The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 3

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How does Washington promise as to that? You have only to hit it in one
place to kill it. Some day the west will be numerically strong enough to
move the seat of government; her past attempts are a fair warning that
when the day comes she will do it. Then the city of Washington will lose
its consequence and pass out of the public view and public talk. It is
quite within the possibilities that, a century hence, people would wonder
and say, "How did your predecessors come to bury their great dead in this
deserted place?"

But as long as American civilisation lasts New York will last. I cannot
but think she has been well and wisely chosen as the guardian of a grave
which is destined to become almost the most conspicuous in the world's
history. Twenty centuries from now New York will still be New York,
still a vast city, and the most notable object in it will still be the
tomb and monument of General Grant.

I observe that the common and strongest objection to New York is that she
is not "national ground." Let us give ourselves no uneasiness about
that. Wherever General Grant's body lies, that is national ground.

S. L. CLEMENS.
ELMIRA, July 27.


The letter that follows is very long, but it seems too important and
too interesting to be omitted in any part. General Grant's early
indulgence in liquors had long been a matter of wide, though not
very definite, knowledge. Every one had heard how Lincoln, on being
told that Grant drank, remarked something to the effect that he
would like to know what kind of whisky Grant used so that he might
get some of it for his other generals. Henry Ward Beecher, selected
to deliver a eulogy on the dead soldier, and doubtless wishing
neither to ignore the matter nor to make too much of it, naturally
turned for information to the publisher of Grant's own memoirs,
hoping from an advance copy to obtain light.


To Henry Ward Beecher, Brooklyn:

ELMIRA, N. Y. Sept. 11, '85.
MY DEAR MR. BEECHER,--My nephew Webster is in Europe making contracts for
the Memoirs. Before he sailed he came to me with a writing, directed to
the printers and binders, to this effect:

"Honor no order for a sight or copy of the Memoirs while I am absent,
even though it be signed by Mr. Clemens himself."

I gave my permission. There were weighty reasons why I should not only
give my permission, but hold it a matter of honor to not dissolve the
order or modify it at any time. So I did all of that--said the order
should stand undisturbed to the end. If a principal could dissolve his
promise as innocently as he can dissolve his written order unguarded by
his promise, I would send you a copy of the Memoirs instantly. I did not
foresee you, or I would have made an exception.

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

My idea gained from army men, is that the drunkenness (and sometimes
pretty reckless spreeing, nights,) ceased before he came East to be Lt.
General. (Refer especially to Gen. Wm. B. Franklin--[If you could see
Franklin and talk with him--then he would unbosom,]) It was while Grant
was still in the West that Mr. Lincoln said he wished he could find out
what brand of whisky that fellow used, so he could furnish it to some of
the other generals. Franklin saw Grant tumble from his horse drunk,
while reviewing troops in New Orleans. The fall gave him a good deal of
a hurt. He was then on the point of leaving for the Chattanooga region.
I naturally put "that and that together" when I read Gen. O. O. Howards's
article in the Christian Union, three or four weeks ago--where he
mentions that the new General arrived lame from a recent accident.
(See that article.) And why not write Howard?

Franklin spoke positively of the frequent spreeing. In camp--in time of
war.

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

Captain Grant was frequently threatened by the Commandant of his Oregon
post with a report to the War Department of his conduct unless he
modified his intemperance. The report would mean dismissal from the
service. At last the report had to be made out; and then, so greatly was
the captain beloved, that he was privately informed, and was thus enabled
to rush his resignation to Washington ahead of the report. Did the
report go, nevertheless? I don't know. If it did, it is in the War
Department now, possibly, and seeable. I got all this from a regular
army man, but I can't name him to save me.

The only time General Grant ever mentioned liquor to me was about last
April or possibly May. He said:

"If I could only build up my strength! The doctors urge whisky and
champagne; but I can't take them; I can't abide the taste of any kind of
liquor."

Had he made a conquest so complete that even the taste of liquor was
become an offense? Or was he so sore over what had been said about his
habit that he wanted to persuade others and likewise himself that he
hadn't even ever had any taste for it? It sounded like the latter, but
that's no evidence.

He told me in the fall of '84 that there was something the matter with
his throat, and that at the suggestion of his physicians he had reduced
his smoking to one cigar a day. Then he added, in a casual fashion, that
he didn't care for that one, and seldom smoked it.

I could understand that feeling. He had set out to conquer not the habit
but the inclination--the desire. He had gone at the root, not the trunk.
It's the perfect way and the only true way (I speak from experience.)
How I do hate those enemies of the human race who go around enslaving
God's free people with pledges--to quit drinking instead of to quit
wanting to drink.

But Sherman and Van Vliet know everything concerning Grant; and if you
tell them how you want to use the facts, both of them will testify.
Regular army men have no concealments about each other; and yet they make
their awful statements without shade or color or malice with a frankness
and a child-like naivety, indeed, which is enchanting-and stupefying.
West Point seems to teach them that, among other priceless things not to
be got in any other college in this world. If we talked about our
guild-mates as I have heard Sherman, Grant, Van Vliet and others talk
about theirs--mates with whom they were on the best possible terms--we
could never expect them to speak to us again.

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

I am reminded, now, of another matter. The day of the funeral I sat an
hour over a single drink and several cigars with Van Vliet and Sherman
and Senator Sherman; and among other things Gen. Sherman said, with
impatient scorn:

"The idea of all this nonsense about Grant not being able to stand rude
language and indelicate stories! Why Grant was full of humor, and full
of the appreciation of it. I have sat with him by the hour listening to
Jim Nye's yarns, and I reckon you know the style of Jim Nye's histories,
Clemens. It makes me sick--that newspaper nonsense. Grant was no
namby-pamby fool, he was a man--all over--rounded and complete."

I wish I had thought of it! I would have said to General Grant: "Put
the drunkenness in the Memoirs--and the repentance and reform. Trust the
people."

But I will wager there is not a hint in the book. He was sore, there.
As much of the book as I have read gives no hint, as far as I recollect.

The sick-room brought out the points of Gen. Grant's character--some of
them particularly, to wit:

His patience; his indestructible equability of temper; his exceeding
gentleness, kindness, forbearance, lovingness, charity; his loyalty: to
friends, to convictions, to promises, half-promises, infinitesimal
fractions and shadows of promises; (There was a requirement of him which
I considered an atrocity, an injustice, an outrage; I wanted to implore
him to repudiate it; Fred Grant said, "Save your labor, I know him; he is
in doubt as to whether he made that half-promise or not--and, he will
give the thing the benefit of the doubt; he will fulfill that
half-promise or kill himself trying;" Fred Grant was right--he did
fulfill it;) his aggravatingly trustful nature; his genuineness,
simplicity, modesty, diffidence, self-depreciation, poverty in the
quality of vanity-and, in no contradiction of this last, his simple
pleasure in the flowers and general ruck sent to him by Tom, Dick and
Harry from everywhere--a pleasure that suggested a perennial surprise
that he should be the object of so much fine attention--he was the most
lovable great child in the world; (I mentioned his loyalty: you remember
Harrison, the colored body-servant? the whole family hated him, but that
did not make any difference, the General always stood at his back,
wouldn't allow him to be scolded; always excused his failures and
deficiencies with the one unvarying formula, "We are responsible for
these things in his race--it is not fair to visit our fault upon them
--let him alone;" so they did let him alone, under compulsion, until the
great heart that was his shield was taken away; then--well they simply
couldn't stand him, and so they were excusable for determining to
discharge him--a thing which they mortally hated to do, and by lucky
accident were saved from the necessity of doing;) his toughness as a
bargainer when doing business for other people or for his country
(witness his "terms" at Donelson, Vicksburg, etc.; Fred Grant told me his
father wound up an estate for the widow and orphans of a friend in St.
Louis--it took several years; at the end every complication had been
straightened out, and the property put upon a prosperous basis; great
sums had passed through his hands, and when he handed over the papers
there were vouchers to show what had been done with every penny) and his
trusting, easy, unexacting fashion when doing business for himself (at
that same time he was paying out money in driblets to a man who was
running his farm for him--and in his first Presidency he paid every one
of those driblets again (total, $3,000 F. said,) for he hadn't a scrap of
paper to show that he had ever paid them before; in his dealings with me
he would not listen to terms which would place my money at risk and leave
him protected--the thought plainly gave him pain, and he put it from him,
waved it off with his hands, as one does accounts of crushings and
mutilations--wouldn't listen, changed the subject;) and his fortitude!
He was under, sentence of death last spring; he sat thinking, musing,
several days--nobody knows what about; then he pulled himself together
and set to work to finish that book, a colossal task for a dying man.
Presently his hand gave out; fate seemed to have got him checkmated.
Dictation was suggested. No, he never could do that; had never tried it;
too old to learn, now. By and by--if he could only do Appomattox-well.
So he sent for a stenographer, and dictated 9,000 words at a single
sitting!--never pausing, never hesitating for a word, never repeating
--and in the written-out copy he made hardly a correction. He dictated
again, every two or three days--the intervals were intervals of
exhaustion and slow recuperation--and at last he was able to tell me that
he had written more matter than could be got into the book. I then
enlarged the book--had to. Then he lost his voice. He was not quite
done yet, however:--there was no end of little plums and spices to be
stuck in, here and there; and this work he patiently continued, a few
lines a day, with pad and pencil, till far into July, at Mt. McGregor.
One day he put his pencil aside, and said he was done--there was nothing
more to do. If I had been there I could have foretold the shock that
struck the world three days later.

Well, I've written all this, and it doesn't seem to amount to anything.
But I do want to help, if I only could. I will enclose some scraps from
my Autobiography--scraps about General Grant--they may be of some trifle
of use, and they may not--they at least verify known traits of his
character. My Autobiography is pretty freely dictated, but my idea is to
jack-plane it a little before I die, some day or other; I mean the rude
construction and rotten grammar. It is the only dictating I ever did,
and it was most troublesome and awkward work. You may return it to
Hartford.
Sincerely Yours
S. L. CLEMENS.


The old long-deferred Library of Humor came up again for discussion,
when in the fall of 1885 Howells associated himself with Harper &
Brothers. Howells's contract provided that his name was not to
appear on any book not published by the Harper firm. He wrote,
therefore, offering to sell out his interest in the enterprise for
two thousand dollars, in addition to the five hundred which he had
already received--an amount considered to be less than he was to
have received as joint author and compiler. Mark Twain's answer
pretty fully covers the details of this undertaking.


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Oct. 18, 1885.
Private.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I reckon it would ruin the book that is, make it
necessary to pigeon-hole it and leave it unpublished. I couldn't publish
it without a very responsible name to support my own on the title page,
because it has so much of my own matter in it. I bought Osgood's rights
for $3,000 cash, I have paid Clark $800 and owe him $700 more, which must
of course be paid whether I publish or not. Yet I fully recognize that I
have no sort of moral right to let that ancient and procrastinated
contract hamper you in any way, and I most certainly won't. So, it is my
decision,--after thinking over and rejecting the idea of trying to buy
permission of the Harpers for $2,500 to use your name, (a proposition
which they would hate to refuse to a man in a perplexed position, and yet
would naturally have to refuse it,) to pigeon-hole the "Library": not
destroy it, but merely pigeon-hole it and wait a few years and see what
new notion Providence will take concerning it. He will not desert us
now, after putting in four licks to our one on this book all this time.
It really seems in a sense discourteous not to call it "Providence's
Library of Humor."

Now that deal is all settled, the next question is, do you need and must
you require that $2,000 now? Since last March, you know, I am carrying a
mighty load, solitary and alone--General Grant's book--and must carry it
till the first volume is 30 days old (Jan. 1st) before the relief money
will begin to flow in. From now till the first of January every dollar
is as valuable to me as it could be to a famishing tramp. If you can
wait till then--I mean without discomfort, without inconvenience--it will
be a large accommodation to me; but I will not allow you to do this favor
if it will discommode you. So, speak right out, frankly, and if you need
the money I will go out on the highway and get it, using violence, if
necessary.

Mind, I am not in financial difficulties, and am not going to be. I am
merely a starving beggar standing outside the door of plenty--obstructed
by a Yale time-lock which is set for Jan. 1st. I can stand it, and stand
it perfectly well; but the days do seem to fool along considerable slower
than they used to.

I am mighty glad you are with the Harpers. I have noticed that good men
in their employ go there to stay.
Yours ever,
MARK.


In the next letter we begin to get some idea of the size of Mark
Twain's first publishing venture, and a brief summary of results may
not be out of place here.

The Grant Life was issued in two volumes. In the early months of
the year when the agents' canvass was just beginning, Mark Twain,
with what seems now almost clairvoyant vision, prophesied a sale of
three hundred thousand sets. The actual sales ran somewhat more
than this number. On February 27, 1886, Charles L. Webster & Co.
paid to Mrs. Grant the largest single royalty check in the history
of book-publishing. The amount of it was two hundred thousand
dollars. Subsequent checks increased the aggregate return to
considerably more than double this figure. In a memorandum made by
Clemens in the midst of the canvass he wrote.

"During 100 consecutive days the sales (i. e., subscriptions) of
General Grant's book averaged 3,000 sets (6,000 single volumes) per
day: Roughly stated, Mrs. Grant's income during all that time was
$5,000 a day."


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HOTEL NORMANDIE
NEW YORK, Dec. 2, '85.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I told Webster, this afternoon, to send you that
$2,000; but he is in such a rush, these first days of publication, that
he may possibly forget it; so I write lest I forget it too. Remind me,
if he should forget. When I postponed you lately, I did it because I
thought I should be cramped for money until January, but that has turned
out to be an error, so I hasten to cut short the postponement.

I judge by the newspapers that you are in Auburndale, but I don't know it
officially.

I've got the first volume launched safely; consequently, half of the
suspense is over, and I am that much nearer the goal. We've bound and
shipped 200,000 books; and by the 10th shall finish and ship the
remaining 125,000 of the first edition. I got nervous and came down to
help hump-up the binderies; and I mean to stay here pretty much all the
time till the first days of March, when the second volume will issue.
Shan't have so much trouble, this time, though, if we get to press pretty
soon, because we can get more binderies then than are to be had in front
of the holidays. One lives and learns. I find it takes 7 binderies four
months to bind 325,000 books.

This is a good book to publish. I heard a canvasser say, yesterday, that
while delivering eleven books he took 7 new subscriptions. But we shall
be in a hell of a fix if that goes on--it will "ball up" the binderies
again.
Yrs ever
MARK.


November 30th that year was Mark Twain's fiftieth birthday, an event
noticed by the newspapers generally, and especially observed by many
of his friends. Warner, Stockton and many others sent letters;
Andrew Lang contributed a fine poem; also Oliver Wendell. Holmes
--the latter by special request of Miss Gilder--for the Critic.
These attentions came as a sort of crowning happiness at the end of
a golden year. At no time in his life were Mark Twain's fortunes
and prospects brighter; he had a beautiful family and a perfect
home. Also, he had great prosperity. The reading-tour with Cable
had been a fine success. His latest book, The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn, had added largely to his fame and income.
The publication of the Grant Memoirs had been a dazzling triumph.
Mark Twain had become recognized, not only as America's most
distinguished author, but as its most envied publisher. And now,
with his fiftieth birthday, had come this laurel from Holmes, last
of the Brahmins, to add a touch of glory to all the rest. We feel
his exaltation in his note of acknowledgment.


To Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Boston:

DEAR MR. HOLMES,--I shall never be able to tell you the half of how proud
you have made me. If I could you would say you were nearly paid for the
trouble you took. And then the family: If I can convey the electrical
surprise and gratitude and exaltation of the wife and the children last
night, when they happened upon that Critic where I had, with artful
artlessness, spread it open and retired out of view to see what would
happen--well, it was great and fine and beautiful to see, and made me
feel as the victor feels when the shouting hosts march by; and if you
also could have seen it you would have said the account was squared. For
I have brought them up in your company, as in the company of a warm and
friendly and beneficent but far-distant sun; and so, for you to do this
thing was for the sun to send down out of the skies the miracle of a
special ray and transfigure me before their faces. I knew what that poem
would be to them; I knew it would raise me up to remote and shining
heights in their eyes, to very fellowship with the chambered Nautilus
itself, and that from that fellowship they could never more dissociate me
while they should live; and so I made sure to be by when the surprise
should come.

Charles Dudley Warner is charmed with the poem for its own felicitous
sake; and so indeed am I, but more because it has drawn the sting of my
fiftieth year; taken away the pain of it, the grief of it, the somehow
shame of it, and made me glad and proud it happened.

With reverence and affection,
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.


Holmes wrote with his own hand: "Did Miss Gilder tell you I had
twenty-three letters spread out for answer when her suggestion came
about your anniversary? I stopped my correspondence and made my
letters wait until the lines were done."