In spite of his success with the Sellers play and his itch
to follow it up, Mark Twain realized what he believed to be
his literary limitations. All his life he was inclined to
consider himself wanting in the finer gifts of character-
shading and delicate portrayal. Remembering Huck Finn, and
the rare presentation of Joan of Arc, we may not altogether
agree with him. Certainly, he was never qualified to
delineate those fine artificialities of life which we are
likely to associate with culture, and perhaps it was
something of this sort that caused the hesitation confessed
in the letter that follows. Whether the plan suggested
interested Howells or not we do not know. In later years
Howells wrote a novel called The Story of a Play; this may
have been its beginning.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, Apl. 26, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--An actor named D. H. Harkins has been here to ask me
to put upon paper a 5-act play which he has been mapping out in his mind
for 3 or 4 years. He sat down and told me his plot all through, in a
clear, bright way, and I was a deal taken with it; but it is a line of
characters whose fine shading and artistic development requires an abler
hand than mine; so I easily perceived that I must not make the attempt.
But I liked the man, and thought there was a good deal of stuff in him;
and therefore I wanted his play to be written, and by a capable hand,
too. So I suggested you, and said I would write and see if you would be
willing to undertake it. If you like the idea, he will call upon you
in the course of two or three weeks and describe his plot and his
characters. Then if it doesn't strike you favorably, of course you can
simply decline; but it seems to me well worth while that you should hear
what he has to say. You could also “average” him while he talks, and
judge whether he could play your priest--though I doubt if any man can
do that justice.
Shan't I write him and say he may call? If you wish to communicate
directly with him instead, his address is “Larchmont Manor, Westchester
Co., N. Y.”
Do you know, the chill of that 19th of April seems to be in my bones
yet? I am inert and drowsy all the time. That was villainous weather for
a couple of wandering children to be out in.
Ys ever
MARK.
The sinister typewriter did not find its way to Howells for nearly a
year. Meantime, Mark Twain had refused to allow the manufacturers
to advertise his ownership. He wrote to them:
HARTFORD, March 19, 1875.
Please do not use my name in any way. Please do not even divulge the
fact that I own a machine. I have entirely stopped using the typewriter,
for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody
without receiving a request by return mail that I would not only
describe the machine, but state what progress I had made in the use of
it, etc., etc. I don't like to write letters, and so I don't want people
to know I own this curiosity-breeding little joker.
Three months later the machine was still in his possession. Bliss
had traded a twelve-dollar saddle for it, but apparently showed
little enthusiasm in his new possession.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
June 25, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I told Patrick to get some carpenters and box the
machine and send it to you--and found that Bliss had sent for the
machine and earned it off.
I have been talking to you and writing to you as if you were present
when I traded the machine to Bliss for a twelve-dollar saddle worth $25
(cheating him outrageously, of course--but conscience got the upper hand
again and I told him before I left the premises that I'd pay for the
saddle if he didn't like the machine--on condition that he donate said
machine to a charity)
This was a little over five weeks ago--so I had long ago concluded
that Bliss didn't want the machine and did want the saddle--wherefore I
jumped at the chance of shoving the machine off onto you, saddle or no
saddle so I got the blamed thing out of my sight.
The saddle hangs on Tara's walls down below in the stable, and the
machine is at Bliss's grimly pursuing its appointed mission, slowly and
implacably rotting away another man's chances for salvation.
I have sent Bliss word not to donate it to a charity (though it is a
pity to fool away a chance to do a charity an ill turn,) but to let me
know when he has got his dose, because I've got another candidate for
damnation. You just wait a couple of weeks and if you don't see the
Type-Writer come tilting along toward Cambridge with an unsatisfied
appetite in its eye, I lose my guess.
Don't you be mad about this blunder, Howells--it only comes of a bad
memory, and the stupidity which is inseparable from true genius. Nothing
intentionally criminal in it.
Yrs ever
MARK.
It was November when Howells finally fell under the baleful
influence of the machine. He wrote:
“The typewriter came Wednesday night, and is already beginning to
have its effect on me. Of course, it doesn't work: if I can
persuade some of the letters to get up against the ribbon they won't
get down again without digital assistance. The treadle refuses to
have any part or parcel in the performance; and I don't know how to
get the roller to turn with the paper. Nevertheless I have begun
several letters to My d-a-r lemans, as it prefers to spell your
respected name, and I don't despair yet of sending you something in
its beautiful handwriting--after I've had a man out from the agent's
to put it in order. It's fascinating in the meantime, and it wastes
my time like an old friend.”
The Clemens family remained in Hartford that summer, with the
exception of a brief season at Bateman's Point, R. I., near
Newport. By this time Mark Twain had taken up and finished the Tom
Sawyer story begun two years before. Naturally he wished Howells to
consider the MS.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, July 5th, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I have finished the story and didn't take the chap
beyond boyhood. I believe it would be fatal to do it in any shape but
autobiographically--like Gil Blas. I perhaps made a mistake in not
writing it in the first person. If I went on, now, and took him into
manhood, he would just like like all the one-horse men in literature and
the reader would conceive a hearty contempt for him. It is not a boy's
book, at all. It will only be read by adults. It is only written for
adults.
Moreover the book is plenty long enough as it stands. It is about 900
pages of MS, and may be 1000 when I shall have finished “working
up” vague places; so it would make from 130 to 150 pages of the
Atlantic--about what the Foregone Conclusion made, isn't it?
I would dearly like to see it in the Atlantic, but I doubt if it would
pay the publishers to buy the privilege, or me to sell it. Bret Harte
has sold his novel (same size as mine, I should say) to Scribner's
Monthly for $6,500 (publication to begin in September, I think,) and he
gets a royalty of 7 1/2 per cent from Bliss in book form afterwards.
He gets a royalty of ten per cent on it in England (issued in serial
numbers) and the same royalty on it in book form afterwards, and is to
receive an advance payment of five hundred pounds the day the first
No. of the serial appears. If I could do as well, here, and there, with
mine, it might possibly pay me, but I seriously doubt it though it is
likely I could do better in England than Bret, who is not widely known
there.
You see I take a vile, mercenary view of things--but then my household
expenses are something almost ghastly.
By and by I shall take a boy of twelve and run him on through life (in
the first person) but not Tom Sawyer--he would not be a good character
for it.
I wish you would promise to read the MS of Tom Sawyer some time, and
see if you don't really decide that I am right in closing with him as a
boy--and point out the most glaring defects for me. It is a tremendous
favor to ask, and I expect you to refuse and would be ashamed to expect
you to do otherwise. But the thing has been so many months in my mind
that it seems a relief to snake it out. I don't know any other person
whose judgment I could venture to take fully and entirely. Don't
hesitate about saying no, for I know how your time is taxed, and I would
have honest need to blush if you said yes.
Osgood and I are “going for” the puppy G---- on infringement of
trademark. To win one or two suits of this kind will set literary folks
on a firmer bottom. I wish Osgood would sue for stealing Holmes's poem.
Wouldn't it be gorgeous to sue R---- for petty larceny? I will promise
to go into court and swear I think him capable of stealing pea-nuts from
a blind pedlar.
Yrs ever,
CLEMENS.
Of course Howells promptly replied that he would read the story,
adding: “You've no idea what I may ask you to do for me, some day.
I'm sorry that you can't do it for the Atlantic, but I
succumb. Perhaps you will do Boy No. 2 for us.” Clemens,
conscience-stricken, meantime, hastily put the MS. out of reach
of temptation.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston: