One must wonder, with all the social demands upon him, how Clemens could
find time to write as much as he did during those Vienna days. He piled
up a great heap of manuscript of every sort. He wrote Twichell:
There may be idle people in the world, but I am not one of them.
And to Howells:
I couldn't get along without work now. I bury myself in it up to
the ears. Long hours--8 & 9 on a stretch sometimes. It isn't all
for print, by any means, for much of it fails to suit me; 50,000
words of it in the past year. It was because of the deadness which
invaded me when Susy died.
He projected articles, stories, critiques, essays, novels,
autobiography, even plays; he covered the whole literary round. Among
these activities are some that represent Mark Twain's choicest work.
“Concerning the Jews,” which followed the publication of his “Stirring
Times in Austria” (grew out of it, in fact), still remains the best
presentation of the Jewish character and racial situation. Mark Twain
was always an ardent admirer of the Jewish race, and its oppression
naturally invited his sympathy. Once he wrote to Twichell:
The difference between the brain of the average Christian and that of
the average Jew--certainly in Europe--is about the difference between a
tadpole's brain & an archbishop's. It is a marvelous race; by long odds
the most marvelous race the world has produced, I suppose.
Yet he did not fail to see its faults and to set them down in his
summary of Hebrew character. It was a reply to a letter written to him
by a lawyer, and he replied as a lawyer might, compactly, logically,
categorically, conclusively. The result pleased him. To Mr. Rogers he
wrote:
The Jew article is my “gem of the ocean.” I have taken a world of
pleasure in writing it & doctoring it & fussing at it. Neither Jew
nor Christian will approve of it, but people who are neither Jews nor
Christian will, for they are in a condition to know the truth when they
see it.
Clemens was not given to race distinctions. In his article he says:
I am quite sure that (bar one) I have no race prejudices, and I think
I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices.
Indeed I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is
that a man is a human being, that is enough for me; he can't be any
worse.
We gather from something that follows that the one race which he bars
is the French, and this, just then, mainly because of the Dreyfus
agitations.
He also states in this article:
I have no special regard for Satan, but I can at least claim that I have
no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way on
account of his not having a fair show.
Clemens indeed always had a friendly feeling toward Satan (at least, as
he conceived him), and just at this time addressed a number of letters
to him concerning affairs in general--cordial, sympathetic, informing
letters enough, though apparently not suited for publication. A good
deal of the work done at this period did not find its way into print.
An interview with Satan; a dream-story concerning a platonic sweetheart,
and some further comment on Austrian politics, are among the condemned
manuscripts.
Mark Twain's interest in Satan would seem later to have extended to his
relatives, for there are at least three bulky manuscripts in which
he has attempted to set down some episodes in the life of one “Young
Satan,” a nephew, who appears to have visited among the planets and
promoted some astonishing adventures in Austria several centuries ago.
The idea of a mysterious, young, and beautiful stranger who would visit
the earth and perform mighty wonders, was always one which Mark Twain
loved to play with, and a nephew of Satan's seemed to him properly
qualified to carry out his intention. His idea was that this celestial
visitant was not wicked, but only indifferent to good and evil and
suffering, having no personal knowledge of any of these things. Clemens
tried the experiment in various ways, and portions of the manuscript
are absorbingly interesting, lofty in conception, and rarely worked
out--other portions being merely grotesque, in which the illusion of
reality vanishes.
Among the published work of the Vienna period is an article about a
morality play, the “Master of Palmyra,”--[About play-acting, Forum,
October, 1898.]--by Adolf Wilbrandt, an impressive play presenting
Death, the all-powerful, as the principal part.
The Cosmopolitan Magazine for August published “At the Appetite-Cure,”
in which Mark Twain, in the guise of humor, set forth a very sound and
sensible idea concerning dietetics, and in October the same magazine
published his first article on “Christian Science and the Book of Mrs.
Eddy.” As we have seen, Clemens had been always deeply interested
in mental healing, and in closing this humorous skit he made due
acknowledgments to the unseen forces which, properly employed, through
the imagination work physical benefits:
“Within the last quarter of a century,” he says, “in America, several
sects of curers have appeared under various names and have done notable
things in the way of healing ailments without the use of medicines.”
Clemens was willing to admit that Mrs. Eddy and her book had benefited
humanity, but he could not resist the fun-making which certain of
her formulas and her phrasing invited. The delightful humor of the
Cosmopolitan article awoke a general laugh, in which even devout
Christian Scientists were inclined to join.--[It was so popular that
John Brisben Walker voluntarily added a check for two hundred dollars
to the eight hundred dollars already paid.]--Nothing that he ever did
exhibits more happily that peculiar literary gift upon which his fame
rests.
But there is another story of this period that will live when most of
those others mentioned are but little remembered. It is the story of
“The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg.” This is a tale that in its own way
takes its place with the half-dozen great English short stories of the
world-with such stories as “The Fall of the House of Usher,” by Poe;
“The Luck of Roaring Camp,” by Harte; “The Man Who Would be King,” by
Kipling; and “The Man Without a Country,” by Hale. As a study of
the human soul, its flimsy pretensions and its pitiful frailties,
it outranks all the rest. In it Mark Twain's pessimistic philosophy
concerning the “human animal” found a free and moral vent. Whatever his
contempt for a thing, he was always amused at it; and in this tale we
can imagine him a gigantic Pantagruel dangling a ridiculous manikin,
throwing himself back and roaring out his great bursting guffaws at its
pitiful antics. The temptation and the downfall of a whole town was a
colossal idea, a sardonic idea, and it is colossally and sardonically
worked out.
Human weakness and rotten moral force were never stripped so bare or so
mercilessly jeered at in the marketplace. For once Mark Twain could hug
himself with glee in derision of self-righteousness, knowing that the
world would laugh with him, and that none would be so bold as to gainsay
his mockery. Probably no one but Mark Twain ever conceived the idea
of demoralizing a whole community--of making its “nineteen leading
citizens” ridiculous by leading them into a cheap, glittering
temptation, and having them yield and openly perjure themselves at the
very moment when their boasted incorruptibility was to amaze the world.
And it is all wonderfully done. The mechanism of the story is perfect,
the drama of it is complete. The exposure of the nineteen citizens
in the very sanctity of the church itself, and by the man they have
discredited, completing the carefully prepared revenge of the injured
stranger, is supreme in its artistic triumph. “The Man that Corrupted
Hadleyburg” is one of the mightiest sermons against self-righteousness
ever preached. Its philosophy, that every man is strong until his price
is named; the futility of the prayer not to be led into temptation, when
it is only by resisting temptation that men grow strong--these things
blaze out in a way that makes us fairly blink with the truth of them.
It is Mark Twain's greatest short story. It is fine that it should be
that, as well as much more than that; for he was no longer essentially a
story-teller. He had become more than ever a moralist and a sage. Having
seen all of the world, and richly enjoyed and deeply suffered at its
hands, he sat now as in a seat of judgment, regarding the passing show
and recording his philosophies.