The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete

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


Aug. 10, '92.
DEAR MR. HALT,--I have dropped that novel I wrote you about, because I
saw a more effective way of using the main episode--to wit: by telling it
through the lips of Huck Finn. So I have started Huck Finn and Tom
Sawyer (still 15 years old) and their friend the freed slave Jim around
the world in a stray balloon, with Huck as narrator, and somewhere after
the end of that great voyage he will work in the said episode and then
nobody will suspect that a whole book has been written and the globe
circumnavigated merely to get that episode in an effective (and at the
same time apparently unintentional) way. I have written 12,000 words of
this narrative, and find that the humor flows as easily as the adventures
and surprises--so I shall go along and make a book of from 50,000 to
100,000 words.

It is a story for boys, of course, and I think will interest any boy
between 8 years and 80.

When I was in New York the other day Mrs. Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas,
wrote and, offered me $5,000 for (serial right) a story for boys 50,000
words long. I wrote back and declined, for I had other matter in my
mind, then.

I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so
that it will not only interest boys but will also strongly interest any
man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.

Now this story doesn't need to be restricted to a Childs magazine--it is
proper enough for any magazine, I should think, or for a syndicate. I
don't swear it, but I think so.

Proposed title of the story, "New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

[No signature.]


The "novel" mentioned in the foregoing was The Extraordinary Twins,
a story from which Pudd'nhead Wilson would be evolved later. It was
a wildly extravagant farce--just the sort of thing that now and then
Mark Twain plunged into with an enthusiasm that had to work itself
out and die a natural death, or mellow into something worth while.
Tom Sawyer Abroad, as the new Huck story was finally called, was
completed and disposed of to St. Nicholas for serial publication.

The Twichells were in Europe that summer, and came to Bad-Nauheim.
The next letter records a pleasant incident. The Prince of Wales of
that day later became King Edward VII.


To Mr. and Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa.:

Private. BAD-NAUHEIM, Aug. 23, '92.
DEAR ORION AND MOLLIE,--("Private" because no newspaper-man or other
gossip must get hold of it)

Livy is getting along pretty well, and the doctor thinks another summer
here will cure her.

The Twichell's have been here four days and we have had good times with
them. Joe and I ran over to Homburg, the great pleasure resort,
Saturday, to dine with some friends, and in the morning I went walking in
the promenade and met the British Ambassador to the Court of Berlin, and
he introduced me to the Prince of Wales, and I found him a most unusually
comfortable and unembarrassing Englishman to talk with--quick to see the
obscurest point, and equipped with a laugh which is spontaneous and
catching. Am invited by a near friend of his to meet him at dinner day
after tomorrow, and there could be a good time, but the brass band will
smash the talk and spoil everything.

We are expecting to move to Florence ten or twelve days hence, but if
this hot weather continues we shall wait for cooler. I take Clara to
Berlin for the winter-music, mainly, with German and French added. Thus
far, Jean is our only glib French scholar.

We all send love to you all and to Pamela and Sam's family, and Annie.

SAM


Clemens and family left Bad-Nauheim for Italy by way of Switzerland.
In September Mrs. Clemens's sister, Mrs. Crane, who had been with
them in Europe during the first year, had now returned to America.
Mrs. Clemens had improved at the baths, though she had by no means
recovered her health. We get a general report of conditions from
the letter which Clemens wrote Mrs. Crane from Lucerne, Switzerland,
where the party rested for several days. The "Phelps" mentioned in
this letter was William Walter Phelps, United States Minister to
Germany. The Phelps and Clemens families had been much associated
in Berlin. "Mason" was Frank Mason, Consul General at Frankfort,
and in later years at Paris. "Charlie and Ida" were Charles and
Mrs. Langdon, of Elmira.


To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira, N. Y.:

LUCERNE, Sept. 18, '92.
DEAR AUNT SUE,--Imagine how I felt to find that you had actually gone off
without filling my traveling ink stand which you gave me! I found it out
yesterday. Livy advised me to write you about it.

I have been driving this pen hard. I wrote 280 pages on a yarn called
"Tom Sawyer Abroad," then took up the "Twins" again, destroyed the last
half of the manuscript and re-wrote it in another form, and am going to
continue it and finish it in Florence. "Tom Sawyer" seems rather pale to
the family after the extravagances of the Twins, but they came to like it
after they got used to it.

We remained in Nauheim a little too long. If we had left there four or
five days earlier we should have made Florence in 3 days; but by the time
we got started Livy had got smitten with what we feared might be
erysipelas--greatly swollen neck and face, and unceasing headaches. We
lay idle in Frankfort 4 days, doctoring. We started Thursday and made
Bale. Hard trip, because it was one of those trains that gets tired
every seven minutes and stops to rest three quarters of an hour. It took
us 3 1/2 hours to get here, instead of the regulation 2.20. We reached
here Friday evening and will leave tomorrow (Tuesday) morning. The rest
has made the headaches better. We shall pull through to Milan tomorrow
if possible. Next day we shall start at 10 a. m., and try to make
Bologna, 5 hours. Next day (Thursday) Florence, D. V. Next year we will
walk, for these excursions have got to be made over again. I've got
seven trunks, and I undertook to be courier because I meant to express
them to Florence direct, but we were a couple of days too late. All
continental roads had issued a peremptory order that no baggage should
travel a mile except in the company of the owner. (All over Europe
people are howling; they are separated from their baggage and can't get
it forwarded to them) I have to re-ship my trunks every day. It is very
amusing--uncommonly so. There seemed grave doubts about our being able
to get these trunks over the Italian frontier, but I've got a very
handsome note from the Frankfort Italian Consul General addressed to all
Italian Customs Officers, and we shall get through if anybody does.

The Phelpses came to Frankfort and we had some great times--dinner at his
hotel, the Masons, supper at our inn--Livy not in it. She was merely
allowed a glimpse, no more. Of course, Phelps said she was merely
pretending to be ill; was never looking so well and fine.

The children are all right. They paddle around a little, and drive-so do
we all. Lucerne seems to be pretty full of tourists. The Fleulen boat
went out crowded yesterday morning.

The Paris Herald has created a public interest by inoculating one of its
correspondents with cholera. A man said yesterday he wished to God they
would inoculate all of them. Yes, the interest is quite general and
strong, and much hope is felt.

Livy says, I have said enough bad things, and better send all our loves
to you and Charley and Ida and all the children and shut up. Which I do
--and shut up.
S. L. C.


They reached Florence on the 26th, and four days later we find
Clemens writing again to Mrs. Crane, detailing everything at length.
Little comment on this letter is required; it fully explains itself.
Perhaps a word of description from one of his memoranda will not be
out of place. Of the villa he wrote: "It is a plain, square
building, like a box, and is painted light green and has green
window-shutters. It stands in a commanding position on the
artificial terrace of liberal dimensions, which is walled around
with masonry. From the walls the vineyards and olive groves of the
estate slant away toward the valley.... Roses overflow the
retaining walls and the battered and mossy stone urn on the
gate-post, in pink and yellow cataracts, exactly as they do on the
drop-curtains in the theaters. The house is a very fortress for
strength."

The Mrs. Ross in this letter was Janet Ross, daughter of Lady Duff
Gordon, remembered to-day for her Egyptian letters. The Ross castle
was but a little distance away.


To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira:

VILLA VIVIANI, SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE.
Sept. 30, 1892
DEAR SUE,--We have been in the house several days, and certainly it is a
beautiful place,--particularly at this moment, when the skies are a deep
leaden color, the domes of Florence dim in the drizzling rain, and
occasional perpendicular coils of lightning quivering intensely in the
black sky about Galileo's Tower. It is a charming panorama, and the most
conspicuous towers and domes down in the city look to-day just as they
looked when Boccaccio and Dante used to contemplate them from this
hillock five and six hundred years ago.

The Mademoiselle is a great help to Livy in the housekeeping, and is a
cheery and cheerful presence in the house. The butler is equipped with a
little French, and it is this fact that enables the house to go--but it
won't go well until the family get some sort of facility with the Italian
tongue, for the cook, the woman-of-all-work and the coachman understand
only that. It is a stubborn and devilish language to learn, but Jean and
the others will master it. Livy's German Nauheim girl is the worst off
of anybody, as there is no market for her tongue at all among the help.

With the furniture in and the curtains up the house is very pretty, and
not unhomelike. At mid-night last night we heard screams up stairs--Susy
had set the lofty window curtains afire with a candle. This sounds kind
of frightful, whereas when you come to think of it, a burning curtain or
pile of furniture hasn't any element of danger about it in this fortress.
There isn't any conceivable way to burn this house down, or enable a
conflagration on one floor to climb to the next.

Mrs. Ross laid in our wood, wine and servants for us, and they are
excellent. She had the house scoured from Cellar to rook the curtains
washed and put up, all beds pulled to pieces, beaten, washed and put
together again, and beguiled the Marchese into putting a big porcelain
stove in the vast central hall. She is a wonderful woman, and we don't
quite see how or when we should have gotten under way without her.

Observe our address above--the post delivers letters daily at the house.

Even with the work and fuss of settling the house Livy has improved--and
the best is yet to come. There is going to be absolute seclusion here
--a hermit life, in fact. We (the rest of us) shall run over to the
Ross's frequently, and they will come here now and then and see Livy
--that is all. Mr. Fiske is away--nobody knows where--and the work on
his house has been stopped and his servants discharged. Therefore we
shall merely go Rossing--as far as society is concerned--shan't circulate
in Florence until Livy shall be well enough to take a share in it.

This present house is modern. It is not much more than two centuries
old; but parts of it, and also its foundations are of high antiquity.
The fine beautiful family portraits--the great carved ones in the large
ovals over the doors of the big hall--carry one well back into the past.
One of them is dated 1305--he could have known Dante, you see. Another
is dated 1343--he could have known Boccaccio and spent his afternoons in
Fiesole listening to the Decameron tales. Another is dated 1463
--he could have met Columbus.....

Evening. The storm thundered away until night, and the rain came down in
floods. For awhile there was a partial break, which furnished about such
a sunset as will be exhibited when the Last Day comes and the universe
tumbles together in wreck and ruin. I have never seen anything more
spectacular and impressive.

One person is satisfied with the villa, anyway. Jean prefers it to all
Europe, save Venice. Jean is eager to get at the Italian tongue again,
now, and I see that she has forgotten little or nothing of what she
learned of it in Rome and Venice last spring.

I am the head French duffer of the family. Most of the talk goes over my
head at the table. I catch only words, not phrases. When Italian comes
to be substituted I shall be even worse off than I am now, I suppose.

This reminds me that this evening the German girl said to Livy, "Man hat
mir gesagt loss Sie una candella verlaught habe"--unconsciously dropping
in a couple of Italian words, you see. So she is going to join the
polyglots, too, it appears. They say it is good entertainment to hear
her and the butler talk together in their respective tongues, piecing out
and patching up with the universal sign-language as they go along. Five
languages in use in the house (including the sign-language-hardest-worked
of them all) and yet with all this opulence of resource we do seem to
have an uncommonly tough time making ourselves understood.

What we lack is a cat. If we only had Germania! That was the most
satisfactory all-round cat I have seen yet. Totally ungermanic in the
raciness of his character and in the sparkle of his mind and the
spontaneity of his movements. We shall not look upon his like again....

S. L. C.


Clemens got well settled down to work presently. He found the
situation, the climate, the background, entirely suited to literary
production, and in a little while he had accomplished more than at
any other time since his arrival in Europe. From letters to Mrs.
Crane and to Mr. Hall we learn something of his employments and his
satisfaction.


To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira:

VILLA VIVIANI
SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE. Oct. 22, '92.
DEAR SUE,--We are getting wonted. The open fires have driven away the
cold and the doubt, and now a cheery spirit pervades the place. Livy and
the Kings and Mademoiselle having been taking their tea a number of
times, lately, on the open terrace with the city and the hills and the
sunset for company. I stop work, a few minutes, as a rule, when the sun
gets down to the hilltops west of Florence, and join the tea-group to
wonder and exclaim. There is always some new miracle in the view, a new
and exquisite variation in the show, a variation which occurs every 15
minutes between dawn and night. Once early in the morning, a multitude
of white villas not before perceived, revealed themselves on the far
hills; then we recognized that all those great hills are snowed thick
with them, clear to the summit.

The variety of lovely effects, the infinitude of change, is something not
to be believed by any who has not seen it. No view that I am acquainted
with in the world is at all comparable to this for delicacy, charm,
exquisiteness, dainty coloring, and bewildering rapidity of change. It
keeps a person drunk with pleasure all the time. Sometimes Florence
ceases to be substantial, and becomes just a faint soft dream, with domes
and towers of air, and one is persuaded that he might blow it away with a
puff of his breath.

Livy is progressing admirably. This is just the place for her.

[Remainder missing.]


To Fred J. Hall, in New York:

Dec. 12, '92.
DEAR MR. HALL,--November check received.

I have lent the Californian's Story to Arthur Stedman for his Author Club
Book, so your suggestion that my new spring-book bear that name arrives
too late, as he probably would not want us to use that story in a book of
ours until the Author book had had its run. That is for him to decide
--and I don't want him hampered at all in his decision. I, for my part,
prefer the "$1,000,000 Banknote and Other Stories" by Mark Twain as a
title, but above my judgment I prefer yours. I mean this--it is not
taffy.

I told Arthur to leave out the former squib or paragraph and use only the
Californian's Story. Tell him this is because I am going to use that in
the book I am now writing.

I finished "Those Extraordinary Twins" night before last makes 60 or
80,000 words--haven't counted.

The last third of it suits me to a dot. I begin, to-day, to entirely
recast and re-write the first two-thirds--new plan, with two minor
characters, made very prominent, one major character cropped out, and the
Twins subordinated to a minor but not insignificant place.

The minor character will now become the chiefest, and I will name the
story after him--"Puddn'head Wilson."

Merry Xmas to you, and great prosperity and felicity!

S. L. CLEMENS.




XXXIII

LETTERS, 1893, TO MR. HALL, MRS. CLEMENS, AND OTHERS. FLORENCE.
BUSINESS TROUBLES. "PUDD'NHEAD WILSON." "JOAN OF ARC."
AT THE PLAYERS, NEW YORK.

The reader may have suspected that young Mr. Hall in New York was having
his troubles. He was by this time one-third owner in the business of
Charles L. Webster & Co., as well as its general manager. The business
had been drained of its capital one way and another-partly by the
publication of unprofitable books; partly by the earlier demands of the
typesetter, but more than all by the manufacturing cost and agents'
commissions demanded by L. A. L.; that is to say, the eleven large
volumes constituting the Library of American Literature, which Webster
had undertaken to place in a million American homes. There was plenty of
sale for it--indeed, that was just the trouble; for it was sold on
payments--small monthly payments--while the cost of manufacture and the
liberal agents' commissions were cash items, and it would require a
considerable period before the dribble of collections would swell into a
tide large enough to satisfy the steady outflow of expense. A sale of
twenty-five sets a day meant prosperity on paper, but unless capital
could be raised from some other source to make and market those books
through a period of months, perhaps even years, to come, it meant
bankruptcy in reality. It was Hall's job, with Clemens to back him, to
keep their ship afloat on these steadily ebbing financial waters. It was
also Hall's affair to keep Mark Twain cheerful, to look pleasant himself,
and to show how they were steadily getting rich because orders were
pouring in, though a cloud that resembled bankruptcy loomed always a
little higher upon the horizon. If Hall had not been young and an
optimist, he would have been frightened out of his boots early in the
game. As it was, he made a brave steady fight, kept as cheerful and
stiff an upper lip as possible, always hoping that something would
happen--some grand sale of his other books, some unexpected inflow from
the type-setter interests--anything that would sustain his ship until the
L. A. L. tide should turn and float it into safety.

Clemens had faith in Hall and was fond of him. He never found fault with
him; he tried to accept his encouraging reports at their face value. He
lent the firm every dollar of his literary earnings not absolutely needed
for the family's support; he signed new notes; he allowed Mrs. Clemens to
put in such remnants of her patrimony as the type-setter had spared.

The situation in 1893 was about as here outlined. The letters to Hall of
that year are frequent and carry along the story. To any who had formed
the idea that Mark Twain was irascible, exacting, and faultfinding, they
will perhaps be a revelation.


To Fred J. Hall, in New York:

FLORENCE, Jan. 1, '93.
DEAR MR. HALL,--Yours of Dec. 19 is to hand, and Mrs. Clemens is deeply
distressed, for she thinks I have been blaming you or finding fault with
you about something. But most surely that cannot be. I tell her that
although I am prone to write hasty and regrettable things to other
people, I am not a bit likely to write such things to you. I can't
believe I have done anything so ungrateful. If I have, pile coals of
fire on my head, for I deserve it!

I wonder if my letter of credit isn't an encumbrance? Do you have to
deposit the whole amount it calls for? If that is so, it is an
encumbrance, and we must withdraw it and take the money out of soak.
I have never made drafts upon it except when compelled, because I thought
you deposited nothing against it, and only had to put up money that I
drew upon it; that therefore the less I drew the easier it would be for
you.

I am dreadfully sorry I didn't know it would be a help to you to let my
monthly check pass over a couple of months. I could have stood that by
drawing what is left of Mrs. Clemens's letter of credit, and we would
have done it cheerfully.

I will write Whitmore to send you the "Century" check for $1,000, and you
can collect Mrs. Dodge's $2,000 (Whitmore has power of attorney which I
think will enable him to endorse it over to you in my name.) If you need
that $3,000 put it in the business and use it, and send Whitmore the
Company's note for a year. If you don't need it, turn it over to Mr.
Halsey and let him invest it for me.

I've a mighty poor financial head, and I may be all wrong--but tell me if
I am wrong in supposing that in lending my own firm money at 6 per cent I
pay 4 of it myself and so really get only a per cent? Now don't laugh if
that is stupid.

Of course my friend declined to buy a quarter interest in the L. A. L.
for $200,000. I judged he would. I hoped he would offer $100,000, but
he didn't. If the cholera breaks out in America, a few months hence, we
can't borrow or sell; but if it doesn't we must try hard to raise
$100,000. I wish we could do it before there is a cholera scare.

I have been in bed two or three days with a cold, but I got up an hour
ago, and I believe I am all right again.

How I wish I had appreciated the need of $100,000 when I was in New York
last summer! I would have tried my best to raise it. It would make us
able to stand 1,000 sets of L. A. L. per month, but not any more, I
guess.

You have done magnificently with the business, and we must raise the
money somehow, to enable you to reap the reward of all that labor.
Sincerely Yours
S. L. CLEMENS.


"Whitmore," in this letter, was F. G. Whitmore, of Hartford, Mark Twain's
financial agent. The money due from Mrs. Dodge was a balance on Tom
Sawyer Abroad, which had been accepted by St. Nicholas. Mr. Halsey was a
down-town broker.

Clemens, who was growing weary of the constant demands of L. A. L., had
conceived the idea that it would be well to dispose of a portion of it
for enough cash to finance its manufacture.

We don't know who the friend was to whom he offered a quarter interest
for the modest sum of two hundred thousand dollars. But in the next
letter we discover designs on a certain very canny Scotchman of Skibo.


To Fred J. Hall, in New York:

FLORENCE, Jan. 28, '92.
DEAR MR. HALL,--I want to throw out a suggestion and see what you think
of it. We have a good start, and solid ground under us; we have a
valuable reputation; our business organization is practical, sound and
well-devised; our publications are of a respect-worthy character and of a
money-breeding species. Now then I think that the association with us of
some one of great name and with capital would give our business a
prodigious impetus--that phrase is not too strong.

As I look at it, it is not money merely that is needed; if that were all,
the firm has friends enough who would take an interest in a paying
venture; we need some one who has made his life a success not only from a
business standpoint, but with that achievement back of him, has been
great enough to make his power felt as a thinker and a literary man. It
is a pretty usual thing for publishers to have this sort of partners.
Now you see what a power Carnegie is, and how far his voice reaches in
the several lines I speak of. Do you know him? You do by correspondence
or purely business talks about his books--but personally, I mean? so that
it would not be an intrusion for you to speak to him about this desire of
mine--for I would like you to put it before him, and if you fail to
interest him in it, you will probably get at least some valuable
suggestions from him. I'll enclose a note of introduction--you needn't
use it if you don't need to.
Yours S. L. C.