- -
- 100%
- +
*****
To Orion Clemens:
May 6, ’80.
My dear brother, – It is a model autobiography.
Continue to develop your character in the same gradual inconspicuous and apparently unconscious way. The reader, up to this time, may have his doubts, perhaps, but he can’t say decidedly, “This writer is not such a simpleton as he has been letting on to be.” Keep him in that state of mind. If, when you shall have finished, the reader shall say, “The man is an ass, but I really don’t know whether he knows it or not,” your work will be a triumph.
Stop re-writing. I saw places in your last batch where re-writing had done formidable injury. Do not try to find those places, else you will mar them further by trying to better them. It is perilous to revise a book while it is under way. All of us have injured our books in that foolish way.
Keep in mind what I told you – when you recollect something which belonged in an earlier chapter, do not go back, but jam it in where you are. Discursiveness does not hurt an autobiography in the least.
I have penciled the Ms here and there, but have not needed to make any criticisms or to knock out anything.
The elder Bliss has heart disease badly, and thenceforth his life hangs upon a thread.
Yr Bro,
Sam.
But Howells could not bring himself to print so frank a confession as Orion had been willing to make. “It wrung my heart,” he said, “and I felt haggard after I had finished it. The writer’s soul is laid bare; it is shocking.” Howells added that the best touches in it were those which made one acquainted with the writer’s brother; that is to say, Mark Twain, and that these would prove valuable material hereafter – a true prophecy, for Mark Twain’s early biography would have lacked most of its vital incident, and at least half of its background, without those faithful chapters, fortunately preserved. Had Onion continued, as he began, the work might have proved an important contribution to literature, but he went trailing off into by-paths of theology and discussion where the interest was lost. There were, perhaps, as many as two thousand pages of it, which few could undertake to read.
Mark Twain’s mind was always busy with plans and inventions, many of them of serious intent, some semi-serious, others of a purely whimsical character. Once he proposed a “Modest Club,” of which the first and main qualification for membership was modesty. “At present,” he wrote, “I am the only member; and as the modesty required must be of a quite aggravated type, the enterprise did seem for a time doomed to stop dead still with myself, for lack of further material; but upon reflection I have come to the conclusion that you are eligible. Therefore, I have held a meeting and voted to offer you the distinction of membership. I do not know that we can find any others, though I have had some thought of Hay, Warner, Twichell, Aldrich, Osgood, Fields, Higginson, and a few more – together with Mrs. Howells, Mrs. Clemens, and certain others of the sex.”
Howells replied that the only reason he had for not joining the Modest Club was that he was too modest – too modest to confess his modesty. “If I could get over this difficulty I should like to join, for I approve highly of the Club and its object…. It ought to be given an annual dinner at the public expense. If you think I am not too modest you may put my name down and I will try to think the same of you. Mrs. Howells applauded the notion of the club from the very first. She said that she knew one thing: that she was modest enough, anyway. Her manner of saying it implied that the other persons you had named were not, and created a painful impression in my mind. I have sent your letter and the rules to Hay, but I doubt his modesty. He will think he has a right to belong to it as much as you or I; whereas, other people ought only to be admitted on sufferance.”
Our next letter to Howells is, in the main, pure foolery, but we get in it a hint what was to become in time one of Mask Twain’s strongest interests, the matter of copyright. He had both a personal and general interest in the subject. His own books were constantly pirated in Canada, and the rights of foreign authors were not respected in America. We have already seen how he had drawn a petition which Holmes, Lowell, Longfellow, and others were to sign, and while nothing had come of this plan he had never ceased to formulate others. Yet he hesitated when he found that the proposed protection was likely to work a hardship to readers of the poorer class. Once he wrote: “My notions have mightily changed lately…. I can buy a lot of the copyright classics, in paper, at from three to thirty cents apiece. These things must find their way into the very kitchens and hovels of the country….. And even if the treaty will kill Canadian piracy, and thus save me an average of $5,000 a year, I am down on it anyway, and I’d like cussed well to write an article opposing the treaty.”
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Belmont, Mass.:
Thursday, June 6th, 1880.
My dear Howells, – There you stick, at Belmont, and now I’m going to Washington for a few days; and of course, between you and Providence that visit is going to get mixed, and you’ll have been here and gone again just about the time I get back. Bother it all, I wanted to astonish you with a chapter or two from Orion’s latest book – not the seventeen which he has begun in the last four months, but the one which he began last week.
Last night, when I went to bed, Mrs. Clemens said, “George didn’t take the cat down to the cellar – Rosa says he has left it shut up in the conservatory.” So I went down to attend to Abner (the cat.) About 3 in the morning Mrs. C. woke me and said, “I do believe I hear that cat in the drawing-room – what did you do with him?” I answered up with the confidence of a man who has managed to do the right thing for once, and said “I opened the conservatory doors, took the library off the alarm, and spread everything open, so that there wasn’t any obstruction between him and the cellar.” Language wasn’t capable of conveying this woman’s disgust. But the sense of what she said, was, “He couldn’t have done any harm in the conservatory – so you must go and make the entire house free to him and the burglars, imagining that he will prefer the coal-bins to the drawing-room. If you had had Mr. Howells to help you, I should have admired but not been astonished, because I should know that together you would be equal to it; but how you managed to contrive such a stately blunder all by yourself, is what I cannot understand.”
So, you see, even she knows how to appreciate our gifts.
Brisk times here. – Saturday, these things happened: Our neighbor Chas. Smith was stricken with heart disease, and came near joining the majority; my publisher, Bliss, ditto, ditto; a neighbor’s child died; neighbor Whitmore’s sixth child added to his five other cases of measles; neighbor Niles sent for, and responded; Susie Warner down, abed; Mrs. George Warner threatened with death during several hours; her son Frank, whilst imitating the marvels in Barnum’s circus bills, thrown from his aged horse and brought home insensible: Warner’s friend Max Yortzburgh, shot in the back by a locomotive and broken into 32 distinct pieces and his life threatened; and Mrs. Clemens, after writing all these cheerful things to Clara Spaulding, taken at midnight, and if the doctor had not been pretty prompt the contemplated Clemens would have called before his apartments were ready.
However, everybody is all right, now, except Yortzburg, and he is mending – that is, he is being mended. I knocked off, during these stirring times, and don’t intend to go to work again till we go away for the Summer, 3 or 6 weeks hence. So I am writing to you not because I have anything to say, but because you don’t have to answer and I need something to do this afternoon…..
I have a letter from a Congressman this morning, and he says Congress couldn’t be persuaded to bother about Canadian pirates at a time like this when all legislation must have a political and Presidential bearing, else Congress won’t look at it. So have changed my mind and my course; I go north, to kill a pirate. I must procure repose some way, else I cannot get down to work again.
Pray offer my most sincere and respectful approval to the President – is approval the proper word? I find it is the one I most value here in the household and seldomest get.
With our affection to you both.
Yrs ever,
Mark.
It was always dangerous to send strangers with letters of introduction to Mark Twain. They were so apt to arrive at the wrong time, or to find him in the wrong mood. Howells was willing to risk it, and that the result was only amusing instead of tragic is the best proof of their friendship.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Belmont, Mass.:
June 9, ’80.
Well, old practical joker, the corpse of Mr. X – has been here, and I have bedded it and fed it, and put down my work during 24 hours and tried my level best to make it do something, or say something, or appreciate something – but no, it was worse than Lazarus. A kind-hearted, well-meaning corpse was the Boston young man, but lawsy bless me, horribly dull company. Now, old man, unless you have great confidence in Mr. X’s judgment, you ought to make him submit his article to you before he prints it. For only think how true I was to you: Every hour that he was here I was saying, gloatingly, “O G– d– you, when you are in bed and your light out, I will fix you” (meaning to kill him)…., but then the thought would follow—“No, Howells sent him – he shall be spared, he shall be respected he shall travel hell-wards by his own route.”
Breakfast is frozen by this time, and Mrs. Clemens correspondingly hot. Good bye.
Yrs ever,
Mark.
“I did not expect you to ask that man to live with you,” Howells answered. “What I was afraid of was that you would turn him out of doors, on sight, and so I tried to put in a good word for him. After this when I want you to board people, I’ll ask you. I am sorry for your suffering. I suppose I have mostly lost my smell for bores; but yours is preternaturally keen. I shall begin to be afraid I bore you. (How does that make you feel?)”
In a letter to Twichell – a remarkable letter – when baby Jean Clemens was about a month old, we get a happy hint of conditions at Quarry Farm, and in the background a glimpse of Mark Twain’s unfailing tragic reflection.
*****
To Rev. Twichell, in Hartford:
Quarry farm, Aug. 29 ’80.
Dear old Joe, – Concerning Jean Clemens, if anybody said he “didn’t see no pints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog,” I should think he was convicting himself of being a pretty poor sort of observer…. I will not go into details; it is not necessary; you will soon be in Hartford, where I have already hired a hall; the admission fee will be but a trifle.
It is curious to note the change in the stock-quotation of the Affection Board brought about by throwing this new security on the Mark.t. Four weeks ago the children still put Mamma at the head of the list right along, where she had always been. But now:
Jean
Mamma
Motley (a cat)
Fräulein (another)
Papa
That is the way it stands, now Mamma is become No. 2; I have dropped from No. 4., and am become No. 5. Some time ago it used to be nip and tuck between me and the cats, but after the cats “developed” I didn’t stand any more show.
I’ve got a swollen ear; so I take advantage of it to lie abed most of the day, and read and smoke and scribble and have a good time. Last evening Livy said with deep concern, “O dear, I believe an abscess is forming in your ear.”
I responded as the poet would have done if he had had a cold in the head—
“Tis said that abscess conquers love,But O believe it not.”This made a coolness.
Been reading Daniel Webster’s Private Correspondence. Have read a hundred of his diffuse, conceited, “eloquent,” bathotic (or bathostic) letters written in that dim (no, vanished) Past when he was a student; and Lord, to think that this boy who is so real to me now, and so booming with fresh young blood and bountiful life, and sappy cynicisms about girls, has since climbed the Alps of fame and stood against the sun one brief tremendous moment with the world’s eyes upon him, and then – f-z-t-! where is he? Why the only long thing, the only real thing about the whole shadowy business is the sense of the lagging dull and hoary lapse of time that has drifted by since then; a vast empty level, it seems, with a formless spectre glimpsed fitfully through the smoke and mist that lie along its remote verge.
Well, we are all getting along here first-rate; Livy gains strength daily, and sits up a deal; the baby is five weeks old and – but no more of this; somebody may be reading this letter 80 years hence. And so, my friend (you pitying snob, I mean, who are holding this yellow paper in your hand in 1960,) save yourself the trouble of looking further; I know how pathetically trivial our small concerns will seem to you, and I will not let your eye profane them. No, I keep my news; you keep your compassion. Suffice it you to know, scoffer and ribald, that the little child is old and blind, now, and once more toothless; and the rest of us are shadows, these many, many years. Yes, and your time cometh!
Mark.
At the Farm that year Mark Twain was working on The Prince and the Pauper, and, according to a letter to Aldrich, brought it to an end September 19th. It is a pleasant letter, worth preserving. The book by Aldrich here mentioned was ‘The Stillwater Tragedy.’
*****
To T. B. Aldrich, in Ponkapog, Mass.:
Elmira, Sept. 15, ’80.
My dear Aldrich, – Thank you ever so much for the book – I had already finished it, and prodigiously enjoyed it, in the periodical of the notorious Howells, but it hits Mrs. Clemens just right, for she is having a reading holiday, now, for the first time in same months; so between-times, when the new baby is asleep and strengthening up for another attempt to take possession of this place, she is going to read it. Her strong friendship for you makes her think she is going to like it.
I finished a story yesterday, myself. I counted up and found it between sixty and eighty thousand words – about the size of your book. It is for boys and girls – been at work at it several years, off and on.
I hope Howells is enjoying his journey to the Pacific. He wrote me that you and Osgood were going, also, but I doubted it, believing he was in liquor when he wrote it. In my opinion, this universal applause over his book is going to land that man in a Retreat inside of two months. I notice the papers say mighty fine things about your book, too. You ought to try to get into the same establishment with Howells. But applause does not affect me – I am always calm – this is because I am used to it.
Well, good-bye, my boy, and good luck to you. Mrs. Clemens asks me to send her warmest regards to you and Mrs. Aldrich – which I do, and add those of.
Yrs ever,
Mark.
While Mark Twain was a journalist in San Francisco, there was a middle-aged man named Soule, who had a desk near him on the Morning Call. Soule was in those days highly considered as a poet by his associates, most of whom were younger and less gracefully poetic. But Soule’s gift had never been an important one. Now, in his old age, he found his fame still local, and he yearned for wider recognition. He wished to have a volume of poems issued by a publisher of recognized standing. Because Mark Twain had been one of Soule’s admirers and a warm friend in the old days, it was natural that Soule should turn to him now, and equally natural that Clemens should turn to Howells.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
Sunday, Oct. 2 ’80.
My dear Howells, – Here’s a letter which I wrote you to San Francisco the second time you didn’t go there…. I told Soule he needn’t write you, but simply send the Ms. to you. O dear, dear, it is dreadful to be an unrecognized poet. How wise it was in Charles Warren Stoddard to take in his sign and go for some other calling while still young.
I’m laying for that Encyclopedical Scotchman – and he’ll need to lock the door behind him, when he comes in; otherwise when he hears my proposed tariff his skin will probably crawl away with him. He is accustomed to seeing the publisher impoverish the author – that spectacle must be getting stale to him – if he contracts with the undersigned he will experience a change in that programme that will make the enamel peel off his teeth for very surprise – and joy. No, that last is what Mrs. Clemens thinks – but it’s not so. The proposed work is growing, mightily, in my estimation, day by day; and I’m not going to throw it away for any mere trifle. If I make a contract with the canny Scot, I will then tell him the plan which you and I have devised (that of taking in the humor of all countries) – otherwise I’ll keep it to myself, I think. Why should we assist our fellowman for mere love of God?
Yrs ever,
Mark.
One wishes that Howells might have found value enough in the verses of Frank Soule to recommend them to Osgood. To Clemens he wrote: “You have touched me in regard to him, and I will deal gently with his poetry. Poor old fellow! I can imagine him, and how he must have to struggle not to be hard or sour.”
The verdict, however, was inevitable. Soule’s graceful verses proved to be not poetry at all. No publisher of standing could afford to give them his imprint.
The “Encyclopedical Scotchman” mentioned in the preceding letter was the publisher Gebbie, who had a plan to engage Howells and Clemens to prepare some sort of anthology of the world’s literature. The idea came to nothing, though the other plan mentioned – for a library of humor – in time grew into a book.
Mark Twain’s contracts with Bliss for the publication of his books on the subscription plan had been made on a royalty basis, beginning with 5 per cent on ‘The Innocents Abroad’ increasing to 7 per cent on ‘Roughing It,’ and to 10 per cent on later books. Bliss had held that these later percentages fairly represented one half the profits. Clemens, however, had never been fully satisfied, and his brother Onion had more than once urged him to demand a specific contract on the half-profit basis. The agreement for the publication of ‘A Tramp Abroad’ was made on these terms. Bliss died before Clemens received his first statement of sales. Whatever may have been the facts under earlier conditions, the statement proved to Mark Twain’s satisfaction; at least, that the half-profit arrangement was to his advantage. It produced another result; it gave Samuel Clemens an excuse to place his brother Onion in a position of independence.
*****
To Onion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:
Sunday, Oct 24 ’80.
My dear Bro., – Bliss is dead. The aspect of the balance-sheet is enlightening. It reveals the fact, through my present contract, (which is for half the profits on the book above actual cost of paper, printing and binding,) that I have lost considerably by all this nonsense – sixty thousand dollars, I should say – and if Bliss were alive I would stay with the concern and get it all back; for on each new book I would require a portion of that back pay; but as it is (this in the very strictest confidence,) I shall probably go to a new publisher 6 or 8 months hence, for I am afraid Frank, with his poor health, will lack push and drive.
Out of the suspicions you bred in me years ago, has grown this result, – to wit, that I shall within the twelvemonth get $40,000 out of this “Tramp” instead Of $20,000. Twenty thousand dollars, after taxes and other expenses are stripped away, is worth to the investor about $75 a month – so I shall tell Mr. Perkins to make your check that amount per month, hereafter, while our income is able to afford it. This ends the loan business; and hereafter you can reflect that you are living not on borrowed money but on money which you have squarely earned, and which has no taint or savor of charity about it – and you can also reflect that the money you have been receiving of me all these years is interest charged against the heavy bill which the next publisher will have to stand who gets a book of mine.
Jean got the stockings and is much obliged; Mollie wants to know whom she most resembles, but I can’t tell; she has blue eyes and brown hair, and three chins, and is very fat and happy; and at one time or another she has resembled all the different Clemenses and Langdons, in turn, that have ever lived.
Livy is too much beaten out with the baby, nights, to write, these times; and I don’t know of anything urgent to say, except that a basket full of letters has accumulated in the 7 days that I have been whooping and cursing over a cold in the head – and I must attack the pile this very minute.
With love from us,
Y aff,
Sam.
$25 enclosed.
On the completion of The Prince and Pauper story, Clemens had naturally sent it to Howells for consideration. Howells wrote: “I have read the two P’s and I like it immensely, it begins well and it ends well.” He pointed out some things that might be changed or omitted, and added: “It is such a book as I would expect from you, knowing what a bottom of fury there is to your fun.” Clemens had thought somewhat of publishing the story anonymously, in the fear that it would not be accepted seriously over his own signature.
The “bull story” referred to in the next letter is the one later used in the Joan of Arc book, the story told Joan by “Uncle Laxart,” how he rode a bull to a funeral.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
Xmas Eve, 1880.
My dear Howells, – I was prodigiously delighted with what you said about the book – so, on the whole, I’ve concluded to publish intrepidly, instead of concealing the authorship. I shall leave out that bull story.
I wish you had gone to New York. The company was small, and we had a first-rate time. Smith’s an enjoyable fellow. I liked Barrett, too. And the oysters were as good as the rest of the company. It was worth going there to learn how to cook them.
Next day I attended to business – which was, to introduce Twichell to Gen. Grant and procure a private talk in the interest of the Chinese Educational Mission here in the U. S. Well, it was very funny. Joe had been sitting up nights building facts and arguments together into a mighty and unassailable array and had studied them out and got them by heart – all with the trembling half-hearted hope of getting Grant to add his signature to a sort of petition to the Viceroy of China; but Grant took in the whole situation in a jiffy, and before Joe had more than fairly got started, the old man said: “I’ll write the Viceroy a Letter – a separate letter – and bring strong reasons to bear upon him; I know him well, and what I say will have weight with him; I will attend to it right away. No, no thanks – I shall be glad to do it – it will be a labor of love.”
So all Joe’s laborious hours were for naught! It was as if he had come to borrow a dollar, and been offered a thousand before he could unfold his case….
But it’s getting dark. Merry Christmas to all of you.
Yrs Ever,
Mark.
The Chinese Educational Mission, mentioned in the foregoing, was a thriving Hartford institution, projected eight years before by a Yale graduate named Yung Wing. The mission was now threatened, and Yung Wing, knowing the high honor in which General Grant was held in China, believed that through him it might be saved. Twichell, of course, was deeply concerned and naturally overjoyed at Grant’s interest. A day or two following the return to Hartford, Clemens received a letter from General Grant, in which he wrote: “Li Hung Chang is the most powerful and most influential Chinaman in his country. He professed great friendship for me when I was there, and I have had assurances of the same thing since. I hope, if he is strong enough with his government, that the decision to withdraw the Chinese students from this country may be changed.”
But perhaps Li Hung Chang was experiencing one of his partial eclipses just then, or possibly he was not interested, for the Hartford Mission did not survive.
XXI. Letters 1881, To Howells And Others. Assisting A Young Sculptor. Literary Plans