MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Thanks for giving me the place of honor.
Bliss made a failure in the matter of getting Tom Sawyer ready on
time--the engravers assisting, as usual. I went down to see how much of
a delay there was going to be, and found that the man had not even put
a canvasser on, or issued an advertisement yet--in fact, that the
electrotypes would not all be done for a month! But of course the
main fact was that no canvassing had been done--because a subscription
harvest is before publication, (not after, when people have discovered
how bad one's book is.)
Well, yesterday I put in the Courant an editorial paragraph stating that
Tam Sawyer is “ready to issue, but publication is put off in order to
secure English copyright by simultaneous publication there and here. The
English edition is unavoidably delayed.”
You see, part of that is true. Very well. When I observed that my
“Sketches” had dropped from a sale of 6 or 7000 a month down to 1200 a
month, I said “this ain't no time to be publishing books; therefore, let
Tom lie still till Autumn, Mr. Bliss, and make a holiday book of him to
beguile the young people withal.”
I shall print items occasionally, still further delaying Tom, till I
ease him down to Autumn without shock to the waiting world.
As to that “Literary Nightmare” proposition. I'm obliged to withhold
consent, for what seems a good reason--to wit: A single page of
horse-car poetry is all that the average reader can stand, without
nausea; now, to stack together all of it that has been written, and
then add it to my article would be to enrage and disgust each and every
reader and win the deathless enmity of the lot.
Even if that reason were insufficient, there would still be a sufficient
reason left, in the fact that Mr. Carlton seems to be the publisher of
the magazine in which it is proposed to publish this horse-car matter.
Carlton insulted me in Feb. 1867, and so when the day arrives that sees
me doing him a civility I shall feel that I am ready for Paradise, since
my list of possible and impossible forgivenesses will then be complete.
Mrs. Clemens says my version of the blindfold novelette “A Murder and A
Marriage” is “good.” Pretty strong language--for her.
The Fieldses are coming down to the play tomorrow, and they promise to
get you and Mrs. Howells to come too, but I hope you'll do nothing of
the kind if it will inconvenience you, for I'm not going to play either
strikingly bad enough or well enough to make the journey pay you.
My wife and I think of going to Boston May 7th to see Anna Dickinson's
debut on the 8th. If I find we can go, I'll try to get a stage box and
then you and Mrs. Howells must come to Parker's and go with us to the
crucifixion.
(Is that spelt right?--somehow it doesn't look right.)
With our very kindest regards to the whole family.
Yrs ever,
MARK.
The mention of Anna Dickinson, at the end of this letter, recalls a
prominent reformer and lecturer of the Civil War period. She had
begun her crusades against temperance and slavery in 1857, when she
was but fifteen years old, when her success as a speaker had been
immediate and extraordinary. Now, in this later period, at the age
of thirty-four, she aspired to the stage--unfortunately for her, as
her gifts lay elsewhere. Clemens and Howells knew Miss Dickinson,
and were anxious for the success which they hardly dared hope for.
Clemens arranged a box party.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
May 4, '76.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I shall reach Boston on Monday the 8th, either at 4:30
p.m. or 6 p.m. (Which is best?) and go straight to Parker's. If you and
Mrs. Howells cannot be there by half past 4, I'll not plan to arrive
till the later train-time (6,) because I don't want to be there
alone--even a minute. Still, Joe Twichell will doubtless go with me
(forgot that,) he is going to try hard to. Mrs. Clemens has given up
going, because Susy is just recovering from about the savagest assault
of diphtheria a child ever did recover from, and therefore will not be
entirely her healthy self again by the 8th.
Would you and Mrs. Howells like to invite Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich? I have a
large proscenium box--plenty of room. Use your own pleasure about it--I
mainly (that is honest,) suggest it because I am seeking to make matters
pleasant for you and Mrs. Howells. I invited Twichell because I thought
I knew you'd like that. I want you to fix it so that you and the Madam
can remain in Boston all night; for I leave next day and we can't have
a talk, otherwise. I am going to get two rooms and a parlor; and would
like to know what you decide about the Aldriches, so as to know whether
to apply for an additional bedroom or not.
Don't dine that evening, for I shall arrive dinnerless and need your
help.
I'll bring my Blindfold Novelette, but shan't exhibit it unless you
exhibit yours. You would simply go to work and write a novelette that
would make mine sick. Because you would know all about where my weak
points lay. No, Sir, I'm one of these old wary birds!
Don't bother to write a letter--3 lines on a postal card is all that I
can permit from a busy man. Yrs ever
MARK.
P. S. Good! You'll not have to feel any call to mention that debut in
the Atlantic--they've made me pay the grand cash for my box!--a thing
which most managers would be too worldly-wise to do, with journalistic
folks. But I'm most honestly glad, for I'd rather pay three prices, any
time, than to have my tongue half paralyzed with a dead-head ticket.
Hang that Anna Dickinson, a body can never depend upon her debuts! She
has made five or six false starts already. If she fails to debut this
time, I will never bet on her again.
In his book, My Mark Twain, Howells refers to the “tragedy” of Miss
Dickinson's appearance. She was the author of numerous plays, some
of which were successful, but her career as an actress was never
brilliant.
At Elmira that summer the Clemenses heard from their good friend
Doctor Brown, of Edinburgh, and sent eager replies.
*****
To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:
ELMIRA, NEW YORK, U. S. June 22, 1876.
DEAR FRIEND THE DOCTOR,--It was a perfect delight to see the well-known
handwriting again! But we so grieve to know that you are feeling
miserable. It must not last--it cannot last. The regal summer is come
and it will smile you into high good cheer; it will charm away your
pains, it will banish your distresses. I wish you were here, to spend
the summer with us. We are perched on a hill-top that overlooks a little
world of green valleys, shining rivers, sumptuous forests and billowy
uplands veiled in the haze of distance. We have no neighbors. It is the
quietest of all quiet places, and we are hermits that eschew caves and
live in the sun. Doctor, if you'd only come!
I will carry your letter to Mrs. C. now, and there will be a glad woman,
I tell you! And she shall find one of those pictures to put in this
for Mrs. Barclays and if there isn't one here we'll send right away to
Hartford and get one. Come over, Doctor John, and bring the Barclays,
the Nicolsons and the Browns, one and all!
Affectionately,
SAML. L. CLEMENS.
From May until August no letters appear to have passed between
Clemens and Howells; the latter finally wrote, complaining of the
lack of news. He was in the midst of campaign activities, he said,
writing a life of Hayes, and gaily added: “You know I wrote the life
of Lincoln, which elected him.” He further reported a comedy he had
completed, and gave Clemens a general stirring up as to his own
work.
Mark Twain, in his hillside study, was busy enough. Summer was his
time for work, and he had tried his hand in various directions. His
mention of Huck Finn in his reply to Howells is interesting, in that
it shows the measure of his enthusiasm, or lack of it, as a gauge of
his ultimate achievement
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, Aug. 9, 1876.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I was just about to write you when your letter
came--and not one of those obscene postal cards, either, but reverently,
upon paper.
I shall read that biography, though the letter of acceptance was amply
sufficient to corral my vote without any further knowledge of the man.
Which reminds me that a campaign club in Jersey City wrote a few
days ago and invited me to be present at the raising of a Tilden
and Hendricks flag there, and to take the stand and give them some
“counsel.” Well, I could not go, but gave them counsel and advice
by letter, and in the kindliest terms as to the raising of the
flag--advised them “not to raise it.”
Get your book out quick, for this is a momentous time. If Tilden is
elected I think the entire country will go pretty straight to--Mrs.
Howells's bad place.
I am infringing on your patent--I started a record of our children's
sayings, last night. Which reminds me that last week I sent down and
got Susie a vast pair of shoes of a most villainous pattern, for I
discovered that her feet were being twisted and cramped out of shape
by a smaller and prettier article. She did not complain, but looked
degraded and injured. At night her mamma gave her the usual admonition
when she was about to say her prayers--to wit:
“Now, Susie--think about God.”
“Mamma, I can't, with those shoes.”
The farm is perfectly delightful this season. It is as quiet and
peaceful as a South Sea Island. Some of the sunsets which we have
witnessed from this commanding eminence were marvelous. One evening a
rainbow spanned an entire range of hills with its mighty arch, and from
a black hub resting upon the hill-top in the exact centre, black rays
diverged upward in perfect regularity to the rainbow's arch and created
a very strongly defined and altogether the most majestic, magnificent
and startling half-sunk wagon wheel you can imagine. After that, a world
of tumbling and prodigious clouds came drifting up out of the West and
took to themselves a wonderfully rich and brilliant green color--the
decided green of new spring foliage. Close by them we saw the intense
blue of the skies, through rents in the cloud-rack, and away off in
another quarter were drifting clouds of a delicate pink color. In one
place hung a pall of dense black clouds, like compacted pitch-smoke. And
the stupendous wagon wheel was still in the supremacy of its unspeakable
grandeur. So you see, the colors present in the sky at once and the same
time were blue, green, pink, black, and the vari-colored splendors of
the rainbow. All strong and decided colors, too. I don't know whether
this weird and astounding spectacle most suggested heaven, or hell.
The wonder, with its constant, stately, and always surprising changes,
lasted upwards of two hours, and we all stood on the top of the hill by
my study till the final miracle was complete and the greatest day ended
that we ever saw.
Our farmer, who is a grave man, watched that spectacle to the end, and
then observed that it was “dam funny.”
The double-barreled novel lies torpid. I found I could not go on with
it. The chapters I had written were still too new and familiar to me. I
may take it up next winter, but cannot tell yet; I waited and waited to
see if my interest in it would not revive, but gave it up a month ago
and began another boys' book--more to be at work than anything else. I
have written 400 pages on it--therefore it is very nearly half done. It
is Huck Finn's Autobiography. I like it only tolerably well, as far as I
have got, and may possibly pigeonhole or burn the MS when it is done.
So the comedy is done, and with a “fair degree of satisfaction.” That
rejoices me, and makes me mad, too--for I can't plan a comedy, and what
have you done that God should be so good to you? I have racked myself
baldheaded trying to plan a comedy harness for some promising characters
of mine to work in, and had to give it up. It is a noble lot of blooded
stock and worth no end of money, but they must stand in the stable and
be profitless. I want to be present when the comedy is produced and help
enjoy the success.
Warner's book is mighty readable, I think.
Love to yez.
Yrs ever
MARK
Howells promptly wrote again, urging him to enter the campaign for
Hayes. “There is not another man in this country,” he said, “who
could help him so much as you.” The “farce” which Clemens refers to
in his reply, was “The Parlor Car,” which seems to have been about
the first venture of Howells in that field.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, August 23, 1876.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I am glad you think I could do Hayes any good, for I
have been wanting to write a letter or make a speech to that end. I'll
be careful not to do either, however, until the opportunity comes in a
natural, justifiable and unlugged way; and shall not then do anything
unless I've got it all digested and worded just right. In which case
I might do some good--in any other I should do harm. When a humorist
ventures upon the grave concerns of life he must do his job better than
another man or he works harm to his cause.
The farce is wonderfully bright and delicious, and must make a hit. You
read it to me, and it was mighty good; I read it last night and it was
better; I read it aloud to the household this morning and it was better
than ever. So it would be worth going a long way to see it well played;
for without any question an actor of genius always adds a subtle
something to any man's work that none but the writer knew was there
before. Even if he knew it. I have heard of readers convulsing audiences
with my “Aurelia's Unfortunate Young Man.” If there is anything really
funny in the piece, the author is not aware of it.
All right--advertise me for the new volume. I send you herewith a sketch
which will make 3 pages of the Atlantic. If you like it and accept
it, you should get it into the December No. because I shall read it in
public in Boston the 13th and 14th of Nov. If it went in a month earlier
it would be too old for me to read except as old matter; and if it went
in a month later it would be too old for the Atlantic--do you see?
And if you wish to use it, will you set it up now, and send me three
proofs?--one to correct for Atlantic, one to send to Temple Bar (shall I
tell them to use it not earlier than their November No.) and one to use
in practising for my Boston readings.
We must get up a less elaborate and a much better skeleton-plan for
the Blindfold Novels and make a success of that idea. David Gray spent
Sunday here and said we could but little comprehend what a rattling stir
that thing would make in the country. He thought it would make a mighty
strike. So do I. But with only 8 pages to tell the tale in, the plot
must be less elaborate, doubtless. What do you think?
When we exchange visits I'll show you an unfinished sketch of
Elizabeth's time which shook David Gray's system up pretty exhaustively.
Yrs ever,
MARK.
The MS. sketch mentioned in the foregoing letter was “The
Canvasser's Tale,” later included in the volume, Tom Sawyer Abroad,
and Other Stories. It is far from being Mark Twain's best work, but
was accepted and printed in the Atlantic. David Gray was an able
journalist and editor whom Mark Twain had known in Buffalo.
The “sketch of Elizabeth's time” is a brilliant piece of writing
--an imaginary record of conversation and court manners in the good
old days of free speech and performance, phrased in the language of
the period. Gray, John Hay, Twichell, and others who had a chance
to see it thought highly of it, and Hay had it set in type and a few
proofs taken for private circulation. Some years afterward a West
Point officer had a special font of antique type made for it, and
printed a hundred copies. But the present-day reader would hardly
be willing to include “Fireside Conversation in the Time of Queen
Elizabeth” in Mark Twain's collected works.
Clemens was a strong Republican in those days, as his letters of
this period show. His mention of the “caves” in the next is another
reference to “The Canvasser's Tale.”
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
Sept. 14, 1876.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Yes, the collection of caves was the origin of it.
I changed it to echoes because these being invisible and intangible,
constituted a still more absurd species of property, and yet a man could
really own an echo, and sell it, too, for a high figure--such an echo
as that at the Villa Siminetti, two miles from Milan, for instance.
My first purpose was to have the man make a collection of caves and
afterwards of echoes; but perceived that the element of absurdity and
impracticability was so nearly identical as to amount to a repetition of
an idea.....
I will not, and do not, believe that there is a possibility of Hayes's
defeat, but I want the victory to be sweeping.....
It seems odd to find myself interested in an election. I never was
before. And I can't seem to get over my repugnance to reading or
thinking about politics, yet. But in truth I care little about any
party's politics--the man behind it is the important thing.
You may well know that Mrs. Clemens liked the Parlor Car--enjoyed it
ever so much, and was indignant at you all through, and kept exploding
into rages at you for pretending that such a woman ever existed--closing
each and every explosion with “But it is just what such a woman would
do.”--“It is just what such a woman would say.” They all voted the
Parlor Car perfection--except me. I said they wouldn't have been allowed
to court and quarrel there so long, uninterrupted; but at each critical
moment the odious train-boy would come in and pile foul literature all
over them four or five inches deep, and the lover would turn his head
aside and curse--and presently that train-boy would be back again (as
on all those Western roads) to take up the literature and leave prize
candy.
Of course the thing is perfect, in the magazine, without the train-boy;
but I was thinking of the stage and the groundlings. If the dainty
touches went over their heads, the train-boy and other possible
interruptions would fetch them every time. Would it mar the flow of the
thing too much to insert that devil? I thought it over a couple of hours
and concluded it wouldn't, and that he ought to be in for the sake of
the groundlings (and to get new copyright on the piece.)
And it seemed to me that now that the fourth act is so successfully
written, why not go ahead and write the 3 preceding acts? And then after
it is finished, let me put into it a low-comedy character (the girl's or
the lover's father or uncle) and gobble a big pecuniary interest in
your work for myself. Do not let this generous proposition disturb your
rest--but do write the other 3 acts, and then it will be valuable to
managers. And don't go and sell it to anybody, like Harte, but keep it
for yourself.
Harte's play can be doctored till it will be entirely acceptable and
then it will clear a great sum every year. I am out of all patience
with Harte for selling it. The play entertained me hugely, even in its
present crude state.
Love to you all.
Yrs ever,
MARK
Following the Sellers success, Clemens had made many attempts at
dramatic writing. Such undertakings had uniformly failed, but he
had always been willing to try again. In the next letter we get the
beginning of what proved his first and last direct literary
association, that is to say, collaboration, with Bret Harte.
Clemens had great admiration for Harte's ability and believed that
between them they could turn out a successful play. Whether or not
this belief was justified will appear later. Howells's biography of
Hayes, meanwhile, had not gone well. He reported that only two
thousand copies had been sold in what was now the height of the
campaign. “There's success for you,” he said; “it makes me despair
of the Republic.”
Clemens, on his part, had made a speech for Hayes that Howells
declared had put civil-service reform in a nutshell; he added: “You
are the only Republican orator, quoted without distinction of party
by all the newspapers.”
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Oct. 11, 1876.
MY DEAR HOWELLS, This is a secret, to be known to nobody but you (of
course I comprehend that Mrs. Howells is part of you) that Bret Harte
came up here the other day and asked me to help him write a play and
divide the swag, and I agreed. I am to put in Scotty Briggs (See Buck
Fanshaw's Funeral, in “Roughing It.”) and he is to put in a Chinaman (a
wonderfully funny creature, as Bret presents him--for 5 minutes--in his
Sandy Bar play.) This Chinaman is to be the character of the play, and
both of us will work on him and develop him. Bret is to draw a plot,
and I am to do the same; we shall use the best of the two, or gouge from
both and build a third. My plot is built--finished it yesterday--six
days' work, 8 or 9 hours a day, and has nearly killed me.
Now the favor I ask of you is that you will have the words “Ah Sin, a
Drama,” printed in the middle of a note-paper page and send the same to
me, with Bill. We don't want anybody to know that we are building this
play. I can't get this title page printed here without having to lie
so much that the thought of it is disagreeable to one reared as I have
been. And yet the title of the play must be printed--the rest of the
application for copyright is allowable in penmanship.
We have got the very best gang of servants in America, now. When George
first came he was one of the most religious of men. He had but one
fault--young George Washington's. But I have trained him; and now it
fairly breaks Mrs. Clemens's heart to hear George stand at that front
door and lie to the unwelcome visitor. But your time is valuable; I must
not dwell upon these things.....I'll ask Warner and Harte if they'll do
Blindfold Novelettes. Some time I'll simplify that plot. All it needs
is that the hanging and the marriage shall not be appointed for the
same day. I got over that difficulty, but it required too much MS to
reconcile the thing--so the movement of the story was clogged.
I came near agreeing to make political speeches with our candidate for
Governor the 16th and 23 inst., but I had to give up the idea, for Harte
and I will be here at work then. Yrs ever,
MARK
Mark Twain was writing few letters these days to any one but
Howells, yet in November he sent one to an old friend of his youth,
Burrough, the literary chair-maker who had roomed with him in the
days when he had been setting type for the St. Louis Evening News.
*****
To Mr. Burrough, of St. Louis:
HARTFORD, Nov. 1, 1876.
MY DEAR BURROUGHS,--As you describe me I can picture myself as I was 20
years ago. The portrait is correct. You think I have grown some; upon
my word there was room for it. You have described a callow fool, a
self-sufficient ass, a mere human tumble-bug.... imagining that he
is remodeling the world and is entirely capable of doing it right.
Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception,
dense and pitiful chuckle-headedness--and an almost pathetic
unconsciousness of it all. That is what I was at 19 and 20; and that
is what the average Southerner is at 60 today. Northerners, too, of a
certain grade. It is of children like this that voters are made. And
such is the primal source of our government! A man hardly knows whether
to swear or cry over it.
I think I comprehend the position there--perfect freedom to vote just
as you choose, provided you choose to vote as other people think--social
ostracism, otherwise. The same thing exists here, among the Irish. An
Irish Republican is a pariah among his people. Yet that race find fault
with the same spirit in Know-Nothingism.
Fortunately a good deal of experience of men enabled me to choose my
residence wisely. I live in the freest corner of the country. There are
no social disabilities between me and my Democratic personal friends.
We break the bread and eat the salt of hospitality freely together and
never dream of such a thing as offering impertinent interference in each
other's political opinions.
Don't you ever come to New York again and not run up here to see me. I
Suppose we were away for the summer when you were East; but no matter,
you could have telegraphed and found out. We were at Elmira N. Y. and
right on your road, and could have given you a good time if you had
allowed us the chance.
Yes, Will Bowen and I have exchanged letters now and then for several
years, but I suspect that I made him mad with my last--shortly after you
saw him in St. Louis, I judge. There is one thing which I can't stand
and won't stand, from many people. That is sham sentimentality--the kind
a school-girl puts into her graduating composition; the sort that makes
up the Original Poetry column of a country newspaper; the rot that deals
in the “happy days of yore,” the “sweet yet melancholy past,” with its
“blighted hopes” and its “vanished dreams” and all that sort of drivel.
Will's were always of this stamp. I stood it years. When I get a letter
like that from a grown man and he a widower with a family, it gives me
the stomach ache. And I just told Will Bowen so, last summer. I told him
to stop being 16 at 40; told him to stop drooling about the sweet yet
melancholy past, and take a pill. I said there was but one solitary
thing about the past worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is
the past--can't be restored. Well, I exaggerated some of these truths
a little--but only a little--but my idea was to kill his sham
sentimentality once and forever, and so make a good fellow of him again.
I went to the unheard-of trouble of re-writing the letter and saying the
same harsh things softly, so as to sugarcoat the anguish and make it a
little more endurable and I asked him to write and thank me honestly
for doing him the best and kindliest favor that any friend ever had done
him--but he hasn't done it yet. Maybe he will, sometime. I am grateful
to God that I got that letter off before he was married (I get that news
from you) else he would just have slobbered all over me and drowned me
when that event happened.
I enclose photograph for the young ladies. I will remark that I do not
wear seal-skin for grandeur, but because I found, when I used to lecture
in the winter, that nothing else was able to keep a man warm sometimes,
in these high latitudes. I wish you had sent pictures of yourself and
family--I'll trade picture for picture with you, straight through, if
you are commercially inclined.
Your old friend,
SAML L. CLEMENS.
XVII. LETTERS, 1877. TO BERMUDA WITH TWICHELL. PROPOSITION TO TH. NAST.
THE WHITTIER DINNER.
Mark Twain must have been too busy to write letters that winter.
Those that have survived are few and unimportant. As a matter of
fact, he was writing the play, “Ah Sin,” with Bret Harte, and
getting it ready for production. Harte was a guest in the Clemens
home while the play was being written, and not always a pleasant
one. He was full of requirements, critical as to the 'menage,' to
the point of sarcasm. The long friendship between Clemens and Harte
weakened under the strain of collaboration and intimate daily
intercourse, never to renew its old fiber. It was an unhappy
outcome of an enterprise which in itself was to prove of little
profit. The play, “Ah Sin,” had many good features, and with
Charles T. Parsloe in an amusing Chinese part might have been made a
success, if the two authors could have harmoniously undertaken the
needed repairs. It opened in Washington in May, and a letter from
Parsloe, written at the moment, gives a hint of the situation.
*****
From Charles T. Parsloe to S. L. Clemens:
WASHINGTON, D. C. May 11th, 1877.
MR. CLEMENS,--I forgot whether I acknowledged receipt of check by
telegram. Harte has been here since Monday last and done little or
nothing yet, but promises to have something fixed by tomorrow morning.
We have been making some improvements among ourselves. The last act is
weak at the end, and I do hope Mr. Harte will have something for a good
finish to the piece. The other acts I think are all right, now.
Hope you have entirely recovered. I am not very well myself, the
excitement of a first night is bad enough, but to have the annoyance
with Harte that I have is too much for a beginner. I ain't used to it.
The houses have been picking up since Tuesday Mr. Ford has worked well
and hard for us.
Yours in, haste,
CHAS. THOS. PARSLOE.
The play drew some good houses in Washington, but it could not hold
them for a run. Never mind what was the matter with it; perhaps a
very small change at the right point would have turned it into a
fine success. We have seen in a former letter the obligation which
Mark Twain confessed to Harte--a debt he had tried in many ways to
repay--obtaining for him a liberal book contract with Bliss;
advancing him frequent and large sums of money which Harte could
not, or did not, repay; seeking to advance his fortunes in many
directions. The mistake came when he introduced another genius into
the intricacies of his daily life. Clemens went down to Washington
during the early rehearsals of “Ah Sin.”
Meantime, Rutherford B. Hayes had been elected President, and
Clemens one day called with a letter of introduction from Howells,
thinking to meet the Chief Executive. His own letter to Howells,
later, probably does not give the real reason of his failure, but it
will be amusing to those who recall the erratic personality of
George Francis Train. Train and Twain were sometimes confused by
the very unlettered; or pretendedly, by Mark Twain's friends.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
BALTIMORE, May 1, '77.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Found I was not absolutely needed in Washington so I
only staid 24 hours, and am on my way home, now. I called at the White
House, and got admission to Col. Rodgers, because I wanted to inquire
what was the right hour to go and infest the President. It was my luck
to strike the place in the dead waste and middle of the day, the very
busiest time. I perceived that Mr. Rodgers took me for George Francis
Train and had made up his mind not to let me get at the President; so at
the end of half an hour I took my letter of introduction from the table
and went away. It was a great pity all round, and a great loss to the
nation, for I was brim full of the Eastern question. I didn't get to
see the President or the Chief Magistrate either, though I had sort of a
glimpse of a lady at a window who resembled her portraits.
Yrs ever,
MARK.
Howells condoled with him on his failure to see the President,
“but,” he added, “if you and I had both been there, our combined
skill would have no doubt procured us to be expelled from the White
House by Fred Douglass. But the thing seems to be a complete
failure as it was.” Douglass at this time being the Marshal of
Columbia, gives special point to Howells's suggestion.
Later, in May, Clemens took Twichell for an excursion to Bermuda.
He had begged Howells to go with them, but Howells, as usual, was
full of literary affairs. Twichell and Clemens spent four glorious
days tramping the length and breadth of the beautiful island, and
remembered it always as one of their happiest adventures. “Put it
down as an Oasis!” wrote Twichell on his return, “I'm afraid I shall
not see as green a spot again soon. And it was your invention and
your gift. And your company was the best of it. Indeed, I never
took more comfort in being with you than on this journey, which, my
boy, is saying a great deal.”
To Howells, Clemens triumphantly reported the success of the
excursion.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, May 29, 1877.
Confound you, Joe Twichell and I roamed about Bermuda day and night
and never ceased to gabble and enjoy. About half the talk was--“It is
a burning shame that Howells isn't here.” “Nobody could get at the very
meat and marrow of this pervading charm and deliciousness like Howells;”
“How Howells would revel in the quaintness, and the simplicity of this
people and the Sabbath repose of this land.” “What an imperishable
sketch Howells would make of Capt. West the whaler, and Capt. Hope with
the patient, pathetic face, wanderer in all the oceans for 42
years, lucky in none; coming home defeated once more, now, minus his
ship--resigned, uncomplaining, being used to this.” “What a rattling
chapter Howells would make out of the small boy Alfred, with his alert
eye and military brevity and exactness of speech; and out of the old
landlady; and her sacred onions; and her daughter; and the visiting
clergyman; and the ancient pianos of Hamilton and the venerable music
in vogue there--and forty other things which we shall leave untouched
or touched but lightly upon, we not being worthy.” “Dam Howells for not
being here!” (this usually from me, not Twichell.)
O, your insufferable pride, which will have a fall some day! If you had
gone with us and let me pay the $50 which the trip and the board and
the various nicknacks and mementoes would cost, I would have picked up
enough droppings from your conversation to pay me 500 per cent profit
in the way of the several magazine articles which I could have written,
whereas I can now write only one or two and am therefore largely out of
pocket by your proud ways. Ponder these things. Lord, what a perfectly
bewitching excursion it was! I traveled under an assumed name and was
never molested with a polite attention from anybody.
Love to you all.
Yrs ever
MARK
Aldrich, meantime, had invited the Clemenses to Ponkapog during the
Bermuda absence, and Clemens hastened to send him a line expressing
regrets. At the close he said:
*****
To T. B. Aldrich, in Ponkapog, Mass.:
FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, June 3, 1877.
Day after tomorrow we leave for the hills beyond Elmira, N. Y. for the
summer, when I shall hope to write a book of some sort or other to beat
the people with. A work similar to your new one in the Atlantic is what
I mean, though I have not heard what the nature of that one is. Immoral,
I suppose. Well, you are right. Such books sell best, Howells says.
Howells says he is going to make his next book indelicate. He says
he thinks there is money in it. He says there is a large class of the
young, in schools and seminaries who--But you let him tell you. He has
ciphered it all down to a demonstration.