There are bound to be vexations, flies in the ointment, as we say. It
was Warner who conferred the name of Eschol Sellers on the chief figure
of the collaborated novel. Warner had known it as the name of an obscure
person, or perhaps he had only heard of it. At all events, it seemed a
good one for the character and had been adopted. But behold, the book
had been issued but a little while when there rose “out of the vasty
deeps” a genuine Eschol Sellers, who was a very respectable person. He
was a stout, prosperous-looking man, gray and about fifty-five years
old. He came into the American Publishing Company offices and asked
permission to look at the book. Mr. Bliss was out at the moment, but
presently arrived. The visitor rose and introduced himself.
“My name is Eschol Sellers,” he said. “You have used it in one of your
publications. It has brought upon me a lot of ridicule. My people wish
me to sue you for $10,000 damages.”
He had documents to prove his identity, and there was only one thing
to be done; he must be satisfied. Bliss agreed to recall as many of
the offending volumes as possible and change the name on the plates.
He contacted the authors, and the name Beriah was substituted for the
offending Eschol. It turned out that the real Sellers family was a large
one, and that the given name Eschol was not uncommon in its several
branches. This particular Eschol Sellers, curiously enough, was an
inventor and a promoter, though of a much more substantial sort than his
fiction namesake. He was also a painter of considerable merit, a writer
and an antiquarian. He was said to have been a grandson of the famous
painter, Rembrandt Peale.
Clemens vowed that he would not lecture in America that winter. The
irrepressible Redpath besieged him as usual, and at the end of January
Clemens telegraphed him, as he thought, finally. Following it with a
letter of explanation, he added:
“I said to her, 'There isn't money enough in America to hire me to leave
you for one day.'”
But Redpath was a persistent devil. He used arguments and held out
inducements which even Mrs. Clemens thought should not be resisted, and
Clemens yielded from time to time, and gave a lecture here and there
during February. Finally, on the 3d of March (1879.) he telegraphed his
tormentor:
“Why don't you congratulate me? I never expect to stand on a lecture
platform again after Thursday night.”
Howells tells delightfully of a visit which he and Aldrich paid to
Hartford just at this period. Aldrich went to visit Clemens and Howells
to visit Charles Dudley Warner, Clemens coming as far as Springfield to
welcome them.
In the good-fellowship of that cordial neighborhood we had two such
days as the aging sun no longer shines on in his round. There was
constant running in and out of friendly houses where the lively
hosts and guests called one another by their Christian names or
nicknames, and no such vain ceremony as knocking or ringing at
doors. Clemens was then building the stately mansion in which he
satisfied his love of magnificence as if it had been another
sealskin coat, and he was at the crest of the prosperity which
enabled him to humor every whim or extravagance.
Howells tells how Clemens dilated on the advantages of subscription sale
over the usual methods of publication, and urged the two Boston authors
to prepare something which canvassers could handle.
“Why, any other means of bringing out a book is privately printing it,”
he declared, and added that his subscription books in Bliss's hands sold
right along, “just like the Bible.”
On the way back to Boston Howells and Aldrich planned a subscription
book which would sell straight along, like the Bible. It was to be
called “Twelve Memorable Murders.” They had dreamed two or three
fortunes by the time they had reached Boston, but the project ended
there.
“We never killed a single soul,” Howells said once to the writer of this
memoir.
Clemens was always urging Howells to visit him after that. He offered
all sorts of inducements.
You will find us the most reasonable people in the world. We had
thought of precipitating upon you, George Warner and his wife one
day, Twichell and his jewel of a wife another day, and Charles
Perkins and wife another. Only those--simply members of our family
they are. But I'll close the door against them all, which will
“fix” all of the lot except Twichell, who will no more hesitate to
climb in the back window than nothing.
And you shall go to bed when you please, get up when you please,
talk when you please, read when you please.
A little later he was urging Howells or Aldrich, or both of them; to
come to Hartford to live.
Mr. Hall, who lives in the house next to Mrs. Stowe's (just where we
drive in to go to our new house), will sell for $16,000 or $17,000.
You can do your work just as well here as in Cambridge, can't you?
Come! Will one of you boys buy that house? Now, say yes.
Certainly those were golden, blessed days, and perhaps, as Howells
says, the sun does not shine on their like any more--not in Hartford,
at least, for the old group that made them no longer assembles there.
Hartford about this time became a sort of shrine for all literary
visitors, and for other notables as well, whether of America or from
overseas. It was the half-way place between Boston and New York,
and pilgrims going in either direction rested there. It is said that
travelers arriving in America, were apt to remember two things they
wished to see: Niagara Falls and Mark Twain. But the Falls had no such
recent advertising advantage as that spectacular success in London.
Visitors were apt to begin in Hartford.
Howells went with considerable frequency after that, or rather with
regularity, twice a year, or oftener, and his coming was always hailed
with great rejoicing. They visited and ate around at one place and
another among that pleasant circle of friends. But they were happiest
afterward together, Clemens smoking continually, “soothing his tense
nerves with a mild hot Scotch,” says Howells, “while we both talked, and
talked, and tasked of everything in the heavens and on the earth, and
the waters under the earth. After two days of this talk I would
come away hollow, realizing myself best in the image of one of those
locust-shells which you find sticking to the bark of trees at the end
of summer.” Sometimes Clemens told the story of his early life, “the
inexhaustible, the fairy, the Arabian Nights story, which I could never
tire of even when it began to be told over again.”