, and
had arranged with General McComb, of the Alta California, for
letters during his proposed trip around the world. However, he
meant to visit his people first, and his old home. He could go
back with means now, and with the prestige of success.

“I sail to-morrow per Opposition—telegraphed you to-day,” he
wrote on December 14th, and a day later his note-book entry says:

Sailed from San Francisco in Opposition (line) steamer America,
Capt. Wakeman, at noon, 15th Dec., 1866. Pleasant sunny day, hills
brightly clad with green grass and shrubbery.

So he was really going home at last! He had been gone five and a
half years—eventful, adventurous years that had made him over
completely, at least so far as ambitions and equipment were
concerned. He had came away, in his early manhood, a printer and
a pilot, unknown outside of his class. He was returning a man of
thirty-one, with a fund of hard experience, three added
professions—mining, journalism, and lecturing—also with a new
name, already famous on the sunset slopes of its adoption, and
beginning to be heard over the hills and far away. In some
degree, at least, he resembled the prince of a fairy tale who,
starting out humble and unnoticed, wins his way through a hundred
adventures and returns with gifts and honors.

The homeward voyage was a notable one. It began with a tempest a
little way out of San Francisco—a storm terrible but brief, that
brought the passengers from their berths to the deck, and for a
time set them praying. Then there was Captain Ned Wakeman, a big,
burly, fearless sailor, who had visited the edges of all
continents and archipelagos; who had been born at sea, and never
had a day's schooling in his life, but knew the Bible by heart;
who was full of human nature and profanity, and believed he was
the only man on the globe who knew the secret of the Bible
miracles. He became a distinct personality in Mark Twain's
work—the memory of him was an unfailing delight. Captain “Ned
Blakely,” in 'Roughing It', who with his own hands hanged Bill
Noakes, after reading him promiscuous chapters from the Bible,
was Captain Wakeman. Captain “Stormfield,” who had the marvelous
visit to heaven, was likewise Captain Wakeman; and he appears in
the “Idle Excursion” and elsewhere.

Another event of the voyage was crossing the Nicaragua
Isthmus—the trip across the lake and down the San Juan River—a
brand-new experience, between shores of splendid tropic tangle,
gleaming with vivid life. The luxuriance got into his note-book.

Dark grottos, fairy festoons, tunnels, temples, columns, pillars,
towers, pilasters, terraces, pyramids, mounds, domes, walls, in
endless confusion of vine-work—no shape known to architecture
unimitated—and all so webbed together that short distances within
are only gained by glimpses. Monkeys here and there; birds
warbling; gorgeous plumaged birds on the wing; Paradise itself,
the imperial realm of beauty-nothing to wish for to make it
perfect.

But it was beyond the isthmus that the voyage loomed into
proportions somber and terrible. The vessel they took there, the
San Francisco, sailed from Greytown January 1, 1867, the
beginning of a memorable year in Mark Twain's life. Next day two
cases of Asiatic cholera were reported in the steerage. There had
been a rumor of it in Nicaragua, but no one expected it on the
ship.

The nature of the disease was not hinted at until evening, when
one of the men died. Soon after midnight, the other followed. A
minister making the voyage home, Rev. J. G. Fackler, read the
burial service. The gaiety of the passengers, who had become well
acquainted during the Pacific voyage, was subdued. When the word
“cholera” went among them, faces grew grave and frightened. On
the morning of January 4th Reverend Fackler's services were again
required. The dead man was put overboard within half an hour
after he had ceased to breathe.

Gloom settled upon the ship. All steam was made to put into Key
West. Then some of the machinery gave way and the ship lay
rolling, helplessly becalmed in the fierce heat of the Gulf,
while repairs were being made. The work was done at a
disadvantage, and the parts did not hold. Time and again they
were obliged to lie to, in the deadly tropic heat, listening to
the hopeless hammering, wondering who would be the next to be
sewed up hastily in a blanket and slipped over the ship's side.
On the 5th seven new cases of illness were reported. One of the
crew, a man called “Shape,” was said to be dying. A few hours
later he was dead. By this time the Reverend Fackler himself had
been taken.

“So they are burying poor 'Shape' without benefit of clergy,”
says the note-book.

General consternation now began to prevail. Then it was learned
that the ship's doctor had run out of medicines. The passengers
became demoralized. They believed their vessel was to become a
charnel ship. Strict sanitary orders were issued, and a hospital
was improvised.

Verily the ship is becoming a floating hospital herself—not an hour
passes but brings its fresh sensation, its new disaster, its
melancholy tidings. When I think of poor “Shape” and the preacher,
both so well when I saw them yesterday evening, I realize that I
myself may be dead to-morrow.
Since the last two hours all laughter, all levity, has ceased on
the ship—a settled gloom is upon the faces of the passengers.

By noon it was evident that the minister could not survive. He
died at two o'clock next morning; the fifth victim in less than
five days. The machinery continued to break and the vessel to
drag. The ship's doctor confessed to Clemens that he was
helpless. There were eight patients in the hospital.

But on January 6th they managed to make Key West, and for some
reason were not quarantined. Twenty-one passengers immediately
deserted the ship and were heard of no more.

“I am glad they are gone. D—n them,” says the notebook.
Apparently he had never considered leaving, and a number of
others remained. The doctor restocked his medicine-locker, and
the next day they put to sea again. Certainly they were a daring
lot of voyagers. On the 8th another of the patients died. Then
the cooler weather seemed to check the contagion, and it was not
until the night of the 11th, when the New York harbor lights were
in view, that the final death occurred. There were no new cases
by this time, and the other patients were convalescent. A
certificate was made out that the last man had died of “dropsy.”
There would seem to have been no serious difficulty in docking
the vessel and landing the passengers. The matter would probably
be handled differently to-day.

LVII. OLD FRIENDS AND NEW PLANS

It had been more than thirteen years since his first arrival in
New York. Then he had been a youth, green, untraveled, eager to
get away from home. Now a veteran, he was as eager to return.

He stopped only long enough in New York to see Charles Henry
Webb, late of California, who had put together a number of the
Mark Twain sketches, including “The Jumping Frog,” for book
publication. Clemens himself decided to take the book to
Carleton, thinking that, having missed the fame of the “Frog”
once, he might welcome a chance to stand sponsor for it now. But
Carleton was wary; the “Frog” had won favor, and even fame, in
its fugitive, vagrant way, but a book was another matter. Books
were undertaken very seriously and with plenty of consideration
in those days. Twenty-one years later, in Switzerland, Carleton
said to Mark Twain:

“My chief claim to immortality is the distinction of having
declined your first book.”

Clemens was ready enough to give up the book when Carleton
declined it, but Webb said he would publish it himself, and he
set about it forthwith. The author waited no longer now, but
started for St. Louis, and was soon with his mother and sister,
whom he had not seen since that eventful first year of the war.
They thought he looked old, which was true enough, but they found
him unchanged in his manner: buoyant, full of banter and gravely
quaint remarks—he was always the same. Jane Clemens had grown
older, too. She was nearly sixty-four, but as keen and vigorous
as ever-proud (even if somewhat critical) of this handsome,
brilliant man of new name and fame who had been her mischievous,
wayward boy. She petted him, joked with him, scolded him, and
inquired searchingly into his morals and habits. In turn he
petted, comforted, and teased her. She decided that he was the
same Sam, and always would be—a true prophecy.

He went up to Hannibal to see old friends. Many were married;
some had moved away; some were dead—the old story. He delivered
his lecture there, and was the center of interest and
admiration—his welcome might have satisfied even Tom Sawyer. From
Hannibal he journeyed to Keokuk, where he lectured again to a
crowd of old friends and new, then returned to St. Louis for a
more extended visit.

It was while he was in St. Louis that he first saw the
announcement of the Quaker City Holy Land Excursion, and was
promptly fascinated by what was then a brand-new idea in ocean
travel—a splendid picnic—a choice and refined party that would
sail away for a long summer's journeying to the most romantic of
all lands and seas, the shores of the Mediterranean. No such
argosy had ever set out before in pursuit of the golden fleece of
happiness.

His projected trip around the world lost its charm in the light
of this idyllic dream. Henry Ward Beecher was advertised as one
of the party; General Sherman as another; also ministers,
high-class journalists—the best minds of the nation. Anson
Burlingame had told him to associate with persons of refinement
and intellect. He lost no time in writing to the Alta, proposing
that they send him in this select company.

Noah Brooks, who was then on the Alta, states—[In an article
published in the Century Magazine.]—that the management was
staggered by the proposition, but that Col. John McComb insisted
that the investment in Mark Twain would be sound. A letter was
accordingly sent, stating that a check for his passage would be
forwarded in due season, and that meantime he could contribute
letters from New York City. The rate for all letters was to be
twenty dollars each. The arrangement was a godsend, in the
fullest sense of the word, to Mark Twain.

It was now April, and he was eager to get back to New York to
arrange his passage. The Quaker City would not sail for two
months yet (two eventful months), but the advertisement said that
passages must be secured by the 5th, and he was there on that
day. Almost the first man he met was the chief of the New York
Alta bureau with a check for twelve hundred and fifty dollars
(the amount of his ticket) and a telegram saying, “Ship Mark
Twain in the Holy Land Excursion and pay his passage.”

—[The following letter, which bears no date, was probably handed to
him later in the New York Alta office as a sort of credential:
ALTA CALIFORNIA OFFICE, 42 JOHN STREET, NEW YORK.
Sam'l Clemens, Esq., New York.
DEAR SIR,—I have the honor to inform you that Fred'k. MacCrellish &
Co., Proprietors of Alta California, San Francisco, Cal., desire to
engage your services as Special Correspondent on the pleasure
excursion now about to proceed from this City to the Holy Land. In
obedience to their instructions I have secured a passage for you on
the vessel about to convey the excursion party referred to, and
made such arrangements as I hope will secure your comfort and
convenience. Your only instructions are that you will continue to
write at such times and from such places as you deem proper, and in
the same style that heretofore secured you the favor of the readers
of the Alta California. I have the honor to remain, with high
respect and esteem,
Your ob'dt. Servant,
JOHN J. MURPHY.]

The Alta, it appears, had already applied for his berth; but, not
having been vouched for by Mr. Beecher or some other eminent
divine, Clemens was fearful he might not be accepted. Quite
casually he was enlightened on this point. While waiting for
attention in the shipping-office, with the Alta agent, he heard a
newspaper man inquire what notables were going. A clerk, with
evident pride, rattled off the names:

“Lieutenant-General Sherman, Henry Ward Beecher, and Mask Twain;
also probably General Banks.”

So he was billed as an attraction. It was his first surreptitious
taste of fame on the Atlantic coast, and not without its delight.
The story often told of his being introduced by Ned House, of the
Tribune, as a minister, though often repeated by Mark Twain
himself, was in the nature of a joke, and mainly apocryphal.
Clemens was a good deal in House's company at the time, for he
had made an arrangement to contribute occasional letters to the
Tribune, and House no doubt introduced him jokingly as one of the
Quaker City ministers.

LVIII. A NEW BOOK AND A LECTURE

Webb, meantime, had pushed the Frog book along. The proofs had
been read and the volume was about ready for issue. Clemens wrote
to his mother April 15th:

My book will probably be in the bookseller's hands in about two
weeks. After that I shall lecture. Since I have been gone, the boys
have gotten up a “call” on me signed by two hundred Californians.

The lecture plan was the idea of Frank Fuller, who as acting
Governor of Utah had known Mark Twain on the Comstock, and
prophesied favorably of his future career. Clemens had hunted up
Fuller on landing in New York in January, and Fuller had
encouraged the lecture then; but Clemens was doubtful.

“I have no reputation with the general public here,” he said. “We
couldn't get a baker's dozen to hear me.”

But Fuller was a sanguine person, with an energy and enthusiasm
that were infectious. He insisted that the idea was sound. It
would solidify Mark Twain's reputation on the Atlantic coast, he
declared, insisting that the largest house in New York, Cooper
Union, should be taken. Clemens had partially consented, and
Fuller had arranged with all the Pacific slope people who had
come East, headed by ex-Governor James W. Nye (by this time
Senator at Washington), to sign a call for the “Inimitable Mark
Twain” to appear before a New York audience. Fuller made Nye
agree to be there and introduce the lecturer, and he was
burningly busy and happy in the prospect.

But Mark Twain was not happy. He looked at that spacious hall and
imagined the little crowd of faithful Californian stragglers that
might gather in to hear him, and the ridicule of the papers next
day. He begged Fuller to take a smaller hall, the smallest he
could get. But only the biggest hall in New York would satisfy
Fuller. He would have taken a larger one if he could have found
it. The lecture was announced for May 6th. Its subject was
“Kanakadom, or the Sandwich Islands”—tickets fifty cents. Fuller
timed it to follow a few days after Webb's book should appear, so
that one event might help the other.

Mark Twain's first book, 'The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveyas County, and Other Sketches', was scheduled for May 1st,
and did, in fact, appear on that date; but to the author it was
no longer an important event. Jim Smiley's frog as
standard-bearer of his literary procession was not an interesting
object, so far as he was concerned—not with that vast, empty hall
in the background and the insane undertaking of trying to fill
it. The San Francisco venture had been as nothing compared with
this. Fuller was working night and day with abounding joy, while
the subject of his labor felt as if he were on the brink of a
fearful precipice, preparing to try a pair of wings without first
learning to fly. At one instant he was cold with fright, the next
glowing with an infection of Fuller's faith. He devised a hundred
schemes for the sale of seats. Once he came rushing to Fuller,
saying:

“Send a lot of tickets down to the Chickering Piano Company. I
have promised to put on my programme, 'The piano used at this
entertainment is manufactured by Chickering.”'

“But you don't want a piano, Mark,” said Fuller, “do you?”

“No, of course not; but they will distribute the tickets for the
sake of the advertisement, whether we have the piano or not.”

Fuller got out a lot of handbills and hung bunches of them in the
stages, omnibuses, and horse-cars. Clemens at first haunted these
vehicles to see if anybody noticed the bills. The little dangling
bunches seemed untouched. Finally two men came in; one of them
pulled off a bill and glanced at it. His friend asked:

“Who's Mark Twain?”

“God knows; I don't!”

The lecturer could not ride any more. He was desperate.

“Fuller,” he groaned, “there isn't a sign—a ripple of interest.”

Fuller assured him that everything was working all right “working
underneath,” Fuller said—but the lecturer was hopeless. He
reported his impressions to the folks at home:

Everything looks shady, at least, if not dark; I have a good agent;
but now, after we have hired the Cooper Institute, and gone to an
expense in one way or another of $500, it comes out that I have got
to play against Speaker Colfax at Irving Hall, Ristori, and also
the double troop of Japanese jugglers, the latter opening at the
great Academy of Music—and with all this against me I have taken
the largest house in New York and cannot back water.

He might have added that there were other rival entertainments:
“The Flying Scud” was at Wallack's, the “Black Crook” was at
Niblo's, John Brougham at the Olympic; and there were at least a
dozen lesser attractions. New York was not the inexhaustible city
in those days; these things could gather in the public to the
last man. When the day drew near, and only a few tickets had been
sold, Clemens was desperate.

“Fuller,” he said, “there'll be nobody in the Cooper Union that
night but you and me. I am on the verge of suicide. I would
commit suicide if I had the pluck and the outfit. You must paper
the house, Fuller. You must send out a flood of complementaries.”

“Very well,” said Fuller; “what we want this time is reputation
anyway—money is secondary. I'll put you before the choicest, most
intelligent audience that ever was gathered in New York City. I
will bring in the school-instructors—the finest body of men and
women in the world.”

Fuller immediately sent out a deluge of complimentary tickets,
inviting the school-teachers of New York and Brooklyn, and all
the adjacent country, to come free and hear Mark Twain's great
lecture on Kanakadom. This was within forty-eight hours of the
time he was to appear.

Senator Nye was to have joined Clemens and Fuller at the
Westminster, where Clemens was stopping, and they waited for him
there with a carriage, fuming and swearing, until it was evident
that he was not coming. At last Clemens said:

“Fuller, you've got to introduce me.”

“No,” suggested Fuller; “I've got a better scheme than that. You
get up and begin by bemeaning Nye for not being there. That will
be better anyway.”

Clemens said:

“Well, Fuller, I can do that. I feel that way. I'll try to think
up something fresh and happy to say about that horse-thief.”

They drove to Cooper Union with trepidation. Suppose, after all,
the school-teachers had declined to come? They went half an hour
before the lecture was to begin. Forty years later Mark Twain
said:

“I couldn't keep away. I wanted to see that vast Mammoth cave and
die. But when we got near the building I saw that all the streets
were blocked with people, and that traffic had stopped. I
couldn't believe that these people were trying to get into Cooper
Institute; but they were, and when I got to the stage at last the
house was jammed full-packed; there wasn't room enough left for a
child.

“I was happy and I was excited beyond expression. I poured the
Sandwich Islands out on those people, and they laughed and
shouted to my entire content. For an hour and fifteen minutes I
was in paradise.”

And Fuller to-day, alive and young, when so many others of that
ancient time and event have vanished, has added:

“When Mark appeared the Californians gave a regular yell of
welcome. When that was over he walked to the edge of the
platform, looked carefully down in the pit, round the edges as if
he were hunting for something. Then he said: 'There was to have
been a piano here, and a senator to introduce me. I don't seem to
discover them anywhere. The piano was a good one, but we will
have to get along with such music as I can make with your help.
As for the senator—Then Mark let himself go and did as he
promised about Senator Nye. He said things that made men from the
Pacific coast, who had known Nye, scream with delight. After that
came his lecture. The first sentence captured the audience. From
that moment to the end it was either in a roar of laughter or
half breathless by his beautiful descriptive passages. People
were positively ill for days, laughing at that lecture.”

So it was a success: everybody was glad to have been there; the
papers were kind, congratulations numerous. —[Kind but not
extravagant; those were burning political times, and the doings
of mere literary people did not excite the press to the extent of
headlines. A jam around Cooper Union to-day, followed by such an
artistic triumph, would be a news event. On the other hand,
Schuyler Colfax, then Speaker of the House, was reported to the
extent of a column, nonpareil. His lecture was of no literary
importance, and no echo of it now remains. But those were
political, not artistic, days.

Of Mark Twain's lecture the Times notice said:

“Nearly every one present came prepared for considerable
provocation for enjoyable laughter, and from the appearance of
their mirthful faces leaving the hall at the conclusion of the
lecture but few were disappointed, and it is not too much to say
that seldom has so large an audience been so uniformly pleased as
the one that listened to Mark Twain's quaint remarks last
evening. The large hall of the Union was filled to its utmost
capacity by fully two thousand persons, which fact spoke well for
the reputation of the lecturer and his future success. Mark
Twain's style is a quaint one both in manner and method, and
through his discourse he managed to keep on the right side of the
audience, and frequently convulsed it with hearty laughter....
During a description of the topography of the Sandwich Islands
the lecturer surprised his hearers by a graphic and eloquent
description of the eruption of the great volcano, which occurred
in 1840, and his language was loudly applauded.

“Judging from the success achieved by the lecturer last evening,
he should repeat his experiment at an early date.”]

COOPER INSTITUTE By Invitation of s large number of
prominent Californians and Citizens of New York,
MARK TWAIN
WILL DELIVER A SERIO-HUMEROUS LECTURE CONERNING
KANAKDOM OR THE SANDWICH ISLANDS,
COOPER INSTITUTE, On Monday Evening, May 6,1867.
TICKETS FIFTY GENTS. For Sale at Chickering and Sons,
852 Broadway, and at the Principal Hotel
Doors open at 7 o'clock. The Wisdom will begin to flow at 8.

Mark Twain always felt grateful to the school-teachers for that
night. Many years later, when they wanted him to read to them in
Steinway Hall, he gladly gave his services without charge.

Nor was the lecture a complete financial failure. In spite of the
flood of complementaries, there was a cash return of some three
hundred dollars from the sale of tickets—a substantial aid in
defraying the expenses which Fuller assumed and insisted on
making good on his own account. That was Fuller's regal way; his
return lay in the joy of the game, and in the winning of the
larger stake for a friend.

“Mark,” he said, “it is all right. The fortune didn't come, but
it will. The fame has arrived; with this lecture and your book
just out you are going to be the most talked-of man in the
country. Your letters for the Alta and the Tribune will get the
widest reception of any letters of travel ever written.”

LIX. THE FIRST BOOK

With the shadow of the Cooper Institute so happily dispelled, The
Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and his following of
Other Sketches, became a matter of more interest. The book was a
neat blue-and-gold volume printed by John A. Gray & Green, the
old firm for which the boy, Sam Clemens, had set type thirteen
years before. The title-page bore Webb's name as publisher, with
the American News Company as selling agents. It further stated
that the book was edited by “John Paul,” that is to say by Webb
himself. The dedication was in keeping with the general
irresponsible character of the venture. It was as follows:

TO JOHN SMITH WHOM I HAVE KNOWN IN DIVERS AND
SUNDRY PLACES ABOUT THE WORLD, AND WHOSE MANY
AND MANIFOLD VIRTUES DID ALWAYS COMMAND MY
ESTEEM, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

It is said that the man to whom a volume is dedicated always buys
a copy. If this prove true in the present instance, a princely
affluence is about to burst upon THE AUTHOR.

The “advertisement” stated that the author had “scaled the
heights of popularity at a single jump, and won for himself the
sobriquet of the 'Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope';
furthermore, that he was known to fame as the 'Moralist of the
Main,'” and that as such he would be likely to go down to
posterity, adding that it was in his secondary character, as
humorist, rather than in his primal one of moralist, that the
volume aimed to present him.—[The advertisement complete, with
extracts from the book, may be found under Appendix E, at the end
of last volume.]

Every little while, during the forty years or more that have
elapsed since then, some one has come forward announcing Mark
Twain to be as much a philosopher as a humorist, as if this were
a new discovery. But it was a discovery chiefly to the person
making the announcement. Every one who ever knew Mark Twain at
any period of his life made the same discovery. Every one who
ever took the trouble to familiarize himself with his work made
it. Those who did not make it have known his work only by hearsay
and quotation, or they have read it very casually, or have been
very dull. It would be much more of a discovery to find a book in
which he has not been serious—a philosopher, a moralist, and a
poet. Even in the Jumping Frog sketches, selected particularly
for their inconsequence, the under-vein of reflection and purpose
is not lacking. The answer to Moral Statistician—[In “Answers to
Correspondents,” included now in Sketches New and Old. An extract
from it, and from “A Strange Dream,” will be found in Appendix
E.]—is fairly alive with human wisdom and righteous wrath. The
“Strange Dream,” though ending in a joke, is aglow with poetry.
Webb's “advertisement” was playfully written, but it was
earnestly intended, and he writes Mark Twain down a moralist—not
as a discovery, but as a matter of course. The discoveries came
along later, when the author's fame as a humorist had dazzled the
nations.

It is as well to say it here as anywhere, perhaps, that one
reason why Mark Twain found it difficult to be accepted seriously
was the fact that his personality was in itself so essentially
humorous. His physiognomy, his manner of speech, this movement,
his mental attitude toward events—all these were distinctly
diverting. When we add to this that his medium of expression was
nearly always full of the quaint phrasing and those surprising
appositions which we recognize as amusing, it is not so
astonishing that his deeper, wiser, more serious purpose should
be overlooked. On the whole these unabated discoverers serve a
purpose, if only to make the rest of their species look somewhat
deeper than the comic phrase.

The little blue-and-gold volume which presented the Frog story
and twenty-six other sketches in covers is chiefly important
to-day as being Mark Twain's first book. The selections in it
were made for a public that had been too busy with a great war to
learn discrimination, and most of them have properly found
oblivion. Fewer than a dozen of them were included in his
collected Sketches issued eight years later, and some even of
those might have been spared; also some that were added, for that
matter; but detailed literary criticism is not the province of
this work. The reader may investigate and judge for himself.

Clemens was pleased with the appearance of his book. To Bret
Harte he wrote:

The book is out and it is handsome. It is full of damnable errors
of grammar and deadly inconsistencies of spelling in the Frog
sketch, because I was away and did not read proofs; but be a
friend and say nothing about these things. When my hurry is over,
I will send you a copy to pisen the children with.

That he had no exaggerated opinion of the book's contents or
prospects we may gather from his letter home:

As for the Frog book, I don't believe it will ever pay anything
worth a cent. I published it simply to advertise myself, and not
with the hope of making anything out of it.

He had grown more lenient in his opinion of the merits of the
Frog story itself since it had made friends in high places,
especially since James Russell Lowell had pronounced it “the
finest piece of humorous writing yet produced in America”; but
compared with his lecture triumph, and his prospective journey to
foreign seas, his book venture, at best, claimed no more than a
casual regard. A Sandwich Island book (he had collected his Union
letters with the idea of a volume) he gave up altogether after
one unsuccessful offer of it to Dick & Fitzgerald.

Frank Fuller's statement, that the fame had arrived, had in it
some measure of truth. Lecture propositions came from various
directions. Thomas Nast, then in the early day of his great
popularity, proposed a joint tour, in which Clemens would
lecture, while he, Nast, illustrated the remarks with lightning
caricatures. But the time was too short; the Quaker City would
sail on the 8th of June, and in the mean time the Alta
correspondent was far behind with his New York letters. On May
29th he wrote:

I am 18 Alta letters behind, and I must catch up or bust. I have
refused all invitations to lecture. Don't know how my book is
coming on.

He worked like a slave for a week or so, almost night and day, to
clean up matters before his departure. Then came days of idleness
and reaction-days of waiting, during which his natural
restlessness and the old-time regret for things done and undone,
beset him.

My passage is paid, and if the ship sails I sail on her; but I make
no calculations, have bought no cigars, no sea-going clothing—have
made no preparations whatever—shall not pack my trunk till the
morning we sail.
All I do know or feel is that I am wild with impatience to move
—move—move! Curse the endless delays! They always kill me—they make
me neglect every duty, and then I have a conscience that tears me
like a wild beast. I wish I never had to stop anywhere a month. I
do more mean things the moment I get a chance to fold my hands and
sit down than ever I get forgiveness for.
Yes, we are to meet at Mr. Beach's next Thursday night, and I
suppose we shall have to be gotten up regardless of expense, in
swallow-tails, white kids and everything 'en regle'.
I am resigned to Rev. Mr. Hutchinson's or anybody else's
supervision. I don't mind it. I am fixed. I have got a splendid,
immoral, tobacco-smoking, wine-drinking, godless roommate who is as
good and true and right-minded a man as ever lived—a man whose
blameless conduct and example will always be an eloquent sermon to
all who shall come within their influence. But send on the
professional preachers—there are none I like better to converse
with; if they're not narrowminded and bigoted they make good
companions.

The “splendid immoral room-mate” was Dan Slote—“Dan,” of The
Innocents, a lovable character—all as set down. Samuel Clemens
wrote one more letter to his mother and sister—a
conscience-stricken, pessimistic letter of good-by written the
night before sailing. Referring to the Alta letters he says:

I think they are the stupidest letters ever written from New York.
Corresponding has been a perfect drag ever since I got to the
States. If it continues abroad, I don't know what the Tribune and
Alta folk will think.

He remembers Orion, who had been officially eliminated when
Nevada had received statehood.

I often wonder if his law business is going satisfactorily. I wish
I had gone to Washington in the winter instead of going West. I
could have gouged an office out of Bill Stewart for him, and that
would have atoned for the loss of my home visit. But I am so
worthless that it seems to me I never do anything or accomplish
anything that lingers in my mind as a pleasant memory. My mind is
stored full of unworthy conduct toward Orion and toward you all,
and an accusing conscience gives me peace only in excitement and
restless moving from place to place. If I could only say I had done
one thing for any of you that entitled me to your good opinions (I
say nothing of your love, for I am sure of that, no matter how
unworthy of it I may make myself—from Orion down, you have always
given me that; all the days of my life, when God Almighty knows I
have seldom deserved it), I believe I could go home and stay there
—and I know I would care little for the world's praise or blame.
There is no satisfaction in the world's praise anyhow, and it has
no worth to me save in the way of business. I tried to gather up
its compliments to send you, but the work was distasteful and I
dropped it.
You observe that under a cheerful exterior I have got a spirit that
is angry with me and gives me freely its contempt. I can get away
from that at sea, and be tranquil and satisfied; and so, with my
parting love and benediction for Orion and all of you, I say
good-by and God bless you all-and welcome the wind that wafts a
weary soul to the sunny lands of the Mediterranean!
Yrs. forever, SAM

LX. THE INNOCENTS AT SEA

HOLY LAND PLEASURE EXCURSION
Steamer: Quaker City.
Captain C. C. Duncan.
Left New York at 2 P.m., June 8, 1867.
Rough weather—anchored within the harbor to lay all night.

That first note recorded an event momentous in Mark Twain's
career—an event of supreme importance; if we concede that any
link in a chain regardless of size is of more importance than any
other link. Undoubtedly it remains the most conspicuous event, as
the world views it now, in retrospect.

The note further heads a new chapter of history in sea-voyaging.
No such thing as the sailing of an ocean steamship with a
pleasure-party on a long transatlantic cruise had ever occurred
before. A similar project had been undertaken the previous year,
but owing to a cholera scare in the East it had been abandoned.
Now the dream had become a fact—a stupendous fact when we
consider it. Such an important beginning as that now would in all
likelihood furnish the chief news story of the day.

But they had different ideas of news in those days. There were no
headlines announcing the departure of the Quaker City—only the
barest mention of the ship's sailing, though a prominent position
was given to an account of a senatorial excursion-party which set
out that same morning over the Union Pacific Railway, then under
construction. Every name in that political party was set dawn,
and not one of them except General Hancock will ever be heard of
again. The New York Times, however, had some one on its editorial
staff who thought it worth while to comment a little on the
history-making Quaker City excursion. The writer was pleasantly
complimentary to officers and passengers. He referred to Moses S.
Beach, of the Sun, who was taking with him type and press,
whereby he would “skilfully utilize the brains of the company for
their mutual edification.” Mr. Beecher and General Sherman would
find talent enough aboard to make the hours go pleasantly
(evidently the writer had not interested himself sufficiently to
know that these gentlemen were not along), and the paragraph
closed by prophesying other such excursions, and wishing the
travelers “good speed, a happy voyage, and a safe return.”

That was handsome, especially for those days; only now, some fine
day, when an airship shall start with a band of happy argonauts
to land beyond the sunrise for the first time in history, we
shall feature it and emblazon it with pictures in the Sunday
papers, and weeklies, and in the magazines.—[The Quaker City idea
was so unheard-of that in some of the foreign ports visited, the
officials could not believe that the vessel was simply a
pleasure-craft, and were suspicious of some dark, ulterior
purpose.]

That Henry Ward Beecher and General Sherman had concluded not to
go was a heavy disappointment at first; but it proved only a
temporary disaster. The inevitable amalgamation of all ship
companies took place. The sixty-seven travelers fell into
congenial groups, or they mingled and devised amusements, and
gossiped and became a big family, as happy and as free from
contention as families of that size are likely to be.

The Quaker City was a good enough ship and sizable for her time.
She was registered eighteen hundred tons—about one-tenth the size
of Mediterranean excursion-steamers today—and when conditions
were favorable she could make ten knots an hour under steam—or,
at least, she could do it with the help of her auxiliary sails.
Altogether she was a cozy, satisfactory ship, and they were a
fortunate company who had her all to themselves and went out on
her on that long-ago ocean gipsying. She has grown since then,
even to the proportions of the Mayflower. It was necessary for
her to grow to hold all of those who in later times claimed to
have sailed in her on that voyage with Mark Twain.—[The Quaker
City passenger list will be found under Appendix F, at the end of
last volume.]

They were not all ministers and deacons aboard the Quaker City.
Clemens found other congenial spirits be sides his room-mate Dan
Slote—among them the ship's surgeon, Dr. A. Reeve Jackson (the
guide-destroying “Doctor” of The Innocents); Jack Van Nostrand,
of New Jersey (“Jack”); Julius Moulton, of St. Louis (“Moult”),
and other care-free fellows, the smoking-room crowd which is
likely to make comradeship its chief watchword. There were
companionable people in the cabin crowd also—fine, intelligent
men and women, especially one of the latter, a middle-aged,
intellectual, motherly soul—Mrs. A. W. Fairbanks, of Cleveland,
Ohio. Mrs. Fairbanks—herself a newspaper correspondent for her
husband's paper, the Cleveland Herald had a large influence on
the character and general tone of those Quaker City letters which
established Mark Twain's larger fame. She was an able writer
herself; her judgment was thoughtful, refined,
unbiased—altogether of a superior sort. She understood Samuel
Clemens, counseled him, encouraged him to read his letters aloud
to her, became in reality “Mother Fairbanks,” as they termed her,
to him and to others of that ship who needed her kindly offices.

In one of his home letters, later, he said of her:

She was the most refined, intelligent, cultivated lady in the ship,
and altogether the kindest and best. She sewed my buttons on, kept
my clothing in presentable trim, fed me on Egyptian jam (when I
behaved), lectured me awfully on the quarter-deck on moonlit
promenading evenings, and cured me of several bad habits. I am
under lasting obligations to her. She looks young because she is so
good, but she has a grown son and daughter at home.

In one of the early letters which Mrs. Fairbanks wrote to her
paper she is scarcely less complimentary to him, even if in a
different way.

We have D.D.'s and M.D.'s—we have men of wisdom and men of wit.
There is one table from which is sure to come a peal of laughter,
and all eyes are turned toward Mark Twain, whose face is, perfectly
mirth-provoking. Sitting lazily at the table, scarcely genteel in
his appearance, there is something, I know not what, that interests
and attracts. I saw to-day at dinner venerable divines and sage-
looking men convulsed with laughter at his drolleries and quaint,
odd manners.

It requires only a few days on shipboard for acquaintances to
form, and presently a little afternoon group was gathering to
hear Mark Twain read his letters. Mrs. Fairbanks was there, of
course, also Mr. and Mrs. S. L. Severance, likewise of Cleveland,
and Moses S. Beach, of the Sun, with his daughter Emma, a girl of
seventeen. Dan Slote was likely to be there, too, and Jack, and
the Doctor, and Charles J. Langdon, of Elmira, New York, a boy of
eighteen, who had conceived a deep admiration for the brilliant
writer. They were fortunate ones who first gathered to hear those
daring, wonderful letters.

But the benefit was a mutual one. He furnished a priceless
entertainment, and he derived something equally priceless in
return—the test of immediate audience and the boon of criticism.
Mrs. Fairbanks especially was frankly sincere. Mr. Severance
wrote afterward:

One afternoon I saw him tearing up a bunch of the soft, white
paper- copy paper, I guess the newspapers call it-on which he had
written something, and throwing the fragments into the
Mediterranean. I inquired of him why he cast away the fruits of his
labors in that manner.

“Well,” he drawled, “Mrs. Fairbanks thinks it oughtn't to be
printed, and, like as not, she is right.”

And Emma Beach (Mrs. Abbott Thayer) remembers hearing him say:

“Well, Mrs. Fairbanks has just destroyed another four hours' work
for me.”

Sometimes he played chess with Emma Beach, who thought him a
great hero because, once when a crowd of men were tormenting a
young lad, a passenger, Mark Twain took the boy's part and made
them desist.

“I am sure I was right, too,” she declares; “heroism came natural
to him.”

Mr. Severance recalls another incident which, as he says, was
trivial enough, but not easy to forget:

We were having a little celebration over the birthday anniversary
of Mrs. Duncan, wife of our captain. Mark Twain got up and made a
little speech, in which he said Mrs. Duncan was really older than
Methuselah because she knew a lot of things that Methuselah never
heard of. Then he mentioned a number of more or less modern
inventions, and wound up by saying, “What did Methuselah know
about a barbed-wire fence?”

Except Following the Equator, The Innocents Abroad comes nearer
to being history than any other of Mark Twain's travel-books. The
notes for it were made on the spot, and there was plenty of fact,
plenty of fresh, new experience, plenty of incident to set down.
His idea of descriptive travel in those days was to tell the
story as it happened; also, perhaps, he had not then acquired the
courage of his inventions. We may believe that the adventures
with Jack, Dan, and the Doctor are elaborated here and there; but
even those happened substantially as recorded. There is little to
add, then, to the story of that halcyon trip, and not much to
elucidate.

The old note-books give a light here and there that is
interesting. It is curious to be looking through them now, trying
to realize that these penciled memoranda were the fresh, first
impressions that would presently grow into the world's most
delightful book of travel; that they were set down in the very
midst of that care-free little company that frolicked through
Italy, climbed wearily the arid Syrian hills. They are all dead
now; but to us they are as alive and young to-day as when they
followed the footprints of the Son of Man through Palestine, and
stood at last before the Sphinx, impressed and awed by its “five
thousand slow-revolving years.”

Some of the items consist of no more than a few terse, suggestive
words—serious, humorous, sometimes profane. Others are
statistical, descriptive, elaborated. Also there are
drawings—“not copied,” he marks them, with a pride not always
justified by the result. The earlier notes are mainly comments on
the “pilgrims,” the freak pilgrims: “the Frenchy-looking woman
who owns a dog and keeps up an interminable biography of him to
the passengers”; the “long-legged, simple, wide-mouthed,
horse-laughing young fellow who once made a sea voyage to
Fortress Monroe, and quotes eternally from his experiences”;
also, there is reference to another young man, “good,
accommodating, pleasant but fearfully green.” This young person
would become the “Interrogation Point,” in due time, and have his
picture on page 71 (old edition), while opposite him, on page 70,
would appear the “oracle," identified as one Doctor Andrews, who
(the note-book says) had the habit of “smelling in guide-books
for knowledge and then trying to play it for old information that
has been festering in his brain.” Sometimes there are abstract
notes such as:

How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing that no one
had ever said it before.

Of the “character” notes, the most important and elaborated is
that which presents the “Poet Lariat.” This is the entry,
somewhat epitomized:

BLOODGOOD H. CUTTER
He is fifty years old, and small of his age. He dresses in
homespun, and is a simple-minded, honest, old-fashioned farmer,
with a strange proclivity for writing rhymes. He writes them on all
possible subjects, and gets them printed on slips of paper, with
his portrait at the head. These he will give to any man who comes
along, whether he has anything against him or not....
Dan said:
“It must be a great happiness to you to sit down at the close of
day and put its events all down in rhymes and poetry, like Byron
and Shakespeare and those fellows.”
“Oh yes, it is—it is—Why, many's the time I've had to get up in the
night when it comes on me:
Whether we're on the sea or the land We've all got to go at the
word of command—
“Hey! how's that?”

A curious character was Cutter—a Long Island farmer with the
obsession of rhyme. In his old age, in an interview, he said:

“Mark was generally writing and he was glum. He would write what
we were doing, and I would write poetry, and Mark would say:

“'For Heaven's sake, Cutter, keep your poems to yourself.'

“Yes, Mark was pretty glum, and he was generally writing.”

Poor old Poet Lariat—dead now with so many others of that happy
crew. We may believe that Mark learned to be “glum” when he saw
the Lariat approaching with his sheaf of rhymes. We may believe,
too, that he was “generally writing.” He contributed fifty-three
letters to the Alta during that five months and six to the
Tribune. They would average about two columns nonpareil each,
which is to say four thousand words, or something like two
hundred and fifty thousand words in all. To turn out an average
of fifteen hundred words a day, with continuous sight-seeing
besides, one must be generally writing during any odd intervals;
those who are wont to regard Mark Twain as lazy may consider
these statistics. That he detested manual labor is true enough,
but at the work for which he was fitted and intended it may be
set down here upon authority (and despite his own frequent
assertions to the contrary) that to his last year he was the most
industrious of men.

LXI. THE INNOCENTS ABROAD

It was Dan, Jack, and the Doctor who with Mark Twain wandered
down through Italy and left moral footprints that remain to this
day. The Italian guides are wary about showing pieces of the True
Cross, fragments of the Crown of Thorns, and the bones of saints
since then. They show them, it is true, but with a smile; the
name of Mark Twain is a touch-stone to test their statements. Not
a guide in Italy but has heard the tale of that iconoclastic
crew, and of the book which turned their marvels into myths,
their relics into bywords.

It was Doctor Jackson, Colonel Denny, Doctor Birch, and Samuel
Clemens who evaded the quarantine and made the perilous night
trip to Athens and looked upon the Parthenon and the sleeping
city by moonlight. It is all set down in the notes, and the
account varies little from that given in the book; only he does
not tell us that Captain Duncan and the quartermaster, Pratt,
connived at the escapade, or how the latter watched the shore in
anxious suspense until he heard the whistle which was their
signal to be taken aboard. It would have meant six months'
imprisonment if they had been captured, for there was no
discretion in the Greek law.

It was T. D. Crocker, A. N. Sanford, Col. Peter Kinney, and
William Gibson who were delegated to draft the address to the
Emperor of Russia at Yalta, with Samuel L. Clemens as chairman of
that committee. The chairman wrote the address, the opening
sentence of which he grew so weary of hearing:

We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply
for recreation, and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial
state.

The address is all set down in the notes, and there also exists
the first rough draft, with the emendations in his own hand. He
deplores the time it required:

That job is over. Writing addresses to emperors is not my strong
suit. However, if it is not as good as it might be it doesn't
signify—the other committeemen ought to have helped me write it;
they had nothing to do, and I had my hands full. But for bothering
with this I would have caught up entirely with my New York Tribune
correspondence and nearly up with the San Francisco.

They wanted him also to read the address to the Emperor, but he
pointed out that the American consul was the proper person for
that office. He tells how the address was presented:

August 26th. The Imperial carriages were in waiting at eleven,
and at twelve we were at the palace....

The Consul for Odessa read the address and the Czar said
frequently, “Good—very good; indeed”—and at the close, “I am
very, very grateful.”

It was not improper for him to set down all this, and much more,
in his own note-book—not then for publication. It was in fact a
very proper record—for today.

One incident of the imperial audience Mark Twain omitted from his
book, perhaps because the humor of it had not yet become
sufficiently evident. “The humorous perception of a thing is a
pretty slow growth sometimes,” he once remarked. It was about
seventeen years before he could laugh enjoyably at a slight
mistake he made at the Emperor's reception. He set down a
memorandum of it, then, for fear it might be lost:

There were a number of great dignitaries of the Empire there, and
although, as a general thing, they were dressed in citizen's
clothing, I observed that the most of them wore a very small piece
of ribbon in the lapels of their coats. That little touch of color
struck my fancy, and it seemed to me a good idea to add it to my
own attractions; not imagining that it had any special
significance. So I stepped aside, hunted up a bit of red ribbon,
and ornamented my lapel with it. Presently, Count Festetics, the
Grand Master of ceremonies, and the only man there who was
gorgeously arrayed, in full official costume, began to show me a
great many attentions. He was particularly polite, and pleasant,
and anxious to be of service to me. Presently, he asked me what
order of nobility I belonged to? I said, “I didn't belong to any.”
Then he asked me what order of knighthood I belonged to? I said,
“None.” Then he asked me what the red ribbon in my buttonhole stood
for? I saw, at once, what an ass I had been making of myself, and
was accordingly confused and embarrassed. I said the first thing
that came into my mind, and that was that the ribbon was merely the
symbol of a club of journalists to which I belonged, and I was not
pursued with any more of Count Festetic's attentions.
Later, I got on very familiar terms with an old gentleman, whom I
took to be the head gardener, and walked him all about the gardens,
slipping my arm into his without invitation, yet without demur on
his part, and by and by was confused again when I found that he was
not a gardener at all, but the Lord High Admiral of Russia! I
almost made up my mind that I would never call on an Emperor again.

Like all Mediterranean excursionists, those first pilgrims were
insatiable collectors of curios, costumes, and all manner of
outlandish things. Dan Slote had the stateroom hung and piled
with such gleanings. At Constantinople his room-mate writes:

I thought Dan had got the state-room pretty full of rubbish at
last, but awhile ago his dragoman arrived with a brand-new ghastly
tombstone of the Oriental pattern, with his name handsomely carved
and gilted on it in Turkish characters. That fellow will buy a
Circassian slave next.

It was Church, Denny, Jack, Davis, Dan, Moult, and Mark Twain who
made the “long trip” through Syria from Beirut to Jerusalem with
their elaborate camping outfit and decrepit nags “Jericho,”
“Baalbec,” and the rest. It was better camping than that Humboldt
journey of six years before, though the horses were not so
dissimilar, and altogether it was a hard, nerve-racking
experience, climbing the arid hills of Palestine in that torrid
summer heat. Nobody makes that trip in summer-time now. Tourists
hurry out of Syria before the first of April, and they do not go
back before November. One brief quotation from Mark Twain's book
gives us an idea of what that early party of pilgrims had to
undergo:

We left Damascus at noon and rode across the plain a couple of
hours, and then the party stopped a while in the shade of some fig-
trees to give me a chance to rest. It was the hottest day we had
seen yet—the sun-flames shot down like the shafts of fire that
stream out before a blow-pipe; the rays seemed to fall in a deluge
on the head and pass downward like rain from a roof. I imagined I
could distinguish between the floods of rays. I thought I could
tell when each flood struck my head, when it reached my shoulders,
and when the next one came. It was terrible.

He had been ill with cholera at Damascus, a light attack; but any
attack of that dread disease is serious enough. He tells of this
in the book, but he does not mention, either in the book or in
his notes, the attack which Dan Slote had some days later. It
remained for William F. Church, of the party, to relate that
incident, for it was the kind of thing that Mark Twain was not
likely to record, or even to remember. Doctor Church was a deacon
with orthodox views and did not approve of Mark Twain; he thought
him sinful, irreverent, profane.

“He was the worst man I ever knew,” Church said; then he added,
“And the best.”

What happened was this: At the end of a terrible day of heat,
when the party had camped on the edge of a squalid Syrian
village, Dan was taken suddenly ill. It was cholera, beyond
doubt. Dan could not go on—he might never go on. The chances were
that way. It was a serious matter all around. To wait with Dan
meant to upset their travel schedule—it might mean to miss the
ship. Consultation was held and a resolution passed (the pilgrims
were always passing resolutions) to provide for Dan as well as
possible, and leave him behind. Clemens, who had remained with
Dan, suddenly appeared and said:

“Gentlemen, I understand that you are going to leave Dan Slote
here alone. I'll be d—-d if I do!”

And he didn't. He stayed there and brought Dan into Jerusalem, a
few days late, but convalescent.

Perhaps most of them were not always reverent during that Holy
Land trip. It was a trying journey, and after fierce days of
desert hills the reaction might not always spare even the holiest
memories. Jack was particularly sinful. When they learned the
price for a boat on Galilee, and the deacons who had traveled
nearly half around the world to sail on that sacred water were
confounded by the charge, Jack said:

“Well, Denny, do you wonder now that Christ walked?”

It was the irreverent Jack who one morning (they had camped the
night before by the ruins of Jericho) refused to get up to see
the sun rise across the Jordan. Deacon Church went to his tent.

“Jack, my boy, get up. Here is the place where the Israelites
crossed over into the Promised Land, and beyond are the mountains
of Moab, where Moses lies buried.”

“Moses who!” said Jack.

“Oh, Jack, my boy, Moses, the great lawgiver—who led the
Israelites out of Egypt-forty years through the wilderness—to the
Promised Land.”

“Forty years!” said Jack. “How far was it?”

“It was three hundred miles, Jack; a great wilderness, and he
brought them through in safety.”

Jack regarded him with scorn. “Huh, Moses—three hundred miles
forty years—why, Ben Holiday would have brought them through in
thirty-six hours!”—[Ben Holiday, owner of the Overland stages,
and a man of great executive ability. This incident, a true one,
is more elaborately told in Roughing It, but it seems pertinent
here.]

Jack probably learned more about the Bible during that trip-its
history and its heroes-than during all his former years. Nor was
Jack the only one of that group thus benefited. The sacred
landmarks of Palestine inspire a burning interest in the
Scriptures, and Mark Twain probably did not now regret those
early Sunday-school lessons; certainly he did not fail to review
them exhaustively on that journey. His note-books fairly overflow
with Bible references; the Syrian chapters in The Innocents
Abroad are permeated with the poetry and legendary beauty of the
Bible story. The little Bible he carried on that trip, bought in
Constantinople, was well worn by the time they reached the ship
again at Jaffa. He must have read it with a large and persistent
interest; also with a double benefit. For, besides the knowledge
acquired, he was harvesting a profit—probably unsuspected at the
time—-viz., the influence of the most direct and beautiful
English—the English of the King James version—which could not
fail to affect his own literary method at that impressionable
age. We have already noted his earlier admiration for that noble
and simple poem, “The Burial of Moses,” which in the Palestine
note-book is copied in full. All the tendency of his expression
lay that way, and the intense consideration of stately Bible
phrase and imagery could hardly fail to influence his mental
processes. The very distinct difference of style, as shown in The
Innocents Abroad and in his earlier writings, we may believe was
in no small measure due to his study of the King James version
during those weeks in Palestine.

He bought another Bible at Jerusalem; but it was not for himself.
It was a little souvenir volume bound in olive and balsam wood,
and on the fly-leaf is inscribed:

Mrs. Jane Clemens from her son. Jerusalem, Sept. 24, 1867.

There is one more circumstance of that long cruise-recorded
neither in the book nor the notes—an incident brief, but of more
importance in the life of Samuel Clemens than any heretofore set
down. It occurred in the beautiful Bay of Smyrna, on the fifth or
sixth of September, while the vessel lay there for the Ephesus
trip.

Reference has been made to young Charles Langdon, of Elmira (the
“Charley” once mentioned in the Innocents), as an admirer of Mark
Twain. There was a good deal of difference in their ages, and
they were seldom of the same party; but sometimes the boy invited
the journalist to his cabin and, boy-like, exhibited his
treasures. He had two sisters at home; and of Olivia, the
youngest, he had brought a dainty miniature done on ivory in
delicate tints—a sweet-pictured countenance, fine and spiritual.
On that fateful day in the day of Smyrna, Samuel Clemens,
visiting in young Langdon's cabin, was shown this portrait. He
looked at it with long admiration, and spoke of it reverently,
for the delicate face seemed to him to be something more than a
mere human likeness. Each time he came, after that, he asked to
see the picture, and once even begged to be allowed to take it
away with him. The boy would not agree to this, and the elder man
looked long and steadily at the miniature, resolving in his mind
that some day he would meet the owner of that lovely face—a
purpose for once in accord with that which the fates had arranged
for him, in the day when all things were arranged, the day of the
first beginning.

LXII. THE RETURN OF THE PILGRIMS

The last note-book entry bears date of October 11th:

At sea, somewhere in the neighborhood of Malta. Very stormy.
Terrible death to be talked to death. The storm has blown two small
land birds and a hawk to sea and they came on board. Sea full of
flying-fish.

That is all. There is no record of the week's travel in Spain,
which a little group of four made under the picturesque Gibraltar
guide, Benunes, still living and quite as picturesque at last
accounts. This side-trip is covered in a single brief paragraph
in the Innocents, and the only account we have of it is in a home
letter, from Cadiz, of October 24th:

We left Gibraltar at noon and rode to Algeciras (4 hours), thus
dodging the quarantine—took dinner, and then rode horseback all
night in a swinging trot, and at daylight took a caleche (a-wheeled
vehicle), and rode 5 hours—then took cars and traveled till twelve
at night. That landed us at Seville, and we were over the hard part
of our trip and somewhat tired. Since then we have taken things
comparatively easy, drifting around from one town to another and
attracting a good deal of attention—for I guess strangers do not
wander through Andalusia and the other southern provinces of Spain
often. The country is precisely what it was when Don Quixote and
Sancho Panza were possible characters.
But I see now what the glory of Spain must have been when it was
under Moorish domination. No, I will not say that—but then when one
is carried away, infatuated, entranced, with the wonders of the
Alhambra and the supernatural beauty of the Alcazar, he is apt to
overflow with admiration for the splendid intellects that created
them.

We may wish that he had left us a chapter of that idyllic
journey, but it will never be written now. A night or two before
the vessel reached New York there was the usual good-by assembly,
and for this occasion, at Mrs. Severance's request, Mark Twain
wrote some verses. They were not especially notable, for meter
and rhyme did not come easy to him, but one prophetic stanza is
worth remembering. In the opening lines the passengers are
referred to as a fleet of vessels, then follows:

Lo! other ships of that parted fleet Shall suffer this fate or
that: One shall be wrecked, another shall sink, Or ground on
treacherous flat. Some shall be famed in many lands As good
ships, fast and fair, And some shall strangely disappear, Men
know not when or where.

The Quaker City returned to America on November 19, 1867, and
Mark Twain found himself, if not famous, at least in very wide
repute. The fifty-three letters to the Alta and the half-dozen to
the New York Tribune had carried his celebrity into every corner
of the States and Territories. Vivid, fearless, full of fresh
color, humor, poetry, they came as a revelation to a public weary
of the driveling, tiresome travel-letters of that period. They
preached a new gospel in travel-literature: the gospel of seeing
with an overflowing honesty; a gospel of sincerity in according
praises to whatever seemed genuine, and ridicule to the things
considered sham. It was the gospel that Mark Twain would continue
to preach during his whole career. It became his chief literary
message to the world-a world waiting for that message.

Moreover, the letters were literature. He had received, from
whatever source, a large and very positive literary impulse, a
loftier conception and expression. It was at Tangier that he
first struck the grander chord, the throbbing cadence of human
story.

Here is a crumbling wall that was old when Columbus discovered
America; old when Peter the Hermit roused the knightly men of the
Middle Ages to arm for the first Crusade; old when Charlemagne
and his paladins beleaguered enchanted castles and battled with
giants and genii in the fabled days of the olden time; old when
Christ and his disciples walked the earth; stood where it stands
to-day when the lips of Memnon were vocal and men bought and sold
in the streets of ancient Thebes.

This is pure poetry. He had never touched so high a strain
before, but he reached it often after that, and always with an
ever-increasing mastery and confidence. In Venice, in Rome, in
Athens, through the Holy Land, his retrospection becomes a
stately epic symphony, a processional crescendo that swings ever
higher until it reaches that sublime strain, the ageless
contemplation of the Sphinx. We cannot forego a paragraph or two
of that word-picture:

After years of waiting it was before me at last. The great face was
so sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient. There was a dignity not
of earth in its mien, and in its countenance a benignity such as
never anything human wore. It was stone, but it seemed sentient. If
ever image of stone thought, it was thinking. It was looking toward
the verge of the landscape, yet looking at nothing—nothing but
distance and vacancy. It was looking over and beyond everything of
the present, and far into the past.... It was thinking of the wars
of the departed ages; of the empires it had seen created and
destroyed; of the nations whose birth it had witnessed, whose
progress it had watched, whose annihilation it had noted; of the
joy and sorrow, the life and death, the grandeur and decay, of five
thousand slow-revolving years....
The Sphinx is grand in its loneliness; it is imposing in its
magnitude; it is impressive in the mystery that hangs over its
story. And there is that in the overshadowing majesty of this
eternal figure of stone, with its accusing memory of the deeds of
all ages, which reveals to one something of what we shall feel when
we shall stand at last in the awful presence of God.

Then that closing word of Egypt. He elaborated it for the book,
and did not improve it. Let us preserve here its original form.

We are glad to have seen Egypt. We are glad to have seen that old
land which taught Greece her letters—and through Greece, Rome—and
through Rome, the world—that venerable cradle of culture and
refinement which could have humanized and civilized the Children of
Israel, but allowed them to depart out of her borders savages—those
Children whom we still revere, still love, and whose sad
shortcomings we still excuse—not because they were savages, but
because they were the chosen savages of God.

The Holy Land letters alone would have brought him fame. They
presented the most graphic and sympathetic picture of Syrian
travel ever written—one that will never become antiquated or
obsolete so long as human nature remains unchanged. From
beginning to end the tale is rarely, reverently told. Its closing
paragraph has not been surpassed in the voluminous literature of
that solemn land:

Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of
a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies.
Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers that solemn
sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing
exists—over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs
motionless and dead—about whose borders nothing grows but weeds and
scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises
refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch.
Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of
Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing one finds
only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho
the accursed lies a moldering ruin today, even as Joshua's miracle
left it more than three thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany,
in their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about them now
to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the Saviour's
presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their
flocks by night, and where the angels sang Peace on earth, goodwill
to men, is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any
feature that is pleasant to the eye. Renowned Jerusalem itself, the
stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and
is become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer
there to compel the admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the
wonderful temple which was the pride and the glory of Israel is
gone, and the Ottoman crescent is lifted above the spot where, on
that most memorable day in the annals of the world, they reared the
Holy Cross. The noted Sea of Galilee, where Roman fleets once rode
at anchor and the disciples of the Saviour sailed in their ships,
was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and commerce, and its
borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a shapeless ruin;
Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have
vanished from the earth, and the “desert places” round about them
where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour's voice and ate
the miraculous bread sleep in the hush of a solitude that is
inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes.
Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise?
Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land?

It would be easy to quote pages here—a pictorial sequence from
Gibraltar to Athens, from Athens to Egypt, a radiant panoramic
march. In time he would write technically better. He would avoid
solecism, he would become a greater master of vocabulary and
phrase, but in all the years ahead he would never match the
lambent bloom and spontaneity of those fresh, first impressions
of Mediterranean lands and seas. No need to mention the humor,
the burlesque, the fearless, unrestrained ridicule of old masters
and of sacred relics, so called. These we have kept familiar with
much repetition. Only, the humor had grown more subtle, more
restrained; the burlesque had become impersonal and harmless, the
ridicule so frank and good-natured, that even the old masters
themselves might have enjoyed it, while the most devoted
churchman, unless blinded by bigotry, would find in it
satisfaction, rather than sacrilege.

The final letter was written for the New York Herald after the
arrival, and was altogether unlike those that preceded it. Gaily
satirical and personal—inclusively so—it might better have been
left unwritten, for it would seem to have given needless offense
to a number of goodly people, whose chief sin was the sedateness
of years. However, it is all past now, and those who were old
then, and perhaps queer and pious and stingy, do not mind any
more, and those who were young and frivolous have all grown old
too, and most of them have set out on the still farther voyage.
Somewhere, it may be, they gather, now; and then, and lightly,
tenderly recall their old-time journeying.

LXIII. IN WASHINGTON—A PUBLISHING PROPOSITION

Clemens remained but one day in New York. Senator Stewart had
written, about the time of the departure of the Quaker City,
offering him the position of private secretary—a position which
was to give him leisure for literary work, with a supporting
salary as well. Stewart no doubt thought it would be considerably
to his advantage to have the brilliant writer and lecturer
attached to his political establishment, and Clemens likewise saw
possibilities in the arrangement. From Naples, in August, he had
written accepting Stewart's offer; he lost no time now in
discussing the matter in person.—[In a letter home, August 9th,
he referred to the arrangement: “I wrote to Bill Stewart to-day
accepting his private secretaryship in Washington, next winter.”]

There seems to have been little difficulty in concluding the
arrangement. When Clemens had been in Washington a week we find
him writing:

DEAR FOLKS, Tired and sleepy—been in Congress all day and making
newspaper acquaintances. Stewart is to look up a clerkship in the
Patent Office for Orion. Things necessarily move slowly where there
is so much business and such armies of office-seekers to be
attended to. I guess it will be all right. I intend it shall be all
right.
I have 18 invitations to lecture, at $100 each, in various parts of
the Union—have declined them all. I am for business now.
Belong on the Tribune Staff, and shall write occasionally. Am
offered the same berth to-day on the Herald by letter. Shall write
Mr. Bennett and accept, as soon as I hear from Tribune that it will
not interfere. Am pretty well known now—intend to be better known.
Am hobnobbing with these old Generals and Senators and other
humbugs for no good purpose. Don't have any more trouble making
friends than I did in California. All serene. Good-by. Shall
continue on the Alta. Yours affectionately, SAM.
P.S.—I room with Bill Stewart and board at Willard's Hotel.

But the secretary arrangement was a brief matter. It is
impossible to conceive of Mark Twain as anybody's secretary,
especially as the secretary of Senator Stewart. —[In Senator
Stewart's memoirs he refers unpleasantly to Mark Twain, and after
relating several incidents that bear only strained relations to
the truth, states that when the writer returned from the Holy
Land he (Stewart) offered him a secretaryship as a sort of
charity. He adds that Mark Twain's behavior on his premises was
such that a threat of a thrashing was necessary. The reason for
such statements becomes apparent, however, when he adds that in
'Roughing It' the author accuses him of cheating, prints a
picture of him with a hatch over his eye, and claims to have
given him a sound thrashing, none of which statements, save only
the one concerning the picture (an apparently unforgivable
offense to his dignity), is true, as the reader may easily
ascertain for himself.]

Within a few weeks he was writing humorous accounts of “My Late
Senatorial Secretaryship,” “Facts Concerning the Recent
Resignation,” etc., all good-natured burlesque, but inspired, we
may believe, by the change: These articles appeared in the New
York Tribune, the New York Citizen, and the Galaxy Magazine.

There appears to have been no ill-feeling at this time between
Clemens and Stewart. If so, it is not discoverable in any of the
former's personal or newspaper correspondence. In fact, in his
article relating to his “late senatorial secretaryship” he puts
the joke, so far as it is a joke, on Senator James W. Nye,
probably as an additional punishment for Nye's failure to appear
on the night of his lecture. He established headquarters with a
brilliant newspaper correspondent named Riley. “One of the best
men in Washington—or elsewhere,” he tells us in a brief sketch of
that person.—[See Riley, newspaper correspondent. Sketches New
and Old.]—He had known Riley in San Francisco; the two were
congenial, and settled down to their several undertakings.

Clemens was chiefly concerned over two things: he wished to make
money and he wished to secure a government appointment for Orion.
He had used up the most of his lecture accumulations, and was
moderately in debt. His work was in demand at good rates, for
those days, and with working opportunity he could presently
dispose of his financial problem. The Tribune was anxious for
letters; the Enterprise and Alta were waiting for them; the
Herald, the Chicago Tribune, the magazines—all had solicited
contributions; the lecture bureaus pursued him. Personally his
outlook was bright.

The appointment for Orion was a different matter. The powers were
not especially interested in a brother; there were too many
brothers and assorted relatives on the official waiting-list
already. Clemens was offered appointments for himself—a
consulship, a post-mastership; even that of San Francisco. From
the Cabinet down, the Washington political contingent had read
his travel-letters, and was ready to recognize officially the
author of them in his own person and personality.

Also, socially: Mark Twain found himself all at once in the midst
of receptions, dinners, and speech-making; all very exciting for
a time at least, but not profitable, not conducive to work. At a
dinner of the Washington Correspondents Club his response to the
toast, “Women,” was pronounced by Schuyler Colfax to be “the best
after dinner speech ever made.” Certainly it was a refreshing
departure from the prosy or clumsy-witted efforts common to that
period. He was coming altogether into his own.—[This is the first
of Mark Twain's after-dinner speeches to be preserved. The reader
will find it complete, as reported next day, in Appendix G, at
the end of last volume.]

He was not immediately interested in the matter of book
publication. The Jumping Frog book was popular, and in England
had been issued by Routledge; but the royalty returns were modest
enough and slow in arrival. His desire was for prompter results.
His interest in book publication had never been an eager one, and
related mainly to the advertising it would furnish, which he did
not now need; or to the money return, in which he had no great
faith. Yet at this very moment a letter for him was lying in the
Tribune office in New York which would bring the book idea into
first prominence and spell the beginning of his fortune.

Among those who had read and found delight in the Tribune letters
was Elisha Bliss, Jr., of the American Publishing Company, of
Hartford. Bliss was a shrewd and energetic man, with a keen
appreciation for humor and the American fondness for that
literary quality. He had recently undertaken the management of a
Hartford concern, and had somewhat alarmed its conservative
directorate by publishing books that furnished entertainment to
the reader as well as moral instruction. Only his success in
paying dividends justified this heresy and averted his downfall.
Two days after the arrival of the Quaker City Bliss wrote the
letter above mentioned. It ran as follows:

OFFICE OF THE AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO. HARTFORD,
CONN., November 21, 1867.

SAMUEL L. CLEMENS, ESQ., Tribune Office, New York.

DEAR SIR,—We take the liberty to address you this, in place of a
letter which we had recently written and were about to forward to
you, not knowing your arrival home was expected so soon. We are
desirous of obtaining from you a work of some kind, perhaps
compiled from your letters from the past, etc., with such
interesting additions as may be proper. We are the publishers of
A. D. Richardson's works, and flatter ourselves that we can give
an author a favorable term and do as full justice to his
productions as any other house in the country. We are perhaps the
oldest subscription house in the country, and have never failed
to give a book an immense circulation. We sold about 100,000
copies of Richardson's F. D. and E. ('Field, Dungeon and
Escape'), and are now printing 41,000 of 'Beyond the
Mississippi', and large orders ahead. If you have any thought of
writing a book, or could be induced to do so, we should be
pleased to see you, and will do so. Will you do us the favor of
reply at once, at your earliest convenience.

Very truly etc.,
E. BLISS, JR., Secretary.

After ten days' delay this letter was forwarded to the Tribune
bureau in Washington, where Clemens received it. He replied
promptly.

WASHINGTON, December 2, 1867.

E. BLISS, JR., ESQ., Secretary American Publishing Co.

DEAR SIR,—I only received your favor of November 21st last night,
at the rooms of the Tribune Bureau here. It was forwarded from
the Tribune office, New York where it had lain eight or ten days.
This will be a sufficient apology for the seeming discourtesy of
my silence.

I wrote fifty-two letters for the San Francisco Alta California
during the Quaker City excursion, about half of which number have
been printed thus far. The Alta has few exchanges in the East,
and I suppose scarcely any of these letters have been copied on
this side of the Rocky Mountains. I could weed them of their
chief faults of construction and inelegancies of expression, and
make a volume that would be more acceptable in many respects than
any I could now write. When those letters were written my
impressions were fresh, but now they have lost that freshness;
they were warm then, they are cold now. I could strike out
certain letters, and write new ones wherewith to supply their
places. If you think such a book would suit your purpose, please
drop me a line, specifying the size and general style of the
volume—when the matter ought to be ready; whether it should have
pictures in it or not; and particularly what your terms with me
would be, and what amount of money I might possibly make out of
it. The latter clause has a degree of importance for me which is
almost beyond my own comprehension. But you understand that, of
course.

I have other propositions for a book, but have doubted the
propriety of interfering with good newspaper engagements, except
my way as an author could be demonstrated to be plain before me.
But I know Richardson, and learned from him some months ago
something of an idea of the subscription plan of publishing. If
that is your plan invariably it looks safe.

I am on the New York Tribune staff here as an “occasional,” among other
things, and a note from you addressed to Very truly, etc.,
SAM. L. CLEMENS, New York Tribune Bureau, Washington will find me,
without fail.

The exchange of those two letters marked the beginning of one of
the most notable publishing connections in American literary
history.

Consummation, however, was somewhat delayed. Bliss was ill when
the reply came, and could not write again in detail until nearly
a month later. In this letter he recited the profits made by
Richardson and others through subscription publication, and named
the royalties paid. Richardson had received four per cent. of the
sale price, a small enough rate for these later days; but the
cost of manufacture was larger then, and the sale and delivery of
books through agents has ever been an expensive process. Even
Horace Greeley had received but a fraction more on his Great
American Conflict. Bliss especially suggested and emphasized a
“humorous work—that is to say, a work humorously inclined.” He
added that they had two arrangements for paying authors: outright
purchase, and royalty. He invited a meeting in New York to
arrange terms.

LXIV. OLIVIA LANGDON

Clemens did in fact go to New York that same evening, to spend
Christmas with Dan Slote, and missed Bliss's second letter. It
was no matter. Fate had his affairs properly in hand, and had
prepared an event of still larger moment than the publication
even of Innocents Abroad. There was a pleasant reunion at Dan
Slote's. He wrote home about it:

Charley Langdon, Jack Van Nostrand, Dan and I (all Quaker City
night-hawks) had a blow-out at Dan's house and a lively talk over
old times. I just laughed till my sides ached at some of our
reminiscences. It was the unholiest gang that ever cavorted through
Palestine, but those are the best boys in the world.

This, however, was not the event; it was only preliminary to it.
We are coming to that now. At the old St. Nicholas Hotel, which
stood on the west of Broadway between Spring and Broome streets,
there were stopping at this time Jervis Langdon, a wealty
coal-dealer and mine-owner of Elmira, his son Charles and his
daughter Olivia, whose pictured face Samuel Clemens had first
seen in the Bay of Smyrna one September day. Young Langdon had
been especially anxious to bring his distinguished Quaker City
friend and his own people together, and two days before Christmas
Samuel Clemens was invited to dine at the hotel. He went very
willingly. The lovely face of that miniature had been often a
part of his waking dreams. For the first time now he looked upon
its reality. Long afterward he said:

“It is forty years ago. From that day to this she has never been
out of my mind.”

Charles Dickens was in New York then, and gave a reading that
night in Steinway Hall. The Langdons went, and Samuel Clemens
accompanied them. He remembered afterward that Dickens wore a
black velvet coat with a fiery red flower in his buttonhole, and
that he read the storm scene from Copperfield—the death of James
Steerforth. But he remembered still more clearly the face and
dress of that slender girlish figure at his side.

Olivia Langdon was twenty-two years old at this time, delicate as
the miniature he had seen, fragile to look upon, though no longer
with the shattered health of her girlhood. At sixteen, through a
fall upon the ice, she had become a complete invalid, confined to
her bed for two years, unable to sit, even when supported, unable
to lie in any position except upon her back. Great physicians and
surgeons, one after another, had done their best for her but she
had failed steadily until every hope had died. Then, when nothing
else was left to try, a certain Doctor Newton, of spectacular
celebrity, who cured by “laying on of hands,” was brought to
Elmira to see her. Doctor Newton came into the darkened room and
said:

“Open the windows—we must have light!”

They protested that she could not bear the light, but the windows
were opened. Doctor Newton came to the bedside of the helpless
girl, delivered a short, fervent prayer, put his arm under her
shoulders, and bade her sit up. She had not moved for two years,
and the family were alarmed, but she obeyed, and he assisted her
into a chair. Sensation came back to her limbs. With his
assistance she even made a feeble attempt to walk. He left then,
saying that she would gradually improve, and in time be well,
though probably never very strong. On the same day he healed a
boy, crippled and drawn with fever.

It turned out as he had said. Olivia Langdon improved steadily,
and now at twenty-two, though not robust—she was never that—she
was comparatively well. Gentle, winning, lovable, she was the
family idol, and Samuel Clemens joined in their worship from the
moment of that first meeting.

Olivia Langdon, on her part, was at first dazed and fascinated,
rather than attracted, by this astonishing creature, so unlike
any one she had ever known. Her life had been circumscribed, her
experiences of a simple sort. She had never seen anything
resembling him before. Indeed, nobody had. Somewhat carelessly,
even if correctly, attired; eagerly, rather than observantly,
attentive; brilliant and startling, rather than cultured, of
speech—a blazing human solitaire, unfashioned, unset, tossed by
the drift of fortune at her feet. He disturbed rather than
gratified her. She sensed his heresy toward the conventions and
forms which had been her gospel; his bantering, indifferent
attitude toward life—to her always so serious and sacred; she
suspected that he even might have unorthodox views on matters of
religion. When he had gone she somehow had the feeling that a
great fiery meteor of unknown portent had swept across her sky.

To her brother, who was eager for her approval of his celebrity,
Miss Langdon conceded admiration. As for her father, he did not
qualify his opinion. With hearty sense of humor, and a keen
perception of verity and capability in men, Jervis Langdon
accepted Samuel Clemens from the start, and remained his stanch
admirer and friend. Clemens left that night with an invitation to
visit Elmira by and by, and with the full intention of
going—soon. Fate, however, had another plan. He did not see
Elmira for the better part of a year.

He saw Miss Langdon again within the week. On New-Year's Day he
set forth to pay calls, after the fashion of the time—more lavish
then than now. Miss Langdon was receiving with Miss Alice Hooker,
a niece of Henry Ward Beecher, at the home of a Mrs. Berry; he
decided to go there first. With young Langdon he arrived at
eleven o'clock in the morning, and they did not leave until
midnight. If his first impression upon Olivia Langdon had been
meteoric, it would seem that he must now have become to her as a
streaming comet that swept from zenith to horizon. One thing is
certain: she had become to him the single, unvarying beacon of
his future years. He visited Henry Ward Beecher on that trip and
dined with him by invitation. Harriet Beecher Stowe was present,
and others of that eminent family. Likewise his old Quaker City
comrades, Moses S. and Emma Beach. It was a brilliant gathering,
a conclave of intellectual gods—a triumph to be there for one who
had been a printer-boy on the banks of the Mississippi, and only
a little while before a miner with pick and shovel. It was
gratifying to be so honored; it would be pleasant to write home;
but the occasion lacked something too—everything, in fact—for
when he ran his eye around the board the face of the minature was
not there.

Still there were compensations; inadequate, of course, but
pleasant enough to remember. It was Sunday evening and the party
adjourned to Plymouth Church. After services Mr. Beecher invited
him to return home with him for a quiet talk. Evidently they had
a good time, for in the letter telling of these things Samuel
Clemens said: “Henry Ward Beecher is a brick.”

LXV. A CONTRACT WITH ELISHA BLISS, JR.

He returned to Washington without seeing Miss Langdon again,
though he would seem to have had permission to write—friendly
letters. A little later (it was on the evening of January 9th) he
lectured in Washington—on very brief notice indeed. The
arrangement for his appearance had been made by a friend during
his absence—“a friend,” Clemens declared afterward, “not entirely
sober at the time.” To his mother he wrote:

I scared up a doorkeeper and was ready at the proper time, and by
pure good luck a tolerably good house assembled and I was saved.
I hardly knew what I was going to talk about, but it went off in
splendid style.

The title of the lecture delivered was “The Frozen Truth”—“more
truth in the title than in the lecture,” according to his own
statement. What it dealt with is not remembered now. It had to do
with the Quaker City trip, perhaps, and it seems to have brought
a financial return which was welcome enough. Subsequently he
delivered it elsewhere; though just how far the tour extended
cannot be learned from the letters, and he had but little memory
of it in later years.

There was some further correspondence with Bliss, then about the
21st of January (1868) Clemens made a trip to Hartford to settle
the matter. Bliss had been particularly anxious to meet him,
personally and was a trifle disappointed with his appearance.
Mark Twain's traveling costume was neither new nor neat, and he
was smoking steadily a pipe of power. His general make-up was
hardly impressive.

Bliss's disturbance was momentary. Once he began to talk the rest
did not matter. He was the author of those letters, and Bliss
decided that personally he was even greater than they. The
publisher, confined to his home with illness, offered him the
hospitality of his household. Also, he made him two propositions:
he would pay him ten thousand dollars cash for his copyright, or
he would pay five per cent. royalty, which was a fourth more than
Richardson had received. He advised the latter arrangement.

Clemens had already taken advice and had discussed the project a
good deal with Richardson. The ten thousand dollars was a heavy
temptation, but he withstood it and closed on the royalty
basis—“the best business judgment I ever displayed,” he was wont
to declare. A letter written to his mother and sister near the
end of this Hartford stay is worth quoting pretty fully here, for
the information and “character” it contains. It bears date of
January 24th.

This is a good week for me. I stopped in the Herald office, as I
came through New York, to see the boys on the staff, and young
James Gordon Bennett asked me to write twice a week, impersonally,
for the Herald, and said if I would I might have full swing, and
about anybody and everything I wanted to. I said I must have the
very fullest possible swing, and he said, “All right.” I said,
“It's a contract—” and that settled that matter.
I'll make it a point to write one letter a week anyhow. But the
best thing that has happened is here. This great American
Publishing Company kept on trying to bargain with me for a book
till I thought I would cut the matter short by coming up for a
talk. I met Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn, and with his usual
whole-souled way of dropping his own work to give other people a
lift when he gets a chance, he said: “Now, here, you are one of the
talented men of the age—nobody is going to deny that—but in matters
of business I don't suppose you know more than enough to come in
when it rains. I'll tell you what to do and how to do it.” And he
did.
And I listened well, and then came up here and made a splendid
contract for a Quaker City book of 5 or 600 large pages, with
illustrations, the manuscript to be placed in the publisher's hands
by the middle of July.—[The contract was not a formal one. There
was an exchange of letters agreeing to the terms, but no joint
document was drawn until October 16 (1868).]—My percentage is to be
a fourth more than they have ever paid any author except Greeley.
Beecher will be surprised, I guess, when he hears this.
These publishers get off the most tremendous editions of their
books you can imagine. I shall write to the Enterprise and Alta
every week, as usual, I guess, and to the Herald twice a week,
occasionally to the Tribune and the magazines (I have a stupid
article in the Galaxy, just issued), but I am not going to write to
this and that and the other paper any more.
I have had a tiptop time here for a few days (guest of Mr. Jno.
Hooker's family—Beecher's relatives—in a general way of Mr. Bliss
also, who is head of the publishing firm). Puritans are mighty
straight-laced, and they won't let me smoke in the parlor, but the
Almighty don't make any better people.
I have to make a speech at the annual Herald dinner on the 6th of
May.

So the book, which would establish his claim to a peerage in the
literary land, was arranged for, and it remained only to prepare
the manuscript, a task which he regarded as not difficult. He had
only to collate the Alta and Tribune letters, edit them, and
write such new matter as would be required for completeness.

Returning to Washington, he plunged into work with his usual
terrific energy, preparing the copy—in the mean time writing
newspaper correspondence and sketches that would bring immediate
return. In addition to his regular contributions, he entered into
a syndicate arrangement with John Swinton (brother of William
Swinton, the historian) to supply letters to a list of
newspapers.

“I have written seven long newspaper letters and a short magazine
article in less than two days,” he wrote home, and by the end of
January he had also prepared several chapters of his book.

The San Francisco post-mastership was suggested to him again, but
he put the temptation behind him. He refers to this more than
once in his home letters, and it is clear that he wavered.

Judge Field said if I wanted the place he could pledge me the
President's appointment, and Senator Corners said he would
guarantee me the Senate's confirmation. It was a great temptation,
but it would render it impossible to fill my book contract, and I
had to drop the idea....
And besides I did not want the office.

He made this final decision when he heard that the chief editor
of the Alta wanted the place, and he now threw his influence in
that quarter. “I would not take ten thousand dollars out of a
friend's pocket,” he said.

But then suddenly came the news from Goodman that the Alta
publishers had copyrighted his Quaker City letters and proposed
getting them out in a book, to reimburse themselves still further
on their investment. This was sharper than a serpent's tooth.
Clemens got confirmation of the report by telegraph. By the same
medium he protested, but to no purpose. Then he wrote a letter
and sat down to wait. He reported his troubles to Orion:

I have made a superb contract for a book, and have prepared the
first ten chapters of the sixty or eighty, but I will bet it never
sees the light. Don't you let the folks at home hear that. That
thieving Alta copyrighted the letters, and now shows no disposition
to let me use them. I have done all I can by telegraph, and now
await the final result by mail. I only charged them for 50 letters
what (even in) greenbacks would amount to less than two thousand
dollars, intending to write a good deal for high-priced Eastern
papers, and now they want to publish my letters in book form
themselves to get back that pitiful sum.

Orion was by this time back from Nevada, setting type in St.
Louis. He was full of schemes, as usual, and his brother counsels
him freely. Then he says:

We chase phantoms half the days of our lives. It is well if we
learn wisdom even then, and save the other half.
I am in for it. I must go on chasing them, until I marry, then I am
done with literature and all other bosh—that is, literature
wherewith to please the general public.
I shall write to please myself then.

He closes by saying that he rather expects to go with Anson
Burlingame on the Chinese embassy. Clearly he was pretty hopeless
as to his book prospects.

His first meeting with General Grant occurred just at this time.
In one of his home letters he mentions, rather airily, that he
will drop in someday on the General for an interview; and at
last, through Mrs. Grant, an appointment was made for a Sunday
evening when the General would be at home. He was elated with the
prospect of an interview; but when he looked into the
imperturbable, square, smileless face of the soldier he found
himself, for the first time in his life, without anything
particular to say. Grant nodded slightly and waited. His caller
wished something would happen. It did. His inspiration returned.

“General,” he said, “I seem to be a little embarrassed. Are you?”

That broke the ice. There were no further difficulties.—[Mark
Twain has variously related this incident. It is given here in
accordance with the letters of the period.]

LXVI. BACK TO SAN FRANCISCO

Reply came from the Alta, but it was not promising. It spoke
rather vaguely of prior arrangements and future possibilities.
Clemens gathered that under certain conditions he might share in
the profits of the venture. There was but one thing to do; he
knew those people—some of them—Colonel McComb and a Mr.
McCrellish intimately. He must confer with them in person.

He was weary of Washington, anyway. The whole pitiful machinery
of politics disgusted him. In his notebook he wrote:

Whiskey is taken into the committee rooms in demijohns and carried
out in demagogues.

And in a letter:

This is a place to get a poor opinion of everybody in. There are
some pitiful intellects in this Congress! There isn't one man in
Washington in civil office who has the brains of Anson Burlingame,
and I suppose if China had not seized and saved his great talents
to the world this government would have discarded him when his time
was up.—[Anson Burlingame had by this time become China's special
ambassador to the nations.]

Furthermore, he was down on the climate of Washington. He decided
to go to San Francisco and see “those Alta thieves face to face.”
Then, if a book resulted, he could prepare it there among
friends. Also, he could lecture.

He had been anxious to visit his people before sailing, but
matters were too urgent to permit delay. He obtained from Bliss
an advance of royalty and took passage, by way of Aspinwall, on
the sidewheel steamer Henry Chauncey, a fine vessel for those
days. The name of Mark Twain was already known on the isthmus,
and when it was learned he had arrived on the Chauncey a
delegation welcomed him on the wharf, and provided him with
refreshments and entertainment. Mr. Tracy Robinson, a poet, long
a resident of that southern land, was one of the group. Beyond
the isthmus Clemens fell in again with his old captain, Ned
Wakeman, who during the trip told him the amazing dream that in
due time would become Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven. He
made the first draft of this story soon after his arrival in San
Francisco, as a sort of travesty of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's
Gates Ajar, then very popular. Clemens, then and later, had a
high opinion of Capt. Ned Wakeman's dream, but his story of it
would pass through several stages before finally reaching the
light of publication.—[Mr. John P. Vollmer, now of Lewiston,
Idaho, a companion of that voyage, writes of a card game which
took place beyond the isthmus. The notorious crippled gambler,
“Smithy,” figured in it, and it would seem to have furnished the
inspiration for the exciting story in Chapter XXXVI of the
Mississippi book.]

In San Francisco matters turned out as he had hoped. Colonel
McComb was his stanch friend; McCrellish and Woodward, the
proprietors, presently conceded that they had already received
good value for the money paid. The author agreed to make proper
acknowledgments to the Alta in his preface, and the matter was
settled with friendliness all around.

The way was now clear, the book assured. First, however, he must
provide himself with funds. He delivered a lecture, with the
Quaker City excursion as his subject. On the 5th of May he wrote
to Bliss:

I lectured here on the trip the other night; over $1,600 in gold
in the house; every seat taken and paid for before night.

He reports that he is steadily at work, and expects to start East
with the completed manuscript about the middle of June.

But this was a miscalculation. Clemens found that the letters
needed more preparation than he had thought. His literary vision
and equipment had vastly altered since the beginning of that
correspondence. Some of the chapters he rewrote; others he
eliminated entirely. It required two months of fairly steady work
to put the big manuscript together.

Some of the new chapters he gave to Bret Harte for the Overland
Monthly, then recently established. Harte himself was becoming a
celebrity about this time. His “Luck of Roaring Camp” and “The
Outcasts of Poker Flat,” published in early numbers of the
Overland, were making a great stir in the East, arousing there a
good deal more enthusiasm than in the magazine office or the city
of their publication. That these two friends, each supreme in his
own field, should have entered into their heritage so nearly at
the same moment, is one of the many seemingly curious
coincidences of literary history.

Clemens now concluded to cover his lecture circuit of two years
before. He was assured that it would be throwing away a precious
opportunity not to give his new lecture to his old friends. The
result justified that opinion. At Virginia, at Carson, and
elsewhere he was received like a returned conqueror. He might
have been accorded a Roman triumph had there been time and
paraphernalia. Even the robbers had reformed, and entire safety
was guaranteed him on the Divide between Virginia and Gold Hill.
At Carson he called on Mrs. Curry, as in the old days, and among
other things told her how snow from the Lebanon Mountains is
brought to Damascus on the backs of camels.

“Sam,” she said, “that's just one of your yarns, and if you tell
it in your lecture to-night I'll get right up and say so.”

But he did tell it, for it was a fact; and though Mrs. Curry did
not rise to deny it she shook her finger at him in a way he knew.

He returned to San Francisco and gave one more lecture, the last
he would ever give in California. His preparatory advertising for
that occasion was wholly unique, characteristic of him to the
last degree. It assumed the form of a handbill of protest,
supposed to have been issued by the foremost citizens of San
Francisco, urging him to return to the States without inflicting
himself further upon them. As signatures he made free with the
names of prominent individuals, followed by those of
organizations, institutions, “Various Benevolent Societies,
Citizens on Foot and Horseback, and fifteen hundred in the
Steerage.”

Following this (on the same bill) was his reply, “To the fifteen
hundred and others,” in which he insisted on another hearing:

I will torment the people if I want to.... It only costs the people
$1 apiece, and if they can't stand it what do they stay here
for?... My last lecture was not as fine as I thought it was, but I
have submitted this discourse to several able critics, and they
have pronounced it good. Now, therefore, why should I withhold it?

He promised positively to sail on the 6th of July if they would
let him talk just this once. Continuing, the handbill presented a
second protest, signed by the various clubs and business firms;
also others bearing variously the signatures of the newspapers,
and the clergy, ending with the brief word:

You had better go. Yours, CHIEF OF POLICE.

All of which drollery concluded with his announcement of place
and date of his lecture, with still further gaiety at the end.
Nothing short of a seismic cataclysm—an earthquake, in fact—could
deter a San Francisco audience after that. Mark Twain's farewell
address, given at the Mercantile Library July 2 (1868), doubtless
remains today the leading literary event in San Francisco's
history.—[Copy of the lecture announcement, complete, will be
found in Appendix H, at the end of last volume.]

He sailed July 6th by the Pacific mail steamer Montana to
Acapulco, caught the Henry Chauncey at Aspinwall, reached New
York on the 28th, and a day or two later had delivered his
manuscript at Hartford.

But a further difficulty had arisen. Bliss was having troubles
himself, this time, with his directors. Many reports of Mark
Twain's new book had been traveling the rounds of the press, some
of which declared it was to be irreverent, even blasphemous, in
tone. The title selected, The New Pilgrim's Progress, was in
itself a sacrilege. Hartford was a conservative place; the
American Publishing Company directors were of orthodox
persuasion. They urged Bliss to relieve the company of this
impending disaster of heresy. When the author arrived one or more
of them labored with him in person, without avail. As for Bliss,
he was stanch; he believed in the book thoroughly, from every
standpoint. He declared if the company refused to print it he
would resign the management and publish the book himself. This
was an alarming suggestion to the stockholders. Bliss had
returned dividends—a boon altogether too rare in the company's
former history. The objectors retired and were heard of no more.
The manuscript was placed in the hands of Fay and Cox,
illustrators, with an order for about two hundred and fifty
pictures.

Fay and Cox turned it over to True Williams, one of the
well-known illustrators of that day. Williams was a man of great
talent—of fine imagination and sweetness of spirit—but it was
necessary to lock him in a room when industry was required, with
nothing more exciting than cold water as a beverage. Clemens
himself aided in the illustrating by obtaining of Moses S. Beach
photographs from the large collection he had brought home.

LXVII. A VISIT TO ELMIRA

Meantime he had skilfully obtained a renewal of the invitation to
spend a week in the Langdon home.

He meant to go by a fast train, but, with his natural gift for
misunderstanding time-tables, of course took a slow one,
telegraphing his approach from different stations along the road.
Young Langdon concluded to go down the line as far as Waverly to
meet him. When the New York train reached there the young man
found his guest in the smoking-car, travel-stained and
distressingly clad. Mark Twain was always scrupulously neat and
correct of dress in later years, but in that earlier day neatness
and style had not become habitual and did not give him comfort.
Langdon greeted him warmly but with doubt. Finally he summoned
courage to say, hesitatingly—“You've got some other clothes,
haven't you?”

The arriving guest was not in the least disturbed.

“Oh yes,” he said with enthusiasm, “I've got a fine brand-new
outfit in this bag, all but a hat. It will be late when we get
in, and I won't see any one to-night. You won't know me in the
morning. We'll go out early and get a hat.”

This was a large relief to the younger man, and the rest of the
journey was happy enough. True to promise, the guest appeared at
daylight correctly, even elegantly clad, and an early trip to the
shops secured the hat. A gay and happy week followed—a week
during which Samuel Clemens realized more fully than ever that in
his heart there was room for only one woman in all the world:
Olivia Langdon—“Livy,” as they all called her—and as the day of
departure drew near it may be that the gentle girl had made some
discoveries, too.

No word had passed between them. Samuel Clemens had the
old-fashioned Southern respect for courtship conventions, and for
what, in that day at least, was regarded as honor. On the morning
of the final day he said to young Langdon:

“Charley, my week is up, and I must go home.”

The young man expressed a regret which was genuine enough, though
not wholly unqualified. His older sister, Mrs. Crane, leaving
just then for a trip to the White Mountains, had said:

“Charley, I am sure Mr. Clemens is after our Livy. You mustn't
let him carry her off before our return.”

The idea was a disturbing one. The young man did not urge his
guest to prolong his-visit. He said:

“We'll have to stand it, I guess, but you mustn't leave before
to-night.”

“I ought to go by the first train,” Clemens said, gloomily. “I am
in love.”

“In what!”

“In love-with your sister, and I ought to get away from here.”

The young man was now very genuinely alarmed. To him Mark Twain
was a highly gifted, fearless, robust man—a man's man—and as such
altogether admirable—lovable. But Olivia—Livy—she was to him
little short of a saint. No man was good enough for her,
certainly not this adventurous soldier of letters from the West.
Delightful he was beyond doubt, adorable as a companion, but not
a companion for Livy.

“Look here, Clemens,” he said, when he could get his voice.
“There's a train in half an hour. I'll help you catch it. Don't
wait till to-night. Go now.”

Clemens shook his head.

“No, Charley,” he said, in his gentle drawl, “I want to enjoy
your hospitality a little longer. I promise to be circumspect,
and I'll go to-night.”

That night, after dinner, when it was time to take the New York
train, a light two-seated wagon was at the gate. The coachman was
in front, and young Langdon and his guest took the back seat. For
some reason the seat had not been locked in its place, and when,
after the good-bys, the coachman touched the horse it made a
quick spring forward, and the back seat, with both passengers,
described a half-circle and came down with force on the cobbled
street. Neither passenger was seriously hurt; Clemens not at
all—only dazed a little for a moment. Then came an inspiration;
here was a chance to prolong his visit. Evidently it was not
intended that he should take that train. When the Langdon
household gathered around with restoratives he did not recover
too quickly. He allowed them to support or carry him into the
house and place him in an arm-chair and apply remedies. The young
daughter of the house especially showed anxiety and attention.
This was pure happiness. He was perjuring himself, of course, but
they say Jove laughs at such things.

He recovered in a day or two, but the wide hospitality of the
handsome Langdon home was not only offered now; it was enforced.
He was still there two weeks later, after which he made a trip to
Cleveland to confide in Mrs. Fairbanks how he intended to win
Livy Langdon for his wife.

LXVIII. THE REV. “JOE” TWICHELL.

He returned to Hartford to look after the progress of his book.
Some of it was being put into type, and with his mechanical
knowledge of such things he was naturally interested in the
process.

He made his headquarters with the Blisses, then living at 821
Asylum Avenue, and read proof in a little upper room, where the
lamp was likely to be burning most of the time, where the
atmosphere was nearly always blue with smoke, and the window-sill
full of cigar butts. Mrs. Bliss took him into the quiet social
life of the neighborhood—to small church receptions, society
gatherings and the like—all of which he seemed to enjoy. Most of
the dwellers in that neighborhood were members of the Asylum Hill
Congregational Church, then recently completed; all but the
spire. It was a cultured circle, well-off in the world's goods,
its male members, for the most part, concerned in various
commercial ventures.

The church stood almost across the way from the Bliss home, and
Mark Twain, with his picturesque phrasing, referred to it as the
“stub-tailed church,” on account of its abbreviated spire; also,
later, with a knowledge of its prosperous membership, as the
“Church of the Holy Speculators.” He was at an evening reception
in the home of one of its members when he noticed a photograph of
the unfinished building framed and hanging on the wall.

“Why, yes,” he commented, in his slow fashion, “this is the
'Church of the Holy Speculators.'”

“Sh,” cautioned Mrs. Bliss. “Its pastor is just behind you. He
knows your work and wants to meet you.” Turning, she said: “Mr.
Twichell, this is Mr. Clemens. Most people know him as Mark
Twain.”

And so, in this casual fashion, he met the man who was presently
to become his closest personal friend and counselor, and would
remain so for more than forty years.

Joseph Hopkins Twichell was a man about his own age, athletic and
handsome, a student and a devout Christian, yet a man familiar
with the world, fond of sports, with an exuberant sense of humor
and a wide understanding of the frailties of humankind. He had
been “port waist oar” at Yale, and had left college to serve with
General “Dan” Sickles as a chaplain who had followed his duties
not only in the camp, but on the field.

Mention has already been made of Mark Twain's natural leaning
toward ministers of the gospel, and the explanation of it is
easier to realize than to convey. He was hopelessly
unorthodox—rankly rebellious as to creeds. Anything resembling
cant or the curtailment of mental liberty roused only his
resentment and irony. Yet something in his heart always warmed
toward any laborer in the vineyard, and if we could put the
explanation into a single sentence, perhaps we might say it was
because he could meet them on that wide, common ground sympathy
with mankind. Mark Twain's creed, then and always, may be put
into three words, “liberty, justice, humanity.” It may be put
into one word, “humanity.”

Ministers always loved Mark Twain. They did not always approve of
him, but they adored him: The Rev. Mr. Rising, of the Comstock,
was an early example of his ministerial friendships, and we have
seen that Henry Ward Beecher cultivated his company. In a San
Francisco letter of two years before, Mark Twain wrote his
mother, thinking it would please her:

I am as thick as thieves with the Reverend Stebbins. I am laying
for the Reverend Scudder and the Reverend Doctor Stone. I am
running on preachers now altogether, and I find them gay.

So it may be that his first impulse toward Joseph Twichell was
due to the fact that he was a young member of that army whose
mission is to comfort and uplift mankind. But it was only a
little time till the impulse had grown into a friendship that
went beyond any profession or doctrine, a friendship that ripened
into a permanent admiration and love for “Joe” Twichell himself,
as one of the noblest specimens of his race.

He was invited to the Twichell home, where he met the young wife
and got a glimpse of the happiness of that sweet and peaceful
household. He had a neglected, lonely look, and he loved to
gather with them at their fireside. He expressed his envy of
their happiness, and Mrs. Twichell asked him why, since his
affairs were growing prosperous, he did not establish a household
of his own. Long afterward Mr. Twichell wrote:

Mark made no answer for a little, but, with his eyes bent on the
floor, appeared to be deeply pondering. Then he looked up, and said
slowly, in a voice tremulous with earnestness (with what sympathy
he was heard may be imagined): “I am taking thought of it. I am in
love beyond all telling with the dearest and best girl in the whole
world. I don't suppose she will marry me. I can't think it
possible. She ought not to. But if she doesn't I shall be sure that
the best thing I ever did was to fall in love with her, and proud
to have it known that I tried to win her!”

It was only a brief time until the Twichell fireside was home to
him. He came and went, and presently it was “Mark” and “Joe,” as
by and by it would be “Livy” and “Harmony,” and in a few years
“Uncle Joe” and “Uncle Mark,” “Aunt Livy” and “Aunt Harmony,” and
so would remain until the end.

LXIX. A LECTURE TOUR

James Redpath, proprietor of the Boston Lyceum Bureau, was the
leading lecture agent of those days, and controlled all, or
nearly all, of the platform celebrities. Mark Twain's success at
the Cooper Union the year before had interested Redpath. He had
offered engagements then and later, but Clemens had not been free
for the regular circuit. Now there was no longer a reason for
postponement of a contract. Redpath was eager for the new
celebrity, and Clemens closed with him for the season of 1868-9.
With his new lecture, “The Vandal Abroad,” he was presently
earning a hundred dollars and more a night, and making most of
the nights count.

This was affluence indeed. He had become suddenly a person of
substance-an associate of men of consequence, with a commensurate
income. He could help his mother lavishly now, and he did.

His new lecture was immensely popular. It was a resume of the
'Quaker City' letters—a foretaste of the book which would
presently follow. Wherever he went, he was hailed with eager
greetings. He caught such drifting exclamations as, “There he is!
There goes Mark Twain!” People came out on the street to see him
pass. That marvelous miracle which we variously call “notoriety,”
“popularity,” “fame,” had come to him. In his notebook he wrote,
“Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the only, earthly
certainty oblivion.”

The newspapers were filled with enthusiasm both as to his matter
and method. His delivery was described as a “long, monotonous
drawl, with the fun invariably coming in at the end of a
sentence—after a pause.” His appearance at this time is thus set
down:

Mark Twain is a man of medium height, about five feet ten, sparsely
built, with dark reddish-brown hair and mustache. His features are
fair, his eyes keen and twinkling. He dresses in scrupulous evening
attire. In lecturing he hangs about the desk, leaning on it or
flirting around the corners of it, then marching and
countermarching in the rear of it. He seldom casts a glance at his
manuscript.

No doubt this fairly presents Mark Twain, the lecturer of that
day. It was a new figure on the platform, a man with a new
method. As to his manuscript, the item might have said that he
never consulted it at all. He learned his lecture; what he
consulted was merely a series of hieroglyphics, a set of crude
pictures drawn by himself, suggestive of the subject-matter
underneath new head. Certain columns represented the Parthenon;
the Sphinx meant Egypt, and so on. His manuscript lay there in
case of accident, but the accident did not happen.

A number of his engagements were in the central part of New York,
at points not far distant from Elmira. He had a standing
invitation to visit the Langdon home, and he made it convenient
to avail himself of that happiness.

His was not an unruffled courtship. When at last he reached the
point of proposing for the daughter of the house, neither the
daughter nor the household offered any noticeable encouragement
to his suit. Many absurd anecdotes have been told of his first
interview with Mr. Langdon on the subject, but they are
altogether without foundation. It was a proper and dignified
discussion of a very serious matter. Mr. Langdon expressed deep
regard for him and friendship but he was not inclined to add him
to the family; the young lady herself, in a general way, accorded
with these views. The applicant for favor left sadly enough, but
he could not remain discouraged or sad. He lectured at Cleveland
with vast success, and the news of it traveled quickly to Elmira.
He was referred to by Cleveland papers as a “lion” and “the
coming man of the age.” Two days later, in Pittsburgh (November
19th), he “played” against Fanny Kemble, the favorite actress of
that time, with the result that Miss Kemble had an audience of
two hundred against nearly ten times the number who gathered to
hear Mark Twain. The news of this went to Elmira, too. It was in
the papers there next morning; surely this was a conquering
hero—a gay Lochinvar from out of the West—and the daughter of the
house must be guarded closely, that he did not bear her away. It
was on the second morning following the Pittsburgh triumph, when
the Langdon family were gathered at breakfast, that a bushy
auburn head poked fearfully in at the door, and a low, humble
voice said:

“The calf has returned; may the prodigal have some breakfast?”

No one could be reserved or reprovingly distant, or any of those
unfriendly things with a person like that; certainly not Jervis
Langdon, who delighted in the humor and the tricks and turns and
oddities of this eccentric visitor. Giving his daughter to him
was another matter, but even that thought was less disturbing
than it had been at the start. In truth, the Langdon household
had somehow grown to feel that he belonged to them. The elder
sister's husband, Theodore Crane, endorsed him fully. He had long
before read some of the Mark Twain sketches that had traveled
eastward in advance of their author, and had recognized, even in
the crudest of them, a classic charm. As for Olivia Langdon's
mother and sister, their happiness lay in hers. Where her heart
went theirs went also, and it would appear that her heart, in
spite of herself, had found its rightful keeper. Only young
Langdon was irreconciled, and eventually set out for a voyage
around the world to escape the situation.

There was only a provisional engagement at first. Jervis Langdon
suggested, and Samuel Clemens agreed with him, that it was proper
to know something of his past, as well as of his present, before
the official parental sanction should be given. When Mr. Langdon
inquired as to the names of persons of standing to whom he might
write for credentials, Clemens pretty confidently gave him the
name of the Reverend Stebbins and others of San Francisco, adding
that he might write also to Joe Goodman if he wanted to, but that
he had lied for Goodman a hundred times and Goodman would lie for
him if necessary, so his testimony would be of no value. The
letters to the clergy were written, and Mr. Langdon also wrote
one on his own account.

It was a long mail-trip to the Coast and back in those days. It
might be two months before replies would come from those
ministers. The lecturer set out again on his travels, and was
radiantly and happily busy. He went as far west as Illinois, had
crowded houses in Chicago, visited friends and kindred in
Hannibal, St. Louis, and Keokuk, carrying the great news, and
lecturing in old familiar haunts.

LXX. INNOCENTS AT HOME—AND “THE INNOCENTS ABROAD”

He was in Jacksonville, Illinois, at the end of January (1869),
and in a letter to Bliss states that he will be in Elmira two
days later, and asks that proofs of the book be sent there. He
arrived at the Langdon home, anxious to hear the reports that
would make him, as the novels might say, “the happiest or the
most miserable of men.” Jervis Langdon had a rather solemn look
when they were alone together. Clemens asked:

“You've heard from those gentlemen out there?”

“Yes, and from another gentleman I wrote concerning you.”

“They don't appear to have been very enthusiastic, from your
manner.”

“Well, yes, some of them were.”

“I suppose I may ask what particular form their emotion took?”

“Oh yes, yes; they agree unanimously that you are a brilliant,
able man, a man with a future, and that you would make about the
worst husband on record.”

The applicant for favor had a forlorn look.

“There's nothing very evasive about that,” he said:

There was a period of reflective silence. It was probably no more
than a few seconds, but it seemed longer.

“Haven't you any other friend that you could suggest?” Langdon
said.

“Apparently none whose testimony would be valuable.”

Jervis Langdon held out his hand. “You have at least one,” he
said. “I believe in you. I know you better than they do.”

And so came the crown of happiness. The engagement of Samuel
Langhorne Clemens and Olivia Lewis Langdon was ratified next day,
February 4, 1869.

But if the friends of Mark Twain viewed the idea of the marriage
with scant favor, the friends of Miss Langdon regarded it with
genuine alarm. Elmira was a conservative place—a place of
pedigree and family tradition; that a stranger, a former printer,
pilot, miner, wandering journalist and lecturer, was to carry off
the daughter of one of the oldest and wealthiest families, was a
thing not to be lightly permitted. The fact that he had achieved
a national fame did not count against other considerations. The
social protest amounted almost to insurrection, but it was not
availing. The Langdon family had their doubts too, though of a
different sort. Their doubts lay in the fear that one, reared as
their daughter had been, might be unable to hold a place as the
wife of this intellectual giant, whom they felt that the world
was preparing to honor. That this delicate, sheltered girl could
have the strength of mind and body for her position seemed hard
to believe. Their faith overbore such questionings, and the
future years proved how fully it was justified.

To his mother Samuel Clemens wrote:

She is only a little body, but she hasn't her peer in Christendom.
I gave her only a plain gold engagement ring, when fashion
imperatively demands a two-hundred-dollar diamond one, and told her
it was typical of her future life-namely, that she would have to
flourish on substance, rather than luxuries (but you see I know the
girl—she don't care anything about luxuries).... She spends no
money but her astral year's allowance, and spends nearly every cent
of that on other people. She will be a good, sensible little wife,
without any airs about her. I don't make intercession for her
beforehand, and ask you to love her, for there isn't any use in
that—you couldn't help it if you were to try. I warn you that
whoever comes within the fatal influence of her beautiful nature is
her willing slave forevermore.

To Mrs. Crane, absent in March, her father wrote:

DEAR SUE,—I received your letter yesterday with a great deal of
pleasure, but the letter has gone in pursuit of one S. L. Clemens,
who has been giving us a great deal of trouble lately. We cannot
have a joy in our family without a feeling, on the part of the
little incorrigible in our family, that this wanderer must share
it, so, as soon as read, into her pocket and off upstairs goes your
letter, and in the next two minutes into the mail, so it is
impossible for me now to refer to it, or by reading it over gain an
inspiration in writing you...

Clemens closed his lecture tour in March, acid went immediately
to Elmira. He had lectured between fifty and sixty times, with a
return of something more than $8,000, not a bad aggregate for a
first season on the circuit. He had planned to make a spring tour
to California, but the attraction at Elmira was of a sort that
discouraged distant travel. Furthermore, he disliked the
platform, then and always. It was always a temptation to him
because of its quick and abundant return, but it was none the
less distasteful. In a letter of that spring he wrote:

I most cordially hate the lecture field. And after all, I shudder
to think I may never get out of it. In all conversation with Gough,
and Anna Dickinson, Nasby, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips,
and the other old stagers, I could not observe that they ever
expected or hoped to get out of the business. I don't want to get
wedded to it as they are.

He declined further engagements on the excuse that he must attend
to getting out his book. The revised proofs were coming now, and
he and gentle Livy Langdon read them together. He realized
presently that with her sensitive nature she had also a keen
literary perception. What he lacked in delicacy—and his lack was
likely to be large enough in that direction—she detected, and
together they pruned it away. She became his editor during those
happy courtship days—a position which she held to her death. The
world owed a large debt of gratitude to Mark Twain's wife, who
from the very beginning—and always, so far as in her strength she
was able—inspired him to give only his worthiest to the world,
whether in written or spoken word, in counsel or in deed. Those
early days of their close companionship, spiritual and mental,
were full of revelation to Samuel Clemens, a revelation that
continued from day to day, and from year to year, even to the
very end.

The letter to Bliss and the proofs were full of suggested changes
that would refine and beautify the text. In one of them he
settles the question of title, which he says is to be:

THE INNOCENTS ABROAD or THE NEW PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

and we may be sure that it was Olivia Langdon's voice that gave
the deciding vote for the newly adopted chief title, which would
take any suggestion of irreverence out of the remaining words.

The book was to have been issued in the spring, but during his
wanderings proofs had been delayed, and there was now
considerable anxiety about it, as the agencies had become
impatient for the canvass. At the end of April Clemens wrote:
“Your printers are doing well. I will hurry the proofs”; but it
was not until the early part of June that the last chapters were
revised and returned. Then the big book, at last completed, went
to press on an edition of twenty thousand, a large number for any
new book, even to-day.

In later years, through some confusion of circumstance, Mark
Twain was led to believe that the publication of The Innocents
Abroad was long and unnecessarily delayed. But this was
manifestly a mistake. The book went to press in June. It was a
big book and a large edition. The first copy was delivered July
20 (1869), and four hundred and seventeen bound volumes were
shipped that month. Even with the quicker mechanical processes of
to-day a month or more is allowed for a large book between the
final return of proofs and the date of publication. So it is only
another instance of his remembering, as he once quaintly put it,
“the thing that didn't happen.”—[In an article in the North
American Review (September 21, 1906) Mr. Clemens stated that he
found it necessary to telegraph notice that he would bring suit
if the book was not immediately issued. In none of the letters
covering this period is there any suggestion of delay on the part
of the publishers, and the date of the final return of proofs,
together with the date of publication, preclude the possibility
of such a circumstance. At some period of his life he doubtless
sent, or contemplated sending, such a message, and this fact,
through some curious psychology, became confused in his mind with
the first edition of The Innocents Abroad.]

LXXI. THE GREAT BOOK OF TRAVEL.

'The Innocents Abroad' was a success from the start. The
machinery for its sale and delivery was in full swing by August
1, and five thousand one hundred and seventy copies were disposed
of that month—a number that had increased to more than thirty-one
thousand by the first of the year. It was a book of travel; its
lowest price was three and a half dollars. No such record had
been made by a book of that description; none has equaled it
since.—[One must recall that this was the record only up to 1910.
D.W.]

If Mark Twain was not already famous, he was unquestionably
famous now. As the author of The New Pilgrim's Progress he was
swept into the domain of letters as one riding at the head of a
cavalcade—doors and windows wide with welcome and jubilant with
applause. Newspapers chorused their enthusiasm; the public voiced
universal approval; only a few of the more cultured critics
seemed hesitant and doubtful.

They applauded—most of them—but with reservation. Doctor Holland
regarded Mark Twain as a mere fun maker of ephemeral popularity,
and was not altogether pleasant in his dictum. Doctor Holmes, in
a letter to the author, speaks of the “frequently quaint and
amusing conceits,” but does not find it in his heart to refer to
the book as literature. It was naturally difficult for the East
to concede a serious value to one who approached his subject with
such militant aboriginality, and occasionally wrote “those kind.”
William Dean Howells reviewed the book in the Atlantic, which was
of itself a distinction, whether the review was favorable or
otherwise. It was favorable on the whole, favorable to the humor
of the book, its “delicious impudence,” the charm of its
good-natured irony. The review closed:

It is no business of ours to fix his rank among the humorists
California has given us, but we think he is, in an entirely
different way from all the others, quite worthy of the company of
the best.

This is praise, but not of an intemperate sort, nor very
inclusive. The descriptive, the poetic, the more pretentious
phases of the book did not receive attention. Mr. Howells was
perhaps the first critic of eminence to recognize in Mark Twain
not only the humorist, but the supreme genius-the “Lincoln of our
literature.” This was later. The public—the silent public—with
what Howells calls “the inspired knowledge of the simple-hearted
multitude,” reached a similar verdict forthwith. And on
sufficient evidence: let the average unprejudiced person of
to-day take up the old volume and read a few chapters anywhere
and decide whether it is the work of a mere humorist, or also of
a philosopher, a poet, and a seer. The writer well remembers a
little group of “the simple-hearted multitude” who during the
winter of '69 and '70 gathered each evening to hear the Innocents
read aloud, and their unanimous verdict that it was the “best
book of modern times.”

It was the most daring book of its day. Passages of it were
calculated to take the breath of the orthodox reader; only,
somehow, it made him smile, too. It was all so good-natured, so
openly sincere. Without doubt it preached heresy—the heresy of
viewing revered landmarks and relics joyously, rather than
lugubriously; reverentially, when they inspired reverence;
satirically, when they invited ridicule, and with kindliness
always.

The Innocents Abroad is Mark Twain's greatest book of travel. The
critical and the pure in speech may object to this verdict.
Brander Matthews regards it second to A Tramp Abroad, the natural
viewpoint of the literary technician. The 'Tramp' contains better
usage without doubt, but it lacks the “color” which gives the
Innocents its perennial charm. In the Innocents there is a glow,
a fragrance, a romance of touch, a subtle something which is
idyllic, something which is not quite of reality, in the tale of
that little company that so long ago sailed away to the harbors
of their illusions beyond the sea, and, wandered together through
old palaces and galleries, and among the tombs of the saints, and
down through ancient lands. There is an atmosphere about it all,
a dream-like quality that lies somewhere in the telling, maybe,
or in the tale; at all events it is there, and the world has felt
it ever since. Perhaps it could be defined in a single word,
perhaps that word would be “youth.” That the artist, poor True
Williams, felt its inspiration is certain. We may believe that
Williams was not a great draftsman, but no artist ever caught
more perfectly the light and spirit of the author's text. Crude
some of the pictures are, no doubt, but they convey the very
essence of the story; they belong to it, they are a part of it,
and they ought never to perish. 'A Tramp Abroad' is a rare book,
but it cannot rank with its great predecessor in human charm. The
public, which in the long run makes mistakes, has rendered that
verdict. The Innocents by far outsells the Tramp, and, for that
matter, any other book of travel.

LXXII.THE PURCHASE OF A PAPER.

It is curious to reflect that Mark Twain still did not regard
himself as a literary man. He had no literary plans for the
future; he scarcely looked forward to the publication of another
book. He considered himself a journalist; his ambition lay in the
direction of retirement in some prosperous newspaper enterprise,
with the comforts and companionship of a home. During his travels
he had already been casting about for a congenial and substantial
association in newspaperdom, and had at one time considered the
purchase of an interest in the Cleveland Herald. But Buffalo was
nearer Elmira, and when an opportunity offered, by which he could
acquire a third interest in the Buffalo Express for $25,000, the
purchase was decided upon. His lack of funds prompted a new plan
for a lecture tour to the Pacific coast, this time with D. R.
Locke (Nasby), then immensely popular, in his lecture “Cussed Be
Canaan.”

Clemens had met Nasby on the circuit, and was very fond of him.
The two had visited Boston together, and while there had called
on Doctor Holmes; this by the way. Nasby was fond of Clemens too,
but doubtful about the trip-doubtful about his lecture:

Your proposition takes my breath away. If I had my new lecture
completed I wouldn't hesitate a moment, but really isn't “Cussed Be
Canaan” too old? You know that lemon, our African brother, juicy as
he was in his day, has been squeezed dry. Why howl about his wrongs
after said wrongs have been redressed? Why screech about the
“damnable spirit of Cahst” when the victim thereof sits at the
first table, and his oppressor mildly takes, in hash, what he
leaves? You see, friend Twain, the Fifteenth Amendment busted
“Cussed Be Canaan.” I howled feelingly on the subject while it was
a living issue, for I felt all that I said and a great deal more;
but now that we have won our fight why dance frantically on the
dead corpse of our enemy? The Reliable Contraband is contraband no
more, but a citizen of the United States, and I speak of him no
more.
Give me a week to think of your proposition. If I can jerk a
lecture in time I will go with you. The Lord knows I would like to.
—[Nasby's lecture, “Cussed Be Canaan,” opened, “We are all
descended from grandfathers!” He had a powerful voice, and always
just on the stroke of eight he rose and vigorously delivered this
sentence. Once, after lecturing an entire season—two hundred and
twenty-five nights—he went home to rest. That evening he sat,
musingly drowsing by the fire, when the clock struck eight. Without
a moment's thought Nasby sprang to his feet and thundered out, “We
are all descended from grandfathers!”]

Nasby did not go, and Clemens's enthusiasm cooled at the prospect
of setting out alone on that long tour. Furthermore, Jervis
Langdon promptly insisted on advancing the money required to
complete the purchase of the Express, and the trade was
closed.—[Mr. Langdon is just as good for $25,000 for me, and has
already advanced half of it in cash. I wrote and asked whether I
had better send him my note, or a due bill, or how he would
prefer to have the indebtedness made of record, and he answered
every other topic in the letter pleasantly, but never replied to
that at all. Still, I shall give my note into a hands of his
business agent here, and pay him the interest as it falls due.—S.
L. C. to his mother.]

The Buffalo Express was at this time in the hands of three
men—Col. George F. Selkirk, J. L. Lamed, and Thomas A. Kennett.
Colonel Selkirk was business manager, Lamed was political editor.
With the purchase of Kennett's share Clemens became a sort of
general and contributing editor, with a more or less “roving
commission”—his hours and duties not very clearly defined. It was
believed by his associates, and by Clemens himself, that his
known connection with the paper would give it prestige and
circulation, as Nasby's connection had popularized the Toledo
Blade. The new editor entered upon his duties August 14 (1869).
The members of the Buffalo press gave him a dinner that evening,
and after the manner of newspaper men the world over, were
handsomely cordial to the “new enemy in their midst.”

There is an anecdote which relates that next morning, when Mark
Twain arrived in the Express office (it was then at 14 Swan
Street), there happened to be no one present who knew him. A
young man rose very bruskly and asked if there was any one he
would like to see. It is reported that he replied, with gentle
deliberation:

“Well, yes, I should like to see some young man offer the new
editor a chair.”

It is so like Mark Twain that we are inclined to accept it,
though it seems of doubtful circumstance. In any case it deserves
to be true. His “Salutatory” (August 18th) is sufficiently
genuine:

Being a stranger, it would be immodest for me to suddenly and
violently assume the associate editorship of the Buffalo Express
without a single word of comfort or encouragement to the
unoffending patrons of the paper, who are about to be exposed to
constant attacks of my wisdom and learning. But the word shall be
as brief as possible. I only want to assure parties having a
friendly interest in the prosperity of the journal that I am not
going to hurt the paper deliberately and intentionally at any time.
I am not going to introduce any startling reforms, nor in any way
attempt to make trouble.... I shall not make use of slang and
vulgarity upon any occasion or under any circumstances, and shall
never use profanity except when discussing house rent and taxes.
Indeed, upon a second thought, I shall not use it even then, for it
is unchristian, inelegant, and degrading; though, to speak truly, I
do not see how house rent and taxes are going to be discussed worth
a cent without it. I shall not often meddle with politics, because
we have a political Editor who is already excellent and only needs
to serve a term or two in the penitentiary to be perfect. I shall
not write any poetry unless I conceive a spite against the
subscribers.
Such is my platform. I do not see any use in it, but custom is law
and must be obeyed.

John Harrison Mills, who was connected with the Express in those
days, has written:

I cannot remember that there was any delay in getting down to his
work. I think within five minutes the new editor had assumed the
easy look of one entirely at home, pencil in hand and a clutch of
paper before him, with an air of preoccupation, as of one intent on
a task delayed. It was impossible to be conscious of the man
sitting there, and not feel his identity with all that he had
enjoyed, and the reminiscence of it he that seemed to radiate; for
the personality was so absolutely in accord with all the record of
himself and his work. I cannot say he seemed to be that vague thing
they call a type in race or blood, though the word, if used in his
case for temperament, would decidedly mean what they used to call
the “sanguine.”
I thought that, pictorially, the noble costume of the Albanian
would have well become him. Or he might have been a Goth, and worn
the horned bull-pate helmet of Alaric's warriors; or stood at the
prow of one of the swift craft of the Vikings. His eyes, which have
been variously described, were, it seemed to me, of an
indescribable depth of the bluish moss-agate, with a capacity of
pupil dilation that in certain lights had the effect of a deep
black....

Mr. Mills adds that in dress he was now “well groomed,” and that
consequently they were obliged to revise their notions as to the
careless negligee which gossip had reported.—[From unpublished
Reminiscences kindly lent to the author by Mr. Mills]

LXXIII. THE FIRST MEETING WITH HOWELLS

Clemens' first period of editorial work was a brief one, though
he made frequent contributions to the paper: sketches, squibs,
travel-notes, and experiences, usually humorous in character. His
wedding-day had been set for early in the year, and it was
necessary to accumulate a bank account for that occasion. Before
October he was out on the lecture circuit, billed now for the
first time for New England, nervous and apprehensive in
consequence, though with good hope. To Pamela he wrote (November
9th):

To-morrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston
audience—4,000 critics—and on the success of this matter depends
my future success in New England. But I am not distressed. Nasby
is in the same boat. Tonight decides the fate of his brand-new
lecture. He has just left my room—been reading his lecture to
me—was greatly depressed. I have convinced him that he has little
to fear.

Whatever alarm Mark Twain may have felt was not warranted. His
success with the New England public was immediate and complete.
He made his headquarters in Boston, at Redpath's office, where
there was pretty sure to be a congenial company, of which he was
presently the center.

It was during one of these Boston sojourns that he first met
William Dean Howells, his future friend and literary counselor.
Howells was assistant editor of the Atlantic at this time; James
T. Fields, its editor. Clemens had been gratified by the Atlantic
review, and had called to express his thanks for it. He sat
talking to Fields, when Howells entered the editorial rooms, and
on being presented to the author of the review, delivered his
appreciation in the form of a story, sufficiently appropriate,
but not qualified for the larger types.—[He said: “When I read
that review of yours, I felt like the woman who was so glad her
baby had come white.”]

His manner, his humor, his quaint colloquial forms all delighted
Howells—more, in fact, than the opulent sealskin overcoat which
he affected at this period—a garment astonishing rather than
esthetic, as Mark Twain's clothes in those days of his first
regeneration were likely to be startling enough, we may believe;
in the conservative atmosphere of the Atlantic rooms. And
Howells—gentle, genial, sincere—filled with the early happiness
of his calling, won the heart of Mark Twain and never lost it,
and, what is still more notable, won his absolute and unvarying
confidence in all literary affairs. It was always Mark Twain's
habit to rely on somebody, and in matters pertaining to
literature and to literary people in general he laid his burden
on William Dean Howells from that day. Only a few weeks after
that first visit we find him telegraphing to Howells, asking him
to look after a Californian poet, then ill and friendless in
Brooklyn. Clemens states that he does not know the poet, but will
contribute fifty dollars if Howells will petition the steamboat
company for a pass; and no doubt Howells complied, and spent a
good deal more than fifty dollars' worth of time to get the poet
relieved and started; it would be like him.

LXXIV. THE WEDDING-DAY

The wedding was planned, at first, either for Christmas or
New-Year's Day; but as the lecture engagements continued into
January it was decided to wait until these were filled. February
2d, a date near the anniversary of the engagement, was agreed
upon, also a quiet wedding with no “tour.” The young people would
go immediately to Buffalo, and take up a modest residence, in a
boardinghouse as comfortable, even as luxurious, as the husband's
financial situation justified. At least that was Samuel Clemens's
understanding of the matter. He felt that he was heavily in
debt—that his first duty was to relieve himself of that
obligation.

There were other plans in Elmira, but in the daily and happy
letters he received there was no inkling of any new purpose.

He wrote to J. D. F. Slee, of Buffalo, who was associated in
business with Mr. Langdon, and asked him to find a suitable
boarding-place, one that would be sufficiently refined for the
woman who was to be his wife, and sufficiently reasonable to
insure prosperity. In due time Slee replied that, while boarding
was a “miserable business anyhow,” he had been particularly
fortunate in securing a place on one of the most pleasant
streets—“the family a small one and choice spirits, with no
predilection for taking boarders, and consenting to the present
arrangement only because of the anticipated pleasure of your
company.” The price, Slee added, would be reasonable. As a matter
of fact a house on Delaware Avenue—still the fine residence
street of Buffalo—had been bought and furnished throughout as a
present to the bride and groom. It stands to-day practically
unchanged—brick and mansard without, Eastlake within, a type then
much in vogue—spacious and handsome for that period. It was
completely appointed. Diagrams of the rooms had been sent to
Elmira and Miss Langdon herself had selected the furnishings.
Everything was put in readiness, including linen, cutlery, and
utensils. Even the servants had been engaged and the pantry and
cellar had been stocked.

It must have been hard for Olivia Langdon to keep this wonderful
surprise out of those daily letters. A surprise like that is
always watching a chance to slip out unawares, especially when
one is eagerly impatient to reveal it.

However, the traveler remained completely in the dark. He may
have wondered vaguely at the lack of enthusiasm in the boarding
idea, and could he have been certain that the sales of the book
would continue, or that his newspaper venture would yield an
abundant harvest, he might have planned his domestic beginning on
a more elaborate scale. If only the Tennessee land would yield
the long-expected fortune now! But these were all incalculable
things. All that he could be sure of was the coming of his great
happiness, in whatever environment, and of the dragging weeks
between.

At last the night of the final lecture came, and he was off for
Elmira with the smallest possible delay. Once there, the
intervening days did not matter. He could join in the busy
preparations; he could write exuberantly to his friends. To Laura
Hawkins, long since Laura Frazer he sent a playful line; to Jim
Gillis, still digging and washing on the slopes of the old
Tuolumne hills, he wrote a letter which eminently belongs here:

Elmira, N. Y., January 26, 1870.
DEAR Jim,—I remember that old night just as well! And somewhere
among my relics I have your remembrance stored away. It makes my
heart ache yet to call to mind some of those days. Still it
shouldn't, for right in the depths of their poverty and their
pocket-hunting vagabondage lay the germ of my coming good fortune.
You remember the one gleam of jollity that shot across our dismal
sojourn in the rain and mud of Angel's Camp—I mean that day we sat
around the tavern stove and heard that chap tell about the frog and
how they filled him with shot. And you remember how we quoted from
the yarn and laughed over it out there on the hillside while you
and dear old Stoker panned and washed. I jotted the story down in
my note-book that day, and would have been glad to get ten or
fifteen dollars for it—I was just that blind. But then we were so
hard up. I published that story, and it became widely known in
America, India, China, England, and the reputation it made for me
has paid me thousands and thousands of dollars since. Four or five
months ago I bought into the Express (I have ordered it sent to you
as long as you live, and if the bookkeeper sends you any bills you
let me hear of it). I went heavily in debt—never could have dared
to do that, Jim, if we hadn't heard the jumping Frog story that
day.
And wouldn't I love to take old Stoker by the hand, and wouldn't I
love to see him in his great specialty, his wonderful rendition of
Rinalds in the “Burning Shame!” Where is Dick and what is he doing?
Give him my fervent love and warm old remembrances.
A week from to-day I shall be married-to a girl even better and
lovelier than the peerless “Chapparal Quails.” You can't come so
far, Jim, but still I cordially invite you to come anyhow, and I
invite Dick too. And if you two boys were to land here on that
pleasant occasion we would make you right royally welcome. Truly
your friend, SAML. L. CLEMENS.
P.S.—-California plums are good. Jim, particularly when they are
stewed.

It had been only five years before—that day in Angel's Camp—but
how long ago and how far away it seemed to him now! So much had
happened since then, so much of which that was the beginning—so
little compared with the marvel of the years ahead, whose
threshold he was now about to cross, and not alone.

A day or two before the wedding he was asked to lecture on the
night of February 2d. He replied that he was sorry to disappoint
the applicant, but that he could not lecture on the night of
February 2d, for the reason that he was going to marry a young
lady on that evening, and that he would rather marry that young
lady than deliver all the lectures in the world.

And so came the wedding-day. It began pleasantly; the postman
brought a royalty check that morning of $4,000, the accumulation
of three months' sales, and the Rev. Joseph Twichell and Harmony,
his wife, came from Hartford—Twichell to join with the Rev.
Thomas K. Beecher in solemnizing the marriage. Pamela Moffett, a
widow now, with her daughter Annie, grown to a young lady, had
come all the way from St. Louis, and Mrs. Fairbanks from
Cleveland.

Yet the guests were not numerous, not more than a hundred at
most, so it was a quiet wedding there in the Langdon parlors,
those dim, stately rooms that in the future would hold so much of
his history—so much of the story of life and death that made its
beginning there.

The wedding-service was about seven o'clock, for Mr. Beecher had
a meeting at the church soon after that hour. Afterward followed
the wedding-supper and dancing, and the bride's father danced
with the bride. To the interested crowd awaiting him at the
church Mr. Beecher reported that the bride was very beautiful,
and had on the longest white gloves he had ever seen; he declared
they reached to her shoulders.—[Perhaps for a younger generation
it should be said that Thomas K. Beecher was a brother of Henry
Ward Beecher. He lived and died in Elmira, the almost worshiped
pastor of the Park Congregational Church. He was a noble,
unorthodox teacher. Samuel Clemens at the time of his marriage
already strongly admired him, and had espoused his cause in an
article signed “S'cat!” in the Elmira Advertiser, when he
(Beecher) had been assailed by the more orthodox Elmira clergy.
For the “S'cat” article see Appendix I, at the end of last
volume.]

It was the next afternoon when they set out for Buffalo,
accompanied by the bride's parents, the groom's relatives, the
Beechers, and perhaps one or two others of that happy company. It
was nine o'clock at night when they arrived, and found Mr. Slee
waiting at the station with sleighs to convey the party to the
“boarding-house” he had selected. They drove and drove, and the
sleigh containing the bride and groom got behind and apparently
was bound nowhere in particular, which disturbed the groom a good
deal, for he thought it proper that they should arrive first, to
receive their guests. He commented on Slee's poor judgment in
selecting a house that was so hard to find, and when at length
they turned into fashionable Delaware Avenue, and stopped before
one of the most attractive places in the neighborhood, he was
beset with fear concerning the richness of the locality.

They were on the steps when the doors opened, and a perfect
fairyland of lights and decoration was revealed within. The
friends who had gone ahead came out with greetings, to lead in
the bride and groom. Servants hurried forward to take bags and
wraps. They were ushered inside; they were led through beautiful
rooms, all newly appointed and garnished. The bridegroom was
dazed, unable to understand the meaning of things, the apparent
ownership and completeness of possession.

At last the young wife put her hand upon his arm:

“Don't you understand, Youth,” she said; that was always her name
for him. “Don't you understand? It is ours, all ours—everything—a
gift from father!”

But even then he could not grasp it; not at first, not until Mr.
Langdon brought a little box and, opening it, handed them the
deeds.

Nobody quite remembers what was the first remark that Samuel
Clemens made then; but either then or a little later he said:

“Mr. Langdon, whenever you are in Buffalo, if it's twice a year,
come right here. Bring your bag and stay overnight if you want
to. It sha'n't cost you a cent!”

They went in to supper then, and by and by the guests were gone
and the young wedded pair were alone.

Patrick McAleer, the young coachman, who would grow old in their
employ, and Ellen, the cook, came in for their morning orders,
and were full of Irish delight at the inexperience and novelty of
it all. Then they were gone, and only the lovers in their new
house and their new happiness remained.

And so it was they entered the enchanted land.

LXXV. AS TO DESTINY

If any reader has followed these chapters thus far, he may have
wondered, even if vaguely, at the seeming fatality of events.
Mark Twain had but to review his own life for justification of
his doctrine of inevitability—an unbroken and immutable sequence
of cause and effect from the beginning. Once he said:

“When the first living atom found itself afloat on the great
Laurentian sea the first act of that first atom led to the second
act of that first atom, and so on down through the succeeding
ages of all life, until, if the steps could be traced, it would
be shown that the first act of that first atom has led inevitably
to the act of my standing here in my dressing-gown at this
instant talking to you.”

It seemed the clearest presentment ever offered in the matter of
predestined circumstance—predestined from the instant when that
primal atom felt the vital thrill. Mark Twain's early life,
however imperfectly recorded, exemplifies this postulate. If
through the years still ahead of us the course of destiny seems
less clearly defined, it is only because thronging events make
the threads less easy to trace. The web becomes richer, the
pattern more intricate and confusing, but the line of fate
neither breaks nor falters, to the end.

LXXVI. ON THE BUFFALO “EXPRESS”

With the beginning of life in Buffalo, Mark Twain had become
already a world character—a man of large consequence and events.
He had no proper realization of this, no real sense of the size
of his conquest; he still regarded himself merely as a lecturer
and journalist, temporarily popular, but with no warrant to a
permanent seat in the world's literary congress. He thought his
success something of an accident. The fact that he was prepared
to settle down as an editorial contributor to a newspaper in what
was then only a big village is the best evidence of a modest
estimate of his talents.

He “worked like a horse,” is the verdict of those who were
closely associated with him on the Express. His hours were not
regular, but they were long. Often he was at his desk at eight in
the morning, and remained there until ten or eleven at night.

His working costume was suited to comfort rather than show. With
coat, vest, collar, and tie usually removed (sometimes even his
shoes), he lounged in his chair, in any attitude that afforded
the larger ease, pulling over the exchanges; scribbling
paragraphs, editorials, humorous skits, and what not, as the
notion came upon him. J. L. Lamed, his co-worker (he sat on the
opposite side of the same table), remembers that Mark Twain
enjoyed his work as he went along—the humor of it—and that he
frequently laughed as some whimsicality or new absurdity came
into his mind.

“I doubt,” writes Lamed, “if he ever enjoyed anything more than
the jackknife engraving that he did on a piece of board of a
military map of the siege of Paris, which was printed in the
Express from his original plate, with accompanying explanations
and comments. His half-day of whittling and laughter that went
with it are something that I find pleasant to remember. Indeed,
my whole experience of association with him is a happy memory,
which I am fortunate in having.... What one saw of him was always
the actual Mark Twain, acting out of his own nature simply,
frankly, without pretense, and almost without reserve. It was
that simplicity and naturalness in the man which carried his
greatest charm.”

Lamed, like many others, likens Mark Twain to Lincoln in various
of his characteristics. The two worked harmoniously together:
Lamed attending to the political direction of the journal,
Clemens to the literary, and what might be termed the sentimental
side. There was no friction in the division of labor, never
anything but good feeling between them. Clemens had a poor
opinion of his own comprehension of politics, and perhaps as
little regard for Lamed's conception of humor. Once when the
latter attempted something in the way of pleasantry his associate
said:

“Better leave the humor on this paper to me, Lamed”; and once
when Lamed was away attending the Republican State Convention at
Saratoga, and some editorial comment seemed necessary, Clemens
thought it best to sign the utterance, and to make humor of his
shortcomings.

I do not know much about politics, and am not sitting up nights to
learn....
I am satisfied that these nominations are all right and sound, and
that they are the only ones that can bring peace to our distracted
country (the only political phrase I am perfectly familiar with and
competent to hurl at the public with fearless confidence—the other
editor is full of them), but being merely satisfied is not enough.
I always like to know before I shout. But I go for Mr. Curtis with
all my strength! Being certain of him, I hereby shout all I know
how. But the others may be a split ticket, or a scratched ticket,
or whatever you call it.
I will let it alone for the present. It will keep. The other young
man will be back to-morrow, and he will shout for it, split or no
split, rest assured of that. He will prance into this political
ring with his tomahawk and his war-whoop, and then you will hear a
crash and see the scalps fly. He has none of my diffidence. He
knows all about these nominees, and if he don't he will let on to
in such a natural way as to deceive the most critical. He knows
everything—he knows more than Webster's Unabridged and the American
Encyclopedia—but whether he knows anything about a subject or not
he is perfectly willing to discuss it. When he gets back he will
tell you all about these candidates as serenely as if he had been
acquainted with them a hundred years, though, speaking
confidentially, I doubt if he ever heard of any of them till
to-day. I am right well satisfied it is a good, sound, sensible
ticket, and a ticket to win; but wait till he comes.
In the mean time I go for George William Curtis and take the
chances. MARK TWAIN.

He had become what Mr. Howells calls entirely “desouthernized” by
this time. From having been of slaveholding stock, and a
Confederate soldier, he had become a most positive Republican, a
rampant abolitionist—had there been anything left to abolish. His
sympathy had been always with the oppressed, and he had now
become their defender. His work on the paper revealed this more
and more. He wrote fewer sketches and more editorials, and the
editorials were likely to be either savage assaults upon some
human abuse, or fierce espousals of the weak. They were fearless,
scathing, terrific. Of some farmers of Cohocton, who had taken
the law into their own hands to punish a couple whom they
believed to be a detriment to the community, he wrote:

“The men who did that deed are capable of doing any low,
sneaking, cowardly villainy that could be invented in perdition.
They are the very bastards of the devil.”

He appended a full list of their names, and added:

“If the farmers of Cohocton are of this complexion, what on earth
must a Cohocton rough be like?”

But all this happened a long time ago, and we need not detail
those various old interests and labors here. It is enough to say
that Mark Twain on the Express was what he had been from the
beginning, and would be to the end—the zealous champion of
justice and liberty; violent and sometimes wrong in his
viewpoint, but never less than fearless and sincere. Invariably
he was for the oppressed. He had a natural instinct for the
right, but, right or wrong, he was for the under dog.

Among the best of his editorial contributions is a tribute to
Anson Burlingame, who died February 23, 1870, at St. Petersburg,
on his trip around the world as special ambassador for the
Chinese Empire. In this editorial Clemens endeavored to pay
something of his debt to the noble statesman. He reviewed
Burlingame's astonishing career—the career which had closed at
forty-seven, and read like a fairy-tale-and he dwelt lovingly on
his hero's nobility of character. At the close he said:

“He was a good man, and a very, very great man. America, lost a
son, and all the world a servant, when he died.”

Among those early contributions to the Express is a series called
“Around the World,” an attempt at collaboration with Prof. D. R.
Ford, who did the actual traveling, while Mark Twain, writing in
the first person, gave the letters his literary stamp. At least
some of the contributions were written in this way, such as
“Adventures in Hayti,” “The Pacific,” and “Japan.” These letters
exist to-day only in the old files of the Express, and indeed
this is the case with most of Clemens's work for that paper. It
was mainly ephemeral or timely work, and its larger value has
disappeared. Here and there is a sentence worth remembering. Of
two practical jokers who sent in a marriage notice of persons not
even contemplating matrimony, he said: “This deceit has been
practised maliciously by a couple of men whose small souls will
escape through their pores some day if they do not varnish their
hides.”

Some of the sketches have been preserved. “Journalism in
Tennessee,” one of the best of his wilder burlesques, is as
enjoyable to-day as when written. “A Curious Dream” made a
lasting impression on his Buffalo readers, and you are pretty
certain to hear of it when you mention Mark Twain in that city
to-day. It vividly called attention to the neglect of the old
North Street graveyard. The gruesome vision of the ancestors
deserting with their coffins on their backs was even more
humiliating than amusing, and inspired a movement for reform. It
has been effective elsewhere since then, and may still be read
with profit—or satisfaction—for in a note at the end the reader
is assured that if the cemeteries of his town are kept in good
order the dream is not leveled at his town at all, but
“particularly and venomously at the next town.”

LXXVII. THE “GALAXY”

Mark Twain's work on the Express represented only a portion of
his literary activities during his Buffalo residence. The Galaxy,
an ambitious New York magazine of that day—[published by Sheldon
& Co. at 498 and 500 Broadway]—proposed to him that he conduct
for them a humorous department. They would pay $2,400 a year for
the work, and allow him a free hand. There was some discussion as
to book rights, but the arrangement was concluded, and his first
instalment, under the general title of “Memoranda,” appeared in
the May number, 1870. In his Introductory he outlined what the
reader might expect, such as “exhaustive statistical tables,”
“Patent Office reports,” and “complete instructions about
farming, even from the grafting of the seed to the harrowing of
the matured crops.” He declared that he would throw a pathos into
the subject of agriculture that would surprise and delight the
world. He added that the “Memoranda” was not necessarily a
humorous department.

I would not conduct an exclusively and professedly humorous
department for any one. I would always prefer to have the privilege
of printing a serious and sensible remark, in case one occurred to
me, without the reader's feeling obliged to consider himself
outraged.... Puns cannot be allowed a place in this department....
No circumstance, however dismal, will ever be considered a
sufficient excuse for the admission of that last and saddest
evidence of intellectual poverty, the pun.

The Galaxy was really a fine magazine, with the best contributors
obtainable; among them Justin McCarthy, S. M. B. Piatt, Richard
Grant White, and many others well known in that day, with names
that still flicker here and there in its literary twilight. The
new department appealed to Clemens, and very soon he was writing
most of his sketches for it. They were better literature, as a
rule, than those published in his own paper.

The first number of the “Memoranda” was fairly representative of
those that followed it. “The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef
Contract,” a manuscript which he had undertaken three years
before and mislaid, was its initial contribution. Besides the
“Beef Contract,” there was a tribute to George Wakeman, a
well-known journalist of those days; a stricture on the Rev. T.
DeWitt Talmage, who had delivered from the pulpit an argument
against workingmen occupying pews in fashionable churches; a
presentment of the Chinese situation in San Francisco, depicting
the cruel treatment of the Celestial immigrant; a burlesque of
the Sunday-school “good little boy” story,—[“The Story of the
Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper” and the “Beef Contract” are
included in Sketches New and Old; also the Chinese sketch, under
the title, “Disgraceful Persecution of a Boy.”]—and several
shorter skits—and anecdotes, ten pages in all; a rather generous
contract.

Mark Twain's comment on Talmage was prompted by an article in
which Talmage had assumed the premise that if workingmen attended
the churches it would drive the better class of worshipers away.
Among other things he said:

I have a good Christian friend who, if he sat in the front pew in
church, and a workingman should enter the door at the other end,
would smell him instantly. My friend is not to blame for the
sensitiveness of his nose, any more than you would flog a pointer
for being keener on the scent than a stupid watch-dog. The fact is,
if you had all the churches free, by reason of the mixing of the
common people with the uncommon, you would keep one-half of
Christendom sick at their stomach. If you are going to kill the
church thus with bad smells I will have nothing to do with this
work of evangelization.

Commenting on this Mark Twain said—well, he said a good deal more
than we have room for here, but a portion of his closing
paragraphs is worth preserving. He compares the Reverend Mr.
Talmage with the early disciples of Christ—Paul and Peter and the
others; or, rather, he contrasts him with them.

They healed the very beggars, and held intercourse with people of a
villainous odor every day. If the subject of these remarks had been
chosen among the original Twelve Apostles he would not have
associated with the rest, because he could not have stood the fishy
smell of some of his comrades who came from around the Sea of
Galilee. He would have resigned his commission with some such
remark as he makes in the extract quoted above: “Master, if thou
art going to kill the church thus with bad smells I will have
nothing to do with this work of evangelization.” He is a disciple,
and makes that remark to the Master; the only difference is that he
makes it in the nineteenth instead of the first century.

Talmage was immensely popular at this time, and Mark Twain's open
attack on him must have shocked a good many Galaxy readers, as
perhaps his article on the Chinese cruelties offended the
citizens of San Francisco. It did not matter. He was not likely
to worry over the friends he would lose because of any stand
taken for human justice. Lamed said of him: “He was very far from
being one who tried in any way to make himself popular.”
Certainly he never made any such attempt at the expense of his
convictions.

The first Galaxy instalment was a sort of platform of principles
for the campaign that was to follow. Not that each month's
contribution contained personal criticism, or a defense of the
Chinese (of whom he was always the champion as long as he lived),
but a good many of them did. In the October number he began a
series of letters under the general title of “Goldsmith's Friend
Abroad Again,” supposed to have been written by a Chinese
immigrant in San Francisco, detailing his experience there. In a
note the author says: “No experience is set down in the following
letters which had to be invented. Fancy is not needed to give
variety to the history of the Chinaman's sojourn in America.
Plain fact is amply sufficient.” The letters show how the
supposed Chinese writer of them had set out for America,
believing it to be a land whose government was based on the
principle that all men are created equal, and treated
accordingly; how, upon arriving in San Francisco, he was kicked
and bruised and beaten, and set upon by dogs, flung into jail,
tried and condemned without witnesses, his own race not being
allowed to testify against Americans—Irish-Americans—in the San
Francisco court. They are scathing, powerful letters, and one
cannot read them, even in this day of improved conditions,
without feeling the hot waves of resentment and indignation which
Mark Twain must have felt when he penned them.

Reverend Mr. Talmage was not the only divine to receive attention
in the “Memoranda.” The Reverend Mr. Sabine, of New York, who had
declined to hold a church burial service for the old actor,
George Holland, came in for the most caustic as well as the most
artistic stricture of the entire series. It deserves preservation
to-day, not only for its literary value, but because no finer
defense of the drama, no more searching sermon on
self-righteousness, has ever been put into concrete form.—[“The
Indignity Put Upon the Remains of Gorge Holland by the Rev. Mr.
Sabine”; Galaxy for February, 1871. The reader will find it
complete under Appendix J, at the end of last volume.]

The “Little Church Around the Corner” on Twenty-ninth Street
received that happy title from this incident.

“There is a little church around the corner that will, perhaps,
permit the service,” Mr. Sabine had said to Holland's friends.

The little church did permit the service, and there was conferred
upon it the new name, which it still bears. It has sheltered a
long line of actor folk and their friends since then, earning
thereby reverence, gratitude, and immortal memory.—[Church of the
Transfiguration. Memorial services were held there for Joseph
Jefferson; and a memorial window, by John La Farge, has been
placed there in memory of Edwin Booth.]

Of the Galaxy contributions a number are preserved in Sketches
New and Old. “How I Edited an Agricultural Paper” is one of the
best of these—an excellent example of Mark Twain's more
extravagant style of humor. It is perennially delightful; in
France it has been dramatized, and is still played.

A successful Galaxy feature, also preserved in the Sketches, was
the “Burlesque Map of Paris,” reprinted from the Express. The
Franco-Prussian War was in progress, and this travesty was
particularly timely. It creates only a smile of amusement to-day,
but it was all fresh and delightful then. Schuyler Colfax, by
this time Vice-President, wrote to him: “I have had the heartiest
possible laugh over it, and so have all my family. You are a
wicked, conscienceless wag, who ought to be punished severely.”

The “Official Commendations,” which accompany the map, are its
chief charm. They are from Grant, Bismarck, Brigham Young, and
others, the best one coming from one J. Smith, who says:

My wife was for years afflicted with freckles, and though
everything was done for her relief that could be done, all was in
vain. But, sir, since her first glance at your map they have
entirely left her. She has nothing but convulsions now.

It is said that the “Map of Paris” found its way to Berlin, where
the American students in the beer-halls used to pretend to
quarrel over it until they attracted the attention of the German
soldiers that might be present. Then they would wander away and
leave it on the table and watch results. The soldiers would
pounce upon it and lose their tempers over it; then finally abuse
it and revile its author, to the satisfaction of everybody.

The larger number of “Memoranda” sketches have properly found
oblivion to-day. They were all, or nearly all, collected by a
Canadian pirate, C. A. Backas, in a volume bearing the title of
Memoranda,—[Also by a harpy named John Camden Hotten (of London),
of whom we shall hear again. Hotten had already pirated The
Innocents, and had it on the market before Routledge could bring
out the authorized edition. Routledge later published the
“Memoranda” under the title of Sketches, including the contents
of the Jumping Frog book.]—a book long ago suppressed. Only about
twenty of the Galaxy contributions found place in Sketches New
and Old, five years later, and some of these might have been
spared as literature. “To Raise Poultry,” “John Chinaman in New
York,” and “History Repeats Itself” are valuable only as examples
of his work at that period. The reader may consult them for
himself.

LXXVIII. THE PRIMROSE PATH

But we are losing sight of more important things. From the very
beginning Mark Twain's home meant always more to him than his
work. The life at 472 Delaware Avenue had begun with as fair a
promise as any matrimonial journey ever undertaken: There seemed
nothing lacking: a beautiful home, sufficient income, bright
prospects—these things, with health and love; constitute married
happiness. Mrs. Clemens wrote to her sister, Mrs. Crane, at the
end of February: “Sue, we are two as happy people as you ever
saw. Our days seem to be made up of only bright sunlight, with no
shadow in them.” In the same letter the husband added: “Livy
pines and pines every day for you, and I pine and pine every day
for you, and when we both of us are pining at once you would
think it was a whole pine forest let loose.”

To Redpath, who was urging lecture engagements for the coming
season, he wrote:

DEAR RED,—I am not going to lecture any more forever. I have got
things ciphered down to a fraction now. I know just about what it
will cost to live, and I can make the money without lecturing.
Therefore, old man, count me out.

And still later, in May:

I guess I am out of the field permanently. Have got a lovely wife,
a lovely house, bewitchingly furnished, a lovely carriage, and a
coachman whose style and dignity are simply awe-in-spiring, nothing
less; and I am making more money than necessary, by considerable,
and therefore why crucify myself nightly on the platform? The
subscriber will have to be excused for the present season at least.

So they were very happy during those early months, acquiring
pleasantly the education which any matrimonial experience is sure
to furnish, accustoming themselves to the uses of housekeeping,
to life in partnership, with all the discoveries and mental and
spiritual adaptations that belong to the close association of
marriage. They were far, very far, apart on many subjects. He was
unpolished, untrained, impulsive, sometimes violent. Twichell
remembers that in the earlier days of their acquaintance he wore
a slouch hat pulled down in front, and smoked a cigar that
sometimes tilted up and touched the brim of it. The atmosphere
and customs of frontier life, the Westernisms of that day, still
clung to him. Mrs. Clemens, on the other hand, was conservative,
dainty, cultured, spiritual. He adored her as little less than a
saint, and she became, indeed, his saving grace. She had all the
personal refinement which he lacked, and she undertook the work
of polishing and purifying her life companion. She had no wish to
destroy his personality, to make him over, but only to preserve
his best, and she set about it in the right way—gently, and with
a tender gratitude in each achievement.

She did not entirely approve of certain lines of his reading; or,
rather, she did not understand them in those days. That he should
be fond of history and the sciences was natural enough, but when
the Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself, appeared, and he
sat up nights to absorb it, and woke early and lighted the lamp
to follow the career of the great showman, she was at a loss to
comprehend this particular literary passion, and indeed was
rather jealous of it. She did not realize then his vast interest
in the study of human nature, or that such a book contained what
Mr. Howells calls “the root of the human matter,” the inner
revelation of the human being at first hand.

Concerning his religious observances her task in the beginning
was easy enough. Clemens had not at that time formulated any
particular doctrines of his own. His natural kindness of heart,
and especially his love for his wife, inclined him toward the
teachings and customs of her Christian faith—unorthodox but
sincere, as Christianity in the Langdon family was likely to be.
It took very little persuasion on his wife's part to establish
family prayers in their home, grace before meals, and the morning
reading of a Bible chapter. Joe Goodman, who made a trip East,
and visited them during the early days of their married life, was
dumfounded to see Mark Twain ask a blessing and join in family
worship. Just how long these forms continued cannot be known
to-day; the time of their abandonment has perished from the
recollection of any one now living.

It would seem to have been the Bible-reading that wrought the
change. The prayer and the blessing were to him sincere and
gracious; but as the readings continued he realized that he had
never before considered the Bible from a doctrinal point of view,
as a guide to spiritual salvation. To his logical reasoning mind,
a large portion of it seemed absurd: a mass of fables and
traditions, mere mythology. From such material humanity had built
its mightiest edifice of hope, the doctrines of its faith. After
a little while he could stand it no longer.

“Livy,” he said one day, “you may keep this up if you want to,
but I must ask you to excuse me from it. It is making me a
hypocrite. I don't believe in this Bible. It contradicts my
reason. I can't sit here and listen to it, letting you believe
that I regard it, as you do, in the light of gospel, the word of
God.”

He was moved to write an article on the human idea of God,
ancient and modern. It contained these paragraphs:

The difference in importance, between the God of the Bible and the
God of the present day, cannot be described, it can only be vaguely
and inadequately figured to the mind.... If you make figures to
represent the earth and moon, and allow a space of one inch between
them, to represent the four hundred thousand miles of distance
which lies between the two bodies, the map will have to be eleven
miles long in order to bring in the nearest fixed star. —[His
figures were far too small. A map drawn on the scale of 400,000
miles to the inch would need to be 1,100 miles long to take in both
the earth and the nearest fixed star. On such a map the earth would
be one-fiftieth of an inch in diameter—the size of a small grain of
sand.]—So one cannot put the modern heavens on a map, nor the
modern God; but the Bible God and the Bible heavens can be set down
on a slate and yet not be discommoded....
The difference between that universe and the modern one revealed by
science is as the difference between a dust-flecked ray in a barn
and the sublime arch of the Milky Way in the skies. Its God was
strictly proportioned to its dimensions. His sole solicitude was
about a handful of truculent nomads. He worried and fretted over
them in a peculiarly and distractingly human way. One day he coaxed
and petted them beyond their due, the next he harried and lashed
them beyond their deserts. He sulked, he cursed, he raged, he
grieved, according to his mood and the circumstances, but all to no
purpose; his efforts were all vain, he could not govern them. When
the fury was on him he was blind to all reason—he not only
slaughtered the offender, but even his harmless little children and
dumb cattle....
To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive,
fierce and ever fickle and changeful master; to trust the true God
is to trust a Being who has uttered no promises, but whose
beneficent, exact, and changeless ordering of the machinery of his
colossal universe is proof that he is at least steadfast to his
purposes; whose unwritten laws, so far as they affect man, being
equal and impartial, show that he is just and fair; these things,
taken together, suggest that if he shall ordain us to live
hereafter, he will still be steadfast, just, and fair toward us. We
shall not need to require anything more.

It seems mild enough, obvious, even orthodox, now—so far have we
traveled in forty years. But such a declaration then would have
shocked a great number of sincerely devout persons. His wife
prevailed upon him not to print it. She respected his
honesty—even his reasoning, but his doubts were a long grief to
her, nevertheless. In time she saw more clearly with his vision,
but this was long after, when she had lived more with the world,
had become more familiar with its larger needs, and the
proportions of created things.

They did not mingle much or long with the social life of Buffalo.
They received and returned calls, attended an occasional
reception; but neither of them found such things especially
attractive in those days, so they remained more and more in their
own environment. There is an anecdote which seems to belong here.

One Sunday morning Clemens noticed smoke pouring from the upper
window of the house across the street. The owner and his wife,
comparatively newcomers, were seated upon the veranda, evidently
not aware of impending danger. The Clemens household thus far had
delayed calling on them, but Clemens himself now stepped briskly
across the street. Bowing with leisurely politeness, he said:

“My name is Clemens; we ought to have called on you before, and I
beg your pardon for intruding now in this informal way, but your
house is on fire.”

Almost the only intimate friends they had in Buffalo were in the
family of David Gray, the poet-editor of the Courier. Gray was a
gentle, lovable man. “The gentlest spirit and the loveliest that
ever went clothed in clay, since Sir Galahad laid him to rest,”
Mark Twain once said of him. Both Gray and Clemens were friends
of John Hay, and their families soon became intimate. Perhaps, in
time, the Clemens household would have found other as good
friends in the Buffalo circles; but heavy clouds that had lain
unseen just beyond the horizon during those earlier months of
marriage rose suddenly into view, and the social life, whatever
it might have become, was no longer a consideration.

LXXIX. THE OLD HUMAN STORY

Jervis Langdon was never able to accept his son-in-law's
invitation to the new home. His health began to fail that spring,
and at the end of March, with his physician and Mrs. Langdon, he
made a trip to the South. In a letter written at Richmond he
said, “I have thrown off all care,” and named a list of the four
great interests in which he was involved. Under “number 5,” he
included “everything,” adding, “so you see how good I am to
follow the counsel of my children.” He closed: “Samuel, I love
your wife and she loves me. I think it is only fair that you
should know it, but you need not flare up. I loved her before you
did, and she loved me before she did you, and has not ceased
since. I see no way but for you to make the most of it.” He was
already a very ill man, and this cheerful letter was among the
last he ever wrote.

He was absent six weeks and seemed to improve, but suffered an
attack early in May; in June his condition became critical.
Clemens and his wife were summoned to Elmira, and joined in the
nursing, day and night. Clemens surprised every one by his
ability as a nurse. His delicacy and thoughtfulness were
unfailing; his original ways of doing things always amused and
interested the patient. In later years Mark Twain once said:

“How much of the nursing did I do? My main watch was from midnight
to four in the morning, nearly four hours. My other watch was a
midday watch, and I think it was nearly three hours. The two
sisters divided the remaining seventeen hours of the twenty-four
hours between them, and each of them tried generously and
persistently to swindle the other out of a part of her watch. I
went to bed early every night, and tried to get sleep enough by
midnight to fit me for my work, but it was always a failure. I went
on watch sleepy and remained miserable, sleepy, and wretched,
straight along through the four hours. I can still see myself
sitting by that bed in the melancholy stillness of the sweltering
night, mechanically waving a palm-leaf fan over the drawn, white
face of the patient. I can still recall my noddings, my fleeting
unconsciousness, when the fan would come to a standstill in my
hand, and I woke up with a start and a hideous shock. During all
that dreary time I began to watch for the dawn long before it came.
When the first faint gray showed through the window-blinds I felt
as no doubt a castaway feels when the dim threads of the looked-for
ship appear against the sky. I was well and strong, but I was a
man, afflicted with a man's infirmity—lack of endurance.”

He always dealt with himself in this unsparing way; but those who
were about him then have left a different story.

It was all without avail. Mr. Langdon rallied, and early in July
there was hope for his recovery. He failed again, and on the
afternoon of the 6th of August he died. To Mrs. Clemens, delicate
and greatly worn with the anxiety and strain of watching, the
blow was a crushing one. It was the beginning of a series of
disasters which would mark the entire remaining period of their
Buffalo residence.

There had been a partial plan for spending the summer in England,
and a more definite one for joining the Twichells in the
Adirondacks. Both of these projects were now abandoned. Mrs.
Clemens concluded that she would be better at home than anywhere
else, and invited an old school friend, a Miss Emma Nye, to visit
her.

But the shadow of death had not been lifted from the Clemens
household. Miss Nye presently fell ill with typhoid fever. There
followed another long period of anxiety and nursing, ending with
the death of the visitor in the new home, September 29th. The
young wife was now in very delicate health; genuinely ill, in
fact. The happy home had become a place of sorrow-of troubled
nights and days. Another friend came to cheer them, and on this
friend's departure Mrs. Clemens drove to the railway station. It
was a hurried trip over rough streets to catch the train. She was
prostrated on her return, and a little later, November 7, 1870,
her first child, Langdon, was prematurely born. A dangerous
illness followed, and complete recovery was long delayed. But on
the 12th the crisis seemed passed, and the new father wrote a
playful letter to the Twichells, as coming from the late arrival:

DEAR UNCLE AND AUNT,—I came into the world on the 7th inst., and
consequently am about five days old now. I have had wretched health
ever since I made my appearance... I am not corpulent, nor am I
robust in any way. At birth I only weighed four and one-half pounds
with my clothes on—and the clothes were the chief feature of the
weight, too, I am obliged to confess, but I am doing finely, all
things considered.... My little mother is very bright and cheery,
and I guess she is pretty happy, but I don't know what about. She
laughs a great deal, notwithstanding she is sick abed.
P. S.—Father says I had better write because you will be more
interested in me, just now, than in the rest of the family.

A week later Clemens, as himself, wrote:

Livy is up and the prince keeps her busy and anxious these latter
days and nights, but I am a bachelor up-stairs and don't have to
jump up and get the soothing sirup, though I would as soon do it as
not, I assure you. (Livy will be certain to read this letter.)
Tell Harmony that I do hold the baby, and do it pretty handily too,
though with occasional apprehensions that his loose head will fall
off. I don't have to quiet him; he hardly ever utters a cry. He is
always thinking about something. He is a patient, good little baby.

Further along he refers to one of his reforms:

Smoke? I always smoke from three till five on Sunday afternoons,
and in New York, the other day, I smoked a week, day and night. But
when Livy is well I smoke only those two hours on Sunday. I'm boss
of the habit now, and shall never let it boss me any more.
Originally I quit solely on Livy's account (not that I believed
there was the faintest reason in the matter, but just as I would
deprive myself of sugar in my coffee if she wished it, or quit
wearing socks if she thought them immoral), and I stick to it yet
on Livy's account, and shall always continue to do so without a
pang. But somehow it seems a pity that you quit, for Mrs. T. didn't
mind it, if I remember rightly. Ah, it is turning one's back upon a
kindly Providence to spurn away from us the good creature he sent
to make the breath of life a luxury as well as a necessity,
enjoyable as well as useful. To go quit smoking, when there ain't
any sufficient excuse for it!—why, my old boy, when they used to
tell me I would shorten my life ten years by smoking, they little
knew the devotee they were wasting their puerile words upon; they
little knew how trivial and valueless I would regard a decade that
had no smoking in it! But I won't persuade you, Twichell—I won't
until I see you again—but then we'll smoke for a week together, and
then shut off again.

LXXX. LITERARY PROJECTS

The success of the Innocents naturally made a thrifty publisher
like Bliss anxious for a second experiment. He had begun early in
the year to talk about another book, but nothing had come of it
beyond a project or two, more or less hazy and unpursued. Clemens
at one time developed a plan for a Noah's Ark book, which was to
detail the cruise of the Ark in diaries kept by various members
of it-Shem, Ham, and the others. He really wrote some of it at
the time, and it was an idea he never entirely lost track of. All
along among his manuscripts appear fragments from those ancient
voyagers. One of the earlier entries will show the style and
purpose of the undertaking. It is from Shem's record:

Friday: Papa's birthday. He is 600 years old. We celebrated it in a
big, black tent. Principal men of the tribe present. Afterward they
were shown over the ark, which was looking desolate and empty and
dreary on account of a misunderstanding with the workmen about
wages. Methuselah was as free with his criticisms as usual, and as
voluble and familiar, which I and my brothers do not like; for we
are past our one hundredth year and married. He still calls me
Shemmy, just as he did when I was a child of sixty. I am still but
a youth, it is true, but youth has its feelings, and I do not like
this....
Saturday: Keeping the Sabbath.
Sunday: Papa has yielded the advance and everybody is hard at work.
The shipyard is so crowded that the men hinder each other;
everybody hurrying or being hurried; the rush and confusion and
shouting and wrangling are astonishing to our family, who have
always been used to a quiet, country life.

It was from this germ that in a later day grew the diaries of
Adam and Eve, though nothing very satisfactory ever came of this
preliminary attempt. The author had faith in it, however. To
Bliss he wrote:

I mean to take plenty of time and pains with the Noah's Ark book;
maybe it will be several years before it is all written, but it
will be a perfect lightning striker when it is done.
You can have the first say (that is plain enough) on that or any
other book I may prepare for the press, as long as you deal in a
fair, open, and honorable way with me. I do not think you will ever
find me doing otherwise with you. I can get a book ready for you
any time you want it; but you can't want one before this time next
year, so I have plenty of time.

Bliss was only temporarily appeased. He realized that to get a
book ready by the time he wanted it-a book of sufficient size and
importance to maintain the pace set by the Innocents meant rather
more immediate action than his author seemed to contemplate.
Futhermore, he knew that other publishers were besieging the
author of the Innocents; a disquieting thought. In early July,
when Mr. Langdon's condition had temporarily improved, Bliss had
come to Elmira and proposed a book which should relate the
author's travels and experiences in the Far West. It was an
inviting subject, and Clemens, by this time more attracted by the
idea of authorship and its rewards, readily enough agreed to
undertake the volume. He had been offered half profits, and
suggested that the new contract be arranged upon these terms.
Bliss, figuring on a sale of 100,000 copies, proposed seven and
one-half per cent. royalty as an equivalent, and the contract was
so arranged. In after-years, when the cost of manufacture and
paper had become greatly reduced, Clemens, with but a confused
notion of business details, believed he had been misled by Bliss
in this contract, and was bitter and resentful accordingly. The
figures remain, however, to show that Bliss dealt fairly. Seven
and one-half per cent. of a subscription book did represent half
profits up to 100,000 copies when the contract was drawn; but it
required ten years to sell that quantity, and in that time
conditions had changed. Bliss could hardly foresee that these
things would be so, and as he was dead when the book touched the
100,000 mark he could not explain or readjust matters, whatever
might have been his inclination.

Clemens was pleased enough with the contract when it was made. To
Orion he wrote July 15 (1870):

Per contract I must have another six-hundred-page book ready for my
publisher January 1st, and I only began it to-day. The subject of
it is a secret, because I may possibly change it. But as it stands
I propose to do up Nevada and California, beginning with the trip
across the country in the stage. Have you a memorandum of the route
we took, or the names of any of the stations we stopped at? Do you
remember any of the scenes, names, incidents, or adventures of the
coach trip?—for I remember next to nothing about the matter. Jot
down a foolscap page of items for me. I wish I could have two days'
talk with you.
I suppose I am to get the biggest copyright this time ever paid on
a subscription book in this country.

The work so promptly begun made little progress. Hard days of
illness and sorrow followed, and it was not until September that
it was really under way. His natural enthusiasm over any new
undertaking possessed him. On the 4th he wrote Bliss:

During the past week I have written the first four chapters of
the book, and I tell you 'The Innocents Abroad' will have to get
up early to beat it. It will be a book that will jump straight
into continental celebrity the first month it is issued.

He prophesied a sale of 90,000 copies during the first twelve
months and declared, “I see the capabilities of the subject.”

But further disasters, even then impending, made continued effort
impossible; the prospect of the new book for a time became
gloomy, the idea of it less inspiring. Other plans presented
themselves, and at one time he thought of letting the Galaxy
publishers get out a volume of his sketches. In October he wrote
Bliss that he was “driveling along tolerably fair on the book,
getting off from twelve to twenty pages of manuscript a day.”
Bliss naturally discouraged the Galaxy idea, and realizing that
the new book might be long delayed, agreed to get out a volume of
miscellany sufficiently large and important for subscription
sales. He was doubtful of the wisdom of this plan, and when
Clemens suddenly proposed a brand-new scheme his publisher very
readily agreed to hold back the publication of Sketches
indefinitely.

The new book was to be adventures in the diamond mines of South
Africa, then newly opened and of wide public interest. Clemens
did not propose to visit the mines himself, but to let another
man do the traveling, make the notes, and write or tell him the
story, after which Clemens would enlarge and elaborate it in his
own fashion. His adaptation of the letters of Professor Ford, a
year earlier, had convinced him that his plan would work out
successfully on a larger scale; he fixed upon his old friend, J.
H. Riley, of Washington—[“Riley-Newspaper Correspondent.” See
Sketches.]—(earlier of San Francisco), as the proper person to do
the traveling. At the end of November he wrote Bliss:

I have put my greedy hands upon the best man in America for my
purpose, and shall start him to the diamond field in South Africa
within a fortnight at my expense... that the book will have a
perfectly beautiful sale.

He suggested that Bliss advance Riley's expense money, the amount
to be deducted from the first royalty returns; also he proposed
an increased royalty, probably in view of the startling splendor
of the new idea. Bliss was duly impressed, and the agreement was
finally made on a basis of eight and one-half per cent., with an
advance of royalty sufficient to see Riley to South Africa and
return.

Clemens had not yet heard from Riley definitely when he wrote his
glowing letter to Bliss. He took it for granted that Riley,
always an adventurous sort, would go. When Riley wrote him that
he felt morally bound to the Alta, of which he was then
Washington correspondent, also in certain other directions till
the end of the session, Clemens wrote him at great length,
detailing his scheme in full and urging him to write instantly to
the Alta and others, asking a release on the ground of being
offered a rare opportunity to improve his fortunes.

You know right well that I would not have you depart a hair from
any obligation for any money. The boundless confidence that I
have in you is born of a conviction of your integrity in small as
well as in great things. I know plenty of men whose integrity I
would trust to here, but not off yonder in Africa.

His proposal, in brief, to Riley was that the latter should make
the trip to Africa without expense to himself, collect memoranda,
and such diamond mines as might be found lying about handy. Upon
his return he was to take up temporary residence in the Clemens
household until the book was finished, after which large benefits
were to accrue to everybody concerned. In the end Riley obtained
a release from his obligations and was off for the diamond mines
and fortune.

Poor fellow! He was faithful in his mission, and it is said that
he really located a mining claim that would have made him and his
independent for all time to come; but returning home with his
precious memoranda and the news of good fortune, he accidentally
wounded himself with a fork while eating; blood-poisoning set in
(they called it cancer then), and he was only able to get home to
die. His memoranda were never used, his mining claim was never
identified. Certainly, death was closely associated with Mark
Twain's fortunes during those earlier days of his married life.

On the whole the Buffalo residence was mainly a gloomy one; its
ventures were attended by ill-fortune. For some reason Mark
Twain's connection with the Express, while it had given the paper
a wide reputation, had not largely increased its subscription.
Perhaps his work on it was too varied and erratic. Nasby, who had
popularized the Toledo Blade, kept steadily to one line. His
farmer public knew always just what to expect when their weekly
edition arrived.

Clemens and his wife dreamed of a new habitation, and new faces
and surroundings. They agreed to offer their home and his
interests in the Express for sale. They began to talk of
Hartford, where Twichell lived, and where Orion Clemens and his
wife had recently located.

Mark Twain's new fortunes had wrought changes in the affairs of
his relatives. Already, before his marriage, he had prospected
towns here and there with a view to finding an Eastern residence
for his mother and sister, and he had kept Orion's welfare always
in mind. When Pamela and her daughter came to his wedding he told
them of a little city by the name of Fredonia (New York), not far
from Buffalo, where he thought they might find a pleasant home.

“I went in there by night and out by night,” he said, “so I saw
none of it, but I had an intelligent, attractive audience.
Prospect Fredonia and let me know what it is like. Try to select
a place where a good many funerals pass. Ma likes funerals. If
you can pick a good funeral corner she will be happy.”

It was in her later life that Jane Clemens had developed this
particular passion. She would consult the morning paper for any
notice of obsequies and attend those that were easy of access.
Watching the processions go by gave her a peculiar joy. Mrs.
Moffett and her daughter did go to Fredonia immediately following
the wedding. They found it residentially attractive, and rented a
house before returning to St. Louis, a promptness that somewhat
alarmed the old lady, who did not altogether fancy the idea of
being suddenly set down in a strange house, in a strange land,
even though it would be within hailing distance of Sam and his
new wife. Perhaps the Fredonia funerals were sufficiently
numerous and attractive, for she soon became attached to the
place, and entered into the spirit of the life there, joining its
temperance crusades, and the like, with zest and enjoyment.

Onion remained in St. Louis, but when Bliss established a paper
called The Publisher, and wanted an editor, he was chosen for the
place, originally offered to his brother; the latter, writing to
Onion, said:

If you take the place with an air of perfect confidence in
yourself, never once letting anything show in your bearing but a
quiet, modest, entire, and perfect confidence in your ability to
do pretty much anything in the world, Bliss will think you are
the very man he needs; but don't show any shadow of timidity or
unsoldierly diffidence, for that sort of thing is fatal to
advancement.

I warn you thus because you are naturally given to knocking your
pot over in this way, when a little judicious conduct would make
it boil.

LXXXI. SOME FURTHER LITERARY MATTERS

Meantime The Innocents Abroad had continued to prosper. Its
author ranked mainly as a humorist, but of such colossal
proportions that his contemporaries had seemed to dwindle; the
mighty note of the “Frog of Calaveras” had dwarfed a score of
smaller peepers. At the end of a year from its date of
publication the book had sold up to 67,000 and was continuing at
the rate of several thousand monthly.

“You are running it in staving, tiptop, first-class style,”
Clemens wrote to Bliss. “On the average ten people a day come and
hunt me up to tell me I am a benefactor! I guess that is a part
of the program we didn't expect, in the first place.”

Apparently the book appealed to readers of every grade. One
hundred and fifteen copies were in constant circulation at the
Mercantile Library, in New York, while in the most remote cabins
of America it was read and quoted. Jack Van Nostrand, making a
long horseback tour of Colorado, wrote:

I stopped a week ago in a ranch but a hundred miles from nowhere.
The occupant had just two books: the Bible and The Innocents
Abroad—the former in good repair.

Across the ocean the book had found no less favor, and was being
translated into many and strange tongues. By what seems now some
veritable magic its author's fame had become literally universal.
The consul at Hongkong, discussing English literature with a
Chinese acquaintance, a mandarin, mentioned The Pilgrim's
Progress.

“Yes, indeed, I have read it!” the mandarin said, eagerly. “We
are enjoying it in China, and shall have it soon in our own
language. It is by Mark Twain.”

In England the book had an amazing vogue from the beginning, and
English readers were endeavoring to outdo the Americans in
appreciation. Indeed, as a rule, English readers of culture,
critical readers, rose to an understanding of Mark Twain's
literary value with greater promptness than did the same class of
readers at home. There were exceptions, of course. There were
English critics who did not take Mark Twain seriously, there were
American critics who did. Among the latter was a certain William
Ward, an editor of a paper down in Macon, Georgia—The Beacon.
Ward did not hold a place with the great magazine arbiters of
literary rank. He was only an obscure country editor, but he
wrote like a prophet. His article—too long to quote in
full—concerned American humorists in general, from Washington
Irving, through John Phoenix, Philander Doesticks, Sut
Lovingwood, Artemus Ward, Josh Billings and Petroleum V. Nasby,
down to Mark Twain. With the exception of the first and last
named he says of them:

They have all had, or will have, their day. Some of them are
resting beneath the sod, and others still live whose work will
scarcely survive them. Since Irving no humorist in prose has held
the foundation of a permanent fame except it be Mark Twain, and
this, as in the case of Irving, is because he is a pure writer.
Aside from any subtle mirth that lurks through his composition, the
grace and finish of his more didactic and descriptive sentences
indicate more than mediocrity.

The writer then refers to Mark Twain's description of the Sphinx,
comparing it with Bulwer's, which he thinks may have influenced
it. He was mistaken in this, for Clemens had not read
Bulwer—never could read him at any length.

Of the English opinions, that of The Saturday Review was perhaps
most doubtful. It came along late in 1870, and would hardly be
worth recalling if it were not for a resulting, or collateral,
interest. Clemens saw notice of this review before he saw the
review itself. A paragraph in the Boston Advertiser spoke of The
Saturday Review as treating the absurdities of the Innocents from
a serious standpoint. The paragraph closed:

We can imagine the delight of the humorist in reading this tribute
to his power; and indeed it is so amusing in itself that he can
hardly do better than reproduce the article in full in his next
monthly “Memoranda.”

The old temptation to hoax his readers prompted Mark Twain to
“reproduce” in the Galaxy, not the Review article, which he had
not yet seen, but an imaginary Review article, an article in
which the imaginary reviewer would be utterly devoid of any sense
of humor and treat the most absurd incidents of The New Pilgrim's
Progress as if set down by the author in solemn and serious
earnest. The pretended review began:

Lord Macaulay died too soon. We never felt this so deeply as when
we finished the last chapter of the above-named extravagant work.
Macaulay died too soon; for none but he could mete out complete and
comprehensive justice to the insolence, the impudence, the
presumption, the mendacity, and, above all, the majestic ignorance
of this author.

The review goes on to cite cases of the author's gross deception.
It says:

Let the cultivated English student of human nature picture to
himself this Mark Twain as a person capable of doing the following
described things; and not only doing them, but, with incredible
innocence, printing them tranquilly and calmly in a book. For
instance:
He states that he entered a hair-dresser's in Paris to get a shave,
and the first “rake” the barber gave him with his razor it loosened
his “hide,” and lifted him out of the chair.
This is unquestionably extravagant. In Florence he was so annoyed
by beggars that he pretends to have seized and eaten one in a
frantic spirit of revenge. There is, of course, no truth in this.
He gives at full length the theatrical program, seventeen or
eighteen hundred years old, which he professes to have found in the
ruins of the Colosseum, among the dirt-and mold and rubbish. It is
a sufficient comment upon this subject to remark that even a cast-
iron program would not have lasted so long under the circumstances.

There were two and one-half pages of this really delightful
burlesque which the author had written with huge-enjoyment,
partly as a joke on the Review, partly to trick American editors,
who he believed would accept it as a fresh and startling proof of
the traditional English lack of humor.

But, as in the early sage-brush hoaxes, he rather overdid the
thing. Readers and editors readily enough accepted it as genuine,
so far as having come from The Saturday Review; but most of them,
regarded it as a delicious bit of humor which Mark Twain himself
had taken seriously, and was therefore the one sold. This was
certainly startling, and by no means gratifying. In the next
issue he undertook that saddest of all performances with tongue
or pen: he explained his joke, and insisted on the truth of the
explanation. Then he said:

If any man doubts my word now I will kill him. No, I will not kill
him; I will win his money. I will bet him twenty to one, and let
any New York publisher hold the stakes, that the statements I have
above made as to the authorship of the article in question are
entirely true.

But the Cincinnati Enquirer persisted in continuing the joke—in
“rubbing it in,” as we say now. The Enquirer declared that Mark
Twain had been intensely mortified at having been so badly taken
in; that his explanation in the Galaxy was “ingenious, but
unfortunately not true.” The Enquirer maintained that The
Saturday Review of October 8, 1870, did contain the article
exactly as printed in the “Memoranda,” and advised Mark Twain to
admit that he was sold, and say no more about it.

This was enraging. Mark Twain had his own ideas as to how far a
joke might be carried without violence, and this was a good way
beyond the limits. He denounced the Enquirer's statement as a
“pitiful, deliberate falsehood,” in his anger falling into the
old-time phrasing of newspaper editorial abuse. He offered to bet
them a thousand dollars in cash that they could not prove their
assertions, and asked pointedly, in conclusion: “Will they
swallow that falsehood ignominiously, or will they send an agent
to the Galaxy office? I think the Cincinnati Enquirer must be
edited by children.” He promised that if they did not accept his
financial proposition he would expose them in the next issue.

The incident closed there. He was prevented, by illness in his
household, from contributing to the next issue, and the second
issue following was his final “Memoranda” installment. So the
matter perished and was forgotten. It was his last editorial
hoax. Perhaps he concluded that hoaxes in any form were dangerous
playthings; they were too likely to go off at the wrong end.

It was with the April number (1871) that he concluded his
relations with the Galaxy. In a brief valedictory he gave his
reasons:

I have now written for the Galaxy a year. For the last eight
months, with hardly an interval, I have had for my fellows and
comrades, night and day, doctors and watchers of the sick! During
these eight months death has taken two members of my home circle
and malignantly threatened two others. All this I have experienced,
yet all the time have been under contract to furnish “humorous”
matter, once a month, for this magazine. I am speaking the exact
truth in the above details. Please to put yourself in my place and
contemplate the grisly grotesqueness of the situation. I think that
some of the “humor” I have written during this period could have
been injected into a funeral sermon without disturbing the
solemnity of the occasion.
The “Memoranda” will cease permanently with this issue of the
magazine. To be a pirate on a low salary, and with no share in the
profits of the business, used to be my idea of an uncomfortable
occupation, but I have other views now. To be a monthly humorist in
a cheerless time is drearier.

Without doubt he felt a glad relief in being rid of this
recurrent, imperative demand. He wrote to Orion that he had told
the Galaxy people he would not write another article, long or
short, for less than $500, and preferred not to do it at all.

The Galaxy department and the work on the Express were Mark
Twain's farewell to journalism; for the “Memoranda” was
essentially journalistic, almost as much so, and as liberally, as
his old-time Enterprise position. Apparently he wrote with
absolute freedom, unhampered by editorial policy or restriction.
The result was not always pleasant, and it was not always
refined. We may be certain that it was because of Mrs. Clemens's
heavy burdens that year, and her consequent inability to exert a
beneficent censorship, that more than one—more than a dozen—of
the “Memoranda” contributions were permitted to see the light of
print.

As a whole, the literary result of Mark Twain's Buffalo period
does not reach the high standard of The Innocents Abroad. It was
a retrogression—in some measure a return to his earlier form. It
had been done under pressure, under heavy stress of mind, as he
said. Also there was another reason; neither the subject treated
nor the environment of labor had afforded that lofty inspiration
which glorified every step of the Quaker City journey. Buffalo
was a progressive city—a beautiful city, as American cities
go—but it was hardly an inspiring city for literature, and a
dull, dingy newspaper office was far, very far, from the pleasant
decks of the Quaker City, the camp-fires of Syria, the blue sky
and sea of the Mediterranean.

LXXXII. THE WRITING OF “ROUGHING IT”

The third book published by Mark Twa in was not the Western book
he was preparing for Bliss. It was a small volume, issued by
Sheldon & Co., entitled Mark Twain's Autobiography (Burlesque)
and First Romance. The Romance was the “Awful, Terrible Medieval
Romance” which had appeared in the Express at the beginning of
1870. The burlesque autobiography had not previously appeared.
The two made a thin little book, which, in addition to its
literary features, had running through it a series of full-page,
irrelevant pictures—-cartoons of the Erie Railroad Ring,
presented as illustrations of a slightly modified version of “The
House That Jack Built.” The “House” was the Erie headquarters,
the purpose being to illustrate the swindling methods of the
Ring. The faces of Jay Gould, James Fisk, Jr., John T. Hoffman,
and others of the combination, are chiefly conspicuous. The
publication was not important, from any standpoint. Literary
burlesque is rarely important, and it was far from Mark Twain's
best form of expression. A year or two later he realized the
mistake of this book, bought in the plates and destroyed them.

Meantime the new Western book was at a standstill. To Orion, in
March, he wrote:

I am still nursing Livy night and day. I am nearly worn out. We
shall go to Elmira ten days hence (if Livy can travel on a mattress
then), and stay there until I finish the California book, say three
months. But I can't begin work right away when I get there; must
have a week's rest, for I have been through thirty days' terrific
siege.

He promised to forward some of the manuscript soon.

Hold on four or five days and I will see if I can get a few
chapters fixed to send to Bliss....
I have offered this house and the Express for sale, and when we go
to Elmira we leave here for good. I shall not select a new home
till the book is finished, but we have little doubt that Hartford
will be the place.

He disposed of his interest in the Express in April, at a
sacrifice of $10,000 on the purchase price. Mrs. Clemens and the
baby were able to travel, and without further delay he took them
to Elmira, to Quarry Farm.

Quarry Farm, the home of Mrs. Clemens's sister, Mrs. Theodore
Crane, is a beautiful hilltop, with a wide green slope,
overlooking the hazy city and the Chemung River, beyond which are
the distant hills. It was bought quite incidentally by Mr. and
Mrs. Langdon, who, driving by one evening, stopped to water the
horses and decided that it would make a happy summer retreat,
where the families could combine their housekeeping arrangements
during vacation days. When the place had first been purchased,
they had debated on a name for it. They had tried several, among
them “Go-as-you-please Hall,” “Crane's Nest,” and had finally
agreed upon “Rest and Be Thankful.” But this was only its
official name. There was an abandoned quarry up the hill, a
little way from the house, and the title suggested by Thomas K.
Beecher came more naturally to the tongue. The place became
Quarry Farm, and so remains.

Clemens and his wife had fully made up their minds to live in
Hartford. They had both conceived an affection for the place,
Clemens mainly because of Twichell, while both of them yearned
for the congenial literary and social atmosphere, and the welcome
which they felt awaited them. Hartford was precisely what Buffalo
in that day was not—a home for the literary man. It held a
distinguished group of writers, most of whom the Clemenses
already knew. Furthermore, with Bliss as publisher of the Mark
Twain books, it held their chief business interests.

Their plans for going were not very definite as to time. Clemens
found that his work went better at the farm, and that Mrs.
Clemens and the delicate baby daily improved. They decided to
remain at Quarry Farm for the summer, their first summer in that
beautiful place which would mean so much to them in the years to
come.

It was really Joe Goodman, as much as anything, that stirred a
fresh enthusiasm in the new book. Goodman arrived just when the
author's spirits were at low ebb.

“Joe,” he said, “I guess I'm done for. I don't appear to be able
to get along at all with my work, and what I do write does not
seem valuable. I'm afraid I'll never be able to reach the
standard of 'The Innocents Abroad' again. Here is what I have
written, Joe. Read it, and see if that is your opinion.”

Goodman took the manuscript and seated himself in a chair, while
Clemens went over to a table and pretended to work. Goodman read
page after page, critically, and was presently absorbed in it.
Clemens watched him furtively, till he could stand it no longer.
Then he threw down his pen, exclaiming:

“I knew it! I knew it! I am writing nothing but rot. You have sat
there all this time reading without a smile, and pitying the ass
I am making of myself. But I am not wholly to blame. I am not
strong enough to fight against fate. I have been trying to write
a funny book, with dead people and sickness everywhere. Mr.
Langdon died first, then a young lady in our house, and now Mrs.
Clemens and the baby have been at the point of death all winter!
Oh, Joe, I wish to God I could die myself!”

“Mark,” said Joe, “I was reading critically, not for amusement,
and so far as I have read, and can judge, this is one of the best
things you have ever written. I have found it perfectly
absorbing. You are doing a great book!”

Clemens knew that Goodman never spoke except from conviction, and
the verdict was to him like a message of life handed down by an
archangel. He was a changed man instantly. He was all enthusiasm,
full of his subject, eager to go on. He proposed to pay Goodman a
salary to stay there and keep him company and furnish him with
inspiration—the Pacific coast atmosphere and vernacular, which he
feared had slipped away from him. Goodman declined the salary,
but extended his visit as long as his plans would permit, and the
two had a happy time together, recalling old Comstock days. Every
morning, for a month or more, they used to tramp over the farm.
They fell into the habit of visiting the old quarry and pawing
over the fragments in search of fossil specimens. Both of them
had a poetic interest in geology, its infinite remotenesses and
its testimonies. Without scientific knowledge, they took a deep
pleasure in accumulating a collection, which they arranged on
boards torn from an old fence, until they had enough specimens to
fill a small museum. They imagined they could distinguish certain
geological relations and families, and would talk about
trilobites, the Old Red Sandstone period, and the azoic age, or
follow random speculation to far-lying conclusions, developing
vague humors of phrase and fancy, having altogether a joyful good
time.

Another interest that developed during Goodman's stay was in one
Ruloff, who was under death sentence for a particularly atrocious
murder. The papers were full of Ruloff's prodigious learning. It
was said that he had in preparation a work showing the unity of
all languages. Goodman and Clemens agreed that Ruloff's death
would be a great loss to mankind, even though he was clearly a
villain and deserved his sentence. They decided that justice
would be served just as well if some stupid person were hung in
his place, and following out this fancy Clemens one morning put
aside his regular work and wrote an article to the Tribune,
offering to supply a substitute for Ruloff. He signed it simply
“Samuel Langhorne,” and it was published as a serious
communication, without comment, so far as the Tribune was
concerned. Other papers, however, took it up and it was widely
copied and commented upon. Apparently no one ever identified,
Mark Twain with the authorship of the letter, which, by the way,
does not appear to have prolonged Ruloff's earthly
usefulness.—[The reader will find the Ruloff letter in full under
Appendix K, at the end of last volume.]

Life at the farm may have furnished agricultural inspiration, for
Clemens wrote something about Horace Greeley's farming, also a
skit concerning Henry Ward Beecher's efforts in that direction.
Of Mr. Beecher's farming he said:

“His strawberries would be a comfortable success if robins would
eat turnips.”

The article amused Beecher, and perhaps Greeley was amused too,
for he wrote:

MARK,—You are mistaken as to my criticisms on your farming. I never
publicly made any, while you have undertaken to tell the exact cost
per pint of my potatoes and cabbages, truly enough the inspiration
of genius. If you will really betake yourself to farming, or even
to telling what you know about it, rather than what you don't know
about mine, I will not only refrain from disparaging criticism, but
will give you my blessing.
Yours, HORACE GREELEY.

The letter is in Mr. Greeley's characteristic scrawl, and no
doubt furnished inspiration for the turnip story in 'Roughing
It', also the model for the pretended facsimile of Greeley's
writing.

Altogether that was a busy, enterprising summer at Quarry Farm.
By the middle of May, Clemens wrote to Bliss that he had twelve
hundred manuscript pages of the new book already written, and
that he was turning out the remainder at the rate of from thirty
to sixty-five per day. He was in high spirits by this time. The
family health had improved, and prospects were bright.

I have enough manuscript on hand now to make (allowing for
engravings) about four hundred pages of the book, consequently am
two-thirds done. I intended to run up to Hartford about the
middle of the week and take it along, but I find myself so
thoroughly interested in my work now (a thing I have not
experienced for months) that I can't bear to lose a single moment
of the inspiration. So I will stay here and peg away as long as
it lasts. My present idea is to write as much more as I have
already written, and then collect from the mass the very best
chapters and discard the rest. When I get it done I want to see
the man who will begin to read it and not finish it. Nothing
grieves me now; nothing troubles me, nothing bothers me or gets
my attention. I don't think of anything but the book, and don't
have an hour's unhappiness about anything, and don't care two
cents whether school keeps or not. The book will be done soon
now. It will be a starchy book; the dedication will be worth the
price of the volume. Thus:

TO THE LATE CAIN THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
not on account of respect for his memory, for it merits little
respect; not on account of sympathy for him, for his bloody deed
places him without the pale of sympathy, strictly speaking, but out
of a mere humane commiseration for him, in that it was his
misfortune to live in a dark age that knew not the beneficent
insanity plea.

Probably Mrs. Clemens diverted this picturesque dedication in
favor of the Higbie inscription, or perhaps the author never
really intended the literary tribute to Cain. The impulse that
inspired it, however, was characteristic.

In a postscript to this letter he adds:

My stock is looking up. I am getting the bulliest offers for books
and almanacs; am flooded with lecture invitations, and one
periodical offers me $6,000 cash for twelve articles of any length,
and on any subject, treated humorously or otherwise.

He set in to make hay while the sun was shining. In addition to
the California book, which was now fast nearing completion, he
discussed a scheme with Goodman for a six-hundred-page work which
they were to do jointly; he planned and wrote one or two scenes
from a Western play, to be built from episodes in the new book
(one of them was the “Arkansas” incident, related in Chapter
XXXI); he perfected one of his several inventions—an
automatically adjusting vest-strap; he wrote a number of
sketches, made an occasional business trip to New York and
Hartford; prospected the latter place for a new home. The shadow
which had hung over the sojourn in Buffalo seemed to have lifted.

He had promised Bliss some contributions for his new paper, and
in June he sent three sketches. In an accompanying letter he
says:

Here are three articles which you may have if you will pay $125 for
the lot. If you don't want them I'll sell them to the Galaxy, but
not for a cent less than three times the money.... If you take them
pay one-tenth of the $125 in weekly instalments to Orion till he
has received it all.

He reconsidered his resolution not to lecture again, and closed
with Redpath for the coming season. He found himself in a
lecture-writing fever. He wrote three of them in succession: one
on Artemus Ward, another on “Reminiscences of Some Pleasant
Characters I Have Met,” and a third one based on chapters from
the new book. Of the “Reminiscence” lecture he wrote Redpath:

“It covers my whole acquaintance; kings, lunatics, idiots, and
all.” Immediately afterward he wrote that he had prepared still
another lecture, “title to be announced later.”

“During July I'll decide which one I like best,” he said. He
instructed Redpath not to make engagements for him to lecture in
churches. “I never made a success of a lecture in a church yet.
People are afraid to laugh in a church.”

Redpath was having difficulties in arranging a circuit to suit
him. Clemens had prejudices against certain towns and localities,
prejudices that were likely to change overnight. In August he
wrote:

DEAR RED,—I am different from other women; my mind changes oftener.
People who have no mind can easily be stead fast and firm, but when
a man is loaded down to the guards with it, as I am, every heavy
sea of foreboding or inclination, maybe of indolence, shifts the
cargo. See? Therefore, if you will notice, one week I am likely to
give rigid instructions to confine me to New England; the next week
send me to Arizona; the next week withdraw my name; the next week
give you full, untrammeled swing; and the week following modify it.
You must try to keep the run of my mind, Redpath that is your
business, being the agent, and it always was too many for me....
Now about the West this week, I am willing that you shall retain
all the Western engagements. But what I shall want next week is
still with God. Yours, MARK.

He was in Hartford when this letter was written, arranging for
residence there and the removal of his belongings. He finally
leased the fine Hooker house on Ford Street, in that pleasant
seclusion known as Nook Farm—the literary part of Hartford, which
included the residence of Charles Dudley Warner and Harriet
Beecher Stowe. He arranged for possession of the premises October
1st. So the new home was settled upon; then learning that Nasby
was to be in Boston, he ran over to that city for a few days of
recreation after his season's labors.

Preparations for removal to Hartford were not delayed. The
Buffalo property was disposed of, the furnishings were packed and
shipped away. The house which as bride and groom they had entered
so happily was left empty and deserted, never to be entered by
them again. In the year and a half of their occupancy it had seen
well-nigh all the human round, all that goes to make up the
happiness and the sorrow of life.

LXXXIII. LECTURING DAYS

Life in Hartford, in the autumn of 1871, began in the letter,
rather than in the spirit. The newcomers were received with a
wide, neighborly welcome, but the disorder of establishment and
the almost immediate departure of the head of the household on a
protracted lecturing tour were disquieting things; the atmosphere
of the Clemens home during those early Hartford days gave only a
faint promise of its future loveliness.

As in a far later period, Mark Twain had resorted to lecturing to
pay off debt. He still owed a portion of his share in the
Express; also he had been obliged to obtain an advance from the
lecture bureau. He dreaded, as always, the tedium of travel, the
clatter of hotel life, the monotony of entertainment, while, more
than most men, he loved the tender luxury of home. It was only
that he could not afford to lose the profit offered on the
platform.

His season opened at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, October 16th, and
his schedule carried him hither and thither, to and fro, over
distances that lie between Boston and Chicago. There were
opportunities to run into Hartford now and then, when he was not
too far away, and in November he lectured there on Artemus Ward.

He changed his entertainment at least twice that season. He began
with the “Reminiscences,” the lecture which he said would treat
of all those whom he had met, “idiots, lunatics, and kings,” but
he did not like it, or it did not go well. He wrote Redpath of
the Artemus Ward address:

“It suits me, and I'll never deliver the nasty, nauseous
'Reminiscences' any more.”

But the Ward lecture was good for little more than a month, for
on December 8th he wrote again:

Notify all hands that from this time I shall talk nothing but
selections from my forthcoming book, 'Roughing It'. Tried it twice
last night; suits me tiptop.

And somewhat later:

Had a splendid time with a splendid audience in Indianapolis last
night; a perfectly jammed house, just as I have all the time out
here.... I don't care now to have any appointments canceled. I'll
even “fetch” those Dutch Pennsylvanians with this lecture.
Have paid up $4,000 indebtedness. You are the last on my list.
Shall begin to pay you in a few days, and then I shall be a free
man again.

Undoubtedly he reveled in the triumphs of a platform tour, though
at no time did he regard it as a pleasure excursion. During those
early weeks the proofs of his new book, chasing him from place to
place, did not add to his comfort. Still, with large, substantial
rewards in hand and in prospect, one could endure much.

In the neighborhood of Boston there were other compensations. He
could spend a good part of his days at the Lyceum headquarters,
in School Street, where there was always congenial
fellowship—Nasby, Josh Billings, and the rest of the peripatetic
group that about the end of the year collected there. Their
lectures were never tried immediately in Boston, but in the
outlying towns; tried and perfected—or discarded. When the
provincial audiences were finally satisfied, then the final. test
in the Boston Music Hall was made, and if this proved successful
the rest of the season was safe. Redpath's lecturers put up at
Young's Hotel, and spent their days at the bureau, smoking and
spinning yarns, or talking shop. Early in the evening they
scattered to the outlying towns, Lowell, Lexington, Concord, New
Bedford. There is no such a condition to-day: lecturers are few,
lecture bureaus obscure; there are no great reputations made on
the platform.

Neither is there any such distinct group of humorists as the one
just mentioned. Humor has become universal since then. Few
writers of this age would confess to taking their work so
seriously as to be at all times unsmiling in it; only about as
many, in fact, as in that day would confess to taking their work
so lightly that they could regard life's sterner phases and
philosophies with a smile.

Josh Billings was one of the gentlest and loveliest of our
pioneers of laughter. The present generation is not overfamiliar
even with his name, but both the name and sayings of that quaint
soul were on everybody's lips at the time of which we are
writing. His true name was Henry W. Shaw, and he was a genuine,
smiling philosopher, who might have built up a more permanent and
serious reputation had he not been induced to disfigure his
maxims with ridiculous spelling in order to popularize them and
make them bring a living price. It did not matter much with
Nasby's work. An assumed illiteracy belonged with the side of
life which he presented; but it is pathetic now to consider some
of the really masterly sayings of Josh Billings presented in that
uncouth form which was regarded as a part of humor a generation
ago. Even the aphorisms that were essentially humorous lose value
in that degraded spelling.

“When a man starts down hill everything is greased for the
occasion,” could hardly be improved upon by distorted
orthography, and here are a few more gems which have survived
that deadly blight.

“Some folks mistake vivacity for wit; whereas the difference
between vivacity and wit is the same as the difference between
the lightning-bug and the lightning.”

“Don't take the bull by the horns-take him by the tail; then you
can let go when you want to.”

“The difficulty is not that we know so much, but that we know so
much that isn't so.”

Josh Billings, Nasby, and Mark Twain were close friends. They had
themselves photographed in a group, and there was always some
pleasantry going on among them. Josh Billings once wrote on
“Lekturing,” and under the head of “Rule Seven,” which treated of
unwisdom of inviting a lecturer to a private house, he said:

Think of asking Mark Twain home with yu, for instance. Yure good
wife has put her house in apple-pie order for the ockashun;
everything is just in the right place. Yu don't smoke in yure
house, never. Yu don't put yure feet on the center-table, yu don't
skatter the nuzepapers all over the room, in utter confushion:
order and ekonemy governs yure premises. But if yu expeckt Mark
Twain to be happy, or even kumfortable yu hav got to buy a box of
cigars worth at least seventeen dollars and yu hav got to move all
the tender things out ov yure parlor. Yu hav got to skatter all the
latest papers around the room careless, you hav got to hav a
pitcher ov icewater handy, for Mark is a dry humorist. Yu hav got
to ketch and tie all yure yung ones, hed and foot, for Mark luvs
babys only in theory; yu hav got to send yure favorite kat over to
the nabors and hide yure poodle. These are things that hav to be
done, or Mark will pak hiz valise with hiz extry shirt collar and
hiz lektur on the Sandwich Islands, and travel around yure streets,
smoking and reading the sighns over the store doorways untill
lektur time begins.

As we-are not likely to touch upon Mark Twain's lecturing, save
only lightly, hereafter, it may be as well to say something of
his method at this period. At all places visited by lecturers
there was a committee, and it was the place of the chairman to
introduce the lecturer, a privilege which he valued, because it
gave him a momentary association with distinction and fame.
Clemens was a great disappointment to these officials. He had
learned long ago that he could introduce himself more effectively
than any one else. His usual formula was to present himself as
the chairman of the committee, introducing the lecturer of the
evening; then, with what was in effect a complete change of
personality, to begin his lecture. It was always startling and
amusing, always a success; but the papers finally printed this
formula, which took the freshness out of it, so that he had to
invent others. Sometimes he got up with the frank statement that
he was introducing himself because he had never met any one who
could pay a proper tribute to his talents; but the newspapers
printed that too, and he often rose and began with no
introduction at all.

Whatever his method of beginning, Mark Twain's procedure probably
was the purest exemplification of the platform entertainer's art
which this country has ever seen. It was the art that makes you
forget the artisanship, the art that made each hearer forget that
he was not being personally entertained by a new and marvelous
friend, who had traveled a long way for his particular benefit.
One listener has written that he sat “simmering with laughter”
through what he supposed was the continuation of the
introduction, waiting for the traditional lecture to begin, when
presently the lecturer, with a bow, disappeared, and it was over.
The listener looked at his watch; he had been there more than an
hour. He thought it could be no more than ten minutes, at most.
Many have tried to set down something of the effect his art
produced on them, but one may not clearly convey the story of a
vanished presence and a silent voice.

There were other pleasant associations in Boston. Howells was
there, and Aldrich; also Bret Harte, who had finished his
triumphal progress across the continent to join the Atlantic
group. Clemens appears not to have met Aldrich before, though
their acquaintance had begun a year earlier, when Aldrich, as
editor of Every Saturday, had commented on a poem entitled, “The
Three Aces,” which had appeared in the Buffalo Express. Aldrich
had assumed the poem to be the work of Mark Twain, and had
characterized it as “a feeble imitation of Bret Harte's 'Heathen
Chinee.'” Clemens, in a letter, had mildly protested as to the
charge of authorship, and Aldrich had promptly printed the letter
with apologetic explanation. A playful exchange of personal
letters followed, and the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

One of the letters has a special interest here. Clemens had
followed his protest with an apology for it, asking that no
further notice be taken of the matter. Aldrich replied that it
was too late to prevent “doing him justice,” as his explanation
was already on the press, but that if Clemens insisted he would
withdraw it in the next issue. Clemens then wrote that he did not
want it withdrawn, and explained that he hated to be accused of
plagiarizing Bret Harte, to whom he was deeply indebted for
literary schooling in the California days. Continuing he said:

Do you know the prettiest fancy and the neatest that ever shot
through Harte's brain? It was this. When they were trying to decide
upon a vignette cover for the Overland a grizzly bear (of the arms
of the State of California) was chosen. Nahl Bros. carved him and
the page was printed with him in it.
As a bear he was a success. He was a good bear, but then, it was
objected, he was an objectless bear—a bear that meant nothing,
signified nothing, simply stood there, snarling over his shoulder
at nothing, and was painfully and manifestly a boorish and
ill-natured intruder upon the fair page. All hands said that none
were satisfied; they hated badly to give him up, and yet they hated
as much to have him there when there was no point to him. But
presently Harte took a pencil and drew two simple lines under his
feet, and behold he was a magnificent success!—the ancient symbol
of California savagery, snarling at the approaching type of high
and progressive civilization, the first Overland locomotive! I just
think that was nothing less than an inspiration.—[The “bear” was
that which has always appeared on the Overland cover; the “two
lines” formed a railway track under his feet. Clemens's original
letter contained crude sketches illustrating these things.]

Among the Boston group was another Californian, Ralph Keeler, an
eccentric, gifted, and altogether charming fellow, whom Clemens
had known on the Pacific slope. Keeler had been adopted by the
Boston writers, and was grateful and happy accordingly. He was
poor of purse, but inexhaustibly rich in the happier gifts of
fortune. He was unfailingly buoyant, light-hearted, and hopeful.
On an infinitesimal capital he had made a tour of many lands, and
had written of it for the Atlantic. In that charmed circle he was
as overflowingly happy as if he had been admitted to the company
of the gods. Keeler was affectionately regarded by all who knew
him, and he offered a sort of worship in return. He often
accompanied Mark Twain on his lecture engagements to the various
outlying towns, and Clemens brought him back to his hotel for
breakfast, where they had good, enjoyable talks together. Once
Keeler came eagerly to the hotel and made his way up to Clemens's
room.

“Come with me,” he said. “Quick!”

“What is it? What's happened?”

“Don't wait to talk. Come with me.”

They tramped briskly through the streets till they reached the
public library, entered, Keeler leading the way, not stopping
till he faced a row of shelves filled with books. He pointed at
one of them, his face radiant with joy.

“Look,” he said. “Do you see it?”

Clemens looked carefully now and identified one of the books as a
still-born novel which Keeler had published.

“This is a library,” said Keeler, eagerly, “and they've got it!”

His whole being was aglow with the wonder of it. He had been
investigating; the library records showed that in the two years
the book had been there it had been taken out and read three
times! It never occurred to Clemens even to smile. Knowing Mark
Twain, one would guess that his eyes were likely to be filled
with tears.

In his book about Mark Twain, Howells tells of a luncheon which
Keeler gave to his more famous associates—Aldrich, Fields, Harte,
Clemens, and Howells himself—a merry informal occasion. Says
Howells:

Nothing remains to me of the happy time but a sense of idle and
aimless and joyful talk—play, beginning and ending nowhere, of
eager laughter, of countless good stories from Fields, of a heat-
lightning shimmer of wit from Aldrich, of an occasional
concentration of our joint mockeries upon our host, who took it
gladly; and amid the discourse, so little improving, but so full of
good-fellowship, Bret Harte's leering dramatization of Clemens's
mental attitude toward a symposium of Boston illuminates. “Why,
fellows,” he spluttered, “this is the dream of Mark's life,” and I
remember the glance from under Clemens's feathery eyebrows which
betrayed his enjoyment of the fun.

Very likely Keeler gave that luncheon in celebration of his
book's triumph; it would be like him.

Keeler's end was a mystery. The New York Tribune commissioned him
to go to Cuba to report the facts of some Spanish outrages. He
sailed from New York in the steamer, and was last seen alive the
night before the vessel reached Havana. He had made no secret of
his mission, but had discussed it in his frank, innocent way.
There were some Spanish military men on the ship.

Clemens, commenting on the matter, once said:

“It may be that he was not flung into the sea, still the belief
was general that that was what had happened.”

In his book Howells refers to the doubt with which Mark Twain was
then received by the polite culture of Boston; which, on the
other hand, accepted Bret Harte as one of its own, forgiving even
social shortcomings.

The reason is not difficult to understand. Harte had made his
appeal with legitimate fiction of the kind which, however fresh
in flavor and environment, was of a sort to be measured and
classified. Harte spoke a language they could understand; his
humor, his pathos, his point of view were all recognizable. It
was an art already standardized by a master. It is no reflection
on the genius of Bret Harte to liken his splendid achievements to
those of Charles Dickens. Much of Harte's work is in no way
inferior to that of his great English prototype. Dickens never
wrote a better short story than “The Outcasts of Poker Flats.” He
never wrote as good a short story as “The Luck of Roaring Camp.”
Boston critics promptly realized these things and gave Harte his
correct rating. That they failed to do this with Mark Twain, lay
chiefly in the fact that he spoke to them in new and startling
tongues. His gospels were likely to be heresies; his literary
eccentricities were all unclassified. Of the ultrafastidious set
Howells tells us that Charles Eliot Norton and Prof. Francis J.
Child were about the only ones who accorded him unqualified
approval. The others smiled and enjoyed him, but with that
condescension which the courtier is likely to accord to motley
and the cap and bells. Only the great, simple-hearted, unbiased
multitude, the public, which had no standards but the direct
appeal from one human heart to another, could recognize
immediately his mightier heritage, could exalt and place him on
the throne.

LXXXIV. “ROUGHING IT”.

Telegram to Redpath:

How in the name of God does a man find his way from here to
Amherst, and when must he start? Give me full particulars, and send
a man with me. If I had another engagement I would rot before I
would fill it. S. L. CLEMENS.

This was at the end of February, and he believed that he was
standing on the platform for the last time. He loathed the
drudgery of the work, and he considered there was no further
need. He was no longer in debt, and his income he accounted
ample. His new book, 'Roughing It',—[It was Bliss who had given
the new book the title of Roughing It. Innocents at Home had been
its provision title, certainly a misleading one, though it has
been retained in England for the second volume; for what reason
it would be difficult to explain.]—had had a large advance sale,
and its earnings promised to rival those of the 'Innocents'. He
resolved in the future to confine himself to the trade and
profits of authorship.

The new book had advantages in its favor. Issued early in the
year, it was offered at the best canvassing season; particularly
so, as the author's lectures had prepared the public for its
reception. Furthermore, it dealt with the most picturesque phases
of American life, scenes and episodes vastly interesting at that
time, and peculiarly adapted to Mark Twain's literary expression.
In a different way 'Roughing It' is quite as remarkable as 'The
Innocents Abroad.' If it has less charm, it has greater interest,
and it is by no means without charm. There is something
delicious, for instance, in this bit of pure enjoyment of the
first day's overland travel:

It was now just dawn, and as we stretched our cramped legs full
length on the mail-sacks, and gazed out through the windows across
the wide wastes of greensward clad in cool, powdery mist to where
there was an expectant look in the Eastern horizon, our perfect
enjoyment took the form of a tranquil and contented ecstasy. The
stage whirled along at a spanking gait, the breeze flapping the
curtains and suspended coats in a most exhilarating way; the cradle
swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering of the horses' hoofs,
the cracking of the driver's whip, and his “Hi-yi! g'lang!” were
music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared to give
us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and look after us
with interest and envy, or something; and as we lay and smoked the
pipe of peace, and compared all this luxury with the years of
tiresome city life that had gone before it, we felt that there was
only one complete and satisfying happiness in the world, and we had
found it.

Also, there is that lofty presentation of South Pass, and a
picture of the alkali desert, so parching, so withering in its
choking realism, that it makes the throat ache and the tongue dry
to read it. Just a bit of the desert in passing:

The sun beats down with a dead, blistering, relentless malignity;
the perspiration is welling from every pore in man and beast, but
scarcely a sign of it finds its way to the surface—it is absorbed
before it gets there; there is not the faintest breath of air
stirring; there is not a merciful shred of cloud in all the
brilliant firmament; there is not a living creature visible in any
direction whither one searches the blank level that stretches its
monotonous miles on every hand; there is not a sound, not a sigh,
not a whisper, not a buzz, or a whir of wings, or distant pipe of
bird; not even a sob from the lost souls that doubtless people that
dead air.

As for the humor of the book, it has been chiefly famous for
that. “Buck Fanshaw's Funeral” has become a classic, and the
purchase of the “Mexican Plug.” But it is to no purpose to review
the book here in detail. We have already reviewed the life and
environment out of which it grew.

Without doubt the story would have contained more of the poetic
and contemplative, in which he was always at his best, if the
subject itself, as in the Innocents, had lent itself oftener to
this form of writing. It was the lack of that halo perhaps which
caused the new book never quite to rank with its great forerunner
in public favor. There could hardly be any other reason. It
presented a fresher theme; it abounded in humor; technically, it
was better written; seemingly it had all the elements of
popularity and of permanence. It did, in fact, possess these
qualities, but its sales, except during the earlier months of its
canvass, never quite equaled those of The Innocents Abroad.

'Roughing It' was accepted by the public for just what it was and
is, a great picture of the Overland Pioneer days—a marvelous
picture of frontier aspects at a time when the frontier itself,
even with its hardships and its tragedies, was little more than a
vast primal joke; when all frontiersmen were obliged to be
laughing philosophers in order to survive the stress of its
warfares.

A word here about this Western humor: It is a distinct product.
It grew out of a distinct condition—the battle with the frontier.
The fight was so desperate, to take it seriously was to
surrender. Women laughed that they might not weep; men, when they
could no longer swear. “Western humor” was the result. It is the
freshest, wildest humor in the world, but there is tragedy behind
it.

'Roughing It' presented the picture of those early conditions
with the startling vividness and truth of a great novel, which,
in effect, it was. It was not accurate history, even of the
author's own adventures. It was true in its aspects, rather than
in its details. The greater artist disregards the truth of detail
to render more strikingly a phase or a condition, to produce an
atmosphere, to reconstruct a vanished time. This was what Mark
Twain did in 'Roughing It'. He told the story of overland travel
and the frontier, for his own and future generations, in what is
essentially a picaresque novel, a work of unperishing fiction,
founded on fact.

The sales of 'Roughing It' during the first three months
aggregated nearly forty thousand copies, and the author was
lavishly elate accordingly. To Orion (who had already closed his
career with Bliss, by exercise of those hereditary eccentricities
through which he so often came to grief) he gave $1,000 out of
the first royalty check, in acknowledgment of the memorandum book
and other data which Orion had supplied. Clemens believed the new
book would sell one hundred thousand copies within the year; but
the sale diminished presently, and at the end of the first year
it was considerably behind the Innocents for the same period. As
already stated, it required ten years for Roughing It to reach
the one-hundred-thousand mark, which the Innocents reached in
three.

LXXXV. A BIRTH, A DEATH, AND A VOYAGE

The year 1872 was an eventful one in Mark Twain's life. At
Elmira, on March 19th, his second child, a little girl, whom they
named Susan Olivia, was born. On June 2d, in the new home in
Hartford, to which they had recently moved, his first child, a
little boy, Langdon, died. He had never been strong, his wavering
life had often been uncertain, always more of the spirit than the
body, and in Elmira he contracted a heavy cold, or perhaps it was
diphtheria from the beginning. In later years, whenever Clemens
spoke of the little fellow, he never failed to accuse himself of
having been the cause of the child's death. It was Mrs. Clemens's
custom to drive out each morning with Langdon, and once when she
was unable to go Clemens himself went instead.

“I should not have been permitted to do it,” he said,
remembering. “I was not qualified for any such responsibility as
that. Some one should have gone who had at least the rudiments of
a mind. Necessarily I would lose myself dreaming. After a while
the coachman looked around and noticed that the carriage-robes
had dropped away from the little fellow, and that he was exposed
to the chilly air. He called my attention to it, but it was too
late. Tonsilitis or something of the sort set in, and he did not
get any better, so we took him to Hartford. There it was
pronounced diphtheria, and of course he died.”

So, with or without reason, he added the blame of another tragedy
to the heavy burden of remorse which he would go on piling up
while he lived.

The blow was a terrible one to Mrs. Clemens; even the comfort of
the little new baby on her arm could not ease the ache in her
breast. It seemed to her that death was pursuing her. In one of
her letters she says:

“I feel so often as if my path is to be lined with graves,” and
she expresses the wish that she may drop out of life herself
before her sister and her husband—a wish which the years would
grant.

They did not return to Elmira, for it was thought that the air of
the shore would be better for the little girl; so they spent the
summer at Saybrook, Connecticut, at Fenwick Hall, leaving Orion
and his wife in charge of the house at Hartford.

Beyond a few sketches, Clemens did very little literary work that
summer, but he planned a trip to Europe, and he invented what is
still known and sold as the “Mark Twain Scrap-Book.”

He wrote to Orion of his proposed trip to England, and dilated
upon his scrap-book with considerable enthusiasm. The idea had
grown out of the inconvenience of finding a paste-jar, and the
general mussiness of scrap-book keeping. His new plan was a
self-pasting scrap-book with the gum laid on in narrow strips,
requiring only to be dampened with a sponge or other moist
substance to be ready for the clipping. He states that he intends
to put the invention into the hands of Slote, Woodman & Co., of
whom Dan Slote, his old Quaker City room-mate, was the senior
partner, and have it manufactured for the trade.

About this time began Mark Twain's long and active interest in
copyright. Previously he had not much considered the subject; he
had taken it for granted there was no step that he could take,
while international piracy was a recognized institution. On both
sides of the water books were appropriated, often without profit,
sometimes even without credit, to the author. To tell the truth,
Clemens had at first regarded it rather in the nature of a
compliment that his books should be thought worth pirating in
England, but as time passed he realized that he was paying
heavily for this recognition. Furthermore, he decided that he was
forfeiting a right; rather that he was being deprived of it:
something which it was in his nature to resent.

When 'Roughing It' had been ready for issue he agreed with Bliss
that they should try the experiment of copyrighting it in
England, and see how far the law would protect them against the
voracious little publisher, who thus far had not only snapped up
everything bearing Mark Twain's signature, but had included in a
volume of Mark Twain sketches certain examples of very weak humor
with which Mark Twain had been previously unfamiliar.

Whatever the English pirate's opinion of the copyright protection
of 'Roughing It' may have been, he did not attempt to violate it.
This was gratifying. Clemens came to regard England as a friendly
power. He decided to visit it and spy out the land. He would make
the acquaintance of its people and institutions and write a book,
which would do these things justice.

He gave out no word of his real purpose. He merely said that he
was going over to see his English publishers, and perhaps to
arrange for a few lectures. He provided himself with some
stylographic note-books, by which he could produce two copies of
his daily memoranda—one for himself and one to mail to Mrs.
Clemens—and sailed on the Scotia August 21, 1872.

Arriving in Liverpool he took train for London, and presently the
wonderful charm of that old, finished country broke upon him. His
“first hour in England was an hour of delight,” he records; “of
rapture and ecstasy. These are the best words I can find, but
they are not adequate; they are not strong enough to convey the
feeling which this first vision of rural England brought me.”
Then he noticed that the gentleman opposite in his compartment
paid no attention to the scenery, but was absorbed in a
green-covered volume. He was so absorbed in it that, by and by,
Clemens's curiosity was aroused. He shifted his position a little
and his eye caught the title. It was the first volume of the
English edition of The Innocents Abroad. This was gratifying for
a moment; then he remembered that the man had never laughed,
never even smiled during the hour of his steady reading. Clemens
recalled what he had heard of the English lack of humor. He
wondered if this was a fair example of it, and if the man could
be really taking seriously every word he was reading. Clemens
could not look at the scenery any more for watching his
fellow-passenger, waiting with a fascinated interest for the
paragraph that would break up that iron-clad solemnity. It did
not come. During all the rest of the trip to London the
atmosphere of the compartment remained heavy with gloom.

He drove to the Langham Hotel, always popular with Americans,
established himself, and went to look up his publishers. He found
the Routledges about to sit down to luncheon in a private room,
up-stairs, in their publishing house. He joined them, and not a
soul stirred from that table again until evening. The Routledges
had never heard Mark Twain talk before, never heard any one talk
who in the least resembled him. Various refreshments were served
during the afternoon, came and went, while this marvelous
creature talked on and they listened, reveling, and wondering if
America had any more of that sort at home. By and by dinner was
served; then after a long time, when there was no further excuse
for keeping him there, they took him to the Savage Club, where
there were yet other refreshments and a gathering of the clans to
welcome this new arrival as a being from some remote and
unfamiliar star.

Tom Hood, the younger, was there, and Harry Lee, and Stanley the
explorer, who had but just returned from finding Livingstone, and
Henry Irving, and many another whose name remains, though the
owners of those names are all dead now, and their laughter and
their good-fellowship are only a part of that intangible fabric
which we call the past.'—[Clemens had first known Stanley as a
newspaper man. “I first met him when he reported a lecture of
mine in St. Louis,” he said once in a conversation where the name
of Stanley was mentioned.]

LXXXVI. ENGLAND

From that night Mark Twain's stay in England could not properly
be called a gloomy one.

Routledge, Hood, Lee, and, in fact, all literary London, set
themselves the task of giving him a good time. Whatever place of
interest they could think of he was taken there; whatever there
was to see he saw it. Dinners, receptions, and assemblies were
not complete without him. The White Friars' Club and others gave
banquets in his honor. He was the sensation of the day. When he
rose to speak on these occasions he was greeted with wild cheers.
Whatever he said they eagerly applauded—too eagerly sometimes, in
the fear that they might be regarded as insensible to American
humor. Other speakers delighted in chaffing him in order to
provoke his retorts. When a speaker humorously referred to his
American habit of carrying a cotton umbrella, his reply that he
followed this custom because a cotton umbrella was the only kind
of an umbrella that an Englishman wouldn't steal, was all over
England next day, and regarded as one of the finest examples of
wit since the days of Swift.

The suddenness and completeness of his acceptance by the great
ones of London rather overwhelmed and frightened him made him
timid. Joaquin Miller writes:

He was shy as a girl, although time was already coyly flirting
white flowers at his temples, and could hardly be coaxed to meet
the learned and great who wanted to take him by the hand.

Many came to call on him at his hotel, among them Charles Reade
and Canon Kingsley. Kingsley came twice without finding him; then
wrote, asking for an appointment. Reade invited his assistance on
a novel. Indeed, it was in England that Mark Twain was first made
to feel that he had come into his rightful heritage. Whatever may
have been the doubts concerning him in America, there was no
question in England. Howells says:

In England rank, fashion, and culture rejoiced in him. Lord mayors,
lord chief justices, and magnates of many kinds were his hosts; he
was desired in country houses, and his bold genius captivated the
favor of periodicals which spurned the rest of our nation.

After that first visit of Mark Twain's, when Americans in
England, referring to their great statesmen, authors, and the
like, naturally mentioned the names of Seward, Webster, Lowell,
or Holmes, the English comment was likely to be: “Never mind
those. We can turn out academic Sewards by the dozen, and
cultured humorists like Lowell and Holmes by the score. Tell us
of Lincoln, Artemus Ward, and Mark Twain. We cannot match these;
they interest us.” And it was true. History could not match them,
for they were unique.

Clemens would have been more than human if in time he had not
realized the fuller meaning of this triumph, and exulted in it a
little to the folks at home. There never lived a more modest,
less pretentious, less aggressive man than Mark Twain, but there
never lived a man who took a more childlike delight in genuine
appreciation; and, being childlike, it was only human that he
should wish those nearest to him to share his happiness. After
one memorable affair he wrote:

I have been received in a sort of tremendous way to-night by the
brains of London, assembled at the annual dinner of the sheriffs of
London; mine being (between you and me) a name which was received
with a thundering outburst of spontaneous applause when the long
list of guests was called.

I might have perished on the spot but for the friendly support
and assistance of my excellent friend, Sir John Bennett.

This letter does not tell all of the incident or the real reason
why he might have perished on the spot. During the long roll-call
of guests he had lost interest a little, and was conversing in
whispers with his “excellent friend,” Sir John Bennett, stopping
to applaud now and then when the applause of the others indicated
that some distinguished name had been pronounced. All at once the
applause broke out with great vehemence. This must be some very
distinguished person indeed. He joined in it with great
enthusiasm. When it was over he whispered to Sir John:

“Whose name was that we were just applauding?”

“Mark Twain's.”

Whereupon the support was needed.

Poor little pirate Hotten did not have a happy time during this
visit. He had reveled in the prospect at first, for he
anticipated a large increase to be derived from his purloined
property; but suddenly, one morning, he was aghast to find in the
Spectator a signed letter from Mark Twain, in which he was
repudiated, referred to as “John Camden Hottentot,” an unsavory
person generally. Hotten also sent a letter to the Spectator, in
which he attempted to justify himself, but it was a feeble
performance. Clemens prepared two other communications, each
worse than the other and both more destructive than the first
one. But these were only to relieve his mind. He did not print
them. In one of them he pursued the fancy of John Camden
Hottentot, whom he offers as a specimen to the Zoological
Gardens.

It is not a bird. It is not a man. It is not a fish. It does not
seem to be in all respects a reptile. It has the body and
features of a man, but scarcely any of the instincts that belong
to such a structure.... I am sure that this singular little
creature is the missing link between the man and the hyena.

Hotten had preyed upon explorer Stanley and libeled him in a
so-called. biography to a degree that had really aroused some
feeling against Stanley in England. Only for the moment—the Queen
invited Stanley to luncheon, and newspaper criticism ceased.
Hotten was in general disrepute, therefore, so it was not worth
while throwing a second brick at him.

In fact, now that Clemens had expended his venom, on paper,
Hotten seemed to him rather an amusing figure than otherwise. An
incident grew out of it all, however, that was not amusing. E. P.
Hingston, whom the reader may remember as having been with
Artemus Ward in Virginia City, and one of that happy group that
wined and dined the year away, had been engaged by Hotten to
write the introductory to his edition of The Innocents Abroad. It
was a well-written, highly complimentary appreciation. Hingston
did not dream that he was committing an offense, nor did Clemens
himself regard it as such in the beginning.

But Mark Twain's views had undergone a radical change, and with
characteristic dismissal of previous conditions he had forgotten
that he had ever had any other views than those he now held.
Hingston was in London, and one evening, at a gathering,
approached Clemens with outstretched hand. But Clemens failed to
see Hingston's hand or to recognize him. In after-years his
conscience hurt him terribly for this. He remembered it only with
remorse and shame. Once, in his old age, he spoke of it with deep
sorrow.

LXXXVII. THE BOOK THAT WAS NEVER WRITTEN

The book on England, which he had prepared for so carefully, was
never written. Hundreds of the stylographic pages were filled,
and the duplicates sent home for the entertainment of Olivia
Clemens, but the notes were not completed, and the actual writing
was never begun. There was too much sociability in London for one
thing, and then he found that he could not write entertainingly
of England without introducing too many personalities, and
running the risk of offending those who had taken him into their
hearts and homes. In a word, he would have to write too seriously
or not at all.

He began his memoranda industriously enough, and the volume might
have been as charming and as valuable as any he has left behind.
The reader will hardly fail to find a few of the entries
interesting. They are offered here as examples of his daily
observation during those early weeks of his stay, and to show
somewhat of his purpose:

AN EXPATRIATE
There was once an American thief who fled his country and took
refuge in England. He dressed himself after the fashion of the
Londoners, and taught his tongue the peculiarities of the London
pronunciation and did his best in all ways to pass himself for a
native. But he did two fatal things: he stopped at the Langham
Hotel, and the first trip he took was to visit Stratford-on-Avon
and the grave of Shakespeare. These things betrayed his
nationality.
STANLEY AND THE QUEEN
See the power a monarch wields! When I arrived here, two weeks ago,
the papers and geographers were in a fair way to eat poor Stanley
up without salt or sauce. The Queen says, “Come four hundred miles
up into Scotland and sit at my luncheon-table fifteen minutes”;
which, being translated, means, “Gentlemen, I believe in this man
and take him under my protection”; and not another yelp is heard.
AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM
What a place it is!
Mention some very rare curiosity of a peculiar nature—a something
which you have read about somewhere but never seen—they show you a
dozen! They show you all the possible varieties of that thing! They
show you curiously wrought jeweled necklaces of beaten gold, worn
by the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Etruscans, Greeks,
Britons—every people of the forgotten ages, indeed. They show you
the ornaments of all the tribes and peoples that live or ever did
live. Then they show you a cast taken from Cromwell's face in
death; then the venerable vase that once contained the ashes of
Xerxes.
I am wonderfully thankful for the British Museum. Nobody comes
bothering around me—nobody elbows me—all the room and all the light
I want, under this huge dome—no disturbing noises—and people
standing ready to bring me a copy of pretty much any book that ever
was printed under the sun—and if I choose to go wandering about the
long corridors and galleries of the great building the secrets of
all the earth and all the ages axe laid open to me. I am not
capable of expressing my gratitude for the British Museum—it seems
as if I do not know any but little words and weak ones.
WESTMINSTER ABBEY BY NIGHT
It was past eleven o'clock and I was just going to bed. But this
friend of mine was as reliable as he was eccentric, and so there
was not a doubt in my mind that his “expedition” had merit in it. I
put on my coat and boots again, and we drove away.
“Where is it? Where are we going?”
“Don't worry. You'll see.”
He was not inclined to talk. So I thought this must be a weighty
matter. My curiosity grew with the minutes, but I kept it manfully
under the surface. I watched the lamps, the signs, the numbers as
we thundered down the long street. I am always lost in London, day
or night. It was very chilly, almost bleak. People leaned against
the gusty blasts as if it were the dead of winter. The crowds grew
thinner and thinner, and the noises waxed faint and seemed far
away. The sky was overcast and threatening. We drove on, and still
on, till I wondered if we were ever going to stop. At last we
passed by a spacious bridge and a vast building, and presently
entered a gateway, passed through a sort of tunnel, and stopped in
a court surrounded by the black outlines of a great edifice. Then
we alighted, walked a dozen steps or so, and waited. In a little
while footsteps were heard, a man emerged from the darkness, and we
dropped into his wake without saying anything. He led us under an
archway of masonry, and from that into a roomy tunnel, through a
tall iron gate, which he locked behind us. We followed him down
this tunnel, guided more by his footsteps on the stone flagging
than by anything we could very distinctly see. At the end of it we
came to another iron gate, and our conductor stopped there and lit
a bull's-eye lantern. Then he unlocked the gate; and I wished he
had oiled it first, it grated so dismally. The gate swung open and
we stood on the threshold of what seemed a limitless domed and
pillared cavern, carved out of the solid darkness. The conductor
and my friend took off their hats reverently, and I did likewise.
For the moment that we stood thus there was not a sound, and the
stillness seemed to add to the solemnity of the gloom. I looked my
inquiry!
“It is the tomb of the great dead of England-Westminster Abbey.”...
We were among the tombs; on every hand dull shapes of men, sitting,
standing, or stooping, inspected us curiously out of the darkness
—reached out their hands toward us—some appealing, some beckoning,
some warning us away. Effigies they were—statues over the graves;
but they looked human and natural in the murky shadows. Now a
little half-grown black and white cat squeezed herself through the
bars of the iron gate and came purring lovingly about us, unawed by
the time or the place, unimpressed by the marble pomp that
sepulchers a line of mighty dead that ends with a great author of
yesterday and began with a sceptered monarch away back in the dawn
of history, more than twelve hundred years ago....
Mr. Wright flashed his lantern first upon this object and then upon
that, and kept up a running commentary that showed there was
nothing about the venerable Abbey that was trivial in his eyes or
void of interest. He is a man in authority, being superintendent,
and his daily business keeps him familiar with every nook and
corner of the great pile. Casting a luminous ray now here, now
yonder, he would say:
“Observe the height of the Abbey—one hundred and three feet to the
base of the roof; I measured it myself the other day. Notice the
base of this column—old, very old—hundreds and hundreds of years
—and how well they knew how to build in those old days! Notice it
—every stone is laid horizontally; that is to say, just as nature
laid it originally in the quarry not set up edgewise; in our day
some people set them on edge, and then wonder why they split and
flake. Architects cannot teach nature anything. Let me remove this
matting—it is put here to preserve the pavement; now there is a bit
of pavement that is seven hundred years old; you can see by these
scattering clusters of colored mosaics how beautiful it was before
time and sacrilegious idlers marred it. Now there, in the border,
was an inscription, once see, follow the circle-you can trace it by
the ornaments that have been pulled out—here is an A and there is
an O, and yonder another A—all beautiful Old English capitals;
there is no telling what the inscription was—no record left now.
Now move along in this direction, if you please. Yonder is where
old King Sebert the Saxon lies his monument is the oldest one in
the Abbey; Sebert died in 616,—[Clemens probably misunderstood the
name. It was Ethelbert who died in 616. The name Sebert does not
appear in any Saxon annals accessible to the author.]—and that's as
much, as twelve hundred and fifty years ago think of it! Twelve
hundred and fifty years! Now yonder is the last one—Charles
Dickens—there on the floor, with the brass letters on the slab—and
to this day the people come and put flowers on it.... There is
Garrick's monument; and Addison's, and Thackeray's bust—and
Macaulay lies there. And close to Dickens and Garrick lie Sheridan
and Dr. Johnson—and here is old Parr....
“That stone there covers Campbell the poet. Here are names you know
pretty well—Milton, and Gray who wrote the Elegy, and Butler who
wrote Hudibras; and Edmund Spenser, and Ben Jonson—there are three
tablets to him scattered about the Abbey, and all got 'O, Rare Ben
Jonson' cut on them. You were standing on one of them just now he
is buried standing up. There used to be a tradition here that
explains it. The story goes that he did not dare ask to be buried
in the Abbey, so he asked King James if he would make him a present
of eighteen inches of English ground, and the King said 'yes,' and
asked him where he would have it, and he said in Westminster Abbey.
Well, the King wouldn't go back on his word, and so there he is,
sure enough-stood up on end.”

The reader may regret that there are not more of these entries,
and that the book itself was never written. Just when he gave up
the project is not recorded. He was urged to lecture in London,
but declined. To Mrs. Clemens, in September, he wrote:

Everybody says lecture, lecture, lecture, but I have not the
least idea of doing it; certainly not at present. Mr. Dolby, who
took Dickens to America, is coming to talk business tomorrow,
though I have sent him word once before that I can't be hired to
talk here; because I have no time to spare. There is too much
sociability; I do not get along fast enough with work.

In October he declared that he was very homesick, and proposed
that Mrs. Clemens and Susie join him at once in London, unless
she would prefer to have him come home for the winter and all of
them return to London in the spring. So it is likely that the
book was not then abandoned. He felt that his visit was by no
means ended; that it was, in fact, only just begun, but he wanted
the ones he loved most to share it with him. To his mother and
sister, in November, he wrote:

I came here to take notes for a book, but I haven't done much but
attend dinners and make speeches. I have had a jolly good time,
and I do hate to go away from these English folks; they make a
stranger feel entirely at home, and they laugh so easily that it
is a comfort to make after-dinner speeches here. I have made
hundreds of friends; and last night, in the crush at the opening
of the new Guild Hall Library and Museum, I was surprised to meet
a familiar face every other step.

All his impressions of England had been happy ones. He could
deliver a gentle satire now and then at certain British
institutions—certain London localities and features—as in his
speech at the Savage Club,—[September 28, 1872. This is probably
the most characteristic speech made by Mark Twain during his
first London visit; the reader will find it in full in Appendix
L, at the end of last volume.]—but taking the snug island as a
whole, its people, its institutions, its fair, rural aspects, he
had found in it only delight. To Mrs. Crane he wrote:

If you and Theodore will come over in the spring with Livy and me,
and spend the summer, you shall see a country that is so beautiful
that you will be obliged to believe in fairy-land. There is nothing
like it elsewhere on the globe. You should have a season ticket and
travel up and down every day between London and Oxford and worship
nature.
And Theodore can browse with me among dusty old dens that look now
as they looked five hundred years ago; and puzzle over books in the
British Museum that were made before Christ was born; and in the
customs of their public dinners, and the ceremonies of every
official act, and the dresses of a thousand dignitaries, trace the
speech and manners of all the centuries that have dragged their
lagging decades over England since the Heptarchy fell asunder. I
would a good deal rather live here if I could get the rest of you
over.

He sailed November 12th, on the Batavia, loaded with Christmas
presents for everybody; jewelry, furs, laces; also a practical
steam-engine for his namesake, Sam Moffett. Half-way across the
Atlantic the Batavia ran into a hurricane and was badly damaged
by heavy seas, and driven far out of her course. It was a lucky
event on the whole, for she fell in with a water-logged lumber
bark, a complete wreck, with nine surviving sailors clinging to
her rigging. In the midst of the wild gale a lifeboat was
launched and the perishing men were rescued. Clemens prepared a
graphic report of the matter for the Royal Humane Society, asking
that medals be conferred upon the brave rescuers, a document that
was signed by his fellow-passengers and obtained for the men
complete recognition and wide celebrity. Closing, the writer
said:

As might have been anticipated, if I have been of any service
toward rescuing these nine shipwrecked human beings by standing
around the deck in a furious storm, without an umbrella, keeping an
eye on things and seeing that they were done right, and yelling
whenever a cheer seemed to be the important thing, I am glad and I
am satisfied. I ask no reward. I would do it again under the same
circumstances. But what I do plead for, earnestly and sincerely, is
that the Royal Humane Society will remember our captain and our
life-boat crew, and in so remembering them increase the high honor
and esteem in which the society is held all over the civilized
world.

The Batavia reached New York November 26, 1872. Mark Twain had
been absent three months, during which he had been brought to at
least a partial realization of what his work meant to him and to
mankind.

An election had taken place during his absence—an election which
gratified him deeply, for it had resulted in the second
presidency of General Grant and in the defeat of Horace Greeley,
whom he admired perhaps, but not as presidential material. To
Thomas Nast, who had aided very effectually in Mr. Greeley's
overwhelming defeat, Clemens wrote:

Nast, you more than any other man have won a prodigious victory
for Grant—I mean, rather, for civilization and progress. Those
pictures were simply marvelous, and if any man in the land has a
right to hold his head up and be honestly proud of his share in
this year's vast events that man is unquestionably yourself. We
all do sincerely honor you, and are proud of you.

Horace Greeley's peculiar abilities and eccentricities won
celebrity for him, rather than voters. Mark Twain once said of
him:

“He was a great man, an honest man, and served his, country well
and was an honor to it. Also, he was a good-natured man, but
abrupt with strangers if they annoyed him when he was busy. He
was profane, but that is nothing; the best of us is that. I did
not know him well, but only just casually, and by accident. I
never met him but once. I called on him in the Tribune office,
but I was not intending to. I was looking for Whitelaw Reid, and
got into the wrong den. He was alone at his desk, writing, and we
conversed—not long, but just a little. I asked him if he was
well, and he said, 'What the hell do you want?' Well, I couldn't
remember what I wanted, so I said I would call again. But I
didn't.”

Clemens did not always tell the incident just in this way.
Sometimes it was John Hay he was looking for instead of Reid, and
the conversation with Greeley varied; but perhaps there was a
germ of history under it somewhere, and at any rate it could have
happened well enough, and not have been out of character with
either of the men.

LXXXVIII. “THE GILDED AGE”

Mark Twain did not go on the lecture circuit that winter. Redpath
had besought him as usual, and even in midsummer had written:

“Will you? Won't you? We have seven thousand to eight thousand
dollars in engagements recorded for you,” and he named a list of
towns ranging geographically from Boston to St. Paul.

But Clemens had no intention then of ever lecturing any more, and
again in November, from London, he announced (to Redpath):

“When I yell again for less than $500 I'll be pretty hungry, but
I haven't any intention of yelling at any price.”

Redpath pursued him, and in January proposed $400 for a single
night in Philadelphia, but without result. He did lecture two
nights in Steinway Hall for the Mercantile Library Association,
on the basis of half profits, netting $1,300 for the two nights
as his share; and he lectured one night in Hartford, at a profit
Of $1,500, for charity. Father Hawley, of Hartford, had announced
that his missionary work was suffering for lack of funds. Some of
his people were actually without food, he said, their children
crying with hunger. No one ever responded to an appeal like that
quicker than Samuel Clemens. He offered to deliver a lecture
free, and to bear an equal proportion of whatever expenses were
incurred by the committee of eight who agreed to join in
forwarding the project. He gave the Sandwich Island lecture, and
at the close of it a large card was handed him with the figures
of the receipts printed upon it. It was held up to view, and the
house broke into a storm of cheers.

He did very little writing during the early weeks following his
return. Early in the year (January 3 and 6, 1873) he contributed
two Sandwich Island letters to the Tribune, in which, in his own
peculiar fashion, he urged annexation.

“We must annex those people,” he declared, and proceeded to
specify the blessings we could give them, such as “leather-headed
juries, the insanity law, and the Tweed Ring.”

We can confer Woodhull and Clafin on them, and George Francis
Train. We can give them lecturers! I will go myself.
We can make that little bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner
on earth, and array it in the moral splendor of our high and holy
civilization. Annexation is what the poor islanders need!
“Shall we, to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?”

His success in England became an incentive to certain American
institutions to recognize his gifts at home. Early in the year he
was dined as the guest of the Lotos Club of New York, and a week
or two later elected to its membership. This was but a beginning.
Some new membership or honor was offered every little while, and
so many banquets that he finally invented a set form for
declining them. He was not yet recognized as the foremost
American man of letters, but undoubtedly he had become the most
popular; and Edwin Whipple, writing at this time, or but little
later, said:

“Mark Twain is regarded chiefly as a humorist, but the exercise
of his real talents would rank him with the ablest of our authors
in the past fifty years.” So he was beginning to be “discovered”
in high places.

It was during this winter that the Clemens household enjoyed its
first real home life in Hartford, its first real home life
anywhere since those earliest days of marriage. The Hooker
mansion was a comfortable place. The little family had
comparatively good health. Their old friends were stanch and
lavishly warm-hearted, and they had added many new ones. Their
fireside was a delightful nucleus around which gathered those
they cared for most, the Twichells, the Warner families, the
Trumbulls—all certain of a welcome there. George Warner, only a
little while ago, remembering, said:

“The Clemens house was the only one I have ever known where there
was never any preoccupation in the evenings, and where visitors
were always welcome. Clemens was the best kind of a host; his
evenings after dinner were an unending flow of stories.”

Friends living near by usually came and went at will, often
without the ceremony of knocking or formal leave-taking. They
were more like one great family in that neighborhood, with a
community of interests, a unity of ideals. The Warner families
and the Clemenses were particularly intimate, and out of their
association grew Mark Twain's next important literary
undertaking, his collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner in 'The
Gilded Age'.

A number of more or less absurd stories have been printed about
the origin of this book. It was a very simple matter, a perfectly
natural development.

At the dinner-table one night, with the Warners present,
criticisms of recent novels were offered, with the usual freedom
and severity of dinner-table talk. The husbands were inclined to
treat rather lightly the novels in which their wives were finding
entertainment. The wives naturally retorted that the proper thing
for the husbands to do was to furnish the American people with
better ones. This was regarded in the nature of a challenge, and
as such was accepted—mutually accepted: that is to say, in
partnership. On the spur of the moment Clemens and Warner agreed
that they would do a novel together, that they would begin it
immediately. This is the whole story of the book's origin; so
far, at least, as the collaboration is concerned. Clemens, in
fact, had the beginning of a story in his mind, but had been
unwilling to undertake an extended work of fiction alone. He
welcomed only too eagerly, therefore, the proposition of joint
authorship. His purpose was to write a tale around that lovable
character of his youth, his mother's cousin, James Lampton—to let
that gentle visionary stand as the central figure against a
proper background. The idea appealed to Warner, and there was no
delay in the beginning. Clemens immediately set to work and
completed 399 pages of the manuscript, the first eleven chapters
of the book, before the early flush of enthusiasm waned.

Warner came over then, and Clemens read it aloud to him. Warner
had some plans for the story, and took it up at this point, and
continued it through the next twelve chapters; and so they worked
alternately, “in the superstition,” as Mark Twain long afterward
declared, “that we were writing one coherent yarn, when I
suppose, as a matter of fact, we were writing two incoherent
ones.”—[The reader may be interested in the division of labor.
Clemens wrote chapters I to XI; also chapters XXIV, XXV, XXVII,
XXVIII, XXX, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXVI, XXXVII, XLII, XLIII,
XLV, LI, LII, LIII, LVII, LIX, LX, LXI, LXII, and portions of
chapters XXXV, XLIX, LVI. Warner wrote chapters XII to XXIII;
also chapters XXVI, XXIX, XXXI, XXXVIII, XXXIX, XL, XLI, XLIV,
XLVI, XLVII, XLVIII, L, LIV, LV, LVIII, LXIII, and portions of
chapters XXXV, XLIX, and LVI. The work was therefore very evenly
divided.

There was another co-worker on The Gilded Age before the book was
finally completed. This was J. Hammond Trumbull, who prepared the
variegated, marvelous cryptographic chapter headings: Trumbull
was the most learned man that ever lived in Hartford. He was
familiar with all literary and scientific data, and according to
Clemens could swear in twenty-seven languages. It was thought to
be a choice idea to get Trumbull to supply a lingual medley of
quotations to precede the chapters in the new book, the purpose
being to excite interest and possibly to amuse the reader—a
purpose which to some extent appears to have miscarried.]

The book was begun in February and finished in April, so the work
did not lag. The result, if not highly artistic, made
astonishingly good reading. Warner had the touch of romance,
Clemens, the gift of creating, or at least of portraying, human
realities. Most of his characters reflected intimate
personalities of his early life. Besides the apotheosis of James
Lampton into the immortal Sellers, Orion became Washington
Hawkins, Squire Clemens the judge, while Mark Twain's own
personality, in a greater or lesser degree, is reflected in most
of his creations. As for the Tennessee land, so long a
will-o'the-wisp and a bugbear, it became tangible property at
last. Only a year or two before Clemens had written to Orion:

Oh, here! I don't want to be consulted at all about Tennessee. I
don't want it even mentioned to me. When I make a suggestion it is
for you to act upon it or throw it aside, but I beseech you never
to ask my advice, opinion, or consent about that hated property.

But it came in good play now. It is the important theme of the
story.

Mark Twain was well qualified to construct his share of the tale.
He knew his characters, their lives, and their atmospheres
perfectly. Senator Dilworthy (otherwise Senator Pomeroy, of
Kansas, then notorious for attempted vote-buying) was familiar
enough. That winter in Washington had acquainted Clemens with the
life there, its political intrigues, and the disrepute of
Congress. Warner was equally well qualified for his share of the
undertaking, and the chief criticism that one may offer is the
one stated by Clemens himself—that the divisions of the tale
remain divisions rather than unity.

As for the story itself—the romance and tragedy of it—the
character of Laura in the hands of either author is one not easy
to forget. Whether this means that the work is well done, or only
strikingly done, the reader himself must judge. Morally, the
character is not justified. Laura was a victim of circumstance
from the beginning. There could be no poetic justice in her doom.
To drag her out of a steamer wreck, only to make her the victim
of a scoundrel, later an adventuress, and finally a murderess,
all may be good art, but of a very bad kind. Laura is a sort of
American Becky Sharp; but there is retributive justice in Becky's
fate, whereas Laura's doom is warranted only by the author's
whim. As for her end, whatever the virtuous public of that day
might have done, a present-day audience would not have pelted her
from the stage, destroyed her future, taken away her life.

The authors regarded their work highly when it was finished, but
that is nothing. Any author regards his work highly at the moment
of its completion. In later years neither of them thought very
well of their production; but that also is nothing. The author
seldom cares very deeply for his offspring once it is turned over
to the public charge. The fact that the story is still popular,
still delights thousands of readers, when a myriad of novels that
have been written since it was completed have lived their little
day and died so utterly that even their names have passed out of
memory, is the best verdict as to its worth.

LXXXIX. PLANNING A NEW HOME

Clemens and his wife bought a lot for the new home that winter, a
fine, sightly piece of land on Farmington Avenue—table-land,
sloping down to a pretty stream that wound through the willows
and among the trees. They were as delighted as children with
their new purchase and the prospect of building. To her sister
Mrs. Clemens wrote:

Mr. Clemens seems to glory in his sense of possession; he goes
daily into the lot, has had several falls trying to lay off the
land by sliding around on his feet....
For three days the ice has covered the trees, and they have been
glorious. We could do nothing but watch the beauty outside; if you
looked at the trees as the sun struck them, with your back toward
the sun, they were covered with jewels. If you looked toward the
sun it was all crystal whiteness, a perfect fairy-land. Then the
nights were moonlight, and that was a great beauty, the moon giving
us the same prismatic effect.

This was the storm of which Mark Twain wrote his matchless
description, given first in his speech on New England weather,
and later preserved in 'Following the Equator', in more extended
form. In that book he likens an ice-storm to his impressions
derived from reading descriptions of the Taj Mahal, that
wonderful tomb of a fair East Indian queen. It is a marvelous bit
of word-painting—his description of that majestic vision: “When
every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dewdrops,
and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of
Persia's diamond plume.” It will pay any one to look up that
description and read it all, though it has been said, by the
fortunate one or two who heard him first give it utterance as an
impromptu outburst, that in the subsequent process of writing the
bloom of its original magnificence was lost.

The plans for the new house were drawn forthwith by that gentle
architect Edward Potter, whose art to-day may be considered open
to criticism, but not because of any lack of originality.
Hartford houses of that period were mainly of the goods-box form
of architecture, perfectly square, typifying the commercial
pursuits of many of their owners. Potter agreed to get away from
this idea, and a radical and even frenzied departure was the
result. Certainly his plans presented beautiful pictures, and all
who saw them were filled with wonder and delight. Architecture
has lavished itself in many florescent forms since then, but we
may imagine that Potter's “English violet” order of design, as he
himself designated it, startled, dazzled, and captivated in a
day, when most houses were mere habitations, built with a view to
economy and the largest possible amount of room.

Workmen were put on the ground without delay, to prepare for the
builders, and work was rapidly pushed along. Then in May the
whole matter was left in the hands of the architect and the
carpenters (with Lawyer Charles E. Perkins to stand between
Potter and the violent builder, who roared at Potter and
frightened him when he wanted changes), while the Clemens
household, with Clara Spaulding, a girlhood friend of Mrs.
Clemens, sailed away to England for a half-year holiday.

XC. A LONG ENGLISH HOLIDAY

They sailed on the Batavia, and with them went a young man named
Thompson, a theological student whom Clemens had consented to
take as an amanuensis. There is a pathetic incident connected
with this young man, and it may as well be set down here. Clemens
found, a few weeks after his arrival in England, that so great
was the tax upon his time that he could make no use of Thompson's
services. He gave Thompson fifty dollars, and upon the
possibility of the young man's desiring to return to America,
advanced him another fifty dollars, saying that he could return
it some day, and never thought of it again. But the young man
remembered it, and one day, thirty-six years later, after a life
of hardship and struggle, such as the life of a country minister
is apt to be, he wrote and inclosed a money-order, a payment on
his debt. That letter and its inclosure brought only sorrow to
Mark Twain. He felt that it laid upon him the accumulated burden
of the weary thirty-six years' struggle with ill-fortune. He
returned the money, of course, and in a biographical note
commented:

How pale painted heroisms of romance look beside it! Thompson's
heroism, which is real, which is colossal, which is sublime, and
which is costly beyond all estimate, is achieved in profound
obscurity, and its hero walks in rags to the end of his days. I had
forgotten Thompson completely, but he flashes before me as vividly
as lightning. I can see him now. It was on the deck of the Batavia,
in the dock. The ship was casting off, with that hubbub and
confusion and rushing of sailors, and shouting of orders and
shrieking of boatswain whistles, which marked the departure
preparations in those days—an impressive contrast with the solemn
silence which marks the departure preparations of the giant ships
of the present day. Mrs. Clemens, Clara Spaulding, little Susy, and
the nurse-maid were all properly garbed for the occasion. We all
had on our storm-rig, heavy clothes of somber hue, but new and
designed and constructed for the purpose, strictly in accordance
with sea-going etiquette; anything wearable on land being
distinctly and odiously out of the question.
Very well. On that deck, and gliding placidly among those honorable
and properly upholstered groups, appeared Thompson, young, grave,
long, slim, with an aged fuzzy plug hat towering high on the upper
end of him and followed by a gray duster, which flowed down,
without break or wrinkle, to his ankles. He came straight to us,
and shook hands and compromised us. Everybody could see that we
knew him. A nigger in heaven could not have created a profounder
astonishment.
However, Thompson didn't know that anything was happening. He had
no prejudices about clothes. I can still see him as he looked when
we passed Sandy Hook and the winds of the big ocean smote us.
Erect, lofty, and grand he stood facing the blast, holding his plug
on with both hands and his generous duster blowing out behind,
level with his neck. There were scoffers observing, but he didn't
know it; he wasn't disturbed.
In my mind, I see him once afterward, clothed as before, taking me
down in shorthand. The Shah of Persia had come to England and Dr.
Hosmer, of the Herald, had sent me to Ostend, to view his Majesty's
progress across the Channel and write an account of it. I can't
recall Thompson after that, and I wish his memory had been as poor
as mine.

They had been a month in London, when the final incident referred
to took place—the arrival of the Shah of Persia—and were
comfortably quartered at the Langham Hotel. To Twichell Clemens
wrote:

We have a luxuriously ample suite of apartments on the third floor,
our bedroom looking straight up Portland Place, our parlor having a
noble array of great windows looking out upon both streets
(Portland Place and the crook that joins it onto Regent Street).
Nine p.m. full twilight, rich sunset tints lingering in the west.
I am not going to write anything; rather tell it when I get back. I
love you and Harmony, and that is all the fresh news I've got
anyway. And I mean to keep that fresh all the time.

Mrs. Clemens, in a letter to her sister, declared: “It is
perfectly discouraging to try to write you. There is so much to
write about that it makes me feel as if it was no use to begin.”

It was a period of continuous honor and entertainment. If Mark
Twain had been a lion on his first visit, he was little less than
royalty now. His rooms at the Langham were like a court. Miss
Spaulding (now Mrs. John B. Stanchfield) remembers that Robert
Browning, Turgenieff, Sir John Millais, Lord Houghton, and Sir
Charles Dilke (then at the height of his fame) were among those
that called to pay their respects. In a recent letter she says:

I remember a delightful luncheon that Charles Kingsley gave for Mr.
Clemens; also an evening when Lord Dunraven brought Mr. Home, the
medium, Lord Dunraven telling many of the remarkable things he had
seen Mr. Home do. I remember I wanted so much to see him float out
of a seven or eight story window, and enter another, which Lord
Dunraven said he had seen him do many times. But Mr. Home had been
very ill, and said his power had left him. My great regret was that
we did not see Carlyle, who was too sad and ill for visits.

Among others they met Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in
Wonderland, and found him so shy that it was almost impossible to
get him to say a word on any subject.

“The shyest full-grown man, except Uncle Remus, I ever met,”
Clemens once wrote. “Dr. MacDonald and several other lively
talkers were present, and the talk went briskly on for a couple
of hours, but Carroll sat still all the while, except now and
then when he answered a question.”

At a dinner given by George Smalley they met Herbert Spencer, and
at a luncheon-party at Lord Houghton's, Sir Arthur Helps, then a
world-wide celebrity.

Lord Elcho, a large, vigorous man, sat at some distance down the
table. He was talking earnestly about the town of Godalming. It was
a deep, flowing, and inarticulate rumble, but I caught the
Godalming pretty nearly every time it broke free of the rumbling,
and as all the strength was on the first end of the word, it
startled me every time, because it sounded so like swearing. In the
middle of the luncheon Lady Houghton rose, remarked to the guests
on her right and on her left, in a matter-of-fact way, “Excuse me,
I have an engagement,” and without further ceremony, she went off
to meet it. This would have been doubtful etiquette in America.
Lord Houghton told a number of delightful stories. He told them in
French, and I lost nothing of them but the nubs.

Little Susy and her father thrived on London life, but after a
time it wore on Mrs. Clemens. She delighted in the English
cordiality and culture, but the demands were heavy, the social
forms sometimes trying. Life in London was interesting, and in
its way charming, but she did not enter into it with quite her
husband's enthusiasm and heartiness. In the end they canceled all
London engagements and quietly set out for Scotland. On the way
they rested a few days in York, a venerable place such as Mark
Twain always loved to describe. In a letter to Mrs. Langdon he
wrote:

For the present we shall remain in this queer old walled town, with
its crooked, narrow lanes, that tell us of their old day that knew
no wheeled vehicles; its plaster-and-timber dwellings, with upper
stories far overhanging the street, and thus marking their date,
say three hundred years ago; the stately city walls, the
castellated gates, the ivy-grown, foliage-sheltered, most noble and
picturesque ruin of St. Mary's Abbey, suggesting their date, say
five hundred years ago, in the heart of Crusading times and the
glory of English chivalry and romance; the vast Cathedral of York,
with its worn carvings and quaintly pictured windows, preaching of
still remoter days; the outlandish names of streets and courts and
byways that stand as a record and a memorial, all these centuries,
of Danish dominion here in still earlier times; the hint here and
there of King Arthur and his knights and their bloody fights with
Saxon oppressors round about this old city more than thirteen
hundred years gone by; and, last of all, the melancholy old stone
coffins and sculptured inscriptions, a venerable arch and a hoary
tower of stone that still remain and are kissed by the sun and
caressed by the shadows every day, just as the sun and the shadows
have kissed and, caressed them every lagging day since the Roman
Emperor's soldiers placed them here in the times when Jesus the Son
of Mary walked the streets of Nazareth a youth, with no more name
or fame than the Yorkshire boy who is loitering down this street
this moment.

They reached Edinburgh at the end of July and secluded themselves
in Veitch's family hotel in George Street, intending to see no
one. But this plan was not a success; the social stress of London
had been too much for Mrs. Clemens, and she collapsed immediately
after their arrival. Clemens was unacquainted in Edinburgh, but
remembered that Dr. John Brown, who had written Rab and His
Friend, lived there. He learned his address, and that he was
still a practising physician. He walked around to 23 Rutland
Street, and made himself known. Dr. Brown came forthwith, and
Mrs. Clemens speedily recovered under his able and inspiring
treatment.

The association did not end there. For nearly a month Dr. Brown
was their daily companion, either at the hotel, or in his own
home, or on protracted drives when he made his round of visits,
taking these new friends along. Dr. John was beloved by everybody
in Edinburgh, everybody in Scotland, for that matter, and his
story of Rab had won him a following throughout Christendom. He
was an unpretentious sovereign. Clemens once wrote of him:

His was a sweet and winning face, as beautiful a face as I have
ever known. Reposeful, gentle, benignant; the face of a saint at
peace with all the world and placidly beaming upon it the sunshine
of love that filled his heart.

He was the friend of all dogs, and of all people. It has been
told of him that once, when driving, he thrust his head suddenly
out of the carriage window, then resumed his place with a
disappointed look.

“Who was it?” asked his companion. “Some one you know?”

“No,” he said. “A dog I don't know.”

He became the boon companion and playmate of little Susy, then
not quite a year and a half old. He called her Megalopis, a Greek
term, suggested by her eyes; those deep, burning eyes that seemed
always so full of life's sadder philosophies, and impending
tragedy. In a collection of Dr. Brown's letters he refers to this
period. In one place he says:

Had the author of The Innocents Abroad not come to Edinburgh at
that time we in all human probability might never have met, and
what a deprivation that would have been to me during the last
quarter of a century!

And in another place:

I am attending the wife of Mark Twain. His real name is Clemens.
She is a quite lovely little woman, modest and clever, and she has
a girlie eighteen months old, her ludicrous miniature—and such
eyes!

Those playmates, the good doctor and Megalopis, romped together
through the hotel rooms with that complete abandon which few
grown persons can assume in their play with children, and not all
children can assume in their play with grown-ups. They played
“bear,” and the “bear” (which was a very little one, so little
that when it stood up behind the sofa you could just get a
glimpse of yellow hair) would lie in wait for her victim, and
spring out and surprise him and throw him into frenzies of fear.

Almost every day they made his professional rounds with him. He
always carried a basket of grapes for his patients. His guests
brought along books to read while they waited. When he stopped
for a call he would say:

“Entertain yourselves while I go in and reduce the population.”

There was much sight-seeing to do in Edinburgh, and they could
not quite escape social affairs. There were teas and luncheons
and dinners with the Dunfermlines and the Abercrombies, and the
MacDonalds, and with others of those brave clans that no longer
slew one another among the grim northern crags and glens, but
were as sociable and entertaining lords and ladies as ever the
southland could produce. They were very gentle folk indeed, and
Mrs. Clemens, in future years, found her heart going back oftener
to Edinburgh than to any other haven of those first wanderings.
August 24th she wrote to her sister:

We leave Edinburgh to-morrow with sincere regret; we have had such
a delightful stay here—we do so regret leaving Dr. Brown and his
sister, thinking that we shall probably never see them again [as
indeed they never did].

They spent a day or two at Glasgow and sailed for Ireland, where
they put in a fortnight, and early in September were back in
England again, at Chester, that queer old city where; from a
tower on the wall, Charles I. read the story of his doom.
Reginald Cholmondeley had invited them to visit his country seat,
beautiful Condover Hall, near Shrewsbury, and in that lovely
retreat they spent some happy, restful days. Then they were in
the whirl of London once more, but escaped for a fortnight to
Paris, sight-seeing and making purchases for the new home.

Mrs. Clemens was quite ready to return to America, by this time.

I am blue and cross and homesick [she wrote]. I suppose what makes
me feel the latter is because we are contemplating to stay in
London another month. There has not one sheet of Mr. Clemens's
proof come yet, and if he goes home before the book is published
here he will lose his copyright. And then his friends feel that it
will be better for him to lecture in London before his book is
published, not only that it will give him a larger but a more
enviable reputation. I would not hesitate one moment if it were
simply for the money that his copyright will bring him, but if his
reputation will be better for his staying and lecturing, of course
he ought to stay.... The truth is, I can't bear the thought of
postponing going home.

It is rather gratifying to find Olivia Clemens human, like that,
now and then. Otherwise, on general testimony, one might well be
tempted to regard her as altogether of another race and kind.

XCI. A LONDON LECTURE

Clemens concluded to hasten the homeward journey, but to lecture
a few nights in London before starting. He would then accompany
his little family home, and return at once to continue the
lecture series and protect his copyright. This plan was carried
out. In a communication to the Standard, October 7th, he said:

SIR,—In view of the prevailing frenzy concerning the Sandwich
Islands, and the inflamed desire of the public to acquire
information concerning them, I have thought it well to tarry yet
another week in England and deliver a lecture upon this absorbing
subject. And lest it should be thought unbecoming in me, a
stranger, to come to the public rescue at such a time, instead of
leaving to abler hands a matter of so much moment, I desire to
explain that I do it with the best motives and the most honorable
intentions. I do it because I am convinced that no one can allay
this unwholesome excitement as effectually as I can, and to allay
it, and allay it as quickly as possible, is surely one thing that
is absolutely necessary at this juncture. I feel and know that I am
equal to this task, for I can allay any kind of an excitement by
lecturing upon it. I have saved many communities in this way. I
have always been able to paralyze the public interest in any topic
that I chose to take hold of and elucidate with all my strength.
Hoping that this explanation will show that if I am seeming to
intrude I am at least doing it from a high impulse, I am, sir, your
obedient servant, MARK TWAIN.

A day later the following announcement appeared:

QUEEN'S CONCERT ROOMS, HANOVER SQUARE.
MR. GEORGE DOLBY begs to announce that
MR. MARK TWAIN
WILL DELIVER A LECTURE OF A HUMOROUS CHARACTER,
AS ABOVE, ON MONDAY EVENING NEXT, OCTOBER 13th,
1873, AND REPEAT IT IN THE SAME PLACE, ON TUESDAY
EVENING, OCTOBER 14th, WEDNESDAY “ “ 15th,
THURSDAY “ “ 16th, FRIDAY “ “ 17th,
At Eight o'Clock, AND SATURDAY AFTERNOON, OCTOBER
18th, At Three o'Clock.
SUBJECT: “Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich
Islands.”
As Mr. TWAIN has spent several months in these Islands, and is well
acquainted with his subject, the Lecture may be expected to furnish
matter of interest.
STALLS, 5s. UNRESERVED SEATS, 3s.

The prospect of a lecture from Mark Twain interested the London
public. Those who had not seen him were willing to pay even for
that privilege. The papers were encouraging; Punch sounded a
characteristic note:

WELCOME TO A LECTURER
“'Tis time we Twain did show ourselves.” 'Twas said By Caesar, when
one Mark had lost his head: By Mark, whose head's quite bright, 'tis
said again: Therefore, “go with me, friends, to bless this Twain.”
—Punch.

Dolby had managed the Dickens lectures, and he proved his sound
business judgment and experience by taking the largest available
hall in London for Mark Twain.

On the evening of October 13th, in the spacious Queen's Concert
Rooms, Hanover Square, Mark Twain delivered his first public
address in England. The subject was “Our Fellow Savages of the
Sandwich Islands,” the old lecture with which he had made his
first great successes. He was not introduced. He appeared on the
platform in evening dress, assuming the character of a manager
announcing a disappointment.

Mr. Clemens, he said, had fully expected to be present. He paused
and loud murmurs arose from the audience. He lifted his hand and
they subsided. Then he added, “I am happy to say that Mark Twain
is present, and will now give his lecture.” Whereupon the
audience roared its approval.

It would be hardly an exaggeration to say that his triumph that
week was a regal one. For five successive nights and a Saturday
matinee the culture and fashion of London thronged to hear him
discourse of their “fellow savages.” It was a lecture event
wholly without precedent. The lectures of Artemus Ward,—[“Artemus
the delicious,” as Charles Reade called him, came to London in
June, 1866, and gave his “piece” in Egyptian Hall. The refined,
delicate, intellectual countenance, the sweet, gave, mouth, from
which one might have expected philosophical lectures retained
their seriousness while listeners were convulsed with laughter.
There was something magical about it. Every sentence was a
surprise. He played on his audience as Liszt did on a piano most
easily when most effectively. Who can ever forget his attempt to
stop his Italian pianist—“a count in his own country, but not
much account in this”—who went on playing loudly while he was
trying to tell us an “affecting incident” that occurred near a
small clump of trees shown on his panorama of the Far West. The
music stormed on-we could see only lips and arms pathetically
moving till the piano suddenly ceased, and we heard-it was all we
heard “and, she fainted in Reginald's arms.” His tricks have been
at tempted in many theaters, but Artemus Ward was inimitable. And
all the time the man was dying. (Moneure D. Conway,
Autobiography.)]—who had quickly become a favorite in London, had
prepared the public for American platform humor, while the daily
doings of this new American product, as reported by the press,
had aroused interest, or curiosity, to a high pitch. On no
occasion in his own country had he won such a complete triumph.
The papers for a week devoted columns of space to appreciation
and editorial comment. The Daily News of October 17th published a
column-and-a-half editorial on American humor, with Mark Twain's
public appearance as the general text. The Times referred to the
continued popularity of the lectures:

They can't be said to have more than whetted the public appetite,
if we are to take the fact which has been imparted to us, that the
holding capacity of the Hanover Square Rooms has been inadequate to
the demand made upon it every night by Twain's lecturing, as a
criterion. The last lecture of this too brief course was delivered
yesterday before an audience which crammed to discomfort every part
of the principal apartment of the Hanover Square Rooms....

At the close of yesterday's lecture Mark Twain was so loudly
applauded that he returned to the stage, and, as soon as the
audience gave him a chance of being heard, he said, with much
apparent emotion:

“Ladies and Gentlemen,—I won't keep you one single moment in this
suffocating atmosphere. I simply wish to say that this is the last
lecture I shall have the honor to deliver in London until I return
from America, four weeks from now. I only wish to say (here Mr.
Clemens faltered as if too much affected to proceed) I am very
grateful. I do not wish to appear pathetic, but it is something
magnificent for a stranger to come to the metropolis of the world
and be received so handsomely as I have been. I simply thank you.”

The Saturday Review devoted a page, and Once a Week, under the
head of “Cracking jokes,” gave three pages, to praise of the
literary and lecture methods of the new American humorist. With
the promise of speedy return, he left London, gave the lecture
once in Liverpool, and with his party (October 21st) set sail for
home.

In mid-Atlantic he remembered Dr. Brown, and wrote him:

We have plowed a long way over the sea, and there's twenty-two
hundred miles of restless water between us now, besides the railway
stretch. And yet you are so present with us, so close to us, that a
span and a whisper would bridge the distance.

So it would seem that of all the many memories of that eventful
half-year, that of Dr. Brown was the most present, the most
tender.

XCII. FURTHER LONDON LECTURE TRIUMPHS

Orion Clemens records that he met “Sam and Livy” on their arrival
from England, November 2d, and that the president of the
Mercantile Library Association sent up his card “four times,” in
the hope of getting a chance to propose a lecture engagement—an
incident which impressed Orion deeply in its evidence of his
brother's towering importance. Orion himself was by this time
engaged in various projects. He was inventing a flying-machine,
for one thing, writing a Jules Verne story, reading proof on a
New York daily, and contemplating the lecture field. This great
blaze of international appreciation which had come to the little
boy who used to set type for him in Hannibal, and wash up the
forms and cry over the dirty proof, made him gasp.

They went to see Booth in Hamlet [he says], and Booth sent for
Sam to come behind the scenes, and when Sam proposed to add a
part to Hamlet, the part of a bystander who makes humorous modern
comment on the situations in the play, Booth laughed
immoderately.

Proposing a sacrilege like that to Booth! To what heights had
this printer-pilot, miner-brother not attained!—[This idea of
introducing a new character in Hamlet was really attempted later
by Mark Twain, with the connivance of Joe Goodman [of all men],
sad to relate. So far as is known it is the one stain on
Goodman's literary record.]

Clemens returned immediately to England—the following Saturday,
in fact—and was back in London lecturing again after barely a
month's absence. He gave the “Roughing It” address, this time
under the title of “Roughing It on the Silver Frontier,” and if
his audiences were any less enthusiastic, or his houses less
crowded than before, the newspapers of that day have left no
record of it. It was the height of the season now, and being free
to do so, he threw himself into the whirl of it, and for two
months, beyond doubt, was the most talked-of figure in London.
The Athenaeum Club made him a visiting member (an honor
considered next to knighthood); Punch quoted him; societies
banqueted him; his apartments, as before; were besieged by
callers. Afternoons one was likely to find him in “Poets' Corner”
of the Langham smoking-room, with a group of London and American
authors—Reade, Collins, Miller, and the others—frankly rioting in
his bold fancies. Charles Warren Stoddard was in London at the
time, and acted as his secretary. Stoddard was a gentle poet, a
delightful fellow, and Clemens was very fond of him. His only
complaint of Stoddard was that he did not laugh enough at his
humorous yarns. Clemens once said:

“Dolby and I used to come in after the lecture, or perhaps after
being out to some dinner, and we liked to sit down and talk it
over and tell yarns, and we expected Stoddard to laugh at them,
but Stoddard would lie there on the couch and snore. Otherwise,
as a secretary, he was perfect.”

The great Tichborne trial was in progress then, and the spectacle
of an illiterate impostor trying to establish his claim as the
rightful heir to a great estate was highly diverting to Mark
Twain.—[In a letter of this period he speaks of having attended
one of the Claimant's “Evenings.”]—He wanted to preserve the
evidence as future literary material, and Stoddard day after day
patiently collected the news reports and neatly pasted them into
scrap-books, where they still rest, a complete record of that now
forgotten farce. The Tichborne trial recalled to Mark Twain the
claimant in the Lampton family, who from time to time wrote him
long letters, urging him to join in the effort to establish his
rights to the earldom of Durham. This American claimant was a
distant cousin, who had “somehow gotten hold of, or had
fabricated a full set of documents.”

Colonel Henry Watterson, just quoted (also a Lampton connection),
adds:

During the Tichborne trial Mark and I were in London, and one day
he said to me: “I have investigated this Durham business down at
the Herald's office. There is nothing to it. The Lamptons passed
out of the earldom of Durham a hundred years ago. There were never
any estates; the title lapsed; the present earldom is a new
creation, not in the same family at all. But I'll tell you what: if
you'll put up $500, I'll put up $500 more; we'll bring our chap
over here and set him in as claimant, and, my word for it,
Kenealy's fat boy won't be a marker to him.”

It was a characteristic Mark Twain project, one of the sort he
never earned out in reality, but loved to follow in fancy, and
with the pen sometimes. The “Rightful Earl of Durham” continued
to send letters for a long time after that (some of them still
exist), but he did not establish his claim. No one but Mark Twain
ever really got anything out of it. Like the Tennessee land, it
furnished material by and by for a book. Colonel Watterson goes
on to say that Clemens was only joking about having looked up the
matter in the peerage; that he hadn't really looked it up at all,
and that the earldom lies still in the Lampton family.

Another of Clemens's friends in London at this time was Prentice
Mulford, of California. In later years Mulford acquired a wide
reputation for his optimistic and practical psychologies. Through
them he lifted himself out of the slough of despond, and he
sought to extend a helping hand to others. His “White Cross
Library” had a wide reading and a wide influence; perhaps has to
this day. But in 1873 Mulford had not found the tangibility of
thought, the secret of strength; he was only finding it, maybe,
in his frank acknowledgment of shortcoming:

Now, Mark, I am down-very much down at present; you are up-where
you deserve to be. I can't ask this on the score of any past
favors, for there have been none. I have not always spoken of you
in terms of extravagant praise; have sometimes criticized you,
which was due, I suppose, in part to an envious spirit. I am simply
human. Some people in the same profession say they entertain no
jealousy of those more successful. I can't. They are divine; I am
not.

It was only that he wished Clemens to speak a word for him to
Routledge, to get him a hearing for his work. He adds:

I shall be up myself some day, although my line is far apart from
yours. Whether you can do anything that I ask of you or not, I
shall be happy then, as I would be now, to do you any just and
right service.... Perhaps I have mistaken my vocation. Certainly,
if I was back with my rocker on the Tuolumne, I'd make it rattle
livelier than ever I did before. I have occasionally thought of
London Bridge, but the Thames is now so d—-d cold and dirty, and
besides I can swim, and any attempt at drowning would, through the
mere instinct of self-preservation, only result in my swimming
ashore and ruining my best clothes; wherefore I should be worse off
than ever.

Of course Mark Twain granted the favor Mulford asked, and a great
deal more, no doubt, for that was his way. Mulford came up, as he
had prophesied, but the sea in due time claimed him, though not
in the way he had contemplated. Years after he was one day found
drifting off the shores of Long Island in an open boat, dead.

Clemens made a number of notable dinner speeches during this
second London lecture period. His response to the toast of the
“Ladies,” delivered at the annual dinner of the Scottish
Corporation of London, was the sensational event of the evening.

He was obliged to decline an invitation to the Lord Mayor's
dinner, whereupon his Lordship wrote to urge him to be present at
least at the finale, when the welcome would be “none the less
hearty,” and bespoke his attendance for any future dinners.

Clemens lectured steadily at the Hanover Square Rooms during the
two months of his stay in London, and it was only toward the end
of this astonishing engagement that the audience began to show
any sign of diminishing. Early in January he wrote to Twichell:

I am not going to the provinces because I cannot get halls that
are large enough. I always felt cramped in the Hanover Square
Rooms, but I find that everybody here speaks with awe and respect
of that prodigious hall and wonders that I could fill it so long.

I am hoping to be back in twenty days, but I have so much to go
home to and enjoy with a jubilant joy that it hardly seems
possible that it can come to pass in so uncertain a world as
this.

In the same letter he speaks of attending an exhibition of
Landseer's paintings at the Royal Academy:

Ah, they are wonderfully beautiful! There are such rich moonlights
and dusks in the “Challenge” and the “Combat,” and in that long
flight of birds across a lake in the subdued flush of sunset (or
sunrise, for no man can ever tell t'other from which in a picture,
except it has the filmy morning mist breathing itself up from the
water), and there is such a grave analytical profundity in the face
of the connoisseurs; and such pathos in the picture of a fawn
suckling its dead mother on a snowy waste, with only the blood in
the footprints to hint that she is not asleep. And the way that he
makes animals' flesh and blood, insomuch that if the room were
darkened ever so little, and a motionless living animal placed
beside the painted one, no man could tell which was which.

I interrupted myself here, to drop a line to Shirley Brooks and
suggest a cartoon for Punch. It was this: in one of the Academy
saloons (in a suite where these pictures are) a fine bust of
Landseer stands on a pedestal in the center of the room. I
suggested that some of Landseer's best known animals be
represented as having come down out of their frames in the
moonlight and grouped themselves about the bust in mourning
attitudes.

He sailed January 13 (1874.), on the Paythia, and two weeks later
was at home, where all was going well. The Gilded Age had been
issued a day or two before Christmas, and was already in its
third edition. By the end of January 26,000 copies had been sold,
a sale that had increased to 40,000 a month later. The new house
was progressing, though it was by no means finished. Mrs. Clemens
was in good health. Little Susy was full of such American
activities as to earn the name of “The Modoc.” The promise of the
year was bright.

XCIII. THE REAL COLONEL SELLERS-GOLDEN DAYS

There are bound to be vexations, flies in the ointment, as we
say. It was Warner who conferred the name of Eschol Sellers on
the chief figure of the collaborated novel. Warner had known it
as the name of an obscure person, or perhaps he had only heard of
it. At all events, it seemed a good one for the character and had
been adopted. But behold, the book had been issued but a little
while when there rose “out of the vasty deeps” a genuine Eschol
Sellers, who was a very respectable person. He was a stout,
prosperous-looking man, gray and about fifty-five years old. He
came into the American Publishing Company offices and asked
permission to look at the book. Mr. Bliss was out at the moment,
but presently arrived. The visitor rose and introduced himself.

“My name is Eschol Sellers,” he said. “You have used it in one of
your publications. It has brought upon me a lot of ridicule. My
people wish me to sue you for $10,000 damages.”

He had documents to prove his identity, and there was only one
thing to be done; he must be satisfied. Bliss agreed to recall as
many of the offending volumes as possible and change the name on
the plates. He contacted the authors, and the name Beriah was
substituted for the offending Eschol. It turned out that the real
Sellers family was a large one, and that the given name Eschol
was not uncommon in its several branches. This particular Eschol
Sellers, curiously enough, was an inventor and a promoter, though
of a much more substantial sort than his fiction namesake. He was
also a painter of considerable merit, a writer and an
antiquarian. He was said to have been a grandson of the famous
painter, Rembrandt Peale.

Clemens vowed that he would not lecture in America that winter.
The irrepressible Redpath besieged him as usual, and at the end
of January Clemens telegraphed him, as he thought, finally.
Following it with a letter of explanation, he added:

“I said to her, 'There isn't money enough in America to hire me
to leave you for one day.'”

But Redpath was a persistent devil. He used arguments and held
out inducements which even Mrs. Clemens thought should not be
resisted, and Clemens yielded from time to time, and gave a
lecture here and there during February. Finally, on the 3d of
March (1879.) he telegraphed his tormentor:

“Why don't you congratulate me? I never expect to stand on a
lecture platform again after Thursday night.”

Howells tells delightfully of a visit which he and Aldrich paid
to Hartford just at this period. Aldrich went to visit Clemens
and Howells to visit Charles Dudley Warner, Clemens coming as far
as Springfield to welcome them.

In the good-fellowship of that cordial neighborhood we had two such
days as the aging sun no longer shines on in his round. There was
constant running in and out of friendly houses where the lively
hosts and guests called one another by their Christian names or
nicknames, and no such vain ceremony as knocking or ringing at
doors. Clemens was then building the stately mansion in which he
satisfied his love of magnificence as if it had been another
sealskin coat, and he was at the crest of the prosperity which
enabled him to humor every whim or extravagance.

Howells tells how Clemens dilated on the advantages of
subscription sale over the usual methods of publication, and
urged the two Boston authors to prepare something which
canvassers could handle.

“Why, any other means of bringing out a book is privately
printing it,” he declared, and added that his subscription books
in Bliss's hands sold right along, “just like the Bible.”

On the way back to Boston Howells and Aldrich planned a
subscription book which would sell straight along, like the
Bible. It was to be called “Twelve Memorable Murders.” They had
dreamed two or three fortunes by the time they had reached
Boston, but the project ended there.

“We never killed a single soul,” Howells said once to the writer
of this memoir.

Clemens was always urging Howells to visit him after that. He
offered all sorts of inducements.

You will find us the most reasonable people in the world. We had
thought of precipitating upon you, George Warner and his wife one
day, Twichell and his jewel of a wife another day, and Charles
Perkins and wife another. Only those—simply members of our family
they are. But I'll close the door against them all, which will
“fix” all of the lot except Twichell, who will no more hesitate to
climb in the back window than nothing.
And you shall go to bed when you please, get up when you please,
talk when you please, read when you please.

A little later he was urging Howells or Aldrich, or both of them;
to come to Hartford to live.

Mr. Hall, who lives in the house next to Mrs. Stowe's (just where
we drive in to go to our new house), will sell for $16,000 or
$17,000. You can do your work just as well here as in Cambridge,
can't you? Come! Will one of you boys buy that house? Now, say yes.

Certainly those were golden, blessed days, and perhaps, as
Howells says, the sun does not shine on their like any more—not
in Hartford, at least, for the old group that made them no longer
assembles there. Hartford about this time became a sort of shrine
for all literary visitors, and for other notables as well,
whether of America or from overseas. It was the half-way place
between Boston and New York, and pilgrims going in either
direction rested there. It is said that travelers arriving in
America, were apt to remember two things they wished to see:
Niagara Falls and Mark Twain. But the Falls had no such recent
advertising advantage as that spectacular success in London.
Visitors were apt to begin in Hartford.

Howells went with considerable frequency after that, or rather
with regularity, twice a year, or oftener, and his coming was
always hailed with great rejoicing. They visited and ate around
at one place and another among that pleasant circle of friends.
But they were happiest afterward together, Clemens smoking
continually, “soothing his tense nerves with a mild hot Scotch,”
says Howells, “while we both talked, and talked, and tasked of
everything in the heavens and on the earth, and the waters under
the earth. After two days of this talk I would come away hollow,
realizing myself best in the image of one of those locust-shells
which you find sticking to the bark of trees at the end of
summer.” Sometimes Clemens told the story of his early life, “the
inexhaustible, the fairy, the Arabian Nights story, which I could
never tire of even when it began to be told over again.”

XCIV. BEGINNING “TOM SAWYER”

The Clemens household went to Quarry Farm in April, leaving the
new house once more in the hands of the architect and builders.
It was costing a vast sum of money, and there was a financial
stress upon land. Mrs. Clemens, always prudent, became a little
uneasy at times, though without warrant in those days, for her
business statement showed that her holdings were only a little
less than a quarter of a million in her own right, while her
husband's books and lectures had been highly remunerative, and
would be more so. They were justified in living in ample, even
luxurious comfort, and how free from financial worries they could
have lived for the rest of their days!

Clemens, realizing his happiness, wrote Dr. Brown:

Indeed I am thankful for the wifey and the child, and if there is
one individual creature on all this footstool who is more
thoroughly and uniformly and, unceasingly happy than I am I defy
the world to produce him and prove him. In my opinion he don't
exist. I was a mighty rough, coarse, unpromising subject when
Livy took charge of me, four years ago, and I may still be to the
rest of the world, but not to her. She has made a very creditable
job of me.

Truly fortune not only smiled, but laughed. Every mail brought
great bundles of letters that sang his praises. Robert Watt, who
had translated his books into Danish, wrote of their wide
popularity among his people. Madame Blanc (Th. Bentzon), who as
early as 1872 had translated The Jumping Frog into French, and
published it, with extended comment on the author and his work,
in the 'Revue des deux mondes', was said to be preparing a review
of 'The Gilded Age'. All the world seemed ready to do him honor.

Of course, one must always pay the price, usually a vexatious
one. Bores stopped him on the street to repeat ancient and
witless stories. Invented anecdotes, some of them exasperating
ones, went the rounds of the press. Impostors in distant
localities personated him, or claimed to be near relatives, and
obtained favors, sometimes money, in his name. Trivial letters,
seeking benefactions of every kind, took the savor from his daily
mail. Letters from literary aspirants were so numerous that he
prepared a “form” letter of reply:

DEAR SIR OR MADAM,—Experience has not taught me very much, still
it has taught me that it is not wise to criticize a piece of
literature, except to an enemy of the person who wrote it; then
if you praise it that enemy admires—you for your honest
manliness, and if you dispraise it he admires you for your sound
judgment.

Yours truly, S. L. C.

Even Orion, now in Keokuk on a chicken farm, pursued him with
manuscripts and proposals of schemes. Clemens had bought this
farm for Orion, who had counted on large and quick returns, but
was planning new enterprises before the first eggs were hatched.
Orion Clemens was as delightful a character as was ever created
in fiction, but he must have been a trial now and then to Mark
Twain. We may gather something of this from a letter written by
the latter to his mother and sister at this period:

I can't “encourage” Orion. Nobody can do that conscientiously, for
the reason that before one's letter has time to reach him he is off
on some new wild-goose chase. Would you encourage in literature a
man who the older he grows the worse he writes?
I cannot encourage him to try the ministry, because he would change
his religion so fast that he would have to keep a traveling agent
under wages to go ahead of him to engage pulpits and board for him.
I cannot conscientiously encourage him to do anything but potter
around his little farm and put in his odd hours contriving new and
impossible projects at the rate of 365 a year which is his
customary average. He says he did well in Hannibal! Now there is a
man who ought to be entirely satisfied with the grandeurs,
emoluments, and activities of a hen farm.
If you ask me to pity Orion I can do that. I can do it every day
and all day long. But one can't “encourage” quicksilver; because
the instant you put your finger on it, it isn't there. No, I am
saying too much. He does stick to his literary and legal
aspirations, and he naturally would elect the very two things which
he is wholly and preposterously unfitted for. If I ever become
able, I mean to put Orion on a regular pension without revealing
the fact that it is a pension.
He did presently allow the pension, a liberal one, which continued
until neither Orion Clemens nor his wife had further earthly need
of it.

Mark Twain for some time had contemplated one of the books that
will longest preserve his memory, 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'.
The success of 'Roughing It' naturally made him cast about for
other autobiographical material, and he remembered those days
along the river-front in Hannibal—his skylarking with Tom
Blankenship, the Bowen boys, John Briggs, and the rest. He had
recognized these things as material—inviting material it was—and
now in the cool luxury of Quarry Farm he set himself to spin the
fabric of youth.

He found summer-time always his best period for literary effort,
and on a hillside just by the old quarry, Mrs. Crane had built
for him that spring a study—a little room of windows, somewhat
suggestive of a pilot-house—overlooking the long sweep of grass
and the dreamlike city below. Vines were planted that in the
course of time would cover and embower it; there was a tiny
fireplace for chilly days. To Twichell, of his new retreat,
Clemens wrote:

It is the loveliest study you ever saw. It is octagonal, with a
peaked roof, each face filled with a spacious window, and it sits
perched in complete isolation on the top of an elevation that
commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of
distant blue hills. It is a cozy nest and just room in it for a
sofa, table, and three or four chairs, and when the storms sweep
down the remote valley and the lightning flashes behind the hills
beyond, and the rain beats upon the roof over my head, imagine
the luxury of it.

He worked steadily there that summer. He would go up mornings,
after breakfast, remaining until nearly dinner-time, say until
five o'clock or after, for it was not his habit to eat luncheon.
Other members of the family did not venture near the place, and
if he was urgently wanted they blew a horn. Each evening he
brought down his day's performance to read to the assembled
family. He felt the need of audience and approval. Usually he
earned the latter, but not always. Once, when for a day he put
aside other matters to record a young undertaker's love-affair,
and brought down the result in the evening, fairly bubbling with
the joy of it, he met with a surprise. The tale was a ghastly
burlesque, its humor of the most disheartening, unsavory sort. No
one spoke during the reading, nobody laughed: The air was thick
with disapproval. His voice lagged and faltered toward the end.
When he finished there was heavy silence. Mrs. Clemens was the
only one who could speak:

“Youth, let's walk a little,” she said.

The “Undertaker's Love Story” is still among the manuscripts of
that period, but it is unlikely that it will ever see the light
of print.—[This tale bears no relation to “The Undertaker's
Story” in Sketches New and Old.]

The Tom Sawyer tale progressed steadily and satisfactorily.
Clemens wrote Dr. Brown:

I have been writing fifty pages of manuscript a day, on an average,
for some time now, on a book (a story), and consequently have been
so wrapped up in it, and dead to everything else, that I have
fallen mighty short in letter-writing....
On hot days I spread the study wide open, anchor my papers down
with brickbats, and write in the midst of the hurricane, clothed in
the same thin linen we make shirts of.

He incloses some photographs in this letter.

The group [he says] represents the vine-clad carriageway in front
of the farm-house. On the left is Megalopis sitting in the lap of
her German nurse-maid. I am sitting behind them. Mrs. Crane is in
the center. Mr. Crane next to her. Then Mrs. Clemens and the new
baby. Her Irish nurse stands at her back. Then comes the table
waitress, a young negro girl, born free. Next to her is Auntie Cord
(a fragment of whose history I have just sent to a magazine). She
is the cook; was in slavery more than forty years; and the self-
satisfied wench, the last of the group, is the little baby's
American nurse-maid. In the middle distance my mother-in-law's
coachman (up on errand) has taken a position unsolicited to help
out the picture. No, that is not true. He was waiting there a
minute or two before the photographer came. In the extreme
background, under the archway, you glimpse my study.

The “new baby,” “Bay,” as they came to call her, was another
little daughter, born in June, a happy, healthy addition to the
household. In a letter written to Twichell we get a sweet summer
picture of this period, particularly of little sunny-haired,
two-year-old Susy.

There is nothing selfish about the Modoc. She is fascinated with
the new baby. The Modoc rips and tears around outdoors most of the
time, and consequently is as hard as a pineknot and as brown as an
Indian. She is bosom friend to all the chickens, ducks, turkeys,
and guinea-hens on the place. Yesterday, as she marched along the
winding path that leads up the hill through the red-clover beds to
the summer-house, there was a long procession of these fowls
stringing contentedly after her, led by a stately rooster, who can
look over the Modoc's head. The devotion of these vassals has been
purchased with daily largess of Indian meal, and so the Modoc,
attended by her body-guard, moves in state wherever she goes.

There were days, mainly Sundays, when he did not work at all;
peaceful days of lying fallow, dreaming in shady places, drowsily
watching little Susy, or reading with Mrs. Clemens. Howells's
“Foregone Conclusion” was running in the Atlantic that year, and
they delighted in it. Clemens wrote the author:

I should think that this must be the daintiest, truest, most
admirable workmanship that was ever put on a story. The creatures
of God do not act out their natures more unerringly than yours do.
If your genuine stories can die I wonder by what right old Walter
Scott's artificialities shall continue to live.

At other times he found comfort in the society of Theodore Crane.
These two were always fond of each other, and often read together
the books in which they were mutually interested. They had
portable-hammock arrangements, which they placed side by side on
the lawn, and read and discussed through summer afternoons. The
'Mutineers of the Bounty' was one of the books they liked best,
and there was a story of an Iceland farmer, a human document,
that had an unfading interest. Also there were certain articles
in old numbers of the Atlantic that they read and reread. 'Pepys'
Diary', 'Two Years Before the Mast', and a book on the Andes were
reliable favorites. Mark Twain read not so many books, but read a
few books often. Those named were among the literature he asked
for each year of his return to Quarry Farm. Without them, the
farm and the summer would not be the same.

Then there was 'Lecky's History of European Morals'; there were
periods when they read Lecky avidly and discussed it in original
and unorthodox ways. Mark Twain found an echo of his own
philosophies in Lecky. He made frequent marginal notes along the
pages of the world's moral history—notes not always quotable in
the family circle. Mainly, however, they were short, crisp
interjections of assent or disapproval. In one place Lecky refers
to those who have undertaken to prove that all our morality is a
product of experience, holding that a desire to obtain happiness
and to avoid pain is the only possible motive to action; the
reason, and the only reason, why we should perform virtuous
actions being “that on the whole such a course will bring us the
greatest amount of happiness.” Clemens has indorsed these
philosophies by writing on the margin, “Sound and true.” It was
the philosophy which he himself would always hold (though,
apparently, never live by), and in the end would embody a volume
of his own.—[What Is Man? Privately printed in 1906.]—In another
place Lecky, himself speaking, says:

Fortunately we are all dependent for many of our pleasures on
others. Co-operation and organization are essential to our
happiness, and these are impossible without some restraint being
placed upon our appetites. Laws are made to secure this restraint,
and being sustained by rewards, and punishments they make it the
interest of the individual to regard that of the community.

“Correct!” comments Clemens. “He has proceeded from unreasoned
selfishness to reasoned selfishness. All our acts, reasoned and
unreasoned, are selfish.” It was a conclusion he logically never
departed from; not the happiest one, it would seem, at first
glance, but one easier to deny than to disprove.

On the back of an old envelope Mark Twain set down his literary
declaration of this period.

“I like history, biography, travels, curious facts and strange
happenings, and science. And I detest novels, poetry, and
theology.”

But of course the novels of Howells would be excepted; Lecky was
not theology, but the history of it; his taste for poetry would
develop later, though it would never become a fixed quantity, as
was his devotion to history and science. His interest in these
amounted to a passion.

XCV. AN “ATLANTIC” STORY AND A PLAY

The reference to “Auntie Cord” in the letter to Dr. Brown brings
us to Mark Twain's first contribution to the Atlantic Monthly.
Howells in his Recollections of his Atlantic editorship, after
referring to certain Western contributors, says:

Later came Mark Twain, originally of Missouri, but then
provisionally of Hartford, and now ultimately of the solar system,
not to say the universe. He came first with “A True Story,” one of
those noble pieces of humanity with which the South has atoned
chiefly, if not solely, through him for all its despite to the
negro.

Clemens had long aspired to appear in the Atlantic, but such was
his own rating of his literature that he hardly hoped to qualify
for its pages. Twichell remembers his “mingled astonishment and
triumph” when he was invited to send something to the magazine.

He was obliged to “send something” once or twice before the
acceptance of “A True Story,” the narrative of Auntie Cord, and
even this acceptance brought with it the return of a fable which
had accompanied it, with the explanation that a fable like that
would disqualify the magazine for every denominational reader,
though Howells hastened to express his own joy in it, having been
particularly touched by the author's reference to Sisyphus and
Atlas as ancestors of the tumble-bug. The “True Story,” he said,
with its “realest king of black talk,” won him, and a few days
later he wrote again: “This little story delights me more and
more. I wish you had about forty of 'em.”

And so, modestly enough, as became him, for the story was of the
simplest, most unpretentious sort, Mark Twain entered into the
school of the elect.

In his letter to Howells, accompanying the MS., the author said:

I inclose also “A True Story,” which has no humor in it. You can
pay as lightly as you choose for that if you want it, for it is
rather out of my line. I have not altered the old colored woman's
story, except to begin it at the beginning, instead of the middle,
as she did—and traveled both ways.

Howells in his Recollections tells of the business anxiety in the
Atlantic office in the effort to estimate the story's pecuniary
value. Clemens and Harte had raised literary rates enormously;
the latter was reputed to have received as much as five cents a
word from affluent newspapers! But the Atlantic was poor, and
when sixty dollars was finally decided upon for the three pages
(about two and a half cents a word) the rate was regarded as
handsome—without precedent in Atlantic history. Howells adds that
as much as forty times this amount was sometimes offered to Mark
Twain in later years. Even in '74 he had received a much higher
rate than that offered by the Atlantic,—but no acceptance, then,
or later, ever made him happier, or seemed more richly rewarded.

“A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It” was
precisely what it claimed to be.—[Atlantic Monthly for November,
1874; also included in Sketches New and Old.]—Auntie Cord, the
Auntie Rachel of that tale, cook at Quarry Farm, was a Virginia
negress who had been twice sold as a slave, and was proud of the
fact; particularly proud that she had brought $1,000 on the
block. All her children had been sold away from her, but it was a
long time ago, and now at sixty she was fat and seemingly without
care. She had told her story to Mrs. Crane, who had more than
once tried to persuade her to tell it to Clemens; but Auntie Cord
was reluctant. One evening, however, when the family sat on the
front veranda in the moonlight, looking down on the picture city,
as was their habit, Auntie Cord came around to say good night,
and Clemens engaged her in conversation. He led up to her story,
and almost before she knew it she was seated at his feet telling
the strange tale in almost the exact words in which it was set
down by him next morning. It gave Mark Twain a chance to exercise
two of his chief gifts—transcription and portrayal. He was always
greater at these things than at invention. Auntie Cord's story is
a little masterpiece.

He wished to do more with Auntie Cord and her associates of the
farm, for they were extraordinarily interesting. Two other
negroes on the place, John Lewis and his wife (we shall hear
notably of Lewis later), were not always on terms of amity with
Auntie Cord. They disagreed on religion, and there were frequent
battles in the kitchen. These depressed the mistress of the
house, but they gave only joy to Mark Twain. His Southern raising
had given him an understanding of their humors, their native
emotions which made these riots a spiritual gratification. He
would slip around among the shrubbery and listen to the noise and
strife of battle, and hug himself with delight. Sometimes they
resorted to missiles—stones, tinware—even dressed poultry which
Auntie Cord was preparing for the oven. Lewis was very black,
Auntie Cord was a bright mulatto, Lewis's' wife several shades
lighter. Wherever the discussion began it promptly shaded off
toward the color-line and insult. Auntie Cord was a Methodist;
Lewis was a Dunkard. Auntie Cord was ignorant and dogmatic; Lewis
could read and was intelligent. Theology invariably led to
personality, and eventually to epithets, crockery, geology, and
victuals. How the greatest joker of the age did enjoy that summer
warfare!

The fun was not all one-sided. An incident of that summer
probably furnished more enjoyment for the colored members of the
household than it did for Mark Twain. Lewis had some fowls, and
among them was a particularly pestiferous guinea-hen that used to
get up at three in the morning and go around making the kind of a
noise that a guinea-hen must like and is willing to get up early
to hear. Mark Twain did not care for it. He stood it as long as
he could one morning, then crept softly from the house to stop
it.

It was a clear, bright night; locating the guinea-hen, he slipped
up stealthily with a stout stick. The bird was pouring out its
heart, tearing the moonlight to tatters. Stealing up close,
Clemens made a vicious swing with his bludgeon, but just then the
guinea stepped forward a little, and he missed. The stroke and
his explosion frightened the fowl, and it started to run.
Clemens, with his mind now on the single purpose of revenge,
started after it. Around the trees, along the paths, up and down
the lawn, through gates and across the garden, out over the
fields, they raced, “pursuer and pursued.” The guinea nor longer
sang, and Clemens was presently too exhausted to swear. Hour
after hour the silent, deadly hunt continued, both stopping to
rest at intervals; then up again and away. It was like something
in a dream. It was nearly breakfast-time when he dragged himself
into the house at last, and the guinea was resting and panting
under a currant-bush. Later in the day Clemens gave orders to
Lewis to “kill and eat that guinea-hen,” which Lewis did. Clemens
himself had then never eaten a guinea, but some years later, in
Paris, when the delicious breast of one of those fowls was served
him, he remembered and said:

“And to think, after chasing that creature all night, John Lewis
got to eat him instead of me.”

The interest in Tom and Huck, or the inspiration for their
adventures, gave out at last, or was superseded by a more
immediate demand. As early as May, Goodman, in San Francisco, had
seen a play announced there, presenting the character of Colonel
Sellers, dramatized by Gilbert S. Densmore and played by John T.
Raymond. Goodman immediately wrote Clemens; also a letter came
from Warner, in Hartford, who had noticed in San Francisco papers
announcements of the play. Of course Clemens would take action
immediately; he telegraphed, enjoining the performance. Then
began a correspondence with the dramatist and actor. This in time
resulted in an amicable arrangement, by which the dramatist
agreed to dispose of his version to Clemens. Clemens did not wait
for it to arrive, but began immediately a version of his own.
Just how much or how little of Densmore's work found its way into
the completed play, as presented by Raymond later, cannot be
known now. Howells conveys the impression that Clemens had no
hand in its authorship beyond the character of Sellers as taken
from the book. But in a letter still extant, which Clemens wrote
to Howells at the time, he says:

I worked a month on my play, and launched it in New York last
Wednesday. I believe it will go. The newspapers have been
complimentary. It is simply a setting for one character, Colonel
Sellers. As a play I guess it will not bear critical assault in
force.

The Warners are as charming as ever. They go shortly to the devil
for a year—that is, to Egypt.

Raymond, in a letter which he wrote to the Sun, November 3, 1874,
declared that “not one line” of Densmore's dramatization was
used, “except that which was taken bodily from The Gilded Age.”
During the newspaper discussion of the matter, Clemens himself
prepared a letter for the Hartford Post. This letter was
suppressed, but it still exists. In it he says:

I entirely rewrote the play three separate and distinct times. I
had expected to use little of his [Densmore's] language and but
little of his plot. I do not think there are now twenty sentences
of Mr. Densmore's in the play, but I used so much of his plot that
I wrote and told him that I should pay him about as much more as I
had already paid him in case the play proved a success. I shall
keep my word.

This letter, written while the matter was fresh in his mind, is
undoubtedly in accordance with the facts. That Densmore was fully
satisfied may be gathered from an acknowledgment, in which he
says: “Your letter reached me on the ad, with check. In this
place permit me to thank you for the very handsome manner in
which you have acted in this matter.”

Warner, meantime, realizing that the play was constructed almost
entirely of the Mark Twain chapters of the book, agreed that his
collaborator should undertake the work and financial
responsibilities of the dramatic venture and reap such rewards as
might result. Various stories have been told of this matter, most
of them untrue. There was no bitterness between the friends, no
semblance of an estrangement of any sort. Warner very generously
and promptly admitted that he was not concerned with the play,
its authorship, or its profits, whatever the latter might amount
to. Moreover, Warner was going to Egypt very soon, and his labors
and responsibilities were doubly sufficient as they stood.

Clemens's estimate of the play as a dramatic composition was
correct enough, but the public liked it, and it was a financial
success from the start. He employed a representative to travel
with Raymond, to assist in the management and in the division of
spoil. The agent had instructions to mail a card every day,
stating the amount of his share in the profits. Howells once
arrived in Hartford just when this postal tide of fortune was at
its flood:

One hundred and fifty dollars—two hundred dollars—three hundred
dollars were the gay figures which they bore, and which he
flaunted in the air, before he sat down at the table, or rose
from it to brandish, and then, flinging his napkin in the chair,
walked up and down to exult in.

Once, in later years, referring to the matter, Howells said “He
was never a man who cared anything about money except as a dream,
and he wanted more and more of it to fill out the spaces of this
dream.” Which was a true word. Mark Twain with money was like a
child with a heap of bright pebbles, ready to pile up more and
still more, then presently to throw them all away and begin
gathering anew.

XCVI. THE NEW HOME

The Clemenses returned to Hartford to find their new house
“ready,” though still full of workmen, decorators, plumbers, and
such other minions of labor as make life miserable to those with
ambitions for new or improved habitations. The carpenters were
still on the lower floor, but the family moved in and camped
about in rooms up-stairs that were more or less free from the
invader. They had stopped in New York ten days to buy carpets and
furnishings, and these began to arrive, with no particular place
to put them; but the owners were excited and happy with it all,
for it was the pleasant season of the year, and all the new
features of the house were fascinating, while the daily progress
of the decorators furnished a fresh surprise when they roamed
through the rooms at evening. Mrs. Clemens wrote home:

We are perfectly delighted with everything here and do so want you
all to see it.

Her husband, as he was likely to do, picked up the letter and
finished it:

Livy appoints me to finish this; but how can a headless man perform
an intelligent function? I have been bully-ragged all day by the
builder, by his foreman, by the architect, by the tapestry devil
who is to upholster the furniture, by the idiot who is putting down
the carpets, by the scoundrel who is setting up the billiard-table
(and has left the balls in New York), by the wildcat who is sodding
the ground and finishing the driveway (after the sun went down), by
a book agent, whose body is in the back yard and the coroner
notified. Just think of this thing going on the whole day long, and
I a man who loathes details with all his heart! But I haven't lost
my temper, and I've made Livy lie down most of the time; could
anybody make her lie down all the time?

Warner wrote from Egypt expressing sympathy for their unfurnished
state of affairs, but added, “I would rather fit out three houses
and fill them with furniture than to fit out one 'dahabiyeh'.”
Warner was at that moment undertaking his charmingly remembered
trip up the Nile.

The new home was not entirely done for a long time. One never
knows when a big house like that—or a little house, for that
matters done. But they were settled at last, with all their
beautiful things in place; and perhaps there have been richer
homes, possibly more artistic ones, but there has never been a
more charming home, within or without, than that one.

So many frequenters have tried to express the charm of that
household. None of them has quite succeeded, for it lay not so
much in its arrangement of rooms or their decorations or their
outlook, though these were all beautiful enough, but rather in
the personality, the atmosphere; and these are elusive things to
convey in words. We can only see and feel and recognize; we
cannot translate them. Even Howells, with his subtle touch, can
present only an aspect here and there; an essence, as it were,
from a happy garden, rather than the fullness of its bloom.

As Mark Twain was unlike any other man that ever lived, so his
house was unlike any other house ever built. People asked him why
he built the kitchen toward the street, and he said:

“So the servants can see the circus go by without running out
into the front yard.”

But this was probably an after-thought. The kitchen end of the
house extended toward Farmington Avenue, but it was by no means
unbeautiful. It was a pleasing detail of the general scheme. The
main entrance faced at right angles with the street and opened to
a spacious hall. In turn, the hall opened to a parlor, where
there was a grand piano, and to the dining-room and library, and
the library opened to a little conservatory, semicircular in
form, of a design invented by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Says
Howells:

The plants were set in the ground, and the flowering vines climbed
up the sides and overhung the roof above the silent spray of the
fountain companied by Callas and other waterloving lilies. There,
while we breakfasted, Patrick came in from the barn and sprinkled
the pretty bower, which poured out its responsive perfume in the
delicate accents of its varied blossoms.

In the library was an old carved mantel which Clemens and his
wife had bought in Scotland, salvage from a dismantled castle,
and across the top of the fireplace a plate of brass with the
motto, “The ornament of a house is the friends that frequent it,”
surely never more appropriately inscribed.

There was the mahogany room, a large bedroom on the ground floor,
and upstairs were other spacious bedrooms and many baths, while
everywhere were Oriental rugs and draperies, and statuary and
paintings. There was a fireplace under a window, after the
English pattern, so that in winter-time one could at the same
moment watch the blaze and the falling snow. The library windows
looked out over the valley with the little stream in it, and
through and across the tree-tops. At the top of the house was
what became Clemens's favorite retreat, the billiard-room, and
here and there were unexpected little balconies, which one could
step out upon for the view.

Below was a wide, covered veranda, the “ombra,” as they called
it, secluded from the public eye—a favorite family
gathering-place on pleasant days.

But a house might easily have all these things without being more
than usually attractive, and a house with a great deal less might
have been as full of charm; only it seemed just the proper
setting for that particular household, and undoubtedly it
acquired the personality of its occupants.

Howells assures us that there never was another home like it, and
we may accept his statement. It was unique. It was the home of
one of the most unusual and unaccountable personalities in the
world, yet was perfectly and serenely ordered. Mark Twain was not
responsible for this blissful condition. He was its beacon-light;
it was around Mrs. Clemens that its affairs steadily revolved.

If in the four years and more of marriage Clemens had made
advancement in culture and capabilities, Olivia Clemens also had
become something more than the half-timid, inexperienced girl he
had first known. In a way her education had been no less notable
than his. She had worked and studied, and her half-year of travel
and entertainment abroad had given her opportunity for acquiring
knowledge and confidence. Her vision of life had vastly enlarged;
her intellect had flowered; her grasp of practicalities had
become firm and sure.

In spite of her delicate physical structure, her continued
uncertainty of health, she capably undertook the management of
their large new house, and supervised its economies. Any one of
her undertakings was sufficient for one woman, but she compassed
them all. No children had more careful direction than hers. No
husband had more devoted attendance and companionship. No
household was ever directed with a sweeter and gentler grace, or
with greater perfection of detail. When the great ones of the
world came to visit America's most picturesque literary figure
she gave welcome to them all, and filled her place at his side
with such sweet and capable dignity that those who came to pay
their duties to him often returned to pay even greater devotion
to his companion. Says Howells:

She was, in a way, the loveliest person I have ever seen—the
gentlest, the kindest, without a touch of weakness; she united
wonderful tact with wonderful truth; and Clemens not only accepted
her rule implicitly, but he rejoiced, he gloried in it.

And once, in an interview with the writer of these chapters,
Howells declared: “She was not only a beautiful soul, but a woman
of singular intellectual power. I never knew any one quite like
her.” Then he added: “Words cannot express Mrs. Clemens—her
fineness, her delicate, her wonderful tact with a man who was in
some respects, and wished to be, the most outrageous creature
that ever breathed.”

Howells meant a good many things by that, no doubt: Clemens's
violent methods, for one thing, his sudden, savage impulses,
which sometimes worked injustice and hardship for others, though
he was first to discover the wrong and to repair it only too
fully. Then, too, Howells may have meant his boyish teasing
tendency to disturb Mrs. Clemens's exquisite sense of decorum.

Once I remember seeing him come into his drawing-room at Hartford
in a pair of white cowskin slippers with the hair out, and do a
crippled colored uncle, to the joy of all beholders. I must not
say all, for I remember also the dismay of Mrs. Clemens, and her
low, despairing cry of “Oh, Youth!”

He was continually doing such things as the “crippled colored
uncle,”; partly for the very joy of the performance, but partly,
too, to disturb her serenity, to incur her reproof, to shiver her
a little—“shock” would be too strong a word. And he liked to
fancy her in a spirit and attitude of belligerence, to present
that fancy to those who knew the measure of her gentle nature.
Writing to Mrs. Howells of a picture of herself in a group, he
said:

You look exactly as Mrs. Clemens does after she has said: “Indeed,
I do not wonder that you can frame no reply; for you know only too
well that your conduct admits of no excuse, palliation, or argument
—none!”

Clemens would pretend to a visitor that she had been violently
indignant over some offense of his; perhaps he would say:

“Well I contradicted her just now, and the crockery will begin to
fly pretty soon.”

She could never quite get used to this pleasantry, and a faint
glow would steal over her face. He liked to produce that glow.
Yet always his manner toward her was tenderness itself. He
regarded her as some dainty bit of porcelain, and it was said
that he was always following her about with a chair. Their union
has been regarded as ideal. That is Twichell's opinion and
Howells's. The latter sums up:

Marriages are what the parties to them alone really know them to
be, but from the outside I should say that this marriage was one of
the most perfect.

XCVII. THE WALK TO BOSTON

The new home became more beautiful to them as things found their
places, as the year deepened; and the wonder of autumn foliage
lit up their landscape. Sitting on one of the little upper
balconies Mrs. Clemens wrote:

The atmosphere is very hazy, and it makes the autumn tints even
more soft and beautiful than usual. Mr. Twichell came for Mr.
Clemens to go walking with him; they returned at dinner-time,
heavily laden with autumn leaves.

And as usual Clemens, finding the letter unfinished, took up the
story.

Twichell came up here with me to luncheon after services, and I
went back home with him and took Susy along in her little carriage.
We have just got home again, middle of afternoon, and Livy has gone
to rest and left the west balcony to me. There is a shining and
most marvelous miracle of cloud-effects mirrored in the brook; a
picture which began with perfection, and has momently surpassed it
ever since, until at last it is almost unendurably beautiful....
There is a cloud-picture in the stream now whose hues are as
manifold as those in an opal and as delicate as the tintings of a
sea-shell. But now a muskrat is swimming through it and
obliterating it with the turmoil of wavelets he casts abroad from
his shoulders.
The customary Sunday assemblage of strangers is gathered together
in the grounds discussing the house.

Twichell and Clemens took a good many walks these days; long
walks, for Twichell was an athlete and Clemens had not then
outgrown the Nevada habit of pedestrian wandering. Talcott's
Tower, a wooden structure about five miles from Hartford, was one
of their favorite objective points; and often they walked out and
back, talking so continuously, and so absorbed in the themes of
their discussions, that time and distance slipped away almost
unnoticed. How many things they talked of in those long walks!
They discussed philosophies and religions and creeds, and all the
range of human possibility and shortcoming, and all the phases of
literature and history and politics. Unorthodox discussions they
were, illuminating, marvelously enchanting, and vanished now
forever. Sometimes they took the train as far as Bloomfield, a
little station on the way, and walked the rest of the distance,
or they took the train from Bloomfield home. It seems a strange
association, perhaps, the fellowship of that violent dissenter
with that fervent soul dedicated to church and creed, but the
root of their friendship lay in the frankness with which each man
delivered his dogmas and respected those of his companion.

It was during one of their walks to the tower that they planned a
far more extraordinary undertaking—nothing less, in fact, than a
walk from Hartford to Boston. This was early in November. They
did not delay the matter, for the weather was getting too
uncertain.

Clemens wrote Redpath:

DEAR REDPATH,—Rev. J. H. Twichell and I expect to start at 8
o'clock Thursday morning to walk to Boston in twenty four
hours—or more. We shall telegraph Young's Hotel for rooms
Saturday night, in order to allow for a low average of
pedestrianism.

It was half past eight on Thursday morning, November 12, 1874,
that they left Twichell's house in a carriage, drove to the East
Hartford bridge, and there took to the road, Twichell carrying a
little bag and Clemens a basket of lunch.

The papers had got hold of it by this time, and were watching the
result. They did well enough that first day, following the old
Boston stage road, arriving at Westford about seven o'clock in
the evening, twenty-eight miles from the starting-point. There
was no real hotel at Westford, only a sort of tavern, but it
afforded the luxury of rest. “Also,” says Twichell, in a
memoranda of the trip, “a sublimely profane hostler whom you
couldn't jostle with any sort of mild remark without bringing
down upon yourself a perfect avalanche of oaths.”

This was a joy to Clemens, who sat behind the stove, rubbing his
lame knees and fairly reveling in Twichell's discomfiture in his
efforts to divert the hostler's blasphemy. There was also a
mellow inebriate there who recommended kerosene for Clemens's
lameness, and offered as testimony the fact that he himself had
frequently used it for stiffness in his joints after lying out
all night in cold weather, drunk: altogether it was a notable
evening.

Westford was about as far as they continued the journey afoot.
Clemens was exceedingly lame next morning, and had had a rather
bad night; but he swore and limped along six miles farther, to
North Ashford, then gave it up. They drove from North Ashford to
the railway, where Clemens telegraphed Redpath and Howells of
their approach. To Redpath:

We have made thirty-five miles in less than five days. This
demonstrates that the thing can be done. Shall now finish by rail.
Did you have any bets on us?

To Howells:

Arrive by rail at seven o'clock, the first of a series of grand
annual pedestrian tours from Hartford to Boston to be performed by
us. The next will take place next year.

Redpath read his despatch to a lecture audience, with effect.
Howells made immediate preparation for receiving two way-worn,
hungry men. He telegraphed to Young's Hotel: “You and Twichell
come right up to 37 Concord Avenue, Cambridge, near observatory.
Party waiting for you.”

They got to Howells's about nine o'clock, and the refreshments
were waiting. Miss Longfellow was there, Rose Hawthorne, John
Fiske, Larkin G. Mead, the sculptor, and others of their kind.
Howells tells in his book how Clemens, with Twichell, “suddenly
stormed in,” and immediately began to eat and drink:

I can see him now as he stood up in the midst of our friends, with
his head thrown back, and in his hand a dish of those escalloped
oysters without which no party in Cambridge was really a party,
exulting in the tale of his adventure, which had abounded in the
most original characters and amusing incidents at every mile of
their progress.

Clemens gave a dinner, next night, to Howells, Aldrich, Osgood,
and the rest. The papers were full of jokes concerning the Boston
expedition; some even had illustrations, and it was all amusing
enough at the time.

Next morning, sitting in the writing-room of Young's Hotel, he
wrote a curious letter to Mrs. Clemens, though intended as much
for Howells and Aldrich as for her. It was dated sixty-one years
ahead, and was a sort of Looking Backwards, though that notable
book had not yet been written. It presupposed a monarchy in which
the name of Boston has been changed to “Limerick,” and Hartford
to “Dublin.” In it, Twichell has become the “Archbishop of
Dublin,” Howells “Duke of Cambridge,” Aldrich “Marquis of
Ponkapog,” Clemens the “Earl of Hartford.” It was too whimsical
and delightful a fancy to be forgotten.—[This remarkable and
amusing document will be found under Appendix M, at the end of
last volume.]

A long time afterward, thirty-four year, he came across this
letter. He said:

“It seems curious now that I should have been dreaming dreams of
a future monarchy and never suspect that the monarchy was already
present and the Republic a thing of the past.”

What he meant, was the political succession that had fostered
those commercial trusts which, in turn, had established party
dominion.

To Howells, on his return, Clemens wrote his acknowledgments, and
added:

Mrs. Clemens gets upon the verge of swearing, and goes tearing
around in an unseemly fury when I enlarge upon the delightful time
we had in Boston, and she not there to have her share. I have tried
hard to reproduce Mrs. Howells to her, and have probably not made a
shining success of it.

XCVIII. “OLD TIMES ON THE MISSISSIPPI”

Howells had been urging Clemens to do something more for the
Atlantic, specifically something for the January number. Clemens
cudgeled his brains, but finally declared he must give it up:

Mrs. Clemens has diligently persecuted me day by day with urgings
to go to work and do that something, but it's no use. I find I
can't. We are in such a state of worry and endless confusion that
my head won't go.

Two hours later he sent another hasty line:

I take back the remark that I can't write for the January number,
for Twichell and I have had a long walk in the woods, and I got to
telling him about old Mississippi days of steam-boating glory and
grandeur as I saw them (during four years) from the pilot-house. He
said, “What a virgin subject to hurl into a magazine!” I hadn't
thought of that before. Would you like a series of papers to run
through three months or six or nine—or about four months, say?

Howells welcomed this offer as an echo of his own thought. He had
come from a piloting family himself, and knew the interest that
Mark Twain could put into such a series.

Acting promptly under the new inspiration, Clemens forthwith sent
the first chapter of that monumental, that absolutely unique,
series of papers on Mississippi River life, which to-day
constitutes one of his chief claims to immortality.

His first number was in the nature of an experiment. Perhaps,
after all, the idea would not suit the Atlantic readers.

“Cut it, scarify it, reject it, handle it with entire freedom,”
he wrote, and awaited the result.

The “result” was that Howells expressed his delight:

The piece about the Mississippi is capital. It almost made the
water in our ice-pitcher muddy as I read it. I don't think I shall
meddle much with it, even in the way of suggestion. The sketch of
the low-lived little town was so good that I could have wished
there was more of it. I want the sketches, if you can make them,
every month.

Mark Twain was now really interested in this new literary
venture. He was fairly saturated with memories. He was writing on
the theme that lay nearest to his heart. Within ten days he
reported that he had finished three of the papers, and had begun
the fourth.

And yet I have spoken of nothing but piloting as a science so
far, and I doubt if I ever get beyond that portion of my subject.
And I don't care to. Any Muggins can write about old days on the
Mississippi of five hundred different kinds, but I am the only
man alive that can scribble about the piloting of that day, and
no man has ever tried to scribble about it yet. Its newness
pleases me all the time, and it is about the only new subject I
know of.

He became so enthusiastic presently that he wanted to take
Howells with him on a trip down the Mississippi, with their wives
for company, to go over the old ground again and obtain added
material enough for a book. Howells was willing enough—agreed to
go, in fact—but found it hard to get away. He began to temporize
and finally backed out. Clemens tried to inveigle Osgood into the
trip, but without success; also John Hay, but Hay had a new baby
at his house just then—“three days old, and with a voice beyond
price,” he said, offering it as an excuse for non-acceptance. So
the plan for revisiting the river and the conclusion of the book
were held in abeyance for nearly seven years.

Those early piloting chapters, as they appeared in the Atlantic,
constituted Mark Twain's best literary exhibit up to that time.
In some respects they are his best literature of any time. As
pictures of an intensely interesting phase of life, they are so
convincing, so real, and at the same time of such extraordinary
charm and interest, that if the English language should survive a
thousand years, or ten times as long, they would be as fresh and
vivid at the end of that period as the day they were penned. In
them the atmosphere of, the river and its environment—its
pictures, its thousand aspects of life—are reproduced with what
is no less than literary necromancy. Not only does he make you
smell the river you can fairly hear it breathe. On the appearance
of the first number John Hay wrote:

“It is perfect; no more nor less. I don't see how you do it,” and
added, “you know what my opinion is of time not spent with you.”

Howells wrote:

You are doing the science of piloting splendidly. Every word
interesting, and don't you drop the series till you've got every
bit of anecdote and reminiscence into it.

He let Clemens write the articles to suit himself. Once he said:

If I might put in my jaw at this point I should say, stick to
actual fact and character in the thing and give things in detail.
All that belongs to the old river life is novel, and is now mostly
historical. Don't write at any supposed Atlantic audience, but yarn
it off as if into my sympathetic ear.

Clemens replied that he had no dread of the Atlantic audience; he
declared it was the only audience that did not require a humorist
to “paint himself striped and stand on his head to amuse it.”

The “Old Times” papers ran through seven numbers of the Atlantic.
They were reprinted everywhere by the newspapers, who in that day
had little respect for magazine copyrights, and were promptly
pirated in book form in Canada. They added vastly to Mark Twain's
literary capital, though Howells informs us that the Atlantic
circulation did not thrive proportionately, for the reason that
the newspapers gave the articles to their readers from advanced
sheets of the magazine, even before the latter could be placed on
sale. It so happened that in the January Atlantic, which
contained the first of the Mississippi papers, there appeared
Robert Dale Owen's article on “Spiritualism,” which brought such
humility both to author and publisher because of the exposure of
the medium Katie King, which came along while the magazine was in
press. Clemens has written this marginal note on the opening page
of the copy at Quarry Farm:

While this number of the Atlantic was being printed the Katie
King manifestations were discovered to be the cheapest,
wretchedest shams and frauds, and were exposed in the newspapers.
The awful humiliation of it unseated Robert Dale Owen's reason,
and he died in the madhouse.

XCIX. A TYPEWRITER, AND A JOKE ON ALDRICH

It was during the trip to Boston with Twichell that Mark Twain
saw for the first time what was then—a brand-new invention, a
typewriter; or it may have been during a subsequent visit, a week
or two later. At all events, he had the machine and was
practising on it December 9, 1874, for he wrote two letters on it
that day, one to Howells and the other to Orion Clemens. In the
latter he says:

I am trying to get the hang of this new-fangled writing-machine,
but am not making a shining success of it. However, this is the
first attempt I ever have made, and yet I perceive that I shall
soon easily acquire a fine facility in its use. I saw the thing in
Boston the other day and was greatly taken with it.

He goes on to explain the new wonder, and on the whole his first
attempt is a very creditable performance. With his usual
enthusiasm over an innovation, he believes it is going to be a
great help to him, and proclaims its advantages.

This is the letter to Howells, with the errors preserved:

You needn't answer this; I am only practicing to get three; anothe
slip-up there; only practici?ng ti get the hang of the thing. I
notice I miss fire & get in a good many unnecessary letters &
punctuation marks. I am simply using you for a target to bang at.
Blame my cats, but this thing requires genius in order to work it
just right.

In an article written long after he tells how he was with Nasby
when he first saw the machine in Boston through a window, and how
they went in to see it perform. In the same article he states
that he was the first person in the world to apply the
type-machine to literature, and that he thinks the story of Tom
Sawyer was the first type-copied manuscript.—[Tom Sawyer was not
then complete, and had been laid aside. The first type-copied
manuscript was probably early chapters of the Mississippi story,
two discarded typewritten pages of which still exist.]

The new enthusiasm ran its course and died. Three months later,
when the Remington makers wrote him for a recommendation of the
machine, he replied that he had entirely stopped using it. The
typewriter was not perfect in those days, and the keys did not
always respond readily. He declared it was ruining his
morals—that it made him “want to swear.” He offered it to Howells
because, he said, Howells had no morals anyway. Howells
hesitated, so Clemens traded the machine to Bliss for a
side-saddle. But perhaps Bliss also became afraid of its
influence, for in due time he brought it back. Howells, again
tempted, hesitated, and this time was lost. What eventually
became of the machine is not history.

One of those, happy Atlantic dinners which Howells tells of came
about the end of that year. It was at the Parker House, and
Emerson was there; and Aldrich, and the rest of that group.

“Don't you dare to refuse the invitation,” said Howells, and
naturally Clemens didn't, and wrote back:

I want you to ask Mrs. Howells to let you stay all night at the
Parker House and tell lies and have an improving time, and take
breakfast with me in the morning. I will have a good room for you
and a fire. Can't you tell her it always makes you sick to go home
late at night or something like that? That sort of thing arouses
Mrs. Clemens's sympathies easily.

Two memories of that old dinner remain to-day. Aldrich and
Howells were not satisfied with the kind of neckties that Mark
Twain wore (the old-fashioned black “string” tie, a Western
survival), so they made him a present of two cravats when he set
out on his return for Hartford. Next day he wrote:

You and Aldrich have made one woman deeply and sincerely grateful
—Mrs. Clemens. For months—I may even say years—she has shown an
unaccountable animosity toward my necktie, even getting up in the
night to take it with the tongs and blackguard it, sometimes also
getting so far as to threaten it.
When I said you and Aldrich had given me two new neckties, and that
they were in a paper in my overcoat pocket, she was in a fever of
happiness until she found I was going to frame them; then all the
venom in her nature gathered itself together; insomuch that I,
being near to a door, went without, perceiving danger.

It is recorded that eventually he wore the neckties, and returned
no more to the earlier mode.

Another memory of that dinner is linked to a demand that Aldrich
made of Clemens that night, for his photograph. Clemens,
returning to Hartford, put up fifty-two different specimens in as
many envelopes, with the idea of sending one a week for a year.
Then he concluded that this was too slow a process, and for a
week sent one every morning to “His Grace of Ponkapog.”

Aldrich stood it for a few days, then protested. “The police,” he
said, “are in the habit of swooping down upon a publication of
that sort.”

On New-Year's no less than twenty pictures came at
once—photographs and prints of Mark Twain, his house, his family,
his various belongings. Aldrich sent a warning then that the
perpetrator of this outrage was known to the police as Mark
Twain, alias “The Jumping Frog,” a well-known California
desperado, who would be speedily arrested and brought to Ponkapog
to face his victim. This letter was signed “T. Bayleigh, Chief of
Police,” and on the outside of the envelope there was a statement
that it would be useless for that person to send any more
mail-matter, as the post-office had been blown up. The jolly
farce closed there. It was the sort of thing that both men
enjoyed.

Aldrich was writing a story at this time which contained some
Western mining incident and environment. He sent the manuscript
to Clemens for “expert” consideration and advice. Clemens wrote
him at great length and in careful detail. He was fond of
Aldrich, regarding him as one of the most brilliant of men. Once,
to Robert Louis Stevenson, he said:

“Aldrich has never had his peer for prompt and pithy and witty and
humorous sayings. None has equaled him, certainly none has
surpassed him, in the felicity of phrasing with which he clothed
these children of his fancy. Aldrich is always brilliant; he can't
help it; he is a fire-opal set round with rose diamonds; when he is
not speaking you know that his dainty fancies are twinkling and
glimmering around in him; when he speaks the diamonds flash. Yes,
he is always brilliant, he will always be brilliant; he will be
brilliant in hell-you will see.”

Stevenson, smiling a chuckly smile, said, “I hope not.”

“Well, you will, and he will dim even those ruddy fires and look
like a transfigured Adonis backed against a pink sunset.”—[North
American Review, September, 1906.]

C. RAYMOND, MENTAL TELEGRAPHY, ETC.

The Sellers play was given in Hartford, in January (1875), to as
many people as could crowd into the Opera House. Raymond had
reached the perfection of his art by that time, and the townsmen
of Mark Twain saw the play and the actor at their best. Kate
Field played the part of Laura Hawkins, and there was a Hartford
girl in the company; also a Hartford young man, who would one day
be about as well known to playgoers as any playwright or actor
that America has produced. His name was William Gillette, and it
was largely due to Mark Twain that the author of Secret Service
and of the dramatic “Sherlock Holmes” got a fair public start.
Clemens and his wife loaned Gillette the three thousand dollars
which tided him through his period of dramatic education. Their
faith in his ability was justified.

Hartford would naturally be enthusiastic on a first
“Sellers-Raymond” night. At the end of the fourth act there was
an urgent demand for the author of the play, who was supposed to
be present. He was not there in person, but had sent a letter,
which Raymond read:

MY DEAR RAYMOND,—I am aware that you are going to be welcomed to
our town by great audiences on both nights of your stay there,
and I beg to add my hearty welcome also, through this note. I
cannot come to the theater on either evening, Raymond, because
there is something so touching about your acting that I can't
stand it.

(I do not mention a couple of colds in my head, because I hardly
mind them as much as I would the erysipelas, but between you and
me I would prefer it if they were rights and lefts.)

And then there is another thing. I have always taken a pride in
earning my living in outside places and spending it in Hartford;
I have said that no good citizen would live on his own people,
but go forth and make it sultry for other communities and fetch
home the result; and now at this late day I find myself in the
crushed and bleeding position of fattening myself upon the spoils
of my brethren! Can I support such grief as this? (This is
literary emotion, you understand. Take the money at the door just
the same.)

Once more I welcome you to Hartford, Raymond, but as for me let
me stay at home and blush.

Yours truly, MARK.

The play was equally successful wherever it went. It made what in
that day was regarded as a fortune. One hundred thousand dollars
is hardly too large an estimate of the amount divided between
author and actor. Raymond was a great actor in that part, as he
interpreted it, though he did not interpret it fully, or always
in its best way. The finer side, the subtle, tender side of
Colonel Sellers, he was likely to overlook. Yet, with a natural
human self-estimate, Raymond believed he had created a much
greater part than Mark Twain had written. Doubtless from the
point of view of a number of people this was so, though the idea,
was naturally obnoxious to Clemens. In course of time their
personal relations ceased.

Clemens that winter gave another benefit for Father Hawley. In
reply to an invitation to appear in behalf of the poor, he wrote
that he had quit the lecture field, and would not return to the
platform unless driven there by lack of bread. But he added:

By the spirit of that remark I am debarred from delivering this
proposed lecture, and so I fall back upon the letter of it, and
emerge upon the platform for this last and final time because I
am confronted by a lack of bread-among Father Hawley's flock.

He made an introductory speech at an old-fashioned spelling-bee,
given at the Asylum Hill Church; a breezy, charming talk of which
the following is a sample:

I don't see any use in spelling a word right—and never did. I mean
I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of
spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook
all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleasing. I have
a correspondent whose letters are always a refreshment to me; there
is such a breezy, unfettered originality about his orthography. He
always spells “kow” with a large “K.” Now that is just as good as
to spell it with a small one. It is better. It gives the
imagination a broader field, a wider scope. It suggests to the mind
a grand, vague, impressive new kind of a cow.
He took part in the contest, and in spite of his early reputation,
was spelled down on the word “chaldron,” which he spelled
“cauldron,” as he had been taught, while the dictionary used as
authority gave that form as second choice.

Another time that winter, Clemens read before the Monday Evening
Club a paper on “Universal Suffrage,” which is still remembered
by the surviving members of that time. A paragraph or two will
convey its purport:

Our marvelous latter-day statesmanship has invented universal
suffrage. That is the finest feather in our cap. All that we
require of a voter is that he shall be forked, wear pantaloons
instead of petticoats, and bear a more or less humorous resemblance
to the reported image of God. He need not know anything whatever;
he may be wholly useless and a cumberer of the earth; he may even
be known to be a consummate scoundrel. No matter. While he can
steer clear of the penitentiary his vote is as weighty as the vote
of a president, a bishop, a college professor, a merchant prince.
We brag of our universal, unrestricted suffrage; but we are shams
after all, for we restrict when we come to the women.

The Monday Evening Club was an organization which included the
best minds of Hartford. Dr. Horace Bushnell, Prof. Calvin E.
Stowe, and J. Hammond Trumbull founded it back in the sixties,
and it included such men as Rev. Dr. Parker, Rev. Dr. Burton,
Charles H. Clark, of the Courant, Warner, and Twichell, with
others of their kind. Clemens had been elected after his first
sojourn in England (February, 1873), and had then read a paper on
the “License of the Press.” The club met alternate Mondays, from
October to May. There was one paper for each evening, and, after
the usual fashion of such clubs, the reading was followed by
discussion. Members of that time agree that Mark Twain's
association with the club had a tendency to give it a life, or at
least an exhilaration, which it had not previously known. His
papers were serious in their purpose he always preferred to be
serious—but they evidenced the magic gift which made whatever he
touched turn to literary jewelry.

Psychic theories and phenomena always attracted Mark Twain. In
thought-transference, especially, he had a frank interest—an
interest awakened and kept alive by certain phenomena—psychic
manifestations we call them now. In his association with Mrs.
Clemens it not infrequently happened that one spoke the other's
thought, or perhaps a long-procrastinated letter to a friend
would bring an answer as quickly as mailed; but these are things
familiar to us all. A more startling example of
thought-communication developed at the time of which we are
writing, an example which raised to a fever-point whatever
interest he may have had in the subject before. (He was always
having these vehement interests—rages we may call them, for it
would be inadequate to speak of them as fads, inasmuch as they
tended in the direction of human enlightenment, or progress, or
reform.)

Clemens one morning was lying in bed when, as he says, “suddenly
a red-hot new idea came whistling down into my camp.” The idea
was that the time was ripe for a book that would tell the story
of the Comstock-of the Nevada silver mines. It seemed to him that
the person best qualified for the work was his old friend William
Wright—Dan de Quille. He had not heard from Dan, or of him, for a
long time, but decided to write and urge him to take up the idea.
He prepared the letter, going fully into the details of his plan,
as was natural for him to do, then laid it aside until he could
see Bliss and secure his approval of the scheme from a publishing
standpoint. Just a week later, it was the 9th of March, a letter
came—a thick letter bearing a Nevada postmark, and addressed in a
handwriting which he presently recognized as De Quille's. To a
visitor who was present he said:

“Now I will do a miracle. I will tell you everything this letter
contains—date, signature, and all without breaking the seal.”

He stated what he believed was in the letter. Then he opened it
and showed that he had correctly given its contents, which were
the same in all essential details as those of his own letter, not
yet mailed.

In an article on “Mental Telegraphy” (he invented the name) he
relates this instance, with others, and in 'Following the
Equator' and elsewhere he records other such happenings. It was
one of the “mysteries” in which he never lost interest, though
his concern in it in time became a passive one.

The result of the De Quille manifestation, however, he has not
recorded. Clemens immediately wrote, urging Dan to come to
Hartford for an extended visit. De Quille came, and put in a
happy spring in his old comrade's luxurious home, writing 'The
Big Bonanza', which Bliss successfully published a year later.

Mark Twain was continually inviting old friends to share his
success with him. Any comrade of former days found welcome in his
home as often as he would come, and for as long as he would stay.
Clemens dropped his own affairs to advise in their undertakings;
and if their undertakings were literary he found them a
publisher. He did this for Joaquin Miller and for Bret Harte, and
he was always urging Goodman to make his house a home.

The Beecher-Tilton trial was the sensation of the spring of 1875,
and Clemens, in common with many others, was greatly worked up
over it. The printed testimony had left him decidedly in doubt as
to Beecher's innocence, though his blame would seem to have been
less for the possible offense than because of the great leader's
attitude in the matter. To Twichell he said:

“His quibbling was fatal. Innocent or guilty, he should have made
an unqualified statement in the beginning.”

Together they attended one of the sessions, on a day when Beecher
himself was on the witness-stand. The tension was very great; the
excitement was painful. Twichell thought that Beecher appeared
well under the stress of examination and was deeply sorry for
him; Clemens was far from convinced.

The feeling was especially strong in Hartford, where Henry Ward
Beecher's relatives were prominent, and animosities grew out of
it. They are all forgotten now; most of those who cherished
bitterness are dead. Any feeling that Clemens had in the matter
lasted but a little while. Howells tells us that when he met him
some months after the trial ended, and was tempted to mention it,
Clemens discouraged any discussion of the event. Says Howells:

He would only say the man had suffered enough; as if the man had
expiated his wrong, and he was not going to do anything to renew
his penalty. I found that very curious, very delicate. His
continued blame could not come to the sufferer's knowledge, but he
felt it his duty to forbear it.

It was one hundred years, that 19th of April, since the battles
of Lexington and Concord, and there was to be a great
celebration. The Howellses had visited Hartford in March, and the
Clemenses were invited to Cambridge for the celebration. Only
Clemens could go, which in the event proved a good thing perhaps;
for when Clemens and Howells set out for Concord they did not go
over to Boston to take the train, but decided to wait for it at
Cambridge. Apparently it did not occur to them that the train
would be jammed the moment the doors were opened at the Boston
station; but when it came along they saw how hopeless was their
chance. They had special invitations and passage from Boston, but
these were only mockeries now. It yeas cold and chilly, and they
forlornly set out in search of some sort of a conveyance. They
tramped around in the mud and raw wind, but vehicles were either
filled or engaged, and drivers and occupants were inclined to
jeer at them. Clemens was taken with an acute attack of
indigestion, which made him rather dismal and savage. Their
effort finally ended with his trying to run down a tally-ho which
was empty inside and had a party of Harvard students riding atop.
The students, who did not recognize their would-be fare, enjoyed
the race. They encouraged their pursuer, and perhaps their
driver, with merriment and cheers. Clemens was handicapped by
having to run in the slippery mud, and soon “dropped by the
wayside.”

“I am glad,” says Howells, “I cannot recall what he said when he
came back to me.”

They hung about a little longer, then dragged themselves home,
slipped into the house, and built up a fine, cheerful fire on the
hearth. They proposed to practise a deception on Mrs. Howells by
pretending they had been to Concord and returned. But it was no
use. Their statements were flimsy, and guilt was plainly written
on their faces. Howells recalls this incident delightfully, and
expresses the belief that the humor of the situation was finally
a greater pleasure to Clemens than the actual visit to Concord
would have been.

Twichell did not have any such trouble in attending the
celebration. He had adventures (he was always having adventures),
but they were of a more successful kind. Clemens heard the tale
of them when he returned to Hartford. He wrote it to Howells:

Joe Twichell preached morning and evening here last Sunday; took
midnight train for Boston; got an early breakfast and started by
rail at 7.30 A.M. for Concord; swelled around there until 1 P.M.,
seeing everything; then traveled on top of a train to Lexington;
saw everything there; traveled on top of a train to Boston (with
hundreds in company), deluged with dust, smoke, and cinders; yelled
and hurrahed all the way like a school-boy; lay flat down, to dodge
numerous bridges, and sailed into the depot howling with excitement
and as black as a chimneysweep; got to Young's Hotel at 7 P.M.; sat
down in the reading-room and immediately fell asleep; was promptly
awakened by a porter, who supposed he was drunk; wandered around an
hour and a half; then took 9 P.M. train, sat down in a smoking-car,
and remembered nothing more until awakened by conductor as the
train came into Hartford at 1.30 A.M. Thinks he had simply a
glorious time, and wouldn't have missed the Centennial for the
world. He would have run out to see us a moment at Cambridge but he
was too dirty. I wouldn't have wanted him there; his appalling
energy would have been an insufferable reproach to mild adventurers
like you and me.

CI. CONCLUDING “TOM SAWYER”—MARK TWAIN's “EDITORS”

Meantime the “inspiration tank,” as Clemens sometimes called it,
had filled up again. He had received from somewhere new afflatus
for the story of Tom and Huck, and was working on it steadily.
The family remained in Hartford, and early in July, under full
head of steam, he brought the story to a close. On the 5th he
wrote Howells:

I have finished the story and didn't take the chap beyond boyhood.
I believe it would be fatal to do it in any shape but
autobiographically, like Gil Blas. I perhaps made a mistake in not
writing it in the first person. If I went on now, and took him into
manhood, he would just lie, like all the one-horse men in
literature, and the reader would conceive a hearty contempt for
him. It is not a boy's book at all. It will only be read by adults.
It is only written for adults.

He would like to see the story in the Atlantic, he said, but
doubted the wisdom of serialization.

“By and by I shall take a boy of twelve and run him through life
(in the first person), but not Tom Sawyer, he would not make a
good character for it.” From which we get the first glimpse of
Huck's later adventures.

Of course he wanted Howells to look at the story. It was a
tremendous favor to ask, he said, and added, “But I know of no
other person whose judgment I could venture to take, fully and
entirely. Don't hesitate to say no, for I know how your time is
taxed, and I would have honest need to blush if you said yes.”

“Send on your MS.,” wrote Howells. “You've no idea what I may ask
you to do for me some day.”

But Clemens, conscience-stricken, “blushed and weakened,” as he
said. When Howells insisted, he wrote:

But I will gladly send it to you if you will do as follows:
dramatize it, if you perceive that you can, and take, for your
remuneration, half of the first $6,000 which I receive for its
representation on the stage. You could alter the plot entirely if
you chose. I could help in the work most cheerfully after you had
arranged the plot. I have my eye upon two young girls who can play
Tom and Huck.

Howells in his reply urged Clemens to do the playwriting himself.
He could never find time, he said, and he doubted whether he
could enter into the spirit of another man's story. Clemens did
begin a dramatization then or a little later, but it was not
completed. Mrs. Clemens, to whom he had read the story as it
proceeded, was as anxious as her husband for Howells's opinion,
for it was the first extended piece of fiction Mark Twain had
undertaken alone. He carried the manuscript over to Boston
himself, and whatever their doubts may have been, Howells's
subsequent letter set them at rest. He wrote that he had sat up
till one in the morning to get to the end of it, simply because
it was impossible to leave off.

It is altogether the best boy story I ever read. It will be an
immense success, but I think you ought to treat it explicitly as
a boy's story; grown-ups will enjoy it just as much if you do,
and if you should put it forth as a story of boys' character from
the grown-up point of view you give the wrong key to it.

Viewed in the light of later events, there has never been any
better literary opinion than that—none that has been more fully
justified.

Clemens was delighted. He wrote concerning a point here and
there, one inquiry referring to the use of a certain strong word.
Howells's reply left no doubt:

I'd have that swearing out in an instant. I suppose I didn't notice
it because the location was so familiar to my Western sense, and so
exactly the thing Huck would say, but it won't do for children.

It was in the last chapter, where Huck relates to Tom the sorrows
of reform and tells how they comb him “all to thunder.” In the
original, “They comb me all to hell,” says Huck; which statement,
one must agree, is more effective, more the thing Huck would be
likely to say.

Clemens's acknowledgment of the correction was characteristic:

Mrs. Clemens received the mail this morning, and the next minute
she lit into the study with danger in her eye and this demand on
her tongue, “Where is the profanity Mr. Howells speaks of?” Then I
had to miserably confess that I had left it out when reading the
MS. to her. Nothing but almost inspired lying got me out of this
scrape with my scalp. Does your wife give you rats, like that, when
you go a little one-sided?

The Clemens family did not go to Elmira that year. The children's
health seemed to require the sea-shore, and in August they went
to Bateman's Point, Rhode Island, where Clemens most of the time
played tenpins in an alley that had gone to ruin. The balls would
not stay on the track; the pins stood at inebriate angles. It
reminded him of the old billiard-tables of Western mining-camps,
and furnished the same uncertainty of play. It was his delight,
after he had become accustomed to the eccentricities of the
alley, to invite in a stranger and watch his suffering and his
frantic effort to score.

CII. “SKETCHES NEW AND OLD”

The long-delayed book of Sketches, contracted for five years
before, was issued that autumn. “The Jumping Frog,” which he had
bought from Webb, was included in the volume, also the French
translation which Madame Blanc (Th. Bentzon) had made for the
Revue des deux mondes, with Mark Twain's retranslation back into
English, a most astonishing performance in its literal rendition
of the French idiom. One example will suffice here. It is where
the stranger says to Smiley, “I don't see no p'ints about that
frog that's any better'n any other frog.”

Says the French, retranslated:

“Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than
each frog” (Je ne vois pas que cette grenouille ait mieux
qu'aucune grenouille). (If that isn't grammar gone to seed then I
count myself no judge.—M. T.)

“Possible that you not it saw not,” said Smiley; “possible that
you you comprehend frogs; possible that you not you there
comprehend nothing; possible that you had of the experience, and
possible that you not be but an amateur. Of all manner (de toute
maniere) I bet forty dollars that she batter in jumping, no
matter which frog of the county of Calaveras.”

He included a number of sketches originally published with the
Frog, also a selection from the “Memoranda” and Buffalo Express
contributions, and he put in the story of Auntie Cord, with some
matter which had never hitherto appeared. True Williams
illustrated the book, but either it furnished him no inspiration
or he was allowed too much of another sort, for the pictures do
not compare with his earlier work.

Among the new matter in the book were-“Some Fables for Good Old
Boys and Girls,” in which certain wood creatures are supposed to
make a scientific excursion into a place at some time occupied by
men. It is the most pretentious feature of the book, and in its
way about as good as any. Like Gulliver's Travels, its object was
satire, but its result is also interest.

Clemens was very anxious that Howells should be first to review
this volume. He had a superstition that Howells's verdicts were
echoed by the lesser reviewers, and that a book was made or
damned accordingly; a belief hardly warranted, for the review has
seldom been written that meant to any book the difference between
success and failure. Howells's review of Sketches may be offered
as a case in point. It was highly commendatory, much more so than
the notice of the 'Innocents' had been, or even that of 'Roughing
It', also more extensive than the latter. Yet after the initial
sale of some twenty thousand copies, mainly on the strength of
the author's reputation, the book made a comparatively poor
showing, and soon lagged far behind its predecessors.

We cannot judge, of course, the taste of that day, but it appears
now an unattractive, incoherent volume. The pictures were
absurdly bad, the sketches were of unequal merit. Many of them
are amusing, some of them delightful, but most of them seem
ephemeral. If we except “The Jumping Frog,” and possibly “A True
Story” (and the latter was altogether out of place in the
collection), there is no reason to suppose that any of its
contents will escape oblivion. The greater number of the
sketches, as Mark Twain himself presently realized and declared,
would better have been allowed to die.

Howells did, however, take occasion to point out in his review,
or at least to suggest, the more serious side of Mark Twain. He
particularly called attention to “A True Story,” which the
reviewers, at the time of its publication in the Atlantic, had
treated lightly, fearing a lurking joke in it; or it may be they
had not read it, for reviewers are busy people. Howells spoke of
it as the choicest piece of work in the volume, and of its
“perfect fidelity to the tragic fact.” He urged the reader to
turn to it again, and to read it as a “simple dramatic report of
reality,” such as had been equaled by no other American writer.

It was in this volume of sketches that Mark Twain first spoke in
print concerning copyright, showing the absurd injustice of
discriminating against literary ownership by statute of
limitation. He did this in the form of an open petition to
Congress, asking that all property, real and personal, should be
put on the copyright basis, its period of ownership limited to a
“beneficent term of forty-two years.” Generally this was regarded
as a joke, as in a sense it was; but like most of Mark Twain's
jokes it was founded on reason and justice.

The approval with which it was received by his literary
associates led him to still further flights. He began a
determined crusade for international copyright laws. It was a
transcendental beginning, but it contained the germ of what, in
the course of time, he would be largely instrumental in bringing
to a ripe and magnificent conclusion. In this first effort he
framed a petition to enact laws by which the United States would
declare itself to be for right and justice, regardless of other
nations, and become a good example to the world by refusing to
pirate the books of any foreign author. He wrote to Howells,
urging him to get Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, and
others to sign this petition.

I will then put a gentlemanly chap under wages, and send him
personally to every author of distinction in the country and
corral the rest of the signatures. Then I'll have the whole thing
lithographed (about one thousand copies), and move upon the
President and Congress in person, but in the subordinate capacity
of the party who is merely the agent of better and wiser men, or
men whom the country cannot venture to laugh at. I will ask the
President to recommend the thing in his message (and if he should
ask me to sit down and frame the paragraph for him I should
blush, but still I would frame it). And then if Europe chooses to
go on stealing from us we would say, with noble enthusiasm,
“American lawmakers do steal, but not from foreign authors—not
from foreign authors,”.... If we only had some God in the
country's laws, instead of being in such a sweat to get Him into
the Constitution, it would be better all around.

The petition never reached Congress. Holmes agreed to sign it
with a smile, and the comment that governments were not in the
habit of setting themselves up as high moral examples, except for
revenue. Longfellow also pledged himself, as did a few others;
but if there was any general concurrence in the effort there is
no memory of it now. Clemens abandoned the original idea, but
remained one of the most persistent and influential advocates of
copyright betterment, and lived to see most of his dream
fulfilled.—[For the petition concerning copyright term in the
United States, see Sketches New and Old. For the petition
concerning international copyright and related matters, see
Appendix N, at the end of last volume.]

CIII. “ATLANTIC” DAYS

It was about this period that Mark Twain began to exhibit openly
his more serious side; that is to say his advocacy of public
reforms. His paper on “Universal Suffrage” had sounded a first
note, and his copyright petitions were of the same spirit. In
later years he used to say that he had always felt it was his
mission to teach, to carry the banner of moral reconstruction,
and here at forty we find him furnishing evidences of this
inclination. In the Atlantic for October, 1875, there was
published an unsigned three-page article entitled, “The Curious
Republic of Gondour.” In this article was developed the idea that
the voting privilege should be estimated not by the individuals,
but by their intellectual qualifications. The republic of Gondour
was a Utopia, where this plan had been established:

It was an odd idea and ingenious. You must understand the
constitution gave every man a vote; therefore that vote was a
vested right, and could not be taken away. But the constitution did
not say that certain individuals might not be given two votes or
ten. So an amendatory clause was inserted in a quiet way, a clause
which authorized the enlargement of the suffrage in certain cases
to be specified by statute....
The victory was complete. The new law was framed and passed. Under
it every citizen, howsoever poor or ignorant, possessed one vote,
so universal suffrage still reigned; but if a man possessed a good
common-school education and no money he had two votes, a
high-school education gave him four; if he had property, likewise,
to the value of three thousand sacos he wielded one more vote; for
every fifty thousand sacos a man added to his property, he was
entitled to another vote; a University education entitled a man to
nine votes, even though he owned no property.

The author goes on to show the beneficent results of this
enaction; how the country was benefited and glorified by this
stimulus toward enlightenment and industry. No one ever suspected
that Mark Twain was the author of this fable. It contained almost
no trace of his usual literary manner. Nevertheless he wrote it,
and only withheld his name, as he did in a few other instances,
in the fear that the world might refuse to take him seriously
over his own signature or nom de plume.

Howells urged him to follow up the “Gondour” paper; to send some
more reports from that model land. But Clemens was engaged in
other things by that time, and was not pledged altogether to
national reforms.

He was writing a skit about a bit of doggerel which was then
making nights and days unhappy for many undeserving persons who
in an evil moment had fallen upon it in some stray newspaper
corner. A certain car line had recently adopted the “punch
system,” and posted in its cars, for the information of
passengers and conductor, this placard:

A Blue Trip Slip for an 8 Cents Fare, A Buff Trip Slip for a 6
Cents Fare, A Pink Trip Slip for a 3 Cents Fare, For Coupon And
Transfer, Punch The Tickets.

Noah Brooks and Isaac Bromley were riding down-town one evening
on the Fourth Avenue line, when Bromley said:

“Brooks, it's poetry. By George, it's poetry!”

Brooks followed the direction of Bromley's finger and read the
card of instructions. They began perfecting the poetic character
of the notice, giving it still more of a rhythmic twist and
jingle; arrived at the Tribune office, W. C. Wyckoff, scientific
editor, and Moses P. Handy lent intellectual and poetic
assistance, with this result:

Conductor, when you receive a fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare! A blue trip slip for an
eight-cent fare, A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, A pink
trip slip for a three-cent fare. Punch in the presence of the
passenjare!
CHORUS Punch, brothers! Punch with care! Punch in the presence of
the passenjare!

It was printed, and street-car poetry became popular. Different
papers had a turn at it, and each usually preceded its own effort
with all other examples, as far as perpetrated. Clemens
discovered the lines, and on one of their walks recited them to
Twichell. “A Literary Nightmare” was written a few days later. In
it the author tells how the jingle took instant and entire
possession of him and went waltzing through his brain; how, when
he had finished his breakfast, he couldn't tell whether he had
eaten anything or not; and how, when he went to finish the novel
he was writing, and took up his pen, he could only get it to say:

Punch in the presence of the passenjare.

He found relief at last in telling it to his reverend friend,
that is, Twichell, upon whom he unloaded it with sad results.

It was an amusing and timely skit, and is worth reading to-day.
Its publication in the Atlantic had the effect of waking up
horse-car poetry all over the world. Howells, going to dine at
Ernest Longfellow's the day following its appearance, heard his
host and Tom Appleton urging each other to “Punch with care.” The
Longfellow ladies had it by heart. Boston was devastated by it.
At home, Howells's children recited it to him in chorus. The
streets were full of it; in Harvard it became an epidemic.

It was transformed into other tongues. Even Swinburne, the
musical, is said to have done a French version for the 'Revue des
deux mondes'. * A St. Louis magazine, The Western, found relief
in a Latin anthem with this chorus:

Pungite, fratres, pungite, Pungite cum amore, Pungite pro
vectore, Diligentissime pungite.

* LE CHANT DU CONDUCTEUR
Ayant ete paye, le conducteur Percera en pleine vue du
voyageur, Quand il regoit trois sous un coupon vert, Un
coupon jaune pour six sous c'est l'affaire, Et pour huit
sous c'est un coupon couleur De rose, en pleine vue du
voyageur.
CHOEUR Donc, percez soigneusement, mes freres Tout en pleine vue
des voyageurs, etc.

CIV. MARK TWAIN AND HIS WIFE

Clemens and his wife traveled to Boston for one of those happy
fore-gatherings with the Howellses, which continued, at one end
of the journey or another, for so many years. There was a
luncheon with Longfellow at Craigie House, and, on the return to
Hartford, Clemens reported to Howells how Mrs. Clemens had
thrived on the happiness of the visit. Also he confesses his
punishment for the usual crimes:

I “caught it” for letting Mrs. Howells bother and bother about her
coffee, when it was a “good deal better than we get at home.” I
“caught it” for interrupting Mrs. C. at the last moment and losing
her the opportunity to urge you not to forget to send her that MS.
when the printers are done with it. I “caught it” once more for
personating that drunken Colonel James. I “caught it” for
mentioning that Mr. Longfellow's picture was slightly damaged; and
when, after a lull in the storm, I confessed, shamefacedly, that I
had privately suggested to you that we hadn't any frames, and that
if you wouldn't mind hinting to Mr. Houghton, etc., etc., etc., the
madam was simply speechless for the space of a minute. Then she
said:
“How could you, Youth! The idea of sending Mr. Howells, with his
sensitive nature, upon such a repulsive er—”
“Oh, Howells won't mind it! You don't know Howells. Howells is a
man who—”
She was gone. But George was the first person she stumbled on in
the hall, so she took it out of George. I am glad of that, because
it saved the babies.

Clemens used to admit, at a later day, that his education did not
advance by leaps and bounds, but gradually, very gradually; and
it used to give him a pathetic relief in those after-years, when
that sweet presence had gone out of his life, to tell the way of
it, to confess over-fully, perhaps, what a responsibility he had
been to her.

He used to tell how, for a long time, he concealed his profanity
from her; how one morning, when he thought the door was shut
between their bedroom and the bathroom, he was in there dressing
and shaving, accompanying these trying things with language
intended only for the strictest privacy; how presently, when he
discovered a button off the shirt he intended to put on, he
hurled it through the window into the yard with appropriate
remarks, followed it with another shirt that was in the same
condition, and added certain collars and neckties and bath-room
requisites, decorating the shrubbery outside, where the people
were going by to church; how in this extreme moment he heard a
slight cough and turned to find that the door was open! There was
only one door to the bath-room, and he knew he had to pass her.
He felt pale and sick, and sat down for a few moments to
consider. He decided to assume that she was asleep, and to walk
out and through the room, head up, as if he had nothing on his
conscience. He attempted it, but without success. Half-way across
the room he heard a voice suddenly repeat his last terrific
remark. He turned to see her sitting up in bed, regarding him
with a look as withering as she could find in her gentle soul.
The humor of it struck him.

“Livy,” he said, “did it sound like that?”

“Of course it did,” she said, “only worse. I wanted you to hear
just how it sounded.”

“Livy,” he said, “it would pain me to think that when I swear it
sounds like that. You got the words right, Livy, but you don't
know the tune.”

Yet he never willingly gave her pain, and he adored her and
gloried in her dominion, his life long. Howells speaks of his
beautiful and tender loyalty to her as the “most moving quality
of his most faithful soul.”

It was a greater part of him than the love of most men for their
wives, and she merited all the worship he could give her, all the
devotion, all the implicit obedience, by her surpassing force and
beauty of character.

She guarded his work sacredly; and reviewing the manuscripts
which he was induced to discard, and certain edited manuscripts,
one gets a partial idea of what the reading world owes to Olivia
Clemens. Of the discarded manuscripts (he seems seldom to have
destroyed them) there are a multitude, and among them all
scarcely one that is not a proof of her sanity and high regard
for his literary honor. They are amusing—some of them; they are
interesting—some of them; they are strong and virile—some of
them; but they are unworthy—most of them, though a number remain
unfinished because theme or interest failed.

Mark Twain was likely to write not wisely but too much, piling up
hundreds of manuscript pages only because his brain was thronging
as with a myriad of fireflies, a swarm of darting, flashing ideas
demanding release. As often as not he began writing with only a
nebulous idea of what he proposed to do. He would start with a
few characters and situations, trusting in Providence to supply
material as needed. So he was likely to run ashore any time. As
for those other attempts—stories “unavailable” for one reason or
another—he was just as apt to begin those as the better sort, for
somehow he could never tell the difference. That is one of the
hall-marks of genius—the thing which sharply differentiates
genius from talent. Genius is likely to rate a literary disaster
as its best work. Talent rarely makes that mistake.

Among the abandoned literary undertakings of these early years of
authorship there is the beginning of what was doubtless intended
to become a book, “The Second Advent,” a story which opens with a
very doubtful miraculous conception in Arkansas, and leads only
to grotesquery and literary disorder. There is another, “The
Autobiography of a Damn Fool,” a burlesque on family history,
hopelessly impossible; yet he began it with vast enthusiasm and,
until he allowed her to see the manuscript, thought it especially
good. “Livy wouldn't have it,” he said, “so I gave it up.” There
is another, “The Mysterious Chamber,” strong and fine in
conception, vividly and intensely interesting; the story of a
young lover who is accidentally locked behind a secret door in an
old castle and cannot announce himself. He wanders at last down
into subterranean passages beneath the castle, and he lives in
this isolation for twenty years. The question of sustenance was
the weak point in the story. Clemens could invent no way of
providing it, except by means of a waste or conduit from the
kitchen into which scraps of meat, bread, and other items of
garbage were thrown. This he thought sufficient, but Mrs. Clemens
did not highly regard such a literary device. Clemens could think
of no good way to improve upon it, so this effort too was
consigned to the penal colony, a set of pigeonholes kept in his
study. To Howells and others, when they came along, he would read
the discarded yarns, and they were delightful enough for such a
purpose, as delightful as the sketches which every artist has,
turned face to the wall.

“Captain Stormfield” lay under the ban for many a year, though
never entirely abandoned. This manuscript was even recommended
for publication by Howells, who has since admitted that it would
not have done then; and indeed, in its original, primitive
nakedness it would hardly have done even in this day of wider
toleration.

It should be said here that there is not the least evidence (and
the manuscripts are full of evidence) that Mrs. Clemens was ever
super-sensitive, or narrow, or unliterary in her restraints. She
became his public, as it were, and no man ever had a more
open-minded, clear-headed public than that. For Mark Twain's
reputation it would have been better had she exercised her
editorial prerogative even more actively—if, in her love for him
and her jealousy of his reputation, she had been even more
severe. She did all that lay in her strength, from the beginning
to the end, and if we dwell upon this phase of their life
together it is because it is so large a part of Mark Twain's
literary story. On her birthday in the year we are now closing
(1875) he wrote her a letter which conveys an acknowledgment of
his debt.

LIVY DARLING,—Six years have gone by since I made my first great
success in life and won you, and thirty years have passed since
Providence made preparation for that happy success by sending you
into the world. Every day we live together adds to the security
of my confidence that we can never any more wish to be separated
than we can imagine a regret that we were ever joined. You are
dearer to me to-day, my child, than you were upon the last
anniversary of this birthday; you were dearer then than you were
a year before; you have grown more and more dear from the first
of those anniversaries, and I do not doubt that this precious
progression will continue on to the end.

Let us look forward to the coming anniversaries, with their age
and their gray hairs, without fear and without depression,
trusting and believing that the love we bear each other will be
sufficient to make them blessed.

So, with abounding affection for you and our babies I hail this
day that brings you the matronly grace and dignity of three
decades!

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Mark Twain: A Biography. Volume I, Part 2: 1866-1875" ***

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