The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete

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


But no matter. His book was a wretchedly poor one, generally speaking,
and it could be no credit to either of us to appear between its covers.

This paragraph is from the New York correspondence of the San Francisco
Alta:

(Clipping pasted in.)

"Mark Twain's story in the Saturday Press of November 18th, called
'Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,' has set all New York in a roar,
and he may be said to have made his mark. I have been asked fifty
times about it and its author, and the papers are copying it far and
near. It is voted the best thing of the day. Cannot the
Californian afford to keep Mark all to itself? It should not let
him scintillate so widely without first being filtered through the
California press."

The New York publishing house of Carleton & Co. gave the sketch to the
Saturday Press when they found it was too late for the book.

Though I am generally placed at the head of my breed of scribblers in
this part of the country, the place properly belongs to Bret Harte,
I think, though he denies it, along with the rest. He wants me to club a
lot of old sketches together with a lot of his, and publish a book.
I wouldn't do it, only he agrees to take all the trouble. But I want to
know whether we are going to make anything out of it, first. However, he
has written to a New York publisher, and if we are offered a bargain that
will pay for a month's labor we will go to work and prepare the volume
for the press.
Yours affy,
SAM.


Bret Harte and Clemens had by this time quit the Californian,
expecting to contribute to Eastern periodicals. Clemens, however,
was not yet through with Coast journalism. There was much interest
just at this time in the Sandwich Islands, and he was selected by
the foremost Sacramento paper to spy out the islands and report
aspects and conditions there. His letters home were still
infrequent, but this was something worth writing.


To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

SAN FRANCISCO, March 5th, 1866.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I start to do Sandwich Islands day after
tomorrow, (I suppose Annie is geographer enough by this time to find them
on the map), in the steamer "Ajax." We shall arrive there in about
twelve days. My friends seem determined that I shall not lack
acquaintances, for I only decided today to go, and they have already sent
me letters of introduction to everybody down there worth knowing. I am
to remain there a month and ransack the islands, the great cataracts and
the volcanoes completely, and write twenty or thirty letters to the
Sacramento Union--for which they pay me as much money as I would get if I
staid at home.

If I come back here I expect to start straight across the continent by
way of the Columbia river, the Pend d'Oreille Lakes, through Montana and
down the Missouri river,--only 200 miles of land travel from San
Francisco to New Orleans.
Goodbye for the present.
Yours,
SAM.


His home letters from the islands are numerous enough; everything
there being so new and so delightful that he found joy in telling of
it; also, he was still young enough to air his triumphs a little,
especially when he has dined with the Grand Chamberlain and is going
to visit the King!

The languorous life of the islands exactly suited Mask Twain. All
his life he remembered them--always planning to return, some day, to
stay there until he died. In one of his note-books he wrote: "Went
with Mr. Dam to his cool, vine-shaded home; no care-worn or eager,
anxious faces in this land of happy contentment. God, what a
contrast with California and the Washoe!"

And again:

"Oh, Islands there are on the face of the deep
Where the leaves never fade and the skies never weep."

The letters tell the story of his sojourn, which stretched itself
into nearly five months.

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

HONOLULU, SANDWICH ISLANDS, April 3, 1866.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I have been here two or three weeks, and like
the beautiful tropical climate better and better. I have ridden on
horseback all over this island (Oahu) in the meantime, and have visited
all the ancient battle-fields and other places of interest. I have got a
lot of human bones which I took from one of these battle-fields--I guess
I will bring you some of them. I went with the American Minister and
took dinner this evening with the King's Grand Chamberlain, who is
related to the royal family, and although darker than a mulatto, he has
an excellent English education and in manners is an accomplished
gentleman. The dinner was as ceremonious as any I ever attended in
California--five regular courses, and five kinds of wine and one of
brandy. He is to call for me in the morning with his carriage, and we
will visit the King at the palace--both are good Masons--the King is a
Royal Arch Mason. After dinner tonight they called in the "singing
girls," and we had some beautiful music; sung in the native tongue.

The steamer I came here in sails tomorrow, and as soon as she is gone I
shall sail for the other islands of the group and visit the great
volcano--the grand wonder of the world. Be gone two months.
Yrs.
SAM.


To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

WAILUKU SUGAR PLANTATION,
ISLAND OF MAUI, H. I., May 4,1866.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--11 O'clock at night.--This is the
infernalist darkest country, when the moon don't shine; I stumbled and
fell over my horse's lariat a minute ago and hurt my leg, so I must stay
here tonight.

I got the same leg hurt last week; I said I hadn't got hold of a spirited
horse since I had been on the island, and one of the proprietors loaned
me a big vicious colt; he was altogether too spirited; I went to tighten
the cinch before mounting him, when he let out with his left leg (?) and
kicked me across a ten-acre lot. A native rubbed and doctored me so well
that I was able to stand on my feet in half an hour. It was then half
after four and I had an appointment to go seven miles and get a girl and
take her to a card party at five.

I have been clattering around among the plantations for three weeks, now,
and next week I am going to visit the extinct crater of Mount Haleakala
--the largest in the world; it is ten miles to the foot of the mountain;
it rises 10,000 feet above the valley; the crater is 29 miles in
circumference and 1,000 feet deep. Seen from the summit, the city
of St. Louis would look like a picture in the bottom of it.

As soon as I get back from Haleakala (pronounced Hally-ekka-lah) I will
sail for Honolulu again and thence to the Island of Hawaii (pronounced
Hah-wy-ye,) to see the greatest active volcano in the world--that of
Kilauea (pronounced Kee-low-way-ah)--and from thence back to San
Francisco--and then, doubtless, to the States. I have been on this trip
two months, and it will probably be two more before I get back to
California.
Yrs affy
SAM.


He was having a glorious time--one of the most happy, carefree
adventures of his career. No form of travel or undertaking could
discountenance Mark Twain at thirty.


To Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Carson City:

HONOLULU, May 22, 1866.
MY DEAR SISTER,--I have just got back from a sea voyage--from the
beautiful island of Maui, I have spent five weeks there, riding backwards
and forwards among the sugar plantations--looking up the splendid scenery
and visiting the lofty crater of Haleakala. It has been a perfect
jubilee to me in the way of pleasure.

I have not written a single line, and have not once thought of business,
or care or human toil or trouble or sorrow or weariness. Few such months
come in a lifetime.

I set sail again, a week hence, for the island of Hawaii, to see the
great active volcano of Kilauea. I shall not get back here for four or
five weeks, and shall not reach San Francisco before the latter part of
July.

So it is no use to wait for me to go home. Go on yourselves.

If I were in the east now, I could stop the publication of a piratical
book which has stolen some of my sketches.

It is late-good-bye, Mollie,
Yr Bro
SAM.


To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

HONOLULU, SANDWICH ISLANDS, June 21,1866.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I have just got back from a hard trip through
the Island of Hawaii, begun on the 26th of May and finished on the 18th
of June--only six or seven days at sea--all the balance horse-back, and
the hardest mountain road in the world. I staid at the volcano about a
week and witnessed the greatest eruption that has occurred for years.
I lived well there. They charge $4 a day for board, and a dollar or two
extra for guides and horses. I had a pretty good time. They didn't
charge me anything. I have got back sick--went to bed as soon as I
arrived here--shall not be strong again for several days yet. I rushed
too fast. I ought to have taken five or six weeks on that trip.

A week hence I start for the Island of Kauai, to be gone three weeks and
then I go back to California.

The Crown Princess is dead and thousands of natives cry and wail and
dance and dance for the dead, around the King's Palace all night and
every night. They will keep it up for a month and then she will be
buried.

Hon. Anson Burlingame, U. S. Minister to China, and Gen. Van Valkenburgh,
Minister to Japan, with their families and suites, have just arrived here
en route. They were going to do me the honor to call on me this morning,
and that accounts for my being out of bed now. You know what condition
my room is always in when you are not around--so I climbed out of bed and
dressed and shaved pretty quick and went up to the residence of the
American Minister and called on them. Mr. Burlingame told me a good deal
about Hon. Jere Clemens and that Virginia Clemens who was wounded in a
duel. He was in Congress years with both of them. Mr. B. sent for his
son, to introduce him--said he could tell that frog story of mine as well
as anybody. I told him I was glad to hear it for I never tried to tell
it myself without making a botch of it. At his request I have loaned Mr.
Burlingame pretty much everything I ever wrote. I guess he will be an
almighty wise man by the time he wades through that lot.

If the New United States Minister to the Sandwich Islands (Hon. Edwin
McCook,) were only here now, so that I could get his views on this new
condition of Sandwich Island politics, I would sail for California at
once. But he will not arrive for two weeks yet and so I am going to
spend that interval on the island of Kauai.

I stopped three days with Hon. Mr. Cony, Deputy Marshal of the Kingdom,
at Hilo, Hawaii, last week and by a funny circumstance he knew everybody
that I ever knew in Hannibal and Palmyra. We used to sit up all night
talking and then sleep all day. He lives like a Prince. Confound that
Island! I had a streak of fat and a streak of lean all over it--got lost
several times and had to sleep in huts with the natives and live like a
dog.

Of course I couldn't speak fifty words of the language. Take it
altogether, though, it was a mighty hard trip.
Yours Affect.
SAM.


Burlingame and Van Valkenburgh were on their way to their posts,
and their coming to the islands just at this time proved a most
important circumstance to Mark Twain. We shall come to this
presently, in a summary of the newspaper letters written to the
Union. June 27th he wrote to his mother and sister a letter, only a
fragment of which survives, in which he tells of the arrival in
Honolulu of the survivors of the ship Hornet, burned on the line,
and of his securing the first news report of the lost vessel.


Part of a letter to Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

HONOLULU, June 27, 1866 .
. . . with a gill of water a day to each man. I got the whole story
from the third mate and two of the sailors. If my account gets to the
Sacramento Union first, it will be published first all over the United
States, France, England, Russia and Germany--all over the world; I may
say. You will see it. Mr. Burlingame went with me all the time, and
helped me question the men--throwing away invitations to dinner with the
princes and foreign dignitaries, and neglecting all sorts of things to
accommodate me. You know how I appreciate that kind of thing--especially
from such a man, who is acknowledged to have no superior in the
diplomatic circles of the world, and obtained from China concessions in
favor of America which were refused to Sir Frederick Bruce and Envoys of
France and Russia until procured for them by Burlingame himself--which
service was duly acknowledged by those dignitaries. He hunted me up as
soon as he came here, and has done me a hundred favors since, and says if
I will come to China in the first trip of the great mail steamer next
January and make his house in Pekin my home, he will afford me facilities
that few men can have there for seeing and learning. He will give me
letters to the chiefs of the great Mail Steamship Company which will be
of service to me in this matter. I expect to do all this, but I expect
to go to the States first--and from China to the Paris World's Fair.

Don't show this letter.
Yours affly
SAM.

P. S. The crown Princess of this Kingdom will be buried tomorrow with
great ceremony--after that I sail in two weeks for California.


This concludes Mark Twain's personal letters from the islands.
Of his descriptive news letters there were about twenty, and they
were regarded by the readers of the Union as distinctly notable.
Re-reading those old letters to-day it is not altogether easy to
understand why. They were set in fine nonpareil type, for one
thing, which present-day eyes simply refuse at any price, and the
reward, by present-day standards, is not especially tempting.

The letters began in the Union with the issue of April the 16th,
1866. The first--of date March 18th--tells of the writer's arrival
at Honolulu. The humor in it is not always of a high order; it
would hardly pass for humor today at all. That the same man who
wrote the Hawaiian letters in 1866 (he was then over thirty years
old) could, two years later, have written that marvelous book, the
Innocents Abroad, is a phenomenon in literary development.

The Hawaiian letters, however, do show the transition stage between
the rough elemental humor of the Comstock and the refined and subtle
style which flowered in the Innocents Abroad. Certainly Mark
Twain's genius was finding itself, and his association with the
refined and cultured personality of Anson Burlingame undoubtedly
aided in that discovery. Burlingame pointed out his faults to him,
and directed him to a better way. No more than that was needed at
such a time to bring about a transformation.

The Sandwich Islands letters, however, must have been precisely
adapted to their audience--a little more refined than the log
Comstock, a little less subtle than the Atlantic public--and they
added materially to his Coast prestige. But let us consider a
sample extract from the first Sandwich Islands letter:


Our little band of passengers were as well and thoughtfully cared for by
the friends they left weeping upon the wharf, as ever were any similar
body of pilgrims. The traveling outfit conferred upon me began with a
naval uniform, continued with a case of wine, a small assortment of
medicinal liquors and brandy, several boxes of cigars, a bunch of
matches, a fine-toothed comb, and a cake of soap, and ended with a pair
of socks. (N. B. I gave the soap to Brown, who bit into it, and then.
shook his head and said that, as a general thing, he liked to prospect
curious, foreign dishes, and find out what they were made of, but he
couldn't go that, and threw it overboard.)

It is nearly impossible to imagine humor in this extract, yet it is
a fair sample of the entire letter.

He improves in his next, at least, in description, and gives us a
picture of the crater. In this letter, also, he writes well and
seriously, in a prophetic strain, of the great trade that is to be
established between San Francisco and Hawaii, and argues for a line
of steamers between the ports, in order that the islands might be
populated by Americans, by which course European trade in that
direction could be superseded. But the humor in this letter, such
as it is, would scarcely provoke a smile to-day.

As the letters continue, he still urges the fostering of the island
trade by the United States, finds himself impressed by the work of
the missionaries, who have converted cannibals to Christians, and
gives picturesque bits of the life and scenery.

Hawaii was then dominated chiefly by French and English; though the
American interests were by no means small.

Extract from letter No. 4:


Cap. Fitch said "There's the king. That's him in the buggy. I know him
as far as I can see him."

I had never seen a king, and I naturally took out a note-book and put him
down: "Tall, slender, dark, full-bearded; green frock-coat, with lapels
and collar bordered with gold band an inch wide; plug hat, broad gold
band around it; royal costume looks too much like livery; this man is not
as fleshy as I thought he was."

I had just got these notes when Cap. Fitch discovered that he'd got hold
of the wrong king, or rather, that he'd got hold of the king's driver,
or a carriage driver of one of the nobility. The king wasn't present at
all. It was a great disappointment to me. I heard afterwards that the
comfortable, easy-going king, Kamehameha V., had been seen sitting on a
barrel on the wharf, the day before, fishing. But there was no
consolation in that. That did not restore me my lost king.


This has something of the flavor of the man we were to know later;
the quaint, gentle resignation to disappointment which is one of the
finest touches in his humor.

Further on he says: "I had not shaved since I left San Francisco.
As soon as I got ashore I hunted up a striped pole, and shortly
found one. I always had a yearning to be a king. This may never
be, I suppose, but, at any rate, it will always be a satisfaction to
me to know that, if I am not a king, I am the next thing to it.
I have been shaved by the king's barber."

Honolulu was a place of cats. He saw cats of every shade and
variety. He says: "I saw cats--tomcats, Mary-Ann cats, bobtailed
cats, blind cats, one-eyed cats, wall-eyed cats, cross-eyed cats,
gray cats, black cats, white cats, yellow cats, striped cats,
spotted cats, tame cats, wild cats, singed cats, individual cats,
groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, armies of cats,
multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of them sleek, fat,
and lazy, and sound asleep." Which illustrates another
characteristic of the humor we were to know later--the humor of
grotesque exaggeration, in which he was always strong.

He found the islands during his periods of inaction conducive to
indolence. "If I were not so fond of looking into the rich mass of
green leaves," he says, "that swathe the stately tamarind right
before my door, I would idle less, and write more, I think."

The Union made good use of his letters. Sometimes it printed them
on the front page. Evidently they were popular from the beginning.
The Union was a fine, handsome paper--beautiful in its minute
typography, and in its press-work; more beautiful than most papers
of to-day, with their machine-set type, their vulgar illustrations,
and their chain-lightning presses. A few more extracts:

"The only cigars here are those trifling, insipid, tasteless,
flavorless things they call Manilas--ten for twenty-five cents--and
it would take a thousand of them to be worth half the money. After
you have smoked about thirty-five dollars' worth of them in the
forenoon, you feel nothing but a desperate yearning to go out
somewhere and take a smoke."

"Captains and ministers form about half the population. The third
fourth is composed of Kanakas and mercantile foreigners and their
families. The final fourth is made up of high officers of the
Hawaiian government, and there are just about enough cats to go
round."

In No. 6, April the 2d, he says: "An excursion to Diamond Head, and
the king's cocoanut grove, was planned to-day, at 4.30 P. M., the
party to consist of half a dozen gentlemen and three ladies. They
all started at the appointed hour except myself. Somebody remarked
that it was twenty minutes past five o'clock, and that woke me up.
It was a fortunate circumstance that Cap. Phillips was there with
his 'turn-out,' as he calls his top buggy that Cap. Cook brought
here in 1778, and a horse that was here when Cap. Cook came."

This bit has something the savor of his subsequent work, but, as a
rule, the humor compares poorly with that which was to come later.

In No. 7 he speaks of the natives singing American songs--not always
to his comfort. "Marching Through Georgia" was one of their
favorite airs. He says: "If it had been all the same to Gen.
Sherman, I wish he had gone around by the way of the Gulf of Mexico,
instead of marching through Georgia."

Letters Nos. 8, 9, and 10 were not of special importance. In No. 10
he gives some advice to San Francisco as to the treatment of
whalers. He says:

"If I were going to advise San Francisco as to the best strategy to
employ in order to secure the whaling trade, I should say, 'Cripple
your facilities for "pulling" sea captains on any pretence that
sailors can trump up, and show the whaler a little more
consideration when he is in port.'"

In No. 11, May 24th, he tells of a trip to the Kalehi Valley, and
through historic points. At one place he looked from a precipice
over which old Kamehameha I. drove the army of Oahu, three-quarters
of a century before.

The vegetation and glory of the tropics attracted him. "In one open
spot a vine of a species unknown had taken possession of two tall
dead stumps, and wound around and about them, and swung out from
their tops, and twined their meeting tendrils together into a
faultless arch. Man, with all his art, could not improve upon its
symmetry."

He saw Sam Brannan's palace, "The Bungalow," built by one Shillaber
of San Francisco at a cost of from thirty to forty thousand dollars.
In its day it had outshone its regal neighbor, the palace of the
king, but had fallen to decay after passing into Brannan's hands,
and had become a picturesque Theban ruin by the time of Mark Twain's
visit.

In No. 12, June 20th (written May 23d), he tells of the Hawaiian
Legislature, and of his trip to the island of Maui, where, as he
says, he never spent so pleasant a month before, or bade any place
good-by so regretfully.

In No. 13 he continues the Legislature, and gives this picture of
Minister Harris: "He is six feet high, bony and rather slender;
long, ungainly arms; stands so straight he leans back a little; has
small side whiskers; his head long, up and down; he has no command
of language or ideas; oratory all show and pretence; a big washing
and a small hang-out; weak, insipid, and a damn fool in general."

In No. 14, June 22d, published July 16th, he tells of the death and
burial ceremonies of the Princess Victoria K. K., and, what was to
be of more importance to him, of the arrival of Anson Burlingame,
U. S. Minister to China, and Gen. Van Valkenburgh, U. S. Minister to
Japan. They were to stay ten or fourteen days, he said, but an
effort would be made to have them stay over July 4th.