The house they had taken in Hartford was the Hooker property on
Forest Street, a handsome place in a distinctly literary
neighborhood. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Dudley Warner, and
other well-known writers were within easy walking distance; Twichell
was perhaps half a mile away.
It was the proper environment for Mark Twain. He settled his little
family there, and was presently at Redpath's office in Boston, which
was a congenial place, as we have seen before. He did not fail to
return to the company of Nasby, Josh Billings, and those others of
Redpath's “attractions” as long and as often as distance would
permit. Bret Harte, who by this time had won fame, was also in
Boston now, and frequently, with Howells, Aldrich, and Mark Twain,
gathered in some quiet restaurant corner for a luncheon that lasted
through a dim winter afternoon—a period of anecdote, reminiscence,
and mirth. They were all young then, and laughed easily. Howells,
has written of one such luncheon given by Ralph Keeler, a young
Californian—a gathering at which James T. Fields was present
“Nothing remains to me of the happy time but a sense of idle and
aimless and joyful talk-play, beginning and ending nowhere, of eager
laughter, of countless good stories from Fields, of a heat-lightning
shimmer of wit from Aldrich, of an occasional concentration of our
joint mockeries upon our host, who took it gladly.”
But a lecture circuit cannot be restricted to the radius of Boston.
Clemens was presently writing to Redpath from Washington and points
farther west.
To James Redpath, in Boston:
WASHINGTON, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 1871.
DEAR RED,—I have come square out, thrown “Reminiscences” overboard, and taken “Artemus Ward, Humorist,” for my subject. Wrote it here on Friday and Saturday, and read it from MS last night to an enormous house. It suits me and I'll never deliver the nasty, nauseous “Reminiscences” any more.
Yours,
MARK.
The Artemus Ward lecture lasted eleven days, then he wrote:
To Redpath and Fall, in Boston:
BUFFALO DEPOT, Dec. 8, 1871.
REDPATH & FALL, BOSTON,—Notify all hands that from this time I shall talk nothing but selections from my forthcoming book “Roughing It.” Tried it last night. Suits me tip-top.
SAM'L L. CLEMENS.
The “Roughing It” chapters proved a success, and continued in high
favor through the rest of the season.
To James Redpath, in Boston:
LOGANSPORT, IND. Jan. 2, 1872.
FRIEND REDPATH,—Had a splendid time with a splendid audience in Indianapolis last night—a perfectly jammed house, just as I have had all the time out here. I like the new lecture but I hate the “Artemus Ward” talk and won't talk it any more. No man ever approved that choice of subject in my hearing, I think.
Give me some comfort. If I am to talk in New York am I going to have a good house? I don't care now to have any appointments cancelled. I'll even “fetch” those Dutch Pennsylvanians with this lecture.
Have paid up $4000 indebtedness. You are the last on my list. Shall begin to pay you in a few days and then I shall be a free man again.
Yours,
MARK.
With his debts paid, Clemens was anxious to be getting home. Two
weeks following the above he wrote Redpath that he would accept no
more engagements at any price, outside of New England, and added,
“The fewer engagements I have from this time forth the better I
shall be pleased.” By the end of February he was back in Hartford,
refusing an engagement in Boston, and announcing to Redpath, “If I
had another engagement I'd rot before I'd fill it.” From which we
gather that he was not entirely happy in the lecture field.
As a matter of fact, Mark Twain loathed the continuous travel and
nightly drudgery of platform life. He was fond of entertaining, and
there were moments of triumph that repaid him for a good deal, but
the tyranny of a schedule and timetables was a constant
exasperation.
Meantime, Roughing It had appeared and was selling abundantly. Mark
Twain, free of debt, and in pleasant circumstances, felt that the
outlook was bright. It became even more so when, in March, the
second child, a little girl, Susy, was born, with no attending
misfortunes. But, then, in the early summer little Langdon died.
It was seldom, during all of Mark Twain's life, that he enjoyed more
than a brief period of unmixed happiness.
It was in June of that year that Clemens wrote his first letter to
William Dean Howells the first of several hundred that would follow
in the years to come, and has in it something that is characteristic
of nearly all the Clemens-Howells letters—a kind of tender
playfulness that answered to something in Howells's make-up, his
sense of humor, his wide knowledge of a humanity which he pictured
so amusingly to the world.
To William Dean Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, June 15, 1872.
FRIEND HOWELLS,—Could you tell me how I could get a copy of your portrait as published in Hearth and Home? I hear so much talk about it as being among the finest works of art which have yet appeared in that journal, that I feel a strong desire to see it. Is it suitable for framing? I have written the publishers of H & H time and again, but they say that the demand for the portrait immediately exhausted the edition and now a copy cannot be had, even for the European demand, which has now begun. Bret Harte has been here, and says his family would not be without that portrait for any consideration. He says his children get up in the night and yell for it. I would give anything for a copy of that portrait to put up in my parlor. I have Oliver Wendell Holmes and Bret Harte's, as published in Every Saturday, and of all the swarms that come every day to gaze upon them none go away that are not softened and humbled and made more resigned to the will of God. If I had yours to put up alongside of them, I believe the combination would bring more souls to earnest reflection and ultimate conviction of their lost condition, than any other kind of warning would. Where in the nation can I get that portrait? Here are heaps of people that want it,—that need it. There is my uncle. He wants a copy. He is lying at the point of death. He has been lying at the point of death for two years. He wants a copy—and I want him to have a copy. And I want you to send a copy to the man that shot my dog. I want to see if he is dead to every human instinct.
Now you send me that portrait. I am sending you mine, in this letter; and am glad to do it, for it has been greatly admired. People who are judges of art, find in the execution a grandeur which has not been equalled in this country, and an expression which has not been approached in any.
Yrs truly,
S. L. CLEMENS.
P. S. 62,000 copies of “Roughing It” sold and delivered in 4 months.
The Clemens family did not spend the summer at Quarry Farm that
year. The sea air was prescribed for Mrs. Clemens and the baby, and
they went to Saybrook, Connecticut, to Fenwick Hall. Clemens wrote
very little, though he seems to have planned Tom Sawyer, and perhaps
made its earliest beginning, which was in dramatic form.
His mind, however, was otherwise active. He was always more or less
given to inventions, and in his next letter we find a description of
one which he brought to comparative perfection.
He had also conceived the idea of another book of travel, and this
was his purpose of a projected trip to England.
To Orion Clemens, in Hartford:
FENWICK HALL, SAYBROOK, CONN.
Aug. 11, 1872.
MY DEAR BRO.—I shall sail for England in the Scotia, Aug. 21.
But what I wish to put on record now, is my new invention—hence this note, which you will preserve. It is this—a self-pasting scrap-book—good enough idea if some juggling tailor does not come along and ante-date me a couple of months, as in the case of the elastic veststrap.
The nuisance of keeping a scrap-book is: 1. One never has paste or gum tragacanth handy; 2. Mucilage won't stick, or stay, 4 weeks; 3. Mucilage sucks out the ink and makes the scraps unreadable; 4. To daub and paste 3 or 4 pages of scraps is tedious, slow, nasty and tiresome. My idea is this: Make a scrap-book with leaves veneered or coated with gum-stickum of some kind; wet the page with sponge, brush, rag or tongue, and dab on your scraps like postage stamps.
Lay on the gum in columns of stripes.
Each stripe of gum the length of say 20 ems, small pica, and as broad as your finger; a blank about as broad as your finger between each 2 stripes—so in wetting the paper you need not wet any more of the gum than your scrap or scraps will cover—then you may shut up the book and the leaves won't stick together.
Preserve, also, the envelope of this letter—postmark ought to be good evidence of the date of this great humanizing and civilizing invention.
I'll put it into Dan Slote's hands and tell him he must send you all over America, to urge its use upon stationers and booksellers—so don't buy into a newspaper. The name of this thing is “Mark Twain's Self-Pasting Scrapbook.”
All well here. Shall be up a P. M. Tuesday. Send the carriage.
Yr Bro.
S. L. CLEMENS.
The Dan Slote of this letter is, of course, his old Quaker City
shipmate, who was engaged in the blank-book business, the firm being
Slote & Woodman, located at 119 and 121 William Street, New York.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg