The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete

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


The first time we called at the convent, Pere Jacopo was absent; the next
(Just at this moment Miss Spaulding spoke up and said something about
Pere Jacopo--there is more in this acting of one mind upon another than
people think) time, he was there, and gave us preserved rose-leaves to
eat, and talked about you, and Mrs. Howells, and Winnie, and brought out
his photographs, and showed us a picture of "the library of your new
house," but not so--it was the study in your Cambridge house. He was
very sweet and good. He called on us next day; the day after that we
left Venice, after a pleasant sojourn Of 3 or 4 weeks. He expects to
spend this winter in Munich and will see us often, he said.

Pretty soon, I am going to write something, and when I finish it I shall
know whether to put it to itself or in the "Contributors' Club." That
"Contributors' Club" was a most happy idea. By the way, I think that the
man who wrote the paragraph beginning at the bottom of page 643 has said
a mighty sound and sensible thing. I wish his suggestion could be
adopted.

It is lovely of you to keep that old pipe in such a place of honor.

While it occurs to me, I must tell you Susie's last. She is sorely
badgered with dreams; and her stock dream is that she is being eaten up
by bears. She is a grave and thoughtful child, as you will remember.
Last night she had the usual dream. This morning she stood apart (after
telling it,) for some time, looking vacantly at the floor, and absorbed
in meditation. At last she looked up, and with the pathos of one who
feels he has not been dealt by with even-handed fairness, said "But
Mamma, the trouble is, that I am never the bear, but always the person."

It would not have occurred to me that there might be an advantage, even
in a dream, in occasionally being the eater, instead of always the party
eaten, but I easily perceived that her point was well taken.

I'm sending to Heidelberg for your letter and Winnie's, and I do hope
they haven't been lost.

My wife and I send love to you all.
Yrs ever,
MARK.


The Howells story, running at this time in the Atlantic, and so much
enjoyed by the Clemens party, was "The Lady of the Aroostook." The
suggestions made for enlarging the part of the "old man" are
eminently characteristic.

Mark Twain's forty-third birthday came in Munich, and in his letter
conveying this fact to his mother we get a brief added outline of
the daily life in that old Bavarian city. Certainly, it would seem
to have been a quieter and more profitable existence than he had
known amid the confusion of things left behind in, America.


To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in America:

No. 1a Karlstrasse,
Dec. 1, MUNICH. 1878.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I broke the back of life yesterday and
started down-hill toward old age. This fact has not produced any effect
upon me that I can detect.

I suppose we are located here for the winter. I have a pleasant
work-room a mile from here where I do my writing. The walk to and from
that place gives me what exercise I need, and all I take. We staid three
weeks in Venice, a week in Florence, a fortnight in Rome, and arrived
here a couple of weeks ago. Livy and Miss Spaulding are studying drawing
and German, and the children have a German day-governess. I cannot see
but that the children speak German as well as they do English.

Susie often translates Livy's orders to the servants. I cannot work and
study German at the same time: so I have dropped the latter, and do not
even read the language, except in the morning paper to get the news.

We have all pretty good health, latterly, and have seldom had to call the
doctor. The children have been in the open air pretty constantly for
months now. In Venice they were on the water in the gondola most of the
time, and were great friends with our gondolier; and in Rome and Florence
they had long daily tramps, for Rosa is a famous hand to smell out the
sights of a strange place. Here they wander less extensively.

The family all join in love to you all and to Orion and Mollie.
Affly
Your son
SAM.




XIX.

LETTERS 1879. RETURN TO AMERICA. THE GREAT GRANT REUNION

Life went on very well in Munich. Each day the family fell more in love
with Fraulein Dahlweiner and her house.

Mark Twain, however, did not settle down to his work readily. His
"pleasant work-room" provided exercise, but no inspiration. When he
discovered he could not find his Swiss note-book he was ready to give up
his travel-writing altogether. In the letter that follows we find him
much less enthusiastic concerning his own performances than over the
story by Howells, which he was following in the Atlantic.

The "detective" chapter mentioned in this letter was not included in
'A Tramp Abroad.' It was published separately, as 'The Stolen White
Elephant' in a volume bearing that title. The play, which he had now
found "dreadfully witless and flat," was no other than "Simon Wheeler,
Detective," which he had once regarded so highly. The "Stewart" referred
to was the millionaire merchant, A. T. Stewart, whose body was stolen in
the expectation of reward.


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

MUNICH, Jan. 21, (1879)
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It's no use, your letter miscarried in some way and is
lost. The consul has made a thorough search and says he has not been
able to trace it. It is unaccountable, for all the letters I did not
want arrived without a single grateful failure. Well, I have read-up,
now, as far as you have got, that is, to where there's a storm at sea
approaching,--and we three think you are clear, out-Howellsing Howells.
If your literature has not struck perfection now we are not able to see
what is lacking. It is all such truth--truth to the life; every where
your pen falls it leaves a photograph. I did imagine that everything had
been said about life at sea that could be said, but no matter, it was all
a failure and lies, nothing but lies with a thin varnish of fact,--only
you have stated it as it absolutely is. And only you see people and
their ways, and their insides and outsides as they are, and make them
talk as they do talk. I think you are the very greatest artist in these
tremendous mysteries that ever lived. There doesn't seem to be anything
that can be concealed from your awful all-seeing eye. It must be a
cheerful thing for one to live with you and be aware that you are going
up and down in him like another conscience all the time. Possibly you
will not be a fully accepted classic until you have been dead a hundred
years,--it is the fate of the Shakespeares and of all genuine prophets,
--but then your books will be as common as Bibles, I believe. You're not
a weed, but an oak; not a summer-house, but a cathedral. In that day I
shall still be in the Cyclopedias, too, thus: "Mark Twain; history and
occupation unknown--but he was personally acquainted with Howells."
There--I could sing your praises all day, and feel and believe every bit
of it.

My book is half finished; I wish to heaven it was done. I have given up
writing a detective novel--can't write a novel, for I lack the faculty;
but when the detectives were nosing around after Stewart's loud remains,
I threw a chapter into my present book in which I have very extravagantly
burlesqued the detective business--if it is possible to burlesque that
business extravagantly. You know I was going to send you that detective
play, so that you could re-write it. Well I didn't do it because I
couldn't find a single idea in it that could be useful to you. It was
dreadfully witless and flat. I knew it would sadden you and unfit you
for work.

I have always been sorry we threw up that play embodying Orion which you
began. It was a mistake to do that. Do keep that MS and tackle it
again. It will work out all right; you will see. I don't believe that
that character exists in literature in so well-developed a condition as
it exists in Orion's person. Now won't you put Orion in a story? Then
he will go handsomely into a play afterwards. How deliciously you could
paint him--it would make fascinating reading--the sort that makes a
reader laugh and cry at the same time, for Orion is as good and
ridiculous a soul as ever was.

Ah, to think of Bayard Taylor! It is too sad to talk about. I was so
glad there was not a single sting and so many good praiseful words in the
Atlantic's criticism of Deukalion.
Love to you all
Yrs Ever
MARK

We remain here till middle of March.


In 'A Tramp Abroad' there is an incident in which the author
describes himself as hunting for a lost sock in the dark, in a vast
hotel bedroom at Heilbronn. The account of the real incident, as
written to Twichell, seems even more amusing.

The "Yarn About the Limburger Cheese and the Box of Guns," like "The
Stolen White Elephant," did not find place in the travel-book, but
was published in the same volume with the elephant story, added to
the rambling notes of "An Idle Excursion."

With the discovery of the Swiss note-book, work with Mark Twain was
going better. His letter reflects his enthusiasm.


To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

MUNICH, Jan 26 '79.
DEAR OLD JOE,--Sunday. Your delicious letter arrived exactly at the
right time. It was laid by my plate as I was finishing breakfast at 12
noon. Livy and Clara, (Spaulding) arrived from church 5 minutes later;
I took a pipe and spread myself out on the sofa, and Livy sat by and
read, and I warmed to that butcher the moment he began to swear. There
is more than one way of praying, and I like the butcher's way because the
petitioner is so apt to be in earnest. I was peculiarly alive to his
performance just at this time, for another reason, to wit: Last night I
awoke at 3 this morning, and after raging to my self for 2 interminable
hours, I gave it up. I rose, assumed a catlike stealthiness, to keep
from waking Livy, and proceeded to dress in the pitch dark. Slowly but
surely I got on garment after garment--all down to one sock; I had one
slipper on and the other in my hand. Well, on my hands and knees I crept
softly around, pawing and feeling and scooping along the carpet, and
among chair-legs for that missing sock; I kept that up; and still kept it
up and kept it up. At first I only said to myself, "Blame that sock,"
but that soon ceased to answer; my expletives grew steadily stronger and
stronger,--and at last, when I found I was lost, I had to sit flat down
on the floor and take hold of something to keep from lifting the roof off
with the profane explosion that was trying to get out of me. I could see
the dim blur of the window, but of course it was in the wrong place and
could give me no information as to where I was. But I had one comfort
--I had not waked Livy; I believed I could find that sock in silence if
the night lasted long enough. So I started again and softly pawed all
over the place,--and sure enough at the end of half an hour I laid my
hand on the missing article. I rose joyfully up and butted the wash-bowl
and pitcher off the stand and simply raised----so to speak. Livy
screamed, then said, "Who is that? what is the matter?" I said "There
ain't anything the matter--I'm hunting for my sock." She said, "Are you
hunting for it with a club?"

I went in the parlor and lit the lamp, and gradually the fury subsided
and the ridiculous features of the thing began to suggest themselves.
So I lay on the sofa, with note-book and pencil, and transferred the
adventure to our big room in the hotel at Heilbronn, and got it on paper
a good deal to my satisfaction.

I found the Swiss note-book, some time ago. When it was first lost I was
glad of it, for I was getting an idea that I had lost my faculty of
writing sketches of travel; therefore the loss of that note-book would
render the writing of this one simply impossible, and let me gracefully
out; I was about to write to Bliss and propose some other book, when the
confounded thing turned up, and down went my heart into my boots. But
there was now no excuse, so I went solidly to work--tore up a great part
of the MS written in Heidelberg,--wrote and tore up,--continued to write
and tear up,--and at last, reward of patient and noble persistence, my
pen got the old swing again!

Since then I'm glad Providence knew better what to do with the Swiss
note-book than I did, for I like my work, now, exceedingly, and often
turn out over 30 MS pages a day and then quit sorry that Heaven makes the
days so short.

One of my discouragements had been the belief that my interest in this
tour had been so slender that I couldn't gouge matter enough out of it to
make a book. What a mistake. I've got 900 pages written (not a word in
it about the sea voyage) yet I stepped my foot out of Heidelberg for the
first time yesterday,--and then only to take our party of four on our
first pedestrian tour--to Heilbronn. I've got them dressed elaborately
in walking costume--knapsacks, canteens, field-glasses, leather leggings,
patent walking shoes, muslin folds around their hats, with long tails
hanging down behind, sun umbrellas, and Alpenstocks. They go all the way
to Wimpfen by rail-thence to Heilbronn in a chance vegetable cart drawn
by a donkey and a cow; I shall fetch them home on a raft; and if other
people shall perceive that that was no pedestrian excursion, they
themselves shall not be conscious of it.--This trip will take 100 pages
or more,--oh, goodness knows how many! for the mood is everything, not
the material, and I already seem to see 300 pages rising before me on
that trip. Then, I propose to leave Heidelberg for good. Don't you see,
the book (1800 MS pages,) may really be finished before I ever get to
Switzerland?

But there's one thing; I want to tell Frank Bliss and his father to be
charitable toward me in,--that is, let me tear up all the MS I want to,
and give me time to write more. I shan't waste the time--I haven't the
slightest desire to loaf, but a consuming desire to work, ever since I
got back my swing. And you see this book is either going to be compared
with the Innocents Abroad, or contrasted with it, to my disadvantage.
I think I can make a book that will be no dead corpse of a thing and I
mean to do my level best to accomplish that.

My crude plans are crystalizing. As the thing stands now, I went to
Europe for three purposes. The first you know, and must keep secret,
even from the Blisses; the second is to study Art; and the third to
acquire a critical knowledge of the German language. My MS already shows
that the two latter objects are accomplished. It shows that I am moving
about as an Artist and a Philologist, and unaware that there is any
immodesty in assuming these titles. Having three definite objects has
had the effect of seeming to enlarge my domain and give me the freedom of
a loose costume. It is three strings to my bow, too.

Well, your butcher is magnificent. He won't stay out of my mind.--I keep
trying to think of some way of getting your account of him into my book
without his being offended--and yet confound him there isn't anything you
have said which he would see any offense in,--I'm only thinking of his
friends--they are the parties who busy themselves with seeing things for
people. But I'm bound to have him in. I'm putting in the yarn about the
Limburger cheese and the box of guns, too--mighty glad Howells declined
it. It seems to gather richness and flavor with age. I have very nearly
killed several companies with that narrative,--the American Artists Club,
here, for instance, and Smith and wife and Miss Griffith (they were here
in this house a week or two.) I've got other chapters that pretty nearly
destroyed the same parties, too.

O, Switzerland! the further it recedes into the enriching haze of time,
the more intolerably delicious the charm of it and the cheer of it and
the glory and majesty and solemnity and pathos of it grow. Those
mountains had a soul; they thought; they spoke,--one couldn't hear it
with the ears of the body, but what a voice it was!--and how real. Deep
down in my memory it is sounding yet. Alp calleth unto Alp!--that
stately old Scriptural wording is the right one for God's Alps and God's
ocean. How puny we were in that awful presence--and how painless it was
to be so; how fitting and right it seemed, and how stingless was the
sense of our unspeakable insignificance. And Lord how pervading were the
repose and peace and blessedness that poured out of the heart of the
invisible Great Spirit of the Mountains.

Now what is it? There are mountains and mountains and mountains in this
world--but only these take you by the heart-strings. I wonder what the
secret of it is. Well, time and time again it has seemed to me that I
must drop everything and flee to Switzerland once more. It is a longing
--a deep, strong, tugging longing--that is the word. We must go again,
Joe.--October days, let us get up at dawn and breakfast at the tower. I
should like that first rate.

Livy and all of us send deluges of love to you and Harmony and all the
children. I dreamed last night that I woke up in the library at home and
your children were frolicing around me and Julia was sitting in my lap;
you and Harmony and both families of Warners had finished their welcomes
and were filing out through the conservatory door, wrecking Patrick's
flower pots with their dress skirts as they went. Peace and plenty abide
with you all!
MARK.

I want the Blisses to know their part of this letter, if possible. They
will see that my delay was not from choice.


Following the life of Mark Twain, whether through his letters or
along the sequence of detailed occurrence, we are never more than a
little while, or a little distance, from his brother Orion. In one
form or another Orion is ever present, his inquiries, his proposals,
his suggestions, his plans for improving his own fortunes, command
our attention. He was one of the most human creatures that ever
lived; indeed, his humanity excluded every form of artificiality
--everything that needs to be acquired. Talented, trusting,
child-like, carried away by the impulse of the moment, despite a
keen sense of humor he was never able to see that his latest plan
or project was not bound to succeed. Mark Twain loved him, pitied
him--also enjoyed him, especially with Howells. Orion's new plan
to lecture in the interest of religion found its way to Munich,
with the following result:


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

MUNICH, Feb. 9. (1879)
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I have just received this letter from Orion--take care
of it, for it is worth preserving. I got as far as 9 pages in my answer
to it, when Mrs. Clemens shut down on it, and said it was cruel, and made
me send the money and simply wish his lecture success. I said I couldn't
lose my 9 pages--so she said send them to you. But I will acknowledge
that I thought I was writing a very kind letter.

Now just look at this letter of Orion's. Did you ever see the
grotesquely absurd and the heart-breakingly pathetic more closely joined
together? Mrs. Clemens said "Raise his monthly pension." So I wrote to
Perkins to raise it a trifle.

Now only think of it! He still has 100 pages to write on his lecture,
yet in one inking of his pen he has already swooped around the United
States and invested the result!

You must put him in a book or a play right away. You are the only man
capable of doing it. You might die at any moment, and your very greatest
work would be lost to the world. I could write Orion's simple biography,
and make it effective, too, by merely stating the bald facts--and this I
will do if he dies before I do; but you must put him into romance. This
was the understanding you and I had the day I sailed.

Observe Orion's career--that is, a little of it: (1) He has belonged to
as many as five different religious denominations; last March he withdrew
from the deaconship in a Congregational Church and the Superintendency of
its Sunday School, in a speech in which he said that for many months (it
runs in my mind that he said 13 years,) he had been a confirmed infidel,
and so felt it to be his duty to retire from the flock.

2. After being a republican for years, he wanted me to buy him a
democratic newspaper. A few days before the Presidential election, he
came out in a speech and publicly went over to the democrats; he
prudently "hedged" by voting for 6 state republicans, also.

The new convert was made one of the secretaries of the democratic
meeting, and placed in the list of speakers. He wrote me jubilantly of
what a ten-strike he was going to make with that speech. All right--but
think of his innocent and pathetic candor in writing me something like
this, a week later:

"I was more diffident than I had expected to be, and this was increased
by the silence with which I was received when I came forward; so I seemed
unable to get the fire into my speech which I had calculated upon, and
presently they began to get up and go out; and in a few minutes they all
rose up and went away."

How could a man uncover such a sore as that and show it to another? Not
a word of complaint, you see--only a patient, sad surprise.

3. His next project was to write a burlesque upon Paradise Lost.

4. Then, learning that the Times was paying Harte $100 a column for
stories, he concluded to write some for the same price. I read his first
one and persuaded him not to write any more.

5. Then he read proof on the N. Y. Eve. Post at $10 a week and meekly
observed that the foreman swore at him and ordered him around "like a
steamboat mate."

6. Being discharged from that post, he wanted to try agriculture--was
sure he could make a fortune out of a chicken farm. I gave him $900 and
he went to a ten-house village a miles above Keokuk on the river bank
--this place was a railway station. He soon asked for money to buy a
horse and light wagon,--because the trains did not run at church time on
Sunday and his wife found it rather far to walk.

For a long time I answered demands for "loans" and by next mail always
received his check for the interest due me to date. In the most
guileless way he let it leak out that he did not underestimate the value
of his custom to me, since it was not likely that any other customer of
mine paid his interest quarterly, and this enabled me to use my capital
twice in 6 months instead of only once. But alas, when the debt at last
reached $1800 or $2500 (I have forgotten which) the interest ate too
formidably into his borrowings, and so he quietly ceased to pay it or
speak of it. At the end of two years I found that the chicken farm had
long ago been abandoned, and he had moved into Keokuk. Later in one of
his casual moments, he observed that there was no money in fattening a
chicken on 65 cents worth of corn and then selling it for 50.

7. Finally, if I would lend him $500 a year for two years, (this was 4
or 5 years ago,) he knew he could make a success as a lawyer, and would
prove it. This is the pension which we have just increased to $600. The
first year his legal business brought him $5. It also brought him an
unremunerative case where some villains were trying to chouse some negro
orphans out of $700. He still has this case. He has waggled it around
through various courts and made some booming speeches on it. The negro
children have grown up and married off, now, I believe, and their
litigated town-lot has been dug up and carted off by somebody--but Orion
still infests the courts with his documents and makes the welkin ring
with his venerable case. The second year, he didn't make anything. The
third he made $6, and I made Bliss put a case in his hands--about half an
hour's work. Orion charged $50 for it--Bliss paid him $15. Thus four or
five years of slaving has brought him $26, but this will doubtless be
increased when he gets done lecturing and buys that "law library."
Meantime his office rent has been $60 a year, and he has stuck to that
lair day by day as patiently as a spider.

8. Then he by and by conceived the idea of lecturing around America as
"Mark Twain's Brother"--that to be on the bills. Subject of proposed
lecture, "On the Formation of Character."