Sept. 4, 1874.
DEAR FRIEND,--I have been writing fifty pages of manuscript a day, on
an average, for sometime now, on a book (a story) and consequently
have been so wrapped up in it and so dead to anything else, that I
have fallen mighty short in letter-writing. But night before last I
discovered that that day's chapter was a failure, in conception, moral
truth to nature, and execution--enough blemish to impair the excellence
of almost any chapter--and so I must burn up the day's work and do it
all over again. It was plain that I had worked myself out, pumped myself
dry. So I knocked off, and went to playing billiards for a change. I
haven't had an idea or a fancy for two days, now--an excellent time to
write to friends who have plenty of ideas and fancies of their own, and
so will prefer the offerings of the heart before those of the head. Day
after to-morrow I go to a neighboring city to see a five-act-drama of
mine brought out, and suggest amendments in it, and would about as soon
spend a night in the Spanish Inquisition as sit there and be tortured
with all the adverse criticisms I can contrive to imagine the audience
is indulging in. But whether the play be successful or not, I hope I
shall never feel obliged to see it performed a second time. My interest
in my work dies a sudden and violent death when the work is done.
I have invented and patented a pretty good sort of scrap-book (I
think) but I have backed down from letting it be known as mine just
at present--for I can't stand being under discussion on a play and a
scrap-book at the same time!
I shall be away two days, and then return to take our tribe to New York,
where we shall remain five days buying furniture for the new house, and
then go to Hartford and settle solidly down for the winter. After all
that fallow time I ought to be able to go to work again on the book. We
shall reach Hartford about the middle of September, I judge.
We have spent the past four months up here on top of a breezy hill, six
hundred feet high, some few miles from Elmira, N. Y., and overlooking
that town; (Elmira is my wife's birthplace and that of Susie and the
new baby). This little summer house on the hill-top (named Quarry Farm
because there's a quarry on it,) belongs to my wife's sister, Mrs.
Crane.
A photographer came up the other day and wanted to make some views, and
I shall send you the result per this mail.
My study is a snug little octagonal den, with a coal-grate, 6 big
windows, one little one, and a wide doorway (the latter opening upon
the distant town.) On hot days I spread the study wide open, anchor my
papers down with brickbats and write in the midst of the hurricanes,
clothed in the same thin linen we make shirts of. The study is nearly on
the peak of the hill; it is right in front of the little perpendicular
wall of rock left where they used to quarry stones. On the peak of the
hill is an old arbor roofed with bark and covered with the vine you call
the “American Creeper”--its green is almost bloodied with red. The
Study is 30 yards below the old arbor and 200 yards above the
dwelling-house-it is remote from all noises.....
Now isn't the whole thing pleasantly situated?
In the picture of me in the study you glimpse (through the left-hand
window) the little rock bluff that rises behind the pond, and the bases
of the little trees on top of it. The small square window is over
the fireplace; the chimney divides to make room for it. Without the
stereoscope it looks like a framed picture. All the study windows have
Venetian blinds; they long ago went out of fashion in America but they
have not been replaced with anything half as good yet.
The study is built on top of a tumbled rock-heap that has
morning-glories climbing about it and a stone stairway leading down
through and dividing it.
There now--if you have not time to read all this, turn it over to “Jock”
and drag in the judge to help.
Mrs. Clemens must put in a late picture of Susie--a picture which she
maintains is good, but which I think is slander on the child.
We revisit the Rutland Street home many a time in fancy, for we hold
every individual in it in happy and grateful memory.
Goodbye,
Your friend,
SAML. L. CLEMENS.
P. S.--I gave the P.O. Department a blast in the papers about sending
misdirected letters of mine back to the writers for reshipment, and
got a blast in return, through a New York daily, from the New York
postmaster. But I notice that misdirected letters find me, now, without
any unnecessary fooling around.
The new house in Hartford was now ready to be occupied, and in a
letter to Howells, written a little more than a fortnight after the
foregoing, we find them located in “part” of it. But what seems
more interesting is that paragraph of the letter which speaks of
close friendly relations still existing with the Warners, in that it
refutes a report current at this time that there was a break between
Clemens and Warner over the rights in the Sellers play. There was,
in fact, no such rupture. Warner, realizing that he had no hand in
the character of Sellers, and no share in the work of dramatization,
generously yielded all claim to any part of the returns.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, Sept. 20, 1876.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--All right, my boy, send proof sheets here. I amend
dialect stuff by talking and talking and talking it till it sounds
right--and I had difficulty with this negro talk because a negro
sometimes (rarely) says “goin” and sometimes “gwyne,” and they make just
such discrepancies in other words--and when you come to reproduce
them on paper they look as if the variation resulted from the writer's
carelessness. But I want to work at the proofs and get the dialect as
nearly right as possible.
We are in part of the new house. Goodness knows when we'll get in the
rest of it--full of workmen yet.
I worked a month at my play, and launched it in New York last Wednesday.
I believe it will go. The newspapers have been complimentary. It is
simply a setting for the one character, Col. Sellers--as a play I guess
it will not bear a critical assault in force.
The Warners are as charming as ever. They go shortly to the devil for a
year--(which is but a poetical way of saying they are going to afflict
themselves with the unsurpassable--(bad word) of travel for a spell.)
I believe they mean to go and see you, first-so they mean to start from
heaven to the other place; not from earth. How is that?
I think that is no slouch of a compliment--kind of a dim religious light
about it. I enjoy that sort of thing.
Yrs ever
MARK.
Raymond, in a letter to the Sun, stated that not “one line” of the
California dramatization had been used by Mark Twain, “except that
which was taken bodily from The Gilded Age.” Clemens himself, in a
statement that he wrote for the Hartford Post, but suppressed,
probably at the request of his wife, gave a full history of the
play's origin, a matter of slight interest to-day.
Sellers on the stage proved a great success. The play had no
special merit as a literary composition, but the character of
Sellers delighted the public, and both author and actor were richly
repaid for their entertainment.
XIV. LETTERS 1874. MISSISSIPPI CHAPTERS. VISITS TO BOSTON. A JOKE ON
ALDRICH.
“Couldn't you send me some such story as that colored one
for our January number--that is, within a month?” wrote
Howells, at the end of September, and during the week
following Mark Twain struggled hard to comply, but without
result. When the month was nearly up he wrote:
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Oct. 23, 1874.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I have delayed thus long, hoping I might do something
for the January number and Mrs. Clemens has diligently persecuted me
day by day with urgings to go to work and do that something, but it's
no use--I find I can't. We are in such a state of weary and endless
confusion that my head won't go. So I give it up.....
Yrs ever,
MARK.
But two hours later, when he had returned from one of the long walks
which he and Twichell so frequently took together, he told a
different story.
Later, P.M. HOME, 24th '74.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I take back the remark that I can't write for the Jan.
number. For Twichell and I have had a long walk in the woods and I got
to telling him about old Mississippi days of steam-boating glory and
grandeur as I saw them (during 5 years) from the pilothouse. He said
“What a virgin subject to hurl into a magazine!” I hadn't thought of
that before. Would you like a series of papers to run through 3 months
or 6 or 9?--or about 4 months, say?
Yrs ever,
MARK.
Howells himself had come from a family of pilots, and rejoiced in
the idea. A few days later Mark Twain forwarded the first
instalment of the new series--those wonderful chapters that begin,
now, with chapter four in the Mississippi book. Apparently he was
not without doubt concerning the manuscript, and accompanied it with
a brief line.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
DEAR HOWELLS,--Cut it, scarify it, reject it handle it with entire
freedom.
Yrs ever,
MARK.
But Howells had no doubts as to the quality of the new find. He
declared that the “piece” about the Mississippi was capital, that it
almost made the water in their ice-pitcher turn muddy as he read it.
“The sketch of the low-lived little town was so good that I could
have wished that there was more of it. I want the sketches, if you
can make them, every month.”
The “low-lived little town” was Hannibal, and the reader can turn to
the vivid description of it in the chapter already mentioned.
In the same letter Howells refers to a “letter from Limerick,” which
he declares he shall keep until he has shown it around--especially
to Aldrich and Osgood.
The “letter from Limerick” has to do with a special episode.
Mention has just been made of Mark Twain's walk with Twichell.
Frequently their walks were extended tramps, and once in a daring
moment one or the other of them proposed to walk to Boston. The
time was November, and the bracing air made the proposition seem
attractive. They were off one morning early, Twichell carrying a
little bag, and Clemens a basket of luncheon. A few days before,
Clemens had written Redpath that the Rev. J. H. Twichell and he
expected to start at eight o'clock Thursday morning “to walk to
Boston in twenty-four hours--or more. We shall telegraph Young's
Hotel for rooms Saturday night, in order to allow for a low average
of pedestrianism.”
They did not get quite to Boston. In fact, they got only a little
farther than the twenty-eight miles they made the first day.
Clemens could hardly walk next morning, but they managed to get to
North Ashford, where they took a carriage for the nearest railway
station. There they telegraphed to Redpath and Howells that they
would be in Boston that evening. Howells, of course, had a good
supper and good company awaiting them at his home, and the
pedestrians spent two happy days visiting and recounting their
adventures.
It was one morning, at his hotel, that Mark Twain wrote the Limerick
letter. It was addressed to Mrs. Clemens, but was really intended
for Howells and Twichell and the others whom it mentions. It was an
amusing fancy, rather than a letter, but it deserves place here.
*****
To Mrs. Clemens---intended for Howells, Aldrich, etc.