For the first time in twenty years Mark Twain was altogether dependent
on literature. He did not feel mentally unequal to the new problem; in
fact, with his added store of experience, he may have felt himself more
fully equipped for authorship than ever before. It had been his habit to
write within his knowledge and observation. To a correspondent of this
time he reviewed his stock in trade--
... I confine myself to life with which I am familiar when
pretending to portray life. But I confined myself to the boy-life
out on the Mississippi because that had a peculiar charm for me, and
not because I was not familiar with other phases of life. I was a
soldier two weeks once in the beginning of the war, and was hunted
like a rat the whole time. Familiar? My splendid Kipling himself
hasn't a more burnt-in, hard-baked, and unforgetable familiarity
with that death-on-the-pale-horse-with-hell-following-after, which
is a raw soldier's first fortnight in the field--and which, without
any doubt, is the most tremendous fortnight and the vividest he is
ever going to see.
Yes, and I have shoveled silver tailings in a quartz-mill a couple
of weeks, and acquired the last possibilities of culture in that
direction. And I've done “pocket-mining” during three months in the
one little patch of ground in the whole globe where Nature conceals
gold in pockets--or did before we robbed all of those pockets and
exhausted, obliterated, annihilated the most curious freak Nature
ever indulged in. There are not thirty men left alive who, being
told there was a pocket hidden on the broad slope of a mountain,
would know how to go and find it, or have even the faintest idea of
how to set about it; but I am one of the possible 20 or 30 who
possess the secret, and I could go and put my hand on that hidden
treasure with a most deadly precision.
And I've been a prospector, and know pay rock from poor when I find
it--just with a touch of the tongue. And I've been a silver miner
and know how to dig and shovel and drill and put in a blast. And so
I know the mines and the miners interiorly as well as Bret Harte
knows them exteriorly.
And I was a newspaper reporter four years in cities, and so saw the
inside of many things; and was reporter in a legislature two
sessions and the same in Congress one session, and thus learned to
know personally three sample bodies of the smallest minds and the
selfishest souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes.
And I was some years a Mississippi pilot, and familiarly knew all
the different kinds of steamboatmen--a race apart, and not like
other folk.
And I was for some years a traveling “jour” printer, and wandered
from city to city--and so I know that sect familiarly.
And I was a lecturer on the public platform a number of seasons and
was a responder to toasts at all the different kinds of banquets
--and so I know a great many secrets about audiences--secrets not to
be got out of books, but only acquirable by experience.
And I watched over one dear project of mine for years, spent a
fortune on it, and failed to make it go--and the history of that
would make a large book in which a million men would see themselves
as in a mirror; and they would testify and say, Verily, this is not
imagination; this fellow has been there--and after would they cast
dust upon their heads, cursing and blaspheming.
And I am a publisher, and did pay to one author's widow (General
Grant's) the largest copyright checks this world has seen
--aggregating more than L80,000 in the first year.
And I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.
Now then: as the most valuable capital or culture or education
usable in the building of novels is personal experience I ought to
be well equipped for that trade.
I surely have the equipment, a wide culture, and all of it real,
none of it artificial, for I don't know anything about books.
This generous bill of literary particulars was fully warranted. Mark
Twain's equipment was equal to his occasions. It is true that he was no
longer young, and that his health was not perfect, but his resolution
and his energy had not waned.
His need was imminent and he lost no time. He dug out from his
pigeonholes such materials as he had in stock, selecting a few completed
manuscripts for immediate disposal--among them his old article entitled,
“Mental Telegraphy,” written in 1878, when he had hesitated to offer it,
in the fear that it would not be accepted by the public otherwise than
as a joke. He added to it now a supplement and sent it to Mr. Alden, of
Harper's Magazine.
Psychic interest had progressed in twelve years; also Mark Twain had
come to be rather more seriously regarded. The article was accepted
promptly!--[The publication of this article created a good deal of a
stir and resulted in the first general recognition of what later became
known as Telepathy. A good many readers insisted on regarding the whole
matter as one of Mark Twain's jokes, but its serious acceptance was
much wider.]--The old sketch, “Luck,” also found its way to Harper's
Magazine, and other manuscripts were looked over and furbished up with a
view to their disposal. Even the history game was dragged from the dust
of its retirement, and Hall was instructed to investigate its chance of
profit.
Then Mark Twain went to work in earnest. Within a week after the
collapse of the Jones bubble he was hard at work on a new book--the
transmigration of the old “Claimant” play into a novel.
Ever since the appearance of the Yankee there had been what was
evidently a concerted movement to induce him to write a novel with
the theories of Henry George as the central idea. Letters from every
direction had urged him to undertake such a story, and these had
suggested a more serious purpose for the Claimant book. A motif in which
there is a young lord who renounces his heritage and class to come to
America and labor with his hands; who attends socialistic meetings at
which men inspired by readings of 'Progress and Poverty' and 'Looking
Backward' address their brothers of toil, could have in it something
worth while. Clemens inserted portions of some of his discarded essays
in these addresses, and had he developed this element further, and
abandoned Colonel Sellers's materialization lunacies to the oblivion
they had earned, the result might have been more fortunate.
But his faith in the new Sellers had never died, and the temptation
to use scenes from the abandoned play proved to be too strong to be
resisted. The result was incongruous enough. The author, however,
admired it amazingly at the time. He sent Howells stirring reports of
his progress. He wrote Hall that the book would be ready soon and that
there must be seventy-five thousand orders by the date of issue, “not
a single one short of that.” Then suddenly, at the end of February, the
rheumatism came back into his shoulder and right arm and he could hardly
hold the pen. He conceived the idea of dictating into a phonograph, and
wrote Howells to test this invention and find out as to terms for three
months, with cylinders enough to carry one hundred and seventy-five
thousand words.
I don't want to erase any of them. My right arm is nearly disabled
by rheumatism, but I am bound to write this book (and sell 100,000
copies of it-no, I mean 1,000,000--next fall). I feel sure I can
dictate the book into a phonograph if I don't have to yell. I write
2,000 words a day. I think I can dictate twice as many.
But mind, if this is going to be too much trouble to you--go ahead
and do it all the same.
Howells replied encouragingly. He had talked a letter into a phonograph
and the phonograph man had talked his answer into it, after which the
cylinder had been taken to a typewriter in the-next room and correctly
written out. If a man had the “cheek” to dictate his story into a
phonograph, Howells said, all the rest seemed perfectly easy.
Clemens ordered a phonograph and gave it a pretty fair trial. It was
only a partial success. He said he couldn't write literature with it
because it hadn't any ideas or gift for elaboration, but was just as
matter-of-fact, compressive and unresponsive, grave and unsmiling as the
devil--a poor audience.
I filled four dozen cylinders in two sittings, then I found I could have
said it about as easy with the pen, and said it a deal better. Then I
resigned.
He did not immediately give it up. To relieve his aching arm he
alternated the phonograph with the pen, and the work progressed rapidly.
Early in May he was arranging for its serial disposition, and it was
eventually sold for twelve thousand dollars to the McClure Syndicate,
who placed it with a number of papers in America and with the Idler
Magazine in England. W. M. Laffan, of the Sun, an old and tried friend,
combined with McClure in the arrangement. Laffan also proposed to join
with McClure in paying Mark Twain a thousand dollars each for a series
of six European letters. This was toward the end of May, 1891, when
Clemens had already decided upon a long European sojourn.
There were several reasons why this was desirable. Neither Clemens nor
his wife was in good health. Both of them were troubled with rheumatism,
and a council of physicians had agreed that Mrs. Clemens had some
disturbance of the heart. The death of Charles L. Webster in April--the
fourth death among relatives in two years--had renewed her forebodings.
Susy, who had been at Bryn Mawr, had returned far from well. The
European baths and the change of travel it was believed would be
beneficial to the family health. Furthermore, the maintenance of the
Hartford home was far too costly for their present and prospective
income. The house with its associations of seventeen incomparable years
must be closed. A great period had ended.
They arranged to sail on the 6th of June by the French line.--[On the
Gascogne.]--Mrs. Crane was to accompany them, and came over in April to
help in breaking the news to the servants. John and Ellen O'Neill (the
gardener and his wife) were to remain in charge; places were found for
George and Patrick. Katie Leary was retained to accompany the family. It
was a sad dissolution.
The day came for departure and the carriage was at the door. Mrs.
Clemens did not come immediately. She was looking into the rooms,
bidding a kind of silent good-by to the home she had made and to all
its memories. Following the others she entered the carriage, and Patrick
McAleer drove them together for the last time. They were going on a long
journey. They did not guess how long, or that the place would never be
home to them again.