The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete

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


The speech was made at John Greenleaf Whittier's seventieth birthday
dinner, given by the Atlantic staff on the evening of December 17,
1877. It was intended as a huge joke--a joke that would shake the
sides of these venerable Boston deities, Longfellow, Emerson,
Holmes, and the rest of that venerated group. Clemens had been a
favorite at the Atlantic lunches and dinners--a speech by him always
an event. This time he decided to outdo himself.

He did that, but not in the way he had intended. To use one of his
own metaphors, he stepped out to meet the rainbow and got struck by
lightning. His joke was not of the Boston kind or size. When its
full nature burst upon the company--when the ears of the assembled
diners heard the sacred names of Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes
lightly associated with human aspects removed--oh, very far removed
--from Cambridge and Concord, a chill fell upon the diners that
presently became amazement, and then creeping paralysis. Nobody
knew afterward whether the great speech that he had so gaily planned
ever came to a natural end or not. Somebody--the next on the
program--attempted to follow him, but presently the company melted
out of the doors and crept away into the night.

It seemed to Mark Twain that his career had come to an end. Back in
Hartford, sweating and suffering through sleepless nights, he wrote
Howells his anguish.


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Sunday Night. 1877.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--My sense of disgrace does not abate. It grows. I see
that it is going to add itself to my list of permanencies--a list of
humiliations that extends back to when I was seven years old, and which
keep on persecuting me regardless of my repentancies.

I feel that my misfortune has injured me all over the country; therefore
it will be best that I retire from before the public at present. It will
hurt the Atlantic for me to appear in its pages, now. So it is my
opinion and my wife's that the telephone story had better be suppressed.
Will you return those proofs or revises to me, so that I can use the same
on some future occasion?

It seems as if I must have been insane when I wrote that speech and saw
no harm in it, no disrespect toward those men whom I reverenced so much.
And what shame I brought upon you, after what you said in introducing me!
It burns me like fire to think of it.

The whole matter is a dreadful subject--let me drop it here--at least on
paper.
Penitently yrs,
MARK.


Howells sent back a comforting letter. "I have no idea of dropping
you out of the Atlantic," he wrote; "and Mr. Houghton has still
less, if possible. You are going to help and not hurt us many a
year yet, if you will.... You are not going to be floored by it;
there is more justice than that, even in this world."

Howells added that Charles Elliot Norton had expressed just the
right feeling concerning the whole affair, and that many who had not
heard the speech, but read the newspaper reports of it, had found it
without offense.

Clemens wrote contrite letters to Holmes, Emerson, and Longfellow,
and received most gracious acknowledgments. Emerson, indeed, had
not heard the speech: His faculties were already blurred by the
mental mists that would eventually shut him in. Clemens wrote again
to Howells, this time with less anguish.


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Friday, 1877.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Your letter was a godsend; and perhaps the welcomest
part of it was your consent that I write to those gentlemen; for you
discouraged my hints in that direction that morning in Boston--rightly,
too, for my offense was yet too new, then. Warner has tried to hold up
our hands like the good fellow he is, but poor Twichell could not say a
word, and confessed that he would rather take nearly any punishment than
face Livy and me. He hasn't been here since.

It is curious, but I pitched early upon Mr. Norton as the very man who
would think some generous thing about that matter, whether he said it or
not. It is splendid to be a man like that--but it is given to few to be.

I wrote a letter yesterday, and sent a copy to each of the three. I
wanted to send a copy to Mr. Whittier also, since the offense was done
also against him, being committed in his presence and he the guest of the
occasion, besides holding the well-nigh sacred place he does in his
people's estimation; but I didn't know whether to venture or not, and so
ended by doing nothing. It seemed an intrusion to approach him, and even
Livy seemed to have her doubts as to the best and properest way to do in
the case. I do not reverence Mr. Emerson less, but somehow I could
approach him easier.

Send me those proofs, if you have got them handy; I want to submit them
to Wylie; he won't show them to anybody.

Had a very pleasant and considerate letter from Mr. Houghton, today, and
was very glad to receive it.

You can't imagine how brilliant and beautiful that new brass fender is,
and how perfectly naturally it takes its place under the carved oak. How
they did scour it up before they sent it! I lied a good deal about it
when I came home--so for once I kept a secret and surprised Livy on a
Christmas morning!

I haven't done a stroke of work since the Atlantic dinner; have only
moped around. But I'm going to try tomorrow. How could I ever have.

Ah, well, I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and
all His works must be contemplated with respect.

Livy and I join in the warmest regards to you and yours,
Yrs ever,
MARK.

Longfellow, in his reply, said: "I do not believe anybody was much hurt.
Certainly I was not, and Holmes tells me he was not. So I think you may
dismiss the matter from your mind without further remorse."

Holmes wrote: "It never occurred to me for a moment to take offense, or
feel wounded by your playful use of my name."

Miss Ellen Emerson replied for her father (in a letter to Mrs. Clemens)
that the speech had made no impression upon him, giving at considerable
length the impression it had made on herself and other members of the
family.

Clearly, it was not the principals who were hurt, but only those who
held them in awe, though one can realize that this would not make it
much easier for Mark Twain.




XVIII.

LETTERS FROM EUROPE, 1878-79. TRAMPING WITH TWICHELL. WRITING A NEW
TRAVEL BOOK. LIFE IN MUNICH.

Whether the unhappy occurrence at the Whittier dinner had anything
to do with Mark Twain's resolve to spend a year or two in Europe
cannot be known now. There were other good reasons for going, one
in particular being a demand for another book of travel. It was
also true, as he explains in a letter to his mother, that his days
were full of annoyances, making it difficult for him to work. He
had a tendency to invest money in almost any glittering enterprise
that came along, and at this time he was involved in the promotion
of a variety of patent rights that brought him no return other than
assessment and vexation.

Clemens's mother was by this time living with her son Onion and his
wife, in Iowa.


To Mrs. Jane Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:

HARTFORD, Feb. 17, 1878
MY DEAR MOTHER,--I suppose I am the worst correspondent in the whole
world; and yet I grow worse and worse all the time. My conscience
blisters me for not writing you, but it has ceased to abuse me for not
writing other folks.

Life has come to be a very serious matter with me. I have a badgered,
harassed feeling, a good part of my time. It comes mainly of business
responsibilities and annoyances, and the persecution of kindly letters
from well meaning strangers--to whom I must be rudely silent or else put
in the biggest half of my time bothering over answers. There are other
things also that help to consume my time and defeat my projects. Well,
the consequence is, I cannot write a book at home. This cuts my income
down. Therefore, I have about made up my mind to take my tribe and fly
to some little corner of Europe and budge no more until I shall have
completed one of the half dozen books that lie begun, up stairs. Please
say nothing about this at present.

We propose to sail the 11th of April. I shall go to Fredonia to meet
you, but it will not be well for Livy to make that trip I am afraid.
However, we shall see. I will hope she can go.

Mr. Twichell has just come in, so I must go to him. We are all well, and
send love to you all.
Affly,
SAM.


He was writing few letters at this time, and doing but little work.
There were always many social events during the winter, and what
with his European plans and a diligent study of the German language,
which the entire family undertook, his days and evenings were full
enough. Howells wrote protesting against the European travel and
berating him for his silence:

"I never was in Berlin and don't know any family hotel there.
I should be glad I didn't, if it would keep you from going. You
deserve to put up at the Sign of the Savage in Vienna. Really, it's
a great blow to me to hear of that prospected sojourn. It's a
shame. I must see you, somehow, before you go. I'm in dreadfully
low spirits about it.

"I was afraid your silence meant something wicked."

Clemens replied promptly, urging a visit to Hartford, adding a
postscript for Mrs. Howells, characteristic enough to warrant
preservation.


P. S. to Mrs. Howells, in Boston:

Feb. '78.
DEAR MRS. HOWELLS. Mrs. Clemens wrote you a letter, and handed it to me
half an hour ago, while I was folding mine to Mr. Howells. I laid that
letter on this table before me while I added the paragraph about R,'s
application. Since then I have been hunting and swearing, and swearing
and hunting, but I can't find a sign of that letter. It is the most
astonishing disappearance I ever heard of. Mrs. Clemens has gone off
driving--so I will have to try and give you an idea of her communication
from memory. Mainly it consisted of an urgent desire that you come to
see us next week, if you can possibly manage it, for that will be a
reposeful time, the turmoil of breaking up beginning the week after. She
wants you to tell her about Italy, and advise her in that connection, if
you will. Then she spoke of her plans--hers, mind you, for I never have
anything quite so definite as a plan. She proposes to stop a fortnight
in (confound the place, I've forgotten what it was,) then go and live in
Dresden till sometime in the summer; then retire to Switzerland for the
hottest season, then stay a while in Venice and put in the winter in
Munich. This program subject to modifications according to
circumstances. She said something about some little by-trips here and
there, but they didn't stick in my memory because the idea didn't charm
me.

(They have just telephoned me from the Courant office that Bayard Taylor
and family have taken rooms in our ship, the Holsatia, for the 11th
April.)

Do come, if you possibly can!--and remember and don't forget to avoid
letting Mrs. Clemens find out I lost her letter. Just answer her the
same as if you had got it.
Sincerely yours
S. L. CLEMENS.


The Howellses came, as invited, for a final reunion before the
breaking up. This was in the early half of March; the Clemenses
were to sail on the 11th of the following month.

Orion Clemens, meantime, had conceived a new literary idea and was
piling in his MS. as fast as possible to get his brother's judgment
on it before the sailing-date. It was not a very good time to send
MS., but Mark Twain seems to have read it and given it some
consideration. "The Journey in Heaven," of his own, which he
mentions, was the story published so many years later under the
title of "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven." He had began it in
1868, on his voyage to San Francisco, it having been suggested by
conversations with Capt. Ned Wakeman, of one of the Pacific
steamers. Wakeman also appears in 'Roughing It,' Chap. L, as Capt.
Ned Blakely, and again in one of the "Rambling Notes of an Idle
Excursion," as "Captain Hurricane Jones."


To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk:

HARTFORD, Mch. 23, 1878.
MY DEAR BRO.,--Every man must learn his trade--not pick it up.
God requires that he learn it by slow and painful processes. The
apprentice-hand, in black-smithing, in medicine, in literature, in
everything, is a thing that can't be hidden. It always shows.

But happily there is a market for apprentice work, else the "Innocents
Abroad" would have had no sale. Happily, too, there's a wider market for
some sorts of apprentice literature than there is for the very best of
journey-work. This work of yours is exceedingly crude, but I am free to
say it is less crude than I expected it to be, and considerably better
work than I believed you could do, it is too crude to offer to any
prominent periodical, so I shall speak to the N. Y. Weekly people. To
publish it there will be to bury it. Why could not same good genius have
sent me to the N. Y. Weekly with my apprentice sketches?

You should not publish it in book form at all--for this reason: it is
only an imitation of Verne--it is not a burlesque. But I think it may be
regarded as proof that Verne cannot be burlesqued.

In accompanying notes I have suggested that you vastly modify the first
visit to hell, and leave out the second visit altogether. Nobody would,
or ought to print those things. You are not advanced enough in
literature to venture upon a matter requiring so much practice. Let me
show you what a man has got to go through:

Nine years ago I mapped out my "Journey in Heaven." I discussed it with
literary friends whom I could trust to keep it to themselves.

I gave it a deal of thought, from time to time. After a year or more I
wrote it up. It was not a success. Five years ago I wrote it again,
altering the plan. That MS is at my elbow now. It was a considerable
improvement on the first attempt, but still it wouldn't do--last year and
year before I talked frequently with Howells about the subject, and he
kept urging me to do it again.

So I thought and thought, at odd moments and at last I struck what I
considered to be the right plan! Mind I have never altered the ideas,
from the first--the plan was the difficulty. When Howells was here last,
I laid before him the whole story without referring to my MS and he said:
"You have got it sure this time. But drop the idea of making mere
magazine stuff of it. Don't waste it. Print it by itself--publish it
first in England--ask Dean Stanley to endorse it, which will draw some of
the teeth of the religious press, and then reprint in America." I doubt
my ability to get Dean Stanley to do anything of the sort, but I shall do
the rest--and this is all a secret which you must not divulge.

Now look here--I have tried, all these years, to think of some way of
"doing" hell too--and have always had to give it up. Hell, in my book,
will not occupy five pages of MS I judge--it will be only covert hints,
I suppose, and quickly dropped, I may end by not even referring to it.

And mind you, in my opinion you will find that you can't write up hell so
it will stand printing. Neither Howells nor I believe in hell or the
divinity of the Savior, but no matter, the Savior is none the less a
sacred Personage, and a man should have no desire or disposition to refer
to him lightly, profanely, or otherwise than with the profoundest
reverence.

The only safe thing is not to introduce him, or refer to him at all,
I suspect. I have entirely rewritten one book 3 (perhaps 4.) times,
changing the plan every time--1200 pages of MS. wasted and burned--and
shall tackle it again, one of these years and maybe succeed at last.
Therefore you need not expect to get your book right the first time.
Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and
lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are
God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases
to get under the bed, by and by.

Mr. Perkins will send you and Ma your checks when we are gone. But don't
write him, ever, except a single line in case he forgets the checks--for
the man is driven to death with work.

I see you are half promising yourself a monthly return for your book.
In my experience, previously counted chickens never do hatch. How many
of mine I have counted! and never a one of them but failed! It is much
better to hedge disappointment by not counting.--Unexpected money is a
delight. The same sum is a bitterness when you expected more.

My time in America is growing mighty short. Perhaps we can manage in
this way: Imprimis, if the N. Y. Weekly people know that you are my
brother, they will turn that fact into an advertisement--a thing of value
to them, but not to you and me. This must be prevented. I will write
them a note to say you have a friend near Keokuk, Charles S. Miller,
who has a MS for sale which you think is a pretty clever travesty on
Verne; and if they want it they might write to him in your care. Then if
any correspondence ensues between you and them, let Mollie write for you
and sign your name--your own hand writing representing Miller's. Keep
yourself out of sight till you make a strike on your own merits there is
no other way to get a fair verdict upon your merits.

Later-I've written the note to Smith, and with nothing in it which he can
use as an advertisement. I'm called--Good bye-love to you both.

We leave here next Wednesday for Elmira: we leave there Apl. 9 or 10--and
sail 11th
Yr Bro.
SAM.


In the letter that follows the mention of Annie and Sam refers, of
course, to the children of Mrs. Moffett, who had been, Pamela
Clemens. They were grown now, and Annie Moffett was married to
Charles L. Webster, who later was to become Mark Twain's business
partner. The Moffetts and Websters were living in Fredonia at this
time, and Clemens had been to pay them a good-by visit. The Taylor
dinner mentioned was a farewell banquet given to Bayard Taylor, who
had been appointed Minister to Germany, and was to sail on the ship
with Mark Twain. Mark Twain's mother was visiting in Fredonia when
this letter was written.


To Mrs. Jane Clemens, in Fredonia:

Apr. 7, '78.
MY DEAR MOTHER,--I have told Livy all about Annie's beautiful house, and
about Sam and Charley, and about Charley's ingenious manufactures and his
strong manhood and good promise, and how glad I am that he and Annie
married. And I have told her about Annie's excellent house-keeping, also
about the great Bacon conflict; (I told you it was a hundred to one that
neither Livy nor the European powers had heard of that desolating
struggle.)

And I have told her how beautiful you are in your age and how bright your
mind is with its old-time brightness, and how she and the children would
enjoy you. And I have told her how singularly young Pamela is looking,
and what a fine large fellow Sam is, and how ill the lingering syllable
"my" to his name fits his port and figure.

Well, Pamela, after thinking it over for a day or so, I came near
inquiring about a state-room in our ship for Sam, to please you, but my
wiser former resolution came back to me. It is not for his good that he
have friends in the ship. His conduct in the Bacon business shows that
he will develop rapidly into a manly man as soon as he is cast loose from
your apron strings.

You don't teach him to push ahead and do and dare things for himself, but
you do just the reverse. You are assisted in your damaging work by the
tyrannous ways of a village--villagers watch each other and so make
cowards of each other. After Sam shall have voyaged to Europe by
himself, and rubbed against the world and taken and returned its cuffs,
do you think he will hesitate to escort a guest into any whisky-mill in
Fredonia when he himself has no sinful business to transact there?
No, he will smile at the idea. If he avoids this courtesy now from
principle, of course I find no fault with it at all--only if he thinks it
is principle he may be mistaken; a close examination may show it is only
a bowing to the tyranny of public opinion.

I only say it may--I cannot venture to say it will. Hartford is not a
large place, but it is broader than to have ways of that sort. Three or
four weeks ago, at a Moody and Sankey meeting, the preacher read a letter
from somebody "exposing" the fact that a prominent clergyman had gone
from one of those meetings, bought a bottle of lager beer and drank it on
the premises (a drug store.)

A tempest of indignation swept the town. Our clergymen and everybody
else said the "culprit" had not only done an innocent thing, but had done
it in an open, manly way, and it was nobody's right or business to find
fault with it. Perhaps this dangerous latitude comes of the fact that we
never have any temperance "rot" going on in Hartford.

I find here a letter from Orion, submitting some new matter in his story
for criticism. When you write him, please tell him to do the best he can
and bang away. I can do nothing further in this matter, for I have but 3
days left in which to settle a deal of important business and answer a
bushel and a half of letters. I am very nearly tired to death.

I was so jaded and worn, at the Taylor dinner, that I found I could not
remember 3 sentences of the speech I had memorized, and therefore got up
and said so and excused myself from speaking. I arrived here at 3
o'clock this morning. I think the next 3 days will finish me. The idea
of sitting down to a job of literary criticism is simply ludicrous.

A young lady passenger in our ship has been placed under Livy's charge.
Livy couldn't easily get out of it, and did not want to, on her own
account, but fully expected I would make trouble when I heard of it.
But I didn't. A girl can't well travel alone, so I offered no objection.
She leaves us at Hamburg. So I've got 6 people in my care, now--which is
just 6 too many for a man of my unexecutive capacity. I expect nothing
else but to lose some of them overboard.

We send our loving good-byes to all the household and hope to see you
again after a spell.
Affly Yrs.
SAM.


There are no other American letters of this period. The Clemens
party, which included Miss Clara Spaulding, of Elmira, sailed as
planned, on the Holsatia, April 11, 1878. As before stated, Bayard
Taylor was on the ship; also Murat Halstead and family. On the eve
of departure, Clemens sent to Howells this farewell word:

"And that reminds me, ungrateful dog that I am, that I owe as much
to your training as the rude country job-printer owes to the city
boss who takes him in hand and teaches him the right way to handle
his art. I was talking to Mrs. Clemens about this the other day,
and grieving because I never mentioned it to you, thereby seeming to
ignore it, or to be unaware of it. Nothing that has passed under
your eye needs any revision before going into a volume, while all my
other stuff does need so much."

A characteristic tribute, and from the heart.

The first European letter came from Frankfort, a rest on their way
to Heidelberg.


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN, May 4, 1878.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I only propose to write a single line to say we are
still around. Ah, I have such a deep, grateful, unutterable sense of
being "out of it all." I think I foretaste some of the advantages of
being dead. Some of the joy of it. I don't read any newspapers or care
for them. When people tell me England has declared war, I drop the
subject, feeling that it is none of my business; when they tell me Mrs.
Tilton has confessed and Mr. B. denied, I say both of them have done that
before, therefore let the worn stub of the Plymouth white-wash brush be
brought out once more, and let the faithful spit on their hands and get
to work again regardless of me--for I am out of it all.