Clemens made an article of the Austrian troubles, one of the best
things he ever wrote, and certainly one of the clearest elucidations
of the Austro-Hungarian confusions. It was published in Harper's
Magazine, and is now included in his complete works.
Thus far none of the Webster Company debts had been paid--at least,
none of importance. The money had been accumulating in Mr. Rogers's
hands, but Clemens was beginning to be depressed by the heavy
burden. He wrote asking for relief.
*****
Fragment of a letter to H. H. Rogers, in New York:
DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I throw up the sponge. I pull down the flag. Let us
begin on the debts. I cannot bear the weight any longer. It totally
unfits me for work. I have lost three entire months now. In that time
I have begun twenty magazine articles and books--and flung every one of
them aside in turn. The debts interfered every time, and took the spirit
out of any work. And yet I have worked like a bond slave and wasted no
time and spared no effort----
Rogers wrote, proposing a plan for beginning immediately upon the debts.
Clemens replied enthusiastically, and during the next few weeks wrote
every few days, expressing his delight in liquidation.
Extracts from letters to H. H. Rogers, in New York:
... We all delighted with your plan. Only don't leave B--out. Apparently
that claim has been inherited by some women--daughters, no doubt.
We don't want to see them lose any thing. B----- is an ass, and
disgruntled, but I don't care for that. I am responsible for the money
and must do the best I can to pay it..... I am writing hard--writing for
the creditors.
Dec. 29.
Land we are glad to see those debts diminishing. For the first time in
my life I am getting more pleasure out of paying money out than pulling
it in.
Jan. 2.
Since we have begun to pay off the debts I have abundant peace of mind
again--no sense of burden. Work is become a pleasure again--it is not
labor any longer.
March 7.
Mrs. Clemens has been reading the creditors' letters over and over again
and thanks you deeply for sending them, and says it is the only really
happy day she has had since Susy died.
XXXVII. LETTERS, 1898, TO HOWELLS AND TWICHELL. LIFE IN VIENNA. PAYMENT
OF THE DEBTS. ASSASSINATION OF THE EMPRESS.
The end of January saw the payment of the last of Mark Twain's debts.
Once more he stood free before the world--a world that sounded his
praises. The latter fact rather amused him. “Honest men must be pretty
scarce,” he said, “when they make so much fuss over even a defective
specimen.” When the end was in sight Clemens wrote the news to Howells
in a letter as full of sadness as of triumph.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
HOTEL METROPOLE,
VIENNA, Jan. 22, '98.
DEAR HOWELLS,--Look at those ghastly figures. I used to write it
“Hartford, 1871.” There was no Susy then--there is no Susy now. And
how much lies between--one long lovely stretch of scented fields, and
meadows, and shady woodlands, and suddenly Sahara! You speak of the
glorious days of that old time--and they were. It is my quarrel--that
traps like that are set. Susy and Winnie given us, in miserable sport,
and then taken away.
About the last time I saw you I described to you the culminating
disaster in a book I was going to write (and will yet, when the stroke
is further away)--a man's dead daughter brought to him when he had been
through all other possible misfortunes--and I said it couldn't be done
as it ought to be done except by a man who had lived it--it must be
written with the blood out of a man's heart. I couldn't know, then, how
soon I was to be made competent. I have thought of it many a time since.
If you were here I think we could cry down each other's necks, as in
your dream. For we are a pair of old derelicts drifting around, now,
with some of our passengers gone and the sunniness of the others in
eclipse.
I couldn't get along without work now. I bury myself in it up to the
ears. Long hours--8 and 9 on a stretch, sometimes. And all the days,
Sundays included. It isn't all for print, by any means, for much of it
fails to suit me; 50,000 words of it in the past year. It was because of
the deadness which invaded me when Susy died. But I have made a change
lately--into dramatic work--and I find it absorbingly entertaining. I
don't know that I can write a play that will play: but no matter, I'll
write half a dozen that won't, anyway. Dear me, I didn't know there was
such fun in it. I'll write twenty that won't play. I get into immense
spirits as soon as my day is fairly started. Of course a good deal of
this friskiness comes of my being in sight of land--on the Webster & Co.
debts, I mean. (Private.) We've lived close to the bone and saved every
cent we could, and there's no undisputed claim, now, that we can't
cash. I have marked this “private” because it is for the friends who are
attending to the matter for us in New York to reveal it when they want
to and if they want to. There are only two claims which I dispute and
which I mean to look into personally before I pay them. But they are
small. Both together they amount to only $12,500. I hope you will never
get the like of the load saddled onto you that was saddled onto me 3
years ago. And yet there is such a solid pleasure in paying the things
that I reckon maybe it is worth while to get into that kind of a hobble,
after all. Mrs. Clemens gets millions of delight out of it; and the
children have never uttered one complaint about the scrimping, from the
beginning.
We all send you and all of you our love.