Mark Twain, A Biography, Vol. 1, Part 2

A >> Albert Bigelow Paine >> Mark Twain, A Biography, Vol. 1, Part 2


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: