The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 3

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


Since then I'm glad Providence knew better what to do with the Swiss
note-book than I did, for I like my work, now, exceedingly, and often
turn out over 30 MS pages a day and then quit sorry that Heaven makes the
days so short.

One of my discouragements had been the belief that my interest in this
tour had been so slender that I couldn't gouge matter enough out of it to
make a book. What a mistake. I've got 900 pages written (not a word in
it about the sea voyage) yet I stepped my foot out of Heidelberg for the
first time yesterday,--and then only to take our party of four on our
first pedestrian tour--to Heilbronn. I've got them dressed elaborately
in walking costume--knapsacks, canteens, field-glasses, leather leggings,
patent walking shoes, muslin folds around their hats, with long tails
hanging down behind, sun umbrellas, and Alpenstocks. They go all the way
to Wimpfen by rail-thence to Heilbronn in a chance vegetable cart drawn
by a donkey and a cow; I shall fetch them home on a raft; and if other
people shall perceive that that was no pedestrian excursion, they
themselves shall not be conscious of it.--This trip will take 100 pages
or more,--oh, goodness knows how many! for the mood is everything, not
the material, and I already seem to see 300 pages rising before me on
that trip. Then, I propose to leave Heidelberg for good. Don't you see,
the book (1800 MS pages,) may really be finished before I ever get to
Switzerland?

But there's one thing; I want to tell Frank Bliss and his father to be
charitable toward me in,--that is, let me tear up all the MS I want to,
and give me time to write more. I shan't waste the time--I haven't the
slightest desire to loaf, but a consuming desire to work, ever since I
got back my swing. And you see this book is either going to be compared
with the Innocents Abroad, or contrasted with it, to my disadvantage.
I think I can make a book that will be no dead corpse of a thing and I
mean to do my level best to accomplish that.

My crude plans are crystalizing. As the thing stands now, I went to
Europe for three purposes. The first you know, and must keep secret,
even from the Blisses; the second is to study Art; and the third to
acquire a critical knowledge of the German language. My MS already shows
that the two latter objects are accomplished. It shows that I am moving
about as an Artist and a Philologist, and unaware that there is any
immodesty in assuming these titles. Having three definite objects has
had the effect of seeming to enlarge my domain and give me the freedom of
a loose costume. It is three strings to my bow, too.

Well, your butcher is magnificent. He won't stay out of my mind.--I keep
trying to think of some way of getting your account of him into my book
without his being offended--and yet confound him there isn't anything you
have said which he would see any offense in,--I'm only thinking of his
friends--they are the parties who busy themselves with seeing things for
people. But I'm bound to have him in. I'm putting in the yarn about the
Limburger cheese and the box of guns, too--mighty glad Howells declined
it. It seems to gather richness and flavor with age. I have very nearly
killed several companies with that narrative,--the American Artists Club,
here, for instance, and Smith and wife and Miss Griffith (they were here
in this house a week or two.) I've got other chapters that pretty nearly
destroyed the same parties, too.

O, Switzerland! the further it recedes into the enriching haze of time,
the more intolerably delicious the charm of it and the cheer of it and
the glory and majesty and solemnity and pathos of it grow. Those
mountains had a soul; they thought; they spoke,--one couldn't hear it
with the ears of the body, but what a voice it was!--and how real. Deep
down in my memory it is sounding yet. Alp calleth unto Alp!--that
stately old Scriptural wording is the right one for God's Alps and God's
ocean. How puny we were in that awful presence--and how painless it was
to be so; how fitting and right it seemed, and how stingless was the
sense of our unspeakable insignificance. And Lord how pervading were the
repose and peace and blessedness that poured out of the heart of the
invisible Great Spirit of the Mountains.

Now what is it? There are mountains and mountains and mountains in this
world--but only these take you by the heart-strings. I wonder what the
secret of it is. Well, time and time again it has seemed to me that I
must drop everything and flee to Switzerland once more. It is a longing
--a deep, strong, tugging longing--that is the word. We must go again,
Joe.--October days, let us get up at dawn and breakfast at the tower. I
should like that first rate.

Livy and all of us send deluges of love to you and Harmony and all the
children. I dreamed last night that I woke up in the library at home and
your children were frolicing around me and Julia was sitting in my lap;
you and Harmony and both families of Warners had finished their welcomes
and were filing out through the conservatory door, wrecking Patrick's
flower pots with their dress skirts as they went. Peace and plenty abide
with you all!
MARK.

I want the Blisses to know their part of this letter, if possible. They
will see that my delay was not from choice.


Following the life of Mark Twain, whether through his letters or
along the sequence of detailed occurrence, we are never more than a
little while, or a little distance, from his brother Orion. In one
form or another Orion is ever present, his inquiries, his proposals,
his suggestions, his plans for improving his own fortunes, command
our attention. He was one of the most human creatures that ever
lived; indeed, his humanity excluded every form of artificiality
--everything that needs to be acquired. Talented, trusting,
child-like, carried away by the impulse of the moment, despite a
keen sense of humor he was never able to see that his latest plan
or project was not bound to succeed. Mark Twain loved him, pitied
him--also enjoyed him, especially with Howells. Orion's new plan
to lecture in the interest of religion found its way to Munich,
with the following result:


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

MUNICH, Feb. 9. (1879)
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I have just received this letter from Orion--take care
of it, for it is worth preserving. I got as far as 9 pages in my answer
to it, when Mrs. Clemens shut down on it, and said it was cruel, and made
me send the money and simply wish his lecture success. I said I couldn't
lose my 9 pages--so she said send them to you. But I will acknowledge
that I thought I was writing a very kind letter.

Now just look at this letter of Orion's. Did you ever see the
grotesquely absurd and the heart-breakingly pathetic more closely joined
together? Mrs. Clemens said "Raise his monthly pension." So I wrote to
Perkins to raise it a trifle.

Now only think of it! He still has 100 pages to write on his lecture,
yet in one inking of his pen he has already swooped around the United
States and invested the result!

You must put him in a book or a play right away. You are the only man
capable of doing it. You might die at any moment, and your very greatest
work would be lost to the world. I could write Orion's simple biography,
and make it effective, too, by merely stating the bald facts--and this I
will do if he dies before I do; but you must put him into romance. This
was the understanding you and I had the day I sailed.

Observe Orion's career--that is, a little of it: (1) He has belonged to
as many as five different religious denominations; last March he withdrew
from the deaconship in a Congregational Church and the Superintendency of
its Sunday School, in a speech in which he said that for many months (it
runs in my mind that he said 13 years,) he had been a confirmed infidel,
and so felt it to be his duty to retire from the flock.

2. After being a republican for years, he wanted me to buy him a
democratic newspaper. A few days before the Presidential election, he
came out in a speech and publicly went over to the democrats; he
prudently "hedged" by voting for 6 state republicans, also.

The new convert was made one of the secretaries of the democratic
meeting, and placed in the list of speakers. He wrote me jubilantly of
what a ten-strike he was going to make with that speech. All right--but
think of his innocent and pathetic candor in writing me something like
this, a week later:

"I was more diffident than I had expected to be, and this was increased
by the silence with which I was received when I came forward; so I seemed
unable to get the fire into my speech which I had calculated upon, and
presently they began to get up and go out; and in a few minutes they all
rose up and went away."

How could a man uncover such a sore as that and show it to another? Not
a word of complaint, you see--only a patient, sad surprise.

3. His next project was to write a burlesque upon Paradise Lost.

4. Then, learning that the Times was paying Harte $100 a column for
stories, he concluded to write some for the same price. I read his first
one and persuaded him not to write any more.

5. Then he read proof on the N. Y. Eve. Post at $10 a week and meekly
observed that the foreman swore at him and ordered him around "like a
steamboat mate."

6. Being discharged from that post, he wanted to try agriculture--was
sure he could make a fortune out of a chicken farm. I gave him $900 and
he went to a ten-house village a miles above Keokuk on the river bank
--this place was a railway station. He soon asked for money to buy a
horse and light wagon,--because the trains did not run at church time on
Sunday and his wife found it rather far to walk.

For a long time I answered demands for "loans" and by next mail always
received his check for the interest due me to date. In the most
guileless way he let it leak out that he did not underestimate the value
of his custom to me, since it was not likely that any other customer of
mine paid his interest quarterly, and this enabled me to use my capital
twice in 6 months instead of only once. But alas, when the debt at last
reached $1800 or $2500 (I have forgotten which) the interest ate too
formidably into his borrowings, and so he quietly ceased to pay it or
speak of it. At the end of two years I found that the chicken farm had
long ago been abandoned, and he had moved into Keokuk. Later in one of
his casual moments, he observed that there was no money in fattening a
chicken on 65 cents worth of corn and then selling it for 50.

7. Finally, if I would lend him $500 a year for two years, (this was 4
or 5 years ago,) he knew he could make a success as a lawyer, and would
prove it. This is the pension which we have just increased to $600. The
first year his legal business brought him $5. It also brought him an
unremunerative case where some villains were trying to chouse some negro
orphans out of $700. He still has this case. He has waggled it around
through various courts and made some booming speeches on it. The negro
children have grown up and married off, now, I believe, and their
litigated town-lot has been dug up and carted off by somebody--but Orion
still infests the courts with his documents and makes the welkin ring
with his venerable case. The second year, he didn't make anything. The
third he made $6, and I made Bliss put a case in his hands--about half an
hour's work. Orion charged $50 for it--Bliss paid him $15. Thus four or
five years of slaving has brought him $26, but this will doubtless be
increased when he gets done lecturing and buys that "law library."
Meantime his office rent has been $60 a year, and he has stuck to that
lair day by day as patiently as a spider.

8. Then he by and by conceived the idea of lecturing around America as
"Mark Twain's Brother"--that to be on the bills. Subject of proposed
lecture, "On the Formation of Character."

9. I protested, and he got on his warpaint, couched his lance, and ran a
bold tilt against total abstinence and the Red Ribbon fanatics. It
raised a fine row among the virtuous Keokukians.

10. I wrote to encourage him in his good work, but I had let a mail
intervene; so by the time my letter reached him he was already winning
laurels as a Red Ribbon Howler.

11. Afterward he took a rabid part in a prayer-meeting epidemic; dropped
that to travesty Jules Verne; dropped that, in the middle of the last
chapter, last March, to digest the matter of an infidel book which he
proposed to write; and now he comes to the surface to rescue our "noble
and beautiful religion" from the sacrilegious talons of Bob Ingersoll.

Now come! Don't fool away this treasure which Providence has laid at
your feet, but take it up and use it. One can let his imagination run
riot in portraying Orion, for there is nothing so extravagant as to be
out of character with him.

Well-good-bye, and a short life and a merry one be yours. Poor old
Methusaleh, how did he manage to stand it so long?
Yrs ever,
MARK.


To Orion Clemens
(Unsent and inclosed with the foregoing, to W. D. Howells):

MUNICH, Feb. 9, (1879)
MY DEAR BRO.,--Yours has just arrived. I enclose a draft on Hartford for
$25. You will have abandoned the project you wanted it for, by the time
it arrives,--but no matter, apply it to your newer and present project,
whatever it is. You see I have an ineradicable faith in your
unsteadfastness,--but mind you, I didn't invent that faith, you conferred
it on me yourself. But fire away, fire away! I don't see why a
changeable man shouldn't get as much enjoyment out of his changes, and
transformations and transfigurations as a steadfast man gets out of
standing still and pegging at the same old monotonous thing all the time.
That is to say, I don't see why a kaleidoscope shouldn't enjoy itself as
much as a telescope, nor a grindstone have as good a time as a whetstone,
nor a barometer as good a time as a yardstick. I don't feel like girding
at you any more about fickleness of purpose, because I recognize and
realize at last that it is incurable; but before I learned to accept this
truth, each new weekly project of yours possessed the power of throwing
me into the most exhausting and helpless convulsions of profanity. But
fire away, now! Your magic has lost its might. I am able to view your
inspirations dispassionately and judicially, now, and say "This one or
that one or the other one is not up to your average flight, or is above
it, or below it."

And so, without passion, or prejudice, or bias of any kind, I sit in
judgment upon your lecture project, and say it was up to your average,
it was indeed above it, for it had possibilities in it, and even
practical ones. While I was not sorry you abandoned it, I should not be
sorry if you had stuck to it and given it a trial. But on the whole you
did the wise thing to lay it aside, I think, because a lecture is a most
easy thing to fail in; and at your time of life, and in your own town,
such a failure would make a deep and cruel wound in your heart and in
your pride. It was decidedly unwise in you to think for a moment of
coming before a community who knew you, with such a course of lectures;
because Keokuk is not unaware that you have been a Swedenborgian, a
Presbyterian, a Congregationalist, and a Methodist (on probation), and
that just a year ago you were an infidel. If Keokuk had gone to your
lecture course, it would have gone to be amused, not instructed, for when
a man is known to have no settled convictions of his own he can't
convince other people. They would have gone to be amused and that would
have been a deep humiliation to you. It could have been safe for you to
appear only where you were unknown--then many of your hearers would think
you were in earnest. And they would be right. You are in earnest while
your convictions are new. But taking it by and large, you probably did
best to discard that project altogether. But I leave you to judge of
that, for you are the worst judge I know of.

(Unfinished.)


That Mark Twain in many ways was hardly less child-like than his
brother is now and again revealed in his letters. He was of
steadfast purpose, and he possessed the driving power which Orion
Clemens lacked; but the importance to him of some of the smaller
matters of life, as shown in a letter like the following, bespeaks a
certain simplicity of nature which he never outgrew:


To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

MUNICH, Feb. 24. (1879)
DEAR OLD JOE,--It was a mighty good letter, Joe--and that idea of yours
is a rattling good one. But I have not sot down here to answer your
letter,--for it is down at my study,--but only to impart some
information.

For a months I had not shaved without crying. I'd spend 3/4 of an hour
whetting away on my hand--no use, couldn't get an edge. Tried a razor
strop-same result. So I sat down and put in an hour thinking out the
mystery. Then it seemed plain--to wit: my hand can't give a razor an
edge, it can only smooth and refine an edge that has already been given.
I judge that a razor fresh from the hone is this shape V--the long point
being the continuation of the edge--and that after much use the shape is
this V--the attenuated edge all worn off and gone. By George I knew that
was the explanation. And I knew that a freshly honed and freshly
strapped razor won't cut, but after strapping on the hand as a final
operation, it will cut.--So I sent out for an oil-stone; none to be had,
but messenger brought back a little piece of rock the size of a
Safety-match box--(it was bought in a shoemaker's shop) bad flaw in
middle of it, too, but I put 4 drops of fine Olive oil on it, picked out
the razor marked "Thursday" because it was never any account and would be
no loss if I spoiled it--gave it a brisk and reckless honing for 10
minutes, then tried it on a hair--it wouldn't cut. Then I trotted it
through a vigorous 20-minute course on a razor-strap and tried it on a
hair-it wouldn't cut--tried it on my face--it made me cry--gave it a
5-minute stropping on my hand, and my land, what an edge she had!
We thought we knew what sharp razors were when we were tramping in
Switzerland, but it was a mistake--they were dull beside this old
Thursday razor of mine--which I mean to name Thursday October Christian,
in gratitude. I took my whetstone, and in 20 minutes I put two more of
my razors in splendid condition--but I leave them in the box--I never use
any but Thursday O. C., and shan't till its edge is gone--and then I'll
know how to restore it without any delay.

We all go to Paris next Thursday--address, Monroe & Co., Bankers.
With love
Ys Ever
MARK.


In Paris they found pleasant quarters at the Hotel Normandy, but it
was a chilly, rainy spring, and the travelers gained a rather poor
impression of the French capital. Mark Twain's work did not go
well, at first, because of the noises of the street. But then he
found a quieter corner in the hotel and made better progress. In a
brief note to Aldrich he said: "I sleep like a lamb and write like a
lion--I mean the kind of a lion that writes--if any such." He
expected to finish the book in six weeks; that is to say, before
returning to America. He was looking after its illustrations
himself, and a letter to Frank Bliss, of The American Publishing
Company, refers to the frontpiece, which, from time to time, has
caused question as to its origin. To Bliss he says: "It is a thing
which I manufactured by pasting a popular comic picture into the
middle of a celebrated Biblical one--shall attribute it to Titian.
It needs to be engraved by a master."

The weather continued bad in France and they left there in July to
find it little better in England. They had planned a journey to
Scotland to visit Doctor Brown, whose health was not very good. In
after years Mark Twain blamed himself harshly for not making the
trip, which he declared would have meant so much to Mrs. Clemens.
He had forgotten by that time the real reasons for not going--the
continued storms and uncertainty of trains (which made it barely
possible for them to reach Liverpool in time for their
sailing-date), and with characteristic self-reproach vowed that
only perversity and obstinacy on his part had prevented the journey
to Scotland. From Liverpool, on the eve of sailing, he sent Doctor
Brown a good-by word.


To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:

WASHINGTON HOTEL, LIME STREET, LIVERPOOL.
Aug. (1879)
MY DEAR MR. BROWN,--During all the 15 months we have been spending on the
continent, we have been promising ourselves a sight of you as our latest
and most prized delight in a foreign land--but our hope has failed, our
plan has miscarried. One obstruction after another intruded itself, and
our short sojourn of three or four weeks on English soil was thus
frittered gradually away, and we were at last obliged to give up the idea
of seeing you at all. It is a great disappointment, for we wanted to
show you how much "Megalopis" has grown (she is 7 now) and what a fine
creature her sister is, and how prettily they both speak German. There
are six persons in my party, and they are as difficult to cart around as
nearly any other menagerie would be. My wife and Miss Spaulding are
along, and you may imagine how they take to heart this failure of our
long promised Edinburgh trip. We never even wrote you, because we were
always so sure, from day to day, that our affairs would finally so shape
themselves as to let us get to Scotland. But no,--everything went wrong
we had only flying trips here and there in place of the leisurely ones
which we had planned.

We arrived in Liverpool an hour ago very tired, and have halted at this
hotel (by the advice of misguided friends)--and if my instinct and
experience are worth anything, it is the very worst hotel on earth,
without any exception. We shall move to another hotel early in the
morning to spend to-morrow. We sail for America next day in the
"Gallic."

We all join in the sincerest love to you, and in the kindest remembrance
to "Jock"--[Son of Doctor Brown.]--and your sister.
Truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.


It was September 3, 1879, that Mark Twain returned to America by the
steamer Gallic. In the seventeen months of his absence he had taken
on a "traveled look" and had added gray hairs. A New York paper
said of his arrival that he looked older than when he went to
Germany, and that his hair had turned quite gray.

Mark Twain had not finished his book of travel in Paris--in fact,
it seemed to him far from complete--and he settled down rather
grimly to work on it at Quarry Farm. When, after a few days no word
of greeting came from Howells, Clemens wrote to ask if he were dead
or only sleeping. Howells hastily sent a line to say that he had
been sleeping "The sleep of a torpid conscience. I will feign that
I did not know where to write you; but I love you and all of yours,
and I am tremendously glad that you are home again. When and where
shall we meet? Have you come home with your pockets full of
Atlantic papers?" Clemens, toiling away at his book, was, as usual,
not without the prospect of other plans. Orion, as literary
material, never failed to excite him.


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, Sept. 15, 1879.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--When and where? Here on the farm would be an elegant
place to meet, but of course you cannot come so far. So we will say
Hartford or Belmont, about the beginning of November. The date of our
return to Hartford is uncertain, but will be three or four weeks hence,
I judge. I hope to finish my book here before migrating.

I think maybe I've got some Atlantic stuff in my head, but there's none
in MS, I believe.

Say--a friend of mine wants to write a play with me, I to furnish the
broad-comedy cuss. I don't know anything about his ability, but his
letter serves to remind me of our old projects. If you haven't used
Orion or Old Wakeman, don't you think you and I can get together and
grind out a play with one of those fellows in it? Orion is a field which
grows richer and richer the more he mulches it with each new top-dressing
of religion or other guano. Drop me an immediate line about this, won't
you? I imagine I see Orion on the stage, always gentle, always
melancholy, always changing his politics and religion, and trying to
reform the world, always inventing something, and losing a limb by a new
kind of explosion at the end of each of the four acts. Poor old chap,
he is good material. I can imagine his wife or his sweetheart
reluctantly adopting each of his new religious in turn, just in time to
see him waltz into the next one and leave her isolated once more.