Howells, writing from Venice, in April, manifested special interest
in the play project: “Something that would run like Scheherazade,
for a thousand and one nights,” so perhaps his book was going
better. He proposed that they devote the month of October to the
work, and inclosed a letter from Mallory, who owned not only a
religious paper, The Churchman, but also the Madison Square Theater,
and was anxious for a Howells play. Twenty years before Howells had
been Consul to Venice, and he wrote, now: “The idea of my being here
is benumbing and silencing. I feel like the Wandering Jew, or the
ghost of the Cardiff giant.”
He returned to America in July. Clemens sent him word of welcome,
with glowing reports of his own undertakings. The story on which he
was piling up MS. was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, begun
seven years before at Quarry Farm. He had no great faith in it
then, and though he had taken it up again in 1880, his interest had
not lasted to its conclusion. This time, however, he was in the
proper spirit, and the story would be finished.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, July 20, '83.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We are desperately glad you and your gang are home
again--may you never travel again, till you go aloft or alow. Charley
Clark has gone to the other side for a run--will be back in August. He
has been sick, and needed the trip very much.
Mrs. Clemens had a long and wasting spell of sickness last Spring,
but she is pulling up, now. The children are booming, and my health is
ridiculous, it's so robust, notwithstanding the newspaper misreports.
I haven't piled up MS so in years as I have done since we came here to
the farm three weeks and a half ago. Why, it's like old times, to step
right into the study, damp from the breakfast table, and sail right in
and sail right on, the whole day long, without thought of running short
of stuff or words.
I wrote 4000 words to-day and I touch 3000 and upwards pretty often, and
don't fall below 1600 any working day. And when I get fagged out, I lie
abed a couple of days and read and smoke, and then go it again for 6 or
7 days. I have finished one small book, and am away along in a big 433
one that I half-finished two or three years ago. I expect to complete it
in a month or six weeks or two months more. And I shall like it, whether
anybody else does or not.
It's a kind of companion to Tom Sawyer. There's a raft episode from it
in second or third chapter of life on the Mississippi.....
I'm booming, these days--got health and spirits to waste--got an
overplus; and if I were at home, we would write a play. But we must do
it anyhow by and by.
We stay here till Sep. 10; then maybe a week at Indian Neck for sea air,
then home.
We are powerful glad you are all back; and send love according.
Yrs Ever
MARK
*****
To Onion Clemens and family, in Keokuk, Id.:
ELMIRA, July 22, '83.
Private.
DEAR MA AND ORION AND MOLLIE,--I don't know that I have anything new
to report, except that Livy is still gaining, and all the rest of us
flourishing. I haven't had such booming working-days for many years. I
am piling up manuscript in a really astonishing way. I believe I shall
complete, in two months, a book which I have been fooling over for 7
years. This summer it is no more trouble to me to write than it is to
lie.
Day before yesterday I felt slightly warned to knock off work for one
day. So I did it, and took the open air. Then I struck an idea for the
instruction of the children, and went to work and carried it out. It
took me all day. I measured off 817 feet of the road-way in our farm
grounds, with a foot-rule, and then divided it up among the English
reigns, from the Conqueror down to 1883, allowing one foot to the year.
I whittled out a basket of little pegs and drove one in the ground at
the beginning of each reign, and gave it that King's name--thus:
I measured all the reigns exactly as many feet to the reign as there
were years in it. You can look out over the grounds and see the little
pegs from the front door--some of them close together, like Richard II,
Richard Cromwell, James II, &c., and some prodigiously wide apart, like
Henry III, Edward III, George III, &c. It gives the children a realizing
sense of the length or brevity of a reign. Shall invent a violent game
to go with it.
And in bed, last night, I invented a way to play it indoors--in a
far more voluminous way, as to multiplicity of dates and events--on a
cribbage board.
Hello, supper's ready.
Love to all.
Good bye.
SAML.
Onion Clemens would naturally get excited over the idea of the game
and its commercial possibilities. Not more so than his brother,
however, who presently employed him to arrange a quantity of
historical data which the game was to teach. For a season, indeed,
interest in the game became a sort of midsummer madness which
pervaded the two households, at Keokuk and at Quarry Farm. Howells
wrote his approval of the idea of “learning history by the running
foot,” which was a pun, even if unintentional, for in its out-door
form it was a game of speed as well as knowledge.
Howells adds that he has noticed that the newspapers are exploiting
Mark Twain's new invention of a history game, and we shall presently
see how this happened.
Also, in this letter, Howells speaks of an English nobleman to whom
he has given a letter of introduction. “He seemed a simple, quiet,
gentlemanly man, with a good taste in literature, which he evinced
by going about with my books in his pockets, and talking of yours.”
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--How odd it seems, to sit down to write a letter with
the feeling that you've got time to do it. But I'm done work, for this
season, and so have got time. I've done two seasons' work in one, and
haven't anything left to do, now, but revise. I've written eight or nine
hundred MS pages in such a brief space of time that I mustn't name the
number of days; I shouldn't believe it myself, and of course couldn't
expect you to. I used to restrict myself to 4 or 5 hours a day and 5
days in the week, but this time I've wrought from breakfast till 5.15
p.m. six days in the week; and once or twice I smouched a Sunday when
the boss wasn't looking. Nothing is half so good as literature hooked on
Sunday, on the sly.
I wrote you and Twichell on the same night, about the game, and was
appalled to get a note from him saying he was going to print part of my
letter, and was going to do it before I could get a chance to forbid it.
I telegraphed him, but was of course too late.
If you haven't ever tried to invent an indoor historical game, don't.
I've got the thing at last so it will work, I guess, but I don't want
any more tasks of that kind. When I wrote you, I thought I had it;
whereas I was only merely entering upon the initiatory difficulties of
it. I might have known it wouldn't be an easy job, or somebody would
have invented a decent historical game long ago--a thing which nobody
had done. I think I've got it in pretty fair shape--so I have caveated
it.
Earl of Onston--is that it? All right, we shall be very glad to receive
them and get acquainted with them. And much obliged to you, too. There's
plenty of worse people than the nobilities. I went up and spent a week
with the Marquis and the Princess Louise, and had as good a time as I
want.
I'm powerful glad you are all back again; and we will come up there if
our little tribe will give us the necessary furlough; and if we can't
get it, you folks must come to us and give us an extension of time. We
get home Sept. 11.
Hello, I think I see Waring coming!
Good-by-letter from Clark, which explains for him.