The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete

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



Of course the petition never reached Congress. Holmes's comment
that governments were not in the habit of setting themselves up as
high moral examples, except for revenue, was shared by too many
others. The petition was tabled, but Clemens never abandoned his
purpose and lived to see most of his dream fulfilled. Meantime,
Howells's notice of the Sketches appeared in the Atlantic, and
brought grateful acknowledgment from the author.


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Oct. 19, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--That is a perfectly superb notice. You can easily
believe that nothing ever gratified me so much before. The newspaper
praises bestowed upon the "Innocents Abroad" were large and generous, but
somehow I hadn't confidence in the critical judgement of the parties who
furnished them. You know how that is, yourself, from reading the
newspaper notices of your own books. They gratify a body, but they
always leave a small pang behind in the shape of a fear that the critic's
good words could not safely be depended upon as authority. Yours is the
recognized critical Court of Last Resort in this country; from its
decision there is no appeal; and so, to have gained this decree of yours
before I am forty years old, I regard as a thing to be right down proud
of. Mrs. Clemens says, "Tell him I am just as grateful to him as I can
be." (It sounds as if she were grateful to you for heroically trampling
the truth under foot in order to praise me but in reality it means that
she is grateful to you for being bold enough to utter a truth which she
fully believes all competent people know, but which none has heretofore
been brave enough to utter.) You see, the thing that gravels her is that
I am so persistently glorified as a mere buffoon, as if that entirely
covered my case--which she denies with venom.

The other day Mrs. Clemens was planning a visit to you, and so I am
waiting with a pleasurable hope for the result of her deliberations.
We are expecting visitors every day, now, from New York; and afterward
some are to come from Elmira. I judge that we shall then be free to go
Bostonward. I should be just delighted; because we could visit in
comfort, since we shouldn't have to do any shopping--did it all in New
York last week, and a tremendous pull it was too.

Mrs. C. said the other day, "We will go to Cambridge if we have to walk;
for I don't believe we can ever get the Howellses to come here again
until we have been there." I was gratified to see that there was one
string, anyway, that could take her to Cambridge. But I will do her the
justice to say that she is always wanting to go to Cambridge, independent
of the selfish desire to get a visit out of you by it. I want her to get
started, now, before children's diseases are fashionable again, because
they always play such hob with visiting arrangements.
With love to you all
Yrs Ever
S. L. CLEMENS.


Mark Twain's trips to Boston were usually made alone. Women require
more preparation to go visiting, and Mrs. Clemens and Mrs. Howells
seem to have exchanged visits infrequently. For Mark Twain,
perhaps, it was just as well that his wife did not always go with
him; his absent-mindedness and boyish ingenuousness often led him
into difficulties which Mrs. Clemens sometimes found embarrassing.
In the foregoing letter they were planning a visit to Cambridge. In
the one that follows they seem to have made it--with certain
results, perhaps not altogether amusing at the moment.


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Oct. 4, '75.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We had a royal good time at your house, and have had a
royal good time ever since, talking about it, both privately and with the
neighbors.

Mrs. Clemens's bodily strength came up handsomely under that cheery
respite from household and nursery cares. I do hope that Mrs. Howells's
didn't go correspondingly down, under the added burden to her cares and
responsibilities. Of course I didn't expect to get through without
committing some crimes and hearing of them afterwards, so I have taken
the inevitable lashings and been able to hum a tune while the punishment
went on. 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 Col. James. I "caught it" for mentioning that Mr. Longfellow's
picture was slightly damaged; and when, after a lull in the storm,
I confessed, shame-facedly, that I had privately suggested to you that we
hadn't any frames, and that if you wouldn't mind hinting to Mr. Houghton,
&c., &c., &c., 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 was glad of that, because it
saved the babies.

I've got another rattling good character for my novel! That great work
is mulling itself into shape gradually.

Mrs. Clemens sends love to Mrs. Howells--meantime she is diligently
laying up material for a letter to her.
Yrs ever
MARK.


The "George" of this letter was Mark Twain's colored butler, a
valued and even beloved member of the household--a most picturesque
character, who "one day came to wash windows," as Clemens used to
say, "and remained eighteen years." The fiction of Mrs. Clemens's
severity he always found amusing, because of its entire contrast
with the reality of her gentle heart.

Clemens carried the Tom Sawyer MS. to Boston himself and placed it
in Howells's hands. Howells had begged to be allowed to see the
story, and Mrs. Clemens was especially anxious that he should do so.
She had doubts as to certain portions of it, and had the fullest
faith in Howells's opinion.

It was a gratifying one when it came. Howells wrote: "I finished
reading Tom Sawyer a week ago, sitting up till one A.M. to get to
the end, simply because it was impossible to leave off. It's
altogether the best boy's 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 study of boy character from the grown-up
point of view, you give the wrong key to it.... The adventures
are enchanting. I wish I had been on that island. The
treasure-hunting, the loss in the cave--it's all exciting and
splendid. I shouldn't think of publishing this story serially.
Give me a hint when it's to be out, and I'll start the sheep to
jumping in the right places"--meaning that he would have an advance
review ready for publication in the Atlantic, which was a leader of
criticism in America.

Mark Twain was writing a great deal at this time. Howells was
always urging him to send something to the Atlantic, declaring a
willingness to have his name appear every month in their pages, and
Clemens was generally contributing some story or sketch. The
"proof" referred to in the next letter was of one of these articles.


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Nov. 23, '75.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Herewith is the proof. In spite of myself, how
awkwardly I do jumble words together; and how often I do use three words
where one would answer--a thing I am always trying to guard against.
I shall become as slovenly a writer as Charles Francis Adams, if I don't
look out. (That is said in jest; because of course I do not seriously
fear getting so bad as that. I never shall drop so far toward his and
Bret Harte's level as to catch myself saying "It must have been wiser to
have believed that he might have accomplished it if he could have felt
that he would have been supported by those who should have &c. &c. &c.")
The reference to Bret Harte reminds me that I often accuse him of being a
deliberate imitator of Dickens; and this in turn reminds me that I have
charged unconscious plagiarism upon Charley Warner; and this in turn
reminds me that I have been delighting my soul for two weeks over a bran
new and ingenious way of beginning a novel--and behold, all at once it
flashes upon me that Charley Warner originated the idea 3 years ago and
told me about it! Aha! So much for self-righteousness! I am well
repaid. Here are 108 pages of MS, new and clean, lying disgraced in the
waste paper basket, and I am beginning the novel over again in an
unstolen way. I would not wonder if I am the worst literary thief in the
world, without knowing it.

It is glorious news that you like Tom Sawyer so well. I mean to see to
it that your review of it shall have plenty of time to appear before the
other notices. Mrs. Clemens decides with you that the book should issue
as a book for boys, pure and simple--and so do I. It is surely the
correct idea. As to that last chapter, I think of just leaving it off
and adding nothing in its place. Something told me that the book was
done when I got to that point--and so the strong temptation to put Huck's
life at the Widow's into detail, instead of generalizing it in a
paragraph was resisted. Just send Sawyer to me by express--I enclose
money for it. If it should get lost it will be no great matter.

Company interfered last night, and so "Private Theatricals" goes over
till this evening, to be read aloud. Mrs. Clemens is mad, but the story
will take that all out. This is going to be a splendid winter night for
fireside reading, anyway.

I am almost at a dead stand-still with my new story, on account of the
misery of having to do it all over again. We--all send love to you--all.
Yrs ever
MARK.


The "story" referred to may have been any one of several begun by him at
this time. His head was full of ideas for literature of every sort.
Many of his beginnings came to nothing, for the reason that he started
wrong, or with no definitely formed plan. Others of his literary
enterprises were condemned by his wife for their grotesqueness or for the
offense they might give in one way or another, however worthy the
intention behind them. Once he wrote a burlesque on family history "The
Autobiography of a Damned Fool." "Livy wouldn't have it," he said later,
"so I gave it up." The world is indebted to Mark Twain's wife for the
check she put upon his fantastic or violent impulses. She was his
public, his best public--clearheaded and wise. That he realized this,
and was willing to yield, was by no means the least of his good fortunes.
We may believe that he did not always yield easily, and perhaps sometimes
only out of love for her. In the letter which he wrote her on her
thirtieth birthday we realize something of what she had come to mean in
his life.


To Mrs. Clemens on her Thirtieth Birthday:

HARTFORD, November 27, 1875.
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 that we can ever 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 birth-day; 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!

Always Yours
S. L. C.






MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1876-1885

ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE



VOLUME III.


XVI.

LETTERS, 1876, CHIEFLY TO W. D. HOWELLS. LITERATURE AND POLITICS.
PLANNING A PLAY WITH BRET HARTE.

The Monday Evening Club of Hartford was an association of most of
the literary talent of that city, and it included a number of very
distinguished members. The writers, the editors, the lawyers, and
the ministers of the gospel who composed it were more often than not
men of national or international distinction. There was but one
paper at each meeting, and it was likely to be a paper that would
later find its way into some magazine.

Naturally Mark Twain was one of its favorite members, and his
contributions never failed to arouse interest and discussion. A
"Mark Twain night" brought out every member. In the next letter we
find the first mention of one of his most memorable contributions--a
story of one of life's moral aspects. The tale, now included in his
collected works, is, for some reason, little read to-day; yet the
curious allegory, so vivid in its seeming reality, is well worth
consideration.


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Jan. 11, '76.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Indeed we haven't forgotten the Howellses, nor scored
up a grudge of any kind against them; but the fact is I was under the
doctor's hands for four weeks on a stretch and have been disabled from
working for a week or so beside. I thought I was well, about ten days
ago, so I sent for a short-hand writer and dictated answers to a bushel
or so of letters that had been accumulating during my illness. Getting
everything shipshape and cleared up, I went to work next day upon an
Atlantic article, which ought to be worth $20 per page (which is the
price they usually pay for my work, I believe) for although it is only 70
pages MS (less than two days work, counting by bulk,) I have spent 3 more
days trimming, altering and working at it. I shall put in one more day's
polishing on it, and then read it before our Club, which is to meet at
our house Monday evening, the 24th inst. I think it will bring out
considerable discussion among the gentlemen of the Club--though the title
of the article will not give them much notion of what is to follow,--this
title being "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in
Connecticut"--which reminds me that today's Tribune says there will be a
startling article in the current Atlantic, in which a being which is
tangible bud invisible will figure-exactly the case with the sketch of
mine which I am talking about! However, mine can lie unpublished a year
or two as well as not--though I wish that contributor of yours had not
interfered with his coincidence of heroes.

But what I am coming at, is this: won't you and Mrs. Howells come down
Saturday the 22nd and remain to the Club on Monday night? We always have
a rattling good time at the Club and we do want you to come, ever so
much. Will you? Now say you will. Mrs. Clemens and I are persuading
ourselves that you twain will come.

My volume of sketches is doing very well, considering the times; received
my quarterly statement today from Bliss, by which I perceive that 20,000
copies have been sold--or rather, 20,000 had been sold 3 weeks ago; a lot
more, by this time, no doubt.

I am on the sick list again--and was, day before yesterday--but on the
whole I am getting along.
Yrs ever
MARK


Howells wrote that he could not come down to the club meeting,
adding that sickness was "quite out of character" for Mark Twain,
and hardly fair on a man who had made so many other people feel
well. He closed by urging that Bliss "hurry out" 'Tom Sawyer.'
"That boy is going to make a prodigious hit." Clemens answered:


To W. D. Howells, in Boston.

HARTFORD, Jan. 18, '76.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Thanks, and ever so many, for the good opinion of 'Tom
Sawyer.' Williams has made about 300 rattling pictures for it--some of
them very dainty. Poor devil, what a genius he has and how he does
murder it with rum. He takes a book of mine, and without suggestion from
anybody builds no end of pictures just from his reading of it.

There was never a man in the world so grateful to another as I was to you
day before yesterday, when I sat down (in still rather wretched health)
to set myself to the dreary and hateful task of making final revision of
Tom Sawyer, and discovered, upon opening the package of MS that your
pencil marks were scattered all along. This was splendid, and swept away
all labor. Instead of reading the MS, I simply hunted out the pencil
marks and made the emendations which they suggested. I reduced the boy
battle to a curt paragraph; I finally concluded to cut the Sunday school
speech down to the first two sentences, leaving no suggestion of satire,
since the book is to be for boys and girls; I tamed the various
obscenities until I judged that they no longer carried offense. So, at a
single sitting I began and finished a revision which I had supposed would
occupy 3 or 4. days and leave me mentally and physically fagged out at
the end. I was careful not to inflict the MS upon you until I had
thoroughly and painstakingly revised it. Therefore, the only faults left
were those that would discover themselves to others, not me--and these
you had pointed out.

There was one expression which perhaps you overlooked. When Huck is
complaining to Tom of the rigorous system in vogue at the widow's, he
says the servants harass him with all manner of compulsory decencies, and
he winds up by saying: "and they comb me all to hell." (No exclamation
point.) Long ago, when I read that to Mrs. Clemens, she made no comment;
another time I created occasion to read that chapter to her aunt and her
mother (both sensitive and loyal subjects of the kingdom of heaven, so to
speak) and they let it pass. I was glad, for it was the most natural
remark in the world for that boy to make (and he had been allowed few
privileges of speech in the book;) when I saw that you, too, had let it
go without protest, I was glad, and afraid; too--afraid you hadn't
observed it. Did you? And did you question the propriety of it? Since
the book is now professedly and confessedly a boy's and girl's hook, that
darn word bothers me some, nights, but it never did until I had ceased to
regard the volume as being for adults.

Don't bother to answer now, (for you've writing enough to do without
allowing me to add to the burden,) but tell me when you see me again!

Which we do hope will be next Saturday or Sunday or Monday. Couldn't you
come now and mull over the alterations which you are going to make in
your MS, and make them after you go back? Wouldn't it assist the work if
you dropped out of harness and routine for a day or two and have that
sort of revivification which comes of a holiday-forgetfulness of the
work-shop? I can always work after I've been to your house; and if you
will come to mine, now, and hear the club toot their various horns over
the exasperating metaphysical question which I mean to lay before them in
the disguise of a literary extravaganza, it would just brace you up like
a cordial.

(I feel sort of mean trying to persuade a man to put down a critical
piece of work at a critical time, but yet I am honest in thinking it
would not hurt the work nor impair your interest in it to come under the
circumstances.) Mrs. Clemens says, "Maybe the Howellses could come Monday
if they cannot come Saturday; ask them; it is worth trying." Well, how's
that? Could you? It would be splendid if you could. Drop me a postal
card--I should have a twinge of conscience if I forced you to write a
letter, (I am honest about that,)--and if you find you can't make out to
come, tell me that you bodies will come the next Saturday if the thing is
possible, and stay over Sunday.
Yrs ever
MARK.


Howells, however, did not come to the club meeting, but promised to
come soon when they could have a quiet time to themselves together.
As to Huck's language, he declared:

"I'd have that swearing out in an instant. I suppose I didn't
notice it because the locution was so familiar to my Western sense,
and so exactly the thing that Huck would say." Clemens changed the
phrase to, "They comb me all to thunder," and so it stands to-day.

The "Carnival of Crime," having served its purpose at the club,
found quick acceptance by Howells for the Atlantic. He was so
pleased with it, in fact, that somewhat later he wrote, urging that
its author allow it to be printed in a dainty book, by Osgood, who
made a specialty of fine publishing. Meantime Howells had written
his Atlantic notice of Tom Sawyer, and now inclosed Clemens a proof
of it. We may judge from the reply that it was satisfactory.


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Apl 3, '76.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It is a splendid notice and will embolden weak-kneed
journalistic admirers to speak out, and will modify or shut up the
unfriendly. To "fear God and dread the Sunday school" exactly described
that old feeling which I used to have, but I couldn't have formulated it.
I want to enclose one of the illustrations in this letter, if I do not
forget it. Of course the book is to be elaborately illustrated, and I
think that many of the pictures are considerably above the American
average, in conception if not in execution.

I do not re-enclose your review to you, for you have evidently read and
corrected it, and so I judge you do not need it. About two days after
the Atlantic issues I mean to begin to send books to principal journals
and magazines.

I read the "Carnival of Crime" proof in New York when worn and witless
and so left some things unamended which I might possibly have altered had
I been at home. For instance, "I shall always address you in your own
S-n-i-v-e-l-i-n-g d-r-a-w-l, baby." I saw that you objected to something
there, but I did not understand what! Was it that it was too personal?
Should the language be altered?--or the hyphens taken out? Won't you
please fix it the way it ought to be, altering the language as you
choose, only making it bitter and contemptuous?

"Deuced" was not strong enough; so I met you halfway with "devilish."

Mrs. Clemens has returned from New York with dreadful sore throat, and
bones racked with rheumatism. She keeps her bed. "Aloha nui!" as the
Kanakas say.
MARK.


Henry Irving once said to Mark Twain: "You made a mistake by not
adopting the stage as a profession. You would have made even a
greater actor than a writer."

Mark Twain would have made an actor, certainly, but not a very
tractable one. His appearance in Hartford in "The Loan of a Lover"
was a distinguished event, and his success complete, though he made
so many extemporaneous improvements on the lines of thick-headed
Peter Spuyk, that he kept the other actors guessing as to their
cues, and nearly broke up the performance. It was, of course, an
amateur benefit, though Augustin Daly promptly wrote, offering to
put it on for a long run.

The "skeleton novelette" mentioned in the next letter refers to a
plan concocted by Howells and Clemens, by which each of twelve
authors was to write a story, using the same plot, "blindfolded" as
to what the others had written. It was a regular "Mark Twain"
notion, and it is hard to-day to imagine Howells's continued
enthusiasm in it. Neither he nor Clemens gave up the idea for a
long time. It appears in their letters again and again, though
perhaps it was just as well for literature that it was never carried
out.