The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete

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


McKinley was a silverite--you concealed it. Roosevelt was a silverite
--you concealed it. Parker was a silverite--you publish it. Along with
a shudder and a warning: "He was unsafe then. Is he any safer now?"

Joe, even I could be guilty of such a thing as that--if I were in
party-politics; I really believe it.

Mr. Cleveland gave the country the gold standard; by implication you
credit the matter to the Republican party.

By implication you prove the whole annual pension-scoop, concealing the
fact that the bulk of the money goes to people who in no way deserve it.
You imply that all the batteners upon this bribery-fund are Republicans.
An indiscreet confession, since about half of them must have been
Democrats before they were bought.

You as good as praise Order 78. It is true you do not shout, and you do
not linger, you only whisper and skip--still, what little you do in the
matter is complimentary to the crime.

It means, if it means anything, that our outlying properties will all be
given up by the Democrats, and our flag hauled down. All of them? Not
only the properties stolen by Mr. McKinley and Mr. Roosevelt, but the
properties honestly acquired? Joe, did you believe that hardy statement
when you made it? Yet you made it, and there it stands in permanent
print. Now what moral law would suffer if we should give up the stolen
ones? But--

"You know our standard-bearer. He will maintain all that we have
gained"--by whatever process. Land, I believe you!

By George, Joe, you are as handy at the game as if you had been in
training for it all your life. Your campaign Address is built from the
ground up upon the oldest and best models. There isn't a paragraph in it
whose facts or morals will wash--not even a sentence, I believe.

But you will soon be out of this. You didn't want to do it--that is
sufficiently apparent, thanks be!--but you couldn't well get out of it.
In a few days you will be out of it, and then you can fumigate yourself
and take up your legitimate work again and resume your clean and
wholesome private character once more and be happy--and useful.

I know I ought to hand you some guff, now, as propitiation and apology
for these reproaches, but on the whole I believe I won't.

I have inquired, and find that Mitsikuri does not arrive here until
to-morrow night. I shall watch out, and telephone again, for I greatly
want to see him.
Always Yours,
MARK.

P. S.--Nov, 4. I wish I could learn to remember that it is unjust and
dishonorable to put blame upon the human race for any of its acts. For
it did not make itself, it did not make its nature, it is merely a
machine, it is moved wholly by outside influences, it has no hand in
creating the outside influences nor in choosing which of them it will
welcome or reject, its performance is wholly automatic, it has no more
mastership nor authority over its mind than it has over its stomach,
which receives material from the outside and does as it pleases with it,
indifferent to it's proprietor's suggestions, even, let alone his
commands; wherefore, whatever the machine does--so called crimes and
infamies included--is the personal act of its Maker, and He, solely, is
responsible. I wish I could learn to pity the human race instead of
censuring it and laughing at it; and I could, if the outside influences
of old habit were not so strong upon my machine. It vexes me to catch
myself praising the clean private citizen Roosevelt, and blaming the
soiled President Roosevelt, when I know that neither praise nor blame is
due to him for any thought or word or deed of his, he being merely a
helpless and irresponsible coffee-mill ground by the hand of God.

Through a misunderstanding, Clemens, something more than a year
earlier, had severed his connection with the Players' Club, of which
he had been one of the charter members. Now, upon his return to New
York, a number of his friends joined in an invitation to him to
return. It was not exactly a letter they sent, but a bit of an old
Scotch song--

"To Mark Twain
from
The Clansmen.
Will ye no come back again,
Will ye no come back again?
Better lo'ed ye canna be.
Will ye no come back again?"

Those who signed it were David Monroe, of the North American Review;
Robert Reid, the painter, and about thirty others of the Round Table
Group, so called because its members were accustomed to lunching at
a large round table in a bay window of the Player dining-room. Mark
Twain's reply was prompt and heartfelt. He wrote:


To Robt. Reid and the Others:

WELL-BELOVED,--Surely those lovely verses went to Prince Charley's heart,
if he had one, and certainly they have gone to mine. I shall be glad and
proud to come back again after such a moving and beautiful compliment as
this from comrades whom I have loved so long. I hope you can poll the
necessary vote; I know you will try, at any rate. It will be many months
before I can foregather with you, for this black border is not
perfunctory, not a convention; it symbolizes the loss of one whose memory
is the only thing I worship.

It is not necessary for me to thank you--and words could not deliver what
I feel, anyway. I will put the contents of your envelope in the small
casket where I keep the things which have become sacred to me.

S. L. C.


A year later, Mark Twain did "come back again," as an honorary life
member, and was given a dinner of welcome by those who had signed the
lines urging his return.




XLIV

LETTERS OF 1905. TO TWICHELL, MR. DUNEKA AND OTHERS.
POLITICS AND HUMANITY. A SUMMER AT DUBLIN. MARK TWAIN AT 70.

In 1884 Mark Twain had abandoned the Republican Party to vote for
Cleveland. He believed the party had become corrupt, and to his
last day it was hard for him to see anything good in Republican
policies or performance. He was a personal friend of Thedore
Roosevelt's but, as we have seen in a former letter, Roosevelt the
politician rarely found favor in his eyes. With or without
justification, most of the President's political acts invited his
caustic sarcasm and unsparing condemnation. Another letter to
Twichell of this time affords a fair example.


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

Feb. 16, '05.
DEAR JOE,--I knew I had in me somewhere a definite feeling about the
President if I could only find the words to define it with. Here they
are, to a hair--from Leonard Jerome: "For twenty years I have loved
Roosevelt the man and hated Roosevelt the statesman and politician."

It's mighty good. Every time, in 25 years, that I have met Roosevelt the
man, a wave of welcome has streaked through me with the hand-grip;
but whenever (as a rule) I meet Roosevelt the statesman and politician,
I find him destitute of morals and not respectworthy. It is plain that
where his political self and his party self are concerned he has nothing
resembling a conscience; that under those inspirations he is naively
indifferent to the restraints of duty and even unaware of them; ready to
kick the Constitution into the back yard whenever it gets in the way; and
whenever he smells a vote, not only willing but eager to buy it, give
extravagant rates for it and pay the bill not out of his own pocket or
the party's, but out of the nation's, by cold pillage. As per Order 78
and the appropriation of the Indian trust funds.

But Roosevelt is excusable--I recognize it and (ought to) concede it.
We are all insane, each in his own way, and with insanity goes
irresponsibility. Theodore the man is sane; in fairness we ought to keep
in mind that Theodore, as statesman and politician, is insane and
irresponsible.

Do not throw these enlightenments aside, but study them, let them raise
you to higher planes and make you better. You taught me in my callow
days, let me pay back the debt now in my old age out of a thesaurus with
wisdom smelted from the golden ores of experience.
Ever yours for sweetness and light
MARK.


The next letter to Twichell takes up politics and humanity in
general, in a manner complimentary to neither. Mark Twain was never
really a pessimist, but he had pessimistic intervals, such as come
to most of us in life's later years, and at such times he let
himself go without stint concerning "the damned human race," as he
called it, usually with a manifest sense of indignation that he
should be a member of it. In much of his later writing
--A Mysterious Stranger for example--he said his say with but small
restraint, and certainly in his purely intellectual moments he was
likely to be a pessimist of the most extreme type, capably damning
the race and the inventor of it. Yet, at heart, no man loved his
kind more genuinely, or with deeper compassion, than Mark Twain,
perhaps for its very weaknesses. It was only that he had intervals
--frequent intervals, and rather long ones--when he did not admire
it, and was still more doubtful as to the ways of providence.


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

March 14, '05.
DEAR JOE,--I have a Puddn'head maxim:

"When a man is a pessimist before 48 he knows too much; if he is an
optimist after it, he knows too little."

It is with contentment, therefore, that I reflect that I am better and
wiser than you. Joe, you seem to be dealing in "bulks," now; the "bulk"
of the farmers and U. S. Senators are "honest." As regards purchase and
sale with money? Who doubts it? Is that the only measure of honesty?
Aren't there a dozen kinds of honesty which can't be measured by the
money-standard? Treason is treason--and there's more than one form of
it; the money-form is but one of them. When a person is disloyal to any
confessed duty, he is plainly and simply dishonest, and knows it; knows
it, and is privately troubled about it and not proud of himself. Judged
by this standard--and who will challenge the validity of it?--there isn't
an honest man in Connecticut, nor in the Senate, nor anywhere else. I do
not even except myself, this time.

Am I finding fault with you and the rest of the populace? No--I assure
you I am not. For I know the human race's limitations, and this makes it
my duty--my pleasant duty--to be fair to it. Each person in it is honest
in one or several ways, but no member of it is honest in all the ways
required by--by what? By his own standard. Outside of that, as I look
at it, there is no obligation upon him.

Am I honest? I give you my word of honor (private) I am not. For seven
years I have suppressed a book which my conscience tells me I ought to
publish. I hold it a duty to publish it. There are other difficult
duties which I am equal to, but I am not equal to that one. Yes, even I
am dishonest. Not in many ways, but in some. Forty-one, I think it is.
We are certainly all honest in one or several ways--every man in the
world--though I have reason to think I am the only one whose black-list
runs so light. Sometimes I feel lonely enough in this lofty solitude.

Yes, oh, yes, I am not overlooking the "steady progress from age to age
of the coming of the kingdom of God and righteousness." "From age to
age"--yes, it describes that giddy gait. I (and the rocks) will not live
to see it arrive, but that is all right--it will arrive, it surely will.
But you ought not to be always ironically apologizing for the Deity. If
that thing is going to arrive, it is inferable that He wants it to
arrive; and so it is not quite kind of you, and it hurts me, to see you
flinging sarcasms at the gait of it. And yet it would not be fair in me
not to admit that the sarcasms are deserved. When the Deity wants a
thing, and after working at it for "ages and ages" can't show even a
shade of progress toward its accomplishment, we--well, we don't laugh,
but it is only because we dasn't. The source of "righteousness"--is in
the heart? Yes. And engineered and directed by the brain? Yes. Well,
history and tradition testify that the heart is just about what it was in
the beginning; it has undergone no shade of change. Its good and evil
impulses and their consequences are the same today that they were in Old
Bible times, in Egyptian times, in Greek times, in Middle Age times, in
Twentieth Century times. There has been no change.

Meantime, the brain has undergone no change. It is what it always was.
There are a few good brains and a multitude of poor ones. It was so in
Old Bible times and in all other times--Greek, Roman, Middle Ages and
Twentieth Century. Among the savages--all the savages--the average brain
is as competent as the average brain here or elsewhere. I will prove it
to you, some time, if you like. And there are great brains among them,
too. I will prove that also, if you like.

Well, the 19th century made progress--the first progress after "ages and
ages"--colossal progress. In what? Materialities. Prodigious
acquisitions were made in things which add to the comfort of many and
make life harder for as many more. But the addition to righteousness?
Is that discoverable? I think not. The materialities were not invented
in the interest of righteousness; that there is more righteousness in the
world because of them than there, was before, is hardly demonstrable, I
think. In Europe and America, there is a vast change (due to them) in
ideals--do you admire it? All Europe and all America, are feverishly
scrambling for money. Money is the supreme ideal--all others take tenth
place with the great bulk of the nations named. Money-lust has always
existed, but not in the history of the world was it ever a craze, a
madness, until your time and mine. This lust has rotted these nations;
it has made them hard, sordid, ungentle, dishonest, oppressive.

Did England rise against the infamy of the Boer war? No--rose in favor
of it. Did America rise against the infamy of the Phillipine war? No
--rose in favor of it. Did Russia rise against the infamy of the present
war? No--sat still and said nothing. Has the Kingdom of God advanced in
Russia since the beginning of time?

Or in Europe and America, considering the vast backward step of the
money-lust? Or anywhere else? If there has been any progress toward
righteousness since the early days of Creation--which, in my ineradicable
honesty, I am obliged to doubt--I think we must confine it to ten per
cent of the populations of Christendom, (but leaving, Russia, Spain and
South America entirely out.) This gives us 320,000,000 to draw the ten
per cent from. That is to say, 32,000,000 have advanced toward
righteousness and the Kingdom of God since the "ages and ages" have been
flying along, the Deity sitting up there admiring. Well, you see it
leaves 1,200,000,000 out of the race. They stand just where they have
always stood; there has been no change.

N. B. No charge for these informations. Do come down soon, Joe.
With love,
MARK.


St. Clair McKelway, of The Brooklyn Eagle, narrowly escaped injuries
in a railway accident, and received the following. Clemens and
McKelway were old friends.


To St. Clair McKelway, in Brooklyn:

21 FIFTH AVE. Sunday Morning.
April 30, 1905.
DEAR McKELWAY, Your innumerable friends are grateful, most grateful.

As I understand the telegrams, the engineer of your train had never seen
a locomotive before. Very well, then, I am once more glad that there is
an Ever-watchful Providence to foresee possible results and send Ogdens
and McIntyres along to save our friends.

The Government's Official report, showing that our railways killed twelve
hundred persons last year and injured sixty thousand convinces me that
under present conditions one Providence is not enough to properly and
efficiently take care of our railroad business. But it is
characteristically American--always trying to get along short-handed and
save wages.

I am helping your family congratulate themselves, and am your friend as
always.
S. L. CLEMENS.


Clemens did not spend any more summers at Quarry Farm. All its
associations were beautiful and tender, but they could only sadden
him. The life there had been as of another world, sunlit, idyllic,
now forever vanished. For the summer of 1905 he leased the Copley
Green house at Dublin, New Hampshire, where there was a Boston
colony of writing and artistic folk, including many of his long-time
friends. Among them was Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who
wrote a hearty letter of welcome when he heard the news. Clemens
replied in kind.


To Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in Boston:

21 FIFTH AVE. Sunday, March 26, 1905.
DEAR COL. HIGGINSON,--I early learned that you would be my neighbor in
the Summer and I rejoiced, recognizing in you and your family a large
asset. I hope for frequent intercourse between the two households. I
shall have my youngest daughter with me. The other one will go from the
rest-cure in this city to the rest-cure in Norfolk Conn and we shall not
see her before autumn. We have not seen her since the middle of October.

Jean (the youngest daughter) went to Dublin and saw the house and came
back charmed with it. I know the Thayers of old--manifestly there is no
lack of attractions up there. Mrs. Thayer and I were shipmates in a wild
excursion perilously near 40 years ago.

You say you "send with this" the story. Then it should be here but it
isn't, when I send a thing with another thing, the other thing goes but
the thing doesn't, I find it later--still on the premises. Will you look
it up now and send it?

Aldrich was here half an hour ago, like a breeze from over the fields,
with the fragrance still upon his spirit. I am tired of waiting for that
man to get old.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. C.


Mark Twain was in his seventieth year, old neither in mind nor body,
but willing to take life more quietly, to refrain from travel and
gay events. A sort of pioneers' reunion was to be held on the
Pacific Coast, and a letter from Robert Fulton, of Reno, Nevada,
invited Clemens to attend. He did not go, but he sent a letter that
we may believe was the next best thing to those who heard it read.


To Robert Fulton, in Reno, Nevada:

IN THE MOUNTAINS,
May 24, 1905.
DEAR MR. FULTON,--I remember, as if it were yesterday, that when I
disembarked from the overland stage in front of the Ormsby in Carson City
in August, 1861, I was not expecting to be asked to come again. I was
tired, discouraged, white with alkali dust, and did not know anybody;
and if you had said then, "Cheer up, desolate stranger, don't be
down-hearted--pass on, and come again in 1905," you cannot think how
grateful I would have been and how gladly I would have closed the
contract. Although I was not expecting to be invited, I was watching out
for it, and was hurt and disappointed when you started to ask me and
changed it to, "How soon are you going away?"

But you have made it all right, now, the wound is closed. And so I thank
you sincerely for the invitation; and with you, all Reno, and if I were a
few years younger I would accept it, and promptly. I would go. I would
let somebody else do the oration, but, as for me, I would talk
--just talk. I would renew my youth; and talk--and talk--and talk
--and have the time of my life! I would march the unforgotten and
unforgettable antiques by, and name their names, and give them reverent
Hailand-farewell as they passed: Goodman, McCarthy, Gillis, Curry,
Baldwin, Winters, Howard, Nye, Stewart; Neely Johnson, Hal Clayton,
North, Root,--and my brother, upon whom be peace!--and then the
desperadoes, who made life a joy and the "Slaughter-house" a precious
possession: Sam Brown, Farmer Pete, Bill Mayfield, Six-fingered Jake,
Jack Williams and the rest of the crimson discipleship--and so on and so
on. Believe me, I would start a resurrection it would do you more good
to look at than the next one will, if you go on the way you are doing
now.

Those were the days! those old ones. They will come no more. Youth will
come no more. They were so full to the brim with the wine of life; there
have been no others like them. It chokes me up to think of them. Would
you like me to come out there and cry? It would not beseem my white
head.

Good-bye. I drink to you all. Have a good time--and take an old man's
blessing.
MARK TWAIN.


A few days later he was writing to H. H. Bancroft, of San Francisco,
who had invited him for a visit in event of his coming to the Coast.
Henry James had just been there for a week and it was hoped that
Howells would soon follow.


To H. H. Bancroft, in San Francisco:

UP IN NEW HAMPSHIRE,
May 27, 1905.
DEAR MR. BANCROFT,--I thank you sincerely for the tempting hospitalities
which you offer me, but I have to deny myself, for my wandering days are
over, and it is my desire and purpose to sit by the fire the rest of my
remnant of life and indulge myself with the pleasure and repose of work
--work uninterrupted and unmarred by duties or excursions.

A man who like me, is going to strike 70 on the 30th of next November has
no business to be flitting around the way Howells does--that shameless
old fictitious butter fly. (But if he comes, don't tell him I said it,
for it would hurt him and I wouldn't brush a flake of powder from his
wing for anything. I only say it in envy of his indestructible youth,
anyway. Howells will be 88 in October.) With thanks again,
Sincerely yours,
S. L. C.


Clemens found that the air of the New Hampshire hills agreed with
him and stimulated him to work. He began an entirely new version of
The Mysterious Stranger, of which he already had a bulky and nearly
finished manuscript, written in Vienna. He wrote several hundred
pages of an extravaganza entitled, Three Thousand Years Among the
Microbes, and then, having got his superabundant vitality reduced
(it was likely to expend itself in these weird mental exploits),
he settled down one day and wrote that really tender and beautiful
idyl, Eve's Diary, which he had begun, or at least planned, the
previous summer at Tyringham. In a letter to Mr. Frederick A.
Duneka, general manager of Harper & Brothers, he tells something of
the manner of the story; also his revised opinion of Adam's Diary,
written in '93, and originally published as a souvenir of Niagara
Falls.


To Frederick A. Duneka, in New York:

DUBLIN, July 16, '05.
DEAR MR. DUNEKA,--I wrote Eve's Diary, she using Adam's Diary as her
(unwitting and unconscious) text, of course, since to use any other text
would have been an imbecility--then I took Adam's Diary and read it. It
turned my stomach. It was not literature; yet it had been literature
once--before I sold it to be degraded to an advertisement of the Buffalo
Fair. I was going to write and ask you to melt the plates and put it out
of print.

But this morning I examined it without temper, and saw that if I
abolished the advertisement it would be literature again.

So I have done it. I have struck out 700 words and inserted 5 MS pages
of new matter (650 words), and now Adam's Diary is dam good--sixty times
as good as it ever was before.

I believe it is as good as Eve's Diary now--no, it's not quite that good,
I guess, but it is good enough to go in the same cover with Eve's. I'm
sure of that.

I hate to have the old Adam go out any more--don't put it on the presses
again, let's put the new one in place of it; and next Xmas, let us bind
Adam and Eve in one cover. They score points against each other--so, if
not bound together, some of the points would not be perceived.....