That summer (July, '94.) the 'North American Review' published "In
Defense of Harriet Shelley," a rare piece of literary criticism and
probably the most human and convincing plea ever made for that injured,
ill-fated woman. An admirer of Shelley's works, Clemens could not resist
taking up the defense of Shelley's abandoned wife. It had become the
fashion to refer to her slightingly, and to suggest that she had not been
without blame for Shelley's behavior. A Shelley biography by Professor
Dowden, Clemens had found particularly irritating. In the midst of his
tangle of the previous year he had paused to give it attention. There
were times when Mark Twain wrote without much sequence, digressing this
way and that, as his fancy led him, charmingly and entertainingly enough,
with no large, logical idea. He pursued no such method in this instance.
The paper on Harriet Shelley is a brief as direct and compact and
cumulative as could have been prepared by a trained legal mind of the
highest order, and it has the added advantage of being the utterance of a
human soul voicing an indignation inspired by human suffering and human
wrong. By no means does it lack humor, searching and biting sarcasm. The
characterization of Professor Dowden's Life of Shelley as a "literary
cake-walk" is a touch which only Mark Twain could have laid on. Indeed,
the "Defense of Harriet Shelly," with those early chapters of Joan at
Florence, maybe counted as the beginning for Mark Twain of a genuine
literary renaissance. It was to prove a remarkable period less
voluminous than the first, but even more choice, containing, as it would,
besides Joan and the Shelley article, the rest of that remarkable series
collected now as Literary Essays; the Hadleyburg story; "Was it Heaven or
Hell?"; those masterly articles on our national policies; closing at last
with those exquisite memories, in his final days.
The summer of 1894 found Mark Twain in the proper frame of mind for
literary work. He was no longer in a state of dread. At Etretat, a
watering-place on the French coast, he returned eagerly to the
long-neglected tale of Joan--"a book which writes itself," he wrote Mr.
Rogers"--a tale which tells itself; I merely have to hold the pen."
Etretat, originally a fishing-village, was less pretentious than to-day,
and the family had taken a small furnished cottage a little way back from
the coast--a charming place, and a cheap one--as became their means.
Clemens worked steadily at Etretat for more than a month, finishing the
second part of his story, then went over to Rouen to visit the hallowed
precincts where Joan dragged out those weary months that brought her to
the stake. Susy Clemens was taken ill at Rouen, and they lingered in
that ancient city, wandering about its venerable streets, which have been
changed but slowly by the centuries, and are still full of memories.
They returned to Paris at length--to the Brighton; their quarters of the
previous winter--but presently engaged for the winter the studio home of
the artist Pomroy at 169 rue de l'Universite, beyond the Seine. Mark
Twain wrote of it once:
It was a lovely house; large, rambling, quaint, charmingly furnished
and decorated, built upon no particular plan, delightfully uncertain
and full of surprises. You were always getting lost in it, and
finding nooks and corners which you did not know were there and
whose presence you had not suspected before. It was built by a rich
French artist, and he had also furnished it and decorated it
himself. The studio was coziness itself. With us it served as a
drawing-room, sitting-room, living-room, dancing-room--we used it
for everything. We couldn't get enough of it. It is odd that it
should have been so cozy, for it was 40 feet long, 40 feet high, and
30 feet wide, with a vast fireplace on, each side, in the middle,
and a musicians' gallery at one end.
Mrs. Clemens had hoped to return to America, to their Hartford home. That
was her heart's desire--to go back once more to their old life and
fireside, to forget all this period of exile and wandering. Her letters
were full of her home-longing; her three years of absence seemed like an
eternity.
In its way, the Pomroy house was the best substitute for home they had
found. Its belongings were of the kind she loved. Susy had better
health, and her husband was happy in his work. They had much delightful
and distinguished company. Her letters tell of these attractive things,
and of their economies to make their income reach.
It was near the end of the year that the other great interest--the
machine--came finally to a conclusion. Reports from the test had been
hopeful during the summer. Early in October Clemens, receiving a copy of
the Times-Herald, partly set by the machine, wrote: "The Herald has just
arrived, and that column is healing for sore eyes. It affects me like
Columbus sighting land." And again on the 28th:
It seems to me that things couldn't well be going better at Chicago
than they are. There's no other machine that can set type eight
hours with only seventeen minutes' stoppage through cussedness. The
others do rather more stopping than working. By and by our machines
will be perfect; then they won't stop at all.
But that was about the end of the good news. The stoppages became worse
and worse. The type began to break--the machine had its old trouble: it
was too delicately adjusted--too complicated.
"Great guns, what is the matter with it?" wrote Clemens in November when
he received a detailed account of its misconduct.
Mr. Rogers and his son-in-law, Mr. Broughton, went out to Chicago to
investigate. They went to the Times-Herald office to watch the
type-setter in action. Mr. Rogers once told of this visit to the writer
of these chapters. He said:
"Certainly it was a marvelous invention. It was the nearest approach to
a human being in the wonderful things it could do of any machine I have
ever known. But that was just the trouble; it was too much of a human
being and not enough of a machine. It had all the complications of the
human mechanism, all the liability of getting out of repair, and it could
not be replaced with the ease and immediateness of the human being. It
was too costly; too difficult of construction; too hard to set up. I
took out my watch and timed its work and counted its mistakes. We
watched it a long time, for it was most interesting, most fascinating,
but it was not practical--that to me was clear."
It had failed to stand the test. The Times-Herald would have no more of
it. Mr. Rogers himself could see the uselessness of the endeavor. He
instructed Mr. Broughton to close up the matter as best he could and
himself undertook the harder task of breaking the news to Mark Twain. His
letters seem not to have been preserved, but the replies to them tell the
story.