In modern times the halls of heaven are warmed by registers
connected with hell; and this is greatly applauded by Jonathan
Edwards, Calvin, Baxter and Company, because it adds a new pang to
the sinner's sufferings to know that the very fire which tortures
him is the means of making the righteous comfortable.
Then there was to be another story, in which the various characters were
to have a weird, pestilential nomenclature; such as “Lockjaw Harris,”
“Influenza Smith,” “Sinapism Davis,” and a dozen or two more, a perfect
outbreak of disorders.
Another--probably the inspiration of some very hot afternoon--was to
present life in the interior of an iceberg, where a colony would live
for a generation or two, drifting about in a vast circular current year
after year, subsisting on polar bears and other Arctic game.
An idea which he followed out and completed was the 1002d Arabian Night,
in which Scheherazade continues her stories, until she finally talks the
Sultan to death. That was a humorous idea, certainly; but when Howells
came home and read it in the usual way he declared that, while the
opening was killingly funny, when he got into the story itself it
seemed to him that he was “made a fellow-sufferer with the Sultan from
Scheherazade's prolixity.”
“On the whole,” he said, “it is not your best, nor your second best; but
all the way it skirts a certain kind of fun which you can't afford to
indulge in.”
And that was the truth. So the tale, neatly typewritten, retired to
seclusion, and there remains to this day.
Clemens had one inspiration that summer which was not directly literary,
but historical, due to his familiarity with English dates. He wrote
Twichell:
Day before yesterday, feeling not in condition for writing, I left
the study, but I couldn't hold in--had to do something; so I spent
eight hours in the sun with a yardstick, measuring off the reigns of
the English kings on the roads in these grounds, from William the
Conqueror to 1883, calculating to invent an open-air game which
shall fill the children's heads with dates without study. I give
each king's reign one foot of space to the year and drive one stake
in the ground to mark the beginning of each reign, and I make the
children call the stake by the king's name. You can stand in the
door and take a bird's-eye view of English monarchy, from the
Conqueror to Edward IV.; then you can turn and follow the road up
the hill to the study and beyond with an opera-glass, and bird's-eye
view the rest of it to 1883.
You can mark the sharp difference in the length of reigns by the
varying distances of the stakes apart. You can see Richard II., two
feet; Oliver Cromwell, two feet; James II., three feet, and so on
--and then big skips; pegs standing forty-five, forty-six, fifty,
fifty-six, and sixty feet apart (Elizabeth, Victoria, Edward III.,
Henry III., and George III.). By the way, third's a lucky number
for length of days, isn't it? Yes, sir; by my scheme you get a
realizing notion of the time occupied by reigns.
The reason it took me eight hours was because, with little Jean's
interrupting assistance, I had to measure from the Conquest to the
end of Henry VI. three times over, and besides I had to whittle out
all those pegs.
I did a full day's work and a third over, yesterday, but was full of
my game after I went to bed trying to fit it for indoors. So I
didn't get to sleep till pretty late; but when I did go off I had
contrived a new way to play my history game with cards and a board.
We may be sure the idea of the game would possess him, once it got a
fair start like that. He decided to save the human race that year with
a history game. When he had got the children fairly going and interested
in playing it, he adapted it to a cribbage-board, and spent his days and
nights working it out and perfecting it to a degree where the world at
large might learn all the facts of all the histories, not only without
effort, but with an actual hunger for chronology. He would have a game
not only of the English kings, but of the kings of every other nation;
likewise of great statesmen, vice-chancellors, churchmen, of celebrities
in every line. He would prepare a book to accompany these games. Each
game would contain one thousand facts, while the book would contain
eight thousand; it would be a veritable encyclopedia. He would organize
clubs throughout the United States for playing the game; prizes were
to be given. Experts would take it up. He foresaw a department in every
newspaper devoted to the game and its problems, instead of to chess and
whist and other useless diversions. He wrote to Orion, and set him to
work gathering facts and dates by the bushel. He wrote to Webster,
sent him a plan, and ordered him to apply for the patent without delay.
Patents must also be applied for abroad. With all nations playing this
great game, very likely it would produce millions in royalties; and so,
in the true Sellers fashion, the iridescent bubble was blown larger and
larger, until finally it blew up. The game on paper had become so large,
so elaborate, so intricate, that no one could play it. Yet the first
idea was a good one: the king stakes driven along the driveway and up
the hillside of Quarry Farm. The children enjoyed it, and played it
through many sweet summer afternoons. Once, in the days when he had
grown old, he wrote, remembering:
Among the principal merits of the games which we played by help of
the pegs were these: that they had to be played in the open air, and
that they compelled brisk exercise. The peg of William the
Conqueror stood in front of the house; one could stand near the
Conqueror and have all English history skeletonized and landmarked
and mile-posted under his eye.... The eye has a good memory.
Many years have gone by and the pegs have disappeared, but I still
see them and each in its place; and no king's name falls upon my ear
without my seeing his pegs at once, and noticing just how many feet
of space he takes up along the road.
It turned out an important literary year after all. In the Mississippi
book he had used a chapter from the story he had been working at from
time to time for a number of years, 'The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn'. Reading over the manuscript now he found his interest in it sharp
and fresh, his inspiration renewed. The trip down the river had revived
it. The interest in the game became quiescent, and he set to work to
finish the story at a dead heat.
To Howells, August 22 (1883), he wrote:
I have written eight or nine hundred manuscript pages in such a
brief space of time that I mustn't name the number of days; I
shouldn't believe it myself, and of course couldn't expect you to.
I used to restrict myself to four and five hours a day and five days
in the week, but this time I have wrought from breakfast till 5.15
P.M. six days in the week, and once or twice I smouched a Sunday
when the boss wasn't looking. Nothing is half so good as literature
hooked on Sunday, on the sly.
He refers to the game, though rather indifferently.
When I wrote you I thought I had it; whereas I was merely entering
upon the initiatory difficulties of it. I might have known it
wouldn't be an easy job or somebody would have invented a decent
historical game long ago--a thing which nobody has done.
Notwithstanding the fact that he was working at Huck with enthusiasm, he
seems to have been in no hurry to revise it for publication, either as a
serial or as a book. But the fact that he persevered until Huck Finn
at last found complete utterance was of itself a sufficient matter for
congratulation.