DEAR MR. DUNEKA,--... I've made a poor guess as to number of words.
I think there must be 20,000. My usual page of MS. contains about 130
words; but when I am deeply interested in my work and dead to everything
else, my hand-writing shrinks and shrinks until there's a great deal
more than 130 on a page--oh, yes, a deal more. Well, I discover, this
morning, that this tale is written in that small hand.
This strong interest is natural, for the heroine is my daughter, Susy,
whom we lost. It was not intentional--it was a good while before I found
it out.
So I am sending you her picture to use--and to reproduce with
photographic exactness the unsurpassable expression and all. May you
find an artist who has lost an idol!
Take as good care of the picture as you can and restore it to me when I
come.
I hope you will illustrate this tale considerably. Not humorous
pictures. No. When they are good (or bad) one's humor gets no chance to
play surprises on the reader. A humorous subject illustrated seriously
is all right, but a humorous artist is no fit person for such work. You
see, the humorous writer pretends to absolute seriousness (when he
knows his trade) then for an artist--to step in and give his calculated
gravity all away with a funny picture--oh, my land! It gives me the dry
gripes just to think of it. It would be just about up to the average
comic artist's intellectual level to make a funny picture of the horse
kicking the lungs out of a trader. Hang it, the remark is funny--because
the horse is not aware of it but the fact is not humorous, it is tragic
and it is no subject for a humorous picture.
Could I be allowed to sit in judgment upon the pictures before they are
accepted--at least those in which Cathy may figure?
This is not essential. It is but a suggestion, and it is hereby
withdrawn, if it would be troublesome or cause delay.
I hope you will reproduce the cat-pile, full page. And save the photo
for me in as good condition as possible. When Susy and Clara were little
tots those cats had their profoundest worship, and there is no duplicate
of this picture. These cats all had thundering names, or inappropriate
ones--furnished by the children with my help. One was named Buffalo
Bill.
Are you interested in coincidences?
After discovering, about the middle of the book, that Cathy was Susy
Clemens, I put her picture with my MS., to be reproduced. After the book
was finished it was discovered that Susy had a dim model of Soldier Boy
in her arms; I had forgotten all about that toy.
Then I examined the cat-picture and laid it with the MS. for
introduction; but it was not until yesterday that I remembered that one
of the cats was named Buffalo Bill.
Sincerely yours,
MARK.
The reference in this letter to shrinkage of his hand-writing with
the increasing intensity of his interest, and the consequent
addition of the number of words to the page, recalls another fact,
noted by Mr. Duneka, viz.: that because of his terse Anglo-Saxon
diction, Mark Twain could put more words on a magazine page than any
other writer. It is hardly necessary to add that he got more force
into what he put on the page for the same reason.
There was always a run of reporters at Mark Twain's New York home.
His opinion was sought for on every matter of public interest, and
whatever happened to him in particular was considered good for at
least half a column of copy, with his name as a catch-line at the
top. When it was learned that he was to spend the summer in New
Hampshire, the reporters had all wanted to find out about it. Now
that the summer was ending, they began to want to know how he had
liked it, what work he had done and what were his plans for another
year. As they frequently applied to his publishers for these
details it was finally suggested to him that he write a letter
furnishing the required information. His reply, handed to Mr.
Duneka, who was visiting him at the moment, is full of interest.
Mem. for Mr. Duneka:
DUBLIN, Oct. 9, 1905.
... As to the other matters, here are the details.
Yes, I have tried a number of summer homes, here and in Europe together.
Each of these homes had charms of its own; charms and delights of its
own, and some of them--even in Europe had comforts. Several of them had
conveniences, too. They all had a “view.”
It is my conviction that there should always be some water in a view--a
lake or a river, but not the ocean, if you are down on its level. I
think that when you are down on its level it seldom inflames you with an
ecstasy which you could not get out of a sand-flat. It is like being on
board ship, over again; indeed it is worse than that, for there's three
months of it. On board ship one tires of the aspects in a couple of
days, and quits looking. The same vast circle of heaving humps is spread
around you all the time, with you in the centre of it and never gaining
an inch on the horizon, so far as you can see; for variety, a flight
of flying-fish, mornings; a flock of porpoises throwing summersaults
afternoons; a remote whale spouting, Sundays; occasional phosphorescent
effects, nights; every other day a streak of black smoke trailing along
under the horizon; on the one single red letter day, the illustrious
iceberg. I have seen that iceberg thirty-four times in thirty-seven
voyages; it is always the same shape, it is always the same size, it
always throws up the same old flash when the sun strikes it; you may set
it on any New York door-step of a June morning and light it up with a
mirror-flash; and I will engage to recognize it. It is artificial, and
it is provided and anchored out by the steamer companies. I used to like
the sea, but I was young then, and could easily get excited over any
kind of monotony, and keep it up till the monotonies ran out, if it was
a fortnight.
Last January, when we were beginning to inquire about a home for this
summer, I remembered that Abbott Thayer had said, three years before,
that the New Hampshire highlands was a good place. He was right--it was
a good place. Any place that is good for an artist in paint is good
for an artist in morals and ink. Brush is here, too; so is Col. T. W.
Higginson; so is Raphael Pumpelly; so is Mr. Secretary Hitchcock; so is
Henderson; so is Learned; so is Summer; so is Franklin MacVeigh; so is
Joseph L. Smith; so is Henry Copley Greene, when I am not occupying
his house, which I am doing this season. Paint, literature, science,
statesmanship, history, professorship, law, morals,--these are all
represented here, yet crime is substantially unknown.
The summer homes of these refugees are sprinkled, a mile apart, among
the forest-clad hills, with access to each other by firm smooth country
roads which are so embowered in dense foliage that it is always twilight
in there, and comfortable. The forests are spider-webbed with these good
roads, they go everywhere; but for the help of the guide-boards, the
stranger would not arrive anywhere.
The village--Dublin--is bunched together in its own place, but a good
telephone service makes its markets handy to all those outliars. I
have spelt it that way to be witty. The village executes orders on, the
Boston plan--promptness and courtesy.
The summer homes are high-perched, as a rule, and have contenting
outlooks. The house we occupy has one. Monadnock, a soaring double hump,
rises into the sky at its left elbow--that is to say, it is close at
hand. From the base of the long slant of the mountain the valley spreads
away to the circling frame of the hills, and beyond the frame the
billowy sweep of remote great ranges rises to view and flows, fold upon
fold, wave upon wave, soft and blue and unwordly, to the horizon fifty
miles away. In these October days Monadnock and the valley and its
framing hills make an inspiring picture to look at, for they are
sumptuously splashed and mottled and be-torched from sky-line to
sky-line with the richest dyes the autumn can furnish; and when they lie
flaming in the full drench of the mid-afternoon sun, the sight affects
the spectator physically, it stirs his blood like military music.
These summer homes are commodious, well built, and well furnished--facts
which sufficiently indicate that the owners built them to live in
themselves. They have furnaces and wood fireplaces, and the rest of
the comforts and conveniences of a city home, and can be comfortably
occupied all the year round.
We cannot have this house next season, but I have secured Mrs. Upton's
house which is over in the law and science quarter, two or three miles
from here, and about the same distance from the art, literary, and
scholastic groups. The science and law quarter has needed improving,
this good while.
The nearest railway-station is distant something like an hour's drive;
it is three hours from there to Boston, over a branch line. You can go
to New York in six hours per branch lines if you change cars every time
you think of it, but it is better to go to Boston and stop over and take
the trunk line next day, then you do not get lost.
It is claimed that the atmosphere of the New Hampshire highlands is
exceptionally bracing and stimulating, and a fine aid to hard and
continuous work. It is a just claim, I think. I came in May, and wrought
35 successive days without a break. It is possible that I could not have
done it elsewhere. I do not know; I have not had any disposition to try
it, before. I think I got the disposition out of the atmosphere, this
time. I feel quite sure, in fact, that that is where it came from.
I am ashamed to confess what an intolerable pile of manuscript I ground
out in the 35 days, therefore I will keep the number of words to myself.
I wrote the first half of a long tale--“The Adventures of a Microbe”
and put it away for a finish next summer, and started another long
tale--“The Mysterious Stranger;” I wrote the first half of it and put
it with the other for a finish next summer. I stopped, then. I was not
tired, but I had no books on hand that needed finishing this year except
one that was seven years old. After a little I took that one up and
finished it. Not for publication, but to have it ready for revision next
summer.
Since I stopped work I have had a two months' holiday. The summer has
been my working time for 35 years; to have a holiday in it (in America)
is new for me. I have not broken it, except to write “Eve's Diary” and
“A Horse's Tale”--short things occupying the mill 12 days.
This year our summer is 6 months long and ends with November and the
flight home to New York, but next year we hope and expect to stretch it
another month and end it the first of December.
[No signature.]
The fact that he was a persistent smoker was widely known, and many
friends and admirers of Mark Twain sent him cigars, most of which he
could not use, because they were too good. He did not care for
Havana cigars, but smoked the fragrant, inexpensive domestic tobacco
with plenty of “pep” in it, as we say today. Now and then he had an
opportunity to head off some liberal friend, who wrote asking
permission to contribute to his cigar collection, as instance the
following.
*****
To Rev. L. M. Powers, in Haverhill, Mass.:
Nov. 9, 1905.
DEAR MR. POWERS,--I should accept your hospitable offer at once but for
the fact I couldn't do it and remain honest. That is to say if I allowed
you to send me what you believe to be good cigars it would distinctly
mean that I meant to smoke them, whereas I should do nothing of the
kind. I know a good cigar better than you do, for I have had 60 years
experience.
No, that is not what I mean; I mean I know a bad cigar better than
anybody else; I judge by the price only; if it costs above 5 cents I
know it to be either foreign or half-foreign, and unsmokeable. By me I
have many boxes of Havana cigars, of all prices from 20 cts apiece up to
1.66 apiece; I bought none of them, they were all presents, they are an
accumulation of several years. I have never smoked one of them and never
shall, I work them off on the visitor. You shall have a chance when you
come.
Pessimists are born not made; optimists are born not made; but no man
is born either pessimist wholly or optimist wholly, perhaps; he is
pessimistic along certain lines and optimistic along certain others.
That is my case.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
In spite of all the fine photographs that were made of him, there
recurred constantly among those sent him to be autographed a print
of one which, years before, Sarony had made and placed on public
sale. It was a good photograph, mechanically and even artistically,
but it did not please Mark Twain. Whenever he saw it he recalled
Sarony with bitterness and severity. Once he received an inquiry
concerning it, and thus feelingly expressed himself.
*****
To Mr. Row (no address):
21 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK,
November 14, 1905.
DEAR MR. ROW,--That alleged portrait has a private history. Sarony was
as much of an enthusiast about wild animals as he was about photography;
and when Du Chaillu brought the first Gorilla to this country in 1819
he came to me in a fever of excitement and asked me if my father was of
record and authentic. I said he was; then Sarony, without any abatement
of his excitement asked if my grandfather also was of record and
authentic. I said he was. Then Sarony, with still rising excitement
and with joy added to it, said he had found my great grandfather in the
person of the gorilla, and had recognized him at once by his resemblance
to me. I was deeply hurt but did not reveal this, because I knew Saxony
meant no offense for the gorilla had not done him any harm, and he was
not a man who would say an unkind thing about a gorilla wantonly. I went
with him to inspect the ancestor, and examined him from several points
of view, without being able to detect anything more than a passing
resemblance. “Wait,” said Sarony with confidence, “let me show you.”
He borrowed my overcoat--and put it on the gorilla. The result was
surprising. I saw that the gorilla while not looking distinctly like me
was exactly what my great grand father would have looked like if I had
had one. Sarong photographed the creature in that overcoat, and spread
the picture about the world. It has remained spread about the world ever
since. It turns up every week in some newspaper somewhere or other. It
is not my favorite, but to my exasperation it is everybody else's. Do
you think you could get it suppressed for me? I will pay the limit.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The year 1905 closed triumphantly for Mark Twain. The great
“Seventieth Birthday” dinner planned by Colonel George Harvey is
remembered to-day as the most notable festival occasion in New York
literary history. Other dinners and ovations followed. At seventy
he had returned to the world, more beloved, more honored than ever
before.
XLV. LETTERS, 1906, TO VARIOUS PERSONS. THE FAREWELL LECTURE. A SECOND
SUMMER IN DUBLIN. BILLIARDS AND COPYRIGHT.
MARK TWAIN at “Pier Seventy,” as he called it, paused to look
backward and to record some memoirs of his long, eventful past. The
Autobiography dictations begun in Florence were resumed, and daily
he traveled back, recalling long-ago scenes and all-but-forgotten
places. He was not without reminders. Now and again there came
some message that brought back the old days--the Tom Sawyer and Huck
Finn days--or the romance of the river that he never recalled other
than with tenderness and a tone of regret that it was gone. An
invitation to the golden wedding of two ancient friends moved and
saddened him, and his answer to it conveys about all the story of
life.
*****
To Mr. and Mrs. Gordon:
21 FIFTH AVENUE,
Jan. 24, '06.
DEAR GORDONS,--I have just received your golden-wedding “At Home” and
am trying to adjust my focus to it and realize how much it means. It is
inconceivable! With a simple sweep it carries me back over a stretch of
time measurable only in astronomical terms and geological periods. It
brings before me Mrs. Gordon, young, round-limbed, handsome; and
with her the Youngbloods and their two babies, and Laura Wright, that
unspoiled little maid, that fresh flower of the woods and the prairies.
Forty-eight years ago!
Life was a fairy-tale, then, it is a tragedy now. When I was 43 and John
Hay 41 he said life was a tragedy after 40, and I disputed it. Three
years ago he asked me to testify again: I counted my graves, and there
was nothing for me to say.
I am old; I recognize it but I don't realize it. I wonder if a person
ever really ceases to feel young--I mean, for a whole day at a time. My
love to you both, and to all of us that are left.