Orion Clemens had kept his job with Bliss only a short time. His mental
make-up was such that it was difficult for him to hold any position
long. He meant to do well, but he was unfortunate in his efforts. His
ideas were seldom practical, his nature was yielding and fickle. He had
returned to Keokuk presently, and being convinced there was a fortune
in chickens, had prevailed upon his brother to purchase for him a little
farm not far from the town. But the chicken business was not lively and
Orion kept the mail hot with manuscripts and propositions of every sort,
which he wanted his brother to take under advisement.
Certainly, to Mark Twain Orion Clemens was a trial. The letters of the
latter show that scarcely one of them but contains the outline of some
rainbow-chasing scheme, full of wild optimism, and the certainty that
somewhere just ahead lies the pot of gold. Only, now and then, there is
a letter of abject humiliation and complete surrender, when some golden
vision, some iridescent soap-bubble, had vanished at his touch. Such
depression did not last; by sunrise he was ready with a new dream, new
enthusiasm, and with a new letter inviting his “brother Sam's” interest
and investment. Yet, his fear of incurring his brother's displeasure
was pitiful, regardless of the fact that he constantly employed the very
means to insure that result. At one time Clemens made him sign a sworn
agreement that he would not suggest any plan or scheme of investment
for the period of twelve months. Orion must have kept this agreement. He
would have gone to the stake before he would have violated an oath,
but the stake would have probably been no greater punishment than his
sufferings that year.
On the whole, Samuel Clemens was surprisingly patient and considerate
with Orion, and there was never a time that he was not willing to help.
Yet there were bound to be moments of exasperation; and once, when
his mother, or sister, had written, suggesting that he encourage his
brother's efforts, he felt moved to write at considerable freedom.
*****
To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y.:
HARTFORD, Sunday, 1875.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I Saw Gov. Newell today and he said he was
still moving in the matter of Sammy's appointment--[As a West Point
cadet.]--and would stick to it till he got a result of a positive nature
one way or the other, but thus far he did not know whether to expect
success or defeat.
Ma, whenever you need money I hope you won't be backward about saying
so--you can always have it. We stint ourselves in some ways, but we have
no desire to stint you. And we don't intend to, either.
I can't “encourage” Orion. Nobody can do that, conscientiously, for the
reason that before one's letter has time to reach him he is off on some
new wild-goose chase. Would you encourage in literature a man who, the
older he grows the worse he writes? Would you encourage Orion in the
glaring insanity of studying law? If he were packed and crammed full of
law, it would be worthless lumber to him, for his is such a capricious
and ill-regulated mind that he would apply the principles of the law
with no more judgment than a child of ten years. I know what I am
saying. I laid one of the plainest and simplest of legal questions
before Orion once, and the helpless and hopeless mess he made of it was
absolutely astonishing. Nothing aggravates me so much as to have Orion
mention law or literature to me.
Well, I cannot encourage him to try the ministry, because he would
change his religion so fast that he would have to keep a traveling agent
under wages to go ahead of him to engage pulpits and board for him.
I cannot conscientiously encourage him to do anything but potter around
his little farm and put in his odd hours contriving new and impossible
projects at the rate of 365 a year--which is his customary average.
He says he did well in Hannibal! Now there is a man who ought to be
entirely satisfied with the grandeurs, emoluments and activities of a
hen farm--
If you ask me to pity Orion, I can do that. I can do it every day
and all day long. But one can't “encourage” quick-silver, because the
instant you put your finger on it it isn't there. No, I am saying
too much--he does stick to his literary and legal aspirations; and
he naturally would select the very two things which he is wholly and
preposterously unfitted for. If I ever become able, I mean to put Orion
on a regular pension without revealing the fact that it is a pension.
That is best for him. Let him consider it a periodical loan, and pay
interest out of the principal. Within a year's time he would be looking
upon himself as a benefactor of mine, in the way of furnishing me a
good permanent investment for money, and that would make him happy and
satisfied with himself. If he had money he would share with me in a
moment and I have no disposition to be stingy with him.
Affly
SAM.
Livy sends love.
The New Orleans plan was not wholly dead at this time. Howells
wrote near the end of January that the matter was still being
debated, now and then, but was far from being decided upon. He
hoped to go somewhere with Mrs. Howells for a brief time in March,
he said. Clemens, in haste, replied:
*****
\
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Jan. 26, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--When Mrs. Clemens read your letter she said: “Well,
then, wherever they go, in March, the direction will be southward and
so they must give us a visit on the way.” I do not know what sort of
control you may be under, but when my wife speaks as positively as that,
I am not in the habit of talking back and getting into trouble. Situated
as I am, I would not be able to understand, now, how you could pass by
this town without feeling that you were running a wanton risk and doing
a daredevil thing. I consider it settled that you are to come in March,
and I would be sincerely sorry to learn that you and Mrs. Howells feel
differently about it.
The piloting material has been uncovering itself by degrees, until
it has exposed such a huge hoard to my view that a whole book will be
required to contain it if I use it. So I have agreed to write the book
for Bliss.--[The book idea was later given up for the time being.]--I
won't be able to run the articles in the Atlantic later than the
September number, for the reason that a subscription book issued in the
fall has a much larger sale than if issued at any other season of the
year. It is funny when I reflect that when I originally wrote you and
proposed to do from 6 to 9 articles for the magazine, the vague thought
in my mind was that 6 might exhaust the material and 9 would be pretty
sure to do it. Or rather it seems to me that that was my thought--can't
tell at this distance. But in truth 9 chapters don't now seem to more
than open up the subject fairly and start the yarn to wagging.
I have been sick a-bed several days, for the first time in 21 years.
How little confirmed invalids appreciate their advantages. I was able
to read the English edition of the Greville Memoirs through without
interruption, take my meals in bed, neglect all business without a pang,
and smoke 18 cigars a day. I try not to look back upon these 21 years
with a feeling of resentment, and yet the partialities of Providence do
seem to me to be slathered around (as one may say) without that gravity
and attention to detail which the real importance of the matter would
seem to suggest.
Yrs ever
MARK.
The New Orleans idea continued to haunt the letters. The thought of
drifting down the Mississippi so attracted both Clemens and Howells,
that they talked of it when they met, and wrote of it when they were
separated. Howells, beset by uncertainties, playfully tried to put
the responsibility upon his wife. Once he wrote: “She says in the
noblest way, 'Well, go to New Orleans, if you want to so much' (you
know the tone). I suppose it will do if I let you know about the
middle of February?”
But they had to give it up in the end. Howells wrote that he had
been under the weather, and on half work the whole winter. He did
not feel that he had earned his salary, he said, or that he was
warranted in taking a three weeks' pleasure trip. Clemens offered
to pay all the expenses of the trip, but only indefinite
postponement followed. It would be seven years more before Mark
Twain would return to the river, and then not with Howells.
In a former chapter mention has been made of Charles Warren
Stoddard, whom Mark Twain had known in his California days. He was
fond of Stoddard, who was a facile and pleasing writer of poems and
descriptive articles. During the period that he had been acting as
Mark Twain's secretary in London, he had taken pleasure in
collecting for him the news reports of the celebrated Tichborn
Claimant case, then in the English courts. Clemens thought of
founding a story on it, and did, in fact, use the idea, though 'The
American Claimant,' which he wrote years later, had little or no
connection with the Tichborn episode.
*****
To C. W. Stoddard:
HARTFORD, Feb. 1, 1875.
DEAR CHARLEY,--All right about the Tichborn scrapbooks; send them along
when convenient. I mean to have the Beecher-Tilton trial scrap-book as a
companion.....
I am writing a series of 7-page articles for the Atlantic at $20 a page;
but as they do not pay anybody else as much as that, I do not complain
(though at the same time I do swear that I am not content.) However the
awful respectability of the magazine makes up.
I have cut your articles about San Marco out of a New York paper (Joe
Twichell saw it and brought it home to me with loud admiration,) and
sent it to Howells. It is too bad to fool away such good literature in a
perishable daily journal.
Do remember us kindly to Lady Hardy and all that rare family--my wife
and I so often have pleasant talks about them.
Ever your friend,
SAML. L. CLEMENS.
The price received by Mark Twain for the Mississippi papers, as
quoted in this letter, furnishes us with a realizing sense of the
improvement in the literary market, with the advent of a flood of
cheap magazines and the Sunday newspaper. The Atlantic page
probably contained about a thousand words, which would make his
price average, say, two cents per word. Thirty years later, when
his fame was not much more extended, his pay for the same matter
would have been fifteen times as great, that is to say, at the rate
of thirty cents per word. But in that early time there were no
Sunday magazines--no literary magazines at all except the Atlantic,
and Harpers, and a few fashion periodicals. Probably there were
news-stands, but it is hard to imagine what they must have looked
like without the gay pictorial cover-femininity that to-day pleases
and elevates the public and makes author and artist affluent.
Clemens worked steadily on the river chapters, and Howells was
always praising him and urging him to go on. At the end of January
he wrote: “You're doing the science of piloting splendidly. Every
word's interesting. And don't you drop the series 'til you've got
every bit of anecdote and reminiscence into it.”
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Feb. 10, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Your praises of my literature gave me the solidest
gratification; but I never did have the fullest confidence in my
critical penetration, and now your verdict on S----- has knocked what
little I did have gully-west! I didn't enjoy his gush, but I thought a
lot of his similes were ever so vivid and good. But it's just my luck;
every time I go into convulsions of admiration over a picture and want
to buy it right away before I've lost the chance, some wretch who really
understands art comes along and damns it. But I don't mind. I would
rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have
got so much more of it.
I send you No. 5 today. I have written and re-written the first half of
it three different times, yesterday and today, and at last Mrs. Clemens
says it will do. I never saw a woman so hard to please about things she
doesn't know anything about.
Yours ever,
MARK.
Of course, the reference to his wife's criticism in this is tenderly
playful, as always--of a pattern with the severity which he pretends
for her in the next.
*****
To Mrs. W. D. Howells, in Boston:
1875
DEAR MRS. HOWELLS,--Mrs. Clemens is delighted to get the pictures, and
so am I. I can perceive in the group, that Mr. Howells is feeling as I
so often feel, viz: “Well, no doubt I am in the wrong, though I do not
know how or where or why--but anyway it will be safest to look meek, and
walk circumspectly for a while, and not discuss the thing.” And you look
exactly as Mrs. Clemens does after she has said, “Indeed I do not wonder
that you can frame no reply: for you know only too well, that your
conduct admits of no excuse, palliation or argument--none!”
I shall just delight in that group on account of the good old human
domestic spirit that pervades it--bother these family groups that put on
a state aspect to get their pictures taken in.
We want a heliotype made of our eldest daughter. How soft and rich and
lovely the picture is. Mr. Howells must tell me how to proceed in the
matter.
Truly Yours
SAM. L. CLEMENS.
In the next letter we have a picture of Susy--[This spelling of the
name was adopted somewhat later and much preferred. It appears as
“Susie” in most of the earlier letters.]--Clemens's third birthday,
certainly a pretty picture, and as sweet and luminous and tender
today as it was forty years ago-as it will be a hundred years hence,
if these lines should survive that long. The letter is to her uncle
Charles Langdon, the “Charlie” of the Quaker City. “Atwater” was
associated with the Langdon coal interests in Elmira. “The play”
is, of course, “The Gilded Age.”
*****
To Charles Langdon, in Elmira:
Mch. 19, 1875.
DEAR CHARLIE,--Livy, after reading your letter, used her severest form
of expression about Mr. Atwater--to wit: She did not “approve” of
his conduct. This made me shudder; for it was equivalent to Allie
Spaulding's saying “Mr. Atwater is a mean thing;” or Rev. Thomas
Beecher's saying “Damn that Atwater,” or my saying “I wish Atwater was
three hundred million miles in----!”
However, Livy does not often get into one of these furies, God be
thanked.
In Brooklyn, Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Chicago,
the play paid me an average of nine hundred dollars a week. In smaller
towns the average is $400 to $500.
This is Susie's birth-day. Lizzie brought her in at 8.30 this morning
(before we were up) hooded with a blanket, red curl-papers in her hair,
a great red japonica, in one hand (for Livy) and a yellow rose-bud
nestled in violets (for my buttonhole) in the other--and she looked
wonderfully pretty. She delivered her memorials and received her
birth-day kisses. Livy laid her japonica, down to get a better “holt”
for kissing--which Susie presently perceived, and became thoughtful:
then said sorrowfully, turning the great deeps of her eyes upon her
mother: “Don't you care for you wow?”
Right after breakfast we got up a rousing wood fire in the main hall (it
is a cold morning) illuminated the place with a rich glow from all the
globes of the newell chandelier, spread a bright rug before the fire,
set a circling row of chairs (pink ones and dove-colored) and in the
midst a low invalid-table covered with a fanciful cloth and laden with
the presents--a pink azalia in lavish bloom from Rosa; a gold inscribed
Russia-leather bible from Patrick and Mary; a gold ring (inscribed) from
“Maggy Cook;” a silver thimble (inscribed with motto and initials) from
Lizzie; a rattling mob of Sunday clad dolls from Livy and Annie, and a
Noah's Ark from me, containing 200 wooden animals such as only a human
being could create and only God call by name without referring to the
passenger list. Then the family and the seven servants assembled there,
and Susie and the “Bay” arrived in state from above, the Bay's head
being fearfully and wonderfully decorated with a profusion of blazing
red flowers and overflowing cataracts of lycopodium. Wee congratulatory
notes accompanied the presents of the servants. I tell you it was
a great occasion and a striking and cheery group, taking all the
surroundings into account and the wintry aspect outside.
(Remainder missing.)
There was to be a centennial celebration that year of the battles of
Lexington and Concord, and Howells wrote, urging Clemens and his
wife to visit them and attend it. Mrs. Clemens did not go, and
Clemens and Howells did not go, either--to the celebration. They
had their own ideas about getting there, but found themselves unable
to board the thronged train at Concord, and went tramping about in
the cold and mud, hunting a conveyance, only to return at length to
the cheer of the home, defeated and rather low in spirits.
Twichell, who went on his own hook, had no such difficulties. To
Howells, Mark Twain wrote the adventures of this athletic and
strenuous exponent of the gospel.
The “Winnie” mentioned in this letter was Howells's daughter
Winifred. She had unusual gifts, but did not live to develop them.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD. Apl. 23, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I've got Mrs. Clemens's picture before me, and hope I
shall not forget to send it with this.
Joe Twichell preached morning and evening here last Sunday; took
midnight train for Boston; got an early breakfast and started by rail
at 7.30 A. M. for Concord; swelled around there until 1 P. M., seeing
everything; then traveled on top of a train to Lexington; saw everything
there; traveled on top of a train to Boston, (with hundreds in company)
deluged with dust, smoke and cinders; yelled and hurrahed all the way
like a schoolboy; lay flat down to dodge numerous bridges, and sailed
into the depot, howling with excitement and as black as a chimney-sweep;
got to Young's Hotel at 7 P. M.; sat down in reading-room and
immediately fell asleep; was promptly awakened by a porter who supposed
he was drunk; wandered around an hour and a half; then took 9 P.
M. train, sat down in smoking car and remembered nothing more until
awakened by conductor as the train came into Hartford at 1.30 A. M.
Thinks he had simply a glorious time--and wouldn't have missed the
Centennial for the world. He would have run out to see us a moment at
Cambridge, but was too dirty. I wouldn't have wanted him there--his
appalling energy would have been an insufferable reproach to mild
adventurers like you and me.
Well, he is welcome to the good time he had--I had a deal better one. My
narrative has made Mrs. Clemens wish she could have been there.--When I
think over what a splendid good sociable time I had in your house I
feel ever so thankful to the wise providence that thwarted our several
ably-planned and ingenious attempts to get to Lexington. I am coming
again before long, and then she shall be of the party.
Now you said that you and Mrs. Howells could run down here nearly any
Saturday. Very well then, let us call it next Saturday, for a “starter.”
Can you do that? By that time it will really be spring and you
won't freeze. The birds are already out; a small one paid us a visit
yesterday. We entertained it and let it go again, Susie protesting.
The spring laziness is already upon me--insomuch that the spirit begins
to move me to cease from Mississippi articles and everything else and
give myself over to idleness until we go to New Orleans. I have one
article already finished, but somehow it doesn't seem as proper a
chapter to close with as the one already in your hands. I hope to get
in a mood and rattle off a good one to finish with--but just now all my
moods are lazy ones.
Winnie's literature sings through me yet! Surely that child has one of
these “futures” before her.
Now try to come--will you?