The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete




To Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

BOSTON, Nov. 9, 1869.
MY DEAR SISTER,--Three or four letters just received from home. My first
impulse was to send Orion a check on my publisher for the money he wants,
but a sober second thought suggested that if he has not defrauded the
government out of money, why pay, simply because the government chooses
to consider him in its debt? No: Right is right. The idea don't suit
me. Let him write the Treasury the state of the case, and tell them he
has no money. If they make his sureties pay, then I will make the
sureties whole, but I won't pay a cent of an unjust claim. You talk of
disgrace. To my mind it would be just as disgraceful to allow one's self
to be bullied into paying that which is unjust.

Ma thinks it is hard that Orion's share of the land should be swept away
just as it is right on the point (as it always has been) of becoming
valuable. Let her rest easy on that point. This letter is his ample
authority to sell my share of the land immediately and appropriate the
proceeds--giving no account to me, but repaying the amount to Ma first,
or in case of her death, to you or your heirs, whenever in the future he
shall be able to do it. Now, I want no hesitation in this matter. I
renounce my ownership from this date, for this purpose, provided it is
sold just as suddenly as he can sell it.

In the next place--Mr. Langdon is old, and is trying hard to withdraw
from business and seek repose. I will not burden him with a purchase
--but I will ask him to take full possession of a coal tract of the land
without paying a cent, simply conditioning that he shall mine and throw
the coal into market at his own cost, and pay to you and all of you what
he thinks is a fair portion of the profits accruing--you can do as you
please with the rest of the land. Therefore, send me (to Elmira,)
information about the coal deposits so framed that he can comprehend the
matter and can intelligently instruct an agent how to find it and go to
work.

Tomorrow 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.

I get just about five hundred more applications to lecture than I can
possibly fill--and in the West they say "Charge all you please, but
come." I shan't go West at all. I stop lecturing the 22d of January,
sure. But I shall talk every night up to that time. They flood me with
high-priced invitations to write for magazines and papers, and publishers
besiege me to write books. Can't do any of these things.

I am twenty-two thousand dollars in debt, and shall earn the money and
pay it within two years--and therefore I am not spending any money except
when it is necessary.

I had my life insured for $10,000 yesterday (what ever became of Mr.
Moffett' s life insurance?) "for the benefit of my natural heirs"--the
same being my mother, for Livy wouldn't claim it, you may be sure of
that. This has taken $200 out of my pocket which I was going to send to
Ma. But I will send her some, soon. Tell Orion to keep a stiff upper
lip--when the worst comes to the worst I will come forward. Must talk in
Providence, R. I., tonight. Must leave now. I thank Mollie and Orion
and the rest for your letters, but you see how I am pushed--ought to have
6 clerks.
Affectionately,
SAM.


By the end of January, 1870 more than thirty thousand copies of the
Innocents had been sold, and in a letter to his publisher the author
expressed his satisfaction.


To Elisha Bliss, in Hartford:

ELMIRA, Jan. 28 '70.
FRIEND BLISS,--..... Yes, I am satisfied with the way you are running the
book. You are running it in staving, tip-top, first-class style. I
never wander into any corner of the country but I find that an agent has
been there before me, and many of that community have read the book. And
on an average about ten people a day come and hunt me up to thank me and
tell me I'm a benefactor! I guess this is a part of the programme we
didn't expect in the first place.

I think you are rushing this book in a manner to be proud of; and you
will make the finest success of it that has ever been made with a
subscription book, I believe. What with advertising, establishing
agencies, &c., you have got an enormous lot of machinery under way and
hard at work in a wonderfully short space of time. It is easy to see,
when one travels around, that one must be endowed with a deal of genuine
generalship in order to maneuvre a publication whose line of battle
stretches from end to end of a great continent, and whose foragers and
skirmishers invest every hamlet and besiege every village hidden away in
all the vast space between.

I'll back you against any publisher in America, Bliss--or elsewhere.
Yrs as ever
CLEMENS.


There is another letter written just at this time which of all
letters must not be omitted here. Only five years earlier Mark
Twain, poor, and comparatively unknown, had been carrying water
while Jim Gillis and Dick Stoker washed out the pans of dirt in
search of the gold pocket which they did not find. Clemens must
have received a letter from Gillis referring to some particular
occasion, but it has disappeared; the reply, however, always
remained one of James Gillis's treasured possessions.


To James Gillis, in his cabin on Jackass Hill,
Tuolumne Co., California:

ELMIRA, N.Y. Jan. 26, '70.
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 Angels' 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 book keeper 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 today 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."


Steve Gillis, who sent a copy of his letter to the writer, added:
"Dick Stoker--dear, gentle unselfish old Dick-died over three years
ago, aged 78. I am sure it will be a melancholy pleasure to Mark to
know that Dick lived in comfort all his later life, sincerely loved
and respected by all who knew him. He never left Jackass Hill. He
struck a pocket years ago containing enough not only to build
himself a comfortable house near his old cabin, but to last him,
without work, to his painless end. He was a Mason, and was buried
by the Order in Sonora.

"The 'Quails'--the beautiful, the innocent, the wild little Quails
--lived way out in the Chapparal; on a little ranch near the
Stanislaus River, with their father and mother. They were famous
for their beauty and had many suitors."

The mention of "California plums" refers to some inedible fruit
which Gillis once, out of pure goodness of heart, bought of a poor
wandering squaw, and then, to conceal his motive, declared that they
were something rare and fine, and persisted in eating them, though
even when stewed they nearly choked him.




X.

LETTERS 1870-71. MARK TWAIN IN BUFFALO. MARRIAGE. THE BUFFALO EXPRESS.
"MEMORANDA." LECTURES. A NEW BOOK.

Samuel L. Clemens and Olivia Langdon were married in the Langdon
home at Elmira, February 2, 1870, and took up their residence in
Buffalo in a beautiful home, a wedding present from the bride's
father. The story of their wedding, and the amusing circumstances
connected with their establishment in Buffalo, have been told
elsewhere.--[Mark Twain: A Biography, chap. lxxiv.]

Mark Twain now believed that he was through with lecturing. Two
letters to Redpath, his agent, express his comfortable condition.


To James Redpath, in Boston:

BUFFALO, March 22, 1890.
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 us
to live and I can make the money without lecturing. Therefore old man,
count me out.
Your friend,
S. L. CLEMENS.


To James Redpath, in Boston:

ELMIRA, N. Y. May 10, 1870.
FRIEND REDPATH,--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-inspiring--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 from the present
season at least.

Remember me to Nasby, Billings and Fall.--[Redpath's partner in the
lecture lyceum.]--Luck to you! I am going to print your menagerie,
Parton and all, and make comments.

In next Galaxy I give Nasby's friend and mine from Philadelphia (John
Quill, a literary thief) a "hyste."
Yours always and after.
MARK.


The reference to the Galaxy in the foregoing letter has to do with a
department called Memoranda, which he had undertaken to conduct for
the new magazine. This work added substantially to his income, and
he believed it would be congenial. He was allowed free hand to
write and print what he chose, and some of his best work at this
time was published in the new department, which he continued for a
year.

Mark Twain now seemed to have his affairs well regulated. His
mother and sister were no longer far away in St. Louis. Soon after
his marriage they had, by his advice, taken up residence at
Fredonia, New York, where they could be easily visited from Buffalo.

Altogether, the outlook seemed bright to Mark Twain and his wife,
during the first months of their marriage. Then there came a
change. In a letter which Clemens wrote to his mother and sister we
get the first chapter of disaster.


To Mrs. Jane Clemens, and Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y.:

ELMIRA, N. Y. June 25, 1870.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--We were called here suddenly by telegram, 3
days ago. Mr. Langdon is very low. We have well-nigh lost hope--all of
us except Livy.

Mr. Langdon, whose hope is one of his most prominent characteristics,
says himself, this morning, that his recovery is only a possibility, not
a probability. He made his will this morning--that is, appointed
executors--nothing else was necessary. The household is sad enough
Charley is in Bavaria. We telegraphed Munroe & Co. Paris, to notify
Charley to come home--they sent the message to Munich. Our message left
here at 8 in the morning and Charley's answer arrived less than eight
hours afterward. He sailed immediately.

He will reach home two weeks from now. The whole city is troubled. As I
write (at the office,) a dispatch arrives from Charley who has reached
London, and will sail thence on 28th. He wants news. We cannot send him
any.
Affectionately
SAM.

P. S. I sent $300 to Fredonia Bank for Ma--It is in her name.


Mrs. Clemens, herself, was not in the best of health at this time,
but devotion to her father took her to his bedside, where she
insisted upon standing long, hard watches, the strain of which told
upon her severely. Meantime, work must go on; the daily demand of
the newspaper and the monthly call of the Memoranda could not go
unheeded. Also, Bliss wanted a new book, and met Mark Twain at
Elmira to arrange for it. In a letter to Orion we learn of this
project.


To Orion Clemens, in St. Louis:

ELMIRA, July 15, 1870
MY DEAR BRO.,--Per contract I must have another 600-page book ready for
my publisher Jan. z, and I only began it today. The subject of it is a
secret, because I may possibly change it. But as it stands, I propose to
do up Nevada and Cal., 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.

Give our love to Mollie.--Mr. Langdon is very low.
Yr Bro
SAM.


The "biggest copyright," mentioned in this letter, was a royalty of
7 1/2 per cent., which Bliss had agreed to pay, on the retail price
of the book. The book was Roughing It, though this title was not
decided upon until considerably later. Orion Clemens eagerly
furnished a detailed memorandum of the route of their overland
journey, which brought this enthusiastic acknowledgment:


To Orion Clemens, in St. Louis:

BUF., 1870.
DEAR BRO.,--I find that your little memorandum book is going to be ever
so much use to me, and will enable me to make quite a coherent narrative
of the Plains journey instead of slurring it over and jumping 2,000 miles
at a stride. The book I am writing will sell. In return for the use of
the little memorandum book I shall take the greatest pleasure in
forwarding to you the third $1,000 which the publisher of the forthcoming
work sends me or the first $1,000, I am not particular--they will both be
in the first quarterly statement of account from the publisher.
In great haste,
Yr Obliged Bro.
SAM.

Love to Mollie. We are all getting along tolerably well.


Mr. Langdon died early in August, and Mrs. Clemens returned to
Buffalo, exhausted in mind and body. If she hoped for rest now, in
the quiet of her own home, she was disappointed, as the two brief
letters that follow clearly show.


To Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y.:

BUFFALO, Aug. 31, 70.
MY DEAR SISTER,--I know I ought to be thrashed for not writing you, but
I have kept putting it off. We get heaps of letters every day; it is a
comfort to have somebody like you that will let us shirk and be patient
over it. We got the book and I did think I wrote a line thanking you for
it-but I suppose I neglected it.

We are getting along tolerably well. Mother [Mrs. Langdon] is here, and
Miss Emma Nye. Livy cannot sleep since her father's death--but I give
her a narcotic every night and make her. I am just as busy as I can be
--am still writing for the Galaxy and also writing a book like the
"Innocents" in size and style. I have got my work ciphered down to days,
and I haven't a single day to spare between this and the date which, by
written contract I am to deliver the M.S. of the book to the publisher.
----In a hurry
Affectionately
SAM


To Orion Clemens, in St, Louis:

BUF. Sept. 9th, 1870.
MY DEAR BRO,--O here! I don't want to be consulted at all about Tenn.
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. If it was because
I felt the slightest personal interest in the infernal land that I ever
made a suggestion, the suggestion would never be made.

Do exactly as you please with the land--always remember this--that so
trivial a percentage as ten per cent will never sell it.

It is only a bid for a somnambulist.

I have no time to turn round, a young lady visitor (schoolmate of Livy's)
is dying in the house of typhoid fever (parents are in South Carolina)
and the premises are full of nurses and doctors and we are all fagged
out.
Yrs.
SAM.


Miss Nye, who had come to cheer her old schoolmate, had been
prostrated with the deadly fever soon after her arrival. Another
period of anxiety and nursing followed. Mrs. Clemens, in spite of
her frail health, devoted much time to her dying friend, until by
the time the end came she was herself in a precarious condition.
This was at the end of September. A little more than a month later,
November 7th, her first child, Langdon Clemens, was prematurely
born. To the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell and wife, of Hartford, Mark
Twain characteristically announced the new arrival.


To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell and wife, in Hartford, Conn.:

BUFFALO, Nov 12, '70.
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. First one thing and then another has
kept me under the weather, and as a general thing I have been chilly and
uncomfortable.

I am not corpulent, nor am I robust in any way. At birth I only weighed
4 1/2 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. I was at a standstill for 3 days and a half, but
during the last 24 hours I have gained nearly an ounce, avoirdupois.

They all say I look very old and venerable-and I am aware, myself, that I
never smile. Life seems a serious thing, what I have seen of it--and my
observation teaches me that it is made up mainly of hiccups, unnecessary
washings, and colic. But no doubt you, who are old, have long since
grown accustomed and reconciled to what seems to me such a disagreeable
novelty.

My father said, this morning, when my face was in repose and thoughtful,
that I looked precisely as young Edward Twichell of Hartford used to look
some is months ago--chin, mouth, forehead, expression--everything.

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. And she eats a great deal, though she
says that is because the nurse desires it. And when she has had all the
nurse desires her to have, she asks for more. She is getting along very
well indeed.

My aunt Susie Crane has been here some ten days or two weeks, but goes
home today, and Granny Fairbanks of Cleveland arrives to take her place.
--[Mrs. Fairbanks, of the Quaker City excursion.]
Very lovingly,
LANGDON CLEMENS.

P. S. Father said I had better write because you would be more
interested in me, just now, than in the rest of the family.


Clemens had made the acquaintance of the Rev. Joseph Hopkins
Twichell and his wife during his several sojourns in Hartford, in
connection with his book publication, and the two men had
immediately become firm friends. Twichell had come to Elmira in
February to the wedding to assist Rev. Thos. K. Beecher in the
marriage ceremony. Joseph Twichell was a devout Christian, while
Mark Twain was a doubter, even a scoffer, where orthodoxy was
concerned, yet the sincerity and humanity of the two men drew them
together; their friendship was lifelong.

A second letter to Twichell, something more than a month later,
shows a somewhat improved condition in the Clemens household.


To Rev. Twichell, in Hartford:

BUF. Dec. 19th, 1870.
DEAR J. H.,--All is well with us, I believe--though for some days the
baby was quite ill. We consider him nearly restored to health now,
however. Ask my brother about us--you will find him at Bliss's
publishing office, where he is gone to edit Bliss's new paper--left here
last Monday. Make his and his wife's acquaintance. Take Mrs. T. to see
them as soon as they are fixed.

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 syrup--though I would as soon do it as not, I assure
you. (Livy will be certain to read this letter.)

Tell Harmony (Mrs. T.) that I do hold the baby, and do it pretty handily,
too, although 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.

Smoke? I always smoke from 3 till 5 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 and quit smoking when then ain't any sufficient
excuse for it! Why, my old boy, when they use to tell me I would shorten
my life ten years by smoking, they little knew the devotee they were
wasting their puerile word 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.

I would have gone to Hartford from New York last Saturday, but I got so
homesick I couldn't. But maybe I'll come soon.

No, Sir, catch me in the metropolis again, to get homesick.

I didn't know Warner had a book out.

We send oceans and continents of love--I have worked myself down, today.
Yrs always
MARK.