A Lively Skirmish in Indiana
(and thirty other similar headings.)
The items under those headings all bear date yesterday, Apl. 16 (refer
to your own paper)--and I give you my word of honor that that string of
commonplace stuff was everything there was in the telegraphic columns
that a body could call news. Well, said I to myself this is getting
pretty dull; this is getting pretty dry; there don't appear to be
anything going on anywhere; has this progressive nation gone to sleep?
Have I got to stand another month of this torpidity before I can begin
to browse among the lively capitals of Europe?
But never mind-things may revive while I am away. During the last two
months my next-door neighbor, Chas. Dudley Warner, has dropped
his “Back-Log Studies,” and he and I have written a bulky novel in
partnership. He has worked up the fiction and I have hurled in the
facts. I consider it one of the most astonishing novels that ever was
written. Night after night I sit up reading it over and over again and
crying. It will be published early in the Fall, with plenty of pictures.
Do you consider this an advertisement?--and if so, do you charge for
such things when a man is your friend?
Yours truly,
SAML. L. CLEMENS,
“MARK TWAIN,”
An amusing, even if annoying, incident happened about the time of
Mark Twain's departure. A man named Chew related to Twichell a most
entertaining occurrence. Twichell saw great possibilities in it,
and suggested that Mark Twain be allowed to make a story of it,
sharing the profits with Chew. Chew agreed, and promised to send
the facts, carefully set down. Twichell, in the mean time, told the
story to Clemens, who was delighted with it and strongly tempted to
write it at once, while he was in the spirit, without waiting on
Chew. Fortunately, he did not do so, for when Chew's material came
it was in the form of a clipping, the story having been already
printed in some newspaper. Chew's knowledge of literary ethics
would seem to have been slight. He thought himself entitled to
something under the agreement with Twichell. Mark Twain, by this
time in London, naturally had a different opinion.
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
LONDON, June 9, '73.
DEAR OLD JOE,--I consider myself wholly at liberty to decline to pay
Chew anything, and at the same time strongly tempted to sue him into the
bargain for coming so near ruining me. If he hadn't happened to send me
that thing in print, I would have used the story (like an innocent fool)
and would straightway have been hounded to death as a plagiarist. It
would have absolutely destroyed me. I cannot conceive of a man being
such a hopeless ass (after serving as a legislative reporter, too) as to
imagine that I or any other literary man in his senses would consent to
chew over old stuff that had already been in print. If that man weren't
an infant in swaddling clothes, his only reply to our petition would
have been, “It has been in print.” It makes me as mad as the very Old
Harry every time I think of Mr. Chew and the frightfully narrow escape I
have had at his hands. Confound Mr. Chew, with all my heart! I'm willing
that he should have ten dollars for his trouble of warming over his cold
victuals--cheerfully willing to that--but no more. If I had had him near
when his letter came, I would have got out my tomahawk and gone for him.
He didn't tell the story half as well as you did, anyhow.
I wish to goodness you were here this moment--nobody in our parlor but
Livy and me,--and a very good view of London to the fore. We have a
luxuriously ample suite of apartments in the Langham Hotel, 3rd floor,
our bedroom looking straight up Portland Place and our parlor having
a noble array of great windows looking out upon both streets (Portland
Place and the crook that joins it to Regent Street.)