DEAR HOWELLS,--Mrs. Clemens has been sick abed for near two weeks, but
is up and around the room now, and gaining. I don't know whether she has
written Mrs. Howells or not--I only know she was going to--and will yet,
if she hasn't. We are promising ourselves a whole world of pleasure in
the visit, and you mustn't dream of disappointing us.
Does this item stir an interest in you? Began a novel four days ago, and
this moment finished chapter four. Title of the book:
“Colonel Mulberry Sellers.
American Claimant
Of the
Great Earldom of Rossmore'
in the
Peerage of Great Britain.”
Ys Ever
MARK.
Probably Mark Twain did not return to literary work reluctantly. He had
always enjoyed writing and felt now that he was equipped better than
ever for authorship, at least so far as material was concerned. There
exists a fragmentary copy of a letter to some unknown correspondent, in
which he recites his qualifications. It bears evidence of having been
written just at this time and is of unusual interest at this point.
*****
Fragment of Letter to -------, 1891:
.... I confine myself to life with which I am familiar when pretending
to portray life. But I confined myself to the boy-life out on the
Mississippi because that had a peculiar charm for me, and not because
I was not familiar with other phases of life. I was a soldier two weeks
once in the beginning of the war, and was hunted like a rat the whole
time. Familiar? My splendid Kipling himself hasn't a more
burnt-in, hard-baked, and unforgetable familiarity with that
death-on-the-pale-horse-with-hell-following-after, which is a raw
soldier's first fortnight in the field--and which, without any doubt, is
the most tremendous fortnight and the vividest he is ever going to see.
Yes, and I have shoveled silver tailings in a quartz-mill a couple of
weeks, and acquired the last possibilities of culture in that direction.
And I've done “pocket-mining” during three months in the one little
patch of ground in the whole globe where Nature conceals gold in
pockets--or did before we robbed all of those pockets and exhausted,
obliterated, annihilated the most curious freak Nature ever indulged in.
There are not thirty men left alive who, being told there was a pocket
hidden on the broad slope of a mountain, would know how to go and find
it, or have even the faintest idea of how to set about it; but I am one
of the possible 20 or 30 who possess the secret, and I could go and put
my hand on that hidden treasure with a most deadly precision.
And I've been a prospector, and know pay rock from poor when I find
it--just with a touch of the tongue. And I've been a silver miner and
know how to dig and shovel and drill and put in a blast. And so I know
the mines and the miners interiorly as well as Bret Harte knows them
exteriorly.
And I was a newspaper reporter four years in cities, and so saw the
inside of many things; and was reporter in a legislature two sessions
and the same in Congress one session, and thus learned to know
personally three sample bodies of the smallest minds and the selfishest
souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes.
And I was some years a Mississippi pilot, and familiarly knew all the
different kinds of steam-boatmen--a race apart, and not like other folk.
And I was for some years a traveling “jour” printer, and wandered from
city to city--and so I know that sect familiarly.
And I was a lecturer on the public platform a number of seasons and was
a responder to toasts at all the different kinds of banquets--and so I
know a great many secrets about audiences--secrets not to be got out of
books, but only acquirable by experience.
And I watched over one dear project of mine for years, spent a fortune
on it, and failed to make it go--and the history of that would make a
large book in which a million men would see themselves as in a mirror;
and they would testify and say, Verily, this is not imagination; this
fellow has been there--and after would cast dust upon their heads,
cursing and blaspheming.
And I am a publisher, and did pay to one author's widow (General
Grant's) the largest copyright checks this world has seen--aggregating
more than L80,000 in the first year.
And I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.
Now then; as the most valuable capital or culture or education usable
in the building of novels is personal experience I ought to be well
equipped for that trade.
I surely have the equipment, a wide culture, and all of it real, none of
it artificial, for I don't know anything about books.
[No signature.]
Clemens for several years had been bothered by rheumatism in his
shoulder. The return now to the steady use of the pen aggravated
his trouble, and at times he was nearly disabled. The phonograph
for commercial dictation had been tried experimentally, and Mark
Twain was always ready for any innovation.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Feb. 28, '91.
DEAR HOWELLS,--Won't you drop-in at the Boylston Building (New
England Phonograph Co) and talk into a phonograph in an ordinary
conversation-voice and see if another person (who didn't hear you do it)
can take the words from the thing without difficulty and repeat them
to you. If the experiment is satisfactory (also make somebody put in a
message which you don't hear, and see if afterward you can get it out
without difficulty) won't you then ask them on what terms they will rent
me a phonograph for 3 months and furnish me cylinders enough to carry
75,000 words. 175 cylinders, ain't it?
I don't want to erase any of them. My right arm is nearly disabled by
rheumatism, but I am bound to write this book (and sell 100,000 copies
of it--no, I mean a million--next fall) I feel sure I can dictate the
book into a phonograph if I don't have to yell. I write 2,000 words a
day; I think I can dictate twice as many.
But mind, if this is going to be too much trouble to you--go ahead and
do it, all the same.
Ys ever
MARK.
Howells, always willing to help, visited the phonograph place, and a
few days later reported results. He wrote: “I talked your letter
into a fonograf in my usual tone at my usual gait of speech. Then
the fonograf man talked his answer in at his wonted swing and swell.
Then we took the cylinder to a type-writer in the next room, and she
put the hooks into her ears and wrote the whole out. I send you the
result. There is a mistake of one word. I think that if you have
the cheek to dictate the story into the fonograf, all the rest is
perfectly easy. It wouldn't fatigue me to talk for an hour as I
did.”
Clemens did not find the phonograph entirely satisfactory, at least
not for a time, and he appears never to have used it steadily. His
early experience with it, however, seems interesting.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Apl. 4, '91.
DEAR HOWELLS,--I'm ashamed. It happened in this way. I was proposing to
acknowledge the receipt of the play and the little book per phonograph,
so that you could see that the instrument is good enough for mere
letter-writing; then I meant to add the fact that you can't write
literature with it, because it hasn't any ideas and it hasn't any gift
for elaboration, or smartness of talk, or vigor of action, or felicity
of expression, but is just matter-of-fact, compressive, unornamental,
and as grave and unsmiling as the devil.
I filled four dozen cylinders in two sittings, then found I could
have said about as much with the pen and said it a deal better. Then I
resigned.
I believe it could teach one to dictate literature to a
phonographer--and some time I will experiment in that line.
The little book is charmingly written, and it interested me. But it
flies too high for me. Its concretest things are filmy abstractions to
me, and when I lay my grip on one of them and open my hand, I feel as
embarrassed as I use to feel when I thought I had caught a fly. I'm
going to try to mail it back to you to-day--I mean I am going to charge
my memory. Charging my memory is one of my chief industries....
With our loves and our kindest regards distributed among you according
to the proprieties.
Yrs ever
MARK.
P. S.--I'm sending that ancient “Mental Telegraphy” article to
Harper's--with a modest postscript. Probably read it to you years ago.