Mark Twain, A Biography Complete

A >> Albert Bigelow Paine >> Mark Twain, A Biography Complete


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: