This law stands right in the way of the subaltern who wants to be a
General before he has smelt powder; and it stands (and should stand) in
everybody's way who applies for pay or position before he has served
his apprenticeship and proved himself. Your sister's course is perfectly
plain. Let her enclose this letter to Maj. J. B. Pond, and offer to
lecture a year for $10 a week and her expenses, the contract to
be annullable by him at any time, after a month's notice, but not
annullable by her at all. The second year, he to have her services, if
he wants them, at a trifle under the best price offered her by anybody
else.
She can learn her trade in those two years, and then be entitled to
remuneration--but she can not learn it in any less time than that,
unless she is a human miracle.
Try it, and do not be afraid. It is the fair and right thing. If she
wins, she will win squarely and righteously, and never have to blush.
Truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Howells wrote, in February, offering to get a publisher to take the
Library of Humor off Mark Twain's hands. Howells had been paid
twenty-six hundred dollars for the work on it, and his conscience
hurt him when he reflected that the book might never be used. In
this letter he also refers to one of the disastrous inventions in
which Clemens had invested--a method of casting brass dies for
stamping book-covers and wall-paper. Howells's purpose was to
introduce something of the matter into his next story. Mark Twain's
reply gives us a light on this particular invention.
HARTFORD, Feb. 15, '87.
DEAR HOWELLS,--I was in New York five days ago, and Webster mentioned
the Library, and proposed to publish it a year or a year and half hence.
I have written him your proposition to-day. (The Library is part of the
property of the C. L. W. & Co. firm.)
I don't remember what that technical phrase was, but I think you will
find it in any Cyclopedia under the head of “Brass.” The thing I best
remember is, that the self-styled “inventor” had a very ingenious way
of keeping me from seeing him apply his invention: the first appointment
was spoiled by his burning down the man's shop in which it was to be
done, the night before; the second was spoiled by his burning down his
own shop the night before. He unquestionably did both of these things.
He really had no invention; the whole project was a blackmailing
swindle, and cost me several thousand dollars.
The slip you sent me from the May “Study” has delighted Mrs. Clemens and
me to the marrow. To think that thing might be possible to many; but to
be brave enough to say it is possible to you only, I certainly
believe. The longer I live the clearer I perceive how unmatchable, how
unapproachable, a compliment one pays when he says of a man “he has the
courage (to utter) his convictions.” Haven't you had reviewers talk Alps
to you, and then print potato hills?
I haven't as good an opinion of my work as you hold of it, but I've
always done what I could to secure and enlarge my good opinion of it.
I've always said to myself, “Everybody reads it and that's something--it
surely isn't pernicious, or the most acceptable people would get pretty
tired of it.” And when a critic said by implication that it wasn't
high and fine, through the remark “High and fine literature is wine” I
retorted (confidentially, to myself,) “yes, high and fine literature is
wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.”
You didn't tell me to return that proof-slip, so I have pasted it into
my private scrap-book. None will see it there. With a thousand thanks.
Ys Ever
MARK.
Our next letter is an unmailed answer, but it does not belong with
the others, having been withheld for reasons of quite a different
sort. Jeanette Gilder, then of the Critic, was one of Mark Twain's
valued friends. In the comment which he made, when it was shown to
him twenty-two years later, he tells us why he thinks this letter
was not sent. The name, “Rest-and-be-Thankful,” was the official
title given to the summer place at Elmira, but it was more often
known as “Quarry.”
*****
To Jeannette Gilder (not mailed):
HARTFORD, May 14, '87.
MY DEAR MISS GILDER,--We shall spend the summer at the same old
place-the remote farm called “Rest-and-be-Thankful,” on top of the hills
three miles from Elmira, N. Y. Your other question is harder to answer.
It is my habit to keep four or five books in process of erection all the
time, and every summer add a few courses of bricks to two or three of
them; but I cannot forecast which of the two or three it is going to be.
It takes seven years to complete a book by this method, but still it is
a good method: gives the public a rest. I have been accused of “rushing
into print” prematurely, moved thereto by greediness for money; but in
truth I have never done that. Do you care for trifles of information?
(Well, then, “Tom Sawyer” and “The Prince and the Pauper” were each
on the stocks two or three years, and “Old Times on the Mississippi”
eight.) One of my unfinished books has been on the stocks sixteen years;
another seventeen. This latter book could have been finished in a day,
at any time during the past five years. But as in the first of these two
narratives all the action takes place in Noah's ark, and as in the other
the action takes place in heaven, there seemed to be no hurry, and so I
have not hurried. Tales of stirring adventure in those localities do
not need to be rushed to publication lest they get stale by waiting. In
twenty-one years, with all my time at my free disposal I have written
and completed only eleven books, whereas with half the labor that
a journalist does I could have written sixty in that time. I do not
greatly mind being accused of a proclivity for rushing into print, but
at the same time I don't believe that the charge is really well founded.
Suppose I did write eleven books, have you nothing to be grateful for?
Go to---remember the forty-nine which I didn't write.
Truly Yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
Notes (added twenty-two years later):
Stormfield, April 30, 1909. It seems the letter was not sent. I probably
feared she might print it, and I couldn't find a way to say so without
running a risk of hurting her. No one would hurt Jeannette Gilder
purposely, and no one would want to run the risk of doing it
unintentionally. She is my neighbor, six miles away, now, and I must ask
her about this ancient letter.
I note with pride and pleasure that I told no untruths in my unsent
answer. I still have the habit of keeping unfinished books lying around
years and years, waiting. I have four or five novels on hand at present
in a half-finished condition, and it is more than three years since I
have looked at any of them. I have no intention of finishing them. I
could complete all of them in less than a year, if the impulse should
come powerfully upon me: Long, long ago money-necessity furnished that
impulse once, (“Following the Equator”), but mere desire for money has
never furnished it, so far as I remember. Not even money-necessity was
able to overcome me on a couple of occasions when perhaps I ought to
have allowed it to succeed. While I was a bankrupt and in debt two
offers were made me for weekly literary contributions to continue during
a year, and they would have made a debtless man of me, but I declined
them, with my wife's full approval, for I had known of no instance where
a man had pumped himself out once a week and failed to run “emptyings”
before the year was finished.
As to that “Noah's Ark” book, I began it in Edinburgh in 1873;--[This is
not quite correct. The “Noah's Ark” book was begun in Buffalo in
1870.] I don't know where the manuscript is now. It was a Diary, which
professed to be the work of Shem, but wasn't. I began it again several
months ago, but only for recreation; I hadn't any intention of carrying
it to a finish--or even to the end of the first chapter, in fact.
As to the book whose action “takes place in Heaven.” That was a
small thing, (“Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.”) It lay in my
pigeon-holes 40 years, then I took it out and printed it in Harper's
Monthly last year.