DEAR MR. WALKER,--By gracious but you have a talent for making a man
feel proud and good! To say a compliment well is a high art--and few
possess it. You know how to do it, and when you confirm its sincerity
with a handsome cheque the limit is reached and compliment can no higher
go. I like to work for you: when you don't approve an article you say
so, recognizing that I am not a child and can stand it; and when you
approve an article I don't have to dicker with you as if I raised
peanuts and you kept a stand; I know I shall get every penny the article
is worth.
You have given me very great pleasure, and I thank you for it.
Sincerely Yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
On the same day he sent word to Howells of the good luck which now
seemed to be coming his way. The Joan of Arc introduction was the
same that today appears in his collected works under the title of
Saint Joan of Arc.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
LONDON, Oct. 19, '99.
DEAR HOWELLS,--My, it's a lucky day!--of the sort when it never rains
but it pours. I was to write an introduction to a nobler book--the
English translation of the Official Record (unabridged) of the Trials
and Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, and make a lot of footnotes. I wrote
the introduction in Sweden, and here a few days ago I tore loose from
a tale I am writing, and took the MS book and went at the grind of
note-making--a fearful job for a man not used to it. This morning
brought a note from my excellent friend Murray, a rich Englishman who
edits the translation, saying, “Never mind the notes--we'll make the
translators do them.” That was comfort and joy.
The same mail brought a note from Canon Wilberforce, asking me to
talk Joan of Arc in his drawing-room to the Dukes and Earls and M.
P.'s--(which would fetch me out of my seclusion and into print, and I
couldn't have that,) and so of course I must run down to the Abbey and
explain--and lose an hour. Just then came Murray and said “Leave that
to me--I'll go and do the explaining and put the thing off 3 months; you
write a note and tell him I am coming.”
(Which I did, later.) Wilberforce carried off my hat from a lunch party
last summer, and in to-day's note he said he wouldn't steal my new hat
this time. In my note I said I couldn't make the drawing-room talk,
now--Murray would explain; and added a P. S.: “You mustn't think it is
because I am afraid to trust my hat in your reach again, for I assure
you upon honor it isn't. I should bring my old one.”
I had suggested to Murray a fortnight ago, that he get some big guns to
write introductory monographs for the book.
Miss X, Joan's Voices and Prophecies.
The Lord Chief Justice of England, the legal prodigies which she
performed before her judges.
Lord Roberts, her military genius.
Kipling, her patriotism.
And so on. When he came this morning he said he had captured Miss X;
that Lord Roberts and Kipling were going to take hold and see if they
could do monographs worthy of the book. He hadn't run the others to
cover yet, but was on their track. Very good news. It is a grand book,
and is entitled to the best efforts of the best people. As for me, I
took pains with my Introduction, and I admit that it is no slouch of a
performance.
Then I came down to Chatto's, and found your all too beautiful letter,
and was lifted higher than ever. Next came letters from America properly
glorifying my Christian Science article in the Cosmopolitan (and one
roundly abusing it,) and a letter from John Brisben Walker enclosing
$200 additional pay for the article (he had already paid enough, but I
didn't mention that--which wasn't right of me, for this is the second
time he has done such a thing, whereas Gilder has done it only once and
no one else ever.) I make no prices with Walker and Gilder--I can trust
them.
And last of all came a letter from M-. How I do wish that man was in
hell. Even-the briefest line from that idiot puts me in a rage.
But on the whole it has been a delightful day, and with M----in hell it
would have been perfect. But that will happen, and I can wait.
Ah, if I could look into the inside of people as you do, and put it on
paper, and invent things for them to do and say, and tell how they said
it, I could writs a fine and readable book now, for I've got a prime
subject. I've written 30,000 words of it and satisfied myself that the
stuff is there; so I am going to discard that MS and begin all over
again and have a good time with it.
Oh, I know how you feel! I've been in hell myself. You are there
tonight. By difference in time you are at luncheon, now--and not
eating it. Nothing is so lonesome as gadding around platforming. I have
declined 45 lectures to-day-England and Scotland. I wanted the money,
but not the torture: Good luck to you!--and repentance.
With love to all of you
MARK.
XXXIX. LETTERS OF 1900, MAINLY TO TWICHELL. THE BOER WAR. BOXER
TROUBLES. THE RETURN TO AMERICA.
The New Year found Clemens still in London, chiefly interested in
osteopathy and characteristically glorifying the practice at the expense
of other healing methods.
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
LONDON, Jan. 8, 1900.
DEAR JOE,--Mental Telepathy has scored another. Mental Telegraphy will
be greatly respected a century hence.
By the accident of writing my sister and describing to her the
remarkable cures made by Kellgren with his hands and without drugs, I
brought upon myself a quite stunning surprise; for she wrote to me that
she had been taking this very treatment in Buffalo--and that it was an
American invention.
Well, it does really turn out that Dr. Still, in the middle of Kansas,
in a village, began to experiment in 1874, only five years after
Kellgren began the same work obscurely in the village of Gotha, in
Germany. Dr. Still seems to be an honest man; therefore I am persuaded
that Kellgren moved him to his experiments by Mental Telegraphy across
six hours of longitude, without need of a wire. By the time Still began
to experiment, Kellgren had completed his development of the
principles of his system and established himself in a good practice in
London--1874--and was in good shape to convey his discovery to Kansas,
Mental Telegraphically.
Yes, I was greatly surprised to find that my mare's nest was much in
arrears: that this new science was well known in America under the name
of Osteopathy. Since then, I find that in the past 3 years it has
got itself legalized in 14 States in spite of the opposition of the
physicians; that it has established 20 Osteopathic schools and colleges;
that among its students are 75 allopathic physicians; that there is a
school in Boston and another in Philadelphia, that there are about 100
students in the parent college (Dr. Still's at Kirksville, Missouri,)
and that there are about 2,000 graduates practicing in America. Dear
me, there are not 30 in Europe. Europe is so sunk in superstitions
and prejudices that it is an almost impossible thing to get her to
do anything but scoff at a new thing--unless it come from abroad; as
witness the telegraph, dentistry, &c.
Presently the Osteopath will come over here from America and will soon
make himself a power that must be recognized and reckoned with; and
then, 25 years from now, England will begin to claim the invention and
tell all about its origin, in the Cyclopedia B-----as in the case of
the telegraph, applied anaesthetics and the other benefactions which she
heaped her abuse upon when her inventors first offered them to her.
I cannot help feeling rather inordinately proud of America for the gay
and hearty way in which she takes hold of any new thing that comes along
and gives it a first rate trial. Many an ass in America, is getting
a deal of benefit out of X-Science's new exploitation of an age-old
healing principle--faith, combined with the patient's imagination--let
it boom along! I have no objection. Let them call it by what name
they choose, so long as it does helpful work among the class which is
numerically vastly the largest bulk of the human race, i.e. the fools,
the idiots, the pudd'nheads.
We do not guess, we know that 9 in 10 of the species are pudd'nheads. We
know it by various evidences; and one of them is, that for ages the
race has respected (and almost venerated) the physician's grotesque
system--the emptying of miscellaneous and harmful drugs into a person's
stomach to remove ailments which in many cases the drugs could not reach
at all; in many cases could reach and help, but only at cost of damage
to some other part of the man; and in the remainder of the cases the
drug either retarded the cure, or the disease was cured by nature in
spite of the nostrums. The doctor's insane system has not only been
permitted to continue its follies for ages, but has been protected by
the State and made a close monopoly--an infamous thing, a crime against
a free-man's proper right to choose his own assassin or his own method
of defending his body against disease and death.
And yet at the same time, with curious and senile inconsistency, the
State has allowed the man to choose his own assassin--in one detail--the
patent-medicine detail--making itself the protector of that perilous
business, collecting money out of it, and appointing no committee of
experts to examine the medicines and forbid them when extra dangerous.
Really, when a man can prove that he is not a jackass, I think he is in
the way to prove that he is no legitimate member of the race.
I have by me a list of 52 human ailments--common ones--and in this list
I count 19 which the physician's art cannot cure. But there isn't one
which Osteopathy or Kellgren cannot cure, if the patient comes early.
Fifteen years ago I had a deep reverence for the physician and the
surgeon. But 6 months of closely watching the Kellgren business has
revolutionized all that, and now I have neither reverence nor respect
for the physician's trade, and scarcely any for the surgeon's,--I am
convinced that of all quackeries, the physician's is the grotesquest and
the silliest. And they know they are shams and humbugs. They have taken
the place of those augurs who couldn't look each other in the face
without laughing.
See what a powerful hold our ancient superstitions have upon us:
two weeks ago, when Livy committed an incredible imprudence and
by consequence was promptly stricken down with a heavy triple
attack--influenza, bronchitis, and a lung affected--she recognized the
gravity of the situation, and her old superstitions rose: she thought
she ought to send for a doctor--Think of it--the last man in the world I
should want around at such a time. Of course I did not say no--not that
I was indisposed to take the responsibility, for I was not, my notion of
a dangerous responsibility being quite the other way--but because it is
unsafe to distress a sick person; I only said we knew no good doctor,
and it could not be good policy to choose at hazard; so she allowed me
to send for Kellgren. To-day she is up and around--cured. It is safe to
say that persons hit in the same way at the same time are in bed yet,
and booked to stay there a good while, and to be in a shackly condition
and afraid of their shadows for a couple of years or more to come.
It will be seen by the foregoing that Mark Twain's interest in the
Kellgren system was still an ardent one. Indeed, for a time he gave most
of his thought to it, and wrote several long appreciations, perhaps with
little idea of publication, but merely to get his enthusiasm physically
expressed. War, however, presently supplanted medicine--the Boer
troubles in South Africa and the Boxer insurrection in China. It was a
disturbing, exciting year.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
WELLINGTON COURT, KNIGHTSBRIDGE,
Jan. 25, 1900.
DEAR HOWELLS,--If you got half as much as Pond prophesied, be content
and praise God--it has not happened to another. But I am sorry he didn't
go with you; for it is marvelous to hear him yarn. He is good company,
cheery and hearty, and his mill is never idle. Your doing a lecture tour
was heroic. It was the highest order of grit, and you have a right to be
proud of yourself. No mount of applause or money or both could save it
from being a hell to a man constituted as you are. It is that even to
me, who am made of coarser stuff.
I knew the audiences would come forward and shake hands with you--that
one infallible sign of sincere approval. In all my life, wherever it
failed me I left the hall sick and ashamed, knowing what it meant.
Privately speaking, this is a sordid and criminal war, and in every way
shameful and excuseless. Every day I write (in my head) bitter magazine
articles about it, but I have to stop with that. For England must
not fall; it would mean an inundation of Russian and German political
degradations which would envelop the globe and steep it in a sort of
Middle-Age night and slavery which would last till Christ comes again.
Even wrong--and she is wrong--England must be upheld. He is an enemy of
the human race who shall speak against her now. Why was the human race
created? Or at least why wasn't something creditable created in place of
it. God had his opportunity. He could have made a reputation. But no,
He must commit this grotesque folly--a lark which must have cost him a
regret or two when He came to think it over and observe effects. For a
giddy and unbecoming caprice there has been nothing like it till this
war. I talk the war with both sides--always waiting until the other man
introduces the topic. Then I say “My head is with the Briton, but my
heart and such rags of morals as I have are with the Boer--now we will
talk, unembarrassed and without prejudice.” And so we discuss, and have
no trouble.
Jan. 26.
It was my intention to make some disparaging remarks about the human
race; and so I kept this letter open for that purpose, and for the
purpose of telling my dream, wherein the Trinity were trying to guess
a conundrum, but I can do better--for I can snip out of the “Times”
various samples and side-lights which bring the race down to date,
and expose it as of yesterday. If you will notice, there is seldom
a telegram in a paper which fails to show up one or more members and
beneficiaries of our Civilization as promenading in his shirt-tail, with
the rest of his regalia in the wash.
I love to see the holy ones air their smug pieties and admire them and
smirk over them, and at the same moment frankly and publicly show their
contempt for the pieties of the Boer--confidently expecting the approval
of the country and the pulpit, and getting it.
I notice that God is on both sides in this war; thus history repeats
itself. But I am the only person who has noticed this; everybody here
thinks He is playing the game for this side, and for this side only.
With great love to you all
MARK.
One cannot help wondering what Mark Twain would have thought of
human nature had he lived to see the great World War, fought mainly
by the Christian nations who for nearly two thousand years had been
preaching peace on earth and goodwill toward men. But his opinion
of the race could hardly have been worse than it was. And nothing
that human beings could do would have surprised him.
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
LONDON, Jan. 27, 1900.
DEAR JOE,--Apparently we are not proposing to set the Filipinos free and
give their islands to them; and apparently we are not proposing to hang
the priests and confiscate their property. If these things are so, the
war out there has no interest for me.
I have just been examining chapter LXX of “Following the Equator,” to
see if the Boer's old military effectiveness is holding out. It reads
curiously as if it had been written about the present war.
I believe that in the next chapter my notion of the Boer was rightly
conceived. He is popularly called uncivilized, I do not know why.
Happiness, food, shelter, clothing, wholesale labor, modest and rational
ambitions, honesty, kindliness, hospitality, love of freedom and
limitless courage to fight for it, composure and fortitude in time of
disaster, patience in time of hardship and privation, absence of noise
and brag in time of victory, contentment with a humble and peaceful
life void of insane excitements--if there is a higher and better form
of civilization than this, I am not aware of it and do not know where
to look for it. I suppose we have the habit of imagining that a lot of
artistic, intellectual and other artificialities must be added, or it
isn't complete. We and the English have these latter; but as we lack the
great bulk of these others, I think the Boer civilization is the best of
the two. My idea of our civilization is that it is a shabby poor
thing and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogancies, meannesses, and
hypocrisies. As for the word, I hate the sound of it, for it conveys
a lie; and as for the thing itself, I wish it was in hell, where it
belongs.
Provided we could get something better in the place of it. But that is
not possible, perhaps. Poor as it is, it is better than real savagery,
therefore we must stand by it, extend it, and (in public) praise it. And
so we must not utter any hateful word about England in these days, nor
fail to hope that she will win in this war, for her defeat and
fall would be an irremediable disaster for the mangy human race....
Naturally, then, I am for England; but she is profoundly in the wrong,
Joe, and no (instructed) Englishman doubts it. At least that is my
belief.
Maybe I managed to make myself misunderstood, as to the Osteopathists.
I wanted to know how the men impress you. As to their Art, I know fairly
well about that, and should not value Hartford's opinion of it; nor a
physician's; nor that of another who proposed to enlighten me out of his
ignorance. Opinions based upon theory, superstition and ignorance are
not very precious.
Livy and the others are off for the country for a day or two.
Love to you all
MARK.
The next letter affords a pleasant variation. Without doubt it was
written on realizing that good nature and enthusiasm had led him
into indiscretion. This was always happening to him, and letters
like this are not infrequent, though generally less entertaining.
*****
To Mr. Ann, in London:
WELLINGTON COURT, Feb. 23, '00.
DEAR MR. ANN,--Upon sober second thought, it won't do!--I withdraw
that letter. Not because I said anything in it which is not true, for
I didn't; but because when I allow my name to be used in forwarding a
stock-scheme I am assuming a certain degree of responsibility as toward
the investor, and I am not willing to do that. I have another objection,
a purely selfish one: trading upon my name, whether the enterprise
scored a success or a failure would damage me. I can't afford that;
even the Archbishop of Canterbury couldn't afford it, and he has more
character to spare than I have. (Ah, a happy thought! If he would sign
the letter with me that would change the whole complexion of the thing,
of course. I do not know him, yet I would sign any commercial scheme
that he would sign. As he does not know me, it follows that he would
sign anything that I would sign. This is unassailable logic--but really
that is all that can be said for it.)
No, I withdraw the letter. This virgin is pure up to date, and is going
to remain so.
Ys sincerely,
S. L. C.
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
WELLINGTON COURT,
KNIGHTSBRIDGE, Mch. 4, '00.
DEAR JOE,--Henry Robinson's death is a sharp wound to me, and it goes
very deep. I had a strong affection for him, and I think he had for
me. Every Friday, three-fourths of the year for 16 years he was of
the billiard-party in our house. When we come home, how shall we have
billiard-nights again--with no Ned Bunce and no Henry Robinson? I
believe I could not endure that. We must find another use for that
room. Susy is gone, George is gone, Libby Hamersley, Ned Bunce, Henry
Robinson. The friends are passing, one by one; our house, where such
warm blood and such dear blood flowed so freely, is become a cemetery.
But not in any repellent sense. Our dead are welcome there; their life
made it beautiful, their death has hallowed it, we shall have them with
us always, and there will be no parting.
It was a moving address you made over Ward Cheney--that fortunate,
youth! Like Susy, he got out of life all that was worth the living, and
got his great reward before he had crossed the tropic frontier of dreams
and entered the Sahara of fact. The deep consciousness of Susy's good
fortune is a constant comfort to me.
London is happy-hearted at last. The British victories have swept the
clouds away and there are no uncheerful faces. For three months the
private dinner parties (we go to no public ones) have been Lodges of
Sorrow, and just a little depressing sometimes; but now they are smiley
and animated again. Joe, do you know the Irish gentleman and the Irish
lady, the Scotch gentleman and the Scotch lady? These are darlings,
every one. Night before last it was all Irish--24. One would have to
travel far to match their ease and sociability and animation and sparkle
and absence of shyness and self-consciousness.
It was American in these fine qualities. This was at Mr. Lecky's. He is
Irish, you know. Last night it was Irish again, at Lady Gregory's. Lord
Roberts is Irish; and Sir William Butler; and Kitchener, I think; and
a disproportion of the other prominent Generals are of Irish and Scotch
breed-keeping up the traditions of Wellington, and Sir Colin Campbell of
the Mutiny. You will have noticed that in S. A. as in the Mutiny, it is
usually the Irish and the Scotch that are placed in the fore-front of
the battle. An Irish friend of mine says this is because the Kelts are
idealists, and enthusiasts, with age-old heroisms to emulate and keep
bright before the world; but that the low-class Englishman is dull
and without ideals, fighting bull-doggishly while he has a leader, but
losing his head and going to pieces when his leader falls--not so with
the Kelt. Sir Wm. Butler said “the Kelt is the spear-head of the British
lance.”
Love to you all.
MARK.
The Henry Robinson mentioned in the foregoing letter was Henry C.
Robinson, one-time Governor of Connecticut, long a dear and intimate
friend of the Clemens household. “Lecky” was W. E. H. Lecky, the
Irish historian whose History of European Morals had been, for many
years, one of Mark Twain's favorite books:
In July the Clemenses left the small apartment at 30 Wellington
Court and established a summer household a little way out of London,
at Dollis Hill. To-day the place has been given to the public under
the name of Gladstone Park, so called for the reason that in an
earlier time Gladstone had frequently visited there. It was a
beautiful spot, a place of green grass and spreading oaks. In a
letter in which Mrs. Clemens wrote to her sister she said: “It is
simply divinely beautiful and peaceful; the great, old trees are
beyond everything. I believe nowhere in the world do you find such
trees as in England.” Clemens wrote to Twichell: “From the house
you can see little but spacious stretches of hay-fields and green
turf..... Yet the massed, brick blocks of London are reachable in
three minutes on a horse. By rail we can be in the heart of London,
in Baker Street, in seventeen minutes--by a smart train in five.”
Mail, however, would seem to have been less prompt.
*****
To the Editor of the Times, in London:
SIR,--It has often been claimed that the London postal service was
swifter than that of New York, and I have always believed that the claim
was justified. But a doubt has lately sprung up in my mind. I live
eight miles from Printing House Square; the Times leaves that point at
4 o'clock in the morning, by mail, and reaches me at 5 in the afternoon,
thus making the trip in thirteen hours.
It is my conviction that in New York we should do it in eleven.