Upset and disturbed as Mark Twain often was, he seldom permitted his
distractions to interfere with the program of his fireside. His days and
his nights might be fevered, but the evenings belonged to another world.
The long European wandering left him more than ever enamoured of his
home; to him it had never been so sweet before, so beautiful, so full
of peace. Company came: distinguished guests and the old neighborhood
circles. Dinner-parties were more frequent than ever, and they were
likely to be brilliant affairs. The best minds, the brightest wits,
gathered around Mark Twain's table. Booth, Barrett, Irving, Sheridan,
Sherman, Howells, Aldrich: they all assembled, and many more. There was
always some one on the way to Boston or New York who addressed himself
for the day or the night, or for a brief call, to the Mark Twain
fireside.
Certain visitors from foreign lands were surprised at his environment,
possibly expecting to find him among less substantial, more bohemian
surroundings. Henry Drummond, the author of Natural Law in the Spiritual
World, in a letter of this time, said:
I had a delightful day at Hartford last Wednesday.... Called
on Mark Twain, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the widow of Horace
Bushnell. I was wishing A----had been at the Mark Twain interview.
He is funnier than any of his books, and to my surprise a most
respected citizen, devoted to things esthetic, and the friend of the
poor and struggling.--[Life of Henry Drummond, by George Adam
Smith.]
The quieter evenings were no less delightful. Clemens did not often go
out. He loved his own home best. The children were old enough now to
take part in a form of entertainment that gave him and them especial
pleasure-acting charades. These he invented for them, and costumed the
little performers, and joined in the acting as enthusiastically and as
unrestrainedly as if he were back in that frolicsome boyhood on John
Quarles's farm. The Warner and Twichell children were often there and
took part in the gay amusements. The children of that neighborhood
played their impromptu parts well and naturally. They were in a dramatic
atmosphere, and had been from infancy. There was never any preparation
for the charades. A word was selected and the parts of it were whispered
to the little actors. Then they withdrew to the hall, where all sorts
of costumes had been laid out for the evening, dressed their parts, and
each detachment marched into the library, performed its syllable and
retired, leaving the audience, mainly composed of parents, to guess the
answer. Often they invented their own words, did their own costuming,
and conducted the entire performance independent of grown-up assistance
or interference. Now and then, even at this early period, they conceived
and produced little plays, and of course their father could not resist
joining in these. At other times, evenings, after dinner, he would
sit at the piano and recall the old darky songs-spirituals and jubilee
choruses-singing them with fine spirit, if not with perfect technic, the
children joining in these moving melodies.
He loved to read aloud to them. It was his habit to read his manuscript
to Mrs. Clemens, and, now that the children were older, he was likely to
include them in his critical audience.
It would seem to have been the winter after their return from Europe
that this custom was inaugurated, for 'The Prince and the Pauper'
manuscript was the first one so read, and it was just then he was
resuming work on this tale. Each afternoon or evening, when he had
finished his chapter, he assembled his little audience and read them the
result. The children were old enough to delight in that half real, half
fairy tale of the wandering prince and the royal pauper: and the charm
and simplicity of the story are measurably due to those two small
listeners, to whom it was adapted in that early day of its creation.
Clemens found the Prince a blessed relief from 'A Tramp Abroad', which
had become a veritable nightmare. He had thought it finished when he
left the farm, but discovered that he must add several hundred pages
to complete its bulk. It seemed to him that he had been given a
life-sentence. He wrote six hundred pages and tore up all but two
hundred and eighty-eight. He was about to destroy these and begin again,
when Mrs. Clemens's health became poor and he was advised to take her to
Elmira, though it was then midwinter. To Howells he wrote:
I said, “if there is one death that is painfuler than another, may I
get it if I don't do that thing.”
So I took the 288 pages to Bliss and told him that was the very last
line I should ever write on this book (a book which required 600
pages of MS., and I have written nearly four thousand, first and
last).
I am as soary (and flighty) as a rocket to-day, with the unutterable
joy of getting that Old Man of the Sea off my back, where he has
been roosting more than a year and a half.
They remained a month at Elmira, and on their return Clemens renewed
work on 'The Prince and the Pauper'. He reported to Howells that if he
never sold a copy his jubilant delight in writing it would suffer no
diminution. A week later his enthusiasm had still further increased:
I take so much pleasure in my story that I am loath to hurry, not
wanting to get it done. Did I ever tell you the plot of it? It
begins at 9 A.M., January 27, 1547.
He follows with a detailed synopsis of his plot, which in this instance
he had worked out with unusual completeness--a fact which largely
accounts for the unity of the tale. Then he adds:
My idea is to afford a realizing sense of the exceeding severity of
the laws of that day by inflicting some of their penalties upon the
king himself, and allowing him a chance to see the rest of them
applied to others; all of which is to account for certain mildnesses
which distinguished Edward VI.'s reign from those that precede it
and follow it.
Imagine this fact: I have even fascinated Mrs. Clemens with this
yarn for youth. My stuff generally gets considerable damning with
faint praise out of her, but this time it is all the other way. She
is become the horse-leech's daughter, and my mill doesn't grind fast
enough to suit her. This is no mean triumph, my dear sir.
He forgot, perhaps, to mention his smaller auditors, but we may believe
they were no less eager in their demands for the tale's continuance.