________________________________________________
_ Whether the unhappy occurrence at the Whittier dinner had anything
to do with Mark Twain's resolve to spend a year or two in Europe
cannot be known now. There were other good reasons for going, one
in particular being a demand for another book of travel. It was
also true, as he explains in a letter to his mother, that his days
were full of annoyances, making it difficult for him to work. He
had a tendency to invest money in almost any glittering enterprise
that came along, and at this time he was involved in the promotion
of a variety of patent rights that brought him no return other than
assessment and vexation.
Clemens's mother was by this time living with her son Onion and his
wife, in Iowa.
To Mrs. Jane Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:
HARTFORD, Feb. 17, 1878
MY DEAR MOTHER,--I suppose I am the worst correspondent in the whole
world; and yet I grow worse and worse all the time. My conscience
blisters me for not writing you, but it has ceased to abuse me for not
writing other folks.
Life has come to be a very serious matter with me. I have a badgered,
harassed feeling, a good part of my time. It comes mainly of business
responsibilities and annoyances, and the persecution of kindly letters
from well meaning strangers--to whom I must be rudely silent or else put
in the biggest half of my time bothering over answers. There are other
things also that help to consume my time and defeat my projects. Well,
the consequence is, I cannot write a book at home. This cuts my income
down. Therefore, I have about made up my mind to take my tribe and fly
to some little corner of Europe and budge no more until I shall have
completed one of the half dozen books that lie begun, up stairs. Please
say nothing about this at present.
We propose to sail the 11th of April. I shall go to Fredonia to meet
you, but it will not be well for Livy to make that trip I am afraid.
However, we shall see. I will hope she can go.
Mr. Twichell has just come in, so I must go to him. We are all well, and
send love to you all.
Affly,
SAM.
He was writing few letters at this time, and doing but little work.
There were always many social events during the winter, and what
with his European plans and a diligent study of the German language,
which the entire family undertook, his days and evenings were full
enough. Howells wrote protesting against the European travel and
berating him for his silence:
"I never was in Berlin and don't know any family hotel there.
I should be glad I didn't, if it would keep you from going. You
deserve to put up at the Sign of the Savage in Vienna. Really, it's
a great blow to me to hear of that prospected sojourn. It's a
shame. I must see you, somehow, before you go. I'm in dreadfully
low spirits about it.
"I was afraid your silence meant something wicked."
Clemens replied promptly, urging a visit to Hartford, adding a
postscript for Mrs. Howells, characteristic enough to warrant
preservation.
P. S. to Mrs. Howells, in Boston:
Feb. '78.
DEAR MRS. HOWELLS. Mrs. Clemens wrote you a letter, and handed it to me
half an hour ago, while I was folding mine to Mr. Howells. I laid that
letter on this table before me while I added the paragraph about R,'s
application. Since then I have been hunting and swearing, and swearing
and hunting, but I can't find a sign of that letter. It is the most
astonishing disappearance I ever heard of. Mrs. Clemens has gone off
driving--so I will have to try and give you an idea of her communication
from memory. Mainly it consisted of an urgent desire that you come to
see us next week, if you can possibly manage it, for that will be a
reposeful time, the turmoil of breaking up beginning the week after. She
wants you to tell her about Italy, and advise her in that connection, if
you will. Then she spoke of her plans--hers, mind you, for I never have
anything quite so definite as a plan. She proposes to stop a fortnight
in (confound the place, I've forgotten what it was,) then go and live in
Dresden till sometime in the summer; then retire to Switzerland for the
hottest season, then stay a while in Venice and put in the winter in
Munich. This program subject to modifications according to
circumstances. She said something about some little by-trips here and
there, but they didn't stick in my memory because the idea didn't charm
me.
(They have just telephoned me from the Courant office that Bayard Taylor
and family have taken rooms in our ship, the Holsatia, for the 11th
April.)
Do come, if you possibly can!--and remember and don't forget to avoid
letting Mrs. Clemens find out I lost her letter. Just answer her the
same as if you had got it.
Sincerely yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
The Howellses came, as invited, for a final reunion before the
breaking up. This was in the early half of March; the Clemenses
were to sail on the 11th of the following month.
Orion Clemens, meantime, had conceived a new literary idea and was
piling in his MS. as fast as possible to get his brother's judgment
on it before the sailing-date. It was not a very good time to send
MS., but Mark Twain seems to have read it and given it some
consideration. "The Journey in Heaven," of his own, which he
mentions, was the story published so many years later under the
title of "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven." He had began it in
1868, on his voyage to San Francisco, it having been suggested by
conversations with Capt. Ned Wakeman, of one of the Pacific
steamers. Wakeman also appears in 'Roughing It,' Chap. L, as Capt.
Ned Blakely, and again in one of the "Rambling Notes of an Idle
Excursion," as "Captain Hurricane Jones."
To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk:
HARTFORD, Mch. 23, 1878.
MY DEAR BRO.,--Every man must learn his trade--not pick it up. God
requires that he learn it by slow and painful processes. The apprentice-
hand, in black-smithing, in medicine, in literature, in everything, is a
thing that can't be hidden. It always shows.
But happily there is a market for apprentice work, else the "Innocents
Abroad" would have had no sale. Happily, too, there's a wider market for
some sorts of apprentice literature than there is for the very best of
journey-work. This work of yours is exceedingly crude, but I am free to
say it is less crude than I expected it to be, and considerably better
work than I believed you could do, it is too crude to offer to any
prominent periodical, so I shall speak to the N. Y. Weekly people. To
publish it there will be to bury it. Why could not same good genius have
sent me to the N. Y. Weekly with my apprentice sketches?
You should not publish it in book form at all--for this reason: it is
only an imitation of Verne--it is not a burlesque. But I think it may be
regarded as proof that Verne cannot be burlesqued.
In accompanying notes I have suggested that you vastly modify the first
visit to hell, and leave out the second visit altogether. Nobody would,
or ought to print those things. You are not advanced enough in
literature to venture upon a matter requiring so much practice. Let me
show you what a man has got to go through:
Nine years ago I mapped out my "Journey in Heaven." I discussed it with
literary friends whom I could trust to keep it to themselves.
I gave it a deal of thought, from time to time. After a year or more I
wrote it up. It was not a success. Five years ago I wrote it again,
altering the plan. That MS is at my elbow now. It was a considerable
improvement on the first attempt, but still it wouldn't do--last year and
year before I talked frequently with Howells about the subject, and he
kept urging me to do it again.
So I thought and thought, at odd moments and at last I struck what I
considered to be the right plan! Mind I have never altered the ideas,
from the first--the plan was the difficulty. When Howells was here last,
I laid before him the whole story without referring to my MS and he said:
"You have got it sure this time. But drop the idea of making mere
magazine stuff of it. Don't waste it. Print it by itself--publish it
first in England--ask Dean Stanley to endorse it, which will draw some of
the teeth of the religious press, and then reprint in America." I doubt
my ability to get Dean Stanley to do anything of the sort, but I shall do
the rest--and this is all a secret which you must not divulge.
Now look here--I have tried, all these years, to think of some way of
"doing" hell too--and have always had to give it up. Hell, in my book,
will not occupy five pages of MS I judge--it will be only covert hints,
I suppose, and quickly dropped, I may end by not even referring to it.
And mind you, in my opinion you will find that you can't write up hell so
it will stand printing. Neither Howells nor I believe in hell or the
divinity of the Savior, but no matter, the Savior is none the less a
sacred Personage, and a man should have no desire or disposition to refer
to him lightly, profanely, or otherwise than with the profoundest
reverence.
The only safe thing is not to introduce him, or refer to him at all,
I suspect. I have entirely rewritten one book 3 (perhaps 4.) times,
changing the plan every time--1200 pages of MS. wasted and burned--and
shall tackle it again, one of these years and maybe succeed at last.
Therefore you need not expect to get your book right the first time.
Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and
lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are
God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases
to get under the bed, by and by.
Mr. Perkins will send you and Ma your checks when we are gone. But don't
write him, ever, except a single line in case he forgets the checks--for
the man is driven to death with work.
I see you are half promising yourself a monthly return for your book.
In my experience, previously counted chickens never do hatch. How many
of mine I have counted! and never a one of them but failed! It is much
better to hedge disappointment by not counting.--Unexpected money is a
delight. The same sum is a bitterness when you expected more.
My time in America is growing mighty short. Perhaps we can manage in
this way: Imprimis, if the N. Y. Weekly people know that you are my
brother, they will turn that fact into an advertisement--a thing of value
to them, but not to you and me. This must be prevented. I will write
them a note to say you have a friend near Keokuk, Charles S. Miller,
who has a MS for sale which you think is a pretty clever travesty on
Verne; and if they want it they might write to him in your care. Then if
any correspondence ensues between you and them, let Mollie write for you
and sign your name--your own hand writing representing Miller's. Keep
yourself out of sight till you make a strike on your own merits there is
no other way to get a fair verdict upon your merits.
Later-I've written the note to Smith, and with nothing in it which he can
use as an advertisement. I'm called--Good bye-love to you both.
We leave here next Wednesday for Elmira: we leave there Apl. 9 or 10--and
sail 11th
Yr Bro.
SAM.
In the letter that follows the mention of Annie and Sam refers, of
course, to the children of Mrs. Moffett, who had been, Pamela
Clemens. They were grown now, and Annie Moffett was married to
Charles L. Webster, who later was to become Mark Twain's business
partner. The Moffetts and Websters were living in Fredonia at this
time, and Clemens had been to pay them a good-by visit. The Taylor
dinner mentioned was a farewell banquet given to Bayard Taylor, who
had been appointed Minister to Germany, and was to sail on the ship
with Mark Twain. Mark Twain's mother was visiting in Fredonia when
this letter was written.
To Mrs. Jane Clemens, in Fredonia:
Apr. 7, '78.
MY DEAR MOTHER,--I have told Livy all about Annie's beautiful house, and
about Sam and Charley, and about Charley's ingenious manufactures and his
strong manhood and good promise, and how glad I am that he and Annie
married. And I have told her about Annie's excellent house-keeping, also
about the great Bacon conflict; (I told you it was a hundred to one that
neither Livy nor the European powers had heard of that desolating
struggle.)
And I have told her how beautiful you are in your age and how bright your
mind is with its old-time brightness, and how she and the children would
enjoy you. And I have told her how singularly young Pamela is looking,
and what a fine large fellow Sam is, and how ill the lingering syllable
"my" to his name fits his port and figure.
Well, Pamela, after thinking it over for a day or so, I came near
inquiring about a state-room in our ship for Sam, to please you, but my
wiser former resolution came back to me. It is not for his good that he
have friends in the ship. His conduct in the Bacon business shows that
he will develop rapidly into a manly man as soon as he is cast loose from
your apron strings.
You don't teach him to push ahead and do and dare things for himself, but
you do just the reverse. You are assisted in your damaging work by the
tyrannous ways of a village--villagers watch each other and so make
cowards of each other. After Sam shall have voyaged to Europe by
himself, and rubbed against the world and taken and returned its cuffs,
do you think he will hesitate to escort a guest into any whisky-mill in
Fredonia when he himself has no sinful business to transact there?
No, he will smile at the idea. If he avoids this courtesy now from
principle, of course I find no fault with it at all--only if he thinks it
is principle he may be mistaken; a close examination may show it is only
a bowing to the tyranny of public opinion.
I only say it may--I cannot venture to say it will. Hartford is not a
large place, but it is broader than to have ways of that sort. Three or
four weeks ago, at a Moody and Sankey meeting, the preacher read a letter
from somebody "exposing" the fact that a prominent clergyman had gone
from one of those meetings, bought a bottle of lager beer and drank it on
the premises (a drug store.)
A tempest of indignation swept the town. Our clergymen and everybody
else said the "culprit" had not only done an innocent thing, but had done
it in an open, manly way, and it was nobody's right or business to find
fault with it. Perhaps this dangerous latitude comes of the fact that we
never have any temperance "rot" going on in Hartford.
I find here a letter from Orion, submitting some new matter in his story
for criticism. When you write him, please tell him to do the best he can
and bang away. I can do nothing further in this matter, for I have but 3
days left in which to settle a deal of important business and answer a
bushel and a half of letters. I am very nearly tired to death.
I was so jaded and worn, at the Taylor dinner, that I found I could not
remember 3 sentences of the speech I had memorized, and therefore got up
and said so and excused myself from speaking. I arrived here at 3
o'clock this morning. I think the next 3 days will finish me. The idea
of sitting down to a job of literary criticism is simply ludicrous.
A young lady passenger in our ship has been placed under Livy's charge.
Livy couldn't easily get out of it, and did not want to, on her own
account, but fully expected I would make trouble when I heard of it.
But I didn't. A girl can't well travel alone, so I offered no objection.
She leaves us at Hamburg. So I've got 6 people in my care, now--which is
just 6 too many for a man of my unexecutive capacity. I expect nothing
else but to lose some of them overboard.
We send our loving good-byes to all the household and hope to see you
again after a spell.
Affly Yrs.
SAM.
There are no other American letters of this period. The Clemens
party, which included Miss Clara Spaulding, of Elmira, sailed as
planned, on the Holsatia, April 11, 1878. As before stated, Bayard
Taylor was on the ship; also Murat Halstead and family. On the eve
of departure, Clemens sent to Howells this farewell word:
"And that reminds me, ungrateful dog that I am, that I owe as much
to your training as the rude country job-printer owes to the city
boss who takes him in hand and teaches him the right way to handle
his art. I was talking to Mrs. Clemens about this the other day,
and grieving because I never mentioned it to you, thereby seeming to
ignore it, or to be unaware of it. Nothing that has passed under
your eye needs any revision before going into a volume, while all my
other stuff does need so much."
A characteristic tribute, and from the heart.
The first European letter came from Frankfort, a rest on their way
to Heidelberg.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN, May 4, 1878.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I only propose to write a single line to say we are
still around. Ah, I have such a deep, grateful, unutterable sense of
being "out of it all." I think I foretaste some of the advantages of
being dead. Some of the joy of it. I don't read any newspapers or care
for them. When people tell me England has declared war, I drop the
subject, feeling that it is none of my business; when they tell me Mrs.
Tilton has confessed and Mr. B. denied, I say both of them have done that
before, therefore let the worn stub of the Plymouth white-wash brush be
brought out once more, and let the faithful spit on their hands and get
to work again regardless of me--for I am out of it all.
We had 2 almost devilish weeks at sea (and I tell you Bayard Taylor is a
really lovable man--which you already knew) then we staid a week in the
beautiful, the very beautiful city of Hamburg; and since then we have
been fooling along, 4 hours per day by rail, with a courier, spending the
other 20 in hotels whose enormous bedchambers and private parlors are an
overpowering marvel to me: Day before yesterday, in Cassel, we had a love
of a bedroom ,31 feet long, and a parlor with 2 sofas, 12 chairs, a
writing desk and 4 tables scattered around, here and there in it. Made
of red silk, too, by George.
The times and times I wish you were along! You could throw some fun into
the journey; whereas I go on, day by day, in a smileless state of solemn
admiration.
What a paradise this is! What clean clothes, what good faces, what
tranquil contentment, what prosperity, what genuine freedom, what superb
government. And I am so happy, for I am responsible for none of it. I
am only here to enjoy. How charmed I am when I overhear a German word
which I understand. With love from us 2 to you 2.
MARK.
P. S. We are not taking six days to go from Hamburg to Heidelberg
because we prefer it. Quite on the contrary. Mrs. Clemens picked up a
dreadful cold and sore throat on board ship and still keeps them in
stock--so she could only travel 4 hours a day. She wanted to dive
straight through, but I had different notions about the wisdom of it.
I found that 4 hours a day was the best she could do. Before I forget
it, our permanent address is Care Messrs. Koester & Co., Backers,
Heidelberg. We go there tomorrow.
Poor Susy! From the day we reached German soil, we have required Rosa to
speak German to the children--which they hate with all their souls. The
other morning in Hanover, Susy came to us (from Rosa, in the nursery) and
said, in halting syllables, "Papa, vie viel uhr ist es?"--then turned
with pathos in her big eyes, and said, "Mamma, I wish Rosa was made in
English."
(Unfinished)
Frankfort was a brief halting-place, their destination being
Heidelberg. They were presently located there in the beautiful
Schloss hotel, which overlooks the old castle with its forest
setting, the flowing Neckar, and the distant valley of the Rhine.
Clemens, who had discovered the location, and loved it, toward the
end of May reported to Howells his felicities.
Part of letter to W. D. Howells, in Boston:
SCHLOSS-HOTEL HEIDELBERG,
Sunday, a. m., May 26, 1878.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--....divinely located. From this airy porch among the
shining groves we look down upon Heidelberg Castle, and upon the swift
Neckar, and the town, and out over the wide green level of the Rhine
valley--a marvelous prospect. We are in a Cul-de-sac formed of hill-
ranges and river; we are on the side of a steep mountain; the river at
our feet is walled, on its other side, (yes, on both sides,) by a steep
and wooded mountain-range which rises abruptly aloft from the water's
edge; portions of these mountains are densely wooded; the plain of the
Rhine, seen through the mouth of this pocket, has many and peculiar
charms for the eye.
Our bedroom has two great glass bird-cages (enclosed balconies) one
looking toward the Rhine valley and sunset, the other looking up the
Neckar cul-de-sac, and naturally we spend nearly all our time in these-
when one is sunny the other is shady. We have tables and chairs in them;
we do our reading, writing, studying, smoking and suppering in them.
The view from these bird-cages is my despair. The pictures change from
one enchanting aspect to another in ceaseless procession, never keeping
one form half an hour, and never taking on an unlovely one.
And then Heidelberg on a dark night! It is massed, away down there,
almost right under us, you know, and stretches off toward the valley.
Its curved and interlacing streets are a cobweb, beaded thick with
lights--a wonderful thing to see; then the rows of lights on the arched
bridges, and their glinting reflections in the water; and away at the far
end, the Eisenbahnhof, with its twenty solid acres of glittering gas-
jets, a huge garden, as one may say, whose every plant is a flame.
These balconies are the darlingest things. I have spent all the morning
in this north one. Counting big and little, it has 256 panes of glass in
it; so one is in effect right out in the free sunshine, and yet sheltered
from wind and rain--and likewise doored and curtained from whatever may
be going on in the bedroom. It must have been a noble genius who devised
this hotel. Lord, how blessed is the repose, the tranquillity of this
place! Only two sounds; the happy clamor of the birds in the groves, and
the muffled music of the Neckar, tumbling over the opposing dykes. It is
no hardship to lie awake awhile, nights, for this subdued roar has
exactly the sound of a steady rain beating upon a roof. It is so healing
to the spirit; and it bears up the thread of one's imaginings as the
accompaniment bears up a song.
While Livy and Miss Spaulding have been writing at this table, I have sat
tilted back, near by, with a pipe and the last Atlantic, and read Charley
Warner's article with prodigious enjoyment. I think it is exquisite.
I think it must be the roundest and broadest and completest short essay
he has ever written. It is clear, and compact, and charmingly done.
The hotel grounds join and communicate with the Castle grounds; so we and
the children loaf in the winding paths of those leafy vastnesses a great
deal, and drink beer and listen to excellent music.
When we first came to this hotel, a couple of weeks ago, I pointed to a
house across the river, and said I meant to rent the centre room on the
3d floor for a work-room. Jokingly we got to speaking of it as my
office; and amused ourselves with watching "my people" daily in their
small grounds and trying to make out what we could of their dress, &c.,
without a glass. Well, I loafed along there one day and found on that
house the only sign of the kind on that side of the river: "Moblirte
Wohnung zu Vermiethen!" I went in and rented that very room which I had
long ago selected. There was only one other room in the whole double-
house unrented.
(It occurs to me that I made a great mistake in not thinking to deliver a
very bad German speech, every other sentence pieced out with English, at
the Bayard Taylor banquet in New York. I think I could have made it one
of the features of the occasion.)--[He used this plan at a gathering of
the American students in Heidelberg, on July 4th, with great effect; so
his idea was not wasted.]
We left Hartford before the end of March, and I have been idle ever
since. I have waited for a call to go to work--I knew it would come.
Well, it began to come a week ago; my note-book comes out more and more
frequently every day since; 3 days ago I concluded to move my manuscript
over to my den. Now the call is loud and decided at last. So tomorrow I
shall begin regular, steady work, and stick to it till middle of July or
1st August, when I look for Twichell; we will then walk about Germany 2
or 3 weeks, and then I'll go to work again--(perhaps in Munich.)
We both send a power of love to the Howellses, and we do wish you were
here. Are you in the new house? Tell us about it.
Yrs Ever
MARK.
There has been no former mention in the letters of the coming of
Twichell; yet this had been a part of the European plan. Mark Twain
had invited his walking companion to make a tramp with him through
Europe, as his guest. Material for the new book would grow faster
with Twichell as a companion; and these two in spite of their widely
opposed views concerning Providence and the general scheme of
creation, were wholly congenial comrades. Twichell, in Hartford,
expecting to receive the final summons to start, wrote: "Oh, my! do
you realize, Mark, what a symposium it is to be? I do. To begin
with, I am thoroughly tired, and the rest will be worth everything.
To walk with you and talk with you for weeks together--why, it's my
dream of luxury."
August 1st brought Twichell, and the friends set out without delay
on a tramp through the Black Forest, making short excursions at
first, but presently extending them in the direction of Switzerland.
Mrs. Clemens and the others remained in Heidelberg, to follow at
their leisure. To Mrs. Clemens her husband sent frequent reports of
their wanderings. It will be seen that their tramp did not confine
itself to pedestrianism, though they did, in fact, walk a great
deal, and Mark Twain in a note to his mother declared, "I loathe all
travel, except on foot." The reports to Mrs. Clemens follow:
Letters to Mrs. Clemens, in Heidelberg:
ALLERHEILIGEN Aug. 5, 1878 8:30 p.m.
Livy darling, we had a rattling good time to-day, but we came very near
being left at Baden-Baden, for instead of waiting in the waiting-room, we
sat down on the platform to wait where the trains come in from the other
direction. We sat there full ten minutes--and then all of a sudden it
occurred to me that that was not the right place.
On the train the principal of the big English school at Nauheim (of which
Mr. Scheiding was a teacher), introduced himself to me, and then he
mapped out our day for us (for today and tomorrow) and also drew a map
and gave us directions how to proceed through Switzerland. He had his
entire school with him, taking them on a prodigious trip through
Switzerland--tickets for the round trip ten dollars apiece. He has done
this annually for 10 years. We took a post carriage from Aachen to
Otterhofen for 7 marks--stopped at the "Pflug" to drink beer, and saw
that pretty girl again at a distance. Her father, mother, and two
brothers received me like an ancient customer and sat down and talked as
long as I had any German left. The big room was full of red-vested
farmers (the Gemeindrath of the district, with the Burgermeister at the
head,) drinking beer and talking public business. They had held an
election and chosen a new member and had been drinking beer at his
expense for several hours. (It was intensely Black-foresty.)
There was an Australian there (a student from Stuttgart or somewhere,)
and Joe told him who I was and he laid himself out to make our course
plain, for us--so I am certain we can't get lost between here and
Heidelberg.
We walked the carriage road till we came to that place where one sees the
foot path on the other side of the ravine, then we crossed over and took
that. For a good while we were in a dense forest and judged we were
lost, but met a native women who said we were all right. We fooled along
and got there at 6 p.m.--ate supper, then followed down the ravine to the
foot of the falls, then struck into a blind path to see where it would
go, and just about dark we fetched up at the Devil's Pulpit on top of the
hills. Then home. And now to bed, pretty sleepy. Joe sends love and I
send a thousand times as much, my darling.
S. L. C.
HOTEL GENNIN.
Livy darling, we had a lovely day jogged right along, with a good horse
and sensible driver--the last two hours right behind an open carriage
filled with a pleasant German family--old gentleman and 3 pretty
daughters. At table d'hote tonight, 3 dishes were enough for me, and
then I bored along tediously through the bill of fare, with a back-ache,
not daring to get up and bow to the German family and leave. I meant to
sit it through and make them get up and do the bowing; but at last Joe
took pity on me and said he would get up and drop them a curtsy and put
me out of my misery. I was grateful. He got up and delivered a
succession of frank and hearty bows, accompanying them with an atmosphere
of good-fellowship which would have made even an English family
surrender. Of course the Germans responded--then I got right up and they
had to respond to my salaams, too. So "that was done."
We walked up a gorge and saw a tumbling waterfall which was nothing to
Giessbach, but it made me resolve to drop you a line and urge you to go
and see Giessbach illuminated. Don't fail--but take a long day's rest,
first. I love you, sweetheart.
SAML.
OVER THE GEMMI PASS.
4.30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 24, 1878.
Livy darling, Joe and I have had a most noble day. Started to climb (on
foot) at 8.30 this morning among the grandest peaks! Every half hour
carried us back a month in the season. We left them harvesting 2d crop
of hay. At 9 we were in July and found ripe strawberries; at 9.30 we
were in June and gathered flowers belonging to that month; at 10 we were
in May and gathered a flower which appeared in Heidelberg the 17th of
that month; also forget-me-nots, which disappeared from Heidelberg about
mid-May; at 11.30 we were in April (by the flowers;) at noon we had rain
and hail mixed, and wind and enveloping fogs, and considered it March; at
12.30 we had snowbanks above us and snowbanks below us, and considered it
February. Not good February, though, because in the midst of the wild
desolation the forget-me-not still bloomed, lovely as ever.
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. _
Read next: VOLUME III - TWAIN'S LETTERS 1876-1885: CHAPTER XIX - LETTERS 1879. RETURN TO AMERICA. THE GREAT GRANT REUNION
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