The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete

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


9. I protested, and he got on his warpaint, couched his lance, and ran a
bold tilt against total abstinence and the Red Ribbon fanatics. It
raised a fine row among the virtuous Keokukians.

10. I wrote to encourage him in his good work, but I had let a mail
intervene; so by the time my letter reached him he was already winning
laurels as a Red Ribbon Howler.

11. Afterward he took a rabid part in a prayer-meeting epidemic; dropped
that to travesty Jules Verne; dropped that, in the middle of the last
chapter, last March, to digest the matter of an infidel book which he
proposed to write; and now he comes to the surface to rescue our "noble
and beautiful religion" from the sacrilegious talons of Bob Ingersoll.

Now come! Don't fool away this treasure which Providence has laid at
your feet, but take it up and use it. One can let his imagination run
riot in portraying Orion, for there is nothing so extravagant as to be
out of character with him.

Well-good-bye, and a short life and a merry one be yours. Poor old
Methusaleh, how did he manage to stand it so long?
Yrs ever,
MARK.


To Orion Clemens
(Unsent and inclosed with the foregoing, to W. D. Howells):

MUNICH, Feb. 9, (1879)
MY DEAR BRO.,--Yours has just arrived. I enclose a draft on Hartford for
$25. You will have abandoned the project you wanted it for, by the time
it arrives,--but no matter, apply it to your newer and present project,
whatever it is. You see I have an ineradicable faith in your
unsteadfastness,--but mind you, I didn't invent that faith, you conferred
it on me yourself. But fire away, fire away! I don't see why a
changeable man shouldn't get as much enjoyment out of his changes, and
transformations and transfigurations as a steadfast man gets out of
standing still and pegging at the same old monotonous thing all the time.
That is to say, I don't see why a kaleidoscope shouldn't enjoy itself as
much as a telescope, nor a grindstone have as good a time as a whetstone,
nor a barometer as good a time as a yardstick. I don't feel like girding
at you any more about fickleness of purpose, because I recognize and
realize at last that it is incurable; but before I learned to accept this
truth, each new weekly project of yours possessed the power of throwing
me into the most exhausting and helpless convulsions of profanity. But
fire away, now! Your magic has lost its might. I am able to view your
inspirations dispassionately and judicially, now, and say "This one or
that one or the other one is not up to your average flight, or is above
it, or below it."

And so, without passion, or prejudice, or bias of any kind, I sit in
judgment upon your lecture project, and say it was up to your average,
it was indeed above it, for it had possibilities in it, and even
practical ones. While I was not sorry you abandoned it, I should not be
sorry if you had stuck to it and given it a trial. But on the whole you
did the wise thing to lay it aside, I think, because a lecture is a most
easy thing to fail in; and at your time of life, and in your own town,
such a failure would make a deep and cruel wound in your heart and in
your pride. It was decidedly unwise in you to think for a moment of
coming before a community who knew you, with such a course of lectures;
because Keokuk is not unaware that you have been a Swedenborgian, a
Presbyterian, a Congregationalist, and a Methodist (on probation), and
that just a year ago you were an infidel. If Keokuk had gone to your
lecture course, it would have gone to be amused, not instructed, for when
a man is known to have no settled convictions of his own he can't
convince other people. They would have gone to be amused and that would
have been a deep humiliation to you. It could have been safe for you to
appear only where you were unknown--then many of your hearers would think
you were in earnest. And they would be right. You are in earnest while
your convictions are new. But taking it by and large, you probably did
best to discard that project altogether. But I leave you to judge of
that, for you are the worst judge I know of.

(Unfinished.)


That Mark Twain in many ways was hardly less child-like than his
brother is now and again revealed in his letters. He was of
steadfast purpose, and he possessed the driving power which Orion
Clemens lacked; but the importance to him of some of the smaller
matters of life, as shown in a letter like the following, bespeaks a
certain simplicity of nature which he never outgrew:


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

MUNICH, Feb. 24. (1879)
DEAR OLD JOE,--It was a mighty good letter, Joe--and that idea of yours
is a rattling good one. But I have not sot down here to answer your
letter,--for it is down at my study,--but only to impart some
information.

For a months I had not shaved without crying. I'd spend 3/4 of an hour
whetting away on my hand--no use, couldn't get an edge. Tried a razor
strop-same result. So I sat down and put in an hour thinking out the
mystery. Then it seemed plain--to wit: my hand can't give a razor an
edge, it can only smooth and refine an edge that has already been given.
I judge that a razor fresh from the hone is this shape V--the long point
being the continuation of the edge--and that after much use the shape is
this V--the attenuated edge all worn off and gone. By George I knew that
was the explanation. And I knew that a freshly honed and freshly
strapped razor won't cut, but after strapping on the hand as a final
operation, it will cut.--So I sent out for an oil-stone; none to be had,
but messenger brought back a little piece of rock the size of a
Safety-match box--(it was bought in a shoemaker's shop) bad flaw in
middle of it, too, but I put 4 drops of fine Olive oil on it, picked out
the razor marked "Thursday" because it was never any account and would be
no loss if I spoiled it--gave it a brisk and reckless honing for 10
minutes, then tried it on a hair--it wouldn't cut. Then I trotted it
through a vigorous 20-minute course on a razor-strap and tried it on a
hair-it wouldn't cut--tried it on my face--it made me cry--gave it a
5-minute stropping on my hand, and my land, what an edge she had!
We thought we knew what sharp razors were when we were tramping in
Switzerland, but it was a mistake--they were dull beside this old
Thursday razor of mine--which I mean to name Thursday October Christian,
in gratitude. I took my whetstone, and in 20 minutes I put two more of
my razors in splendid condition--but I leave them in the box--I never use
any but Thursday O. C., and shan't till its edge is gone--and then I'll
know how to restore it without any delay.

We all go to Paris next Thursday--address, Monroe & Co., Bankers.
With love
Ys Ever
MARK.


In Paris they found pleasant quarters at the Hotel Normandy, but it
was a chilly, rainy spring, and the travelers gained a rather poor
impression of the French capital. Mark Twain's work did not go
well, at first, because of the noises of the street. But then he
found a quieter corner in the hotel and made better progress. In a
brief note to Aldrich he said: "I sleep like a lamb and write like a
lion--I mean the kind of a lion that writes--if any such." He
expected to finish the book in six weeks; that is to say, before
returning to America. He was looking after its illustrations
himself, and a letter to Frank Bliss, of The American Publishing
Company, refers to the frontpiece, which, from time to time, has
caused question as to its origin. To Bliss he says: "It is a thing
which I manufactured by pasting a popular comic picture into the
middle of a celebrated Biblical one--shall attribute it to Titian.
It needs to be engraved by a master."

The weather continued bad in France and they left there in July to
find it little better in England. They had planned a journey to
Scotland to visit Doctor Brown, whose health was not very good. In
after years Mark Twain blamed himself harshly for not making the
trip, which he declared would have meant so much to Mrs. Clemens.
He had forgotten by that time the real reasons for not going--the
continued storms and uncertainty of trains (which made it barely
possible for them to reach Liverpool in time for their
sailing-date), and with characteristic self-reproach vowed that
only perversity and obstinacy on his part had prevented the journey
to Scotland. From Liverpool, on the eve of sailing, he sent Doctor
Brown a good-by word.


To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:

WASHINGTON HOTEL, LIME STREET, LIVERPOOL.
Aug. (1879)
MY DEAR MR. BROWN,--During all the 15 months we have been spending on the
continent, we have been promising ourselves a sight of you as our latest
and most prized delight in a foreign land--but our hope has failed, our
plan has miscarried. One obstruction after another intruded itself, and
our short sojourn of three or four weeks on English soil was thus
frittered gradually away, and we were at last obliged to give up the idea
of seeing you at all. It is a great disappointment, for we wanted to
show you how much "Megalopis" has grown (she is 7 now) and what a fine
creature her sister is, and how prettily they both speak German. There
are six persons in my party, and they are as difficult to cart around as
nearly any other menagerie would be. My wife and Miss Spaulding are
along, and you may imagine how they take to heart this failure of our
long promised Edinburgh trip. We never even wrote you, because we were
always so sure, from day to day, that our affairs would finally so shape
themselves as to let us get to Scotland. But no,--everything went wrong
we had only flying trips here and there in place of the leisurely ones
which we had planned.

We arrived in Liverpool an hour ago very tired, and have halted at this
hotel (by the advice of misguided friends)--and if my instinct and
experience are worth anything, it is the very worst hotel on earth,
without any exception. We shall move to another hotel early in the
morning to spend to-morrow. We sail for America next day in the
"Gallic."

We all join in the sincerest love to you, and in the kindest remembrance
to "Jock"--[Son of Doctor Brown.]--and your sister.
Truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.


It was September 3, 1879, that Mark Twain returned to America by the
steamer Gallic. In the seventeen months of his absence he had taken
on a "traveled look" and had added gray hairs. A New York paper
said of his arrival that he looked older than when he went to
Germany, and that his hair had turned quite gray.

Mark Twain had not finished his book of travel in Paris--in fact,
it seemed to him far from complete--and he settled down rather
grimly to work on it at Quarry Farm. When, after a few days no word
of greeting came from Howells, Clemens wrote to ask if he were dead
or only sleeping. Howells hastily sent a line to say that he had
been sleeping "The sleep of a torpid conscience. I will feign that
I did not know where to write you; but I love you and all of yours,
and I am tremendously glad that you are home again. When and where
shall we meet? Have you come home with your pockets full of
Atlantic papers?" Clemens, toiling away at his book, was, as usual,
not without the prospect of other plans. Orion, as literary
material, never failed to excite him.


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, Sept. 15, 1879.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--When and where? Here on the farm would be an elegant
place to meet, but of course you cannot come so far. So we will say
Hartford or Belmont, about the beginning of November. The date of our
return to Hartford is uncertain, but will be three or four weeks hence,
I judge. I hope to finish my book here before migrating.

I think maybe I've got some Atlantic stuff in my head, but there's none
in MS, I believe.

Say--a friend of mine wants to write a play with me, I to furnish the
broad-comedy cuss. I don't know anything about his ability, but his
letter serves to remind me of our old projects. If you haven't used
Orion or Old Wakeman, don't you think you and I can get together and
grind out a play with one of those fellows in it? Orion is a field which
grows richer and richer the more he mulches it with each new top-dressing
of religion or other guano. Drop me an immediate line about this, won't
you? I imagine I see Orion on the stage, always gentle, always
melancholy, always changing his politics and religion, and trying to
reform the world, always inventing something, and losing a limb by a new
kind of explosion at the end of each of the four acts. Poor old chap,
he is good material. I can imagine his wife or his sweetheart
reluctantly adopting each of his new religious in turn, just in time to
see him waltz into the next one and leave her isolated once more.

(Mem. Orion's wife has followed him into the outer darkness, after 30
years' rabid membership in the Presbyterian Church.)

Well, with the sincerest and most abounding love to you and yours, from
all this family, I am,
Yrs ever
MARK.


The idea of the play interested Howells, but he had twinges of
conscience in the matter of using Orion as material. He wrote:
"More than once I have taken the skeleton of that comedy of ours and
viewed it with tears..... I really have a compunction or two about
helping to put your brother into drama. You can say that he is your
brother, to do what you like with him, but the alien hand might
inflict an incurable hurt on his tender heart."

As a matter of fact, Orion Clemens had a keen appreciation of his
own shortcomings, and would have enjoyed himself in a play as much
as any observer of it. Indeed, it is more than likely that he would
have been pleased at the thought of such distinguished
dramatization. From the next letter one might almost conclude that
he had received a hint of this plan, and was bent upon supplying
rich material.


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, Oct. 9 '79.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Since my return, the mail facilities have enabled Orion
to keep me informed as to his intentions. Twenty-eight days ago it was
his purpose to complete a work aimed at religion, the preface to which he
had already written. Afterward he began to sell off his furniture, with
the idea of hurrying to Leadville and tackling silver-mining--threw up
his law den and took in his sign. Then he wrote to Chicago and St. Louis
newspapers asking for a situation as "paragrapher"--enclosing a taste of
his quality in the shape of two stanzas of "humorous rhymes." By a later
mail on the same day he applied to New York and Hartford insurance
companies for copying to do.

However, it would take too long to detail all his projects. They
comprise a removal to south-west Missouri; application for a reporter's
berth on a Keokuk paper; application for a compositor's berth on a St.
Louis paper; a re-hanging of his attorney's sign, "though it only creaks
and catches no flies;" but last night's letter informs me that he has
retackled the religious question, hired a distant den to write in,
applied to my mother for $50 to re-buy his furniture, which has advanced
in value since the sale--purposes buying $25 worth of books necessary to
his labors which he had previously been borrowing, and his first chapter
is already on its way to me for my decision as to whether it has enough
ungodliness in it or not. Poor Orion!

Your letter struck me while I was meditating a project to beguile you,
and John Hay and Joe Twichell, into a descent upon Chicago which I dream
of making, to witness the re-union of the great Commanders of the Western
Army Corps on the 9th of next month. My sluggish soul needs a fierce
upstirring, and if it would not get it when Grant enters the meeting
place I must doubtless "lay" for the final resurrection. Can you and Hay
go? At the same time, confound it, I doubt if I can go myself, for this
book isn't done yet. But I would give a heap to be there. I mean to
heave some holiness into the Hartford primaries when I go back; and if
there was a solitary office in the land which majestic ignorance and
incapacity, coupled with purity of heart, could fill, I would run for it.
This naturally reminds me of Bret Harte--but let him pass.

We propose to leave here for New York Oct. 21, reaching Hartford 24th or
25th. If, upon reflection, you Howellses find, you can stop over here on
your way, I wish you would do it, and telegraph me. Getting pretty
hungry to see you. I had an idea that this was your shortest way home,
but like as not my geography is crippled again--it usually is.
Yrs ever
MARK.


The "Reunion of the Great Commanders," mentioned in the foregoing,
was a welcome to General Grant after his journey around the world.
Grant's trip had been one continuous ovation--a triumphal march.
In '79 most of his old commanders were still alive, and they had
planned to assemble in Chicago to do him honor. A Presidential year
was coming on, but if there was anything political in the project
there were no surface indications. Mark Twain, once a Confederate
soldier, had long since been completely "desouthernized"--at least
to the point where he felt that the sight of old comrades paying
tribute to the Union commander would stir his blood as perhaps it
had not been stirred, even in that earlier time, when that same
commander had chased him through the Missouri swamps. Grant,
indeed, had long since become a hero to Mark Twain, though it is
highly unlikely that Clemens favored the idea of a third term. Some
days following the preceding letter an invitation came for him to be
present at the Chicago reunion; but by this time he had decided not
to go. The letter he wrote has been preserved.


To Gen. William E. Strong, in Chicago:

FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD.
Oct. 28, 1879.
GEN. WM. E. STRONG, CH'M,
AND GENTLEMEN OF THE COMMITTEE:

I have been hoping during several weeks that it might be my good fortune
to receive an invitation to be present on that great occasion in Chicago;
but now that my desire is accomplished my business matters have so shaped
themselves as to bar me from being so far from home in the first half of
November. It is with supreme regret that I lost this chance, for I have
not had a thorough stirring up for some years, and I judged that if I
could be in the banqueting hall and see and hear the veterans of the Army
of the Tennessee at the moment that their old commander entered the room,
or rose in his place to speak, my system would get the kind of upheaval
it needs. General Grant's progress across the continent is of the
marvelous nature of the returning Napoleon's progress from Grenoble to
Paris; and as the crowning spectacle in the one case was the meeting with
the Old Guard, so, likewise, the crowning spectacle in the other will be
our great captain's meeting with his Old Guard--and that is the very
climax which I wanted to witness.

Besides, I wanted to see the General again, any way, and renew the
acquaintance. He would remember me, because I was the person who did not
ask him for an office. However, I consume your time, and also wander
from the point--which is, to thank you for the courtesy of your
invitation, and yield up my seat at the table to some other guest who may
possibly grace it better, but will certainly not appreciate its
privileges more, than I should.
With great respect,
I am, Gentlemen,
Very truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.

Private:--I beg to apologize for my delay, gentlemen, but the card of
invitation went to Elmira, N. Y. and hence has only just now reached me.


This letter was not sent. He reconsidered and sent an acceptance,
agreeing to speak, as the committee had requested. Certainly there
was something picturesque in the idea of the Missouri private who
had been chased for a rainy fortnight through the swamps of Ralls
County being selected now to join in welcome to his ancient enemy.

The great reunion was to be something more than a mere banquet. It
would continue for several days, with processions, great
assemblages, and much oratory.

Mark Twain arrived in Chicago in good season to see it all. Three
letters to Mrs. Clemens intimately present his experiences: his
enthusiastic enjoyment and his own personal triumph.

The first was probably written after the morning of his arrival.
The Doctor Jackson in it was Dr. A. Reeves Jackson, the
guide-dismaying "Doctor" of Innocents Abroad.


To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:

PALMER HOUSE, CHICAGO, Nov. 11.
Livy darling, I am getting a trifle leg-weary. Dr. Jackson called and
dragged me out of bed at noon, yesterday, and then went off. I went down
stairs and was introduced to some scores of people, and among them an
elderly German gentleman named Raster, who said his wife owed her life to
me--hurt in Chicago fire and lay menaced with death a long time, but the
Innocents Abroad kept her mind in a cheerful attitude, and so, with the
doctor's help for the body she pulled through.... They drove me to Dr.
Jackson's and I had an hour's visit with Mrs. Jackson. Started to walk
down Michigan Avenue, got a few steps on my way and met an erect,
soldierly looking young gentleman who offered his hand; said, "Mr.
Clemens, I believe--I wish to introduce myself--you were pointed out to
me yesterday as I was driving down street--my name is Grant."

"Col. Fred Grant?"

"Yes. My house is not ten steps away, and I would like you to come and
have a talk and a pipe, and let me introduce my wife."

So we turned back and entered the house next to Jackson's and talked
something more than an hour and smoked many pipes and had a sociable good
time. His wife is very gentle and intelligent and pretty, and they have
a cunning little girl nearly as big as Bay but only three years old.
They wanted me to come in and spend an evening, after the banquet, with
them and Gen. Grant, after this grand pow-wow is over, but I said I was
going home Friday. Then they asked me to come Friday afternoon, when
they and the general will receive a few friends, and I said I would.
Col. Grant said he and Gen. Sherman used the Innocents Abroad as their
guide book when they were on their travels.

I stepped in next door and took Dr. Jackson to the hotel and we played
billiards from 7 to 11.30 P.M. and then went to a beer-mill to meet some
twenty Chicago journalists--talked, sang songs and made speeches till 6
o'clock this morning. Nobody got in the least degree "under the
influence," and we had a pleasant time. Read awhile in bed, slept till
11, shaved, went to breakfast at noon, and by mistake got into the
servants' hall. I remained there and breakfasted with twenty or thirty
male and female servants, though I had a table to myself.

A temporary structure, clothed and canopied with flags, has been erected
at the hotel front, and connected with the second-story windows of a
drawing-room. It was for Gen. Grant to stand on and review the
procession. Sixteen persons, besides reporters, had tickets for this
place, and a seventeenth was issued for me. I was there, looking down on
the packed and struggling crowd when Gen. Grant came forward and was
saluted by the cheers of the multitude and the waving of ladies'
handkerchiefs--for the windows and roofs of all neighboring buildings
were massed full of life. Gen. Grant bowed to the people two or three
times, then approached my side of the platform and the mayor pulled me
forward and introduced me. It was dreadfully conspicuous. The General
said a word or so--I replied, and then said, "But I'll step back,
General, I don't want to interrupt your speech."