The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete

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


This letter, however, has a special interest in the account it gives
of Mark Twain's visit to the Jameson raiders, then imprisoned at
Pretoria.


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

PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC,
The Queen's Birthday, '96.
(May 24)
DEAR OLD JOE,--Harper for May was given to me yesterday in Johannesburg
by an American lady who lives there, and I read your article on me while
coming up in the train with her and an old friend and fellow-Missourian
of mine, Mrs. John Hays Hammond, the handsome and spirited wife of the
chief of the 4 Reformers, who lies in prison here under a 15-year
sentence, along with 50 minor Reformers who are in for 1 and 5-year
terms. Thank you a thousand times Joe, you have praised me away above my
deserts, but I am not the man to quarrel with you for that; and as for
Livy, she will take your very hardiest statements at par, and be grateful
to you to the bottom of her heart. Between you and Punch and Brander
Matthews, I am like to have my opinion of myself raised sufficiently
high; and I guess the children will be after you, for it is the study of
their lives to keep my self-appreciation down somewhere within bounds.

I had a note from Mrs. Rev. Gray (nee Tyler) yesterday, and called on her
to-day. She is well.

Yesterday I was allowed to enter the prison with Mrs. Hammond. A Boer
guard was at my elbow all the time, but was courteous and polite, only
he barred the way in the compound (quadrangle or big open court) and
wouldn't let me cross a white mark that was on the ground--the
"death-line" one of the prisoners called it. Not in earnest, though, I
think. I found that I had met Hammond once when he was a Yale senior and
a guest of Gen. Franklin's. I also found that I had known Capt. Mein
intimately 32 years ago. One of the English prisoners had heard me
lecture in London 23 years ago. After being introduced in turn to all
the prisoners, I was allowed to see some of the cells and examine their
food, beds, etc. I was told in Johannesburg that Hammond's salary of
$150,000 a year is not stopped, and that the salaries of some of the
others are still continued. Hammond was looking very well indeed, and I
can say the same of all the others. When the trouble first fell upon
them it hit some of them very hard; several fell sick (Hammond among
them), two or three had to be removed to the hospital, and one of the
favorites lost his mind and killed himself, poor fellow, last week. His
funeral, with a sorrowing following of 10,000, took the place of the
public demonstration the Americans were getting up for me.

These prisoners are strong men, prominent men, and I believe they are all
educated men. They are well off; some of them are wealthy. They have a
lot of books to read, they play games and smoke, and for awhile they will
be able to bear up in their captivity; but not for long, not for very
long, I take it. I am told they have times of deadly brooding and
depression. I made them a speech--sitting down. It just happened so.
I don't prefer that attitude. Still, it has one advantage--it is only a
talk, it doesn't take the form of a speech. I have tried it once before
on this trip. However, if a body wants to make sure of having "liberty,"
and feeling at home, he had better stand up, of course. I advised them
at considerable length to stay where they were--they would get used to it
and like it presently; if they got out they would only get in again
somewhere else, by the look of their countenances; and I promised to go
and see the President and do what I could to get him to double their
jail-terms.

We had a very good sociable time till the permitted time was up and a
little over, and we outsiders had to go. I went again to-day, but the
Rev. Mr. Gray had just arrived, and the warden, a genial, elderly Boer
named Du Plessis--explained that his orders wouldn't allow him to admit
saint and sinner at the same time, particularly on a Sunday. Du Plessis
--descended from the Huguenot fugitives, you see, of 200 years ago
--but he hasn't any French left in him now--all Dutch.

It gravels me to think what a goose I was to make Livy and Clara remain
in Durban; but I wanted to save them the 30-hour railway trip to
Johannesburg. And Durban and its climate and opulent foliage were so
lovely, and the friends there were so choice and so hearty that I
sacrificed myself in their interests, as I thought. It is just the
beginning of winter, and although the days are hot, the nights are cool.
But it's lovely weather in these regions, too; and the friends are as
lovely as the weather, and Johannesburg and Pretoria are brimming with
interest. I talk here twice more, then return to Johannesburg next
Wednesday for a fifth talk there; then to the Orange Free State capital,
then to some town on the way to Port Elizabeth, where the two will join
us by sea from Durban; then the gang will go to Kimberley and presently
to the Cape--and so, in the course of time, we shall get through and sail
for England; and then we will hunt up a quiet village and I will write
and Livy edit, for a few months, while Clara and Susy and Jean study
music and things in London.

We have had noble good times everywhere and every day, from Cleveland,
July 15, to Pretoria, May 24, and never a dull day either on sea or land,
notwithstanding the carbuncles and things. Even when I was laid up 10
days at Jeypore in India we had the charmingest times with English
friends. All over India the English well, you will never know how good
and fine they are till you see them.

Midnight and after! and I must do many things to-day, and lecture
tonight.

A world of thanks to you, Joe dear, and a world of love to all of you.

MARK.


Perhaps for readers of a later day a word as to what constituted the
Jameson raid would not be out of place here. Dr. Leander Starr
Jameson was an English physician, located at Kimberley. President
Kruger (Oom Paul), head of the South African Republic, was one of
his patients; also, Lobengula, the Matabele chief. From Lobengula
concessions were obtained which led to the formation of the South
African Company. Jameson gave up his profession and went in for
conquest, associating himself with the projects of Cecil Rhodes.
In time he became administrator of Rhodesia. By the end of 1894.
he was in high feather, and during a visit to England was feted as
a sort of romantic conqueror of the olden time. Perhaps this turned
his head; at all events at the end of 1895 came the startling news
that "Dr. Jim," as he was called, at the head of six hundred men,
had ridden into the Transvaal in support of a Rhodes scheme for an
uprising at Johannesburg. The raid was a failure. Jameson, and
those other knights of adventure, were captured by the forces of
"Oom Paul," and some of them barely escaped execution. The Boer
president handed them over to the English Government for punishment,
and they received varying sentences, but all were eventually
released. Jameson, later, became again prominent in South-African
politics, but there is no record of any further raids.

.........................

The Clemens party sailed from South Africa the middle of July, 1896,
and on the last day of the month reached England. They had not
planned to return to America, but to spend the winter in or near
London in some quiet place where Clemens could write the book of his
travels.

The two daughters in America, Susy and Jean, were expected to arrive
August 12th, but on that day there came, instead, a letter saying
that Susy Clemens was not well enough to sail. A cable inquiry was
immediately sent, but the reply when it came was not satisfactory,
and Mrs. Clemens and Clara sailed for America without further delay.
This was on August 15th. Three days later, in the old home at
Hartford, Susy Clemens died of cerebral fever. She had been
visiting Mrs. Charles Dudley Warner, but by the physician's advice
had been removed to the comfort and quiet of her own home, only a
few steps away.

Mark Twain, returning from his triumphant tour of the world in the
hope that soon, now, he might be free from debt, with his family
happily gathered about him, had to face alone this cruel blow.
There was no purpose in his going to America; Susy would be buried
long before his arrival. He awaited in England the return of his
broken family. They lived that winter in a quiet corner of Chelsea,
No. 23 Tedworth Square.


To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, in Hartford, Conn.:

Permanent address:
% CHATTO & WINDUS
111 T. MARTIN'S LANE, LONDON,
Sept. 27, '96.
Through Livy and Katy I have learned, dear old Joe, how loyally you stood
poor Susy's friend, and mine, and Livy's: how you came all the way down,
twice, from your summer refuge on your merciful errands to bring the
peace and comfort of your beloved presence, first to that poor child, and
again to the broken heart of her poor desolate mother. It was like you;
like your good great heart, like your matchless and unmatchable self.
It was no surprise to me to learn that you stayed by Susy long hours,
careless of fatigue and heat, it was no surprise to me to learn that you
could still the storms that swept her spirit when no other could; for she
loved you, revered you, trusted you, and "Uncle Joe" was no empty phrase
upon her lips! I am grateful to you, Joe, grateful to the bottom of my
heart, which has always been filled with love for you, and respect and
admiration; and I would have chosen you out of all the world to take my
place at Susy's side and Livy's in those black hours.

Susy was a rare creature; the rarest that has been reared in Hartford in
this generation. And Livy knew it, and you knew it, and Charley Warner
and George, and Harmony, and the Hillyers and the Dunhams and the
Cheneys, and Susy and Lilly, and the Bunces, and Henry Robinson and Dick
Burton, and perhaps others. And I also was of the number, but not in the
same degree--for she was above my duller comprehension. I merely knew
that she was my superior in fineness of mind, in the delicacy and
subtlety of her intellect, but to fully measure her I was not competent.
I know her better now; for I have read her private writings and sounded
the deeps of her mind; and I know better, now, the treasure that was mine
than I knew it when I had it. But I have this consolation: that dull as
I was, I always knew enough to be proud when she commended me or my work
--as proud as if Livy had done it herself--and I took it as the accolade
from the hand of genius. I see now--as Livy always saw--that she had
greatness in her; and that she herself was dimly conscious of it.

And now she is dead--and I can never tell her.

God bless you Joe--and all of your house.
S. L. C.


To Mr. Henry C. Robinson, Hartford, Conn.:

LONDON, Sept. 28, '96.
It is as you say, dear old friend, "the pathos of it" yes, it was a
piteous thing--as piteous a tragedy as any the year can furnish. When we
started westward upon our long trip at half past ten at night, July 14,
1895, at Elmira, Susy stood on the platform in the blaze of the electric
light waving her good-byes to us as the train glided away, her mother
throwing back kisses and watching her through her tears. One year, one
month, and one week later, Clara and her mother having exactly completed
the circuit of the globe, drew up at that platform at the same hour of
the night, in the same train and the same car--and again Susy had come a
journey and was near at hand to meet them. She was waiting in the house
she was born in, in her coffin.

All the circumstances of this death were pathetic--my brain is worn to
rags rehearsing them. The mere death would have been cruelty enough,
without overloading it and emphasizing it with that score of harsh and
wanton details. The child was taken away when her mother was within
three days of her, and would have given three decades for sight of her.

In my despair and unassuageable misery I upbraid myself for ever parting
with her. But there is no use in that. Since it was to happen it would
have happened.
With love
S. L. C.


The life at Tedworth Square that winter was one of almost complete
privacy. Of the hundreds of friends which Mark Twain had in London
scarcely half a dozen knew his address. He worked steadily on his
book of travels, 'Following the Equator', and wrote few letters
beyond business communications to Mr. Rogers. In one of these he
said, "I am appalled! Here I am trying to load you up with work
again after you have been dray-horsing over the same tiresome ground
for a year. It's too bad, and I am ashamed of it."

But late in November he sent a letter of a different sort--one that
was to have an important bearing on the life of a girl today of
unique and world-wide distinction.


To Mrs. H. H. Rogers, in New York City:

For and in behalf of Helen Keller,
stone blind and deaf, and formerly dumb.

DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--Experience has convinced me that when one wishes to
set a hard-worked man at something which he mightn't prefer to be
bothered with, it is best to move upon him behind his wife. If she can't
convince him it isn't worth while for other people to try.

Mr. Rogers will remember our visit with that astonishing girl at Lawrence
Hutton's house when she was fourteen years old. Last July, in Boston,
when she was 16 she underwent the Harvard examination for admission to
Radcliffe College. She passed without a single condition. She was
allowed the same amount of time that is granted to other applicants, and
this was shortened in her case by the fact that the question papers had
to be read to her. Yet she scored an average of 90 as against an average
of 78 on the part of the other applicants.

It won't do for America to allow this marvelous child to retire from her
studies because of poverty. If she can go on with them she will make a
fame that will endure in history for centuries. Along her special lines
she is the most extraordinary product of all the ages.

There is danger that she must retire from the struggle for a College
degree for lack of support for herself and for Miss Sullivan, (the
teacher who has been with her from the start--Mr. Rogers will remember
her.) Mrs. Hutton writes to ask me to interest rich Englishmen in her
case, and I would gladly try, but my secluded life will not permit it.
I see nobody. Nobody knows my address. Nothing but the strictest hiding
can enable me to write my long book in time.

So I thought of this scheme: Beg you to lay siege to your husband and get
him to interest himself and Mess. John D. and William Rockefeller and the
other Standard Oil chiefs in Helen's case; get them to subscribe an
annual aggregate of six or seven hundred or a thousand dollars--and agree
to continue this for three or four years, until she has completed her
college course. I'm not trying to limit their generosity--indeed no,
they may pile that Standard Oil, Helen Keller College Fund as high as
they please, they have my consent.

Mrs. Hutton's idea is to raise a permanent fund the interest upon which
shall support Helen and her teacher and put them out of the fear of want.
I shan't say a word against it, but she will find it a difficult and
disheartening job, and meanwhile what is to become of that miraculous
girl?

No, for immediate and sound effectiveness, the thing is for you to plead
with Mr. Rogers for this hampered wonder of your sex, and send him
clothed with plenary powers to plead with the other chiefs--they have
spent mountains of money upon the worthiest benevolences, and I think
that the same spirit which moved them to put their hands down through
their hearts into their pockets in those cases will answer "Here!" when
its name is called in this one. 638

There--I don't need to apologize to you or to H. H. for this appeal that
I am making; I know you too well for that.

Good-bye with love to all of you
S. L. CLEMENS.

Laurence Hutton is on the staff of Harper's Monthly--close by, and handy
when wanted.


The plea was not made in vain. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers interested
themselves most liberally in Helen Keller's fortune, and certainly
no one can say that any of those who contributed to her success ever
had reason for disappointment.

In his letter of grateful acknowledgment, which follows, Clemens
also takes occasion to thank Mr. Rogers for his further efforts in
the matter of his own difficulties. This particular reference
concerns the publishing, complications which by this time had arisen
between the American Publishing Company, of Hartford, and the house
in Franklin Square.


LONDON, Dec. 22, '96.
DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--It is superb! And I am beyond measure grateful to you
both. I knew you would be interested in that wonderful girl, and that
Mr. Rogers was already interested in her and touched by her; and I was
sure that if nobody else helped her you two would; but you have gone far
and away beyond the sum I expected--may your lines fall in pleasant
places here and Hereafter for it!

The Huttons are as glad and grateful as they can be, and I am glad for
their sakes as well as for Helen's.

I want to thank Mr. Rogers for crucifying himself again on the same old
cross between Bliss and Harper; and goodness knows I hope he will come to
enjoy it above all other dissipations yet, seeing that it has about it
the elements of stability and permanency. However, at any time that he
says sign, we're going to do it.
Ever sincerely Yours
S. L. CLEMENS.




XXXVI

LETTERS 1897. LONDON, SWITZERLAND, VIENNA

Mark Twain worked steadily on his book that sad winter and managed to
keep the gloom out of his chapters, though it is noticeable that
'Following the Equator' is more serious than his other books of travel.
He wrote few letters, and these only to his three closest friends,
Howells, Twichell, and Rogers. In the letter to Twichell, which follows,
there is mention of two unfinished manuscripts which he expects to
resume. One of these was a dream story, enthusiastically begun, but
perhaps with insufficient plot to carry it through, for it never reached
conclusion. He had already tried it in one or two forms and would begin
it again presently. The identity of the other tale is uncertain.


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

LONDON, Jan. 19, '97.
DEAR JOE,--Do I want you to write to me? Indeed I do. I do not want
most people to write, but I do want you to do it. The others break my
heart, but you will not. You have a something divine in you that is not
in other men. You have the touch that heals, not lacerates. And you
know the secret places of our hearts. You know our life--the outside of
it--as the others do--and the inside of it--which they do not. You have
seen our whole voyage. You have seen us go to sea, a cloud of sail--and
the flag at the peak; and you see us now, chartless, adrift--derelicts;
battered, water-logged, our sails a ruck of rags, our pride gone. For it
is gone. And there is nothing in its place. The vanity of life was all
we had, and there is no more vanity left in us. We are even ashamed of
that we had; ashamed that we trusted the promises of life and builded
high--to come to this!

I did know that Susy was part of us; I did not know that she could go
away; I did not know that she could go away, and take our lives with her,
yet leave our dull bodies behind. And I did not know what she was. To
me she was but treasure in the bank; the amount known, the need to look
at it daily, handle it, weigh it, count it, realize it, not necessary;
and now that I would do it, it is too late; they tell me it is not there,
has vanished away in a night, the bank is broken, my fortune is gone, I
am a pauper. How am I to comprehend this? How am I to have it? Why am
I robbed, and who is benefited?

Ah, well, Susy died at home. She had that privilege. Her dying eyes
rested upon nothing that was strange to them, but only upon things which
they had known and loved always and which had made her young years glad;
and she had you, and Sue, and Katy, and John, and Ellen. This was happy
fortune--I am thankful that it was vouchsafed to her. If she had died in
another house-well, I think I could not have borne that. To us, our
house was not unsentient matter--it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to
see us with; and approvals, and solicitudes, and deep sympathies; it was
of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the
peace of its benediction. We never came home from an absence that its
face did not light up and speak out its eloquent welcome--and we could
not enter it unmoved. And could we now, oh, now, in spirit we should
enter it unshod.

I am trying to add to the "assets" which you estimate so generously.
No, I am not. The thought is not in my mind. My purpose is other. I am
working, but it is for the sake of the work--the "surcease of sorrow"
that is found there. I work all the days, and trouble vanishes away when
I use that magic. This book will not long stand between it and me, now;
but that is no matter, I have many unwritten books to fly to for my
preservation; the interval between the finishing of this one and the
beginning of the next will not be more than an hour, at most.
Continuances, I mean; for two of them are already well along--in fact
have reached exactly the same stage in their journey: 19,000 words each.
The present one will contain 180,000 words--130,000 are done. I am well
protected; but Livy! She has nothing in the world to turn to; nothing
but housekeeping, and doing things for the children and me. She does not
see people, and cannot; books have lost their interest for her. She sits
solitary; and all the day, and all the days, wonders how it all happened,
and why. We others were always busy with our affairs, but Susy was her
comrade--had to be driven from her loving persecutions--sometimes at 1 in
the morning. To Livy the persecutions were welcome. It was heaven to
her to be plagued like that. But it is ended now. Livy stands so in
need of help; and none among us all could help her like you.

Some day you and I will walk again, Joe, and talk. I hope so. We could
have such talks! We are all grateful to you and Harmony--how grateful it
is not given to us to say in words. We pay as we can, in love; and in
this coin practicing no economy.
Good bye, dear old Joe!
MARK.


The letters to Mr. Rogers were, for the most part, on matters of
business, but in one of them he said: "I am going to write with all
my might on this book, and follow it up with others as fast as I can
in the hope that within three years I can clear out the stuff that
is in me waiting to be written, and that I shall then die in the
promptest kind of a way and no fooling around." And in one he
wrote: "You are the best friend ever a man had, and the surest."


To W. D. Howells, in New York

LONDON, Feb. 23, '97.
DEAR HOWELLS,-I find your generous article in the Weekly, and I want to
thank you for its splendid praises, so daringly uttered and so warmly.
The words stir the dead heart of me, and throw a glow of color into a
life which sometimes seems to have grown wholly wan. I don't mean that I
am miserable; no--worse than that--indifferent. Indifferent to nearly
everything but work. I like that; I enjoy it, and stick to it. I do it
without purpose and without ambition; merely for the love of it.

This mood will pass, some day--there is history for it. But it cannot
pass until my wife comes up out of the submergence. She was always so
quick to recover herself before, but now there is no rebound, and we are
dead people who go through the motions of life. Indeed I am a mud image,
and it will puzzle me to know what it is in me that writes, and has
comedy-fancies and finds pleasure in phrasing them. It is a law of our
nature, of course, or it wouldn't happen; the thing in me forgets the
presence of the mud image and goes its own way, wholly unconscious of it
and apparently of no kinship with it. I have finished my book, but I go
on as if the end were indefinitely away--as indeed it is. There is no
hurry--at any rate there is no limit.