notice me. Then we understood, and our hearts broke. How poor we are today!
But how thankful I am that her persecutions are ended. I would not call her back if I could.
Today, treasured in her worn old Testament, I found a dear and gentle letter from you, dated Far Rockaway, Sept. 13, 1896, about our poor Susy’s death. I am tired and old; I wish I were with Livy.
I send my love-and hers-to you all.
S. L. C.
In a letter to Twichell he wrote: “How sweet she was in death; how young, how beautiful, how like her dear, girlish self cf thirty years ago; not a gray hair showing.”
The family was now without plans for the future until they remembered the summer home of R. W. Gilder, at Tyringham, Massachusetts, and the possibility of finding lodgment for themselves in that secluded corner of New England. Clemens wrote without delay, as follows:
To R. W. Gilder, in New York:
VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE, June 7, ’04.
DEAR GILDER FAMILY,–I have been worrying and worrying to know what to do: at last I went to the girls with an idea: to ask the Gilders to get us shelter near their summer home. It was the first time they have not shaken their heads. So to-morrow I will cable to you and shall hope to be in time.
An, hour ago the best heart that ever beat for me and mine went silent out of this house, and I am as one who wanders and has lost his way. She who is gone was our head, she was our hands. We are now trying to make plans–we: we who have never made a plan before, nor ever needed to. If she could speak to us she would make it all simple and easy with a word, and our perplexities would vanish away. If she had known she was near to death she would have told us where to go and what to do: but she was not suspecting, neither were we. (She had been chatting cheerfully a moment before, and in an instant she was gone from us and we did not know it. We were not alarmed, we did not know anything had happened. It was a blessed death–she passed away without knowing it.) She was all our riches and she is gone: she was our breath, she was our life and now we are nothing.
We send you our love–and with it the love of you that was in her heart when she died.
S. L. CLEMENS.
Howells wrote his words of sympathy, adding: “The character which now remains a memory was one of the most perfect ever formed on the earth,” and again, after having received Clemens’s letter: “I cannot speak of your wife’s having kept that letter of mine where she did. You know how it must humiliate a man in his unworthiness to have anything of his so consecrated. She hallowed what she touched, far beyond priests.”
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
VILLA DI QUARTO, ’04. June 12, 6 p. m.
DEAR HOWELLS,–We have to sit and hold our hands and wait–in the silence and solitude of this prodigious house; wait until June 25, then we go to Naples and sail in the Prince Oscar the 26th. There is a ship 12 days earlier (but we came in that one.) I see Clara twice a day–morning and evening–greeting–nothing more is allowed. She keeps her bed, and says nothing. She has not cried yet. I wish she could cry. It would break Livy’s heart to see Clara. We excuse ourselves from all the friends that call–though of course only intimates come. Intimates–but they are not the old old friends, the friends of the old, old times when we laughed.
Shall we ever laugh again? If I could only see a dog that I knew in the old times! and could put my arms around his neck and tell him all, everything, and ease my heart.
Think-in 3 hours it will be a week!–and soon a month; and by and by a year. How fast our dead fly from us.
She loved you so, and was always as pleased as a child with any notice you took of her.
Soon your wife will be with you, oh fortunate man! And John, whom mine was so fond of. The sight of him was such a delight to her. Lord, the old friends, how dear they are.
S. L. C.
To Rev. J. R. Twichell, in Hartford:
VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE, June 18, ’04.
DEAR JOE,–It is 13 days. I am bewildered and must remain so for a time longer. It was so sudden, so unexpected. Imagine a man worth a hundred millions who finds himself suddenly penniless and fifty million in debt in his old age.
I was richer than any other person in the world, and now I am that pauper without peer. Some day I will tell you about it, not now. MARK.
A tide of condolence flowed in from all parts of the world. It was impossible to answer all. Only a few who had been their closest friends received a written line, but the little printed acknowledgment which was returned was no mere formality. It was a heartfelt, personal word.
They arrived in America in July, and were accompanied by Twichell to Elmira, and on the 14th Mrs. Clemens was laid to rest by the side of Susy and little Langdon. R. W. Gilder had arranged for them to occupy, for the summer, a cottage on his place at Tyringham, in the Berkshire Hills. By November they were at the Grosvenor, in New York, preparing to establish themselves in a house which they had taken on the corner of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue–Number 21.
To F. N. Doubleday, in New York:
DEAR DOUBLEDAY,–I did not know you were going to England: I would have freighted you with such messages of homage and affection to Kipling. And I would have pressed his hand, through you, for his sympathy with me in my crushing loss, as expressed by him in his letter to Gilder. You know my feeling for Kipling and that it antedates that expression.
I was glad that the boys came here to invite me to the house-warming and I think they understood why a man in the shadow of a calamity like mine could not go.
It has taken three months to repair and renovate our house–corner of 9th and 5th Avenue, but I shall be in it in io or 15 days hence. Much of the furniture went into it today (from Hartford). We have not seen it for 13 years. Katy Leary, our old housekeeper, who has been in our service more than 24 years, cried when she told me about it to-day. She said “I had forgotten it was so beautiful, and it brought Mrs. Clemens right back to me–in that old time when she was so young and lovely.”
Jean and my secretary and the servants whom we brought from Italy because Mrs. Clemens liked them so well, are still keeping house in the Berkshire hills–and waiting. Clara (nervously wrecked by her mother’s death) is in the hands of a specialist in 69th St., and I shall not be allowed to have any communication with her–even telephone–for a year. I am in this comfortable little hotel, and still in bed–for I dasn’t budge till I’m safe from my pet devil, bronchitis.
Isn’t it pathetic? One hour and ten minutes before Mrs. Clemens died I was saying to her “To-day, after five months search, I’ve found the villa that will content you: to-morrow you will examine the plans and give it your consent and I will buy it.” Her eyes danced with pleasure, for she longed for a home of her own. And there, on that morrow, she lay white and cold. And unresponsive to my reverent caresses–a new thing to me and a new thing to her; that had not happened before in five and thirty years.
I am coming to see you and Mrs. Doubleday by and bye. She loved and honored Mrs. Doubleday and her work.
Always yours,
MARK.
It was a presidential year and the air was thick with politics. Mark Twain was no longer actively interested in the political situation; he was only disheartened by the hollowness and pretense of office-seeking, and the methods of office-seekers in general. Grieved that Twichell should still pin his faith to any party when all parties were so obviously venal and time-serving, he wrote in outspoken and rather somber protest.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
THE GROSVENOR, Nov. 4, ’04. Oh, dear! get out of that sewer–party politics–dear Joe. At least with your mouth. We hail only two men who could make speeches for their parties and preserve their honor and their dignity. One of them is dead. Possibly there were four. I am sorry for John Hay; sorry and ashamed. And yet I know he couldn’t help it. He wears the collar, and he had to pay the penalty. Certainly he had no more desire to stand up before a mob of confiding human incapables and debauch them than you had. Certainly he took no more real pleasure in distorting history, concealing facts, propagating immoralities, and appealing to the sordid side of human nature than did you; but he was his party’s property, and he had to climb away down and do it.
It is interesting, wonderfully interesting–the miracles which party- politics can do with a man’s mental and moral make-up. Look at McKinley, Roosevelt, and yourself: in private life spotless in character; honorable, honest, just, humane, generous; scorning trickeries, treacheries, suppressions of the truth, mistranslations of the meanings of facts, the filching of credit earned by another, the condoning of crime, the glorifying of base acts: in public political life the reverse of all this.
McKinley was a silverite–you concealed it. Roosevelt was a silverite– you concealed it. Parker was a silverite–you publish it. Along with a shudder and a warning: “He was unsafe then. Is he any safer now?”
Joe, even I could be guilty of such a thing as that–if I were in party- politics; I really believe it.
Mr. Cleveland gave the country the gold standard; by implication you credit the matter to the Republican party.
By implication you prove the whole annual pension-scoop, concealing the fact that the bulk of the money goes to people who in no way deserve it. You imply that all the batteners upon this bribery-fund are Republicans. An indiscreet confession, since about half of them must have been Democrats before they were bought.
You as good as praise Order 78. It is true you do not shout, and you do not linger, you only whisper and skip–still, what little you do in the matter is complimentary to the crime.
It means, if it means anything, that our outlying properties will all be given up by the Democrats, and our flag hauled down. All of them? Not only the properties stolen by Mr. McKinley and Mr. Roosevelt, but the properties honestly acquired? Joe, did you believe that hardy statement when you made it? Yet you made it, and there it stands in permanent print. Now what moral law would suffer if we should give up the stolen ones? But–
“You know our standard-bearer. He will maintain all that we have gained”–by whatever process. Land, I believe you!
By George, Joe, you are as handy at the game as if you had been in training for it all your life. Your campaign Address is built from the ground up upon the oldest and best models. There isn’t a paragraph in it whose facts or morals will wash–not even a sentence, I believe.
But you will soon be out of this. You didn’t want to do it–that is sufficiently apparent, thanks be!–but you couldn’t well get out of it. In a few days you will be out of it, and then you can fumigate yourself and take up your legitimate work again and resume your clean and wholesome private character once more and be happy–and useful.
I know I ought to hand you some guff, now, as propitiation and apology for these reproaches, but on the whole I believe I won’t.
I have inquired, and find that Mitsikuri does not arrive here until to- morrow night. I shall watch out, and telephone again, for I greatly want to see him.
Always Yours,
MARK.
P. S.–Nov, 4. I wish I could learn to remember that it is unjust and dishonorable to put blame upon the human race for any of its acts. For it did not make itself, it did not make its nature, it is merely a machine, it is moved wholly by outside influences, it has no hand in creating the outside influences nor in choosing which of them it will welcome or reject, its performance is wholly automatic, it has no more mastership nor authority over its mind than it has over its stomach, which receives material from the outside and does as it pleases with it, indifferent to it’s proprietor’s suggestions, even, let alone his commands; wherefore, whatever the machine does–so called crimes and infamies included–is the personal act of its Maker, and He, solely, is responsible. I wish I could learn to pity the human race instead of censuring it and laughing at it; and I could, if the outside influences of old habit were not so strong upon my machine. It vexes me to catch myself praising the clean private citizen Roosevelt, and blaming the soiled President Roosevelt, when I know that neither praise nor blame is due to him for any thought or word or deed of his, he being merely a helpless and irresponsible coffee-mill ground by the hand of God.
Through a misunderstanding, Clemens, something more than a year earlier, had severed his connection with the Players’ Club, of which he had been one of the charter members. Now, upon his return to New York, a number of his friends joined in an invitation to him to return. It was not exactly a letter they sent, but a bit of an old Scotch song–
“To Mark Twain
from
The Clansmen.
Will ye no come back again, Will ye no come back again? Better lo’ed ye canna be.
Will ye no come back again?”
Those who signed it were David Monroe, of the North American Review; Robert Reid, the painter, and about thirty others of the Round Table Group, so called because its members were accustomed to lunching at a large round table in a bay window of the Player dining-room. Mark Twain’s reply was prompt and heartfelt. He wrote:
To Robt. Reid and the Others:
WELL-BELOVED,–Surely those lovely verses went to Prince Charley’s heart, if he had one, and certainly they have gone to mine. I shall be glad and proud to come back again after such a moving and beautiful compliment as this from comrades whom I have loved so long. I hope you can poll the necessary vote; I know you will try, at any rate. It will be many months before I can foregather with you, for this black border is not perfunctory, not a convention; it symbolizes the loss of one whose memory is the only thing I worship.
It is not necessary for me to thank you–and words could not deliver what I feel, anyway. I will put the contents of your envelope in the small casket where I keep the things which have become sacred to me.
S. L. C.
A year later, Mark Twain did “come back again,” as an honorary life member, and was given a dinner of welcome by those who had signed the lines urging his return.
XLIV
LETTERS OF 1905. TO TWICHELL, MR. DUNEKA AND OTHERS. POLITICS AND HUMANITY. A SUMMER AT DUBLIN. MARK TWAIN AT 70
In 1884 Mark Twain had abandoned the Republican Party to vote for Cleveland. He believed the party had become corrupt, and to his last day it was hard for him to see anything good in Republican policies or performance. He was a personal friend of Thedore Roosevelt’s but, as we have seen in a former letter, Roosevelt the politician rarely found favor in his eyes. With or without justification, most of the President’s political acts invited his caustic sarcasm and unsparing condemnation. Another letter to Twichell of this time affords a fair example.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
Feb. 16, ’05. DEAR JOE,–I knew I had in me somewhere a definite feeling about the President if I could only find the words to define it with. Here they are, to a hair–from Leonard Jerome: “For twenty years I have loved Roosevelt the man and hated Roosevelt the statesman and politician.”
It’s mighty good. Every time, in 25 years, that I have met Roosevelt the man, a wave of welcome has streaked through me with the hand-grip; but whenever (as a rule) I meet Roosevelt the statesman and politician, I find him destitute of morals and not respectworthy. It is plain that where his political self and his party self are concerned he has nothing resembling a conscience; that under those inspirations he is naively indifferent to the restraints of duty and even unaware of them; ready to kick the Constitution into the back yard whenever it gets in the way; and whenever he smells a vote, not only willing but eager to buy it, give extravagant rates for it and pay the bill not out of his own pocket or the party’s, but out of the nation’s, by cold pillage. As per Order 78 and the appropriation of the Indian trust funds.
But Roosevelt is excusable–I recognize it and (ought to) concede it. We are all insane, each in his own way, and with insanity goes irresponsibility. Theodore the man is sane; in fairness we ought to keep in mind that Theodore, as statesman arid politician, is insane and irresponsible.
Do not throw these enlightenments aside, but study them, let them raise you to higher planes and make you better. You taught me in my callow days, let me pay back the debt now in my old age out of a thesaurus with wisdom smelted from the golden ores of experience. Ever yours for sweetness and light MARK.
The next letter to Twichell takes up politics and humanity in general, in a manner complimentary to neither. Mark Twain was never really a pessimist, but he had pessimistic intervals, such as come to most of us in life’s later years, and at such times he let himself go without stint concerning “the damned human race,” as he called it, usually with a manifest sense of indignation that he should be a member of it. In much of his later writing– A Mysterious Stranger for example–he said his say with but small restraint, and certainly in his purely intellectual moments he was likely to be a pessimist of the most extreme type, capably damning the race and the inventor of it. Yet, at heart, no man loved his kind more genuinely, or with deeper compassion, than Mark Twain, perhaps for its very weaknesses. It was only that he had intervals –frequent intervals, and rather long ones–when he did not admire it, and was still more doubtful as to the ways of providence.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
March 14, ’05. DEAR JOE,–I have a Puddn’head maxim:
“When a man is a pessimist before 48 he knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.”
It is with contentment, therefore, that I reflect that I am better and wiser than you. Joe, you seem to be dealing in “bulks,” now; the “bulk” of the farmers and U. S. Senators are “honest.” As regards purchase and sale with money? Who doubts it? Is that the only measure of honesty? Aren’t there a dozen kinds of honesty which can’t be measured by the money-standard? Treason is treason–and there’s more than one form of it; the money-form is but one of them. When a person is disloyal to any confessed duty, he is plainly and simply dishonest, and knows it; knows it, and is privately troubled about it and not proud of himself. Judged by this standard–and who will challenge the validity of it?–there isn’t an honest man in Connecticut, nor in the Senate, nor anywhere else. I do not even except myself, this time.
Am I finding fault with you and the rest of the populace? No–I assure you I am not. For I know the human race’s limitations, and this makes it my duty–my pleasant duty–to be fair to it. Each person in it is honest in one or several ways, but no member of it is honest in all the ways required by–by what? By his own standard. Outside of that, as I look at it, there is no obligation upon him.
Am I honest? I give you my word of honor (private) I am not. For seven years I have suppressed a book which my conscience tells me I ought to publish. I hold it a duty to publish it. There are other difficult duties which I am equal to, but I am not equal to that one. Yes, even I am dishonest. Not in many ways, but in some. Forty-one, I think it is. We are certainly all honest in one or several ways–every man in the world–though I have reason to think I am the only one whose black-list runs so light. Sometimes I feel lonely enough in this lofty solitude.
Yes, oh, yes, I am not overlooking the “steady progress from age to age of the coming of the kingdom of God and righteousness.” “From age to age”–yes, it describes that giddy gait. I (and the rocks) will not live to see it arrive, but that is all right–it will arrive, it surely will. But you ought not to be always ironically apologizing for the Deity. If that thing is going to arrive, it is inferable that He wants it to arrive; and so it is not quite kind of you, and it hurts me, to see you flinging sarcasms at the gait of it. And yet it would not be fair in me not to admit that the sarcasms are deserved. When the Deity wants a thing, and after working at it for “ages and ages” can’t show even a shade of progress toward its accomplishment, we–well, we don’t laugh, but it is only because we dasn’t. The source of “righteousness”–is in the heart? Yes. And engineered and directed by the brain? Yes. Well, history and tradition testify that the heart is just about what it was in the beginning; it has undergone no shade of change. Its good and evil impulses and their consequences are the same today that they were in Old Bible times, in Egyptian times, in Greek times, in Middle Age times, in Twentieth Century times. There has been no change.
Meantime, the brain has undergone no change. It is what it always was. There are a few good brains and a multitude of poor ones. It was so in Old Bible times and in all other times–Greek, Roman, Middle Ages and Twentieth Century. Among the savages–all the savages–the average brain is as competent as the average brain here or elsewhere. I will prove it to you, some time, if you like. And there are great brains among them, too. I will prove that also, if you like.
Well, the 19th century made progress–the first progress after “ages and ages”–colossal progress. In what? Materialities. Prodigious acquisitions were made in things which add to the comfort of many and make life harder for as many more. But the addition to righteousness? Is that discoverable? I think not. The materialities were not invented in the interest of righteousness; that there is more righteousness in the world because of them than there, was before, is hardly demonstrable, I think. In Europe and America, there is a vast change (due to them) in ideals–do you admire it? All Europe and all America, are feverishly scrambling for money. Money is the supreme ideal–all others take tenth place with the great bulk of the nations named. Money-lust has always existed, but not in the history of the world was it ever a craze, a madness, until your time and mine. This lust has rotted these nations; it has made them hard, sordid, ungentle, dishonest, oppressive.
Did England rise against the infamy of the Boer war? No–rose in favor of it. Did America rise against the infamy of the Phillipine war? No– rose in favor of it. Did Russia rise against the infamy of the present war? No–sat still and said nothing. Has the Kingdom of God advanced in Russia since the beginning of time?
Or in Europe and America, considering the vast backward step of the money-lust? Or anywhere else? If there has been any progress toward righteousness since the early days of Creation–which, in my ineradicable honesty, I am obliged to doubt–I think we must confine it to ten per cent of the populations of Christendom, (but leaving, Russia, Spain and South America entirely out.) This gives us 320,000,000 to draw the ten per cent from. That is to say, 32,000,000 have advanced toward righteousness and the Kingdom of God since the “ages and ages” have been flying along, the Deity sitting up there admiring. Well, you see it leaves 1,200,000,000 out of the race. They stand just where they have always stood; there has been no change.
N. B. No charge for these informations. Do come down soon, Joe. With love,
MARK.
St. Clair McKelway, of The Brooklyn Eagle, narrowly escaped injuries in a railway accident, and received the following. Clemens and McKelway were old friends.
To St. Clair McKelway, in Brooklyn:
21 FIFTH AVE. Sunday Morning. April 30, 1905. DEAR McKELWAY, Your innumerable friends are grateful, most grateful.
As I understand the telegrams, the engineer of your train had never seen a locomotive before. Very well, then, I am once more glad that there is an Ever-watchful Providence to foresee possible results and send Ogdens and McIntyres along to save our friends.
The Government’s Official report, showing that our railways killed twelve hundred persons last year and injured sixty thousand convinces me that under present conditions one Providence is not enough to properly and efficiently take care of our railroad business. But it is characteristically American–always trying to get along short-handed and save wages.
I am helping your family congratulate themselves, and am your friend as always.
S. L. CLEMENS.
Clemens did not spend any more summers at Quarry Farm. All its associations were beautiful and tender, but they could only sadden him. The life there had been as of another world, sunlit, idyllic, now forever vanished. For the summer of 1905 he leased the Copley Green house at Dublin, New Hampshire, where there was a Boston colony of writing and artistic folk, including many of his long-time friends. Among them was Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who wrote a hearty letter of welcome when he heard the news. Clemens replied in kind.
To Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in Boston:
21 FIFTH AVE. Sunday, March 26, z9o.5. DEAR COL. HIGGINSON,–I early learned that you would be my neighbor in the Summer and I rejoiced, recognizing in you and your family a large asset. I hope for frequent intercourse between the two households. I shall have my youngest daughter with me. The other one will go from the rest-cure in this city to the rest-cure in Norfolk Conn and we shall not see her before autumn. We have not seen her since the middle of October.
Jean (the youngest daughter) went to Dublin and saw the house and came back charmed with it. I know the Thayers of old–manifestly there is no lack of attractions up there. Mrs. Thayer and I were shipmates in a wild excursion perilously near 40 years ago.
You say you “send with this” the story. Then it should be here but it isn’t, when I send a thing with another thing, the other thing goes but the thing doesn’t, I find it later–still on the premises. Will you look it up now and send it?
Aldrich was here half an hour ago, like a breeze from over the fields, with the fragrance still upon his spirit. I am tired of waiting for that man to get old.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. C.
Mark Twain was in his seventieth year, old neither in mind nor body, but willing to take life more quietly, to refrain from travel and gay events. A sort of pioneers’ reunion was to be held on the Pacific Coast, and a letter from Robert Fulton, of Reno, Nevada, invited Clemens to attend. He did not go, but he sent a letter that we may believe was the next best thing to those who heard it read.
To Robert Fulton, in Reno, Nevada:
IN THE MOUNTAINS, May 24, 1905. DEAR MR. FULTON,–I remember, as if it were yesterday, that when I disembarked from the overland stage in front of the Ormsby in Carson City in August, 1861, I was not expecting to be asked to come again. I was tired, discouraged, white with alkali dust, and did not know anybody; and if you had said then, “Cheer up, desolate stranger, don’t be down- hearted–pass on, and come again in 1905,” you cannot think how grateful I would have been and how gladly I would have closed the contract. Although I was not expecting to be invited, I was watching out for it, and was hurt and disappointed when you started to ask me and changed it to, “How soon are you going away?”
But you have made it all right, now, the wound is closed. And so I thank you sincerely for the invitation; and with you, all Reno, and if I were a few years younger I would accept it, and promptly. I would go. I would let somebody else do the oration, but, as for me, I would talk– just talk. I would renew my youth; and talk–and talk–and talk –and have the time of my life! I would march the unforgotten and unforgettable antiques by, and name their names, and give them reverent Hailand-farewell as they passed: Goodman, McCarthy, Gillis, Curry, Baldwin, Winters, Howard, Nye, Stewart; Neely Johnson, Hal Clayton, North, Root,–and my brother, upon whom be peace!–and then the desperadoes, who made life a joy and the “Slaughter-house” a precious possession: Sam Brown, Farmer Pete, Bill Mayfield, Six-fingered Jake, Jack Williams and the rest of the crimson discipleship–and so on and so on. Believe me, I would start a resurrection it would do you more good to look at than the next one will, if you go on the way you are doing now.
Those were the days! those old ones. They will come no more. Youth will come no more. They were so full to the brim with the wine of life; there have been no others like them. It chokes me up to think of them. Would you like me to come out there and cry? It would not beseem my white head.
Good-bye. I drink to you all. Have a good time–and take an old man’s blessing.
MARK TWAIN.
A few days later he was writing to H. H. Bancroft, of San Francisco, who had invited him for a visit in event of his coming to the Coast. Henry James had just been there for a week and it was hoped that Howells would soon follow.
To H. H. Bancroft, in San Francisco:
UP IN NEW HAMPSHIRE, May 27, 1905. DEAR MR. BANCROFT,–I thank you sincerely for the tempting hospitalities which you offer me, but I have to deny myself, for my wandering days are over, and it is my desire and purpose to sit by the fire the rest of my remnant of life and indulge myself with the pleasure and repose of work –work uninterrupted and unmarred by duties or excursions.
A man who like me, is going to strike 70 on the 30th of next November has no business to be flitting around the way Howells does–that shameless old fictitious butter fly. (But if he comes, don’t tell him I said it, for it would hurt him and I wouldn’t brush a flake of powder from his wing for anything. I only say it in envy of his indestructible youth, anyway. Howells will be 88 in October.) With thanks again, Sincerely yours,
S. L. C.
Clemens found that the air of the New Hampshire hills agreed with him and stimulated him to work. He began an entirely new version of The Mysterious Stranger, of which he already had a bulky and nearly finished manuscript, written in Vienna. He wrote several hundred pages of an extravaganza entitled, Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes, and then, having got his superabundant vitality reduced (it was likely to expend itself in these weird mental exploits), he settled down one day and wrote that really tender and beautiful idyl, Eve’s Diary, which he had begun, or at least planned, the previous summer at Tyringham. In a letter to Mr. Frederick A. Duneka, general manager of Harper & Brothers, he tells something of the manner of the story; also his revised opinion of Adam’s Diary, written in ’93, and originally published as a souvenir of Niagara Falls.
To Frederick A. Duneka, in New York:
DUBLIN, July 16, ’05. DEAR MR. DUNEKA,–I wrote Eve’s Diary, she using Adam’s Diary as her (unwitting and unconscious) text, of course, since to use any other text would have been an imbecility–then I took Adam’s Diary and read it. It turned my stomach. It was not literature; yet it had been literature once–before I sold it to be degraded to an advertisement of the Buffalo Fair. I was going to write and ask you to melt the plates and put it out of print.
But this morning I examined it without temper, and saw that if I abolished the advertisement it would be literature again.
So I have done it. I have struck out 700 words and inserted 5 MS pages of new matter (650 words), and now Adam’s Diary is dam good–sixty times as good as it ever was before.
I believe it is as good as Eve’s Diary now–no, it’s not quite that good, I guess, but it is good enough to go in the same cover with Eve’s. I’m sure of that.
I hate to have the old Adam go out any more–don’t put it on the presses again, let’s put the new one in place of it; and next Xmas, let us bind Adam and Eve in one cover. They score points against each other–so, if not bound together, some of the points would not be perceived…..
P. S. Please send another Adam’s Diary, so that I can make 2 revised copies. Eve’s Diary is Eve’s love-Story, but we will not name it that. Yrs ever,
MARK.
The peace-making at Portsmouth between Japan and Russia was not satisfactory to Mark Twain, who had fondly hoped there would be no peace until, as he said, “Russian liberty was safe. One more battle would have abolished the waiting chains of millions upon millions of unborn Russians and I wish it could have been fought.” He set down an expression of his feelings for the Associated Press, and it invited many letters. Charles Francis Adams wrote, “It attracted my attention because it so exactly expresses the views I have myself all along entertained.”
Clemens was invited by Colonel George Harvey to dine with the Russian emissaries, Baron Rosen and Sergius Witte. He declined, but his telegram so pleased Witte that he asked permission to publish it, and announced that he would show it to the Czar.
Telegram. To Col. George Harvey, in New York:
TO COLONEL HARVEY,–I am still a cripple, otherwise I should be more than glad of this opportunity to meet the illustrious magicians who came here equipped with nothing but a pen, and with it have divided the honors of the war with the sword. It is fair to presume that in thirty centuries history will not get done admiring these men who attempted what the world regarded as impossible and achieved it.
Witte would not have cared to show the Czar the telegram in its original form, which follows.
Telegram (unsent). To Col. George Harvey, in New York:
TO COLONEL HARVEY,–I am still a cripple, otherwise I should be more than glad of this opportunity to meet those illustrious magicians who with the pen have annulled, obliterated, and abolished every high achievement of the Japanese sword and turned the tragedy of a tremendous war into a gay and blithesome comedy. If I may, let me in all respect and honor salute them as my fellow-humorists, I taking third place, as becomes one who was not born to modesty, but by diligence and hard work is acquiring it. MARK.
Nor still another unsent form, perhaps more characteristic than either of the foregoing.
Telegram (unsent). To Col. George Harvey, in New York:
DEAR COLONEL,–No, this is a love-feast; when you call a lodge of sorrow send for me.
MARK.
To Mrs. Crane, Quarry Farm:
DUBLIN, Sept. 24, ’05. Susy dear, I have had a lovely dream. Livy, dressed in black, was sitting up in my bed (here) at my right and looking as young and sweet as she used to do when she was in health. She said: “what is the name of your sweet sister?” I said, “Pamela.” “Oh, yes, that is it, I thought it was–” (naming a name which has escaped me) “Won’t you write it down for me?” I reached eagerly for a pen and pad–laid my hands upon both–then said to myself, “It is only a dream,” and turned back sorrowfully and there she was, still. The conviction flamed through me that our lamented disaster was a dream, and this a reality. I said, “How blessed it is, how blessed it is, it was all a dream, only a dream!” She only smiled and did not ask what dream I meant, which surprised me. She leaned her head against mine and I kept saying, “I was perfectly sure it was a dream, I never would have believed it wasn’t.”
I think she said several things, but if so they are gone from my memory. I woke and did not know I had been dreaming. She was gone. I wondered how she could go without my knowing it, but I did not spend any thought upon that, I was too busy thinking of how vivid and real was the dream that we had lost her and how unspeakably blessed it was to find that it was not true and that she was still ours and with us. S. L. C.
One day that summer Mark Twain received a letter from the actress, Minnie Maddern Fiske, asking him to write something that would aid her in her crusade against bull-fighting. The idea appealed to him; he replied at once.
To Mrs. Fiske:
DEAR MRS. FISKE,–I shall certainly write the story. But I may not get it to suit me, in which case it will go in the fire. Later I will try again–and yet again–and again. I am used to this. It has taken me twelve years to write a short story–the shortest one I ever wrote, I think.–[Probably “The Death Disk.”]–So do not be discouraged; I will stick to this one in the same way. Sincerely yours, S. L. CLEMENS.
He did not delay in his beginning, and a few weeks later was sending word to his publisher about it.
To Frederick A. Duneka, in New York:
Oct. 2, ’05. DEAR MR. DUNEKA,–I have just finished a short story which I “greatly admire,” and so will you–“A Horse’s Tale”–about 15,000 words, at a rough guess. It has good fun in it, and several characters, and is lively. I shall finish revising it in a few days or more, then Jean will type it.
Don’t you think you can get it into the Jan. and Feb. numbers and issue it as a dollar booklet just after the middle of Jan. when you issue the Feb. number?
It ought to be ably illustrated.
Why not sell simultaneous rights, for this once, to the Ladies’ Home Journal or Collier’s, or both, and recoup yourself?–for I would like to get it to classes that can’t afford Harper’s. Although it doesn’t preach, there’s a sermon concealed in it. Yr sincerely,
MARK.
Five days later he added some rather interesting facts concerning the new story.
To F. A. Duneka, in New York:
Oct. 7, 1906. [’05] 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. MARK.
Though he used very little liquor of any kind, it was Mark Twain’s custom to keep a bottle of Scotch whiskey with his collection of pipes and cigars and tobacco on a little table by his bed-side. During restless nights he found a small quantity of it conducive to sleep. Andrew Carnegie, learning of this custom, made it his business to supply Scotch of his own special importation. The first case came, direct from Scotland. When it arrived Clemens sent this characteristic acknowledgment.
To Andrew Carnegie, in Scotland:
21 FIFTH AVE. Feb. 10, ’06. DEAR ST. ANDREW,–The whisky arrived in due course from over the water; last week one bottle of it was extracted from the wood and inserted into me, on the instalment plan, with this result: that I believe it to be the best, smoothest whisky now on the planet. Thanks, oh, thanks: I have discarded Peruna.
Hoping that you three are well and happy and will be coming back before the winter sets in.
I am,
Sincerely yours,
MARK.
It must have been a small bottle to be consumed by him in a week, or perhaps he had able assistance. The next brief line refers to the manuscript of his article, “Saint Joan of Arc,” presented to the museum at Rouen.
To Edward E. Clarke:
21 FIFTH AVE., Feb., 1906. DEAR SIR,–I have found the original manuscript and with great pleasure I transmit it herewith, also a printed copy.
It is a matter of great pride to me to have any word of mine concerning the world’s supremest heroine honored by a place in that Museum. Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The series of letters which follows was prepared by Mark Twain and General Fred Grant, mainly with a view of advertising the lecture that Clemens had agreed to deliver for the benefit of the Robert Fulton Monument Association. It was, in fact, to be Mark Twain’s “farewell lecture,” and the association had really proposed to pay him a thousand dollars for it. The exchange of these letters, however, was never made outside of Mark Twain’s bed-room. Propped against the pillows, pen in hand, with General Grant beside him, they arranged the series with the idea of publication. Later the plan was discarded, so that this pleasant foolery appears here for the first, time.
PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
(Correspondence)
Telegram
Army Headquarters (date) MARK TWAIN, New York,–Would you consider a proposal to talk at Carnegie Hall for the benefit of the Robert Fulton Monument Association, of which you are a Vice President, for a fee of a thousand dollars? F. D. GRANT,
President,
Fulton Monument Association.
Telegraphic Answer:
MAJOR-GENERAL F. D. GRANT, Army Headquarters,–I shall be glad to do it, but I must stipulate that you keep the thousand dollars and add it to the Monument fund as my contribution.
CLEMENS.
Letters:
DEAR MR. CLEMENS,–You have the thanks of the Association, and the terms shall be as you say. But why give all of it? Why not reserve a portion –why should you do this work wholly without compensation? Truly yours
FRED. D. GRANT.
MAJOR GENERAL GRANT, Army Headquarters.
DEAR GENERAL,–Because I stopped talking for pay a good many years ago, and I could not resume the habit now without a great deal of personal discomfort. I love to hear myself talk, because I get so much instruction and moral upheaval out of it, but I lose the bulk of this joy when I charge for it. Let the terms stand.
General, if I have your approval, I wish to use this good occasion to retire permanently from the platform.
Truly yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
DEAR MR. CLEMENS,–Certainly. But as an old friend, permit me to say, Don’t do that. Why should you?–you are not old yet. Yours truly,
FRED D. GRANT.
DEAR GENERAL,–I mean the pay-platform; I shan’t retire from the gratis- platform until after I am dead and courtesy requires me to keep still and not disturb the others.
What shall I talk about? My idea is this: to instruct the audience about Robert Fulton, and….. Tell me-was that his real name, or was it his nom de plume? However, never mind, it is not important–I can skip it, and the house will think I knew all about it, but forgot. Could you find out for me if he was one of the Signers of the Declaration, and which one? But if it is any trouble, let it alone, I can skip it. Was he out with Paul Jones? Will you ask Horace Porter? And ask him if he brought both of them home. These will be very interesting facts, if they can be established. But never mind, don’t trouble Porter, I can establish them anyway. The way I look at it, they are historical gems–gems of the very first water.
Well, that is my idea, as I have said: first, excite the audience with a spoonful of information about Fulton, then quiet down with a barrel of illustration drawn by memory from my books–and if you don’t say anything the house will think they never heard of it before, because people don’t really read your books, they only say they do, to keep you from feeling bad. Next, excite the house with another spoonful of Fultonian fact, then tranquilize them again with another barrel of illustration. And so on and so on, all through the evening; and if you are discreet and don’t tell them the illustrations don’t illustrate anything, they won’t notice it and I will send them home as well-informed about Robert Fulton as I am myself. Don’t be afraid; I know all about audiences, they believe everything you say, except when you are telling the truth. Truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
P.S. Mark all the advertisements “Private and Confidential,” otherwise the people will not read them.
M. T.
DEAR MR. CLEMENS,–How long shall you talk? I ask in order that we may be able to say when carriages may be called. Very Truly yours,
HUGH GORDON MILLER,
Secretary.
DEAR MR. MILLER,–I cannot say for sure. It is my custom to keep on talking till I get the audience cowed. Sometimes it takes an hour and fifteen minutes, sometimes I can do it in an hour. Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Mem. My charge is 2 boxes free. Not the choicest–sell the choicest, and give me any 6-seat boxes you please. S. L. C.
I want Fred Grant (in uniform) on the stage; also the rest of the officials of the Association; also other distinguished people–all the attractions we can get. Also, a seat for Mr. Albert Bigelow Paine, who may be useful to me if he is near me and on the front. S. L. C.
The seat chosen for the writer of these notes was to be at the front of the stage in order that the lecturer might lean over now and then and pretend to be asking information concerning Fulton. I was not entirely happy in the thought of this showy honor, and breathed more freely when this plan was abandoned and the part assigned to General Grant.
The lecture was given in Carnegie Hall, which had been gayly decorated for the occasion. The house was more than filled, and a great sum of money was realized for the fund.
It was that spring that Gorky and Tchaikowski, the Russian revolutionists, came to America hoping to arouse interest in their cause. The idea of the overthrow of the Russian dynasty was pleasant to Mark Twain. Few things would have given him greater comfort than to have known that a little more than ten years would see the downfall of Russian imperialism. The letter which follows was a reply to an invitation from Tchaikowski, urging him to speak at one of the meetings.
DEAR MR. TCHAIKOWSKI,–I thank you for the honor of the invitation, but I am not able to accept it, because on Thursday evening I shall be presiding at a meeting whose object is to find remunerative work for certain classes of our blind who would gladly support themselves if they had the opportunity.
My sympathies are with the Russian revolution, of course. It goes without saying. I hope it will succeed, and now that I have talked with you I take heart to believe it will. Government by falsified promises; by lies, by treacheries, and by the butcher-knife for the aggrandizement of a single family of drones and its idle and vicious kin has been borne quite long enough in Russia, I should think, and it is to be hoped that the roused nation, now rising in its strength, will presently put an end to it and set up the republic in its place. Some of us, even of the white headed, may live to see the blessed day when Czars and Grand Dukes will be as scarce there as I trust they are in heaven. Most sincerely yours,
MARK TWAIN.
There came another summer at Dublin, New Hampshire, this time in the fine Upton residence on the other slope of Monadnock, a place of equally beautiful surroundings, and an even more extended view. Clemens was at this time working steadily on his so-called Autobiography, which was not that, in fact, but a series of remarkable chapters, reminiscent, reflective, commentative, written without any particular sequence as to time or subject-matter. He dictated these chapters to a stenographer, usually in the open air, sitting in a comfortable rocker or pacing up and down the long veranda that faced a vast expanse of wooded slope and lake and distant blue mountains. It became one of the happiest occupations of his later years.
To W. D. Howells, in Maine:
DUBLIN, Sunday, June 17, ’06. DEAR HOWELLS,–….. The dictating goes lazily and pleasantly on. With intervals. I find that I have been at it, off and on, nearly two hours a day for 155 days, since Jan. 9. To be exact I’ve dictated 75 hours in 80 days and loafed 75 days. I’ve added 60,000 words in the month that I’ve been here; which indicates that I’ve dictated during 20 days of that time–40 hours, at an average of 1,500 words an hour. It’s a plenty, and I am satisfied.
There’s a good deal of “fat” I’ve dictated, (from Jan. 9) 210,000 words, and the “fat” adds about 50,000 more.
The “fat” is old pigeon-holed things, of the years gone by, which I or editors didn’t das’t to print. For instance, I am dumping in the little old book which I read to you in Hartford about 30 years ago and which you said “publish–and ask Dean Stanley to furnish an introduction; he’ll do it.” (“Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.”) It reads quite to suit me, without altering a word, now that it isn’t to see print until I am dead.
To-morrow I mean to dictate a chapter which will get my heirs and assigns burnt alive if they venture to print it this side of 2006 A.D.–which I judge they won’t. There’ll be lots of such chapters if I live 3 or 4 years longer. The edition of A.D. 2006 will make a stir when it comes out. I shall be hovering around taking notice, along with other dead pals. You are invited.
MARK.
His tendency to estimate the measure of the work he was doing, and had completed, must have clung to him from his old printer days.
The chapter which was to get his heirs and assigns burned alive was on the orthodox God, and there was more than one such chapter. In the next letter he refers to two exquisite poems by Howells, and the writer of these notes recalls his wonderful reading of them aloud. ‘In Our Town’ was a collection of short stories then recently issued by William Allen White. Howells had recommended them.
To W. D. Howells, in Maine:
21 FIFTH AVE., Tuesday Eve. 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. MARK TWAIN.
On another occasion, when Bynner had written a poem to Clara Clemens, her father pretended great indignation that the first poem written by Bynner to any one in his household should not be to him, and threatened revenge. At dinner shortly after he produced from his pocket a slip of paper on which he had set down what he said was “his only poem.” He read the lines that follow:
“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: It might have been. Ah, say not so! as life grows longer, leaner, thinner, We recognize, O God, it might have Bynner!”
He returned to New York in October and soon after was presented by Mrs. H. H. Rogers with a handsome billiard-table.
He had a passion for the game, but had played comparatively little since the old Hartford days of fifteen years before, when a group of his friends used to assemble on Friday nights in the room at the top of the house for long, strenuous games and much hilarity. Now the old fever all came back; the fascinations of the game superseded even his interest in the daily dictations.
To Mrs. H. H. Rogers, in New York:
21 FIFTH AVENUE, Monday, Nov., 1906. DEAR MRS. ROGERS,–The billiard table is better than the doctors. It is driving out the heartburn in a most promising way. I have a billiardist on the premises, and I walk not less than ten miles every day with the cue in my hand. And the walking is not the whole of the exercise, nor the most health-giving part of it, I think. Through the multitude of the positions and attitudes it brings into play every muscle in the body and exercises them all.
The games begin right after luncheon, daily, and continue until midnight, with 2 hours’ intermission for dinner and music. And so it is 9 hours’ exercise per day, and 10 or 12 on Sunday. Yesterday and last night it was 12–and I slept until 8 this morning without waking. The billiard table, as a Sabbath breaker can beat any coal-breaker in Pennsylvania, and give it 30 in, the game. If Mr. Rogers will take to daily billiards he can do without doctors and the massageur, I think.
We are really going to build a house on my farm, an hour and a half from New York. It is decided. It is to be built by contract, and is to come within $25,000.
With love and many thanks. S. L. C.
P.S. Clara is in the sanitarium–till January 28 when her western concert tour will begin. She is getting to be a mighty competent singer. You must know Clara better; she is one of the very finest and completest and most satisfactory characters I have ever met. Others knew it before, but I have always been busy with other matters.
The “billiardist on the premises” was the writer of these notes, who, earlier in the year, had become his biographer, and, in the course of time, his daily companion and friend. The farm mentioned was one which he had bought at Redding, Connecticut, where, later, he built the house known as “Stormfield.”
Henry Mills Alden, for nearly forty years editor of Harper’s Magazine, arrived at his seventieth birthday on November 11th that year, and Harper & Brothers had arranged to give him a great dinner in the offices of Franklin Square, where, for half a century, he had been an active force. Mark Twain, threatened with a cold, and knowing the dinner would be strenuous, did not feel able to attend, so wrote a letter which, if found suitable, could be read at the gathering.
To Mr. Henry Alden:
ALDEN,–dear and ancient friend–it is a solemn moment. You have now reached the age of discretion. You have been a long time arriving. Many years ago you docked me on an article because the subject was too old; later, you docked me on an article because the subject was too new; later still, you docked me on an article because the subject was betwixt and between. Once, when I wrote a Letter to Queen Victoria, you did not put it in the respectable part of the Magazine, but interred it in that potter’s field, the Editor’s Drawer. As a result, she never answered it. How often we recall, with regret, that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember, with charity, that his intentions were good.
You will reform, now, Alden. You will cease from these economies, and you will be discharged. But in your retirement you will carry with you the admiration and earnest good wishes of the oppressed and toiling scribes. This will be better than bread. Let this console you when the bread fails.
You will carry with you another thing, too–the affection of the scribes; for they all love you in spite of your crimes. For you bear a kind heart in your breast, and the sweet and winning spirit that charms away all hostilities and animosities, and makes of your enemy your friend and keeps him so. You have reigned over us thirty-six years, and, please God, you shall reign another thirty-six–“and peace to Mahmoud on his golden throne!”
Always yours
MARK
A copyright bill was coming up in Washington and a delegation of authors went down to work for it. Clemens was not the head of the delegation, but he was the most prominent member of it, as well as the most useful. He invited the writer to accompany him, and elsewhere I have told in detail the story of that excursion,–[See Mark Twain; A Biography, chap. ccli,]–which need be but briefly touched upon here.
His work was mainly done aside from that of the delegation. They had him scheduled for a speech, however, which he made without notes and with scarcely any preparation. Meantime he had applied to Speaker Cannon for permission to allow him on the floor of the House, where he could buttonhole the Congressmen. He was not eligible to the floor without having received the thanks of Congress, hence the following letter:
To Hon. Joseph Cannon, House of Representatives:
Dec. 7, 1906. DEAR UNCLE JOSEPH,–Please get me the thanks of the Congress–not next week but right away. It is very necessary. Do accomplish this for your affectionate old friend right away; by persuasion, if you can, by violence if you must, for it is imperatively necessary that I get on the floor for two or three hours and talk to the members, man by man, in behalf of the support, encouragement and protection of one of the nation’s most valuable assets and industries–its literature. I have arguments with me, also a barrel, with liquid in it.
Give me a chance. Get me the thanks of Congress. Don’t wait for others; there isn’t time. I have stayed away and let Congress alone for seventy- one years and I am entitled to thanks. Congress knows it perfectly well and I have long felt hurt that this quite proper and earned expression of gratitude has been merely felt by the House and never publicly uttered. Send me an order on the Sergeant-at-Arms quick. When shall I come? With love and a benediction.
MARK TWAIN.
This was mainly a joke. Mark Twain did not expect any “thanks,” but he did hope for access to the floor, which once, in an earlier day, had been accorded him. We drove to the Capitol and he delivered his letter to “Uncle Joe” by hand. “Uncle Joe” could not give him the privilege of the floor; the rules had become more stringent. He declared they would hang him if he did such a thing. He added that he had a private room down-stairs, where Mark Twain might establish headquarters, and that he would assign his colored servant, Neal, of long acquaintanceship with many of the members, to pass the word that Mark Twain was receiving.
The result was a great success. All that afternoon members of Congress poured into the Speaker’s room and, in an atmosphere blue with tobacco smoke, Mark Twain talked the gospel of copyright to his heart’s content.
The bill did not come up for passage that session, but Mark Twain lived to see his afternoon’s lobbying bring a return. In 1909, Champ Clark, and those others who had gathered around him that afternoon, passed a measure that added fourteen years to the copyright term.
The next letter refers to a proposed lobby of quite a different sort.
To Helen Keller, in Wrentham, Mass.:
21 FIFTH AVENUE, Dec. 23, ’06. DEAR HELEN KELLER,–. . . You say, “As a reformer, you know that ideas must be driven home again and again.”
Yes, I know it; and by old experience I know that speeches and documents and public meetings are a pretty poor and lame way of accomplishing it. Last year I proposed a sane way–one which I had practiced with success for a quarter of a century–but I wasn’t expecting it to get any attention, and it didn’t.
Give me a battalion of 200 winsome young girls and matrons, and let me tell them what to do and how to do it, and I will be responsible for shining results. If I could mass them on the stage in front of the audience and instruct them there, I could make a public meeting take hold of itself and do something really valuable for once. Not that the real instruction would be done there, for it wouldn’t; it would be previously done privately, and merely repeated there.
But it isn’t going to happen–the good old way will be stuck to: there’ll be a public meeting: with music, and prayer, and a wearying report, and a verbal description of the marvels the blind can do, and 17 speeches–then the call upon all present who are still alive, to contribute. This hoary program was invented in the idiot asylum, and will never be changed. Its function is to breed hostility to good causes.
Some day somebody will recruit my 200–my dear beguilesome Knights of the Golden Fleece–and you will see them make good their ominous name.
Mind, we must meet! not in the grim and ghastly air of the platform, mayhap, but by the friendly fire–here at 21. Affectionately your friend, S. L. CLEMENS.
They did meet somewhat later that winter in the friendly parlors of No. 21, and friends gathered in to meet the marvelous blind girl and to pay tribute to Miss Sullivan (Mrs. Macy) for her almost incredible achievement.