Orion Clemens had kept his job with Bliss only a short time. His mental make-up was such that it was difficult for him to hold any position long. He meant to do well, but he was unfortunate in his efforts. His ideas were seldom practical, his nature was yielding and fickle. He had returned to Keokuk presently, and being convinced there was a fortune in chickens, had prevailed upon his brother to purchase for him a little farm not far from the town. But the chicken business was not lively and Orion kept the mail hot with manuscripts and propositions of every sort, which he wanted his brother to take under advisement.
Certainly, to Mark Twain Orion Clemens was a trial. The letters of the latter show that scarcely one of them but contains the outline of some rainbow-chasing scheme, full of wild optimism, and the certainty that somewhere just ahead lies the pot of gold. Only, now and then, there is a letter of abject humiliation and complete surrender, when some golden vision, some iridescent soap-bubble, had vanished at his touch. Such depression did not last; by sunrise he was ready with a new dream, new enthusiasm, and with a new letter inviting his “brother Sam's” interest and investment. Yet, his fear of incurring his brother's displeasure was pitiful, regardless of the fact that he constantly employed the very means to insure that result. At one time Clemens made him sign a sworn agreement that he would not suggest any plan or scheme of investment for the period of twelve months. Orion must have kept this agreement. He would have gone to the stake before he would have violated an oath, but the stake would have probably been no greater punishment than his sufferings that year.
On the whole, Samuel Clemens was surprisingly patient and considerate with Orion, and there was never a time that he was not willing to help. Yet there were bound to be moments of exasperation; and once, when his mother, or sister, had written, suggesting that he encourage his brother's efforts, he felt moved to write at considerable freedom.
To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y.:
HARTFORD, Sunday, 1875.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,—I Saw Gov. Newell today and he said he was still moving in the matter of Sammy's appointment—[As a West Point cadet.]—and would stick to it till he got a result of a positive nature one way or the other, but thus far he did not know whether to expect success or defeat.
Ma, whenever you need money I hope you won't be backward about saying so—you can always have it. We stint ourselves in some ways, but we have no desire to stint you. And we don't intend to, either.
I can't “encourage” Orion. Nobody can do that, conscientiously, for the reason that before one's letter has time to reach him he is off on some new wild-goose chase. Would you encourage in literature a man who, the older he grows the worse he writes? Would you encourage Orion in the glaring insanity of studying law? If he were packed and crammed full of law, it would be worthless lumber to him, for his is such a capricious and ill-regulated mind that he would apply the principles of the law with no more judgment than a child of ten years. I know what I am saying. I laid one of the plainest and simplest of legal questions before Orion once, and the helpless and hopeless mess he made of it was absolutely astonishing. Nothing aggravates me so much as to have Orion mention law or literature to me.
Well, I cannot encourage him to try the ministry, because he would change his religion so fast that he would have to keep a traveling agent under wages to go ahead of him to engage pulpits and board for him.
I cannot conscientiously encourage him to do anything but potter around his little farm and put in his odd hours contriving new and impossible projects at the rate of 365 a year—which is his customary average. He says he did well in Hannibal! Now there is a man who ought to be entirely satisfied with the grandeurs, emoluments and activities of a hen farm—
If you ask me to pity Orion, I can do that. I can do it every day and all day long. But one can't “encourage” quick-silver, because the instant you put your finger on it it isn't there. No, I am saying too much—he does stick to his literary and legal aspirations; and he naturally would select the very two things which he is wholly and preposterously unfitted for. If I ever become able, I mean to put Orion on a regular pension without revealing the fact that it is a pension. That is best for him. Let him consider it a periodical loan, and pay interest out of the principal. Within a year's time he would be looking upon himself as a benefactor of mine, in the way of furnishing me a good permanent investment for money, and that would make him happy and satisfied with himself. If he had money he would share with me in a moment and I have no disposition to be stingy with him.
Affly
SAM.
Livy sends love.
The New Orleans plan was not wholly dead at this time. Howells
wrote near the end of January that the matter was still being
debated, now and then, but was far from being decided upon. He
hoped to go somewhere with Mrs. Howells for a brief time in March,
he said. Clemens, in haste, replied:
\
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Jan. 26, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,—When Mrs. Clemens read your letter she said: “Well, then, wherever they go, in March, the direction will be southward and so they must give us a visit on the way.” I do not know what sort of control you may be under, but when my wife speaks as positively as that, I am not in the habit of talking back and getting into trouble. Situated as I am, I would not be able to understand, now, how you could pass by this town without feeling that you were running a wanton risk and doing a daredevil thing. I consider it settled that you are to come in March, and I would be sincerely sorry to learn that you and Mrs. Howells feel differently about it.
The piloting material has been uncovering itself by degrees, until it has exposed such a huge hoard to my view that a whole book will be required to contain it if I use it. So I have agreed to write the book for Bliss.—[The book idea was later given up for the time being.]—I won't be able to run the articles in the Atlantic later than the September number, for the reason that a subscription book issued in the fall has a much larger sale than if issued at any other season of the year. It is funny when I reflect that when I originally wrote you and proposed to do from 6 to 9 articles for the magazine, the vague thought in my mind was that 6 might exhaust the material and 9 would be pretty sure to do it. Or rather it seems to me that that was my thought—can't tell at this distance. But in truth 9 chapters don't now seem to more than open up the subject fairly and start the yarn to wagging.
I have been sick a-bed several days, for the first time in 21 years. How little confirmed invalids appreciate their advantages. I was able to read the English edition of the Greville Memoirs through without interruption, take my meals in bed, neglect all business without a pang, and smoke 18 cigars a day. I try not to look back upon these 21 years with a feeling of resentment, and yet the partialities of Providence do seem to me to be slathered around (as one may say) without that gravity and attention to detail which the real importance of the matter would seem to suggest.
Yrs ever
MARK.
The New Orleans idea continued to haunt the letters. The thought of
drifting down the Mississippi so attracted both Clemens and Howells,
that they talked of it when they met, and wrote of it when they were
separated. Howells, beset by uncertainties, playfully tried to put
the responsibility upon his wife. Once he wrote: “She says in the
noblest way, 'Well, go to New Orleans, if you want to so much' (you
know the tone). I suppose it will do if I let you know about the
middle of February?”
But they had to give it up in the end. Howells wrote that he had
been under the weather, and on half work the whole winter. He did
not feel that he had earned his salary, he said, or that he was
warranted in taking a three weeks' pleasure trip. Clemens offered
to pay all the expenses of the trip, but only indefinite
postponement followed. It would be seven years more before Mark
Twain would return to the river, and then not with Howells.
In a former chapter mention has been made of Charles Warren
Stoddard, whom Mark Twain had known in his California days. He was
fond of Stoddard, who was a facile and pleasing writer of poems and
descriptive articles. During the period that he had been acting as
Mark Twain's secretary in London, he had taken pleasure in
collecting for him the news reports of the celebrated Tichborn
Claimant case, then in the English courts. Clemens thought of
founding a story on it, and did, in fact, use the idea, though 'The
American Claimant,' which he wrote years later, had little or no
connection with the Tichborn episode.
To C. W. Stoddard:
HARTFORD, Feb. 1, 1875.
DEAR CHARLEY,—All right about the Tichborn scrapbooks; send them along when convenient. I mean to have the Beecher-Tilton trial scrap-book as a companion.....
I am writing a series of 7-page articles for the Atlantic at $20 a page; but as they do not pay anybody else as much as that, I do not complain (though at the same time I do swear that I am not content.) However the awful respectability of the magazine makes up.
I have cut your articles about San Marco out of a New York paper (Joe Twichell saw it and brought it home to me with loud admiration,) and sent it to Howells. It is too bad to fool away such good literature in a perishable daily journal.
Do remember us kindly to Lady Hardy and all that rare family—my wife and I so often have pleasant talks about them.
Ever your friend,
SAML. L. CLEMENS.
The price received by Mark Twain for the Mississippi papers, as
quoted in this letter, furnishes us with a realizing sense of the
improvement in the literary market, with the advent of a flood of
cheap magazines and the Sunday newspaper. The Atlantic page
probably contained about a thousand words, which would make his
price average, say, two cents per word. Thirty years later, when
his fame was not much more extended, his pay for the same matter
would have been fifteen times as great, that is to say, at the rate
of thirty cents per word. But in that early time there were no
Sunday magazines—no literary magazines at all except the Atlantic,
and Harpers, and a few fashion periodicals. Probably there were
news-stands, but it is hard to imagine what they must have looked
like without the gay pictorial cover-femininity that to-day pleases
and elevates the public and makes author and artist affluent.
Clemens worked steadily on the river chapters, and Howells was
always praising him and urging him to go on. At the end of January
he wrote: “You're doing the science of piloting splendidly. Every
word's interesting. And don't you drop the series 'til you've got
every bit of anecdote and reminiscence into it.”
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Feb. 10, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,—Your praises of my literature gave me the solidest gratification; but I never did have the fullest confidence in my critical penetration, and now your verdict on S——- has knocked what little I did have gully-west! I didn't enjoy his gush, but I thought a lot of his similes were ever so vivid and good. But it's just my luck; every time I go into convulsions of admiration over a picture and want to buy it right away before I've lost the chance, some wretch who really understands art comes along and damns it. But I don't mind. I would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have got so much more of it.
I send you No. 5 today. I have written and re-written the first half of it three different times, yesterday and today, and at last Mrs. Clemens says it will do. I never saw a woman so hard to please about things she doesn't know anything about.
Yours ever,
MARK.
Of course, the reference to his wife's criticism in this is tenderly
playful, as always—of a pattern with the severity which he pretends
for her in the next.
To Mrs. W. D. Howells, in Boston:
1875
DEAR MRS. HOWELLS,—Mrs. Clemens is delighted to get the pictures, and so am I. I can perceive in the group, that Mr. Howells is feeling as I so often feel, viz: “Well, no doubt I am in the wrong, though I do not know how or where or why—but anyway it will be safest to look meek, and walk circumspectly for a while, and not discuss the thing.” And you look exactly as Mrs. Clemens does after she has said, “Indeed I do not wonder that you can frame no reply: for you know only too well, that your conduct admits of no excuse, palliation or argument—none!”
I shall just delight in that group on account of the good old human domestic spirit that pervades it—bother these family groups that put on a state aspect to get their pictures taken in.
We want a heliotype made of our eldest daughter. How soft and rich and lovely the picture is. Mr. Howells must tell me how to proceed in the matter.
Truly Yours
SAM. L. CLEMENS.
In the next letter we have a picture of Susy—[This spelling of the
name was adopted somewhat later and much preferred. It appears as
“Susie” in most of the earlier letters.]—Clemens's third birthday,
certainly a pretty picture, and as sweet and luminous and tender
today as it was forty years ago-as it will be a hundred years hence,
if these lines should survive that long. The letter is to her uncle
Charles Langdon, the “Charlie” of the Quaker City. “Atwater” was
associated with the Langdon coal interests in Elmira. “The play”
is, of course, “The Gilded Age.”
To Charles Langdon, in Elmira:
Mch. 19, 1875.
DEAR CHARLIE,—Livy, after reading your letter, used her severest form of expression about Mr. Atwater—to wit: She did not “approve” of his conduct. This made me shudder; for it was equivalent to Allie Spaulding's saying “Mr. Atwater is a mean thing;” or Rev. Thomas Beecher's saying “Damn that Atwater,” or my saying “I wish Atwater was three hundred million miles in——!”
However, Livy does not often get into one of these furies, God be thanked.
In Brooklyn, Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Chicago, the play paid me an average of nine hundred dollars a week. In smaller towns the average is $400 to $500.
This is Susie's birth-day. Lizzie brought her in at 8.30 this morning (before we were up) hooded with a blanket, red curl-papers in her hair, a great red japonica, in one hand (for Livy) and a yellow rose-bud nestled in violets (for my buttonhole) in the other—and she looked wonderfully pretty. She delivered her memorials and received her birth-day kisses. Livy laid her japonica, down to get a better “holt” for kissing—which Susie presently perceived, and became thoughtful: then said sorrowfully, turning the great deeps of her eyes upon her mother: “Don't you care for you wow?”
Right after breakfast we got up a rousing wood fire in the main hall (it is a cold morning) illuminated the place with a rich glow from all the globes of the newell chandelier, spread a bright rug before the fire, set a circling row of chairs (pink ones and dove-colored) and in the midst a low invalid-table covered with a fanciful cloth and laden with the presents—a pink azalia in lavish bloom from Rosa; a gold inscribed Russia-leather bible from Patrick and Mary; a gold ring (inscribed) from “Maggy Cook;” a silver thimble (inscribed with motto and initials) from Lizzie; a rattling mob of Sunday clad dolls from Livy and Annie, and a Noah's Ark from me, containing 200 wooden animals such as only a human being could create and only God call by name without referring to the passenger list. Then the family and the seven servants assembled there, and Susie and the “Bay” arrived in state from above, the Bay's head being fearfully and wonderfully decorated with a profusion of blazing red flowers and overflowing cataracts of lycopodium. Wee congratulatory notes accompanied the presents of the servants. I tell you it was a great occasion and a striking and cheery group, taking all the surroundings into account and the wintry aspect outside.
(Remainder missing.)
There was to be a centennial celebration that year of the battles of
Lexington and Concord, and Howells wrote, urging Clemens and his
wife to visit them and attend it. Mrs. Clemens did not go, and
Clemens and Howells did not go, either—to the celebration. They
had their own ideas about getting there, but found themselves unable
to board the thronged train at Concord, and went tramping about in
the cold and mud, hunting a conveyance, only to return at length to
the cheer of the home, defeated and rather low in spirits.
Twichell, who went on his own hook, had no such difficulties. To
Howells, Mark Twain wrote the adventures of this athletic and
strenuous exponent of the gospel.
The “Winnie” mentioned in this letter was Howells's daughter
Winifred. She had unusual gifts, but did not live to develop them.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD. Apl. 23, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,—I've got Mrs. Clemens's picture before me, and hope I shall not forget to send it with this.
Joe Twichell preached morning and evening here last Sunday; took midnight train for Boston; got an early breakfast and started by rail at 7.30 A. M. for Concord; swelled around there until 1 P. M., seeing everything; then traveled on top of a train to Lexington; saw everything there; traveled on top of a train to Boston, (with hundreds in company) deluged with dust, smoke and cinders; yelled and hurrahed all the way like a schoolboy; lay flat down to dodge numerous bridges, and sailed into the depot, howling with excitement and as black as a chimney-sweep; got to Young's Hotel at 7 P. M.; sat down in reading-room and immediately fell asleep; was promptly awakened by a porter who supposed he was drunk; wandered around an hour and a half; then took 9 P. M. train, sat down in smoking car and remembered nothing more until awakened by conductor as the train came into Hartford at 1.30 A. M. Thinks he had simply a glorious time—and wouldn't have missed the Centennial for the world. He would have run out to see us a moment at Cambridge, but was too dirty. I wouldn't have wanted him there—his appalling energy would have been an insufferable reproach to mild adventurers like you and me.
Well, he is welcome to the good time he had—I had a deal better one. My narrative has made Mrs. Clemens wish she could have been there.—When I think over what a splendid good sociable time I had in your house I feel ever so thankful to the wise providence that thwarted our several ably-planned and ingenious attempts to get to Lexington. I am coming again before long, and then she shall be of the party.
Now you said that you and Mrs. Howells could run down here nearly any Saturday. Very well then, let us call it next Saturday, for a “starter.” Can you do that? By that time it will really be spring and you won't freeze. The birds are already out; a small one paid us a visit yesterday. We entertained it and let it go again, Susie protesting.
The spring laziness is already upon me—insomuch that the spirit begins to move me to cease from Mississippi articles and everything else and give myself over to idleness until we go to New Orleans. I have one article already finished, but somehow it doesn't seem as proper a chapter to close with as the one already in your hands. I hope to get in a mood and rattle off a good one to finish with—but just now all my moods are lazy ones.
Winnie's literature sings through me yet! Surely that child has one of these “futures” before her.
Now try to come—will you?
With the warmest regards of the two of us—
Yrs ever,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Mrs. Clemens sent a note to Mrs. Howells, which will serve as a pendant to the foregoing.
From Mrs. Clemens to Mrs. Howells, in Boston:
MY DEAR MRS. HOWELLS,—Don't dream for one instant that my not getting a letter from you kept me from Boston. I am too anxious to go to let such a thing as that keep me.
Mr. Clemens did have such a good time with you and Mr. Howells. He evidently has no regret that he did not get to the Centennial. I was driven nearly distracted by his long account of Mr. Howells and his wanderings. I would keep asking if they ever got there, he would never answer but made me listen to a very minute account of everything that they did. At last I found them back where they started from.
If you find misspelled words in this note, you will remember my infirmity and not hold me responsible.
Affectionately yours,
LIVY L. CLEMENS.
In spite of his success with the Sellers play and his itch
to follow it up, Mark Twain realized what he believed to be
his literary limitations. All his life he was inclined to
consider himself wanting in the finer gifts of character-
shading and delicate portrayal. Remembering Huck Finn, and
the rare presentation of Joan of Arc, we may not altogether
agree with him. Certainly, he was never qualified to
delineate those fine artificialities of life which we are
likely to associate with culture, and perhaps it was
something of this sort that caused the hesitation confessed
in the letter that follows. Whether the plan suggested
interested Howells or not we do not know. In later years
Howells wrote a novel called The Story of a Play; this may
have been its beginning.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, Apl. 26, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,—An actor named D. H. Harkins has been here to ask me to put upon paper a 5-act play which he has been mapping out in his mind for 3 or 4 years. He sat down and told me his plot all through, in a clear, bright way, and I was a deal taken with it; but it is a line of characters whose fine shading and artistic development requires an abler hand than mine; so I easily perceived that I must not make the attempt. But I liked the man, and thought there was a good deal of stuff in him; and therefore I wanted his play to be written, and by a capable hand, too. So I suggested you, and said I would write and see if you would be willing to undertake it. If you like the idea, he will call upon you in the course of two or three weeks and describe his plot and his characters. Then if it doesn't strike you favorably, of course you can simply decline; but it seems to me well worth while that you should hear what he has to say. You could also “average” him while he talks, and judge whether he could play your priest—though I doubt if any man can do that justice.
Shan't I write him and say he may call? If you wish to communicate directly with him instead, his address is “Larchmont Manor, Westchester Co., N. Y.”
Do you know, the chill of that 19th of April seems to be in my bones yet? I am inert and drowsy all the time. That was villainous weather for a couple of wandering children to be out in.
Ys ever
MARK.
The sinister typewriter did not find its way to Howells for nearly a
year. Meantime, Mark Twain had refused to allow the manufacturers
to advertise his ownership. He wrote to them:
HARTFORD, March 19, 1875.
Please do not use my name in any way. Please do not even divulge the fact that I own a machine. I have entirely stopped using the typewriter, for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail that I would not only describe the machine, but state what progress I had made in the use of it, etc., etc. I don't like to write letters, and so I don't want people to know I own this curiosity-breeding little joker.
Three months later the machine was still in his possession. Bliss
had traded a twelve-dollar saddle for it, but apparently showed
little enthusiasm in his new possession.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
June 25, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,—I told Patrick to get some carpenters and box the machine and send it to you—and found that Bliss had sent for the machine and earned it off.
I have been talking to you and writing to you as if you were present when I traded the machine to Bliss for a twelve-dollar saddle worth $25 (cheating him outrageously, of course—but conscience got the upper hand again and I told him before I left the premises that I'd pay for the saddle if he didn't like the machine—on condition that he donate said machine to a charity)
This was a little over five weeks ago—so I had long ago concluded that Bliss didn't want the machine and did want the saddle—wherefore I jumped at the chance of shoving the machine off onto you, saddle or no saddle so I got the blamed thing out of my sight.
The saddle hangs on Tara's walls down below in the stable, and the machine is at Bliss's grimly pursuing its appointed mission, slowly and implacably rotting away another man's chances for salvation.
I have sent Bliss word not to donate it to a charity (though it is a pity to fool away a chance to do a charity an ill turn,) but to let me know when he has got his dose, because I've got another candidate for damnation. You just wait a couple of weeks and if you don't see the Type-Writer come tilting along toward Cambridge with an unsatisfied appetite in its eye, I lose my guess.
Don't you be mad about this blunder, Howells—it only comes of a bad memory, and the stupidity which is inseparable from true genius. Nothing intentionally criminal in it.
Yrs ever
MARK.
It was November when Howells finally fell under the baleful
influence of the machine. He wrote:
“The typewriter came Wednesday night, and is already beginning to
have its effect on me. Of course, it doesn't work: if I can
persuade some of the letters to get up against the ribbon they won't
get down again without digital assistance. The treadle refuses to
have any part or parcel in the performance; and I don't know how to
get the roller to turn with the paper. Nevertheless I have begun
several letters to My d-a-r lemans, as it prefers to spell your
respected name, and I don't despair yet of sending you something in
its beautiful handwriting—after I've had a man out from the agent's
to put it in order. It's fascinating in the meantime, and it wastes
my time like an old friend.”
The Clemens family remained in Hartford that summer, with the
exception of a brief season at Bateman's Point, R. I., near
Newport. By this time Mark Twain had taken up and finished the Tom
Sawyer story begun two years before. Naturally he wished Howells to
consider the MS.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, July 5th, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,—I have finished the story and didn't take the chap beyond boyhood. I believe it would be fatal to do it in any shape but autobiographically—like Gil Blas. I perhaps made a mistake in not writing it in the first person. If I went on, now, and took him into manhood, he would just like like all the one-horse men in literature and the reader would conceive a hearty contempt for him. It is not a boy's book, at all. It will only be read by adults. It is only written for adults.
Moreover the book is plenty long enough as it stands. It is about 900 pages of MS, and may be 1000 when I shall have finished “working up” vague places; so it would make from 130 to 150 pages of the Atlantic—about what the Foregone Conclusion made, isn't it?
I would dearly like to see it in the Atlantic, but I doubt if it would pay the publishers to buy the privilege, or me to sell it. Bret Harte has sold his novel (same size as mine, I should say) to Scribner's Monthly for $6,500 (publication to begin in September, I think,) and he gets a royalty of 7 1/2 per cent from Bliss in book form afterwards. He gets a royalty of ten per cent on it in England (issued in serial numbers) and the same royalty on it in book form afterwards, and is to receive an advance payment of five hundred pounds the day the first No. of the serial appears. If I could do as well, here, and there, with mine, it might possibly pay me, but I seriously doubt it though it is likely I could do better in England than Bret, who is not widely known there.
You see I take a vile, mercenary view of things—but then my household expenses are something almost ghastly.
By and by I shall take a boy of twelve and run him on through life (in the first person) but not Tom Sawyer—he would not be a good character for it.
I wish you would promise to read the MS of Tom Sawyer some time, and see if you don't really decide that I am right in closing with him as a boy—and point out the most glaring defects for me. It is a tremendous favor to ask, and I expect you to refuse and would be ashamed to expect you to do otherwise. But the thing has been so many months in my mind that it seems a relief to snake it out. I don't know any other person whose judgment I could venture to take fully and entirely. Don't hesitate about saying no, for I know how your time is taxed, and I would have honest need to blush if you said yes.
Osgood and I are “going for” the puppy G—— on infringement of trademark. To win one or two suits of this kind will set literary folks on a firmer bottom. I wish Osgood would sue for stealing Holmes's poem. Wouldn't it be gorgeous to sue R—— for petty larceny? I will promise to go into court and swear I think him capable of stealing pea-nuts from a blind pedlar.
Yrs ever,
CLEMENS.
Of course Howells promptly replied that he would read the story,
adding: “You've no idea what I may ask you to do for me, some day.
I'm sorry that you can't do it for the Atlantic, but I
succumb. Perhaps you will do Boy No. 2 for us.” Clemens,
conscience-stricken, meantime, hastily put the MS. out of reach
of temptation.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
July 13, 1875
MY DEAR HOWELLS,—Just as soon as you consented I realized all the atrocity of my request, and straightway blushed and weakened. I telegraphed my theatrical agent to come here and carry off the MS and copy it.
But I will gladly send it to you if you will do as follows: dramatize it, if you perceive that you can, and take, for your remuneration, half of the first $6000 which I receive for its representation on the stage. You could alter the plot entirely, if you chose. I could help in the work, most cheerfully, after you had arranged the plot. I have my eye upon two young girls who can play “Tom” and “Huck.” I believe a good deal of a drama can be made of it. Come—can't you tackle this in the odd hours of your vacation? or later, if you prefer?
I do wish you could come down once more before your holiday. I'd give anything!
Yrs ever,
MARK.
Howells wrote that he had no time for the dramatization and
urged Clemens to undertake it himself. He was ready to read
the story, whenever it should arrive. Clemens did not
hurry, however, The publication of Tom Sawyer could wait.
He already had a book in press—the volume of Sketches New
and Old, which he had prepared for Bliss several years
before.
Sketches was issued that autumn, and Howells gave it a good
notice—possibly better than it deserved.
Considered among Mark Twain's books to-day, the collection
of sketches does not seem especially important. With the
exception of the frog story and the “True Story” most of
those included—might be spared. Clemens himself confessed
to Howells that He wished, when it was too late, that he had
destroyed a number of them. The book, however, was
distinguished in a special way: it contains Mark Twain's
first utterance in print on the subject of copyright, a
matter in which he never again lost interest. The absurdity
and injustice of the copyright laws both amused and
irritated him, and in the course of time he would be largely
instrumental in their improvement. In the book his open
petition to Congress that all property rights, as well as
literary ownership, should be put on the copyright basis and
limited to a “beneficent term of forty-two years,” was more
or less of a joke, but, like so many of Mark Twain's jokes,
it was founded on reason and justice.
He had another idea, that was not a joke: an early plan in
the direction of international copyright. It was to be a
petition signed by the leading American authors, asking the
United States to declare itself to be the first to stand for
right and justice by enacting laws against the piracy of
foreign books. It was a rather utopian scheme, as most
schemes for moral progress are, in their beginning. It
would not be likely ever to reach Congress, but it would
appeal to Howells and his Cambridge friends. Clemens wrote,
outlining his plan of action.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Sept. 18, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,—My plan is this—you are to get Mr. Lowell and Mr. Longfellow to be the first signers of my copyright petition; you must sign it yourself and get Mr. Whittier to do likewise. Then Holmes will sign—he said he would if he didn't have to stand at the head. Then I'm fixed. I will then put a gentlemanly chap under wages and send him personally to every author of distinction in the country, and corral the rest of the signatures. Then I'll have the whole thing lithographed (about a thousand copies) and move upon the President and Congress in person, but in the subordinate capacity of a party who is merely the agent of better and wiser men—men whom the country cannot venture to laugh at.
I will ask the President to recommend the thing in his message (and if he should ask me to sit down and frame the paragraph for him I should blush—but still I would frame it.)
Next I would get a prime leader in Congress: I would also see that votes enough to carry the measure were privately secured before the bill was offered. This I would try through my leader and my friends there.
And then if Europe chose to go on stealing from us, we would say with noble enthusiasm, “American lawmakers do steal but not from foreign authors—Not from foreign authors!”
You see, what I want to drive into the Congressional mind is the simple fact that the moral law is “Thou shalt not steal”—no matter what Europe may do.
I swear I can't see any use in robbing European authors for the benefit of American booksellers, anyway.
If we can ever get this thing through Congress, we can try making copyright perpetual, some day. There would be no sort of use in it, since only one book in a hundred millions outlives the present copyright term—no sort of use except that the writer of that one book have his rights—which is something.
If we only had some God in the country's laws, instead of being in such a sweat to get Him into the Constitution, it would be better all around.
The only man who ever signed my petition with alacrity, and said that the fact that a thing was right was all-sufficient, was Rev. Dr. Bushnell.
I have lost my old petition, (which was brief) but will draft and enclose another—not in the words it ought to be, but in the substance. I want Mr. Lowell to furnish the words (and the ideas too,) if he will do it.
Say—Redpath beseeches me to lecture in Boston in November—telegraphs that Beecher's and Nast's withdrawal has put him in the tightest kind of a place. So I guess I'll do that old “Roughing It” lecture over again in November and repeat it 2 or 3 times in New York while I am at it.
Can I take a carriage after the lecture and go out and stay with you that night, provided you find at that distant time that it will not inconvenience you? Is Aldrich home yet?
With love to you all
Yrs ever,
S. L. C.
Of course the petition never reached Congress. Holmes's comment
that governments were not in the habit of setting themselves up as
high moral examples, except for revenue, was shared by too many
others. The petition was tabled, but Clemens never abandoned his
purpose and lived to see most of his dream fulfilled. Meantime,
Howells's notice of the Sketches appeared in the Atlantic, and
brought grateful acknowledgment from the author.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Oct. 19, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,—That is a perfectly superb notice. You can easily believe that nothing ever gratified me so much before. The newspaper praises bestowed upon the “Innocents Abroad” were large and generous, but somehow I hadn't confidence in the critical judgement of the parties who furnished them. You know how that is, yourself, from reading the newspaper notices of your own books. They gratify a body, but they always leave a small pang behind in the shape of a fear that the critic's good words could not safely be depended upon as authority. Yours is the recognized critical Court of Last Resort in this country; from its decision there is no appeal; and so, to have gained this decree of yours before I am forty years old, I regard as a thing to be right down proud of. Mrs. Clemens says, “Tell him I am just as grateful to him as I can be.” (It sounds as if she were grateful to you for heroically trampling the truth under foot in order to praise me but in reality it means that she is grateful to you for being bold enough to utter a truth which she fully believes all competent people know, but which none has heretofore been brave enough to utter.) You see, the thing that gravels her is that I am so persistently glorified as a mere buffoon, as if that entirely covered my case—which she denies with venom.
The other day Mrs. Clemens was planning a visit to you, and so I am waiting with a pleasurable hope for the result of her deliberations. We are expecting visitors every day, now, from New York; and afterward some are to come from Elmira. I judge that we shall then be free to go Bostonward. I should be just delighted; because we could visit in comfort, since we shouldn't have to do any shopping—did it all in New York last week, and a tremendous pull it was too.
Mrs. C. said the other day, “We will go to Cambridge if we have to walk; for I don't believe we can ever get the Howellses to come here again until we have been there.” I was gratified to see that there was one string, anyway, that could take her to Cambridge. But I will do her the justice to say that she is always wanting to go to Cambridge, independent of the selfish desire to get a visit out of you by it. I want her to get started, now, before children's diseases are fashionable again, because they always play such hob with visiting arrangements.
With love to you all
Yrs Ever
S. L. CLEMENS.
Mark Twain's trips to Boston were usually made alone. Women require
more preparation to go visiting, and Mrs. Clemens and Mrs. Howells
seem to have exchanged visits infrequently. For Mark Twain,
perhaps, it was just as well that his wife did not always go with
him; his absent-mindedness and boyish ingenuousness often led him
into difficulties which Mrs. Clemens sometimes found embarrassing.
In the foregoing letter they were planning a visit to Cambridge. In
the one that follows they seem to have made it—with certain
results, perhaps not altogether amusing at the moment.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
Oct. 4, '75.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,—We had a royal good time at your house, and have had a royal good time ever since, talking about it, both privately and with the neighbors.
Mrs. Clemens's bodily strength came up handsomely under that cheery respite from household and nursery cares. I do hope that Mrs. Howells's didn't go correspondingly down, under the added burden to her cares and responsibilities. Of course I didn't expect to get through without committing some crimes and hearing of them afterwards, so I have taken the inevitable lashings and been able to hum a tune while the punishment went on. I “caught it” for letting Mrs. Howells bother and bother about her coffee when it was “a good deal better than we get at home.” I “caught it” for interrupting Mrs. C. at the last moment and losing her the opportunity to urge you not to forget to send her that MS when the printers are done with it. I “caught it” once more for personating that drunken Col. James. I “caught it” for mentioning that Mr. Longfellow's picture was slightly damaged; and when, after a lull in the storm, I confessed, shame-facedly, that I had privately suggested to you that we hadn't any frames, and that if you wouldn't mind hinting to Mr. Houghton, &c., &c., &c., the Madam was simply speechless for the space of a minute. Then she said:
“How could you, Youth! The idea of sending Mr. Howells, with his sensitive nature, upon such a repulsive er—”
“Oh, Howells won't mind it! You don't know Howells. Howells is a man who—” She was gone. But George was the first person she stumbled on in the hall, so she took it out of George. I was glad of that, because it saved the babies.
I've got another rattling good character for my novel! That great work is mulling itself into shape gradually.
Mrs. Clemens sends love to Mrs. Howells—meantime she is diligently
laying up material for a letter to her.
Yrs ever
MARK.
The “George” of this letter was Mark Twain's colored butler, a
valued and even beloved member of the household—a most picturesque
character, who “one day came to wash windows,” as Clemens used to
say, “and remained eighteen years.” The fiction of Mrs. Clemens's
severity he always found amusing, because of its entire contrast
with the reality of her gentle heart.
Clemens carried the Tom Sawyer MS. to Boston himself and placed it
in Howells's hands. Howells had begged to be allowed to see the
story, and Mrs. Clemens was especially anxious that he should do so.
She had doubts as to certain portions of it, and had the fullest
faith in Howells's opinion.
It was a gratifying one when it came. Howells wrote: “I finished
reading Tom Sawyer a week ago, sitting up till one A.M. to get to
the end, simply because it was impossible to leave off. It's
altogether the best boy's story I ever read. It will be an immense
success. But I think you ought to treat it explicitly as a boy's
story. Grown-ups will enjoy it just as much if you do; and if you
should put it forth as a study of boy character from the grown-up
point of view, you give the wrong key to it.... The adventures
are enchanting. I wish I had been on that island. The
treasure-hunting, the loss in the cave—it's all exciting and
splendid. I shouldn't think of publishing this story serially.
Give me a hint when it's to be out, and I'll start the sheep to
jumping in the right places”—meaning that he would have an advance
review ready for publication in the Atlantic, which was a leader of
criticism in America.
Mark Twain was writing a great deal at this time. Howells was
always urging him to send something to the Atlantic, declaring a
willingness to have his name appear every month in their pages, and
Clemens was generally contributing some story or sketch. The
“proof” referred to in the next letter was of one of these articles.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Nov. 23, '75.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,—Herewith is the proof. In spite of myself, how awkwardly I do jumble words together; and how often I do use three words where one would answer—a thing I am always trying to guard against. I shall become as slovenly a writer as Charles Francis Adams, if I don't look out. (That is said in jest; because of course I do not seriously fear getting so bad as that. I never shall drop so far toward his and Bret Harte's level as to catch myself saying “It must have been wiser to have believed that he might have accomplished it if he could have felt that he would have been supported by those who should have &c. &c. &c.”) The reference to Bret Harte reminds me that I often accuse him of being a deliberate imitator of Dickens; and this in turn reminds me that I have charged unconscious plagiarism upon Charley Warner; and this in turn reminds me that I have been delighting my soul for two weeks over a bran new and ingenious way of beginning a novel—and behold, all at once it flashes upon me that Charley Warner originated the idea 3 years ago and told me about it! Aha! So much for self-righteousness! I am well repaid. Here are 108 pages of MS, new and clean, lying disgraced in the waste paper basket, and I am beginning the novel over again in an unstolen way. I would not wonder if I am the worst literary thief in the world, without knowing it.
It is glorious news that you like Tom Sawyer so well. I mean to see to it that your review of it shall have plenty of time to appear before the other notices. Mrs. Clemens decides with you that the book should issue as a book for boys, pure and simple—and so do I. It is surely the correct idea. As to that last chapter, I think of just leaving it off and adding nothing in its place. Something told me that the book was done when I got to that point—and so the strong temptation to put Huck's life at the Widow's into detail, instead of generalizing it in a paragraph was resisted. Just send Sawyer to me by express—I enclose money for it. If it should get lost it will be no great matter.
Company interfered last night, and so “Private Theatricals” goes over till this evening, to be read aloud. Mrs. Clemens is mad, but the story will take that all out. This is going to be a splendid winter night for fireside reading, anyway.
I am almost at a dead stand-still with my new story, on account of the
misery of having to do it all over again. We—all send love to you—all. Yrs ever
MARK.
The “story” referred to may have been any one of several
begun by him at this time. His head was full of ideas for
literature of every sort. Many of his beginnings came to
nothing, for the reason that he started wrong, or with no
definitely formed plan. Others of his literary enterprises
were condemned by his wife for their grotesqueness or for
the offense they might give in one way or another, however
worthy the intention behind them. Once he wrote a burlesque
on family history “The Autobiography of a Damned Fool.”
“Livy wouldn't have it,” he said later, “so I gave it up.”
The world is indebted to Mark Twain's wife for the check she
put upon his fantastic or violent impulses. She was his
public, his best public—clearheaded and wise. That he
realized this, and was willing to yield, was by no means the
least of his good fortunes. We may believe that he did not
always yield easily, and perhaps sometimes only out of love
for her. In the letter which he wrote her on her thirtieth
birthday we realize something of what she had come to mean
in his life.
To Mrs. Clemens on her Thirtieth Birthday:
HARTFORD, November 27, 1875.
Livy darling, six years have gone by since I made my first great success in life and won you, and thirty years have passed since Providence made preparation for that happy success by sending you into the world. Every day we live together adds to the security of my confidence, that we can never any more wish to be separated than that we can ever imagine a regret that we were ever joined. You are dearer to me to-day, my child, than you were upon the last anniversary of this birth-day; you were dearer then than you were a year before—you have grown more and more dear from the first of those anniversaries, and I do not doubt that this precious progression will continue on to the end.
Let us look forward to the coming anniversaries, with their age and their gray hairs without fear and without depression, trusting and believing that the love we bear each other will be sufficient to make them blessed.
So, with abounding affection for you and our babies, I hail this day that brings you the matronly grace and dignity of three decades!
Always Yours
S. L. C.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg