DEAR SIR,--No--no, I could not think of taking it, with you unsatisfied;

and you ought not to be satisfied until you have made personal

examination of the machine and had a consensus of testimony of

disinterested people, besides. My own perfect knowledge of what is

required of such a machine, and my perfect knowledge of the fact that

this is the only machine that can meet that requirement, make it

difficult for me to realize that a doubt is possible to less well-posted

men; and so I would have taken your money without thinking, and thus

would have done a great wrong to you and a great one to myself. And now

that I go back over the ground, I remember that where I said I could get

along 3 months without drawing on you, that delay contemplated a visit

from you to the machine in the interval, and your satisfaction with its

character and prospects. I had forgotten all that. But I remember it

now; and the fact that it was not "so nominated in the bond" does not

alter the case or justify me in making my call so prematurely. I do not

know that you regarded all that as a part of the bargain--for you were

thoroughly and magnanimously unexacting--but I so regarded it,

notwithstanding I have so easily managed to forget all about it.

You so gratified me, and did me so much honor in bonding yourself to me

in a large sum, upon no evidence but my word and with no protection but

my honor, that my pride in that is much stronger than my desire to reap a

money advantage from it.

With the sincerest appreciation I am Truly yours

S L. CLEMENS.

P. S. I have written a good many words and yet I seem to have failed to

say the main thing in exact enough language--which is, that the

transaction between us is not complete and binding until you shall have

convinced yourself that the machine's character and prospects are

satisfactory.

I ought to explain that the grippe delayed us some weeks, and that we

have since been waiting for Mr. Jones. When he was ready, we were not;

and now we have been ready more than a month, while he has been kept in

Washington by the Silver bill. He said the other day that to venture out

of the Capitol for a day at this time could easily chance to hurt him if

the bill came up for action, meantime, although it couldn't hurt the

bill, which would pass anyway. Mrs. Jones said she would send me two or

three days' notice, right after the passage of the bill, and that they

would follow as soon as I should return word that their coming would not

inconvenience us. I suppose I ought to go to New York without waiting

for Mr. Jones, but it would not be wise to go there without money.

The bill is still pending.

The Mergenthaler machine, like the Paige, was also at this time in

the middle stages of experimental development. It was a slower

machine, but it was simpler, less expensive, occupied less room.

There was not so much about it to get out of order; it was not so

delicate, not so human. These were immense advantages.

But no one at this time could say with certainty which typesetter

would reap the harvest of millions. It was only sure that at least

one of them would, and the Mergenthaler people were willing to trade

stock for stock with the Paige company in order to insure financial

success for both, whichever won. Clemens, with a faith that never

faltered, declined this offer, a decision that was to cost him

millions.

Winter and spring had gone and summer had come, but still there had

been no financial conclusion with Jones, Mackay, and the other rich

Californians who were to put up the necessary million for the

machine's manufacture. Goodman was spending a large part of his

time traveling back and forth between California and Washington,

trying to keep business going at both ends. Paige spent most of his

time working out improvements for the type-setter, delicate

attachments which complicated its construction more and more.

To Joe T. Goodman, in Washington:

HARTFORD, June 22, '90.

DEAR JOE,--I have been sitting by the machine 2 hours, this afternoon,

and my admiration of it towers higher than ever. There is no sort of

mistake about it, it is the Big Bonanza. In the 2 hours, the time lost

by type-breakage was 3 minutes.

This machine is totally without a rival. Rivalry with it is impossible.

Last Friday, Fred Whitmore (it was the 28th day of his apprenticeship on

the machine) stacked up 49,700 ems of solid nonpareil in 8 hours, and the

type-breaking delay was only 6 minutes for the day.

I claim yet, as I have always claimed, that the machine's market (abroad

and here together,) is today worth $150,000,000 without saying anything

about the doubling and trebling of this sum that will follow within the

life of the patents. Now here is a queer fact: I am one of the

wealthiest grandees in America--one of the Vanderbilt gang, in fact--and

yet if you asked me to lend you a couple of dollars I should have to ask

you to take my note instead.

It makes me cheerful to sit by the machine: come up with Mrs. Goodman and

refresh yourself with a draught of the same.

Ys ever

MARK.

The machine was still breaking the types now and then, and no doubt

Paige was itching to take it to pieces, and only restrained by force

from doing so. He was never thoroughly happy unless he was taking

the machine apart or setting it up again. Finally, he was allowed

to go at it--a disasterous permission, for it was just then that

Jones decided to steal a day or two from the Silver Bill and watch

the type-setter in operation. Paige already had it in parts when

this word came from Goodman, and Jones's visit had to be called off.

His enthusiasm would seem to have weakened from that day. In July,

Goodman wrote that both Mackay and Jones had become somewhat

diffident in the matter of huge capitalization. He thought it

partly due, at least, to "the fatal delays that have sicklied over

the bloom of original enthusiasm." Clemens himself went down to

Washington and perhaps warmed Jones with his eloquence; at least,

Jones seemed to have agreed to make some effort in the matter a

qualified promise, the careful word of a wary politician and

capitalist. How many Washington trips were made is not certain, but

certainly more than one. Jones would seem to have suggested forms

of contracts, but if he came to the point of signing any there is no

evidence of it to-day.

Any one who has read Mark Twain's, "A Connecticut Yankee in King

Arthur's Court," has a pretty good idea of his opinion of kings in

general, and tyrants in particular. Rule by "divine right," however

liberal, was distasteful to him; where it meant oppression it

stirred him to violence. In his article, "The Czar's Soliloquy," he

gave himself loose rein concerning atrocities charged to the master

of Russia, and in a letter which he wrote during the summer of 1890,

he offered a hint as to remedies. The letter was written by

editorial request, but was never mailed. Perhaps it seemed too

openly revolutionary at the moment.

Yet scarcely more than a quarter of a century was needed to make it

"timely." Clemens and his family were spending some weeks in the

Catskills when it was written.

An unpublished letter on the Czar.

ONTEORA, 1890.

TO THE EDITOR OF FREE RUSSIA,--I thank you for the compliment of your

invitation to say something, but when I ponder the bottom paragraph on

your first page, and then study your statement on your third page, of the

objects of the several Russian liberation-parties, I do not quite know

how to proceed. Let me quote here the paragraph referred to:

"But men's hearts are so made that the sight of one voluntary victim for

a noble idea stirs them more deeply than the sight of a crowd submitting

to a dire fate they cannot escape. Besides, foreigners could not see so

clearly as the Russians how much the Government was responsible for the

grinding poverty of the masses; nor could they very well realize the

moral wretchedness imposed by that Government upon the whole of educated

Russia. But the atrocities committed upon the defenceless prisoners are

there in all their baseness, concrete and palpable, admitting of no

excuse, no doubt or hesitation, crying out to the heart of humanity

against Russian tyranny. And the Tzar's Government, stupidly confident

in its apparently unassailable position, instead of taking warning from

the first rebukes, seems to mock this humanitarian age by the aggravation

of brutalities. Not satisfied with slowly killing its prisoners, and

with burying the flower of our young generation in the Siberian desserts,

the Government of Alexander III. resolved to break their spirit by

deliberately submitting them to a regime of unheard-of brutality and

degradation."

When one reads that paragraph in the glare of George Kennan's

revelations, and considers how much it means; considers that all earthly

figures fail to typify the Czar's government, and that one must descend

into hell to find its counterpart, one turns hopefully to your statement

of the objects of the several liberation-parties--and is disappointed.

Apparently none of them can bear to think of losing the present hell

entirely, they merely want the temperature cooled down a little.

I now perceive why all men are the deadly and uncompromising enemies of

the rattlesnake: it is merely because the rattlesnake has not speech.

Monarchy has speech, and by it has been able to persuade men that it

differs somehow from the rattlesnake, has something valuable about it

somewhere, something worth preserving, something even good and high and

fine, when properly "modified," something entitling it to protection from

the club of the first comer who catches it out of its hole. It seems a

most strange delusion and not reconcilable with our superstition that man

is a reasoning being. If a house is afire, we reason confidently that it

is the first comer's plain duty to put the fire out in any way he can

--drown it with water, blow it up with dynamite, use any and all means to

stop the spread of the fire and save the rest of the city. What is the

Czar of Russia but a house afire in the midst of a city of eighty

millions of inhabitants? Yet instead of extinguishing him, together with

his nest and system, the liberation-parties are all anxious to merely

cool him down a little and keep him.

It seems to me that this is illogical--idiotic, in fact. Suppose you had

this granite-hearted, bloody-jawed maniac of Russia loose in your house,

chasing the helpless women and little children--your own. What would you

do with him, supposing you had a shotgun? Well, he is loose in your

house-Russia. And with your shotgun in your hand, you stand trying to

think up ways to "modify" him.

Do these liberation-parties think that they can succeed in a project

which has been attempted a million times in the history of the world and

has never in one single instance been successful--the "modification" of a

despotism by other means than bloodshed? They seem to think they can.

My privilege to write these sanguinary sentences in soft security was

bought for me by rivers of blood poured upon many fields, in many lands,

but I possess not one single little paltry right or privilege that come

to me as a result of petition, persuasion, agitation for reform, or any

kindred method of procedure. When we consider that not even the most

responsible English monarch ever yielded back a stolen public right until

it was wrenched from them by bloody violence, is it rational to suppose

that gentler methods can win privileges in Russia?

Of course I know that the properest way to demolish the Russian throne

would be by revolution. But it is not possible to get up a revolution

there; so the only thing left to do, apparently, is to keep the throne

vacant by dynamite until a day when candidates shall decline with thanks.

Then organize the Republic. And on the whole this method has some large

advantages; for whereas a revolution destroys some lives which cannot

well be spared, the dynamite way doesn't. Consider this: the

conspirators against the Czar's life are caught in every rank of life,

from the low to the high. And consider: if so many take an active part,

where the peril is so dire, is this not evidence that the sympathizers

who keep still and do not show their hands, are countless for multitudes?

Can you break the hearts of thousands of families with the awful Siberian

exodus every year for generations and not eventually cover all Russia

from limit to limit with bereaved fathers and mothers and brothers and

sisters who secretly hate the perpetrator of this prodigious crime and

hunger and thirst for his life? Do you not believe that if your wife or

your child or your father was exiled to the mines of Siberia for some

trivial utterances wrung from a smarting spirit by the Czar's intolerable

tyranny, and you got a chance to kill him and did not do it, that you

would always be ashamed to be in your own society the rest of your life?

Suppose that that refined and lovely Russian lady who was lately stripped

bare before a brutal soldiery and whipped to death by the Czar's hand in

the person of the Czar's creature had been your wife, or your daughter or

your sister, and to-day the Czar should pass within reach of your hand,

how would you feel--and what would you do? Consider, that all over vast

Russia, from boundary to boundary, a myriad of eyes filled with tears

when that piteous news came, and through those tears that myriad of eyes

saw, not that poor lady, but lost darlings of their own whose fate her

fate brought back with new access of grief out of a black and bitter past

never to be forgotten or forgiven.

If I am a Swinburnian--and clear to the marrow I am--I hold human nature

in sufficient honor to believe there are eighty million mute Russians

that are of the same stripe, and only one Russian family that isn't.

MARK TWAIN.

Type-setter matters were going badly. Clemens still had faith in

Jones, and he had lost no grain of faith in the machine. The money

situation, however, was troublesome. With an expensive

establishment, and work of one sort or another still to be done on

the machine, his income would not reach. Perhaps Goodman had

already given up hope, for he does not seem to have returned from

California after the next letter was written--a colorless letter

--in which we feel a note of resignation. The last few lines are

sufficient.

To Joe T. Goodman, in California:

DEAR JOE,--...... I wish you could get a day off and make those two or

three Californians buy those privileges, for I'm going to need money

before long.

I don't know where the Senator is; but out on the Coast I reckon.

I guess we've got a perfect machine at last. We never break a type, now,

and the new device for enabling the operator to touch the last letters

and justify the line simultaneously works, to a charm.

With love to you both,

MARK

The year closed gloomily enough. The type-setter seemed to be

perfected, but capital for its manufacture was not forthcoming.

The publishing business of Charles L. Webster & Co. was returning

little or no profit. Clemens's mother had died in Keokuk at the end

of October, and his wife's mother, in Elmira a month later. Mark

Twain, writing a short business letter to his publishing manager,

Fred J. Ball, closed it: "Merry Xmas to you!--and I wish to God I

could have one myself before I die."

XXXI

LETTERS, 1891, TO HOWELLS, MRS. CLEMENS AND OTHERS.

RETURN TO LITERATURE. AMERICAN CLAIMANT. LEAVING HARTFORD.

EUROPE. DOWN THE RHINE

Clemens was still not without hope in the machine, at the beginning of

the new year (1891) but it was a hope no longer active, and it presently

became a moribund. Jones, on about the middle of February, backed out

altogether, laying the blame chiefly on Mackay and the others, who, he

said, had decided not to invest. Jones "let his victim down easy" with

friendly words, but it was the end, for the present, at least, of machine

financiering.

It was also the end of Mark Twain's capital. His publishing business was

not good. It was already in debt and needing more money. There was just

one thing for him to do and he did it at once, not stopping to cry over

spilt milk, but with good courage and the old enthusiasm that never

failed him, he returned to the trade of authorship. He dug out

half-finished articles and stories, finished them and sold them, and

within a week after the Jones collapse he was at work on a novel based an

the old Sellers idea, which eight years before he and Howells had worked

into a play. The brief letter in which he reported this news to Howells

bears no marks of depression, though the writer of it was in his

fifty-sixth year; he was by no means well, and his financial prospects

were anything but golden.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Feb. 24, '91

DEAR HOWELLS,--Mrs. Clemens has been sick abed for near two weeks, but is

up and around the room now, and gaining. I don't know whether she has

written Mrs. Howells or not--I only know she was going to--and will yet,

if she hasn't. We are promising ourselves a whole world of pleasure in

the visit, and you mustn't dream of disappointing us.

Does this item stir an interest in you? Began a novel four days ago, and

this moment finished chapter four. Title of the book

"Colonel Mulberry Sellers.

American Claimant

Of the

Great Earldom of Rossmore'

in the

Peerage of Great Britain."

Ys Ever

MARK.

Probably Mark Twain did not return to literary work reluctantly. He had

always enjoyed writing and felt now that he was equipped better than ever

for authorship, at least so far as material was concerned. There exists

a fragmentary copy of a letter to some unknown correspondent, in which he

recites his qualifications. It bears evidence of having been written

just at this time and is of unusual interest at this point.

Fragment of Letter to -------, 1891:

. . . . 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 steam-boatmen--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 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.

[No signature.]

Clemens for several years had been bothered by rheumatism in his

shoulder. The return now to the steady use of the pen aggravated

his trouble, and at times he was nearly disabled. The phonograph

for commercial dictation had been tried experimentally, and Mark

Twain was always ready for any innovation.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Feb. 28, '91.

DEAR HOWELLS,--Won't you drop-in at the Boylston Building (New

England Phonograph Co) and talk into a phonograph in an ordinary

conversation-voice and see if another person (who didn't hear you do it)

can take the words from the thing without difficulty and repeat them to

you. If the experiment is satisfactory (also make somebody put in a

message which you don't hear, and see if afterward you can get it out

without difficulty) won't you then ask them on what terms they will rent

me a phonograph for 3 months and furnish me cylinders enough to carry

75,000 words. 175 cylinders, ain't it?

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 a million--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.

Ys ever

MARK.

Howells, always willing to help, visited the phonograph place, and a

few days later reported results. He wrote: "I talked your letter

into a fonograf in my usual tone at my usual gait of speech. Then

the fonograf man talked his answer in at his wonted swing and swell.

Then we took the cylinder to a type-writer in the next room, and she

put the hooks into her ears and wrote the whole out. I send you the

result. There is a mistake of one word. I think that if you have

the cheek to dictate the story into the fonograf, all the rest is

perfectly easy. It wouldn't fatigue me to talk for an hour as I

did."

Clemens did not find the phonograph entirely satisfactory, at least

not for a time, and he appears never to have used it steadily. His

early experience with it, however, seems interesting.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Apl. 4, '91.

DEAR HOWELLS,--I'm ashamed. It happened in this way. I was proposing to

acknowledge the receipt of the play and the little book per phonograph,

so that you could see that the instrument is good enough for mere

letter-writing; then I meant to add the fact that you can't write

literature with it, because it hasn't any ideas and it hasn't any gift

for elaboration, or smartness of talk, or vigor of action, or felicity of

expression, but is just matter-of-fact, compressive, unornamental, and as

grave and unsmiling as the devil.

I filled four dozen cylinders in two sittings, then found I could have

said about as much with the pen and said it a deal better. Then I

resigned.

I believe it could teach one to dictate literature to a phonographer--and

some time I will experiment in that line.

The little book is charmingly written, and it interested me. But it

flies too high for me. Its concretest things are filmy abstractions to

me, and when I lay my grip on one of them and open my hand, I feel as

embarrassed as I use to feel when I thought I had caught a fly. I'm

going to try to mail it back to you to-day--I mean I am going to charge

my memory. Charging my memory is one of my chief industries ....

With our loves and our kindest regards distributed among you according to

the proprieties.

Yrs ever

MARK.

P. S.--I'm sending that ancient "Mental Telegraphy" article to Harper's

--with a modest postscript. Probably read it to you years ago.

S. L. C.

The "little book" mentioned in this letter was by Swedenborg, an

author in whom the Boston literary set was always deeply interested.

"Mental Telegraphy" appeared in Harper's Magazine, and is now

included in the Uniform Edition of Mark Twain's books. It was

written in 1878.

Joe Goodman had long since returned to California, it being clear

that nothing could be gained by remaining in Washington. On receipt

of the news of the type-setter's collapse he sent a consoling word.

Perhaps he thought Clemens would rage over the unhappy circumstance,

and possibly hold him in some measure to blame. But it was

generally the smaller annoyances of life that made Mark Twain rage;

the larger catastrophes were likely to stir only his philosophy.

The Library of American Literature, mentioned in the following

letter, was a work in many volumes, edited by Edmund Clarence

Stedman and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson.

To Joe T. Goodman:

April [?] 1891.

DEAR JOE, Well, it's all right, anyway. Diplomacy couldn't have saved

it--diplomacy of mine--at that late day. I hadn't any diplomacy in

stock, anyway. In order to meet Jones's requirements I had to surrender

the old contract (a contract which made me boss of the situation and gave

me the whip-hand of Paige) and allow the new one to be drafted and put in

its place. I was running an immense risk, but it was justified by

Jones's promises--promises made to me not merely once but every time I

tallied with him. When February arrived, I saw signs which were mighty

plain reading. Signs which meant that Paige was hoping and praying that

Jones would go back on me--which would leave Paige boss, and me robbed

and out in the cold. His prayers were answered, and I am out in the

cold. If I ever get back my nine-twentieths interest, it will be by

law-suit--which will be instituted in the indefinite future, when the

time comes.

I am at work again--on a book. Not with a great deal of spirit, but with

enough--yes, plenty. And I am pushing my publishing house. It has

turned the corner after cleaning $50,000 a year for three consecutive

years, and piling every cent of it into one book--Library of American

Literature--and from next January onward it will resume dividends. But

I've got to earn $50,000 for it between now and then--which I will do if

I keep my health. This additional capital is needed for that same book,

because its prosperity is growing so great and exacting.

It is dreadful to think of you in ill health--I can't realize it; you are

always to me the same that you were in those days when matchless health.

and glowing spirits and delight in life were commonplaces with us. Lord

save us all from old age and broken health and a hope-tree that has lost

the faculty of putting out blossoms.

With love to you both from us all.

MARK.

Mark Twain's residence in Hartford was drawing rapidly to a close.

Mrs. Clemens was poorly, and his own health was uncertain. They

believed that some of the European baths would help them.

Furthermore, Mark Twain could no longer afford the luxury of his

Hartford home. In Europe life could be simpler and vastly cheaper.

He was offered a thousand dollars apiece for six European letters,

by the McClure syndicate and W. M. Laffan, of the Sun. This would

at least give him a start on the other side. The family began

immediately their sad arrangements for departure.

To Fred J. Hall (manager Chas. L. Webster & Co.), N. Y.:

HARTFORD, Apl. 14, '91.

DEAR MR. HALL,--Privately--keep it to yourself--as you, are already

aware, we are going to Europe in June, for an indefinite stay. We shall

sell the horses and shut up the house. We wish to provide a place for

our coachman, who has been with us a 21 years, and is sober, active,

diligent, and unusually bright and capable. You spoke of hiring a

colored man as engineer and helper in the packing room. Patrick would

soon learn that trade and be very valuable. We will cease to need him by

the middle or end of June. Have you made irrevocable arrangements with

the colored man, or would you prefer to have Patrick, if he thinks he

would like to try?

I have not said anything to him about it yet.

Yours

S. L. C.

It was to be a complete breaking up of their beautiful

establishment. Patrick McAleer, George the butler, and others of

their household help had been like members of the family. We may

guess at the heartbreak of it all, even though the letters remain

cheerful.

Howells, strangely enough, seems to have been about the last one to

be told of their European plans; in fact, he first got wind of it

from the papers, and wrote for information. Likely enough Clemens

had not until then had the courage to confess.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, May 20, '91.

DEAR HOWELLS,--For her health's sake Mrs. Clemens must try baths

somewhere, and this it is that has determined us to go to Europe.

The water required seems to be provided at a little obscure and

little-visited nook up in the hills back of the Rhine somewhere and you

get to it by Rhine traffic-boat and country stage-coach. Come, get "sick

or sorry enough" and join us. We shall be a little while at that bath,

and the rest of the summer at Annecy (this confidential to you) in Haute

Savoie, 22 miles from Geneva. Spend the winters in Berlin. I don't know

how long we shall be in Europe--I have a vote, but I don't cast it. I'm

going to do whatever the others desire, with leave to change their mind,

without prejudice, whenever they want to. Travel has no longer, any

charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to see except

heaven and hell, and I have only a vague curiosity as concerns one of

those.

I found I couldn't use the play--I had departed too far from its lines

when I came to look at it. I thought I might get a great deal of

dialogue out of it, but I got only 15 loosely written pages--they saved

me half a days work. It was the cursing phonograph. There was abundance

of good dialogue, but it couldn't befitted into the new conditions of the

story.

Oh, look here--I did to-day what I have several times in past years

thought of doing: answered an interviewing proposition from a rich

newspaper with the reminder that they had not stated the terms; that my

time was all occupied with writing, at good pay, and that as talking was

harder work I should not care to venture it unless I knew the pay was

going to be proportionately higher. I wish I had thought of this the

other day when Charley Stoddard turned a pleasant Englishman loose on me

and I couldn't think of any rational excuse.

Ys Ever

MARK.

Clemens had finished his Sellers book and had disposed of the serial

rights to the McClure syndicate. The house in Hartford was closed

early in June, and on the 6th the family, with one maid, Katie

Leary, sailed on the Gascogne. Two weeks later they had begun a

residence abroad which was to last for more than nine years.

It was not easy to get to work in Europe. Clemens's arm remained

lame, and any effort at writing brought suffering. The Century

Magazine proposed another set of letters, but by the end of July he

had barely begun on those promised to McClure and Laffan. In

August, however, he was able to send three: one from Aix about the

baths there, another from Bayreuth concerning the Wagner festival,

and a third from Marienbad, in Bohemia, where they rested for a

time. He decided that he would arrange for no more European letters

when the six were finished, but would gather material for a book.

He would take a courier and a kodak and go tramping again in some

fashion that would be interesting to do and to write.

The idea finally matured when he reached Switzerland and settled the

family at the Hotel Beau Rivage, Ouchy, Lausanne, facing Lake Leman.

He decided to make a floating trip down the Rhone, and he engaged

Joseph Very, a courier that had served him on a former European

trip, to accompany him. The courier went over to Bourget and bought

for five dollars a flat-bottomed boat and engaged its owner as their

pilot. It was the morning of September 20, when they began their

floating-trip down the beautiful historic river that flows through

the loveliest and most romantic region of France. He wrote daily to

Mrs. Clemens, and his letters tell the story of that drowsy, happy

experience better than the notes made with a view to publication.

Clemens had arrived at Lake Bourget on the evening before the

morning of their start and slept on the Island of Chatillon, in an

old castle of the same name. Lake Bourget connects with the Rhone

by a small canal.

Letters and Memoranda to Mrs. Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:

Sept. 20, 1891.

Sunday, 11 a.m.

On the lake Bourget--just started. The castle of Chatillon high overhead

showing above the trees. It was a wonderfully still place to sleep in.

Beside us there was nobody in it but a woman, a boy and a dog. A Pope

was born in the room I slept in. No, he became a Pope later.

The lake is smooth as glass--a brilliant sun is shining.

Our boat is comfortable and shady with its awning.

11.20 We have crossed the lake and are entering the canal. Shall

presently be in the Rhone.

Noon. Nearly down to the Rhone. Passing the village of Chanaz.

3.15 p. m. Sunday. We have been in the Rhone 3 hours. It is

unimaginably still and reposeful and cool and soft and breezy. No rowing

or work of any kind to do--we merely float with the current--we glide

noiseless and swift--as fast as a London cab-horse rips along--8 miles an

hour--the swiftest current I've ever boated in. We have the entire river

to ourselves--nowhere a boat of any kind.

Good bye Sweetheart

S. L. C.

PORT DE GROLEE, Monday, 4.15 p.m.

[Sept. 21, 1891]

Name of the village which we left five minutes ago.

We went ashore at 5 p. m. yesterday, dear heart, and walked a short mile

to St. Geuix, a big village, and took quarters at the principal inn; had

a good dinner and afterwards along walk out of town on the banks of the

Guiers till 7.30.

Went to bed at 8.30 and continued to make notes and read books and

newspapers till midnight. Slept until 8, breakfasted in bed, and lay

till noon, because there had been a very heavy rain in the night and the

day was still dark and lowering. But at noon the sun broke through and

in 15 minutes we were tramping toward the river. Got afloat at 1 p. m.

but at 2.40 we had to rush suddenly ashore and take refuge in the above

village. Just as we got ourselves and traps safely housed in the inn,

the rain let go and came down in great style. We lost an hour and a half

there, but we are off again, now, with bright sunshine.

I wrote you yesterday my darling, and shall expect to write you every

day.

Good-day, and love to all of you.

SAML.

ON THE RHONE BELOW VILLEBOIS,

Tuesday noon.

Good morning, sweetheart. Night caught us yesterday where we had to take

quarters in a peasant's house which was occupied by the family and a lot

of cows and calves--also several rabbits.--[His word for fleas.]--The

latter had a ball, and I was the ball-room; but they were very friendly

and didn't bite.

The peasants were mighty kind and hearty, and flew around and did their

best to make us comfortable. This morning I breakfasted on the shore in

the open air with two sociable dogs and a cat. Clean cloth, napkin and

table furniture, white sugar, a vast hunk of excellent butter, good

bread, first class coffee with pure milk, fried fish just caught.

Wonderful that so much cleanliness should come out of such a phenomenally

dirty house.

An hour ago we saw the Falls of the Rhone, a prodigiously rough and

dangerous looking place; shipped a little water but came to no harm.

It was one of the most beautiful pieces of piloting and boat-management

I ever saw. Our admiral knew his business.

We have had to run ashore for shelter every time it has rained

heretofore, but Joseph has been putting in his odd time making a

water-proof sun-bonnet for the boat, and now we sail along dry although

we had many heavy showers this morning.

With a word of love to you all and particularly you,

SAML.

ON THE RHONE, BELOW VIENNA.

I salute you, my darling. Your telegram reached me in Lyons last night

and was very pleasant news indeed.

I was up and shaved before 8 this morning, but we got delayed and didn't

sail from Lyons till 10.30--an hour and a half lost. And we've lost

another hour--two of them, I guess--since, by an error. We came in sight

of Vienne at 2 o'clock, several miles ahead, on a hill, and I proposed to

walk down there and let the boat go ahead of us. So Joseph and I got out

and struck through a willow swamp along a dim path, and by and by came

out on the steep bank of a slough or inlet or something, and we followed

that bank forever and ever trying to get around the head of that slough.

Finally I noticed a twig standing up in the water, and by George it had a

distinct and even vigorous quiver to it! I don't know when I have felt

so much like a donkey. On an island! I wanted to drown somebody, but I

hadn't anybody I could spare. However, after another long tramp we found

a lonely native, and he had a scow and soon we were on the mainland--yes,

and a blamed sight further from Vienne than we were when we started.

Notes--I make millions of them; and so I get no time to write to you. If

you've got a pad there, please send it poste-restante to Avignon. I may

not need it but I fear I shall.

I'm straining to reach St. Pierre de Boef, but it's going to be a close

fit, I reckon.

AFLOAT, Friday, 3 p.m., '91.

Livy darling, we sailed from St. Pierre de Boef six hours ago, and are

now approaching Tournon, where we shall not stop, but go on and make

Valence, a City Of 25,000 people. It's too delicious, floating with the

swift current under the awning these superb sunshiny days in deep peace

and quietness. Some of these curious old historical towns strangely

persuade me, but it is so lovely afloat that I don't stop, but view them

from the outside and sail on. We get abundance of grapes and peaches for

next to nothing.

Joseph is perfect. He is at his very best--and never was better in his

life. I guess he gets discouraged and feels disliked and in the way when

he is lying around--but here he is perfection, and brim full of useful

alacrities and helps and ingenuities.

When I woke up an hour ago and heard the clock strike 4, I said "I seem

to have been asleep an immensely long time; I must have gone to bed

mighty early; I wonder what time I did go to bed." And I got up and lit

a candle and looked at my watch to see.

AFLOAT

2 HOURS BELOW BOURG ST. ANDEOL.

Monday, 11 a.m., Sept. 28.

Livy darling, I didn't write yesterday. We left La Voulte in a driving

storm of cold rain--couldn't write in it--and at 1 p. m. when we were

not thinking of stopping, we saw a picturesque and mighty ruin on a high

hill back of a village, and I was seized with a desire to explore it; so

we landed at once and set out with rubbers and umbrella, sending the boat

ahead to St. Andeol, and we spent 3 hours clambering about those cloudy

heights among those worn and vast and idiotic ruins of a castle built by

two crusaders 650 years ago. The work of these asses was full of

interest, and we had a good time inspecting, examining and scrutinizing

it. All the hills on both sides of the Rhone have peaks and precipices,

and each has its gray and wasted pile of mouldy walls and broken towers.

The Romans displaced the Gauls, the Visigoths displaced the Romans, the

Saracens displaced the Visigoths, the Christians displaced the Saracens,

and it was these pious animals who built these strange lairs and cut each

other's throats in the name and for the glory of God, and robbed and

burned and slew in peace and war; and the pauper and the slave built

churches, and the credit of it went to the Bishop who racked the money

out of them. These are pathetic shores, and they make one despise the

human race.

We came down in an hour by rail, but I couldn't get your telegram till

this morning, for it was Sunday and they had shut up the post office to

go to the circus. I went, too. It was all one family--parents and 5

children--performing in the open air to 200 of these enchanted villagers,

who contributed coppers when called on. It was a most gay and strange

and pathetic show. I got up at 7 this morning to see the poor devils

cook their poor breakfast and pack up their sordid fineries.

This is a 9 k-m. current and the wind is with us; we shall make Avignon

before 4 o'clock. I saw watermelons and pomegranates for sale at St.

Andeol.

With a power of love, Sweetheart,

SAML.

HOTEL D'EUROPE, AVIGNON,

Monday, 6 p.m., Sept. 28.

Well, Livy darling, I have been having a perfect feast of letters for an

hour, and I thank you and dear Clam with all my heart. It's like hearing

from home after a long absence.

It is early to be in bed, but I'm always abed before 9, on this voyage;

and up at 7 or a trifle later, every morning. If I ever take such a trip

again, I will have myself called at the first tinge of dawn and get to

sea as soon after as possible. The early dawn on the water-nothing can

be finer, as I know by old Mississippi experience. I did so long for you

and Sue yesterday morning--the most superb sunrise!--the most marvelous

sunrise! and I saw it all from the very faintest suspicion of the coming

dawn all the way through to the final explosion of glory. But it had

interest private to itself and not to be found elsewhere in the world;

for between me and it, in the far distant-eastward, was a silhouette

mountain-range in which I had discovered, the previous afternoon, a most

noble face upturned to the sky, and mighty form out stretched, which I

had named Napoleon Dreaming of Universal Empire--and now, this prodigious

face, soft, rich, blue, spirituelle, asleep, tranquil, reposeful, lay

against that giant conflagration of ruddy and golden splendors all rayed

like a wheel with the upstreaming and far-reaching lances of the sun. It

made one want to cry for delight, it was so supreme in its unimaginable

majesty and beauty.

We had a curious experience today. A little after I had sealed and

directed my letter to you, in which I said we should make Avignon before

4, we got lost. We ceased to encounter any village or ruin mentioned in

our "particularizes" and detailed Guide of the Rhone--went drifting along

by the hour in a wholly unknown land and on an uncharted river! Confound

it, we stopped talking and did nothing but stand up in the boat and

search the horizons with the glass and wonder what in the devil had

happened. And at last, away yonder at 5 o'clock when some east towers

and fortresses hove in sight we couldn't recognize them for Avignon--yet

we knew by the broken bridge that it was Avignon.

Then we saw what the trouble was--at some time or other we had drifted

down the wrong side of an island and followed a sluggish branch of the

Rhone not frequented in modern times. We lost an hour and a half by it

and missed one of the most picturesque and gigantic and history-sodden

masses of castellated medieval ruin that Europe can show.

It was dark by the time we had wandered through the town and got the

letters and found the hotel--so I went to bed.

We shall leave here at noon tomorrow and float down to Arles, arriving

about dark, and there bid good bye to the boat, the river-trip finished.

Between Arles and Nimes (and Avignon again,) we shall be till Saturday

morning--then rail it through on that day to Ouchy, reaching the hotel at

11 at night if the train isn't late.

Next day (Sunday) if you like, go to Basel, and Monday to Berlin. But I

shall be at your disposal, to do exactly as you desire and prefer.

With no end of love to all of you and twice as much to you,

sweetheart,

SAML.

I believe my arm is a trifle better than it was when I started.

The mention in the foregoing letter of the Napoleon effigy is the

beginning of what proved to be a rather interesting episode. Mark

Twain thought a great deal of his discovery, as he called it--the

giant figure of Napoleon outlined by the distant mountain range.

In his note-book he entered memoranda telling just where it was to

be seen, and added a pencil sketch of the huge profile. But then he

characteristically forgot all about it, and when he recalled the

incident ten years later, he could not remember the name of the

village, Beauchastel, from which the great figure could be seen;

also, that he had made a record of the place.

But he was by this time more certain than ever that his discovery

was a remarkable one, which, if known, would become one of the great

natural wonders, such as Niagara Falls. Theodore Stanton was

visiting him at the time, and Clemens urged him, on his return to

France, to make an excursion to the Rhone and locate the Lost

Napoleon, as he now called it. But Clemens remembered the wonder as

being somewhere between Arles and Avignon, instead of about a

hundred miles above the last-named town. Stanton naturally failed

to find it, and it remained for the writer of these notes, motoring

up the Rhone one September day, exactly twenty-two years after the

first discovery, to re-locate the vast reclining figure of the first

consul of France, "dreaming of Universal Empire." The re-discovery

was not difficult--with Mark Twain's memoranda as a guide--and it

was worth while. Perhaps the Lost Napoleon is not so important a

natural wonder as Mark Twain believed, but it is a striking picture,

and on a clear day the calm blue face outlined against the sky will

long hold the traveler's attention.

To Clara Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:

AFLOAT, 11.20 a.m., Sept. 29, Tuesday.

DEAR OLD BEN,--The vast stone masses and huge towers of the ancient papal

palace of Avignon are projected above an intervening wooded island a mile

up the river behind me--for we are already on our way to Arles. It is a

perfectly still morning, with a brilliant sun, and very hot--outside; but

I am under cover of the linen hood, and it is cool and shady in here.

Please tell mamma I got her very last letter this morning, and I perceive

by it that I do not need to arrive at Ouchy before Saturday midnight.

I am glad, because I couldn't do the railroading I am proposing to do

during the next two or three days and get there earlier. I could put in

the time till Sunday midnight, but shall not venture it without

telegraphic instructions from her to Nimes day after tomorrow, Oct. 1,

care Hotel Manivet.

The only adventures we have is in drifting into rough seas now and then.

They are not dangerous, but they go thro' all the motions of it.

Yesterday when we shot the Bridge of the Holy Spirit it was probably in

charge of some inexperienced deputy spirit for the day, for we were

allowed to go through the wrong arch, which brought us into a tourbillon

below which tried to make this old scow stand on its head. Of course I

lost my temper and blew it off in a way to be heard above the roar of the

tossing waters. I lost it because the admiral had taken that arch in

deference to my opinion that it was the best one, while his own judgment

told him to take the one nearest the other side of the river. I could

have poisoned him I was so mad to think I had hired such a turnip.

A boatman in command should obey nobody's orders but his own, and yield

to nobody's suggestions.

It was very sweet of you to write me, dear, and I thank you ever so much.

With greatest love and kisses,

PAPA.

To Mrs. Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:

ARLES, Sept. 30, noon.

Livy darling, I hain't got no time to write today, because I am sight

seeing industriously and imagining my chapter.

Bade good-bye to the river trip and gave away the boat yesterday evening.

We had ten great days in her.

We reached here after dark. We were due about 4.30, counting by

distance, but we couldn't calculate on such a lifeless current as we

found.

I love you, sweetheart.

SAML.

It had been a long time since Clemens had written to his old friend

Twichell, but the Rhone trip must have reminded him of those days

thirteen years earlier, when, comparatively young men, he and

Twichell were tramping through the Black Forest and scaling Gemmi

Pass. He sent Twichell a reminder of that happy time.

To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, in Hartford, Conn:

NIMES, Oct. 1, '91.

DEAR JOE,--I have been ten days floating down the Rhone on a raft, from

Lake Bourget, and a most curious and darling kind of a trip it has been.

You ought to have been along--I could have made room for you easily--and

you would have found that a pedestrian tour in Europe doesn't begin with

a raft-voyage for hilarity and mild adventure, and intimate contact with

the unvisited native of the back settlements, and extinction from the

world and newspapers, and a conscience in a state of coma, and lazy

comfort, and solid happiness. In fact there's nothing that's so lovely.

But it's all over. I gave the raft away yesterday at Arles, and am

loafing along back by short stages on the rail to Ouchy-Lausanne where

the tribe are staying.

Love to you all

MARK.

The Clemenses settled in Berlin for the winter, at 7 Kornerstrasse,

and later at the Hotel Royal. There had been no permanent

improvement in Mark Twain's arm and he found writing difficult.

Some of the letters promised to Laffan and McClure were still

unfinished.

Young Hall, his publishing manager in America, was working hard to

keep the business afloat, and being full of the optimism of his

years did not fail to make as good a showing as he could. We may

believe his letters were very welcome to Clemens and his wife, who

found little enough in the general prospect to comfort them.

To Mr. Hall, in New York:

BERLIN, Nov. 27, '91.

DEAR MR. HALL,--That kind of a statement is valuable. It came this

morning. This is the first time since the business began that I have had

a report that furnished the kind of information I wanted, and was really

enlightening and satisfactory. Keep it up. Don't let it fall into

desuetude.

Everything looks so fine and handsome with the business, now, that I feel

a great let-up from depression. The rewards of your long and patient

industry are on their way, and their arrival safe in port, presently,

seems assured.

By George, I shall be glad when the ship comes in!

My arm is so much better that I was able to make a speech last night to

250 Americans. But when they threw my portrait on the screen it was a

sorrowful reminder, for it was from a negative of 15 years ago, and

hadn't a gray hair in it. And now that my arm is better, I have stolen a

couple of days and finished up a couple of McClure letters that have been

lying a long time.

I shall mail one of them to you next Tuesday--registered. Lookout for

it.

I shall register and mail the other one (concerning the "Jungfrau") next

Friday look out for it also, and drop me a line to let me know they have

arrived.

I shall write the 6th and last letter by and by when I have studied

Berlin sufficiently.

Yours in a most cheerful frame of mind, and with my and all the family's

Thanksgiving greetings and best wishes,

S. L. CLEMENS.

Postscript by Mrs. Clemens written on Mr. Clemens's letter:

DEAR MR. HALL,--This is my birthday and your letter this morning was a

happy addition to the little gifts on the breakfast table. I thought of

going out and spending money for something unnecessary after it came, but

concluded perhaps I better wait a little longer.

Sincerely yours

O. L. CLEMENS.

"The German Chicago" was the last of the six McClure letters and was

finished that winter in Berlin. It is now included in the Uniform

Edition of Mark Twain's works, and is one of the best descriptive

articles of the German capital ever written. He made no use of the

Rhone notes further than to put them together in literary form.

They did not seem to him to contain enough substance to warrant

publication. A letter to Hall, written toward the end of December,

we find rather gloomy in tone, though he is still able to extract

comfort and even cheerfulness from one of Mr. Hall's reports.

Memorandum to Fred J. Hall, in New York:

Among the MSS I left with you are a few that have a recent look and are

written on rather stiff pale green paper. If you will have those

type-writered and keep the originals and send me the copies (one per

mail, not two.) I'll see if I can use them.

But tell Howells and other inquirers that my hopes of writing anything

are very slender--I seem to be disabled for life.

Drop McClure a line and tell him the same. I can't dare to make an

engagement now for even a single letter.

I am glad Howells is on a magazine, but sorry he gave up the Study.

I shall have to go on a magazine myself if this L. A. L. continues to

hold my nose down to the grind-stone much longer.

I'm going to hold my breath, now, for 30 days--then the annual statement

will arrive and I shall know how we feel! Merry Xmas to you from us all.

Sincerely,

S. L. C.

P. S. Just finished the above and finished raging at the eternal German

tax-gatherer, and so all the jubilant things which I was going to say

about the past year's business got knocked out of me. After writing this

present letter I was feeling blue about Huck Finn, but I sat down and

overhauled your reports from now back to last April and compared them

with the splendid Oct.-Nov. business, and went to bed feeling refreshed

and fine, for certainly it has been a handsome year. Now rush me along

the Annual Report and let's see how we feel!

S. L. C.

XXXII

LETTERS, 1892, CHIEFLY TO MR. HALL AND MRS. CRANE. IN BERLIN, MENTONE,

BAD-NAUHEIM, FLORENCE

Mark Twain was the notable literary figure in Berlin that winter, the

center of every great gathering. He was entertained by the Kaiser, and

shown many special attentions by Germans of every rank. His books were

as well known in Berlin as in New York, and at court assemblies and

embassies he was always a chief center of interest.

He was too popular for his own good; the gaiety of the capital told on

him. Finally, one night, after delivering a lecture in a hot room, he

contracted a severe cold, driving to a ball at General von Versen's, and

a few days later was confined to his bed with pneumonia. It was not a

severe attack, but it was long continued. He could write some letters

and even work a little, but he was not allowed to leave his bed for many

weeks, a condition which he did not find a hardship, for no man ever

enjoyed the loose luxury of undress and the comfort of pillows more than

Mark Twain. In a memorandum of that time he wrote: "I am having a

booming time all to myself."

Meantime, Hall, in America, was sending favorable reports of the

publishing business, and this naturally helped to keep up his spirits.

He wrote frequently to Hall, of course, but the letters for the most part

are purely of a business nature and of little interest to the general

reader.

To Fred J. Hall, in New York:

HOTEL ROYAL, BERLIN, Feb. 12.

DEAR MR. HALL,--Daly wants to get the stage rights of the "American

Claimant." The foundation from which I wrote the story is a play of the

same name which has been in A. P. Burbank's hands 5 or 6 years. That

play cost me some money (helping Burbank stage it) but has never brought

me any. I have written Burbank (Lotos Club) and asked him to give me

back his rights in the old play so that I can treat with Daly and utilize

this chance to even myself up. Burbank is a lovely fellow, and if he

objects I can't urge him. But you run in at the Lotos and see him; and

if he relinquishes his claim, then I would like you to conduct the

business with Daly; or have Whitford or some other lawyer do it under

your supervision if you prefer.

This morning I seem to have rheumatism in my right foot.

I am ordered south by the doctor and shall expect to be well enough to

start by the end of this month.

[No signature.]

It is curious, after Clemens and Howells had tried so hard and so

long to place their "Sellers" Play, that now, when the story

appeared in book form, Augustin Daly should have thought it worth

dramatizing. Daly and Clemens were old friends, and it would seem

that Daly could hardly have escaped seeing the play when it was

going the rounds. But perhaps there is nothing more mysterious in

the world than the ways and wants of theatrical managers. The

matter came to nothing, of course, but the fact that Daly should

have thought a story built from an old discarded play had a play in

it seems interesting.

Clemens and his wife were advised to leave the cold of Berlin as

soon as he was able to travel. This was not until the first of

March, when, taking their old courier, Joseph Very, they left the

children in good hands and journeyed to the south of France.

To Susy Clemens, in Berlin:

MENTONE, Mch 22, '92.

SUSY DEAR,--I have been delighted to note your easy facility with your

pen and proud to note also your literary superiorities of one kind and

another--clearness of statement, directness, felicity of expression,

photographic ability in setting forth an incident--style--good style--no

barnacles on it in the way of unnecessary, retarding words (the Shipman

scrapes off the barnacles when he wants his racer to go her best gait and

straight to the buoy.) You should write a letter every day, long or short

--and so ought I, but I don't.

Mamma says, tell Clara yes, she will have to write a note if the fan

comes back mended.

We couldn't go to Nice to-day--had to give it up, on various accounts

--and this was the last chance. I am sorry for Mamma--I wish she could

have gone. She got a heavy fall yesterday evening and was pretty stiff

and lame this morning, but is working it off trunk packing.

Joseph is gone to Nice to educate himself in Kodaking--and to get the

pictures mounted which Mamma thinks she took here; but I noticed she

didn't take the plug out, as a rule. When she did, she took nine

pictures on top of each other--composites.

With lots of love.

PAPA.

In the course of their Italian wanderings they reached Florence,

where they were so comfortable and well that they decided to engage

a villa for the next winter. Through Prof. Willard Fiske, they

discovered the Villa Viviani, near Settignano, an old palace

beautifully located on the hilltops east of Florence, commanding a

wonderful view of the ancient city. Clemens felt that he could work

there, and time proved that he was right.

For the summer, however, they returned to Germany, and located at

Bad-Nauheim. Clemens presently decided to make a trip to America to

give some personal attention to business matters. For one thing,

his publishing-house, in spite of prosperity, seemed constantly to

be requiring more capital, and then a Chicago company had been

persuaded by Paige to undertake the manufacture of the type-setter.

It was the beginning of a series of feverish trips which he would

make back and forth across the ocean during the next two years.

To Fred J. Hall, in New York:

BAD-NAUHEIM, June 11, '92.

Saturday.

DEAR MR. HALL,--If this arrives before I do, let it inform you that I am

leaving Bremen for New York next Tuesday in the "Havel."

If you can meet me when the ship arrives, you can help me to get away

from the reporters; and maybe you can take me to your own or some other

lodgings where they can't find me.

But if the hour is too early or too late for you, I shall obscure myself

somewhere till I can come to the office.

Yours sincerely

S. L. C.

Nothing of importance happened in America. The new Paige company

had a factory started in Chicago and expected to manufacture fifty

machines as a beginning. They claimed to have capital, or to be

able to command it, and as the main control had passed from

Clemens's hands, he could do no more than look over the ground and

hope for the best. As for the business, about all that he could do

was to sign certain notes necessary to provide such additional

capital as was needed, and agree with Hall that hereafter they would

concentrate their efforts and resist further temptation in the way

of new enterprise. Then he returned to Bad-Nauheim and settled down

to literature. This was the middle of July, and he must have worked

pretty steadily, for he presently had a variety of MSS. ready to

offer.

To Fred J. Hall, in New York:

Aug. 10, '92.

DEAR MR. HALT,--I have dropped that novel I wrote you about, because I

saw a more effective way of using the main episode--to wit: by telling it

through the lips of Huck Finn. So I have started Huck Finn and Tom

Sawyer (still 15 years old) and their friend the freed slave Jim around

the world in a stray balloon, with Huck as narrator, and somewhere after

the end of that great voyage he will work in the said episode and then

nobody will suspect that a whole book has been written and the globe

circumnavigated merely to get that episode in an effective (and at the

same time apparently unintentional) way. I have written 12,000 words of

this narrative, and find that the humor flows as easily as the adventures

and surprises--so I shall go along and make a book of from 50,000 to

100,000 words.

It is a story for boys, of course, and I think will interest any boy

between 8 years and 80.

When I was in New York the other day Mrs. Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas,

wrote and, offered me $5,000 for (serial right) a story for boys 50,000

words long. I wrote back and declined, for I had other matter in my

mind, then.

I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so

that it will not only interest boys but will also strongly interest any

man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.

Now this story doesn't need to be restricted to a Childs magazine--it is

proper enough for any magazine, I should think, or for a syndicate. I

don't swear it, but I think so.

Proposed title of the story, "New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

[No signature.]

The "novel" mentioned in the foregoing was The Extraordinary Twins,

a story from which Pudd'nhead Wilson would be evolved later. It was

a wildly extravagant farce--just the sort of thing that now and then

Mark Twain plunged into with an enthusiasm that had to work itself

out and die a natural death, or mellow into something worth while.

Tom Sawyer Abroad, as the new Huck story was finally called, was

completed and disposed of to St. Nicholas for serial publication.

The Twichells were in Europe that summer, and came to Bad-Nauheim.

The next letter records a pleasant incident. The Prince of Wales of

that day later became King Edward VII.

To Mr. and Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa.:

Private. BAD-NAUHEIM, Aug. 23, '92.

DEAR ORION AND MOLLIE,--("Private" because no newspaper-man or other

gossip must get hold of it)

Livy is getting along pretty well, and the doctor thinks another summer

here will cure her.

The Twichell's have been here four days and we have had good times with

them. Joe and I ran over to Homburg, the great pleasure resort,

Saturday, to dine with some friends, and in the morning I went walking in

the promenade and met the British Ambassador to the Court of Berlin, and

he introduced me to the Prince of Wales, and I found him a most unusually

comfortable and unembarrassing Englishman to talk with--quick to see the

obscurest point, and equipped with a laugh which is spontaneous and

catching. Am invited by a near friend of his to meet him at dinner day

after tomorrow, and there could be a good time, but the brass band will

smash the talk and spoil everything.

We are expecting to move to Florence ten or twelve days hence, but if

this hot weather continues we shall wait for cooler. I take Clara to

Berlin for the winter-music, mainly, with German and French added. Thus

far, Jean is our only glib French scholar.

We all send love to you all and to Pamela and Sam's family, and Annie.

SAM

Clemens and family left Bad-Nauheim for Italy by way of Switzerland.

In September Mrs. Clemens's sister, Mrs. Crane, who had been with

them in Europe during the first year, had now returned to America.

Mrs. Clemens had improved at the baths, though she had by no means

recovered her health. We get a general report of conditions from

the letter which Clemens wrote Mrs. Crane from Lucerne, Switzerland,

where the party rested for several days. The "Phelps" mentioned in

this letter was William Walter Phelps, United States Minister to

Germany. The Phelps and Clemens families had been much associated

in Berlin. "Mason" was Frank Mason, Consul General at Frankfort,

and in later years at Paris. "Charlie and Ida" were Charles and

Mrs. Langdon, of Elmira.

To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira, N. Y.:

LUCERNE, Sept. 18, '92.

DEAR AUNT SUE,--Imagine how I felt to find that you had actually gone off

without filling my traveling ink stand which you gave me! I found it out

yesterday. Livy advised me to write you about it.

I have been driving this pen hard. I wrote 280 pages on a yarn called

"Tom Sawyer Abroad," then took up the "Twins" again, destroyed the last

half of the manuscript and re-wrote it in another form, and am going to

continue it and finish it in Florence. "Tom Sawyer" seems rather pale to

the family after the extravagances of the Twins, but they came to like it

after they got used to it.

We remained in Nauheim a little too long. If we had left there four or

five days earlier we should have made Florence in 3 days; but by the time

we got started Livy had got smitten with what we feared might be

erysipelas--greatly swollen neck and face, and unceasing headaches. We

lay idle in Frankfort 4 days, doctoring. We started Thursday and made

Bale. Hard trip, because it was one of those trains that gets tired

every seven minutes and stops to rest three quarters of an hour. It took

us 3 1/2 hours to get here, instead of the regulation 2.20. We reached

here Friday evening and will leave tomorrow (Tuesday) morning. The rest

has made the headaches better. We shall pull through to Milan tomorrow

if possible. Next day we shall start at 10 a. m., and try to make

Bologna, 5 hours. Next day (Thursday) Florence, D. V. Next year we will

walk, for these excursions have got to be made over again. I've got

seven trunks, and I undertook to be courier because I meant to express

them to Florence direct, but we were a couple of days too late. All

continental roads had issued a peremptory order that no baggage should

travel a mile except in the company of the owner. (All over Europe

people are howling; they are separated from their baggage and can't get

it forwarded to them) I have to re-ship my trunks every day. It is very

amusing--uncommonly so. There seemed grave doubts about our being able

to get these trunks over the Italian frontier, but I've got a very

handsome note from the Frankfort Italian Consul General addressed to all

Italian Customs Officers, and we shall get through if anybody does.

The Phelpses came to Frankfort and we had some great times--dinner at his

hotel, the Masons, supper at our inn--Livy not in it. She was merely

allowed a glimpse, no more. Of course, Phelps said she was merely

pretending to be ill; was never looking so well and fine.

The children are all right. They paddle around a little, and drive-so do

we all. Lucerne seems to be pretty full of tourists. The Fleulen boat

went out crowded yesterday morning.

The Paris Herald has created a public interest by inoculating one of its

correspondents with cholera. A man said yesterday he wished to God they

would inoculate all of them. Yes, the interest is quite general and

strong, and much hope is felt.

Livy says, I have said enough bad things, and better send all our loves

to you and Charley and Ida and all the children and shut up. Which I do

--and shut up.

S. L. C.

They reached Florence on the 26th, and four days later we find

Clemens writing again to Mrs. Crane, detailing everything at length.

Little comment on this letter is required; it fully explains itself.

Perhaps a word of description from one of his memoranda will not be

out of place. Of the villa he wrote: "It is a plain, square

building, like a box, and is painted light green and has green

window-shutters. It stands in a commanding position on the

artificial terrace of liberal dimensions, which is walled around

with masonry. From the walls the vineyards and olive groves of the

estate slant away toward the valley.... Roses overflow the

retaining walls and the battered and mossy stone urn on the

gate-post, in pink and yellow cataracts, exactly as they do on the

drop-curtains in the theaters. The house is a very fortress for

strength."

The Mrs. Ross in this letter was Janet Ross, daughter of Lady Duff

Gordon, remembered to-day for her Egyptian letters. The Ross castle

was but a little distance away.

To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira:

VILLA VIVIANI, SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE.

Sept. 30, 1892

DEAR SUE,--We have been in the house several days, and certainly it is a

beautiful place,--particularly at this moment, when the skies are a deep

leaden color, the domes of Florence dim in the drizzling rain, and

occasional perpendicular coils of lightning quivering intensely in the

black sky about Galileo's Tower. It is a charming panorama, and the most

conspicuous towers and domes down in the city look to-day just as they

looked when Boccaccio and Dante used to contemplate them from this

hillock five and six hundred years ago.

The Mademoiselle is a great help to Livy in the housekeeping, and is a

cheery and cheerful presence in the house. The butler is equipped with a

little French, and it is this fact that enables the house to go--but it

won't go well until the family get some sort of facility with the Italian

tongue, for the cook, the woman-of-all-work and the coachman understand

only that. It is a stubborn and devilish language to learn, but Jean and

the others will master it. Livy's German Nauheim girl is the worst off

of anybody, as there is no market for her tongue at all among the help.

With the furniture in and the curtains up the house is very pretty, and

not unhomelike. At mid-night last night we heard screams up stairs--Susy

had set the lofty window curtains afire with a candle. This sounds kind

of frightful, whereas when you come to think of it, a burning curtain or

pile of furniture hasn't any element of danger about it in this fortress.

There isn't any conceivable way to burn this house down, or enable a

conflagration on one floor to climb to the next.

Mrs. Ross laid in our wood, wine and servants for us, and they are

excellent. She had the house scoured from Cellar to rook the curtains

washed and put up, all beds pulled to pieces, beaten, washed and put

together again, and beguiled the Marchese into putting a big porcelain

stove in the vast central hall. She is a wonderful woman, and we don't

quite see how or when we should have gotten under way without her.

Observe our address above--the post delivers letters daily at the house.

Even with the work and fuss of settling the house Livy has improved--and

the best is yet to come. There is going to be absolute seclusion here

--a hermit life, in fact. We (the rest of us) shall run over to the

Ross's frequently, and they will come here now and then and see Livy

--that is all. Mr. Fiske is away--nobody knows where--and the work on

his house has been stopped and his servants discharged. Therefore we

shall merely go Rossing--as far as society is concerned--shan't circulate

in Florence until Livy shall be well enough to take a share in it.

This present house is modern. It is not much more than two centuries

old; but parts of it, and also its foundations are of high antiquity.

The fine beautiful family portraits--the great carved ones in the large

ovals over the doors of the big hall--carry one well back into the past.

One of them is dated 1305--he could have known Dante, you see. Another

is dated 1343--he could have known Boccaccio and spent his afternoons in

Fiesole listening to the Decameron tales. Another is dated 1463

--he could have met Columbus.....

Evening. The storm thundered away until night, and the rain came down in

floods. For awhile there was a partial break, which furnished about such

a sunset as will be exhibited when the Last Day comes and the universe

tumbles together in wreck and ruin. I have never seen anything more

spectacular and impressive.

One person is satisfied with the villa, anyway. Jean prefers it to all

Europe, save Venice. Jean is eager to get at the Italian tongue again,

now, and I see that she has forgotten little or nothing of what she

learned of it in Rome and Venice last spring.

I am the head French duffer of the family. Most of the talk goes over my

head at the table. I catch only words, not phrases. When Italian comes

to be substituted I shall be even worse off than I am now, I suppose.

This reminds me that this evening the German girl said to Livy, "Man hat

mir gesagt loss Sie una candella verlaught habe"--unconsciously dropping

in a couple of Italian words, you see. So she is going to join the

polyglots, too, it appears. They say it is good entertainment to hear

her and the butler talk together in their respective tongues, piecing out

and patching up with the universal sign-language as they go along. Five

languages in use in the house (including the sign-language-hardest-worked

of them all) and yet with all this opulence of resource we do seem to

have an uncommonly tough time making ourselves understood.

What we lack is a cat. If we only had Germania! That was the most

satisfactory all-round cat I have seen yet. Totally ungermanic in the

raciness of his character and in the sparkle of his mind and the

spontaneity of his movements. We shall not look upon his like again....

S. L. C.

Clemens got well settled down to work presently. He found the

situation, the climate, the background, entirely suited to literary

production, and in a little while he had accomplished more than at

any other time since his arrival in Europe. From letters to Mrs.

Crane and to Mr. Hall we learn something of his employments and his

satisfaction.

To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira:

VILLA VIVIANI

SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE. Oct. 22, '92.

DEAR SUE,--We are getting wonted. The open fires have driven away the

cold and the doubt, and now a cheery spirit pervades the place. Livy and

the Kings and Mademoiselle having been taking their tea a number of

times, lately, on the open terrace with the city and the hills and the

sunset for company. I stop work, a few minutes, as a rule, when the sun

gets down to the hilltops west of Florence, and join the tea-group to

wonder and exclaim. There is always some new miracle in the view, a new

and exquisite variation in the show, a variation which occurs every 15

minutes between dawn and night. Once early in the morning, a multitude

of white villas not before perceived, revealed themselves on the far

hills; then we recognized that all those great hills are snowed thick

with them, clear to the summit.

The variety of lovely effects, the infinitude of change, is something not

to be believed by any who has not seen it. No view that I am acquainted

with in the world is at all comparable to this for delicacy, charm,

exquisiteness, dainty coloring, and bewildering rapidity of change. It

keeps a person drunk with pleasure all the time. Sometimes Florence

ceases to be substantial, and becomes just a faint soft dream, with domes

and towers of air, and one is persuaded that he might blow it away with a

puff of his breath.

Livy is progressing admirably. This is just the place for her.

[Remainder missing.]

To Fred J. Hall, in New York:

Dec. 12, '92.

DEAR MR. HALL,--November check received.

I have lent the Californian's Story to Arthur Stedman for his Author Club

Book, so your suggestion that my new spring-book bear that name arrives

too late, as he probably would not want us to use that story in a book of

ours until the Author book had had its run. That is for him to decide

--and I don't want him hampered at all in his decision. I, for my part,

prefer the "$1,000,000 Banknote and Other Stories" by Mark Twain as a

title, but above my judgment I prefer yours. I mean this--it is not

taffy.

I told Arthur to leave out the former squib or paragraph and use only the

Californian's Story. Tell him this is because I am going to use that in

the book I am now writing.

I finished "Those Extraordinary Twins" night before last makes 60 or

80,000 words--haven't counted.

The last third of it suits me to a dot. I begin, to-day, to entirely

recast and re-write the first two-thirds--new plan, with two minor

characters, made very prominent, one major character cropped out, and the

Twins subordinated to a minor but not insignificant place.

The minor character will now become the chiefest, and I will name the

story after him--"Puddn'head Wilson."

Merry Xmas to you, and great prosperity and felicity!

S. L. CLEMENS.

XXXIII

LETTERS, 1893, TO MR. HALL, MRS. CLEMENS, AND OTHERS. FLORENCE.

BUSINESS TROUBLES. "PUDD'NHEAD WILSON." "JOAN OF ARC."

AT THE PLAYERS, NEW YORK

The reader may have suspected that young Mr. Hall in New York was having

his troubles. He was by this time one-third owner in the business of

Charles L. Webster & Co., as well as its general manager. The business

had been drained of its capital one way and another-partly by the

publication of unprofitable books; partly by the earlier demands of the

typesetter, but more than all by the manufacturing cost and agents'

commissions demanded by L. A. L.; that is to say, the eleven large

volumes constituting the Library of American Literature, which Webster

had undertaken to place in a million American homes. There was plenty of

sale for it--indeed, that was just the trouble; for it was sold on

payments--small monthly payments--while the cost of manufacture and the

liberal agents' commissions were cash items, and it would require a

considerable period before the dribble of collections would swell into a

tide large enough to satisfy the steady outflow of expense. A sale of

twenty-five sets a day meant prosperity on paper, but unless capital

could be raised from some other source to make and market those books

through a period of months, perhaps even years, to come, it meant

bankruptcy in reality. It was Hall's job, with Clemens to back him, to

keep their ship afloat on these steadily ebbing financial waters. It was

also Hall's affair to keep Mark Twain cheerful, to look pleasant himself,

and to show how they were steadily getting rich because orders were

pouring in, though a cloud that resembled bankruptcy loomed always a

little higher upon the horizon. If Hall had not been young and an

optimist, he would have been frightened out of his boots early in the

game. As it was, he made a brave steady fight, kept as cheerful and

stiff an upper lip as possible, always hoping that something would

happen--some grand sale of his other books, some unexpected inflow from

the type-setter interests--anything that would sustain his ship until the

L. A. L. tide should turn and float it into safety.

Clemens had faith in Hall and was fond of him. He never found fault with

him; he tried to accept his encouraging reports at their face value. He

lent the firm every dollar of his literary earnings not absolutely needed

for the family's support; he signed new notes; he allowed Mrs. Clemens to

put in such remnants of her patrimony as the type-setter had spared.

The situation in 1893 was about as here outlined. The letters to Hall of

that year are frequent and carry along the story. To any who had formed

the idea that Mark Twain was irascible, exacting, and faultfinding, they

will perhaps be a revelation.

To Fred J. Hall, in New York:

FLORENCE, Jan. 1, '93.

DEAR MR. HALL,--Yours of Dec. 19 is to hand, and Mrs. Clemens is deeply

distressed, for she thinks I have been blaming you or finding fault with

you about something. But most surely that cannot be. I tell her that

although I am prone to write hasty and regrettable things to other

people, I am not a bit likely to write such things to you. I can't

believe I have done anything so ungrateful. If I have, pile coals of

fire on my head, for I deserve it!

I wonder if my letter of credit isn't an encumbrance? Do you have to

deposit the whole amount it calls for? If that is so, it is an

encumbrance, and we must withdraw it and take the money out of soak.

I have never made drafts upon it except when compelled, because I thought

you deposited nothing against it, and only had to put up money that I

drew upon it; that therefore the less I drew the easier it would be for

you.

I am dreadfully sorry I didn't know it would be a help to you to let my

monthly check pass over a couple of months. I could have stood that by

drawing what is left of Mrs. Clemens's letter of credit, and we would

have done it cheerfully.

I will write Whitmore to send you the "Century" check for $1,000, and you

can collect Mrs. Dodge's $2,000 (Whitmore has power of attorney which I

think will enable him to endorse it over to you in my name.) If you need

that $3,000 put it in the business and use it, and send Whitmore the

Company's note for a year. If you don't need it, turn it over to Mr.

Halsey and let him invest it for me.

I've a mighty poor financial head, and I may be all wrong--but tell me if

I am wrong in supposing that in lending my own firm money at 6 per cent I

pay 4 of it myself and so really get only a per cent? Now don't laugh if

that is stupid.

Of course my friend declined to buy a quarter interest in the L. A. L.

for $200,000. I judged he would. I hoped he would offer $100,000, but

he didn't. If the cholera breaks out in America, a few months hence, we

can't borrow or sell; but if it doesn't we must try hard to raise

$100,000. I wish we could do it before there is a cholera scare.

I have been in bed two or three days with a cold, but I got up an hour

ago, and I believe I am all right again.

How I wish I had appreciated the need of $100,000 when I was in New York

last summer! I would have tried my best to raise it. It would make us

able to stand 1,000 sets of L. A. L. per month, but not any more, I

guess.

You have done magnificently with the business, and we must raise the

money somehow, to enable you to reap the reward of all that labor.

Sincerely Yours

S. L. CLEMENS.

"Whitmore," in this letter, was F. G. Whitmore, of Hartford, Mark Twain's

financial agent. The money due from Mrs. Dodge was a balance on Tom

Sawyer Abroad, which had been accepted by St. Nicholas. Mr. Halsey was a

down-town broker.

Clemens, who was growing weary of the constant demands of L. A. L., had

conceived the idea that it would be well to dispose of a portion of it

for enough cash to finance its manufacture.

We don't know who the friend was to whom he offered a quarter interest

for the modest sum of two hundred thousand dollars. But in the next

letter we discover designs on a certain very canny Scotchman of Skibo.

To Fred J. Hall, in New York:

FLORENCE, Jan. 28, '92.

DEAR MR. HALL,--I want to throw out a suggestion and see what you think

of it. We have a good start, and solid ground under us; we have a

valuable reputation; our business organization is practical, sound and

well-devised; our publications are of a respect-worthy character and of a

money-breeding species. Now then I think that the association with us of

some one of great name and with capital would give our business a

prodigious impetus--that phrase is not too strong.

As I look at it, it is not money merely that is needed; if that were all,

the firm has friends enough who would take an interest in a paying

venture; we need some one who has made his life a success not only from a

business standpoint, but with that achievement back of him, has been

great enough to make his power felt as a thinker and a literary man. It

is a pretty usual thing for publishers to have this sort of partners.

Now you see what a power Carnegie is, and how far his voice reaches in

the several lines I speak of. Do you know him? You do by correspondence

or purely business talks about his books--but personally, I mean? so that

it would not be an intrusion for you to speak to him about this desire of

mine--for I would like you to put it before him, and if you fail to

interest him in it, you will probably get at least some valuable

suggestions from him. I'll enclose a note of introduction--you needn't

use it if you don't need to.

Yours S. L. C.

P. S. Yes, I think I have already acknowledged the Dec. $1,000 and the

Jan. $500--and if another $500 was mailed 3 days ago there's no hiatus.

I think I also reminded you that the new letter of credit does not cover

the unexpended balance of the old one but falls considerably short of it.

Do your best with Carnegie, and don't wait to consider any of my

intermediate suggestions or talks about our raising half of the $200,000

ourselves. I mean, wait for nothing. To make my suggestion available I

should have to go over and see Arnot, and I don't want to until I can

mention Carnegie's name to him as going in with us.

My book is type-written and ready for print--"Pudd'nhead Wilson-a Tale."

(Or, "Those Extraordinary Twins," if preferable.)

It makes 82,500 words--12,000 more than Huck Finn. But I don't know what

to do with it. Mrs. Clemens thinks it wouldn't do to go to the Am. Pub.

Co. or anywhere outside of our own house; we have no subscription

machinery, and a book in the trade is a book thrown away, as far as

money-profit goes. I am in a quandary. Give me a lift out of it.

I will mail the book to you and get you to examine it and see if it is

good or if it is bad. I think it is good, and I thought the Claimant

bad, when I saw it in print; but as for real judgment, I think I am

destitute of it.

I am writing a companion to the Prince and Pauper, which is half done and

will make 200,000 words; and I have had the idea that if it were gotten

up in handsome style, with many illustrations and put at a high enough

price maybe the L. A. L. canvassers would take it and run it with that

book. Would they? It could be priced anywhere from $4 up to $10,

according to how it was gotten up, I suppose.

I don't want it to go into a magazine.

S. L. C.

I am having several short things type-"writered." I will send them to

you presently. I like the Century and Harper's, but I don't know that I

have any business to object to the Cosmopolitan if they pay as good

rates. I suppose a man ought to stick to one magazine, but that may be

only superstition. What do you think?

S. L. C.

"The companion to The Prince and the Pauper," mentioned in this

letter, was the story of Joan of Arc, perhaps the most finished of

Mark Twain's literary productions. His interest in Joan had been

first awakened when, as a printer's apprentice in Hannibal, he had

found blowing along the street a stray leaf from some printed story

of her life. That fragment of history had pictured Joan in prison,

insulted and mistreated by ruffians. It had aroused all the

sympathy and indignation in the boy, Sam Clemens; also, it had

awakened his interest in history, and, indeed, in all literature.

His love for the character of Joan had grown with the years, until

in time he had conceived the idea of writing her story. As far back

as the early eighties he had collected material for it, and had

begun to make the notes. One thing and another had interfered, and

he had found no opportunity for such a story. Now, however, in

Florence, in the ancient villa, and in the quiet garden, looking

across the vineyards and olive groves to the dream city along the

Arno, he felt moved to take up the tale of the shepherd girl of

France, the soldier maid, or, as he called her, "The noble child,

the most innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable the ages have

produced." His surroundings and background would seem to have been

perfect, and he must have written with considerable ease to have

completed a hundred thousand words in a period of not more than six

weeks.

Perhaps Hall did not even go to see Carnegie; at all events nothing

seems to have come of the idea. Once, at a later time, Mask Twain

himself mentioned the matter to Carnegie, and suggested to him that

it was poor financiering to put all of one's eggs into one basket,

meaning into iron. But Carnegie answered, "That's a mistake; put

all your eggs into one basket and watch that basket."

It was March when Clemens felt that once more his presence was

demanded in America. He must see if anything could be realized from

the type-setter or L. A. L.

To Fred J. Hall, in New York:

March 13, '93.

DEAR MR. HALL,--I am busy getting ready to sail the 22d, in the Kaiser

Wilhelm II.

I send herewith 2 magazine articles.

The Story contains 3,800 to 4,000 words.

The "Diary" contains 3,800 words.

Each would make about 4 pages of the Century.

The Diary is a gem, if I do say it myself that shouldn't.

If the Cosmopolitan wishes to pay $600 for either of them or $1,200 for

both, gather in the check, and I will use the money in America instead of

breaking into your treasury.

If they don't wish to trade for either, send the articles to the Century,

without naming a price, and if their check isn't large enough I will call

and abuse them when I come.

I signed and mailed the notes yesterday.

Yours

S. L. C.

Clemens reached New York on the 3d of April and made a trip to

Chicago, but accomplished nothing, except to visit the World's Fair

and be laid up with a severe cold. The machine situation had not

progressed. The financial stringency of 1893 had brought everything

to a standstill. The New York bank would advance Webster & Co. no

more money. So disturbed were his affairs, so disordered was

everything, that sometimes he felt himself as one walking amid

unrealities. A fragment of a letter to Mrs. Crane conveys this:

"I dreamed I was born and grew up and was a pilot on the Mississippi

and a miner and a journalist in Nevada and a pilgrim in the Quaker

City, and had a wife and children and went to live in a villa at

Florence--and this dream goes on and on and sometimes seems so real

that I almost believe it is real. I wonder if it is? But there is

no way to tell, for if one applies tests they would be part of the

dream, too, and so would simply aid the deceit. I wish I knew

whether it is a dream or real."

He saw Warner, briefly, in America; also Howells, now living in New

York, but he had little time for visiting. On May 13th he sailed

again for Europe on the Kaiser Wilhelm II. On the night before

sailing he sent Howells a good-by word.

To W. D. Howells, in New York City:

MURRAY HILL HOTEL, NEW YORE, May 12, 1893.

Midnight.

DEAR HOWELLS--I am so sorry I missed you.

I am very glad to have that book for sea entertainment, and I thank you

ever so much for it.

I've had a little visit with Warner at last; I was getting afraid I

wasn't going to have a chance to see him at all. I forgot to tell you

how thoroughly I enjoyed your account of the country printing office, and

how true it all was and how intimately recognizable in all its details.

But Warner was full of delight over it, and that reminded me, and I am

glad, for I wanted to speak of it.

You have given me a book; Annie Trumbull has sent me her book; I bought a

couple of books; Mr. Hall gave me a choice German book; Laflan gave me

two bottles of whisky and a box of cigars--I go to sea nobly equipped.

Good-bye and all good fortune attend you and yours--and upon you all I

leave my benediction.

MARK.

Mention has already been made of the Ross home being very near to

Viviani, and the association of the Ross and Clemens families.

There was a fine vegetable garden on the Ross estate, and it was in

the interest of it that the next letter was written to the Secretary

of Agriculture.

To Hon. J. Sterling Morton, in Washington, D. C.:

Editorial Department Century Magazine, Union Square,

NEW YORK, April 6, 1893.

TO THE HON. J. STERLING MORTON,--Dear Sir: Your petitioner, Mark Twain,

a poor farmer of Connecticut--indeed, the poorest one there, in the

opinion of many-desires a few choice breeds of seed corn (maize), and in

return will zealously support the Administration in all ways honorable

and otherwise.

To speak by the card, I want these things to hurry to Italy to an English

lady. She is a neighbor of mine outside of Florence, and has a great

garden and thinks she could raise corn for her table if she had the right

ammunition. I myself feel a warm interest in this enterprise, both on

patriotic grounds and because I have a key to that garden, which I got

made from a wax impression. It is not very good soil, still I think she

can grow enough for one table and I am in a position to select the table.

If you are willing to aid and abet a countryman (and Gilder thinks you

are,) please find the signature and address of your petitioner below.

Respectfully and truly yours.

MARK TWAIN,

67 Fifth Avenue, New York.

P. S.--A handful of choice (Southern) watermelon seeds would pleasantly

add to that lady's employments and give my table a corresponding lift.

His idea of business values had moderated considerably by the time

he had returned to Florence. He was not hopeless yet, but he was

clearly a good deal disheartened--anxious for freedom.

To Fred J. Hall, in New York:

FLORENCE May 30, '93

DEAR MR. HALL,--You were to cable me if you sold any machine royalties

--so I judge you have not succeeded.

This has depressed me. I have been looking over the past year's letters

and statements and am depressed still more.

I am terribly tired of business. I am by nature and disposition unfitted

for it and I want to get out of it. I am standing on the Mount Morris

volcano with help from the machine a long way off--doubtless a long way

further off than the Connecticut Co. imagines.

Now here is my idea for getting out.

The firm owes Mrs. Clemens and me--I do not know quite how much, but it

is about $170,000 or $175,000, I suppose (I make this guess from the

documents here, whose technicalities confuse me horribly.)

The firm owes other sums, but there is stock and cash assets to cover the

entire indebtedness and $116,679.20 over. Is that it? In addition we

have the L. A. L. plates and copyright, worth more than $130,000--is

that correct?

That is to say, we have property worth about $250,000 above indebtedness,

I suppose--or, by one of your estimates, $300,000? The greater part of

the first debts to me is in notes paying 6 percent. The rest (the old

$70,000 or whatever it is) pays no interest.

Now then, will Harper or Appleton, or Putnam give me $200,000 for those

debts and my two-thirds interest in the firm? (The firm of course taking

the Mount Morris and all such obligations off my hands and leaving me

clear of all responsibility.)

I don't want much money. I only want first class notes--$200,000 worth

of them at 6 per cent, payable monthly;--yearly notes, renewable annually

for 3 years, with $5,000 of the principal payable at the beginning and

middle of each year. After that, the notes renewable annually and

(perhaps) a larger part of the principal payable semi-annually.

Please advise me and suggest alterations and emendations of the above

scheme, for I need that sort of help, being ignorant of business and not

able to learn a single detail of it.

Such a deal would make it easy for a big firm to pour in a big cash

capital and jump L. A. L. up to enormous prosperity. Then your one-third

would be a fortune--and I hope to see that day!

I enclose an authority to use with Whitmore in case you have sold any

royalties. But if you can't make this deal don't make any. Wait a

little and see if you can't make the deal. Do make the deal if you

possibly can. And if any presence shall be necessary in order to

complete it I will come over, though I hope it can be done without that.

Get me out of business!

And I will be yours forever gratefully,

S. L. CLEMENS.

My idea is, that I am offering my 2/3 of L. A. L. and the business for

thirty or forty thousand dollars. Is that it?

P. S. S. The new firm could retain my books and reduce them to a

10 percent royalty. S. L. C.

To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

VILLA VIVIANI, SETTIGNANO (FLORENCE)

June 9, '93.

DEAR JOE,--The sea voyage set me up and I reached here May 27 in

tolerable condition--nothing left but weakness, cough all gone.

Old Sir Henry Layard was here the other day, visiting our neighbor Janet

Ross, daughter of Lady Duff Gordon, and since then I have been reading

his account of the adventures of his youth in the far East. In a

footnote he has something to say about a sailor which I thought might

interest you--viz:

"This same quartermaster was celebrated among the English in Mesopotamia

for an entry which he made in his log-book-after a perilous storm; 'The

windy and watery elements raged. Tears and prayers was had recourse to,

but was of no manner of use. So we hauled up the anchor and got round

the point.'"

There--it isn't Ned Wakeman; it was before his day.

With love,

MARK.

They closed Villa Viviani in June and near the end of the month

arrived in Munich in order that Mrs. Clemens might visit some of the

German baths. The next letter is written by her and shows her deep

sympathy with Hall in his desperate struggle. There have been few

more unselfish and courageous women in history than Mark Twain's

wife.

From Mrs. Clemens to Mr. Hall, in New York:

June 27th 1893

MUNICH.

DEAR MR. HALL,--Your letter to Mr. Clemens of June 16th has just reached

here; as he has gone to Berlin for Clara I am going to send you just a

line in answer to it.

Mr. Clemens did not realize what trouble you would be in when his letter

should reach you or he would not have sent it just then. I hope you will

not worry any more than you can help. Do not let our interests weigh on

you too heavily. We both know you will, as you always have, look in

every way to the best interests of all.

I think Mr. Clemens is right in feeling that he should get out of

business, that he is not fitted for it; it worries him too much.

But he need be in no haste about it, and of course, it would be the very

farthest from his desire to imperil, in the slightest degree, your

interests in order to save his own.

I am sure that I voice his wish as well as mine when I say that he would

simply like you to bear in mind the fact that he greatly desires to be

released from his present anxiety and worry, at a time when it shall not

endanger your interest or the safety of the business.

I am more sorry than I can express that this letter of Mr. Clemens'

should have reached you when you were struggling under such terrible

pressure. I hope now that the weight is not quite so heavy. He would

not have written you about the money if he had known that it was an

inconvenience for you to send it. He thought the book-keeper whose duty

it is to forward it had forgotten.

We can draw on Mr. Langdon for money for a few weeks until things are a

little easier with you. As Mr. Clemens wrote you we would say "do not

send us any more money at present" if we were not afraid to do so. I

will say, however, do not trouble yourself if for a few weeks you are not

able to send the usual amount.

Mr. Clemens and I have the greatest possible desire, not to increase in

any way your burdens, and sincerely wish we might aid you.

I trust my brother may be able, in his talk with you, to throw some

helpful light on the situation.

Hoping you will see a change for the better and begin to reap the fruit

of your long and hard labor.

Believe me

Very Cordially yours

OLIVIA L. CLEMENS.

Hall, naturally, did not wish to be left alone with the business. He

realized that his credit would suffer, both at the bank and with the

public, if his distinguished partner should retire. He wrote, therefore,

proposing as an alternate that they dispose of the big subscription set

that was swamping them. It was a good plan--if it would work--and we

find Clemens entering into it heartily.

To Fred J. Hall, in New York:

MUNICH, July 3, '93.

DEAR MR. HALL,--You make a suggestion which has once or twice flitted

dimly through my mind heretofore to wit, sell L. A. L.

I like that better than the other scheme, for it is no doubt feasible,

whereas the other is perhaps not.

The firm is in debt, but L. A. L. is free--and not only free but has

large money owing to it. A proposition to sell that by itself to a big

house could be made without embarrassment we merely confess that we

cannot spare capital from the rest of the business to run it on the huge

scale necessary to make it an opulent success.

It will be selling a good thing--for somebody; and it will be getting rid

of a load which we are clearly not able to carry. Whoever buys will have

a noble good opening--a complete equipment, a well organized business,

a capable and experienced manager, and enterprise not experimental but

under full sail, and immediately able to pay 50 per cent a year on every

dollar the publisher shall actually invest in it--I mean in making and

selling the books.

I am miserably sorry to be adding bothers and torments to the over-supply

which you already have in these hideous times, but I feel so troubled,

myself, considering the dreary fact that we are getting deeper and deeper

in debt and the L. A. L. getting to be a heavier and heavier burden all

the time, that I must bestir myself and seek a way of relief.

It did not occur to me that in selling out I would injure you--for that I

am not going to do. But to sell L. A. L. will not injure you it will put

you in better shape.

Sincerely Yours

S. L. CLEMENS.

To Fred J. Hall, in New York:

July 8, '92.

DEAR MR. HALL,--I am sincerely glad you are going to sell L. A. L. I am

glad you are shutting off the agents, and I hope the fatal book will be

out of our hands before it will be time to put them on again. With

nothing but our non-existent capital to work with the book has no value

for us, rich a prize as it will be to any competent house that gets it.

I hope you are making an effort to sell before you discharge too many

agents, for I suppose the agents are a valuable part of the property.

We have been stopping in Munich for awhile, but we shall make a break for

some country resort in a few days now.

Sincerely Yours

S. L. C.

July 8

P. S. No, I suppose I am wrong in suggesting that you wait a moment

before discharging your L. A. L. agents--in fact I didn't mean that.

I judge your only hope of salvation is in discharging them all at once,

since it is their commissions that threaten to swamp us. It is they who

have eaten up the $14,000 I left with you in such a brief time, no doubt.

I feel panicky.

I think the sale might be made with better advantage, however, now, than

later when the agents have got out of the purchaser's reach.

S. L. C.

P. S. No monthly report for many months.

Those who are old enough to remember the summer of 1893 may recall

it as a black financial season. Banks were denying credit,

businesses were forced to the wall. It was a poor time to float any

costly enterprise. The Chicago company who was trying to build the

machines made little progress. The book business everywhere was

bad. In a brief note following the foregoing letters Clemens wrote

Hall:

"It is now past the middle of July and no cablegram to say the

machine is finished. We are afraid you are having miserable days

and worried nights, and we sincerely wish we could relieve you, but

it is all black with us and we don't know any helpful thing to say

or do."

He inclosed some kind of manuscript proposition for John Brisben

Walker, of the Cosmopolitan, with the comment: "It is my ingenious

scheme to protect the family against the alms-house for one more

year--and after that--well, goodness knows! I have never felt so

desperate in my life--and good reason, for I haven't got a penny to

my name, and Mrs. Clemens hasn't enough laid up with Langdon to keep

us two months."

It was like Mark Twain, in the midst of all this turmoil, to project

an entirely new enterprise; his busy mind was always visioning

success in unusual undertakings, regardless of immediate conditions

and the steps necessary to achievement.

To Fred J. Hall, in New York:

July 26, '93.

DEAR MR. HALL,--..... I hope the machine will be finished this month;

but it took me four years and cost me $100,000 to finish the other

machine after it was apparently entirely complete and setting type like a

house-afire.

I wonder what they call "finished." After it is absolutely perfect it

can't go into a printing-office until it has had a month's wear, running

night and day, to get the bearings smooth, I judge.

I may be able to run over about mid-October. Then if I find you relieved

of L. A. L. we will start a magazine inexpensive, and of an entirely

unique sort. Arthur Stedman and his father editors of it. Arthur could

do all the work, merely submitting it to his father for approval.

The first number should pay--and all subsequent ones--25 cents a number.

Cost of first number (20,000 copies) $2,000. Give most of them away,

sell the rest. Advertising and other expenses--cost unknown. Send one

to all newspapers--it would get a notice--favorable, too.

But we cannot undertake it until L. A. L, is out of the way. With our

hands free and some capital to spare, we could make it hum.

Where is the Shelley article? If you have it on hand, keep it and I will

presently tell you what to do with it.

Don't forget to tell me.

Yours Sincerely

S. L. C.

The Shelley article mentioned in this letter was the "Defense of

Harriet Sheller," one of the very best of his essays. How he could

have written this splendid paper at a time of such distraction

passes comprehension. Furthermore, it is clear that he had revised,

indeed rewritten, the long story of Pudd'nhead Wilson.

To Fred J. Hall, in New York:

July 30, '93.

DEAR MR. HALL,--This time "Pudd'nhead Wilson" is a success! Even Mrs.

Clemens, the most difficult of critics, confesses it, and without

reserves or qualifications. Formerly she would not consent that it be

published either before or after my death. I have pulled the twins apart

and made two individuals of them; I have sunk them out of sight, they are

mere flitting shadows, now, and of no importance; their story has

disappeared from the book. Aunt Betsy Hale has vanished wholly, leaving

not a trace behind; aunt Patsy Cooper and her daughter Rowena have almost

disappeared--they scarcely walk across the stage. The whole story is

centered on the murder and the trial; from the first chapter the movement

is straight ahead without divergence or side-play to the murder and the

trial; everything that is done or said or that happens is a preparation

for those events. Therefore, 3 people stand up high, from beginning to

end, and only 3--Pudd'nhead, "Tom" Driscoll, and his nigger mother,

Roxana; none of the others are important, or get in the way of the story

or require the reader's attention. Consequently, the scenes and episodes

which were the strength of the book formerly are stronger than ever, now.

When I began this final reconstruction the story contained 81,500 words,

now it contains only 58,000. I have knocked out everything that delayed

the march of the story--even the description of a Mississippi steamboat.

There's no weather in, and no scenery--the story is stripped for flight!

Now, then what is she worth? The amount of matter is but 3,000 words

short of the American Claimant, for which the syndicate paid $12,500.

There was nothing new in that story, but the finger-prints in this one

is virgin ground--absolutely fresh, and mighty curious and interesting

to everybody.

I don't want any more syndicating--nothing short of $20,000, anyway, and

that I can't get--but won't you see how much the Cosmopolitan will stand?

Do your best for me, for I do not sleep these nights, for visions of the

poor-house.

This in spite of the hopeful tone of yours of 11th to Langdon (just

received) for in me hope is very nearly expiring. Everything does look

so blue, so dismally blue!

By and by I shall take up the Rhone open-boat voyage again, but not now

--we are going to be moving around too much. I have torn up some of it,

but still have 15,000 words that Mrs. Clemens approves of, and that I

like. I may go at it in Paris again next winter, but not unless I know I

can write it to suit me.

Otherwise I shall tackle Adam once more, and do him in a kind of a

friendly and respectful way that will commend him to the Sunday schools.

I've been thinking out his first life-days to-day and framing his

childish and ignorant impressions and opinions for him.

Will ship Pudd'nhead in a few days. When you get it cable

Mark Twain

Care Brownship, London

Received.

I mean to ship "Pudd'nhead Wilson" to you-say, tomorrow. It'll furnish

me hash for awhile I reckon. I am almost sorry it is finished; it was

good entertainment to work at it, and kept my mind away from things.

We leave here in about ten days, but the doctors have changed our plans

again. I think we shall be in Bohemia or thereabouts till near the end

of September, then go to Paris and take a rest.

Yours Sincerely

S. L. C.

P. S. Mrs. Clemens has come in since, and read your letter and is deeply

distressed. She thinks that in some letter of mine I must have

reproached you. She says it is wonderful that you have kept the ship

afloat in this storm that has seen fleets and fleets go down; that from

what she learns of the American business-situation from her home letters

you have accomplished a marvel in the circumstances, and that she cannot

bear to have a word said to you that shall voice anything but praise and

the heartiest appreciation--and not the shadow of a reproach will she

allow.

I tell her I didn't reproach you and never thought of such a thing. And

I said I would break open my letter and say so.

Mrs. Clemens says I must tell you not to send any money for a month or

two--so that you may be afforded what little relief is in our power.

All right--I'm willing; (this is honest) but I wish Brer Chatto would

send along his little yearly contribution. I dropped him a line about

another matter a week ago--asked him to subscribe for the Daily News for

me--you see I wanted to remind him in a covert way that it was pay-up

time--but doubtless I directed the letter to you or some one else, for I

don't hear from him and don't get any Daily News either.

To Fred J. Hall, in New York:

Aug. 6, '93.

DEAR MR. HALL,--I am very sorry--it was thoughtless in me. Let the

reports go. Send me once a month two items, and two only:

Cash liabilities--(so much)

Cash assets--(so much)

I can perceive the condition of the business at a glance, then, and that

will be sufficient.

Here we never see a newspaper, but even if we did I could not come

anywhere near appreciating or correctly estimating the tempest you have

been buffeting your way through--only the man who is in it can do that

--but I have tried not to burden you thoughtlessly or wantonly. I have

been wrought and unsettled in mind by apprehensions, and that is a thing

that is not helpable when one is in a strange land and sees his resources

melt down to a two months' supply and can't see any sure daylight beyond.

The bloody machine offered but a doubtful outlook--and will still offer

nothing much better for a long time to come; for when Davis's "three

weeks" is up there's three months' tinkering to follow I guess. That is

unquestionably the boss machine of the world, but is the toughest one on

prophets, when it is in an incomplete state, that has ever seen the

light. Neither Davis nor any other man can foretell with any

considerable approach to certainty when it will be ready to get down to

actual work in a printing office.

[No signature.]

Three days after the foregoing letter was written he wrote, briefly:

"Great Scott but it's a long year-for you and me! I never knew the

almanac to drag so. At least since I was finishing that other

machine.

"I watch for your letters hungrily--just as I used to watch for the

cablegram saying the machine's finished; but when 'next week

certainly' swelled into 'three weeks sure' I recognized the old

familiar tune I used to hear so much. Ward don't know what

sick-heartedness is--but he is in a way to find out."

Always the quaint form of his humor, no matter how dark the way.

We may picture him walking the floor, planning, scheming, and

smoking--always smoking--trying to find a way out. It was not the

kind of scheming that many men have done under the circumstances;

not scheming to avoid payment of debts, but to pay them.

To Fred J. Hall, in New York:

Aug. 14, '93

DEAR MR. HALL,--I am very glad indeed if you and Mr. Langdon are able to

see any daylight ahead. To me none is visible. I strongly advise that

every penny that comes in shall be applied to paying off debts. I may be

in error about this, but it seems to me that we have no other course

open. We can pay a part of the debts owing to outsiders--none to the

Clemenses. In very prosperous times we might regard our stock and

copyrights as assets sufficient, with the money owing to us, to square up

and quit even, but I suppose we may not hope for such luck in the present

condition of things.

What I am mainly hoping for, is to save my royalties. If they come into

danger I hope you will cable me, so that I can come over and try to save

them, for if they go I am a beggar.

I would sail to-day if I had anybody to take charge of my family and help

them through the difficult journeys commanded by the doctors. I may be

able to sail ten days hence; I hope so, and expect so.

We can never resurrect the L. A. L. I would not spend any more money on

that book. You spoke, a while back, of trying to start it up again as a

preparation to disposing of it, but we are not in shape to venture that,

I think. It would require more borrowing, and we must not do that.

Yours Sincerely

S. L. C.

Aug. 16. I have thought, and thought, but I don't seem to arrive in any

very definite place. Of course you will not have an instant's safety

until the bank debts are paid. There is nothing to be thought of but to

hand over every penny as fast as it comes in--and that will be slow

enough! Or could you secure them by pledging part of our cash assets

and--

I am coming over, just as soon as I can get the family moved and settled.

S. L. C.