DEAR HOWELLS,--It is lovely of you to say those beautiful things--I
don't know how to thank you enough. But I love you, that I know.
I read “After the Wedding” aloud and we felt all the pain of it and
the truth. It was very moving and very beautiful--would have been
over-comingly moving, at times, but for the haltings and pauses
compelled by the difficulties of MS--these were a protection, in that
they furnished me time to brace up my voice, and get a new start. Jean
wanted to keep the MS for another reading-aloud, and for “keeps,” too, I
suspected, but I said it would be safest to write you about it.
I like “In Our Town,” particularly that Colonel, of the Lookout Mountain
Oration, and very particularly pages 212-16. I wrote and told White so.
After “After the Wedding” I read “The Mother” aloud and sounded its
human deeps with your deep-sea lead. I had not read it before, since it
was first published.
I have been dictating some fearful things, for 4 successive
mornings--for no eye but yours to see until I have been dead a
century--if then. But I got them out of my system, where they had been
festering for years--and that was the main thing. I feel better, now.
I came down today on business--from house to house in 12 1/2 hours, and
expected to arrive dead, but am neither tired nor sleepy.
Yours as always
MARK.
*****
To William Allen White, in Emporia, Kans.:
DUBLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE,
June 24, 1906.
DEAR MR. WHITE,--Howells told me that “In Our Town” was a charming book,
and indeed it is. All of it is delightful when read one's self, parts
of it can score finely when subjected to the most exacting of tests--the
reading aloud. Pages 197 and 216 are of that grade. I have tried them
a couple of times on the family, and pages 212 and 216 are qualified
to fetch any house of any country, caste or color, endowed with those
riches which are denied to no nation on the planet--humor and feeling.
Talk again--the country is listening.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Witter Bynner, the poet, was one of the editors of McClure's
Magazine at this time, but was trying to muster the courage to give
up routine work for verse-making and the possibility of poverty.
Clemens was fond of Bynner and believed in his work. He did not
advise him, however, to break away entirely from a salaried
position--at least not immediately; but one day Bynner did so, and
reported the step he had taken, with some doubt as to the answer he
would receive.
*****
To Witter Bynner, in New York:
DUBLIN, Oct. 5, 1906.
DEAR POET,--You have certainly done right for several good reasons; at
least, of them, I can name two:
1. With your reputation you can have your freedom and yet earn your
living. 2. if you fall short of succeeding to your wish, your reputation
will provide you another job. And so in high approval I suppress the
scolding and give you the saintly and fatherly pat instead.