The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 3

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 3


We have all read your two opening numbers in the Century, and consider
them almost beyond praise. I hear no dissent from this verdict. I did
not know there was an untouched personage in American life, but I had
forgotten the auctioneer. You have photographed him accurately.

I have been an utterly free person for a month or two; and I do not
believe I ever so greatly appreciated and enjoyed--and realized the
absence of the chains of slavery as I do this time. Usually my first
waking thought in the morning is, "I have nothing to do to-day, I belong
to nobody, I have ceased from being a slave." Of course the highest
pleasure to be got out of freedom, and having nothing to do, is labor.
Therefore I labor. But I take my time about it. I work one hour or four
as happens to suit my mind, and quit when I please. And so these days
are days of entire enjoyment. I told Clark the other day, to jog along
comfortable and not get in a sweat. I said I believed you would not be
able to enjoy editing that library over there, where you have your own
legitimate work to do and be pestered to death by society besides;
therefore I thought if he got it ready for you against your return, that
that would be best and pleasantest.

You remember Governor Jewell, and the night he told about Russia, down in
the library. He was taken with a cold about three weeks ago, and I
stepped over one evening, proposing to beguile an idle hour for him with
a yarn or two, but was received at the door with whispers, and the
information that he was dying. His case had been dangerous during that
day only and he died that night, two hours after I left. His taking off
was a prodigious surprise, and his death has been most widely and
sincerely regretted. Win. E. Dodge, the father-in-law of one of Jewell's
daughters, dropped suddenly dead the day before Jewell died, but Jewell
died without knowing that. Jewell's widow went down to New York, to
Dodge's house, the day after Jewell's funeral, and was to return here day
before yesterday, and she did--in a coffin. She fell dead, of heart
disease, while her trunks were being packed for her return home.
Florence Strong, one of Jewell's daughters, who lives in Detroit, started
East on an urgent telegram, but missed a connection somewhere, and did
not arrive here in time to see her father alive. She was his favorite
child, and they had always been like lovers together. He always sent her
a box of fresh flowers once a week to the day of his death; a custom
which he never suspended even when he was in Russia. Mrs. Strong had
only just reached her Western home again when she was summoned to
Hartford to attend her mother's funeral.

I have had the impulse to write you several times. I shall try to
remember better henceforth.

With sincerest regards to all of you,
Yours as ever,
MARK.


Mark Twain made another trip to Canada in the interest of copyright
--this time to protect the Mississippi book. When his journey was
announced by the press, the Marquis of Lorne telegraphed an
invitation inviting him to be his guest at Rideau Hall, in Ottawa.
Clemens accepted, of course, and was handsomely entertained by the
daughter of Queen Victoria and her husband, then Governor-General of
Canada.

On his return to Hartford he found that Osgood had issued a curious
little book, for which Clemens had prepared an introduction. It was
an absurd volume, though originally issued with serious intent, its
title being The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and
English.'--[The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and
English, by Pedro Caxolino, with an introduction by Mark Twain.
Osgood, Boston, 1883. ]--Evidently the "New Guide" was prepared by
some simple Portuguese soul with but slight knowledge of English
beyond that which could be obtained from a dictionary, and his
literal translation of English idioms are often startling, as, for
instance, this one, taken at random:

"A little learneds are happies enough for to may to satisfy their
fancies on the literature."

Mark Twain thought this quaint book might amuse his royal hostess,
and forwarded a copy in what he considered to be the safe and proper
form.

To Col. De Winton, in Ottawa, Canada:

HARTFORD, June 4, '83.
DEAR COLONEL DE WINTON,--I very much want to send a little book to her
Royal Highness--the famous Portuguese phrase book; but I do not know the
etiquette of the matter, and I would not wittingly infringe any rule of
propriety. It is a book which I perfectly well know will amuse her "some
at most" if she has not seen it before, and will still amuse her "some at
least," even if she has inspected it a hundred times already. So I will
send the book to you, and you who know all about the proper observances
will protect me from indiscretion, in case of need, by putting the said
book in the fire, and remaining as dumb as I generally was when I was up
there. I do not rebind the thing, because that would look as if I
thought it worth keeping, whereas it is only worth glancing at and
casting aside.

Will you please present my compliments to Mrs. De Winton and Mrs.
Mackenzie?--and I beg to make my sincere compliments to you, also, for
your infinite kindnesses to me. I did have a delightful time up there,
most certainly.
Truly yours
S. L. CLEMENS.

P. S. Although the introduction dates a year back, the book is only just
now issued. A good long delay.

S. L. C.

Howells, writing from Venice, in April, manifested special interest
in the play project: "Something that would run like Scheherazade,
for a thousand and one nights," so perhaps his book was going
better. He proposed that they devote the month of October to the
work, and inclosed a letter from Mallory, who owned not only a
religious paper, The Churchman, but also the Madison Square Theater,
and was anxious for a Howells play. Twenty years before Howells had
been Consul to Venice, and he wrote, now: "The idea of my being here
is benumbing and silencing. I feel like the Wandering Jew, or the
ghost of the Cardiff giant."

He returned to America in July. Clemens sent him word of welcome,
with glowing reports of his own undertakings. The story on which he
was piling up MS. was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, begun
seven years before at Quarry Farm. He had no great faith in it
then, and though he had taken it up again in 1880, his interest had
not lasted to its conclusion. This time, however, he was in the
proper spirit, and the story would be finished.


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, July 20, '83.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We are desperately glad you and your gang are home
again--may you never travel again, till you go aloft or alow. Charley
Clark has gone to the other side for a run--will be back in August. He
has been sick, and needed the trip very much.

Mrs. Clemens had a long and wasting spell of sickness last Spring, but
she is pulling up, now. The children are booming, and my health is
ridiculous, it's so robust, notwithstanding the newspaper misreports.

I haven't piled up MS so in years as I have done since we came here to
the farm three weeks and a half ago. Why, it's like old times, to step
right into the study, damp from the breakfast table, and sail right in
and sail right on, the whole day long, without thought of running short
of stuff or words.

I wrote 4000 words to-day and I touch 3000 and upwards pretty often, and
don't fall below 1600 any working day. And when I get fagged out, I lie
abed a couple of days and read and smoke, and then go it again for 6 or 7
days. I have finished one small book, and am away along in a big 433
one that I half-finished two or three years ago. I expect to complete it
in a month or six weeks or two months more. And I shall like it, whether
anybody else does or not.

It's a kind of companion to Tom Sawyer. There's a raft episode from it
in second or third chapter of life on the Mississippi.....

I'm booming, these days--got health and spirits to waste--got an
overplus; and if I were at home, we would write a play. But we must do
it anyhow by and by.

We stay here till Sep. 10; then maybe a week at Indian Neck for sea air,
then home.

We are powerful glad you are all back; and send love according.

Yrs Ever
MARK


To Onion Clemens and family, in Keokuk, Id.:

ELMIRA, July 22, '83.
Private.

DEAR MA AND ORION AND MOLLIE,--I don't know that I have anything new to
report, except that Livy is still gaining, and all the rest of us
flourishing. I haven't had such booming working-days for many years.
I am piling up manuscript in a really astonishing way. I believe I shall
complete, in two months, a book which I have been fooling over for
7 years. This summer it is no more trouble to me to write than it is to
lie.

Day before yesterday I felt slightly warned to knock off work for one
day. So I did it, and took the open air. Then I struck an idea for the
instruction of the children, and went to work and carried it out. It
took me all day. I measured off 817 feet of the road-way in our farm
grounds, with a foot-rule, and then divided it up among the English
reigns, from the Conqueror down to 1883, allowing one foot to the year.
I whittled out a basket of little pegs and drove one in the ground at the
beginning of each reign, and gave it that King's name--thus:

I measured all the reigns exactly as many feet to the reign as there were
years in it. You can look out over the grounds and see the little pegs
from the front door--some of them close together, like Richard II,
Richard Cromwell, James II, &c., and some prodigiously wide apart, like
Henry III, Edward III, George III, &c. It gives the children a realizing
sense of the length or brevity of a reign. Shall invent a violent game
to go with it.

And in bed, last night, I invented a way to play it indoors--in a far
more voluminous way, as to multiplicity of dates and events--on a
cribbage board.

Hello, supper's ready.
Love to all.
Good bye.
SAML.


Onion Clemens would naturally get excited over the idea of the game
and its commercial possibilities. Not more so than his brother,
however, who presently employed him to arrange a quantity of
historical data which the game was to teach. For a season, indeed,
interest in the game became a sort of midsummer madness which
pervaded the two households, at Keokuk and at Quarry Farm. Howells
wrote his approval of the idea of "learning history by the running
foot," which was a pun, even if unintentional, for in its out-door
form it was a game of speed as well as knowledge.

Howells adds that he has noticed that the newspapers are exploiting
Mark Twain's new invention of a history game, and we shall presently
see how this happened.

Also, in this letter, Howells speaks of an English nobleman to whom
he has given a letter of introduction. "He seemed a simple, quiet,
gentlemanly man, with a good taste in literature, which he evinced
by going about with my books in his pockets, and talking of yours."


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--How odd it seems, to sit down to write a letter with
the feeling that you've got time to do it. But I'm done work, for this
season, and so have got time. I've done two seasons' work in one, and
haven't anything left to do, now, but revise. I've written eight or nine
hundred MS pages in such a brief space of time that I mustn't name the
number of days; I shouldn't believe it myself, and of course couldn't
expect you to. I used to restrict myself to 4 or 5 hours a day and
5 days in the week, but this time I've wrought from breakfast till
5.15 p.m. six days in the week; and once or twice I smouched a Sunday
when the boss wasn't looking. Nothing is half so good as literature
hooked on Sunday, on the sly.

I wrote you and Twichell on the same night, about the game, and was
appalled to get a note from him saying he was going to print part of my
letter, and was going to do it before I could get a chance to forbid it.
I telegraphed him, but was of course too late.

If you haven't ever tried to invent an indoor historical game, don't.
I've got the thing at last so it will work, I guess, but I don't want any
more tasks of that kind. When I wrote you, I thought I had it; whereas I
was only merely entering upon the initiatory difficulties of it. I might
have known it wouldn't be an easy job, or somebody would have invented a
decent historical game long ago--a thing which nobody had done. I think
I've got it in pretty fair shape--so I have caveated it.

Earl of Onston--is that it? All right, we shall be very glad to receive
them and get acquainted with them. And much obliged to you, too.
There's plenty of worse people than the nobilities. I went up and spent
a week with the Marquis and the Princess Louise, and had as good a time
as I want.

I'm powerful glad you are all back again; and we will come up there if
our little tribe will give us the necessary furlough; and if we can't get
it, you folks must come to us and give us an extension of time. We get
home Sept. 11.

Hello, I think I see Waring coming!

Good-by-letter from Clark, which explains for him.

Love to you all from the
CLEMENSES.

No--it wasn't Waring. I wonder what the devil has become of that man.
He was to spend to-day with us, and the day's most gone, now.

We are enjoying your story with our usual unspeakableness; and I'm right
glad you threw in the shipwreck and the mystery--I like it. Mrs. Crane
thinks it's the best story you've written yet. We--but we always think
the last one is the best. And why shouldn't it be? Practice helps.

P. S. I thought I had sent all our loves to all of you, but Mrs. Clemens
says I haven't. Damn it, a body can't think of everything; but a woman
thinks you can. I better seal this, now--else there'll be more
criticism.

I perceive I haven't got the love in, yet. Well, we do send the love of
all the family to all the Howellses.
S. L. C.


There had been some delay and postponement in the matter of the play
which Howells and Clemens agreed to write. They did not put in the
entire month of October as they had planned, but they did put in a
portion of that month, the latter half, working out their old idea.
In the end it became a revival of Colonel Sellers, or rather a caricature
of that gentle hearted old visionary. Clemens had always complained that
the actor Raymond had never brought out the finer shades of Colonel
Sellers's character, but Raymond in his worst performance never belied
his original as did Howells and Clemens in his dramatic revival. These
two, working together, let their imaginations run riot with disastrous
results. The reader can judge something of this himself, from The
American Claimant the book which Mark Twain would later build from the
play.

But at this time they thought it a great triumph. They had "cracked
their sides" laughing over its construction, as Howells once said, and
they thought the world would do the same over its performance. They
decided to offer it to Raymond, but rather haughtily, indifferently,
because any number of other actors would be waiting for it.

But this was a miscalculation. Raymond now turned the tables. Though
favorable to the idea of a new play, he declared this one did not present
his old Sellers at all, but a lunatic. In the end he returned the MS.
with a brief note. Attempts had already been made to interest other
actors, and would continue for some time.




XXIV

LETTERS, 1884, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. CABLE'S GREAT APRIL FOOL.
"HUCK FINN" IN PRESS. MARK TWAIN FOR CLEVELAND. CLEMENS AND CABLE.

Mark Twain had a lingering attack of the dramatic fever that winter.
He made a play of the Prince and Pauper, which Howells pronounced "too
thin and slight and not half long enough." He made another of Tom
Sawyer, and probably destroyed it, for no trace of the MS. exists to-day.
Howells could not join in these ventures, for he was otherwise occupied
and had sickness in his household.


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Jan. 7, '84.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--"O my goodn's", as Jean says. You have now encountered
at last the heaviest calamity that can befall an author. The scarlet
fever, once domesticated, is a permanent member of the family. Money may
desert you, friends forsake you, enemies grow indifferent to you, but the
scarlet fever will be true to you, through thick and thin, till you be
all saved or damned, down to the last one. I say these things to cheer
you.

The bare suggestion of scarlet fever in the family makes me shudder; I
believe I would almost rather have Osgood publish a book for me.

You folks have our most sincere sympathy. Oh, the intrusion of this
hideous disease is an unspeakable disaster.

My billiard table is stacked up with books relating to the Sandwich
Islands: the walls axe upholstered with scraps of paper penciled with
notes drawn from them. I have saturated myself with knowledge of that
unimaginably beautiful land and that most strange and fascinating people.
And I have begun a story. Its hidden motive will illustrate a but-little
considered fact in human nature; that the religious folly you are born in
you will die in, no matter what apparently reasonabler religious folly
may seem to have taken its place meanwhile, and abolished and obliterated
it. I start Bill Ragsdale at 12 years of age, and the heroine at 4, in
the midst of the ancient idolatrous system, with its picturesque and
amazing customs and superstitions, 3 months before the arrival of the
missionaries and the erection of a shallow Christianity upon the ruins of
the old paganism. Then these two will become educated Christians, and
highly civilized.

And then I will jump 15 years, and do Ragsdale's leper business. When we
came to dramatize, we can draw a deal of matter from the story, all ready
to our hand.
Yrs Ever
MARK.


He never finished the Sandwich Islands story which he and Howells
were to dramatize later. His head filled up with other projects,
such as publishing plans, reading-tours, and the like. The
type-setting machine does not appear in the letters of this period,
but it was an important factor, nevertheless. It was costing
several thousand dollars a month for construction and becoming
a heavy drain on Mark Twain's finances. It was necessary to
recuperate, and the anxiety for a profitable play, or some other
adventure that would bring a quick and generous return, grew out
of this need.

Clemens had established Charles L. Webster, his nephew by marriage,
in a New York office, as selling agent for the Mississippi book and
for his plays. He was also planning to let Webster publish the new
book, Huck Finn.

George W. Cable had proven his ability as a reader, and Clemens saw
possibilities in a reading combination, which was first planned to
include Aldrich, and Howells, and a private car.

But Aldrich and Howells did not warm to the idea, and the car was
eliminated from the plan. Cable came to visit Clemens in Hartford,
and was taken with the mumps, so that the reading-trip was
postponed.

The fortunes of the Sellers play were most uncertain and becoming
daily more doubtful. In February, Howells wrote: "If you have got
any comfort in regard to our play I wish you would heave it into my
bosom."

Cable recovered in time, and out of gratitude planned a great
April-fool surprise for his host. He was a systematic man, and did
it in his usual thorough way. He sent a "private and confidential"
suggestion to a hundred and fifty of Mark Twain's friends and
admirers, nearly all distinguished literary men. The suggestion
was that each one of them should send a request for Mark Twain's
autograph, timing it so that it would arrive on the 1st of April.
All seemed to have responded. Mark Twain's writing-table on April
Fool morning was heaped with letters, asking in every ridiculous
fashion for his "valuable autograph." The one from Aldrich was a
fair sample. He wrote: "I am making a collection of autographs of
our distinguished writers, and having read one of your works,
Gabriel Convoy, I would like to add your name to the list."

Of course, the joke in this was that Gabriel Convoy was by Bret
Harte, who by this time was thoroughly detested by Mark Twain. The
first one or two of the letters puzzled the victim; then he
comprehended the size and character of the joke and entered into it
thoroughly. One of the letters was from Bloodgood H. Cutter, the
"Poet Lariat" of Innocents Abroad. Cutter, of course, wrote in
"poetry," that is to say, doggerel. Mark Twain's April Fool was a
most pleasant one.


Rhymed letter by Bloodgood H. Cutter to Mark Twain:

LITTLE NECK, LONG ISLAND.

LONG ISLAND FARMER, TO HIS FRIEND AND PILGRIM BROTHER,
SAMUEL L. CLEMENS, ESQ.

Friends, suggest in each one's behalf
To write, and ask your autograph.
To refuse that, I will not do,
After the long voyage had with you.
That was a memorable time You wrote in prose, I wrote in Rhyme To
describe the wonders of each place, And the queer customs of each race.

That is in my memory yet
For while I live I'll not forget.
I often think of that affair
And the many that were with us there.

As your friends think it for the best
I ask your Autograph with the rest,
Hoping you will it to me send
'Twill please and cheer your dear old friend:

Yours truly,
BLOODGOOD H. CUTTER.


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Apl 8, '84.
MY DEAR HOWELLS, It took my breath away, and I haven't recovered it yet,
entirely--I mean the generosity of your proposal to read the proofs of
Huck Finn.

Now if you mean it, old man--if you are in earnest--proceed, in God's
name, and be by me forever blest. I cannot conceive of a rational man
deliberately piling such an atrocious job upon himself; but if there is
such a man and you be that man, why then pile it on. It will cost me a
pang every time I think of it, but this anguish will be eingebusst to me
in the joy and comfort I shall get out of the not having to read the
verfluchtete proofs myself. But if you have repented of your
augenblichlicher Tobsucht and got back to calm cold reason again, I won't
hold you to it unless I find I have got you down in writing somewhere.
Herr, I would not read the proof of one of my books for any fair and
reasonable sum whatever, if I could get out of it.

The proof-reading on the P & P cost me the last rags of my religion.
M.


Howells had written that he would be glad to help out in the reading of
the proofs of Huck Finn, which book Webster by this time had in hand.
Replying to Clemens's eager and grateful acceptance now, he wrote: "It is
all perfectly true about the generosity, unless I am going to read your
proofs from one of the shabby motives which I always find at the bottom
of my soul if I examine it." A characteristic utterance, though we may
be permitted to believe that his shabby motives were fewer and less
shabby than those of mankind in general.

The proofs which Howells was reading pleased him mightily. Once, during
the summer, he wrote: "if I had written half as good a book as Huck Finn
I shouldn't ask anything better than to read the proofs; even as it is,
I don't, so send them on; they will always find me somewhere."

This was the summer of the Blaine-Cleveland campaign. Mark Twain, in
company with many other leading men, had mugwumped, and was supporting
Cleveland. From the next letter we gather something of the aspects of
that memorable campaign, which was one of scandal and vituperation. We
learn, too, that the young sculptor, Karl Gerhardt, having completed a
three years' study in Paris, had returned to America a qualified artist.