Enclosure:
MY DEAR STOKER,--I am not dating this because it is not to be mailed at
present.
When it reaches you it will mean that there is a hitch in my
machine-enterprise--a hitch so serious as to make it take to itself the
aspect of a dissolved dream. This letter, then, will contain cheque for
the $100 which you have paid. And will you tell Irving for me--I can't
get up courage enough to talk about this misfortune myself, except to
you, whom by good luck I haven't damaged yet that when the wreckage
presently floats ashore he will get a good deal of his $500 back; and a
dab at a time I will make up to him the rest.
I'm not feeling as fine as I was when I saw you there in your home.
Please remember me kindly to Mrs. Stoker. I gave up that London
lecture-project entirely. Had to--there's never been a chance since to
find the time.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
XXXV. LETTERS, 1895-96, TO H. H. ROGERS AND OTHERS. FINISHING “JOAN OF
ARC.” THE TRIP AROUND THE WORLD. DEATH OF SUSY CLEMENS.
*****
To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
[No date.]
DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Yours of Dec. 21 has arrived, containing the circular
to stockholders and I guess the Co. will really quit--there doesn't seem
to be any other wise course.
There's one thing which makes it difficult for me to soberly realize
that my ten year dream is actually dissolved; and that is, that it
reveries my horoscope. The proverb says, “Born lucky, always lucky,” and
I am very superstitious. As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It
was usual for one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the
Mississippi or in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned
condition 9 times before I learned to swim, and was considered to be
a cat in disguise. When the “Pennsylvania” blew up and the telegraph
reported my brother as fatally injured (with 60 others) but made
no mention of me, my uncle said to my mother “It means that Sam was
somewhere else, after being on that boat a year and a half--he was born
lucky.” Yes, I was somewhere else. I am so superstitious that I have
always been afraid to have business dealings with certain relatives and
friends of mine because they were unlucky people. All my life I have
stumbled upon lucky chances of large size, and whenever they were wasted
it was because of my own stupidity and carelessness. And so I have felt
entirely certain that that machine would turn up trumps eventually. It
disappointed me lots of times, but I couldn't shake off the confidence
of a life-time in my luck.
Well, whatever I get out of the wreckage will be due to good luck--the
good luck of getting you into the scheme--for, but for that, there
wouldn't be any wreckage; it would be total loss.
I wish you had been in at the beginning. Then we should have had the
good luck to step promptly ashore.
Miss Harrison has had a dream which promises me a large bank account,
and I want her to go ahead and dream it twice more, so as to make the
prediction sure to be fulfilled.
I've got a first rate subject for a book. It kept me awake all night,
and I began it and completed it in my mind. The minute I finish Joan I
will take it up.
Love and Happy New Year to you all.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
This was about the end of the machine interests so far as Clemens
was concerned. Paige succeeded in getting some new people
interested, but nothing important happened, or that in any way
affected Mark Twain. Characteristically he put the whole matter
behind him and plunged into his work, facing comparative poverty and
a burden of debts with a stout heart. The beginning of the new year
found him really poorer in purse than he had ever been in his life,
but certainly not crushed, or even discouraged--at least, not
permanently--and never more industrious or capable.
*****
To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
PARIS, Jan. 23, '95.
DEAR MR. ROGERS,--After I wrote you, two or three days ago I thought
I would make a holiday of the rest of the day--the second deliberate
holiday since I had the gout. On the first holiday I wrote a tale of
about 6,000 words, which was 3 days' work in one; and this time I did
8,000 before midnight. I got nothing out of that first holiday but the
recreation of it, for I condemned the work after careful reading and
some revision; but this time I fared better--I finished the Huck Finn
tale that lies in your safe, and am satisfied with it.
The Bacheller syndicate (117 Tribune Building) want a story of 5,000
words (lowest limit of their London agent) for $1,000 and offer to plank
the check on delivery, and it was partly to meet that demand that I took
that other holiday. So as I have no short story that suits me (and can't
and shan't make promises), the best I can do is to offer the longer one
which I finished on my second holiday--“Tom Sawyer, Detective.”
It makes 27 or 28,000 words, and is really written for grown folks,
though I expect young folk to read it, too. It transfers to the banks of
the Mississippi the incidents of a strange murder which was committed in
Sweden in old times.
I'll refer applicants for a sight of the story to you or Miss
Harrison.--[Secretary to Mr. Rogers.]
Yours sincerely,
S. L. CLEMENS.
*****
To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
Apr. 29, '95.
DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Your felicitous delightful letter of the 15th arrived
three days ago, and brought great pleasure into the house.
There is one thing that weighs heavily on Mrs. Clemens and me. That is
Brusnahan's money. If he is satisfied to have it invested in the Chicago
enterprise, well and good; if not, we would like to have the money
paid back to him. I will give him as many months to decide in as he
pleases--let him name 6 or 10 or 12--and we will let the money stay
where it is in your hands till the time is up. Will Miss Harrison
tell him so? I mean if you approve. I would like him to have a good
investment, but would meantime prefer to protect him against loss.
At 6 minutes past 7, yesterday evening, Joan of Arc was burned at the
stake.
With the long strain gone, I am in a sort of physical collapse today,
but it will be gone tomorrow. I judged that this end of the book would
be hard work, and it turned out so. I have never done any work before
that cost so much thinking and weighing and measuring and planning and
cramming, or so much cautious and painstaking execution. For I wanted
the whole Rouen trial in, if it could be got in in such a way that the
reader's interest would not flag--in fact I wanted the reader's interest
to increase; and so I stuck to it with that determination in view--with
the result that I have left nothing out but unimportant repetitions.
Although it is mere history--history pure and simple--history stripped
naked of flowers, embroideries, colorings, exaggerations, invention--the
family agree that I have succeeded. It was a perilous thing to try in a
tale, but I never believed it a doubtful one--provided I stuck strictly
to business and didn't weaken and give up: or didn't get lazy and skimp
the work. The first two-thirds of the book were easy; for I only needed
to keep my historical road straight; therefore I used for reference only
one French history and one English one--and shoveled in as much fancy
work and invention on both sides of the historical road as I pleased.
But on this last third I have constantly used five French sources and
five English ones and I think no telling historical nugget in any of
them has escaped me.
Possibly the book may not sell, but that is nothing--it was written for
love.
There--I'm called to see company. The family seldom require this of me,
but they know I am not working today.
Yours sincerely,
S. L. CLEMENS.
“Brusnahan,” of the foregoing letter, was an employee of the New
York Herald, superintendent of the press-room--who had invested some
of his savings in the type-setter.
In February Clemens returned to New York to look after matters
connected with his failure and to close arrangements for a
reading-tour around the world. He was nearly sixty years old, and
time had not lessened his loathing for the platform. More than
once, however, in earlier years, he had turned to it as a
debt-payer, and never yet had his burden been so great as now. He
concluded arrangements with Major Pond to take him as far as the
Pacific Coast, and with R. S. Smythe, of Australia, for the rest of
the tour. In April we find him once more back in Paris preparing
to bring the family to America, He had returned by way of London,
where he had visited Stanley the explorer--an old friend.
*****
To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
Sunday, Apr.7,'95.
DEAR MR. ROGERS,--..... Stanley is magnificently housed in London, in
a grand mansion in the midst of the official world, right off Downing
Street and Whitehall. He had an extraordinary assemblage of brains and
fame there to meet me--thirty or forty (both sexes) at dinner, and more
than a hundred came in, after dinner. Kept it up till after midnight.
There were cabinet ministers, ambassadors, admirals, generals, canons,
Oxford professors, novelists, playwrights, poets, and a number of people
equipped with rank and brains. I told some yarns and made some speeches.
I promised to call on all those people next time I come to London, and
show them the wife and the daughters. If I were younger and very strong
I would dearly love to spend a season in London--provided I had no work
on hand, or no work more exacting than lecturing. I think I will lecture
there a month or two when I return from Australia.
There were many delightful ladies in that company. One was the wife
of His Excellency Admiral Bridge, Commander-in Chief of the Australian
Station, and she said her husband was able to throw wide all doors to me
in that part of the world and would be glad to do it, and would yacht me
and my party around, and excursion us in his flag-ship and make us have
a great time; and she said she would write him we were coming, and we
would find him ready. I have a letter from her this morning enclosing
a letter of introduction to the Admiral. I already know the Admiral
commanding in the China Seas and have promised to look in on him out
there. He sleeps with my books under his pillow. P'raps it is the only
way he can sleep.
According to Mrs. Clemens's present plans--subject to modification, of
course--we sail in May; stay one day, or two days in New York, spend
June, July and August in Elmira and prepare my lectures; then lecture
in San Francisco and thereabouts during September and sail for Australia
before the middle of October and open the show there about the middle of
November. We don't take the girls along; it would be too expensive and
they are quite willing to remain behind anyway.
Mrs. C. is feeling so well that she is not going to try the New York
doctor till we have gone around the world and robbed it and made the
finances a little easier.
With a power of love to you all,
S. L. CLEMENS.
There would come moments of depression, of course, and a week later
he wrote: “I am tired to death all the time:” To a man of less
vitality, less vigor of mind and body, it is easy to believe that
under such circumstances this condition would have remained
permanent. But perhaps, after all, it was his comic outlook on
things in general that was his chief life-saver.
*****
To H. H. Rogers, in New York City: