The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 3
M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 3
What a flower garden the Gemmi Pass is! After I had got my hands full
Joe made me a paper bag, which I pinned to my lapel and filled with
choice specimens. I gathered no flowers which I had ever gathered before
except 4 or 5 kinds. We took it leisurely and I picked all I wanted to.
I mailed my harvest to you a while ago. Don't send it to Mrs. Brooks
until you have looked it over, flower by flower. It will pay.
Among the clouds and everlasting snows I found a brave and bright little
forget-me-not growing in the very midst of a smashed and tumbled
stone-debris, just as cheerful as if the barren and awful domes and
ramparts that towered around were the blessed walls of heaven. I thought
how Lilly Warner would be touched by such a gracious surprise, if she,
instead of I, had seen it. So I plucked it, and have mailed it to her
with a note.
Our walk was 7 hours--the last 2 down a path as steep as a ladder,
almost, cut in the face of a mighty precipice. People are not allowed to
ride down it. This part of the day's work taxed our knees, I tell you.
We have been loafing about this village (Leukerbad) for an hour, now we
stay here over Sunday. Not tired at all. (Joe's hat fell over the
precipice--so he came here bareheaded.) I love you, my darling.
SAML.
ST. NICHOLAS, Aug. 26th, '78.
Livy darling, we came through a-whooping today, 6 hours tramp up steep
hills and down steep hills, in mud and water shoe-deep, and in a steady
pouring rain which never moderated a moment. I was as chipper and fresh
as a lark all the way and arrived without the slightest sense of fatigue.
But we were soaked and my shoes full of water, so we ate at once,
stripped and went to bed for 2 1/2 hours while our traps were thoroughly
dried, and our boots greased in addition. Then we put our clothes on hot
and went to table d'hote.
Made some nice English friends and shall see them at Zermatt tomorrow.
Gathered a small bouquet of new flowers, but they got spoiled. I sent
you a safety-match box full of flowers last night from Leukerbad.
I have just telegraphed you to wire the family news to me at Riffel
tomorrow. I do hope you are all well and having as jolly a time as we
are, for I love you, sweetheart, and also, in a measure, the Bays.
--[Little Susy's word for "babies."]--Give my love to Clara Spaulding
and also to the cubs.
SAML.
This, as far as it goes, is a truer and better account of the
excursion than Mark Twain gave in the book that he wrote later. A
Tramp Abroad has a quality of burlesque in it, which did not belong
to the journey at all, but was invented to satisfy the craving for
what the public conceived to be Mark Twain's humor. The serious
portions of the book are much more pleasing--more like himself.
The entire journey, as will be seen, lasted one week more than a
month.
Twichell also made his reports home, some of which give us
interesting pictures of his walking partner. In one place he wrote:
"Mark is a queer fellow. There is nothing he so delights in as a
swift, strong stream. You can hardly get him to leave one when once
he is within the influence of its fascinations."
Twichell tells how at Kandersteg they were out together one evening
where a brook comes plunging down from Gasternthal and how he pushed
in a drift to see it go racing along the current. "When I got back
to the path Mark was running down stream after it as hard as he
could go, throwing up his hands and shouting in the wildest ecstasy,
and when a piece went over a fall and emerged to view in the foam
below he would jump up and down and yell. He said afterward that he
had not been so excited in three months."
In other places Twichell refers to his companion's consideration for
the feeling of others, and for animals. "When we are driving, his
concern is all about the horse. He can't bear to see the whip used,
or to see a horse pull hard."
After the walk over Gemmi Pass he wrote: "Mark to-day was immensely
absorbed in flowers. He scrambled around and gathered a great variety,
and manifested the intensest pleasure in them. He crowded a pocket of
his note-book with his specimens, and wanted more room."
Whereupon Twichell got out his needle and thread and some stiff paper he
had and contrived the little paper bag to hang to the front of his vest.
The tramp really ended at Lausanne, where Clemens joined his party, but a
short excursion to Chillon and Chamonix followed, the travelers finally
separating at Geneva, Twichell to set out for home by way of England,
Clemens to remain and try to write the story of their travels. He
hurried a good-by letter after his comrade:
To Rev. J. H. Twichell:
(No date)
DEAR OLD JOE,--It is actually all over! I was so low-spirited at the
station yesterday, and this morning, when I woke, I couldn't seem to
accept the dismal truth that you were really gone, and the pleasant
tramping and talking at an end. Ah, my boy! it has been such a rich
holiday to me, and I feel under such deep and honest obligations to you
for coming. I am putting out of my mind all memory of the times when I
misbehaved toward you and hurt you: I am resolved to consider it
forgiven, and to store up and remember only the charming hours of the
journeys and the times when I was not unworthy to be with you and share a
companionship which to me stands first after Livy's. It is justifiable
to do this; for why should I let my small infirmities of disposition live
and grovel among my mental pictures of the eternal sublimities of the
Alps?
Livy can't accept or endure the fact that you are gone. But you are,
and we cannot get around it. So take our love with you, and bear it also
over the sea to Harmony, and God bless you both.
MARK.
From Switzerland the Clemens party worked down into Italy,
sight-seeing, a diversion in which Mark Twain found little enough of
interest. He had seen most of the sights ten years before, when his
mind was fresh. He unburdened himself to Twichell and to Howells,
after a period of suffering.
To J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
ROME, Nov. 3, '78.
DEAR JOE,--.....I have received your several letters, and we have
prodigiously enjoyed them. How I do admire a man who can sit down and
whale away with a pen just the same as if it was fishing--or something
else as full of pleasure and as void of labor. I can't do it; else, in
common decency, I would when I write to you. Joe, if I can make a book
out of the matter gathered in your company over here, the book is safe;
but I don't think I have gathered any matter before or since your visit
worth writing up. I do wish you were in Rome to do my sightseeing for
me. Rome interests me as much as East Hartford could, and no more. That
is, the Rome which the average tourist feels an interest in; but there
are other things here which stir me enough to make life worth living.
Livy and Clara Spaulding are having a royal time worshiping the old
Masters, and I as good a time gritting my ineffectual teeth over them.
A friend waits for me. A power of love to you all.
Amen.
MARK.
In his letter to Howells he said: "I wish I could give those sharp
satires on European life which you mention, but of course a man
can't write successful satire except he be in a calm, judicial
good-humor; whereas I hate travel, and I hate hotels, and I hate the
opera, and I hate the old masters. In truth, I don't ever seem to
be in a good-enough humor with anything to satirize it. No, I want
to stand up before it and curse it and foam at the mouth, or take a
club and pound it to rags and pulp. I have got in two or three
chapters about Wagner's operas, and managed to do it without showing
temper, but the strain of another such effort would burst me!"
From Italy the Clemens party went to Munich, where they had arranged
in advance for winter quarters. Clemens claims, in his report of
the matter to Howells, that he took the party through without the
aid of a courier, though thirty years later, in some comment which
he set down on being shown the letter, he wrote concerning this
paragraph: "Probably a lie." He wrote, also, that they acquired a
great affection for Fraulein Dahlweiner: "Acquired it at once and it
outlasted the winter we spent in her house."
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
No 1a, Karlstrasse, 2e Stock.
Care Fraulein Dahlweiner.
MUNICH, Nov. 17, 1878.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We arrived here night before last, pretty well fagged:
an 8-hour pull from Rome to Florence; a rest there of a day and two
nights; then 5 1/2 hours to Bologna; one night's rest; then from noon to
10:30 p.m. carried us to Trent, in the Austrian Tyrol, where the
confounded hotel had not received our message, and so at that miserable
hour, in that snowy region, the tribe had to shiver together in fireless
rooms while beds were prepared and warmed, then up at 6 in the morning
and a noble view of snow-peaks glittering in the rich light of a full
moon while the hotel-devils lazily deranged a breakfast for us in the
dreary gloom of blinking candles; then a solid 12 hours pull through the
loveliest snow ranges and snow-draped forest--and at 7 p.m. we hauled up,
in drizzle and fog, at the domicile which had been engaged for us ten
months before. Munich did seem the horriblest place, the most desolate
place, the most unendurable place!--and the rooms were so small, the
conveniences so meagre, and the porcelain stoves so grim, ghastly,
dismal, intolerable! So Livy and Clara (Spaulding) sat down forlorn,
and cried, and I retired to a private, place to pray. By and by we all
retired to our narrow German beds; and when Livy and I finished talking
across the room, it was all decided that we would rest 24 hours then pay
whatever damages were required, and straightway fly to the south of
France.
But you see, that was simply fatigue. Next morning the tribe fell in
love with the rooms, with the weather, with Munich, and head over heels
in love with Fraulein Dahlweiner. We got a larger parlor--an ample one
--threw two communicating bedrooms into one, for the children, and now we
are entirely comfortable. The only apprehension, at present, is that the
climate may not be just right for the children, in which case we shall
have to go to France, but it will be with the sincerest regret.
Now I brought the tribe through from Rome, myself. We never had so
little trouble before. The next time anybody has a courier to put out to
nurse, I shall not be in the market.
Last night the forlornities had all disappeared; so we gathered around
the lamp, after supper, with our beer and my pipe, and in a condition of
grateful snugness tackled the new magazines. I read your new story
aloud, amid thunders of applause, and we all agreed that Captain Jenness
and the old man with the accordion-hat are lovely people and most
skillfully drawn--and that cabin-boy, too, we like. Of course we are all
glad the girl is gone to Venice--for there is no place like Venice. Now
I easily understand that the old man couldn't go, because you have a
purpose in sending Lyddy by herself: but you could send the old man over
in another ship, and we particularly want him along. Suppose you don't
need him there? What of that? Can't you let him feed the doves?
Can't you let him fall in the canal occasionally? Can't you let his
good-natured purse be a daily prey to guides and beggar-boys? Can't you
let him find peace and rest and fellowship under Pere Jacopo's kindly
wing? (However, you are writing the book, not I--still, I am one of the
people you are writing it for, you understand.) I only want to insist, in
a friendly way, that the old man shall shed his sweet influence
frequently upon the page--that is all.
The first time we called at the convent, Pere Jacopo was absent; the next
(Just at this moment Miss Spaulding spoke up and said something about
Pere Jacopo--there is more in this acting of one mind upon another than
people think) time, he was there, and gave us preserved rose-leaves to
eat, and talked about you, and Mrs. Howells, and Winnie, and brought out
his photographs, and showed us a picture of "the library of your new
house," but not so--it was the study in your Cambridge house. He was
very sweet and good. He called on us next day; the day after that we
left Venice, after a pleasant sojourn Of 3 or 4 weeks. He expects to
spend this winter in Munich and will see us often, he said.
Pretty soon, I am going to write something, and when I finish it I shall
know whether to put it to itself or in the "Contributors' Club." That
"Contributors' Club" was a most happy idea. By the way, I think that the
man who wrote the paragraph beginning at the bottom of page 643 has said
a mighty sound and sensible thing. I wish his suggestion could be
adopted.
It is lovely of you to keep that old pipe in such a place of honor.
While it occurs to me, I must tell you Susie's last. She is sorely
badgered with dreams; and her stock dream is that she is being eaten up
by bears. She is a grave and thoughtful child, as you will remember.
Last night she had the usual dream. This morning she stood apart (after
telling it,) for some time, looking vacantly at the floor, and absorbed
in meditation. At last she looked up, and with the pathos of one who
feels he has not been dealt by with even-handed fairness, said "But
Mamma, the trouble is, that I am never the bear, but always the person."
It would not have occurred to me that there might be an advantage, even
in a dream, in occasionally being the eater, instead of always the party
eaten, but I easily perceived that her point was well taken.
I'm sending to Heidelberg for your letter and Winnie's, and I do hope
they haven't been lost.
My wife and I send love to you all.
Yrs ever,
MARK.
The Howells story, running at this time in the Atlantic, and so much
enjoyed by the Clemens party, was "The Lady of the Aroostook." The
suggestions made for enlarging the part of the "old man" are
eminently characteristic.
Mark Twain's forty-third birthday came in Munich, and in his letter
conveying this fact to his mother we get a brief added outline of
the daily life in that old Bavarian city. Certainly, it would seem
to have been a quieter and more profitable existence than he had
known amid the confusion of things left behind in, America.
To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in America:
No. 1a Karlstrasse,
Dec. 1, MUNICH. 1878.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I broke the back of life yesterday and
started down-hill toward old age. This fact has not produced any effect
upon me that I can detect.
I suppose we are located here for the winter. I have a pleasant
work-room a mile from here where I do my writing. The walk to and from
that place gives me what exercise I need, and all I take. We staid three
weeks in Venice, a week in Florence, a fortnight in Rome, and arrived
here a couple of weeks ago. Livy and Miss Spaulding are studying drawing
and German, and the children have a German day-governess. I cannot see
but that the children speak German as well as they do English.
Susie often translates Livy's orders to the servants. I cannot work and
study German at the same time: so I have dropped the latter, and do not
even read the language, except in the morning paper to get the news.
We have all pretty good health, latterly, and have seldom had to call the
doctor. The children have been in the open air pretty constantly for
months now. In Venice they were on the water in the gondola most of the
time, and were great friends with our gondolier; and in Rome and Florence
they had long daily tramps, for Rosa is a famous hand to smell out the
sights of a strange place. Here they wander less extensively.
The family all join in love to you all and to Orion and Mollie.
Affly
Your son
SAM.
XIX.
LETTERS 1879. RETURN TO AMERICA. THE GREAT GRANT REUNION
Life went on very well in Munich. Each day the family fell more in love
with Fraulein Dahlweiner and her house.
Mark Twain, however, did not settle down to his work readily. His
"pleasant work-room" provided exercise, but no inspiration. When he
discovered he could not find his Swiss note-book he was ready to give up
his travel-writing altogether. In the letter that follows we find him
much less enthusiastic concerning his own performances than over the
story by Howells, which he was following in the Atlantic.
The "detective" chapter mentioned in this letter was not included in
'A Tramp Abroad.' It was published separately, as 'The Stolen White
Elephant' in a volume bearing that title. The play, which he had now
found "dreadfully witless and flat," was no other than "Simon Wheeler,
Detective," which he had once regarded so highly. The "Stewart" referred
to was the millionaire merchant, A. T. Stewart, whose body was stolen in
the expectation of reward.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
MUNICH, Jan. 21, (1879)
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It's no use, your letter miscarried in some way and is
lost. The consul has made a thorough search and says he has not been
able to trace it. It is unaccountable, for all the letters I did not
want arrived without a single grateful failure. Well, I have read-up,
now, as far as you have got, that is, to where there's a storm at sea
approaching,--and we three think you are clear, out-Howellsing Howells.
If your literature has not struck perfection now we are not able to see
what is lacking. It is all such truth--truth to the life; every where
your pen falls it leaves a photograph. I did imagine that everything had
been said about life at sea that could be said, but no matter, it was all
a failure and lies, nothing but lies with a thin varnish of fact,--only
you have stated it as it absolutely is. And only you see people and
their ways, and their insides and outsides as they are, and make them
talk as they do talk. I think you are the very greatest artist in these
tremendous mysteries that ever lived. There doesn't seem to be anything
that can be concealed from your awful all-seeing eye. It must be a
cheerful thing for one to live with you and be aware that you are going
up and down in him like another conscience all the time. Possibly you
will not be a fully accepted classic until you have been dead a hundred
years,--it is the fate of the Shakespeares and of all genuine prophets,
--but then your books will be as common as Bibles, I believe. You're not
a weed, but an oak; not a summer-house, but a cathedral. In that day I
shall still be in the Cyclopedias, too, thus: "Mark Twain; history and
occupation unknown--but he was personally acquainted with Howells."
There--I could sing your praises all day, and feel and believe every bit
of it.
My book is half finished; I wish to heaven it was done. I have given up
writing a detective novel--can't write a novel, for I lack the faculty;
but when the detectives were nosing around after Stewart's loud remains,
I threw a chapter into my present book in which I have very extravagantly
burlesqued the detective business--if it is possible to burlesque that
business extravagantly. You know I was going to send you that detective
play, so that you could re-write it. Well I didn't do it because I
couldn't find a single idea in it that could be useful to you. It was
dreadfully witless and flat. I knew it would sadden you and unfit you
for work.
I have always been sorry we threw up that play embodying Orion which you
began. It was a mistake to do that. Do keep that MS and tackle it
again. It will work out all right; you will see. I don't believe that
that character exists in literature in so well-developed a condition as
it exists in Orion's person. Now won't you put Orion in a story? Then
he will go handsomely into a play afterwards. How deliciously you could
paint him--it would make fascinating reading--the sort that makes a
reader laugh and cry at the same time, for Orion is as good and
ridiculous a soul as ever was.
Ah, to think of Bayard Taylor! It is too sad to talk about. I was so
glad there was not a single sting and so many good praiseful words in the
Atlantic's criticism of Deukalion.
Love to you all
Yrs Ever
MARK
We remain here till middle of March.
In 'A Tramp Abroad' there is an incident in which the author
describes himself as hunting for a lost sock in the dark, in a vast
hotel bedroom at Heilbronn. The account of the real incident, as
written to Twichell, seems even more amusing.
The "Yarn About the Limburger Cheese and the Box of Guns," like "The
Stolen White Elephant," did not find place in the travel-book, but
was published in the same volume with the elephant story, added to
the rambling notes of "An Idle Excursion."
With the discovery of the Swiss note-book, work with Mark Twain was
going better. His letter reflects his enthusiasm.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
MUNICH, Jan 26 '79.
DEAR OLD JOE,--Sunday. Your delicious letter arrived exactly at the
right time. It was laid by my plate as I was finishing breakfast at 12
noon. Livy and Clara, (Spaulding) arrived from church 5 minutes later;
I took a pipe and spread myself out on the sofa, and Livy sat by and
read, and I warmed to that butcher the moment he began to swear. There
is more than one way of praying, and I like the butcher's way because the
petitioner is so apt to be in earnest. I was peculiarly alive to his
performance just at this time, for another reason, to wit: Last night I
awoke at 3 this morning, and after raging to my self for 2 interminable
hours, I gave it up. I rose, assumed a catlike stealthiness, to keep
from waking Livy, and proceeded to dress in the pitch dark. Slowly but
surely I got on garment after garment--all down to one sock; I had one
slipper on and the other in my hand. Well, on my hands and knees I crept
softly around, pawing and feeling and scooping along the carpet, and
among chair-legs for that missing sock; I kept that up; and still kept it
up and kept it up. At first I only said to myself, "Blame that sock,"
but that soon ceased to answer; my expletives grew steadily stronger and
stronger,--and at last, when I found I was lost, I had to sit flat down
on the floor and take hold of something to keep from lifting the roof off
with the profane explosion that was trying to get out of me. I could see
the dim blur of the window, but of course it was in the wrong place and
could give me no information as to where I was. But I had one comfort
--I had not waked Livy; I believed I could find that sock in silence if
the night lasted long enough. So I started again and softly pawed all
over the place,--and sure enough at the end of half an hour I laid my
hand on the missing article. I rose joyfully up and butted the wash-bowl
and pitcher off the stand and simply raised----so to speak. Livy
screamed, then said, "Who is that? what is the matter?" I said "There
ain't anything the matter--I'm hunting for my sock." She said, "Are you
hunting for it with a club?"
I went in the parlor and lit the lamp, and gradually the fury subsided
and the ridiculous features of the thing began to suggest themselves.
So I lay on the sofa, with note-book and pencil, and transferred the
adventure to our big room in the hotel at Heilbronn, and got it on paper
a good deal to my satisfaction.
I found the Swiss note-book, some time ago. When it was first lost I was
glad of it, for I was getting an idea that I had lost my faculty of
writing sketches of travel; therefore the loss of that note-book would
render the writing of this one simply impossible, and let me gracefully
out; I was about to write to Bliss and propose some other book, when the
confounded thing turned up, and down went my heart into my boots. But
there was now no excuse, so I went solidly to work--tore up a great part
of the MS written in Heidelberg,--wrote and tore up,--continued to write
and tear up,--and at last, reward of patient and noble persistence, my
pen got the old swing again!