MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It's no use, your letter miscarried in some way and
is lost. The consul has made a thorough search and says he has not been
able to trace it. It is unaccountable, for all the letters I did not
want arrived without a single grateful failure. Well, I have read-up,
now, as far as you have got, that is, to where there's a storm at sea
approaching,--and we three think you are clear, out-Howellsing Howells.
If your literature has not struck perfection now we are not able to see
what is lacking. It is all such truth--truth to the life; every where
your pen falls it leaves a photograph. I did imagine that everything had
been said about life at sea that could be said, but no matter, it
was all a failure and lies, nothing but lies with a thin varnish of
fact,--only you have stated it as it absolutely is. And only you see
people and their ways, and their insides and outsides as they are, and
make them talk as they do talk. I think you are the very greatest artist
in these tremendous mysteries that ever lived. There doesn't seem to be
anything that can be concealed from your awful all-seeing eye. It must
be a cheerful thing for one to live with you and be aware that you are
going up and down in him like another conscience all the time. Possibly
you will not be a fully accepted classic until you have been dead a
hundred years,--it is the fate of the Shakespeares and of all genuine
prophets,--but then your books will be as common as Bibles, I believe.
You're not a weed, but an oak; not a summer-house, but a cathedral. In
that day I shall still be in the Cyclopedias, too, thus: “Mark Twain;
history and occupation unknown--but he was personally acquainted with
Howells.” There--I could sing your praises all day, and feel and believe
every bit of it.
My book is half finished; I wish to heaven it was done. I have given up
writing a detective novel--can't write a novel, for I lack the faculty;
but when the detectives were nosing around after Stewart's loud
remains, I threw a chapter into my present book in which I have very
extravagantly burlesqued the detective business--if it is possible to
burlesque that business extravagantly. You know I was going to send you
that detective play, so that you could re-write it. Well I didn't do it
because I couldn't find a single idea in it that could be useful to you.
It was dreadfully witless and flat. I knew it would sadden you and unfit
you for work.
I have always been sorry we threw up that play embodying Orion which you
began. It was a mistake to do that. Do keep that MS and tackle it again.
It will work out all right; you will see. I don't believe that that
character exists in literature in so well-developed a condition as it
exists in Orion's person. Now won't you put Orion in a story? Then he
will go handsomely into a play afterwards. How deliciously you could
paint him--it would make fascinating reading--the sort that makes
a reader laugh and cry at the same time, for Orion is as good and
ridiculous a soul as ever was.
Ah, to think of Bayard Taylor! It is too sad to talk about. I was so
glad there was not a single sting and so many good praiseful words in
the Atlantic's criticism of Deukalion.
Love to you all
Yrs Ever
MARK
We remain here till middle of March.
In 'A Tramp Abroad' there is an incident in which the author
describes himself as hunting for a lost sock in the dark, in a vast
hotel bedroom at Heilbronn. The account of the real incident, as
written to Twichell, seems even more amusing.
The “Yarn About the Limburger Cheese and the Box of Guns,” like “The
Stolen White Elephant,” did not find place in the travel-book, but
was published in the same volume with the elephant story, added to
the rambling notes of “An Idle Excursion.”
With the discovery of the Swiss note-book, work with Mark Twain was
going better. His letter reflects his enthusiasm.
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
MUNICH, Jan 26 '79.
DEAR OLD JOE,--Sunday. Your delicious letter arrived exactly at the
right time. It was laid by my plate as I was finishing breakfast at 12
noon. Livy and Clara, (Spaulding) arrived from church 5 minutes later; I
took a pipe and spread myself out on the sofa, and Livy sat by and read,
and I warmed to that butcher the moment he began to swear. There is
more than one way of praying, and I like the butcher's way because the
petitioner is so apt to be in earnest. I was peculiarly alive to his
performance just at this time, for another reason, to wit: Last night I
awoke at 3 this morning, and after raging to my self for 2 interminable
hours, I gave it up. I rose, assumed a catlike stealthiness, to keep
from waking Livy, and proceeded to dress in the pitch dark. Slowly but
surely I got on garment after garment--all down to one sock; I had one
slipper on and the other in my hand. Well, on my hands and knees I crept
softly around, pawing and feeling and scooping along the carpet, and
among chair-legs for that missing sock; I kept that up; and still kept
it up and kept it up. At first I only said to myself, “Blame that sock,”
but that soon ceased to answer; my expletives grew steadily stronger and
stronger,--and at last, when I found I was lost, I had to sit flat down
on the floor and take hold of something to keep from lifting the roof
off with the profane explosion that was trying to get out of me. I could
see the dim blur of the window, but of course it was in the wrong
place and could give me no information as to where I was. But I had
one comfort--I had not waked Livy; I believed I could find that sock in
silence if the night lasted long enough. So I started again and softly
pawed all over the place,--and sure enough at the end of half an hour I
laid my hand on the missing article. I rose joyfully up and butted the
wash-bowl and pitcher off the stand and simply raised----so to speak.
Livy screamed, then said, “Who is that? what is the matter?” I said
“There ain't anything the matter--I'm hunting for my sock.” She said,
“Are you hunting for it with a club?”
I went in the parlor and lit the lamp, and gradually the fury subsided
and the ridiculous features of the thing began to suggest themselves.
So I lay on the sofa, with note-book and pencil, and transferred the
adventure to our big room in the hotel at Heilbronn, and got it on paper
a good deal to my satisfaction.
I found the Swiss note-book, some time ago. When it was first lost I
was glad of it, for I was getting an idea that I had lost my faculty of
writing sketches of travel; therefore the loss of that note-book would
render the writing of this one simply impossible, and let me gracefully
out; I was about to write to Bliss and propose some other book, when the
confounded thing turned up, and down went my heart into my boots. But
there was now no excuse, so I went solidly to work--tore up a great part
of the MS written in Heidelberg,--wrote and tore up,--continued to write
and tear up,--and at last, reward of patient and noble persistence, my
pen got the old swing again!
Since then I'm glad Providence knew better what to do with the Swiss
note-book than I did, for I like my work, now, exceedingly, and often
turn out over 30 MS pages a day and then quit sorry that Heaven makes
the days so short.
One of my discouragements had been the belief that my interest in this
tour had been so slender that I couldn't gouge matter enough out of it
to make a book. What a mistake. I've got 900 pages written (not a word
in it about the sea voyage) yet I stepped my foot out of Heidelberg for
the first time yesterday,--and then only to take our party of four
on our first pedestrian tour--to Heilbronn. I've got them dressed
elaborately in walking costume--knapsacks, canteens, field-glasses,
leather leggings, patent walking shoes, muslin folds around their hats,
with long tails hanging down behind, sun umbrellas, and Alpenstocks.
They go all the way to Wimpfen by rail-thence to Heilbronn in a chance
vegetable cart drawn by a donkey and a cow; I shall fetch them home on
a raft; and if other people shall perceive that that was no pedestrian
excursion, they themselves shall not be conscious of it.--This trip will
take 100 pages or more,--oh, goodness knows how many! for the mood is
everything, not the material, and I already seem to see 300 pages rising
before me on that trip. Then, I propose to leave Heidelberg for good.
Don't you see, the book (1800 MS pages,) may really be finished before I
ever get to Switzerland?
But there's one thing; I want to tell Frank Bliss and his father to be
charitable toward me in,--that is, let me tear up all the MS I want to,
and give me time to write more. I shan't waste the time--I haven't the
slightest desire to loaf, but a consuming desire to work, ever since I
got back my swing. And you see this book is either going to be compared
with the Innocents Abroad, or contrasted with it, to my disadvantage.
I think I can make a book that will be no dead corpse of a thing and I
mean to do my level best to accomplish that.
My crude plans are crystalizing. As the thing stands now, I went to
Europe for three purposes. The first you know, and must keep secret,
even from the Blisses; the second is to study Art; and the third to
acquire a critical knowledge of the German language. My MS already shows
that the two latter objects are accomplished. It shows that I am moving
about as an Artist and a Philologist, and unaware that there is any
immodesty in assuming these titles. Having three definite objects has
had the effect of seeming to enlarge my domain and give me the freedom
of a loose costume. It is three strings to my bow, too.
Well, your butcher is magnificent. He won't stay out of my mind.--I keep
trying to think of some way of getting your account of him into my book
without his being offended--and yet confound him there isn't anything
you have said which he would see any offense in,--I'm only thinking of
his friends--they are the parties who busy themselves with seeing things
for people. But I'm bound to have him in. I'm putting in the yarn about
the Limburger cheese and the box of guns, too--mighty glad Howells
declined it. It seems to gather richness and flavor with age. I have
very nearly killed several companies with that narrative,--the American
Artists Club, here, for instance, and Smith and wife and Miss Griffith
(they were here in this house a week or two.) I've got other chapters
that pretty nearly destroyed the same parties, too.
O, Switzerland! the further it recedes into the enriching haze of time,
the more intolerably delicious the charm of it and the cheer of it
and the glory and majesty and solemnity and pathos of it grow. Those
mountains had a soul; they thought; they spoke,--one couldn't hear it
with the ears of the body, but what a voice it was!--and how real.
Deep down in my memory it is sounding yet. Alp calleth unto Alp!--that
stately old Scriptural wording is the right one for God's Alps and God's
ocean. How puny we were in that awful presence--and how painless it was
to be so; how fitting and right it seemed, and how stingless was the
sense of our unspeakable insignificance. And Lord how pervading were
the repose and peace and blessedness that poured out of the heart of the
invisible Great Spirit of the Mountains.
Now what is it? There are mountains and mountains and mountains in this
world--but only these take you by the heart-strings. I wonder what the
secret of it is. Well, time and time again it has seemed to me that
I must drop everything and flee to Switzerland once more. It is a
longing--a deep, strong, tugging longing--that is the word. We must go
again, Joe.--October days, let us get up at dawn and breakfast at the
tower. I should like that first rate.
Livy and all of us send deluges of love to you and Harmony and all the
children. I dreamed last night that I woke up in the library at home and
your children were frolicing around me and Julia was sitting in my lap;
you and Harmony and both families of Warners had finished their welcomes
and were filing out through the conservatory door, wrecking Patrick's
flower pots with their dress skirts as they went. Peace and plenty abide
with you all!