The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 3
M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 3
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, Aug. 21, '84.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--This presidential campaign is too delicious for
anything. Isn't human nature the most consummate sham and lie that was
ever invented? Isn't man a creature to be ashamed of in pretty much all
his aspects? Man, "know thyself "--and then thou wilt despise thyself,
to a dead moral certainty. Take three quite good specimens--Hawley,
Warner, and Charley Clark. Even I do not loathe Blaine more than they
do; yet Hawley is howling for Blaine, Warner and Clark are eating their
daily crow in the paper for him, and all three will vote for him. O
Stultification, where is thy sting, O slave where is thy hickory!
I suppose you heard how a marble monument for which St. Gaudens was
pecuniarily responsible, burned down in Hartford the other day,
uninsured--for who in the world would ever think of insuring a marble
shaft in a cemetery against a fire?--and left St. Gauden out of pocket
$15,000.
It was a bad day for artists. Gerhardt finished my bust that day, and
the work was pronounced admirable by all the kin and friends; but in
putting it in plaster (or rather taking it out) next day it got ruined.
It was four or five weeks hard work gone to the dogs. The news flew, and
everybody on the farm flocked to the arbor and grouped themselves about
the wreck in a profound and moving silence--the farm-help, the colored
servants, the German nurse, the children, everybody--a silence
interrupted at wide intervals by absent-minded ejaculations wising from
unconscious breasts as the whole size of the disaster gradually worked
its way home to the realization of one spirit after another.
Some burst out with one thing, some another; the German nurse put up her
hands and said, "Oh, Schade! oh, schrecklich!" But Gerhardt said
nothing; or almost that. He couldn't word it, I suppose. But he went to
work, and by dark had everything thoroughly well under way for a fresh
start in the morning; and in three days' time had built a new bust which
was a trifle better than the old one--and to-morrow we shall put the
finishing touches on it, and it will be about as good a one as nearly
anybody can make.
Yrs Ever
MARK.
If you run across anybody who wants a bust, be sure and recommend
Gerhardt on my say-so.
But Howells was determinedly for Blaine. "I shall vote for Blaine," he
replied. "I do not believe he is guilty of the things they accuse him
of, and I know they are not proved against him. As for Cleveland, his
private life may be no worse than that of most men, but as an enemy of
that contemptible, hypocritical, lop-sided morality which says a woman
shall suffer all the shame of unchastity and man none, I want to see him
destroyed politically by his past. The men who defend him would take
their wives to the White House if he were president, but if he married
his concubine--'made her an honest woman' they would not go near him. I
can't stand that."
Certainly this was sound logic, in that day, at least. But it left
Clemens far from satisfied.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, Sept. 17, '84.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Somehow I can't seem to rest quiet under the idea of
your voting for Blaine. I believe you said something about the country
and the party. Certainly allegiance to these is well; but as certainly a
man's first duty is to his own conscience and honor--the party or the
country come second to that, and never first. I don't ask you to vote at
all--I only urge you to not soil yourself by voting for Blaine.
When you wrote before, you were able to say the charges against him were
not proven. But you know now that they are proven, and it seems to me
that that bars you and all other honest and honorable men (who are
independently situated) from voting for him.
It is not necessary to vote for Cleveland; the only necessary thing to
do, as I understand it, is that a man shall keep himself clean, (by
withholding his vote for an improper man) even though the party and the
country go to destruction in consequence. It is not parties that make or
save countries or that build them to greatness--it is clean men, clean
ordinary citizens, rank and file, the masses. Clean masses are not made
by individuals standing back till the rest become clean.
As I said before, I think a man's first duty is to his own honor; not to
his country and not to his party. Don't be offended; I mean no offence.
I am not so concerned about the rest of the nation, but--well, good-bye.
Ys Ever
MARK.
There does not appear to be any further discussion of the matter
between Howells and Clemens. Their letters for a time contained no
suggestion of politics.
Perhaps Mark Twain's own political conscience was not entirely clear
in his repudiation of his party; at least we may believe from his
next letter that his Cleveland enthusiasm was qualified by a
willingness to support a Republican who would command his admiration
and honor. The idea of an eleventh-hour nomination was rather
startling, whatever its motive.
To Mr. Pierce, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Oct. 22, '84.
MY DEAR MR. PIERCE,--You know, as well as I do, that the reason the
majority of republicans are going to vote for Blaine is because they feel
that they cannot help themselves. Do not you believe that if Mr. Edmunds
would consent to run for President, on the Independent ticket--even at
this late day--he might be elected?
Well, if he wouldn't consent, but should even strenuously protest and say
he wouldn't serve if elected, isn't it still wise and fair to nominate
him and vote for him? since his protest would relieve him from all
responsibility; and he couldn't surely find fault with people for forcing
a compliment upon him. And do not you believe that his name thus
compulsorily placed at the head of the Independent column would work
absolutely certain defeat to Blain and save the country's honor?
Politicians often carry a victory by springing some disgraceful and
rascally mine under the feet of the adversary at the eleventh hour; would
it not be wholesome to vary this thing for once and spring as formidable
a mine of a better sort under the enemy's works?
If Edmunds's name were put up, I would vote for him in the teeth of all
the protesting and blaspheming he could do in a month; and there are lots
of others who would do likewise.
If this notion is not a foolish and wicked one, won't you just consult
with some chief Independents, and see if they won't call a sudden
convention and whoop the thing through? To nominate Edmunds the 1st of
November, would be soon enough, wouldn't it?
With kindest regards to you and the Aldriches,
Yr Truly
S. L. CLEMENS.
Clemens and Cable set out on their reading-tour in November. They were a
curiously-assorted pair: Cable was of orthodox religion, exact as to
habits, neat, prim, all that Clemens was not. In the beginning Cable
undertook to read the Bible aloud to Clemens each evening, but this part
of the day's program was presently omitted by request. If they spent
Sunday in a town, Cable was up bright and early visiting the various
churches and Sunday-schools, while Mark Twain remained at the hotel, in
bed, reading or asleep.
XXV
THE GREAT YEAR OF 1885. CLEMENS AND CABLE. PUBLICATION OF "HUCK FINN."
THE GRANT MEMOIRS. MARK TWAIN AT FIFTY.
The year 1885 was in some respects the most important, certainly the
most pleasantly exciting, in Mark Twain's life. It was the year in
which he entered fully into the publishing business and launched one
of the most spectacular of all publishing adventures, The Personal
Memoirs of General U. S. Grant. Clemens had not intended to do
general publishing when he arranged with Webster to become
sales-agent for the Mississippi book, and later general agent for
Huck Finn's adventures; he had intended only to handle his own
books, because he was pretty thoroughly dissatisfied with other
publishing arrangements. Even the Library of Humor, which Howells,
with Clark, of the Courant, had put together for him, he left with
Osgood until that publisher failed, during the spring of 1885.
Certainly he never dreamed of undertaking anything of the
proportions of the Grant book.
He had always believed that Grant could make a book. More than
once, when they had met, he had urged the General to prepare his
memoirs for publication. Howells, in his 'My Mark Twain', tells of
going with Clemens to see Grant, then a member of the ill-fated firm
of Grant and Ward, and how they lunched on beans, bacon and coffee
brought in from a near-by restaurant. It was while they were eating
this soldier fare that Clemens--very likely abetted by Howells
--especially urged the great commander to prepare his memoirs. But
Grant had become a financier, as he believed, and the prospect of
literary earnings, however large, did not appeal to him.
Furthermore, he was convinced that he was without literary ability
and that a book by him would prove a failure.
But then, by and by, came a failure more disastrous than anything he
had foreseen--the downfall of his firm through the Napoleonic
rascality of Ward. General Grant was utterly ruined; he was left
without income and apparently without the means of earning one. It
was the period when the great War Series was appeasing in the
Century Magazine. General Grant, hard-pressed, was induced by the
editors to prepare one or more articles, and, finding that he could
write them, became interested in the idea of a book. It is
unnecessary to repeat here the story of how the publication of this
important work passed into the hands of Mark Twain; that is to say,
the firm of Charles L. Webster & Co., the details having been fully
given elsewhere.--[See Mark Twain: A Biography, chap. cliv.]--
We will now return for the moment to other matters, as reported in
order by the letters. Clemens and Cable had continued their
reading-tour into Canada, and in February found themselves in
Montreal. Here they were invited by the Toque Bleue Snow-shoe Club
to join in one of their weekly excursions across Mt. Royal. They
could not go, and the reasons given by Mark Twain are not without
interest. The letter is to Mr. George Iles, author of Flame,
Electricity, and the Camera, and many other useful works.
To George Iles, far the Toque Blew Snow-shoe Club,
Montreal:
DETROIT, February 12, 1885.
Midnight, P.S.
MY DEAR ILES,--I got your other telegram a while ago, and answered it,
explaining that I get only a couple of hours in the middle of the day for
social life. I know it doesn't seem rational that a man should have to
lie abed all day in order to be rested and equipped for talking an hour
at night, and yet in my case and Cable's it is so. Unless I get a great
deal of rest, a ghastly dulness settles down upon me on the platform, and
turns my performance into work, and hard work, whereas it ought always to
be pastime, recreation, solid enjoyment. Usually it is just this latter,
but that is because I take my rest faithfully, and prepare myself to do
my duty by my audience.
I am the obliged and appreciative servant of my brethren of the Snow-shoe
Club, and nothing in the world would delight me more than to come to
their house without naming time or terms on my own part--but you see how
it is. My cast iron duty is to my audience--it leaves me no liberty and
no option.
With kindest regards to the Club, and to you,
I am Sincerely yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
In the next letter we reach the end of the Clemens-Cable venture and
get a characteristic summing up of Mark Twain's general attitude
toward the companion of his travels. It must be read only in the
clear realization of Mark Twain's attitude toward orthodoxy, and his
habit of humor. Cable was as rigidly orthodox as Mark Twain was
revolutionary. The two were never anything but the best of friends.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
PHILADA. Feb. 27, '85.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--To-night in Baltimore, to-morrow afternoon and night in
Washington, and my four-months platform campaign is ended at last. It
has been a curious experience. It has taught me that Cable's gifts of
mind are greater and higher than I had suspected. But--
That "But" is pointing toward his religion. You will never, never know,
never divine, guess, imagine, how loathsome a thing the Christian
religion can be made until you come to know and study Cable daily and
hourly. Mind you, I like him; he is pleasant company; I rage and swear
at him sometimes, but we do not quarrel; we get along mighty happily
together; but in him and his person I have learned to hate all religions.
He has taught me to abhor and detest the Sabbath-day and hunt up new and
troublesome ways to dishonor it.
Nat Goodwin was on the train yesterday. He plays in Washington all the
coming week. He is very anxious to get our Sellers play and play it
under changed names. I said the only thing I could do would be to write
to you. Well, I've done it.
Ys Ever
MARK.
Clemens and Webster were often at the house of General Grant during
these early days of 1885, and it must have been Webster who was
present with Clemens on the great occasion described in the
following telegram. It was on the last day and hour of President
Arthur's administration that the bill was passed which placed
Ulysses S. Grant as full General with full pay on the retired list,
and it is said that the congressional clock was set back in order
that this enactment might become a law before the administration
changed. General Grant had by this time developed cancer and was
already in feeble health.
Telegram to Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:
NEW YORK, Mar. 4, 1885.
To MRS. S. L. CLEMENS, We were at General Grant's at noon and a telegram
arrived that the last act of the expiring congress late this morning
retired him with full General's rank and accompanying emoluments. The
effect upon him was like raising the dead. We were present when the
telegram was put in his hand.
S. L. CLEMENS.
Something has been mentioned before of Mark Twain's investments and
the generally unprofitable habit of them. He had a trusting nature,
and was usually willing to invest money on any plausible
recommendation. He was one of thousands such, and being a person of
distinction he now and then received letters of inquiry, complaint,
or condolence. A minister wrote him that he had bought some stocks
recommended by a Hartford banker and advertised in a religious
paper. He added, "After I made that purchase they wrote me that you
had just bought a hundred shares and that you were a 'shrewd' man."
The writer closed by asking for further information. He received
it, as follows:
To the Rev. J----, in Baltimore:
WASHINGTON, Mch. 2,'85.
MY DEAR SIR,--I take my earliest opportunity to answer your favor of Feb.
B---- was premature in calling me a "shrewd man." I wasn't one at that
time, but am one now--that is, I am at least too shrewd to ever again
invest in anything put on the market by B----. I know nothing whatever
about the Bank Note Co., and never did know anything about it. B----
sold me about $4,000 or $5,000 worth of the stock at $110, and I own it
yet. He sold me $10,000 worth of another rose-tinted stock about the
same time. I have got that yet, also. I judge that a peculiarity of
B----'s stocks is that they are of the staying kind. I think you should
have asked somebody else whether I was a shrewd man or not for two
reasons: the stock was advertised in a religious paper, a circumstance
which was very suspicious; and the compliment came to you from a man who
was interested to make a purchaser of you. I am afraid you deserve your
loss. A financial scheme advertised in any religious paper is a thing
which any living person ought to know enough to avoid; and when the
factor is added that M. runs that religious paper, a dead person ought to
know enough to avoid it.
Very Truly Yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
The story of Huck Finn was having a wide success. Webster handled
it skillfully, and the sales were large. In almost every quarter
its welcome was enthusiastic. Here and there, however, could be
found an exception; Huck's morals were not always approved of by
library reading-committees. The first instance of this kind was
reported from Concord; and would seem not to have depressed the
author-publisher.
To Chas. L. Webster, in New York:
Mch 18, '85.
DEAR CHARLEY,--The Committee of the Public Library of Concord, Mass, have
given us a rattling tip-top puff which will go into every paper in the
country. They have expelled Huck from their library as "trash and
suitable only for the slums." That will sell 25,000 copies for us sure.
S. L. C.
Perhaps the Concord Free Trade Club had some idea of making amends
to Mark Twain for the slight put upon his book by their librarians,
for immediately after the Huck Finn incident they notified him of
his election to honorary membership.
Those were the days of "authors' readings," and Clemens and Howells
not infrequently assisted at these functions, usually given as
benefits of one kind or another. From the next letter, written
following an entertainment given for the Longfellow memorial, we
gather that Mark Twain's opinion of Howells's reading was steadily
improving.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, May 5, '85.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--.....Who taught you to read? Observation and thought,
I guess. And practice at the Tavern Club?--yes; and that was the best
teaching of all:
Well, you sent even your daintiest and most delicate and fleeting points
home to that audience--absolute proof of good reading. But you couldn't
read worth a damn a few years ago. I do not say this to flatter. It is
true I looked around for you when I was leaving, but you had already
gone.
Alas, Osgood has failed at last. It was easy to see that he was on the
very verge of it a year ago, and it was also easy to see that he was
still on the verge of it a month or two ago; but I continued to hope--but
not expect that he would pull through. The Library of Humor is at his
dwelling house, and he will hand it to you whenever you want it.
To save it from any possibility of getting mixed up in the failure,
perhaps you had better send down and get it. I told him, the other day,
that an order of any kind from you would be his sufficient warrant for
its delivery to you.
In two days General Grant has dictated 50 pages of foolscap, and thus the
Wilderness and Appomattox stand for all time in his own words. This
makes the second volume of his book as valuable as the first.
He looks mighty well, these latter days.
Yrs Ever
MARK.
"I am exceedingly glad," wrote Howells, "that you approve of my
reading, for it gives me some hope that I may do something on the
platform next winter..... but I would never read within a hundred
miles of you, if I could help it. You simply straddled down to the
footlights and took that house up in the hollow of your hand and
tickled it."
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, July 21, 1885.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--You are really my only author; I am restricted to you,
I wouldn't give a damn for the rest.
I bored through Middlemarch during the past week, with its labored and
tedious analyses of feelings and motives, its paltry and tiresome people,
its unexciting and uninteresting story, and its frequent blinding flashes
of single-sentence poetry, philosophy, wit, and what not, and nearly died
from the overwork. I wouldn't read another of those books for a farm.
I did try to read one other--Daniel Deronda. I dragged through three
chapters, losing flesh all the time, and then was honest enough to quit,
and confess to myself that I haven't any romance literature appetite, as
far as I can see, except for your books.
But what I started to say, was, that I have just read Part II of Indian
Summer, and to my mind there isn't a waste line in it, or one that could
be improved. I read it yesterday, ending with that opinion; and read it
again to-day, ending with the same opinion emphasized. I haven't read
Part I yet, because that number must have reached Hartford after we left;
but we are going to send down town for a copy, and when it comes I am to
read both parts aloud to the family. It is a beautiful story, and makes
a body laugh all the time, and cry inside, and feel so old and so
forlorn; and gives him gracious glimpses of his lost youth that fill him
with a measureless regret, and build up in him a cloudy sense of his
having been a prince, once, in some enchanted far-off land, and of being
an exile now, and desolate--and Lord, no chance ever to get back there
again! That is the thing that hurts. Well, you have done it with
marvelous facility and you make all the motives and feelings perfectly
clear without analyzing the guts out of them, the way George Eliot does.
I can't stand George Eliot and Hawthorne and those people; I see what
they are at a hundred years before they get to it and they just tire me
to death. And as for "The Bostonians," I would rather be damned to John
Bunyan's heaven than read that.
Yrs Ever
MARK
It is as easy to understand Mark Twain's enjoyment of Indian Summer
as his revolt against Daniel Deronda and The Bostonians. He cared
little for writing that did not convey its purpose in the simplest
and most direct terms. It is interesting to note that in thanking
Clemens for his compliment Howells wrote: "What people cannot see is
that I analyze as little as possible; they go on talking about the
analytical school, which I am supposed to belong to, and I want to
thank you for using your eyes..... Did you ever read De Foe's
'Roxana'? If not, then read it, not merely for some of the deepest
insights into the lying, suffering, sinning, well-meaning human
soul, but for the best and most natural English that a book was ever
written in."
General Grant worked steadily on his book, dictating when he could,
making brief notes on slips of paper when he could no longer speak.
Clemens visited him at Mt. McGregor and brought the dying soldier
the comforting news that enough of his books were already sold to
provide generously for his family, and that the sales would
aggregate at least twice as much by the end of the year.
This was some time in July. On the 23d of that month General Grant
died. Immediately there was a newspaper discussion as to the most
suitable place for the great chieftain to lie. Mark Twain's
contribution to this debate, though in the form of an open letter,
seems worthy of preservation here.
To the New York "Sun," on the proper place for Grant's Tomb:
To THE EDITOR OP' THE SUN:--SIR,--The newspaper atmosphere is charged
with objections to New York as a place of sepulchre for General Grant,
and the objectors are strenuous that Washington is the right place. They
offer good reasons--good temporary reasons--for both of these positions.
But it seems to me that temporary reasons are not mete for the occasion.
We need to consider posterity rather than our own generation. We should
select a grave which will not merely be in the right place now, but will
still be in the right place 500 years from now.