MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It's finished. I was misled by hurried mis-paging.
There were ten pages of notes, and over 300 pages of MS when the
play was done. Did it in 42 hours, by the clock; 40 pages of the
Atlantic--but then of course it's very “fat.” Those are the figures, but
I don't believe them myself, because the thing's impossible.
But let that pass. All day long, and every day, since I finished (in the
rough) I have been diligently altering, amending, re-writing, cutting
down. I finished finally today. Can't think of anything else in the way
of an improvement. I thought I would stick to it while the interest was
hot--and I am mighty glad I did. A week from now it will be frozen--then
revising would be drudgery. (You see I learned something from the fatal
blunder of putting “Ah Sin” aside before it was finished.)
She's all right, now. She reads in two hours and 20 minutes and will
play not longer than 2 3/4 hours. Nineteen characters; 3 acts; (I
bunched 2 into 1.)
Tomorrow I will draw up an exhaustive synopsis to insert in the printed
title-page for copyrighting, and then on Friday or Saturday I go to New
York to remain a week or ten days and lay for an actor. Wish you could
run down there and have a holiday. 'Twould be fun.
My wife won't have “Balaam's Ass”; therefore I call the piece “Cap'n
Simon Wheeler, The Amateur Detective.”
Yrs
MARK.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, Aug. 29, 1877.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Just got your letter last night. No, dern that
article,--[One of the Bermuda chapters.]--it made me cry when I read it
in proof, it was so oppressively and ostentatiously poor. Skim your eye
over it again and you will think as I do. If Isaac and the prophets of
Baal can be doctored gently and made permissible, it will redeem the
thing: but if it can't, let's burn all of the articles except the
tail-end of it and use that as an introduction to the next article--as I
suggested in my letter to you of day before yesterday. (I had this proof
from Cambridge before yours came.)
Boucicault says my new play is ever so much better than “Ah Sin;” says
the Amateur detective is a bully character, too. An actor is chawing
over the play in New York, to see if the old Detective is suited to his
abilities. Haven't heard from him yet.
If you've got that paragraph by you yet, and if in your judgment it
would be good to publish it, and if you absolutely would not mind doing
it, then I think I'd like to have you do it--or else put some other
words in my mouth that will be properer, and publish them. But mind,
don't think of it for a moment if it is distasteful--and doubtless it
is. I value your judgment more than my own, as to the wisdom of saying
anything at all in this matter. To say nothing leaves me in an injurious
position--and yet maybe I might do better to speak to the men themselves
when I go to New York. This was my latest idea, and it looked wise.
We expect to leave here for home Sept. 4, reaching there the 8th--but we
may be delayed a week.
Curious thing. I read passages from my play, and a full synopsis, to
Boucicault, who was re-writing a play, which he wrote and laid aside 3
or 4 years ago. (My detective is about that age, you know.) Then he read
a passage from his play, where a real detective does some things that
are as idiotic as some of my old Wheeler's performances. Showed me the
passages, and behold, his man's name is Wheeler! However, his Wheeler
is not a prominent character, so we'll not alter the names. My Wheeler's
name is taken from the old jumping Frog sketch.
I am re-reading Ticknor's diary, and am charmed with it, though I still
say he refers to too many good things when he could just as well have
told them. Think of the man traveling 8 days in convoy and familiar
intercourse with a band of outlaws through the mountain fastnesses of
Spain--he the fourth stranger they had encountered in thirty years--and
compressing this priceless experience into a single colorless paragraph
of his diary! They spun yarns to this unworthy devil, too.
I wrote you a very long letter a day or two ago, but Susy Crane wanted
to make a copy of it to keep, so it has not gone yet. It may go today,
possibly.
We unite in warm regards to you and yours.
Yrs ever,
MARK.
The Ticknor referred to in a former letter was Professor George
Ticknor, of Harvard College, a history-writer of distinction. On
the margin of the “Diary” Mark Twain once wrote, “Ticknor is a
Millet, who makes all men fall in love with him.” And adds: “Millet
was the cause of lovable qualities in people, and then he admired
and loved those persons for the very qualities which he (without
knowing it) had created in them. Perhaps it would be strictly truer
of these two men to say that they bore within them the divine
something in whose presence the evil in people fled away and hid
itself, while all that was good in them came spontaneously forward
out of the forgotten walls and comers in their systems where it was
accustomed to hide.”
It is Frank Millet, the artist, he is speaking of--a knightly soul
whom all the Clemens household loved, and who would one day meet his
knightly end with those other brave men that found death together
when the Titanic went down.
The Clemens family was still at Quarry Farm at the end of August,
and one afternoon there occurred a startling incident which Mark
Twain thought worth setting down in practically duplicate letters to
Howells and to Dr. John Brown. It may be of interest to the reader
to know that John T. Lewis, the colored man mentioned, lived to a
good old age--a pensioner of the Clemens family and, in the course
of time, of H. H. Rogers. Howells's letter follows. It is the
“very long letter” referred to in the foregoing.
*****
To W. D. Howells and wife, in Boston:
ELMIRA, Aug. 25 '77.
MY DEAR HOWELLSES,--I thought I ought to make a sort of record of it for
further reference; the pleasantest way to do that would be to write it
to somebody; but that somebody would let it leak into print and that we
wish to avoid. The Howellses would be safe--so let us tell the Howellses
about it.
Day before yesterday was a fine summer day away up here on the summit.
Aunt Marsh and Cousin May Marsh were here visiting Susie Crane and Livy
at our farmhouse. By and by mother Langdon came up the hill in the
“high carriage” with Nora the nurse and little Jervis (Charley Langdon's
little boy)--Timothy the coachman driving. Behind these came Charley's
wife and little girl in the buggy, with the new, young, spry, gray
horse--a high-stepper. Theodore Crane arrived a little later.
The Bay and Susy were on hand with their nurse, Rosa. I was on hand,
too. Susy Crane's trio of colored servants ditto--these being Josie,
house-maid; Aunty Cord, cook, aged 62, turbaned, very tall, very broad,
very fine every way (see her portrait in “A True Story just as I
Heard It” in my Sketches;) Chocklate (the laundress) (as the Bay calls
her--she can't say Charlotte,) still taller, still more majestic of
proportions, turbaned, very black, straight as an Indian--age 24. Then
there was the farmer's wife (colored) and her little girl, Susy.
Wasn't it a good audience to get up an excitement before? Good
excitable, inflammable material?
Lewis was still down town, three miles away, with his two-horse wagon,
to get a load of manure. Lewis is the farmer (colored). He is of mighty
frame and muscle, stocky, stooping, ungainly, has a good manly face and
a clear eye. Age about 45--and the most picturesque of men, when he sits
in his fluttering work-day rags, humped forward into a bunch, with his
aged slouch hat mashed down over his ears and neck. It is a spectacle to
make the broken-hearted smile. Lewis has worked mighty hard and remained
mighty poor. At the end of each whole year's toil he can't show a gain
of fifty dollars. He had borrowed money of the Cranes till he owed them
$700 and he being conscientious and honest, imagine what it was to him
to have to carry this stubborn, helpless load year in and year out.
Well, sunset came, and Ida the young and comely (Charley Langdon's wife)
and her little Julia and the nurse Nora, drove out at the gate behind
the new gray horse and started down the long hill--the high carriage
receiving its load under the porte cochere. Ida was seen to turn her
face toward us across the fence and intervening lawn--Theodore waved
good-bye to her, for he did not know that her sign was a speechless
appeal for help.
The next moment Livy said, “Ida's driving too fast down hill!” She
followed it with a sort of scream, “Her horse is running away!”
We could see two hundred yards down that descent. The buggy seemed to
fly. It would strike obstructions and apparently spring the height of a
man from the ground.
Theodore and I left the shrieking crowd behind and ran down the hill
bare-headed and shouting. A neighbor appeared at his gate--a tenth of
a second too late! the buggy vanished past him like a thought. My last
glimpse showed it for one instant, far down the descent, springing high
in the air out of a cloud of dust, and then it disappeared. As I flew
down the road my impulse was to shut my eyes as I turned them to the
right or left, and so delay for a moment the ghastly spectacle of
mutilation and death I was expecting.
I ran on and on, still spared this spectacle, but saying to myself:
“I shall see it at the turn of the road; they never can pass that turn
alive.” When I came in sight of that turn I saw two wagons there bunched
together--one of them full of people. I said, “Just so--they are staring
petrified at the remains.”
But when I got amongst that bunch, there sat Ida in her buggy and nobody
hurt, not even the horse or the vehicle. Ida was pale but serene. As
I came tearing down, she smiled back over her shoulder at me and
said, “Well, we're alive yet, aren't we?” A miracle had been
performed--nothing else.
You see Lewis, the prodigious, humped upon his front seat, had been
toiling up, on his load of manure; he saw the frantic horse plunging
down the hill toward him, on a full gallop, throwing his heels as high
as a man's head at every jump. So Lewis turned his team diagonally
across the road just at the “turn,” thus making a V with the fence--the
running horse could not escape that, but must enter it. Then Lewis
sprang to the ground and stood in this V. He gathered his vast strength,
and with a perfect Creedmoor aim he seized the gray horse's bit as he
plunged by and fetched him up standing!
It was down hill, mind you. Ten feet further down hill neither Lewis
nor any other man could have saved them, for they would have been on the
abrupt “turn,” then. But how this miracle was ever accomplished at
all, by human strength, generalship and accuracy, is clean beyond my
comprehension--and grows more so the more I go and examine the ground
and try to believe it was actually done. I know one thing, well; if
Lewis had missed his aim he would have been killed on the spot in the
trap he had made for himself, and we should have found the rest of the
remains away down at the bottom of the steep ravine.
Ten minutes later Theodore and I arrived opposite the house, with the
servants straggling after us, and shouted to the distracted group on the
porch, “Everybody safe!”
Believe it? Why how could they? They knew the road perfectly. We might
as well have said it to people who had seen their friends go over
Niagara.
However, we convinced them; and then, instead of saying something, or
going on crying, they grew very still--words could not express it, I
suppose.
Nobody could do anything that night, or sleep, either; but there was a
deal of moving talk, with long pauses between pictures of that flying
carriage, these pauses represented--this picture intruded itself all the
time and disjointed the talk.
But yesterday evening late, when Lewis arrived from down town he
found his supper spread, and some presents of books there, with very
complimentary writings on the fly-leaves, and certain very complimentary
letters, and more or less greenbacks of dignified denomination pinned to
these letters and fly-leaves,--and one said, among other things, (signed
by the Cranes) “We cancel $400 of your indebtedness to us,” &c. &c.
(The end thereof is not yet, of course, for Charley Langdon is West and
will arrive ignorant of all these things, today.)
The supper-room had been kept locked and imposingly secret and
mysterious until Lewis should arrive; but around that part of the house
were gathered Lewis's wife and child, Chocklate, Josie, Aunty Cord and
our Rosa, canvassing things and waiting impatiently. They were all on
hand when the curtain rose.
Now, Aunty Cord is a violent Methodist and Lewis an implacable
Dunker--Baptist. Those two are inveterate religious disputants. The
revealments having been made Aunty Cord said with effusion--
“Now, let folks go on saying there ain't no God! Lewis, the Lord sent
you there to stop that horse.”
Says Lewis:
“Then who sent the horse there in sich a shape?”
But I want to call your attention to one thing. When Lewis arrived the
other evening, after saving those lives by a feat which I think is the
most marvelous of any I can call to mind--when he arrived, hunched up
on his manure wagon and as grotesquely picturesque as usual, everybody
wanted to go and see how he looked. They came back and said he was
beautiful. It was so, too--and yet he would have photographed exactly as
he would have done any day these past 7 years that he has occupied this
farm.
Aug. 27.
P. S. Our little romance in real life is happily and satisfactorily
completed. Charley has come, listened, acted--and now John T. Lewis has
ceased to consider himself as belonging to that class called “the poor.”
It has been known, during some years, that it was Lewis's purpose to
buy a thirty dollar silver watch some day, if he ever got where he
could afford it. Today Ida has given him a new, sumptuous gold Swiss
stem-winding stop-watch; and if any scoffer shall say, “Behold this
thing is out of character,” there is an inscription within, which will
silence him; for it will teach him that this wearer aggrandizes the
watch, not the watch the wearer.
I was asked beforehand, if this would be a wise gift, and I said “Yes,
the very wisest of all;” I know the colored race, and I know that
in Lewis's eyes this fine toy will throw the other more valuable
testimonials far away into the shade. If he lived in England the Humane
Society would give him a gold medal as costly as this watch, and nobody
would say: “It is out of character.” If Lewis chose to wear a town
clock, who would become it better?
Lewis has sound common sense, and is not going to be spoiled. The
instant he found himself possessed of money, he forgot himself in a plan
to make his old father comfortable, who is wretchedly poor and lives
down in Maryland. His next act, on the spot, was the proffer to the
Cranes of the $300 of his remaining indebtedness to them. This was put
off by them to the indefinite future, for he is not going to be allowed
to pay that at all, though he doesn't know it.
A letter of acknowledgment from Lewis contains a sentence which raises
it to the dignity of literature:
“But I beg to say, humbly, that inasmuch as divine providence saw fit
to use me as a instrument for the saving of those presshious lives, the
honner conferd upon me was greater than the feat performed.”
That is well said.
Yrs ever
MARK.
Howells was moved to use the story in the “Contributors' Club,”
and warned Clemens against letting it get into the newspapers. He
declared he thought it one of the most impressive things he had ever
read. But Clemens seems never to have allowed it to be used in any
form. In its entirety, therefore, it is quite new matter.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Sept. 19, 1877.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I don't really see how the story of the runaway horse
could read well with the little details of names and places and things
left out. They are the true life of all narrative. It wouldn't quite
do to print them at this time. We'll talk about it when you come.
Delicacy--a sad, sad false delicacy--robs literature of the best
two things among its belongings. Family-circle narrative and obscene
stories. But no matter; in that better world which I trust we are all
going to I have the hope and belief that they will not be denied us.
Say--Twichell and I had an adventure at sea, 4 months ago, which I did
not put in my Bermuda articles, because there was not enough to it. But
the press dispatches bring the sequel today, and now there's plenty
to it. A sailless, wasteless, chartless, compassless, grubless old
condemned tub that has been drifting helpless about the ocean for 4
months and a half, begging bread and water like any other tramp, flying
a signal of distress permanently, and with 13 innocent, marveling
chuckleheaded Bermuda niggers on board, taking a Pleasure Excursion!
Our ship fed the poor devils on the 25th of last May, far out at sea and
left them to bullyrag their way to New York--and now they ain't as near
New York as they were then by 250 miles! They have drifted 750 miles
and are still drifting in the relentless Gulf Stream! What a delicious
magazine chapter it would make--but I had to deny myself. I had to come
right out in the papers at once, with my details, so as to try to raise
the government's sympathy sufficiently to have better succor sent them
than the cutter Colfax, which went a little way in search of them the
other day and then struck a fog and gave it up.
If the President were in Washington I would telegraph him.
When I hear that the “Jonas Smith” has been found again, I mean to send
for one of those darkies, to come to Hartford and give me his adventures
for an Atlantic article.
Likely you will see my today's article in the newspapers.
Yrs ever,
MARK.
The revenue cutter Colfax went after the Jonas Smith, thinking there was
mutiny or other crime on board. It occurs to me now that, since there is
only mere suffering and misery and nobody to punish, it ceases to be a
matter which (a republican form of) government will feel authorized to
interfere in further. Dam a republican form of government.
Clemens thought he had given up lecturing for good; he was
prosperous and he had no love for the platform. But one day an idea
popped into his head: Thomas Nast, the “father of the American
cartoon,” had delivered a successful series of illustrated lectures
--talks for which he made the drawings as he went along. Mark
Twain's idea was to make a combination with Nast. His letter gives
us the plan in full.
*****
To Thomas Nast, Morristown, N. J.: