________________________________________________
_ Orion Clemens had kept his job with Bliss only a short time. His mental
make-up was such that it was difficult for him to hold any position long.
He meant to do well, but he was unfortunate in his efforts. His ideas
were seldom practical, his nature was yielding and fickle. He had
returned to Keokuk presently, and being convinced there was a fortune in
chickens, had prevailed upon his brother to purchase for him a little
farm not far from the town. But the chicken business was not lively and
Orion kept the mail hot with manuscripts and propositions of every sort,
which he wanted his brother to take under advisement.
Certainly, to Mark Twain Orion Clemens was a trial. The letters of the
latter show that scarcely one of them but contains the outline of some
rainbow-chasing scheme, full of wild optimism, and the certainty that
somewhere just ahead lies the pot of gold. Only, now and then, there is
a letter of abject humiliation and complete surrender, when some golden
vision, some iridescent soap-bubble, had vanished at his touch. Such
depression did not last; by sunrise he was ready with a new dream, new
enthusiasm, and with a new letter inviting his "brother Sam's" interest
and investment. Yet, his fear of incurring his brother's displeasure was
pitiful, regardless of the fact that he constantly employed the very
means to insure that result. At one time Clemens made him sign a sworn
agreement that he would not suggest any plan or scheme of investment for
the period of twelve months. Orion must have kept this agreement. He
would have gone to the stake before he would have violated an oath, but
the stake would have probably been no greater punishment than his
sufferings that year.
On the whole, Samuel Clemens was surprisingly patient and considerate
with Orion, and there was never a time that he was not willing to help.
Yet there were bound to be moments of exasperation; and once, when his
mother, or sister, had written, suggesting that he encourage his
brother's efforts, he felt moved to write at considerable freedom.
To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y.:
HARTFORD, Sunday, 1875.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I Saw Gov. Newell today and he said he was
still moving in the matter of Sammy's appointment--[As a West Point
cadet.]--and would stick to it till he got a result of a positive nature
one way or the other, but thus far he did not know whether to expect
success or defeat.
Ma, whenever you need money I hope you won't be backward about saying so
--you can always have it. We stint ourselves in some ways, but we have
no desire to stint you. And we don't intend to, either.
I can't "encourage" Orion. Nobody can do that, conscientiously, for the
reason that before one's letter has time to reach him he is off on some
new wild-goose chase. Would you encourage in literature a man who, the
older he grows the worse he writes? Would you encourage Orion in the
glaring insanity of studying law? If he were packed and crammed full of
law, it would be worthless lumber to him, for his is such a capricious
and ill-regulated mind that he would apply the principles of the law with
no more judgment than a child of ten years. I know what I am saying.
I laid one of the plainest and simplest of legal questions before Orion
once, and the helpless and hopeless mess he made of it was absolutely
astonishing. Nothing aggravates me so much as to have Orion mention law
or literature to me.
Well, I cannot encourage him to try the ministry, because he would change
his religion so fast that he would have to keep a traveling agent under
wages to go ahead of him to engage pulpits and board for him.
I cannot conscientiously encourage him to do anything but potter around
his little farm and put in his odd hours contriving new and impossible
projects at the rate of 365 a year--which is his customary average.
He says he did well in Hannibal! Now there is a man who ought to be
entirely satisfied with the grandeurs, emoluments and activities of a hen
farm--
If you ask me to pity Orion, I can do that. I can do it every day and
all day long. But one can't "encourage" quick-silver, because the
instant you put your finger on it it isn't there. No, I am saying too
much--he does stick to his literary and legal aspirations; and he
naturally would select the very two things which he is wholly and
preposterously unfitted for. If I ever become able, I mean to put Orion
on a regular pension without revealing the fact that it is a pension.
That is best for him. Let him consider it a periodical loan, and pay
interest out of the principal. Within a year's time he would be looking
upon himself as a benefactor of mine, in the way of furnishing me a good
permanent investment for money, and that would make him happy and
satisfied with himself. If he had money he would share with me in a
moment and I have no disposition to be stingy with him.
Affly
SAM.
Livy sends love.
The New Orleans plan was not wholly dead at this time. Howells
wrote near the end of January that the matter was still being
debated, now and then, but was far from being decided upon. He
hoped to go somewhere with Mrs. Howells for a brief time in March,
he said. Clemens, in haste, replied:
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Jan. 26, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--When Mrs. Clemens read your letter she said: "Well,
then, wherever they go, in March, the direction will be southward and so
they must give us a visit on the way." I do not know what sort of
control you may be under, but when my wife speaks as positively as that,
I am not in the habit of talking back and getting into trouble. Situated
as I am, I would not be able to understand, now, how you could pass by
this town without feeling that you were running a wanton risk and doing a
daredevil thing. I consider it settled that you are to come in March,
and I would be sincerely sorry to learn that you and Mrs. Howells feel
differently about it.
The piloting material has been uncovering itself by degrees, until it has
exposed such a huge hoard to my view that a whole book will be required
to contain it if I use it. So I have agreed to write the book for Bliss.
--[The book idea was later given up for the time being.]--I won't be
able to run the articles in the Atlantic later than the September number,
for the reason that a subscription book issued in the fall has a much
larger sale than if issued at any other season of the year. It is funny
when I reflect that when I originally wrote you and proposed to do from 6
to 9 articles for the magazine, the vague thought in my mind was that 6
might exhaust the material and 9 would be pretty sure to do it. Or
rather it seems to me that that was my thought--can't tell at this
distance. But in truth 9 chapters don't now seem to more than open up
the subject fairly and start the yarn to wagging.
I have been sick a-bed several days, for the first time in 21 years.
How little confirmed invalids appreciate their advantages. I was able to
read the English edition of the Greville Memoirs through without
interruption, take my meals in bed, neglect all business without a pang,
and smoke 18 cigars a day. I try not to look back upon these 21 years
with a feeling of resentment, and yet the partialities of Providence do
seem to me to be slathered around (as one may say) without that gravity
and attention to detail which the real importance of the matter would
seem to suggest.
Yrs ever
MARK.
The New Orleans idea continued to haunt the letters. The thought of
drifting down the Mississippi so attracted both Clemens and Howells,
that they talked of it when they met, and wrote of it when they were
separated. Howells, beset by uncertainties, playfully tried to put
the responsibility upon his wife. Once he wrote: "She says in the
noblest way, 'Well, go to New Orleans, if you want to so much' (you
know the tone). I suppose it will do if I let you know about the
middle of February?"
But they had to give it up in the end. Howells wrote that he had
been under the weather, and on half work the whole winter. He did
not feel that he had earned his salary, he said, or that he was
warranted in taking a three weeks' pleasure trip. Clemens offered
to pay all the expenses of the trip, but only indefinite
postponement followed. It would be seven years more before Mark
Twain would return to the river, and then not with Howells.
In a former chapter mention has been made of Charles Warren
Stoddard, whom Mark Twain had known in his California days. He was
fond of Stoddard, who was a facile and pleasing writer of poems and
descriptive articles. During the period that he had been acting as
Mark Twain's secretary in London, he had taken pleasure in
collecting for him the news reports of the celebrated Tichborn
Claimant case, then in the English courts. Clemens thought of
founding a story on it, and did, in fact, use the idea, though 'The
American Claimant,' which he wrote years later, had little or no
connection with the Tichborn episode.
To C. W. Stoddard:
HARTFORD, Feb. 1, 1875.
DEAR CHARLEY,--All right about the Tichborn scrapbooks; send them along
when convenient. I mean to have the Beecher-Tilton trial scrap-book as a
companion.....
I am writing a series of 7-page articles for the Atlantic at $20 a page;
but as they do not pay anybody else as much as that, I do not complain
(though at the same time I do swear that I am not content.) However the
awful respectability of the magazine makes up.
I have cut your articles about San Marco out of a New York paper (Joe
Twichell saw it and brought it home to me with loud admiration,) and sent
it to Howells. It is too bad to fool away such good literature in a
perishable daily journal.
Do remember us kindly to Lady Hardy and all that rare family--my wife and
I so often have pleasant talks about them.
Ever your friend,
SAML. L. CLEMENS.
The price received by Mark Twain for the Mississippi papers, as
quoted in this letter, furnishes us with a realizing sense of the
improvement in the literary market, with the advent of a flood of
cheap magazines and the Sunday newspaper. The Atlantic page
probably contained about a thousand words, which would make his
price average, say, two cents per word. Thirty years later, when
his fame was not much more extended, his pay for the same matter
would have been fifteen times as great, that is to say, at the rate
of thirty cents per word. But in that early time there were no
Sunday magazines--no literary magazines at all except the Atlantic,
and Harpers, and a few fashion periodicals. Probably there were
news-stands, but it is hard to imagine what they must have looked
like without the gay pictorial cover-femininity that to-day pleases
and elevates the public and makes author and artist affluent.
Clemens worked steadily on the river chapters, and Howells was
always praising him and urging him to go on. At the end of January
he wrote: "You're doing the science of piloting splendidly. Every
word's interesting. And don't you drop the series 'til you've got
every bit of anecdote and reminiscence into it."
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Feb. 10, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Your praises of my literature gave me the solidest
gratification; but I never did have the fullest confidence in my critical
penetration, and now your verdict on S-----has knocked what little I did
have gully-west! I didn't enjoy his gush, but I thought a lot of his
similes were ever so vivid and good. But it's just my luck; every time I
go into convulsions of admiration over a picture and want to buy it right
away before I've lost the chance, some wretch who really understands art
comes along and damns it. But I don't mind. I would rather have my
ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have got so much more
of it.
I send you No. 5 today. I have written and re-written the first half of
it three different times, yesterday and today, and at last Mrs. Clemens
says it will do. I never saw a woman so hard to please about things she
doesn't know anything about.
Yours ever,
MARK.
Of course, the reference to his wife's criticism in this is tenderly
playful, as always--of a pattern with the severity which he pretends
for her in the next.
To Mrs. W. D. Howells, in Boston:
1875
DEAR MRS. HOWELLS,--Mrs. Clemens is delighted to get the pictures, and so
am I. I can perceive in the group, that Mr. Howells is feeling as I so
often feel, viz: "Well, no doubt I am in the wrong, though I do not know
how or where or why--but anyway it will be safest to look meek, and walk
circumspectly for a while, and not discuss the thing." And you look
exactly as Mrs. Clemens does after she has said, "Indeed I do not wonder
that you can frame no reply: for you know only too well, that your
conduct admits of no excuse, palliation or argument--none!"
I shall just delight in that group on account of the good old human
domestic spirit that pervades it--bother these family groups that put on
a state aspect to get their pictures taken in.
We want a heliotype made of our eldest daughter. How soft and rich and
lovely the picture is. Mr. Howells must tell me how to proceed in the
matter.
Truly Yours
SAM. L. CLEMENS.
In the next letter we have a picture of Susy--[This spelling of the
name was adopted somewhat later and much preferred. It appears as
"Susie" in most of the earlier letters.]--Clemens's third birthday,
certainly a pretty picture, and as sweet and luminous and tender
today as it was forty years ago-as it will be a hundred years hence,
if these lines should survive that long. The letter is to her uncle
Charles Langdon, the "Charlie" of the Quaker City. "Atwater" was
associated with the Langdon coal interests in Elmira. "The play"
is, of course, "The Gilded Age."
To Charles Langdon, in Elmira:
Mch. 19, 1875.
DEAR CHARLIE,--Livy, after reading your letter, used her severest form of
expression about Mr. Atwater--to wit: She did not "approve" of his
conduct. This made me shudder; for it was equivalent to Allie
Spaulding's saying "Mr. Atwater is a mean thing;" or Rev. Thomas
Beecher's saying "Damn that Atwater," or my saying "I wish Atwater was
three hundred million miles in----!"
However, Livy does not often get into one of these furies, God be
thanked.
In Brooklyn, Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Chicago,
the play paid me an average of nine hundred dollars a week. In smaller
towns the average is $400 to $500.
This is Susie's birth-day. Lizzie brought her in at 8.30 this morning
(before we were up) hooded with a blanket, red curl-papers in her hair, a
great red japonica, in one hand (for Livy) and a yellow rose-bud nestled
in violets (for my buttonhole) in the other--and she looked wonderfully
pretty. She delivered her memorials and received her birth-day kisses.
Livy laid her japonica, down to get a better "holt" for kissing-which
Susie presently perceived, and became thoughtful: then said sorrowfully,
turning the great deeps of her eyes upon her mother: "Don't you care for
you wow?"
Right after breakfast we got up a rousing wood fire in the main hall
(it is a cold morning) illuminated the place with a rich glow from all
the globes of the newell chandelier, spread a bright rug before the fire,
set a circling row of chairs (pink ones and dove-colored) and in the
midst a low invalid-table covered with a fanciful cloth and laden with
the presents--a pink azalia in lavish bloom from Rosa; a gold inscribed
Russia-leather bible from Patrick and Mary; a gold ring (inscribed) from
"Maggy Cook;" a silver thimble (inscribed with motto and initials) from
Lizzie; a rattling mob of Sunday clad dolls from Livy and Annie, and a
Noah's Ark from me, containing 200 wooden animals such as only a human
being could create and only God call by name without referring to the
passenger list. Then the family and the seven servants assembled there,
and Susie and the "Bay" arrived in state from above, the Bay's head being
fearfully and wonderfully decorated with a profusion of blazing red
flowers and overflowing cataracts of lycopodium. Wee congratulatory
notes accompanied the presents of the servants. I tell you it was a
great occasion and a striking and cheery group, taking all the
surroundings into account and the wintry aspect outside.
(Remainder missing.)
There was to be a centennial celebration that year of the battles of
Lexington and Concord, and Howells wrote, urging Clemens and his
wife to visit them and attend it. Mrs. Clemens did not go, and
Clemens and Howells did not go, either--to the celebration. They
had their own ideas about getting there, but found themselves unable
to board the thronged train at Concord, and went tramping about in
the cold and mud, hunting a conveyance, only to return at length to
the cheer of the home, defeated and rather low in spirits.
Twichell, who went on his own hook, had no such difficulties. To
Howells, Mark Twain wrote the adventures of this athletic and
strenuous exponent of the gospel.
The "Winnie" mentioned in this letter was Howells's daughter
Winifred. She had unusual gifts, but did not live to develop them.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD. Apl. 23, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I've got Mrs. Clemens's picture before me, and hope I
shall not forget to send it with this.
Joe Twichell preached morning and evening here last Sunday; took midnight
train for Boston; got an early breakfast and started by rail at 7.30
A. M. for Concord; swelled around there until 1 P. M., seeing
everything; then traveled on top of a train to Lexington; saw everything
there; traveled on top of a train to Boston, (with hundreds in company)
deluged with dust, smoke and cinders; yelled and hurrahed all the way
like a schoolboy; lay flat down to dodge numerous bridges, and sailed
into the depot, howling with excitement and as black as a chimney-sweep;
got to Young's Hotel at 7 P. M.; sat down in reading-room and immediately
fell asleep; was promptly awakened by a porter who supposed he was drunk;
wandered around an hour and a half; then took 9 P. M. train, sat down in
smoking car and remembered nothing more until awakened by conductor as
the train came into Hartford at 1.30 A. M. Thinks he had simply a
glorious time--and wouldn't have missed the Centennial for the world.
He would have run out to see us a moment at Cambridge, but was too dirty.
I wouldn't have wanted him there--his appalling energy would have been an
insufferable reproach to mild adventurers like you and me.
Well, he is welcome to the good time he had--I had a deal better one.
My narrative has made Mrs. Clemens wish she could have been there.--When
I think over what a splendid good sociable time I had in your house I
feel ever so thankful to the wise providence that thwarted our several
ably-planned and ingenious attempts to get to Lexington. I am coming
again before long, and then she shall be of the party.
Now you said that you and Mrs. Howells could run down here nearly any
Saturday. Very well then, let us call it next Saturday, for a "starter."
Can you do that? By that time it will really be spring and you won't
freeze. The birds are already out; a small one paid us a visit
yesterday. We entertained it and let it go again, Susie protesting.
The spring laziness is already upon me--insomuch that the spirit begins
to move me to cease from Mississippi articles and everything else and
give myself over to idleness until we go to New Orleans. I have one
article already finished, but somehow it doesn't seem as proper a chapter
to close with as the one already in your hands. I hope to get in a mood
and rattle off a good one to finish with--but just now all my moods are
lazy ones.
Winnie's literature sings through me yet! Surely that child has one of
these "futures" before her.
Now try to come--will you?
With the warmest regards of the two of us--
Yrs ever,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Mrs. Clemens sent a note to Mrs. Howells, which will serve as a pendant
to the foregoing.
From Mrs. Clemens to Mrs. Howells, in Boston:
MY DEAR MRS. HOWELLS,--Don't dream for one instant that my not getting a
letter from you kept me from Boston. I am too anxious to go to let such
a thing as that keep me.
Mr. Clemens did have such a good time with you and Mr. Howells.
He evidently has no regret that he did not get to the Centennial. I was
driven nearly distracted by his long account of Mr. Howells and his
wanderings. I would keep asking if they ever got there, he would never
answer but made me listen to a very minute account of everything that
they did. At last I found them back where they started from.
If you find misspelled words in this note, you will remember my infirmity
and not hold me responsible.
Affectionately yours,
LIVY L. CLEMENS.
In spite of his success with the Sellers play and his itch to follow it
up, Mark Twain realized what he believed to be his literary limitations.
All his life he was inclined to consider himself wanting in the finer
gifts of character-shading and delicate portrayal. Remembering Huck
Finn, and the rare presentation of Joan of Arc, we may not altogether
agree with him. Certainly, he was never qualified to delineate those
fine artificialities of life which we are likely to associate with
culture, and perhaps it was something of this sort that caused the
hesitation confessed in the letter that follows. Whether the plan
suggested interested Howells or not we do not know. In later years
Howells wrote a novel called The Story of a Play; this may have been its
beginning.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, Apl. 26, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--An actor named D. H. Harkins has been here to ask me to
put upon paper a 5-act play which he has been mapping out in his mind for
3 or 4 years. He sat down and told me his plot all through, in a clear,
bright way, and I was a deal taken with it; but it is a line of
characters whose fine shading and artistic development requires an abler
hand than mine; so I easily perceived that I must not make the attempt.
But I liked the man, and thought there was a good deal of stuff in him;
and therefore I wanted his play to be written, and by a capable hand,
too. So I suggested you, and said I would write and see if you would be
willing to undertake it. If you like the idea, he will call upon you in
the course of two or three weeks and describe his plot and his
characters. Then if it doesn't strike you favorably, of course you can
simply decline; but it seems to me well worth while that you should hear
what he has to say. You could also "average" him while he talks, and
judge whether he could play your priest--though I doubt if any man can do
that justice.
Shan't I write him and say he may call? If you wish to communicate
directly with him instead, his address is "Larchmont Manor, Westchester
Co., N. Y."
Do you know, the chill of that 19th of April seems to be in my bones yet?
I am inert and drowsy all the time. That was villainous weather for a
couple of wandering children to be out in.
Ys ever
MARK.
The sinister typewriter did not find its way to Howells for nearly a
year. Meantime, Mark Twain had refused to allow the manufacturers
to advertise his ownership. He wrote to them:
HARTFORD, March 19, 1875.
Please do not use my name in any way. Please do not even divulge the
fact that I own a machine. I have entirely stopped using the typewriter,
for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody
without receiving a request by return mail that I would not only describe
the machine, but state what progress I had made in the use of it, etc.,
etc. I don't like to write letters, and so I don't want people to know
I own this curiosity-breeding little joker.
Three months later the machine was still in his possession. Bliss
had traded a twelve-dollar saddle for it, but apparently showed
little enthusiasm in his new possession.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
June 25, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I told Patrick to get some carpenters and box the
machine and send it to you--and found that Bliss had sent for the machine
and earned it off.
I have been talking to you and writing to you as if you were present when
I traded the machine to Bliss for a twelve-dollar saddle worth $25
(cheating him outrageously, of course--but conscience got the upper hand
again and I told him before I left the premises that I'd pay for the
saddle if he didn't like the machine--on condition that he donate said
machine to a charity)
This was a little over five weeks ago--so I had long ago concluded that
Bliss didn't want the machine and did want the saddle--wherefore I jumped
at the chance of shoving the machine off onto you, saddle or no saddle so
I got the blamed thing out of my sight.
The saddle hangs on Tara's walls down below in the stable, and the
machine is at Bliss's grimly pursuing its appointed mission, slowly and
implacably rotting away another man's chances for salvation.
I have sent Bliss word not to donate it to a charity (though it is a pity
to fool away a chance to do a charity an ill turn,) but to let me know
when he has got his dose, because I've got another candidate for
damnation. You just wait a couple of weeks and if you don't see the
Type-Writer come tilting along toward Cambridge with an unsatisfied
appetite in its eye, I lose my guess.
Don't you be mad about this blunder, Howells--it only comes of a bad
memory, and the stupidity which is inseparable from true genius. Nothing
intentionally criminal in it.
Yrs ever
MARK.
It was November when Howells finally fell under the baleful
influence of the machine. He wrote:
"The typewriter came Wednesday night, and is already beginning to
have its effect on me. Of course, it doesn't work: if I can
persuade some of the letters to get up against the ribbon they won't
get down again without digital assistance. The treadle refuses to
have any part or parcel in the performance; and I don't know how to
get the roller to turn with the paper. Nevertheless I have begun
several letters to My d-a-r lemans, as it prefers to spell your
respected name, and I don't despair yet of sending you something in
its beautiful handwriting--after I've had a man out from the agent's
to put it in order. It's fascinating in the meantime, and it wastes
my time like an old friend."
The Clemens family remained in Hartford that summer, with the
exception of a brief season at Bateman's Point, R. I., near
Newport. By this time Mark Twain had taken up and finished the Tom
Sawyer story begun two years before. Naturally he wished Howells to
consider the MS.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, July 5th, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I have finished the story and didn't take the chap
beyond boyhood. I believe it would be fatal to do it in any shape but
autobiographically--like Gil Blas. I perhaps made a mistake in not
writing it in the first person. If I went on, now, and took him into
manhood, he would just like like all the one-horse men in literature and
the reader would conceive a hearty contempt for him. It is not a boy's
book, at all. It will only be read by adults. It is only written for
adults.
Moreover the book is plenty long enough as it stands. It is about 900
pages of MS, and may be 1000 when I shall have finished "working up"
vague places; so it would make from 130 to 150 pages of the Atlantic--
about what the Foregone Conclusion made, isn't it?
I would dearly like to see it in the Atlantic, but I doubt if it would
pay the publishers to buy the privilege, or me to sell it. Bret Harte
has sold his novel (same size as mine, I should say) to Scribner's
Monthly for $6,500 (publication to begin in September, I think,) and he
gets a royalty of 7 1/2 per cent from Bliss in book form afterwards. He
gets a royalty of ten per cent on it in England (issued in serial
numbers) and the same royalty on it in book form afterwards, and is to
receive an advance payment of five hundred pounds the day the first No.
of the serial appears. If I could do as well, here, and there, with
mine, it might possibly pay me, but I seriously doubt it though it is
likely I could do better in England than Bret, who is not widely known
there.
You see I take a vile, mercenary view of things--but then my household
expenses are something almost ghastly.
By and by I shall take a boy of twelve and run him on through life (in
the first person) but not Tom Sawyer--he would not be a good character
for it.
I wish you would promise to read the MS of Tom Sawyer some time, and see
if you don't really decide that I am right in closing with him as a boy-
and point out the most glaring defects for me. It is a tremendous favor
to ask, and I expect you to refuse and would be ashamed to expect you to
do otherwise. But the thing has been so many months in my mind that it
seems a relief to snake it out. I don't know any other person whose
judgment I could venture to take fully and entirely. Don't hesitate
about saying no, for I know how your time is taxed, and I would have
honest need to blush if you said yes.
Osgood and I are "going for" the puppy G---- on infringement of
trademark. To win one or two suits of this kind will set literary folks
on a firmer bottom. I wish Osgood would sue for stealing Holmes's poem.
Wouldn't it be gorgeous to sue R---- for petty larceny? I will promise
to go into court and swear I think him capable of stealing pea-nuts from
a blind pedlar.
Yrs ever,
CLEMENS.
Of course Howells promptly replied that he would read the story,
adding: "You've no idea what I may ask you to do for me, some day.
I'm sorry that you can't do it for the Atlantic, but I succumb.
Perhaps you will do Boy No. 2 for us." Clemens, conscience-
stricken, meantime, hastily put the MS. out of reach of temptation.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
July 13, 1875
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Just as soon as you consented I realized all the
atrocity of my request, and straightway blushed and weakened.
I telegraphed my theatrical agent to come here and carry off the MS and
copy it.
But I will gladly send it to you if you will do as follows: dramatize it,
if you perceive that you can, and take, for your remuneration, half of
the first $6000 which I receive for its representation on the stage. You
could alter the plot entirely, if you chose. I could help in the work,
most cheerfully, after you had arranged the plot. I have my eye upon two
young girls who can play "Tom" and "Huck." I believe a good deal of a
drama can be made of it. Come--can't you tackle this in the odd hours of
your vacation? or later, if you prefer?
I do wish you could come down once more before your holiday. I'd give
anything!
Yrs ever,
MARK.
Howells wrote that he had no time for the dramatization and urged Clemens
to undertake it himself. He was ready to read the story, whenever it
should arrive. Clemens did not hurry, however, The publication of Tom
Sawyer could wait. He already had a book in press--the volume of
Sketches New and Old, which he had prepared for Bliss several years
before.
Sketches was issued that autumn, and Howells gave it a good notice--
possibly better than it deserved.
Considered among Mark Twain's books to-day, the collection of sketches
does not seem especially important. With the exception of the frog story
and the "True Story" most of those included--might be spared. Clemens
himself confessed to Howells that He wished, when it was too late, that
he had destroyed a number of them. The book, however, was distinguished
in a special way: it contains Mark Twain's first utterance in print on
the subject of copyright, a matter in which he never again lost interest.
The absurdity and injustice of the copyright laws both amused and
irritated him, and in the course of time he would be largely instrumental
in their improvement. In the book his open petition to Congress that all
property rights, as well as literary ownership, should be put on the
copyright basis and limited to a "beneficent term of forty-two years,"
was more or less of a joke, but, like so many of Mark Twain's jokes, it
was founded on reason and justice.
He had another idea, that was not a joke: an early plan in the direction
of international copyright. It was to be a petition signed by the
leading American authors, asking the United States to declare itself to
be the first to stand for right and justice by enacting laws against the
piracy of foreign books. It was a rather utopian scheme, as most schemes
for moral progress are, in their beginning. It would not be likely ever
to reach Congress, but it would appeal to Howells and his Cambridge
friends. Clemens wrote, outlining his plan of action.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Sept. 18, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--My plan is this--you are to get Mr. Lowell and Mr.
Longfellow to be the first signers of my copyright petition; you must
sign it yourself and get Mr. Whittier to do likewise. Then Holmes will
sign--he said he would if he didn't have to stand at the head. Then I'm
fixed. I will then put a gentlemanly chap under wages and send him
personally to every author of distinction in the country, and corral the
rest of the signatures. Then I'll have the whole thing lithographed
(about a thousand copies) and move upon the President and Congress in
person, but in the subordinate capacity of a party who is merely the
agent of better and wiser men--men whom the country cannot venture to
laugh at.
I will ask the President to recommend the thing in his message (and if he
should ask me to sit down and frame the paragraph for him I should blush
--but still I would frame it.)
Next I would get a prime leader in Congress: I would also see that votes
enough to carry the measure were privately secured before the bill was
offered. This I would try through my leader and my friends there.
And then if Europe chose to go on stealing from us, we would say with
noble enthusiasm, "American lawmakers do steal but not from foreign
authors--Not from foreign authors!"
You see, what I want to drive into the Congressional mind is the simple
fact that the moral law is "Thou shalt not steal"--no matter what Europe
may do.
I swear I can't see any use in robbing European authors for the benefit
of American booksellers, anyway.
If we can ever get this thing through Congress, we can try making
copyright perpetual, some day. There would be no sort of use in it,
since only one book in a hundred millions outlives the present copyright
term--no sort of use except that the writer of that one book have his
rights--which is something.
If we only had some God in the country's laws, instead of being in such a
sweat to get Him into the Constitution, it would be better all around.
The only man who ever signed my petition with alacrity, and said that the
fact that a thing was right was all-sufficient, was Rev. Dr. Bushnell.
I have lost my old petition, (which was brief) but will draft and enclose
another--not in the words it ought to be, but in the substance. I want
Mr. Lowell to furnish the words (and the ideas too,) if he will do it.
Say--Redpath beseeches me to lecture in Boston in November--telegraphs
that Beecher's and Nast's withdrawal has put him in the tightest kind of
a place. So I guess I'll do that old "Roughing It" lecture over again in
November and repeat it 2 or 3 times in New York while I am at it.
Can I take a carriage after the lecture and go out and stay with you that
night, provided you find at that distant time that it will not
inconvenience you? Is Aldrich home yet?
With love to you all
Yrs ever,
S. L. C.
Of course the petition never reached Congress. Holmes's comment
that governments were not in the habit of setting themselves up as
high moral examples, except for revenue, was shared by too many
others. The petition was tabled, but Clemens never abandoned his
purpose and lived to see most of his dream fulfilled. Meantime,
Howells's notice of the Sketches appeared in the Atlantic, and
brought grateful acknowledgment from the author.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Oct. 19, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--That is a perfectly superb notice. You can easily
believe that nothing ever gratified me so much before. The newspaper
praises bestowed upon the "Innocents Abroad" were large and generous, but
somehow I hadn't confidence in the critical judgement of the parties who
furnished them. You know how that is, yourself, from reading the
newspaper notices of your own books. They gratify a body, but they
always leave a small pang behind in the shape of a fear that the critic's
good words could not safely be depended upon as authority. Yours is the
recognized critical Court of Last Resort in this country; from its
decision there is no appeal; and so, to have gained this decree of yours
before I am forty years old, I regard as a thing to be right down proud
of. Mrs. Clemens says, "Tell him I am just as grateful to him as I can
be." (It sounds as if she were grateful to you for heroically trampling
the truth under foot in order to praise me but in reality it means that
she is grateful to you for being bold enough to utter a truth which she
fully believes all competent people know, but which none has heretofore
been brave enough to utter.) You see, the thing that gravels her is that
I am so persistently glorified as a mere buffoon, as if that entirely
covered my case--which she denies with venom.
The other day Mrs. Clemens was planning a visit to you, and so I am
waiting with a pleasurable hope for the result of her deliberations.
We are expecting visitors every day, now, from New York; and afterward
some are to come from Elmira. I judge that we shall then be free to go
Bostonward. I should be just delighted; because we could visit in
comfort, since we shouldn't have to do any shopping--did it all in New
York last week, and a tremendous pull it was too.
Mrs. C. said the other day, "We will go to Cambridge if we have to walk;
for I don't believe we can ever get the Howellses to come here again
until we have been there." I was gratified to see that there was one
string, anyway, that could take her to Cambridge. But I will do her the
justice to say that she is always wanting to go to Cambridge, independent
of the selfish desire to get a visit out of you by it. I want her to get
started, now, before children's diseases are fashionable again, because
they always play such hob with visiting arrangements.
With love to you all
Yrs Ever
S. L. CLEMENS.
Mark Twain's trips to Boston were usually made alone. Women require
more preparation to go visiting, and Mrs. Clemens and Mrs. Howells
seem to have exchanged visits infrequently. For Mark Twain,
perhaps, it was just as well that his wife did not always go with
him; his absent-mindedness and boyish ingenuousness often led him
into difficulties which Mrs. Clemens sometimes found embarrassing.
In the foregoing letter they were planning a visit to Cambridge. In
the one that follows they seem to have made it--with certain
results, perhaps not altogether amusing at the moment.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
Oct. 4, '75.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We had a royal good time at your house, and have had a
royal good time ever since, talking about it, both privately and with the
neighbors.
Mrs. Clemens's bodily strength came up handsomely under that cheery
respite from household and nursery cares. I do hope that Mrs. Howells's
didn't go correspondingly down, under the added burden to her cares and
responsibilities. Of course I didn't expect to get through without
committing some crimes and hearing of them afterwards, so I have taken
the inevitable lashings and been able to hum a tune while the punishment
went on. I "caught it" for letting Mrs. Howells bother and bother about
her coffee when it was "a good deal better than we get at home."
I "caught it" for interrupting Mrs. C. at the last moment and losing her
the opportunity to urge you not to forget to send her that MS when the
printers are done with it. I "caught it" once more for personating that
drunken Col. James. I "caught it" for mentioning that Mr. Longfellow's
picture was slightly damaged; and when, after a lull in the storm,
I confessed, shame-facedly, that I had privately suggested to you that we
hadn't any frames, and that if you wouldn't mind hinting to Mr. Houghton,
&c., &c., &c., the Madam was simply speechless for the space of a minute.
Then she said:
"How could you, Youth! The idea of sending Mr. Howells, with his
sensitive nature, upon such a repulsive er--"
"Oh, Howells won't mind it! You don't know Howells. Howells is a man
who--" She was gone. But George was the first person she stumbled on in
the hall, so she took it out of George. I was glad of that, because it
saved the babies.
I've got another rattling good character for my novel! That great work
is mulling itself into shape gradually.
Mrs. Clemens sends love to Mrs. Howells--meantime she is diligently
laying up material for a letter to her.
Yrs ever
MARK.
The "George" of this letter was Mark Twain's colored butler, a
valued and even beloved member of the household--a most picturesque
character, who "one day came to wash windows," as Clemens used to
say, "and remained eighteen years." The fiction of Mrs. Clemens's
severity he always found amusing, because of its entire contrast
with the reality of her gentle heart.
Clemens carried the Tom Sawyer MS. to Boston himself and placed it
in Howells's hands. Howells had begged to be allowed to see the
story, and Mrs. Clemens was especially anxious that he should do so.
She had doubts as to certain portions of it, and had the fullest
faith in Howells's opinion.
It was a gratifying one when it came. Howells wrote: "I finished
reading Tom Sawyer a week ago, sitting up till one A.M. to get to
the end, simply because it was impossible to leave off. It's
altogether the best boy's story I ever read. It will be an immense
success. But I think you ought to treat it explicitly as a boy's
story. Grown-ups will enjoy it just as much if you do; and if you
should put it forth as a study of boy character from the grown-up
point of view, you give the wrong key to it.... The adventures are
enchanting. I wish I had been on that island. The treasure-
hunting, the loss in the cave--it's all exciting and splendid.
I shouldn't think of publishing this story serially. Give me a hint
when it's to be out, and I'll start the sheep to jumping in the
right places"--meaning that he would have an advance review ready
for publication in the Atlantic, which was a leader of criticism in
America.
Mark Twain was writing a great deal at this time. Howells was
always urging him to send something to the Atlantic, declaring a
willingness to have his name appear every month in their pages, and
Clemens was generally contributing some story or sketch. The
"proof" referred to in the next letter was of one of these articles.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Nov. 23, '75.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Herewith is the proof. In spite of myself, how
awkwardly I do jumble words together; and how often I do use three words
where one would answer--a thing I am always trying to guard against.
I shall become as slovenly a writer as Charles Francis Adams, if I don't
look out. (That is said in jest; because of course I do not seriously
fear getting so bad as that. I never shall drop so far toward his and
Bret Harte's level as to catch myself saying "It must have been wiser to
have believed that he might have accomplished it if he could have felt
that he would have been supported by those who should have &c. &c. &c.")
The reference to Bret Harte reminds me that I often accuse him of being a
deliberate imitator of Dickens; and this in turn reminds me that I have
charged unconscious plagiarism upon Charley Warner; and this in turn
reminds me that I have been delighting my soul for two weeks over a bran
new and ingenious way of beginning a novel--and behold, all at once it
flashes upon me that Charley Warner originated the idea 3 years ago and
told me about it! Aha! So much for self-righteousness! I am well
repaid. Here are 108 pages of MS, new and clean, lying disgraced in the
waste paper basket, and I am beginning the novel over again in an
unstolen way. I would not wonder if I am the worst literary thief in the
world, without knowing it.
It is glorious news that you like Tom Sawyer so well. I mean to see to
it that your review of it shall have plenty of time to appear before the
other notices. Mrs. Clemens decides with you that the book should issue
as a book for boys, pure and simple--and so do I. It is surely the
correct idea. As to that last chapter, I think of just leaving it off
and adding nothing in its place. Something told me that the book was
done when I got to that point--and so the strong temptation to put Huck's
life at the Widow's into detail, instead of generalizing it in a
paragraph was resisted. Just send Sawyer to me by express--I enclose
money for it. If it should get lost it will be no great matter.
Company interfered last night, and so "Private Theatricals" goes over
till this evening, to be read aloud. Mrs. Clemens is mad, but the story
will take that all out. This is going to be a splendid winter night for
fireside reading, anyway.
I am almost at a dead stand-still with my new story, on account of the
misery of having to do it all over again. We--all send love to you--all.
Yrs ever
MARK.
The "story" referred to may have been any one of several begun by him at
this time. His head was full of ideas for literature of every sort.
Many of his beginnings came to nothing, for the reason that he started
wrong, or with no definitely formed plan. Others of his literary
enterprises were condemned by his wife for their grotesqueness or for the
offense they might give in one way or another, however worthy the
intention behind them. Once he wrote a burlesque on family history "The
Autobiography of a Damned Fool." "Livy wouldn't have it," he said later,
"so I gave it up." The world is indebted to Mark Twain's wife for the
check she put upon his fantastic or violent impulses. She was his
public, his best public--clearheaded and wise. That he realized this,
and was willing to yield, was by no means the least of his good fortunes.
We may believe that he did not always yield easily, and perhaps sometimes
only out of love for her. In the letter which he wrote her on her
thirtieth birthday we realize something of what she had come to mean in
his life.
To Mrs. Clemens on her Thirtieth Birthday:
HARTFORD, November 27, 1875.
Livy darling, six years have gone by since I made my first great success
in life and won you, and thirty years have passed since Providence made
preparation for that happy success by sending you into the world. Every
day we live together adds to the security of my confidence, that we can
never any more wish to be separated than that we can ever imagine a
regret that we were ever joined. You are dearer to me to-day, my child,
than you were upon the last anniversary of this birth-day; you were
dearer then than you were a year before--you have grown more and more
dear from the first of those anniversaries, and I do not doubt that this
precious progression will continue on to the end.
Let us look forward to the coming anniversaries, with their age and their
gray hairs without fear and without depression, trusting and believing
that the love we bear each other will be sufficient to make them blessed.
So, with abounding affection for you and our babies, I hail this day that
brings you the matronly grace and dignity of three decades!
Always Yours
S. L. C. _
Read next: VOLUME III - TWAIN'S LETTERS 1876-1885: CHAPTER XVI - LETTERS, 1876, CHIEFLY TO W. D. HOWELLS. LITERATURE AND POLITICS. PLANNING A PLAY WITH BRET HARTE
Read previous: VOLUME II - MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1867-1875: CHAPTER XIV - LETTERS 1874. MISSISSIPPI CHAPTERS. VISITS TO BOSTON. A JOKE ON ALDRICH
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