The end of the year 1898 found Mark Twain once more in easy, even
luxurious, circumstances. The hard work and good fortune which had
enabled him to pay his debts had, in the course of another year,
provided what was comparative affluence: His report to Howells is
characteristic and interesting.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN, L. NEVER MARKT 6
Dec. 30, '98.
DEAR HOWELLS,--I begin with a date--including all the details--though
I shall be interrupted presently by a South-African acquaintance who is
passing through, and it may be many days before I catch another
leisure moment. Note how suddenly a thing can become habit, and how
indestructible the habit is, afterward! In your house in Cambridge a
hundred years ago, Mrs. Howells said to me, “Here is a bunch of your
letters, and the dates are of no value, because you don't put any
in--the years, anyway.” That remark diseased me with a habit which has
cost me worlds of time and torture and ink, and millions of vain efforts
and buckets of tears to break it, and here it is yet--I could easier get
rid of a virtue.....
I hope it will interest you (for I have no one else who would much
care to know it) that here lately the dread of leaving the children
in difficult circumstances has died down and disappeared and I am now
having peace from that long, long nightmare, and can sleep as well as
anyone. Every little while, for these three years, now, Mrs. Clemens has
come with pencil and paper and figured up the condition of things (she
keeps the accounts and the bank-book) and has proven to me that the
clouds were lifting, and so has hoisted my spirits temporarily and kept
me going till another figuring-up was necessary. Last night she figured
up for her own satisfaction, not mine, and found that we own a house and
furniture in Hartford; that my English and American copyrights pay an
income which represents a value of $200,000; and that we have $107,000
cash in the bank. I have been out and bought a box of 6-cent cigars; I
was smoking 4 1/2 centers before.
At the house of an English friend, on Christmas Eve, we saw the
Mouse-Trap played and well played. I thought the house would kill
itself with laughter. By George they played with life! and it was most
devastatingly funny. And it was well they did, for they put us Clemenses
in the front seat, and if they played it poorly I would have assaulted
them. The head young man and girl were Americans, the other parts
were taken by English, Irish and Scotch girls. Then there was a
nigger-minstrel show, of the genuine old sort, and I enjoyed that, too,
for the nigger-show was always a passion of mine. This one was created
and managed by a Quaker doctor from Philada., (23 years old) and he was
the middle man. There were 9 others--5 Americans from 5 States and a
Scotchman, 2 Englishmen and an Irishman--all post-graduate-medical young
fellows, of course--or, it could be music; but it would be bound to be
one or the other.
It's quite true--I don't read you “as much as I ought,” nor anywhere
near half as much as I want to; still I read you all I get a chance to.
I saved up your last story to read when the numbers should be complete,
but before that time arrived some other admirer of yours carried off the
papers. I will watch admirers of yours when the Silver Wedding journey
begins, and that will not happen again. The last chance at a bound book
of yours was in London nearly two years ago--the last volume of your
short things, by the Harpers. I read the whole book twice through and
some of the chapters several times, and the reason that that was as far
as I got with it was that I lent it to another admirer of yours and he
is admiring it yet. Your admirers have ways of their own; I don't know
where they get them.
Yes, our project is to go home next autumn if we find we can afford
to live in New York. We've asked a friend to inquire about flats and
expenses. But perhaps nothing will come of it. We do afford to live
in the finest hotel in Vienna, and have 4 bedrooms, a dining-room, a
drawing-room, 3 bath-rooms and 3 Vorzimmers, (and food) but we couldn't
get the half of it in New York for the same money ($600 a month).
Susy hovers about us this holiday week, and the shadows fall all about
us of
“The days when we went gipsying
A long time ago.”
Death is so kind, so benignant, to whom he loves; but he goes by us
others and will not look our way. We saw the “Master of Palmyra” last
night. How Death, with the gentleness and majesty, made the human
grand-folk around him seem little and trivial and silly!
With love from all of us to all of you.