*****
To Wm. T. Stead, in London:
No. 2.
DEAR MR. STEAD,--Peace by compulsion. That seems a better idea than the
other. Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should
not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first,
and history seems to show that that cannot be done. Can't we reduce
the armaments little by little--on a pro rata basis--by concert of the
powers? Can't we get four great powers to agree to reduce their strength
10 per cent a year and thrash the others into doing likewise? For, of
course, we cannot expect all of the powers to be in their right minds at
one time. It has been tried. We are not going to try to get all of them
to go into the scheme peaceably, are we? In that case I must withdraw
my influence; because, for business reasons, I must preserve the outward
signs of sanity. Four is enough if they can be securely harnessed
together. They can compel peace, and peace without compulsion would be
against nature and not operative. A sliding scale of reduction of 10 per
cent a year has a sort of plausible look, and I am willing to try that
if three other powers will join. I feel sure that the armaments are now
many times greater than necessary for the requirements of either
peace or war. Take wartime for instance. Suppose circumstances made it
necessary for us to fight another Waterloo, and that it would do what it
did before--settle a large question and bring peace. I will guess that
400,000 men were on hand at Waterloo (I have forgotten the figures).
In five hours they disabled 50,000 men. It took them that tedious, long
time because the firearms delivered only two or three shots a minute.
But we would do the work now as it was done at Omdurman, with shower
guns, raining 600 balls a minute. Four men to a gun--is that the number?
A hundred and fifty shots a minute per man. Thus a modern soldier is 149
Waterloo soldiers in one. Thus, also, we can now retain one man out of
each 150 in service, disband the others, and fight our Waterloos just
as effectively as we did eighty-five years ago. We should do the same
beneficent job with 2,800 men now that we did with 400,000 then. The
allies could take 1,400 of the men, and give Napoleon 1,400 and then
whip him.
But instead what do we see? In war-time in Germany, Russia and France,
taken together we find about 8 million men equipped for the field. Each
man represents 149 Waterloo men, in usefulness and killing capacity.
Altogether they constitute about 350 million Waterloo men, and there are
not quite that many grown males of the human race now on this planet.
Thus we have this insane fact--that whereas those three countries could
arm 18,000 men with modern weapons and make them the equals of 3 million
men of Napoleon's day, and accomplish with them all necessary war work,
they waste their money and their prosperity creating forces of their
populations in piling together 349,982,000 extra Waterloo equivalents
which they would have no sort of use for if they would only stop
drinking and sit down and cipher a little.
Perpetual peace we cannot have on any terms, I suppose; but I hope we
can gradually reduce the war strength of Europe till we get it down to
where it ought to be--20,000 men, properly armed. Then we can have all
the peace that is worth while, and when we want a war anybody can afford
it.
VIENNA, January 9.
P. S.--In the article I sent the figures are wrong--“350 million” ought
to be 450 million; “349,982,000” ought to be 449,982,000, and the remark
about the sum being a little more than the present number of males on
the planet--that is wrong, of course; it represents really one and a
half the existing males.
Now and then one of Mark Twain's old comrades still reached out to
him across the years. He always welcomed such letters--they came as
from a lost land of romance, recalled always with tenderness. He
sent light, chaffing replies, but they were never without an
undercurrent of affection.
*****
To Major “Jack” Downing, in Middleport, Ohio:
HOTEL KRANTZ, WEIN, I, NEUER MART 6,
Feb. 26, 1899.
DEAR MAJOR,--No: it was to Bixby that I was apprenticed. He was to teach
me the river for a certain specified sum. I have forgotten what it was,
but I paid it. I steered a trip for Bart Bowen, of Keokuk, on the A.
T. Lacy, and I was partner with Will Bowen on the A. B. Chambers (one
trip), and with Sam Bowen a whole summer on a small Memphis packet.
The newspaper report you sent me is incorrect. Bixby is not 67: he is
97. I am 63 myself, and I couldn't talk plain and had just begun to walk
when I apprenticed myself to Bixby who was then passing himself off for
57 and successfully too, for he always looked 60 or 70 years younger
than he really was. At that time he was piloting the Mississippi on a
Potomac commission granted him by George Washington who was a personal
friend of his before the Revolution. He has piloted every important
river in America, on that commission, he has also used it as a passport
in Russia. I have never revealed these facts before. I notice, too, that
you are deceiving the people concerning your age. The printed portrait
which you have enclosed is not a portrait of you, but a portrait of me
when I was 19. I remember very well when it was common for people
to mistake Bixby for your grandson. Is it spreading, I wonder--this
disposition of pilots to renew their youth by doubtful methods? Beck
Jolly and Joe Bryan--they probably go to Sunday school now--but it will
not deceive.
Yes, it is as you say. All of the procession but a fraction has passed.
It is time for us all to fall in.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN I. NEUER MARKT 6
April 2, '99.
DEAR HOWELLS,--I am waiting for the April Harper, which is about due
now; waiting, and strongly interested. You are old enough to be a weary
man, with paling interests, but you do not show it. You do your work
in the same old delicate and delicious and forceful and searching and
perfect way. I don't know how you can--but I suspect. I suspect that to
you there is still dignity in human life, and that Man is not a joke--a
poor joke--the poorest that was ever contrived. Since I wrote my Bible,
(last year)--[“What Is Man.”]--which Mrs. Clemens loathes, and shudders
over, and will not listen to the last half nor allow me to print any
part of it, Man is not to me the respect-worthy person he was
before; and so I have lost my pride in him, and can't write gaily nor
praisefully about him any more. And I don't intend to try. I mean to go
on writing, for that is my best amusement, but I shan't print much (for
I don't wish to be scalped, any more than another.)
April 5. The Harper has come. I have been in Leipzig with your party,
and then went on to Karlsbad and saw Mrs. Marsh's encounter with the
swine with the toothpick and the other manners--[“Their Silver Wedding
Journey.”]--At this point Jean carried the magazine away.
Is it imagination, or--Anyway I seem to get furtive and fleeting
glimpses which I take to be the weariness and condolence of age;
indifference to sights and things once brisk with interest;
tasteless stale stuff which used to be champagne; the boredom
of travel: the secret sigh behind the public smile, the private
What-in-hell-did-I-come-for!
But maybe that is your art. Maybe that is what you intend the reader to
detect and think he has made a Columbus-discovery. Then it is well
done, perfectly done. I wrote my last travel book--[Following the
Equator.]--in hell; but I let on, the best I could, that it was an
excursion through heaven. Some day I will read it, and if its lying
cheerfulness fools me, then I shall believe it fooled the reader. How
I did loathe that journey around the world!--except the sea-part and
India.
Evening. My tail hangs low. I thought I was a financier--and I bragged
to you. I am not bragging, now. The stock which I sold at such a fine
profit early in January, has never ceased to advance, and is now worth
$60,000 more than I sold it for. I feel just as if I had been spending
$20,000 a month, and I feel reproached for this showy and unbecoming
extravagance.
Last week I was going down with the family to Budapest to lecture,
and to make a speech at a banquet. Just as I was leaving here I got a
telegram from London asking for the speech for a New York paper. I (this
is strictly private) sent it. And then I didn't make that speech, but
another of a quite different character--a speech born of something which
the introducer said. If that said speech got cabled and printed, you
needn't let on that it was never uttered.
That was a darling night, and those Hungarians were lively people. We
were there a week and had a great time. At the banquet I heard their
chief orator make a most graceful and easy and beautiful and delicious
speech--I never heard one that enchanted me more--although I did not
understand a word of it, since it was in Hungarian. But the art of
it!--it was superlative.
They are wonderful English scholars, these people; my lecture
audience--all Hungarians--understood me perfectly--to judge by the
effects. The English clergyman told me that in his congregation are 150
young English women who earn their living teaching their language; and
that there are others besides these.
For 60 cents a week the telephone reads the morning news to you at home;
gives you the stocks and markets at noon; gives you lessons in 3 foreign
languages during 3 hours; gives you the afternoon telegrams; and
at night the concerts and operas. Of course even the clerks and
seamstresses and bootblacks and everybody else are subscribers.
(Correction. Mrs. Clemens says it is 60 cents a month.)
I am renewing my youth. I made 4 speeches at one banquet here last
Saturday night. And I've been to a lot of football matches.
Jean has been in here examining the poll for the Immortals
(“Literature,” March 24,) in the hope, I think, that at last she should
find me at the top and you in second place; and if that is her ambition
she has suffered disappointment for the third time--and will never fare
any better, I hope, for you are where you belong, by every right. She
wanted to know who it is that does the voting, but I was not able to
tell her. Nor when the election will be completed and decided.
Next Morning. I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every
morning--well knowing that I shall find in it the usual depravities and
basenesses and hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization, and
cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of
the human race. I cannot seem to get my prayers answered, yet I do not
despair.
(Escaped from) 5 o'clock tea ['sh!) Oh, the American girl in Europe!
Often she is creditable, but sometimes she is just shocking. This one,
a minute ago--19, fat-face, raspy voice, pert ways, the self-complacency
of God; and with it all a silly laugh (embarrassed) which kept breaking
out through her chatter all along, whereas there was no call for it,
for she said nothing that was funny. “Spose so many 've told y' how they
'njoyed y'r chapt'r on the Germ' tongue it's bringin' coals to Newcastle
Kehe! say anything 'bout it Ke-hehe! Spent m' vacation 'n Russia, 'n saw
Tolstoi; he said--” It made me shudder.
April 12. Jean has been in here with a copy of Literature, complaining
that I am again behind you in the election of the 10 consecrated
members; and seems troubled about it and not quite able to understand
it. But I have explained to her that you are right there on the ground,
inside the pool-booth, keeping game--and that that makes a large
difference in these things.
13th. I have been to the Knustausstellung with Mrs. Clemens. The office
of art seems to be to grovel in the dirt before Emperors and this and
that and the other damned breed of priests.
Yrs ever
MARK.
Howells and Clemens were corresponding regularly again, though not
with the frequency of former years. Perhaps neither of them was
bubbling over with things to say; perhaps it was becoming yearly
less attractive to pick up a pen and write, and then, of course,
there was always the discouragement of distance. Once Howells
wrote: “I know this will find you in Austria before I can well turn
round, but I must make believe you are in Kennebunkport before I can
begin it.” And in another letter: “It ought to be as pleasant to
sit down and write to you as to sit down and talk to you, but it
isn't..... The only reason why I write is that I want another
letter from you, and because I have a whole afternoon for the job.
I have the whole of every afternoon, for I cannot work later than
lunch. I am fagged by that time, and Sunday is the only day that
brings unbearable leisure. I hope you will be in New York another
winter; then I shall know what to do with these foretastes of
eternity.”
Clemens usually wrote at considerable length, for he had a good deal
to report of his life in the Austrian capital, now drawing to a
close.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
May 12, 1899.
DEAR HOWELLS,--7.15 p. m. Tea (for Mr. and Mrs. Tower, who are leaving
for Russia) just over; nice people and rather creditable to the human
race: Mr. and Mrs. Tower; the new Minister and his wife; the Secretary
of Legation; the Naval (and Military) Attach; several English ladies; an
Irish lady; a Scotch lady; a particularly nice young Austrian baron who
wasn't invited but came and went supposing it was the usual thing and
wondered at the unusually large gathering; two other Austrians and
several Americans who were also in his fix; the old Baronin Langeman,
the only Austrian invited; the rest were Americans. It made just a
comfortable crowd in our parlor, with an overflow into Clara's through
the folding doors. I don't enjoy teas, and am daily spared them by Mrs.
Clemens, but this was a pleasant one. I had only one accident. The
old Baronin Langeman is a person I have a strong fondness for, for
we violently disagree on some subjects and as violently agree on
others--for instance, she is temperance and I am not: she has religious
beliefs and feelings and I have none; (she's a Methodist!) she is
a democrat and so am I; she is woman's rights and so am I; she is
laborers' rights and approves trades unions and strikes, and that is me.
And so on. After she was gone an English lady whom I greatly like, began
to talk sharply against her for contributing money, time, labor, and
public expression of favor to a strike that is on (for an 11-hour day)
in the silk factories of Bohemia--and she caught me unprepared and
betrayed me into over-warm argument. I am sorry: for she didn't know
anything about the subject, and I did; and one should be gentle with the
ignorant, for they are the chosen of God.
(The new Minister is a good man, but out of place. The Sec. of Legation
is a good man, but out of place. The Attache is a good man, but out of
place. Our government for displacement beats the new White Star ship;
and her possible is 17,200 tons.)
May 13, 4 p. m. A beautiful English girl and her handsome English
husband came up and spent the evening, and she certainly is a bird.
English parents--she was born and reared in Roumania and couldn't talk
English till she was 8 or 10. She came up clothed like the sunset, and
was a delight to look at. (Roumanian costume.).....
Twenty-four young people have gone out to the Semmering to-day (and
to-morrow) and Mrs. Clemens and an English lady and old Leschetitzky and
his wife have gone to chaperon them. They gave me a chance to go, but
there are no snow mountains that I want to look at. Three hours out,
three hours back, and sit up all night watching the young people dance;
yelling conversationally and being yelled at, conversationally, by new
acquaintances, through the deafening music, about how I like Vienna, and
if it's my first visit, and how long we expect to stay, and did I see
the foot-washing, and am I writing a book about Vienna, and so on. The
terms seemed too severe. Snow mountains are too dear at the price....
For several years I have been intending to stop writing for print as
soon as I could afford it. At last I can afford it, and have put the
pot-boiler pen away. What I have been wanting is a chance to write a
book without reserves--a book which should take account of no one's
feelings, and no one's prejudices, opinions, beliefs, hopes, illusions,
delusions; a book which should say my say, right out of my heart, in the
plainest language and without a limitation of any sort. I judged that
that would be an unimaginable luxury, heaven on earth.
It is under way, now, and it is a luxury! an intellectual drunk: Twice I
didn't start it right; and got pretty far in, both times, before I found
it out. But I am sure it is started right this time. It is in tale-form.
I believe I can make it tell what I think of Man, and how he is
constructed, and what a shabby poor ridiculous thing he is, and how
mistaken he is in his estimate of his character and powers and qualities
and his place among the animals.
So far, I think I am succeeding. I let the madam into the secret day
before yesterday, and locked the doors and read to her the opening
chapters. She said--
“It is perfectly horrible--and perfectly beautiful!”
“Within the due limits of modesty, that is what I think.”
I hope it will take me a year or two to write it, and that it will turn
out to be the right vessel to contain all the abuse I am planning to
dump into it.
Yours ever
MARK.
The story mentioned in the foregoing, in which Mark Twain was to
give his opinion of man, was The Mysterious Stranger. It was not
finished at the time, and its closing chapter was not found until
after his death. Six years later (1916) it was published serially
in Harper's Magazine, and in book form.
The end of May found the Clemens party in London, where they were
received and entertained with all the hospitality they had known in
earlier years. Clemens was too busy for letter-writing, but in the
midst of things he took time to report to Howells an amusing
incident of one of their entertainments.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in America: