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diff --git a/3197-0.txt b/3197-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dfc37dc --- /dev/null +++ b/3197-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4415 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 5, +1901-1906, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 5, 1901-1906 + +Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +Release Date: August 20, 2016 [EBook #3197] +Last Updated: February 24, 2018 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWAIN LETTERS, VOL. 5 *** + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1901-1906 + +VOLUME V. + +By Mark Twain + + +ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE + + + + + +XL. LETTERS OF 1901, CHIEFLY TO TWICHELL. MARK TWAIN AS A REFORMER. +SUMMER AT SARANAC. ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. + + An editorial in the Louisville Courier-Journal, early in 1901, said: + “A remarkable transformation, or rather a development, has taken + place in Mark Twain. The genial humorist of the earlier day is now + a reformer of the vigorous kind, a sort of knight errant who does + not hesitate to break a lance with either Church or State if he + thinks them interposing on that broad highway over which he believes + not a part but the whole of mankind has the privilege of passing in + the onward march of the ages.” + + Mark Twain had begun “breaking the lance” very soon after his return + from Europe. He did not believe that he could reform the world, but + at least he need not withhold his protest against those things which + stirred his wrath. He began by causing the arrest of a cabman who + had not only overcharged but insulted him; he continued by writing + openly against the American policy in the Philippines, the + missionary propaganda which had resulted in the Chinese uprising and + massacre, and against Tammany politics. Not all of his efforts were + in the line of reform; he had become a sort of general spokesman + which the public flocked to hear, whatever the subject. On the + occasion of a Lincoln Birthday service at Carnegie Hall he was + chosen to preside, and he was obliged to attend more dinners than + were good for his health. His letters of this period were mainly + written to his old friend Twichell, in Hartford. Howells, who lived + in New York, he saw with considerable frequency. + + In the letter which follows the medicine which Twichell was to take + was Plasmon, an English proprietary remedy in which Mark Twain had + invested--a panacea for all human ills which osteopathy could not + reach. + + +***** + + +To Rev. Joseph Twichell, in Hartford: + + 14 W. 10TH ST. Jan. 23, '01. + +DEAR JOE,--Certainly. I used to take it in my coffee, but it settled to +the bottom in the form of mud, and I had to eat it with a spoon; so +I dropped the custom and took my 2 teaspoonfuls in cold milk after +breakfast. If we were out of milk I shoveled the dry powder into my +mouth and washed it down with water. The only essential is to get it +down, the method is not important. + +No, blame it, I can't go to the Alumni dinner, Joe. It takes two days, +and I can't spare the time. Moreover I preside at the Lincoln birthday +celebration in Carnegie Hall Feb. 11, and I must not make two speeches +so close together. Think of it--two old rebels functioning there--I +as President, and Watterson as Orator of the Day! Things have changed +somewhat in these 40 years, thank God. + +Look here--when you come down you must be our guest--we've got a roomy +room for you, and Livy will make trouble if you go elsewhere. Come +straight to 14 West 10th. + +Jan. 24. Livy says Amen to that; also, can you give us a day or two's +notice, so the room will be sure to be vacant? + +I'm going to stick close to my desk for a month, now, hoping to write a +small book. + + Ys Ever + MARK + + + The letter which follows is a fair sample of Mark Twain's private + violence on a subject which, in public print, he could only treat + effectively by preserving his good humor. When he found it + necessary to boil over, as he did, now and then, for relief, he + always found a willing audience in Twichell. The mention of his + “Private Philosophy” refers to 'What Is Man?', privately published + in 1906; reissued by his publishers in 1916. + +***** + + +To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + 14 W. 10th Jan. 29, '01. + +DEAR JOE,--I'm not expecting anything but kicks for scoffing, and am +expecting a diminution of my bread and butter by it, but if Livy will +let me I will have my say. This nation is like all the others that +have been spewed upon the earth--ready to shout for any cause that will +tickle its vanity or fill its pocket. What a hell of a heaven it will +be, when they get all these hypocrites assembled there! + +I can't understand it! You are a public guide and teacher, Joe, and are +under a heavy responsibility to men, young and old; if you teach your +people--as you teach me--to hide their opinions when they believe the +flag is being abused and dishonored, lest the utterance do them and a +publisher a damage, how do you answer for it to your conscience? You +are sorry for me; in the fair way of give and take, I am willing to be a +little sorry for you. + +However, I seem to be going counter to my own Private Philosophy--which +Livy won't allow me to publish--because it would destroy me. But I hope +to see it in print before I die. I planned it 15 years ago, and wrote it +in '98. I've often tried to read it to Livy, but she won't have it; it +makes her melancholy. The truth always has that effect on people. Would +have, anyway, if they ever got hold of a rag of it--Which they don't. + +You are supposing that I am supposing that I am moved by a Large +Patriotism, and that I am distressed because our President has blundered +up to his neck in the Philippine mess; and that I am grieved because +this great big ignorant nation, which doesn't know even the A B C +facts of the Philippine episode, is in disgrace before the sarcastic +world--drop that idea! I care nothing for the rest--I am only distressed +and troubled because I am befouled by these things. That is all. When I +search myself away down deep, I find this out. Whatever a man feels or +thinks or does, there is never any but one reason for it--and that is a +selfish one. + +At great inconvenience, and expense of precious time I went to the chief +synagogue the other night and talked in the interest of a charity school +of poor Jew girls. I know--to the finest, shades--the selfish ends that +moved me; but no one else suspects. I could give you the details if I +had time. You would perceive how true they are. + +I've written another article; you better hurry down and help Livy +squelch it. + +She's out pottering around somewhere, poor housekeeping slave; and Clara +is in the hands of the osteopath, getting the bronchitis pulled and +hauled out of her. It was a bad attack, and a little disquieting. It +came day before yesterday, and she hasn't sat up till this afternoon. +She is getting along satisfactorily, now. + + Lots of love to you all. + MARK + + + Mark Twain's religion had to do chiefly with humanity in its present + incarnation, and concerned itself very little with any possible + measure of reward or punishment in some supposed court of the + hereafter. Nevertheless, psychic investigation always interested + him, and he was good-naturedly willing to explore, even hoping, + perhaps, to be convinced that individuality continues beyond death. + The letter which follows indicates his customary attitude in + relation to spiritualistic research. The experiments here + mentioned, however, were not satisfactory. + + +***** + + +To Mrs. Charles McQuiston: + + DOBBS FERRY, N. Y. + March 26, 1901. + +DEAR MRS. McQUISTON,--I have never had an experience which moved me to +believe the living can communicate with the dead, but my wife and I have +experimented in the matter when opportunity offered and shall continue +to do so. + +I enclose a letter which came this morning--the second from the same +source. Mrs. K----is a Missourian, and lately she discovered, by +accident, that she was a remarkable hypnotiser. Her best subject is a +Missouri girl, Miss White, who is to come here soon and sustain strictly +scientific tests before professors at Columbia University. Mrs. Clemens +and I intend to be present. And we shall ask the pair to come to our +house to do whatever things they can do. Meantime, if you thought well +of it, you might write her and arrange a meeting, telling her it is by +my suggestion and that I gave you her address. + +Someone has told me that Mrs. Piper is discredited. I cannot be sure, +but I think it was Mr. Myers, President of the London Psychical Research +Society--we heard of his death yesterday. He was a spiritualist. I am +afraid he was a very easily convinced man. We visited two mediums whom +he and Andrew Lang considered quite wonderful, but they were quite +transparent frauds. + +Mrs. Clemens corrects me: One of those women was a fraud, the other not +a fraud, but only an innocent, well-meaning, driveling vacancy. + + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + In Mark Twain's Bermuda chapters entitled Idle Notes of an Idle + Excursion he tells of an old sea captain, one Hurricane Jones, who + explained biblical miracles in a practical, even if somewhat + startling, fashion. In his story of the prophets of Baal, for + instance, the old captain declared that the burning water was + nothing more nor less than petroleum. Upon reading the “notes,” + Professor Phelps of Yale wrote that the same method of explaining + miracles had been offered by Sir Thomas Browne. + + Perhaps it may be added that Captain Hurricane Jones also appears in + Roughing It, as Captain Ned Blakely. + + +***** + + +To Professor William Lyon Phelps; + + YALE UNIVERSITY, + NEW YORK, April 24, 1901. + +MY DEAR SIR,--I was not aware that old Sir Thomas had anticipated that +story, and I am much obliged to you for furnishing me the paragraph. +It is curious that the same idea should leave entered two heads so unlike +as the head of that wise old philosopher and that of Captain Ned +Wakeman, a splendidly uncultured old sailor, but in his own opinion a +thinker by divine right. He was an old friend of mine of many years' +standing; I made two or three voyages with him, and found him a darling +in many ways. The petroleum story was not told to me; he told it to Joe +Twichell, who ran across him by accident on a sea voyage where I think +the two were the only passengers. A delicious pair, and admirably mated, +they took to each other at once and became as thick as thieves. Joe was +passing under a fictitious name, and old Wakeman didn't suspect that he +was a parson; so he gave his profanity full swing, and he was a master +of that great art. You probably know Twichell, and will know that that +is a kind of refreshment which he is very capable of enjoying. + + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + For the summer Clemens and his family found a comfortable lodge in + the Adirondacks--a log cabin called “The Lair”--on Saranac Lake. + Soon after his arrival there he received an invitation to attend the + celebration of Missouri's eightieth anniversary. He sent the + following letter: + + +***** + + +To Edward L. Dimmitt, in St. Louis: + + AMONG THE ADIRONDACK LAKES, July 19, 1901. + +DEAR MR. DIMMITT,--By an error in the plans, things go wrong end first +in this world, and much precious time is lost and matters of urgent +importance are fatally retarded. Invitations which a brisk young fellow +should get, and which would transport him with joy, are delayed and +impeded and obstructed until they are fifty years overdue when they +reach him. + +It has happened again in this case. + +When I was a boy in Missouri I was always on the lookout for invitations +but they always miscarried and went wandering through the aisles of +time; and now they are arriving when I am old and rheumatic and can't +travel and must lose my chance. + +I have lost a world of delight through this matter of delaying +invitations. Fifty years ago I would have gone eagerly across the world +to help celebrate anything that might turn up. IT would have made no +difference to me what it was, so that I was there and allowed a chance +to make a noise. + +The whole scheme of things is turned wrong end to. Life should begin +with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and +its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages. As things are now, +when in youth a dollar would bring a hundred pleasures, you can't have +it. When you are old, you get it and there is nothing worth buying with +it then. + +It's an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity +to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance +without the capacity. + +I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I +am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no +time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities +proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and +inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way +and imminent as indicated above. + +Yours is a great and memorable occasion, and as a son of Missouri I +should hold it a high privilege to be there and share your just pride in +the state's achievements; but I must deny myself the indulgence, while +thanking you earnestly for the prized honor you have done me in asking +me to be present. + + Very truly yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + In the foregoing Mark Twain touches upon one of his favorite + fancies: that life should begin with old age and approach strong + manhood, golden youth, to end at last with pampered and beloved + babyhood. Possibly he contemplated writing a story with this idea + as the theme, but He seems never to have done so. + + The reader who has followed these letters may remember Yung Wing, + who had charge of the Chinese educational mission in Hartford, and + how Mark Twain, with Twichell, called on General Grant in behalf of + the mission. Yung Wing, now returned to China, had conceived the + idea of making an appeal to the Government of the United States for + relief of his starving countrymen. + + +***** + + +To J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + AMPERSAND, N. Y., July 28, '01. + +DEAR JOE,--As you say, it is impracticable--in my case, certainly. For +me to assist in an appeal to that Congress of land-thieves and liars +would be to bring derision upon it; and for me to assist in an appeal +for cash to pass through the hands of those missionaries out there, +of any denomination, Catholic or Protestant, wouldn't do at all. They +wouldn't handle money which I had soiled, and I wouldn't trust them +with it, anyway. They would devote it to the relief of suffering--I +know that--but the sufferers selected would be converts. The +missionary-utterances exhibit no humane feeling toward the others, but +in place of it a spirit of hate and hostility. And it is natural; +the Bible forbids their presence there, their trade is unlawful, why +shouldn't their characters be of necessity in harmony with--but never +mind, let it go, it irritates me. + +Later.... I have been reading Yung Wing's letter again. It may be that +he is over-wrought by his sympathies, but it may not be so. There may +be other reasons why the missionaries are silent about the Shensi-2-year +famine and cannibalism. It may be that there are so few Protestant +converts there that the missionaries are able to take care of them. +That they are not likely to largely concern themselves about Catholic +converts and the others, is quite natural, I think. + +That crude way of appealing to this Government for help in a cause which +has no money in it, and no politics, rises before me again in all its +admirable innocence! Doesn't Yung Wing know us yet? However, he has +been absent since '96 or '97. We have gone to hell since then. Kossuth +couldn't raise 30 cents in Congress, now, if he were back with his +moving Magyar-Tale. + +I am on the front porch (lower one--main deck) of our little bijou of a +dwelling-house. The lake-edge (Lower Saranac) is so nearly under me +that I can't see the shore, but only the water, small-pored with +rain-splashes--for there is a heavy down-pour. It is charmingly like +sitting snuggled up on a ship's deck with the stretching sea all +around--but very much more satisfactory, for at sea a rain-storm is +depressing, while here of course the effect engendered is just a deep +sense of comfort and contentment. The heavy forest shuts us solidly +in on three sides there are no neighbors. There are beautiful little +tan-colored impudent squirrels about. They take tea, 5 p. m., (not +invited) at the table in the woods where Jean does my typewriting, and +one of them has been brave enough to sit upon Jean's knee with his tail +curved over his back and munch his food. They come to dinner, 7 p. +m., on the front porch (not invited). They all have the one +name--Blennerhasset, from Burr's friend--and none of them answers to it +except when hungry. + +We have been here since June 21st. For a little while we had some warm +days--according to the family's estimate; I was hardly discommoded +myself. Otherwise the weather has been of the sort you are familiar with +in these regions: cool days and cool nights. We have heard of the hot +wave every Wednesday, per the weekly paper--we allow no dailies to +intrude. Last week through visitors also--the only ones we have had--Dr. +Root and John Howells. + +We have the daily lake-swim; and all the tribe, servants included (but +not I) do a good deal of boating; sometimes with the guide, sometimes +without him--Jean and Clara are competent with the oars. If we live +another year, I hope we shall spend its summer in this house. + +We have taken the Appleton country seat, overlooking the Hudson, at +Riverdale, 25 minutes from the Grand Central Station, for a year, +beginning Oct. 1, with option for another year. We are obliged to be +close to New York for a year or two. + +Aug. 3rd. I go yachting a fortnight up north in a 20-knot boat 225 feet +long, with the owner, (Mr. Rogers), Tom Reid, Dr. Rice, Col. A. G. Paine +and one or two others. Judge Howland would go, but can't get away +from engagements; Professor Sloane would go, but is in the grip of an +illness. Come--will you go? If you can manage it, drop a post-card to +me c/o H.H. Rogers, 26 Broadway. I shall be in New York a couple of days +before we sail--July 31 or Aug. 1, perhaps the latter,--and I think I +shall stop at the Hotel Grosvenor, cor. 10th St and 5th ave. + +We all send you and the Harmonies lots and gobs of love. + + MARK + + +***** + + +To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + AMPERSAND, N. Y., Aug. 28. + +DEAR JOE,--Just a word, to scoff at you, with your extravagant +suggestion that I read the biography of Phillips Brooks--the very +dullest book that has been printed for a century. Joe, ten pages of +Mrs. Cheney's masterly biography of her fathers--no, five pages of +it--contain more meat, more sense, more literature, more brilliancy, +than that whole basketful of drowsy rubbish put together. Why, in that +dead atmosphere even Brooks himself is dull--he wearied me; oh how he +wearied me! + +We had a noble good time in the Yacht, and caught a Chinese missionary +and drowned him. + + Love from us all to you all. + MARK. + + + The assassination of President McKinley occurred September 6, 1901. + Such an event would naturally stir Mark Twain to comment on human + nature in general. His letter to Twichell is as individual as it is + sound in philosophy. At what period of his own life, or under what + circumstances, he made the long journey with tragic intent there is + no means of knowing now. There is no other mention of it elsewhere + in the records that survive him. + + +***** + + +To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + AMPERSAND, Tuesday, (Sept. 10, 1901) + +DEAR JOE,--It is another off day, but tomorrow I shall resume work to a +certainty, and bid a long farewell to letter-scribbling. + +The news of the President looks decidedly hopeful, and we are all glad, +and the household faces are much improved, as to cheerfulness. Oh, the +talk in the newspapers! Evidently the Human Race is the same old Human +Race. And how unjust, and unreflectingly discriminating, the talkers +are. Under the unsettling effects of powerful emotion the talkers are +saying wild things, crazy things--they are out of themselves, and do not +know it; they are temporarily insane, yet with one voice they +declare the assassin sane--a man who has been entertaining fiery and +reason--debauching maggots in his head for weeks and months. Why, no one +is sane, straight along, year in and year out, and we all know it. +Our insanities are of varying sorts, and express themselves in varying +forms--fortunately harmless forms as a rule--but in whatever form +they occur an immense upheaval of feeling can at any time topple us +distinctly over the sanity-line for a little while; and then if our form +happens to be of the murderous kind we must look out--and so must the +spectator. + +This ass with the unpronounceable name was probably more insane than +usual this week or two back, and may get back upon his bearings by and +by, but he was over the sanity-border when he shot the President. It is +possible that it has taken him the whole interval since the murder of +the King of Italy to get insane enough to attempt the President's life. +Without a doubt some thousands of men have been meditating the same act +in the same interval, but new and strong interests have intervened and +diverted their over-excited minds long enough to give them a chance to +settle, and tranquilize, and get back upon a healthy level again. Every +extraordinary occurrence unsettles the heads of hundreds of thousands +of men for a few moments or hours or days. If there had been ten kings +around when Humbert fell they would have been in great peril for a day +or more--and from men in whose presence they would have been quite safe +after the excess of their excitement had had an interval in which to +cool down. I bought a revolver once and travelled twelve hundred miles +to kill a man. He was away. He was gone a day. With nothing else to do, +I had to stop and think--and did. Within an hour--within half of it--I +was ashamed of myself--and felt unspeakably ridiculous. I do not know +what to call it if I was not insane. During a whole week my head was in +a turmoil night and day fierce enough and exhausting enough to upset a +stronger reason than mine. + +All over the world, every day, there are some millions of men in +that condition temporarily. And in that time there is always a +moment--perhaps only a single one when they would do murder if their man +was at hand. If the opportunity comes a shade too late, the chances are +that it has come permanently too late. Opportunity seldom comes +exactly at the supreme moment. This saves a million lives a day in the +world--for sure. + +No Ruler is ever slain but the tremendous details of it are ravenously +devoured by a hundred thousand men whose minds dwell, unaware, near the +temporary-insanity frontier--and over they go, now! There is a day--two +days--three--during which no Ruler would be safe from perhaps the half +of them; and there is a single moment wherein he would not be safe from +any of them, no doubt. + +It may take this present shooting-case six months to breed another +ruler-tragedy, but it will breed it. There is at least one mind +somewhere which will brood, and wear, and decay itself to the +killing-point and produce that tragedy. + +Every negro burned at the stake unsettles the excitable brain of +another one--I mean the inflaming details of his crime, and the lurid +theatricality of his exit do it--and the duplicate crime follows; and +that begets a repetition, and that one another one and so on. Every +lynching-account unsettles the brains of another set of excitable white +men, and lights another pyre--115 lynchings last year, 102 inside of 8 +months this year; in ten years this will be habit, on these terms. + +Yes, the wild talk you see in the papers! And from men who are sane when +not upset by overwhelming excitement. A U. S. Senator-Cullom--wants this +Buffalo criminal lynched! It would breed other lynchings--of men who are +not dreaming of committing murders, now, and will commit none if Cullom +will keep quiet and not provide the exciting cause. + +And a District Attorney wants a law which shall punish with death +attempts upon a President's life--this, mind you, as a deterrent. It +would have no effect--or the opposite one. The lunatic's mind-space is +all occupied--as mine was--with the matter in hand; there is no room +in it for reflections upon what may happen to him. That comes after the +crime. + +It is the noise the attempt would make in the world that would breed the +subsequent attempts, by unsettling the rickety minds of men who envy +the criminal his vast notoriety--his obscure name tongued by stupendous +Kings and Emperors--his picture printed everywhere, the trivialest +details of his movements, what he eats, what he drinks; how he sleeps, +what he says, cabled abroad over the whole globe at cost of fifty +thousand dollars a day--and he only a lowly shoemaker yesterday!--like +the assassin of the President of France--in debt three francs to his +landlady, and insulted by her--and to-day she is proud to be able to say +she knew him “as familiarly as you know your own brother,” and glad to +stand till she drops and pour out columns and pages of her grandeur and +her happiness upon the eager interviewer. + +Nothing will check the lynchings and ruler-murder but absolute +silence--the absence of pow-pow about them. How are you going to manage +that? By gagging every witness and jamming him into a dungeon for life; +by abolishing all newspapers; by exterminating all newspaper men; and by +extinguishing God's most elegant invention, the Human Race. It is quite +simple, quite easy, and I hope you will take a day off and attend to it, +Joe. I blow a kiss to you, and am + + Lovingly Yours, + MARK. + + + When the Adirondack summer ended Clemens settled for the winter in + the beautiful Appleton home at Riverdale-on-the-Hudson. It was a + place of wide-spreading grass and shade-a house of ample room. They + were established in it in time for Mark Twain to take an active + interest in the New York elections and assist a ticket for good + government to defeat Tammany Hall. + + + + +XLI. LETTERS OF 1902. RIVERDALE. YORK HARBOR. ILLNESS OF MRS. CLEMENS + +The year 1902 was an eventful one for Mark Twain. In April he received +a degree of LL.D. from the University of Missouri and returned to his +native State to accept it. This was his last journey to the Mississippi +River. During the summer Mrs. Clemens's health broke down and illnesses +of one sort or another visited other members of the family. Amid so much +stress and anxiety Clemens had little time or inclination for work. +He wrote not many letters and mainly somber ones. Once, by way +of diversion, he worked out the idea of a curious club--which he +formed--its members to be young girls--girls for the most part whom he +had never seen. They were elected without their consent from among those +who wrote to him without his consent, and it is not likely that any one +so chosen declined membership. One selection from his letters to the +French member, Miss Helene Picard, of St.-Die, France, will explain the +club and present a side of Mask Twain somewhat different from that found +in most of his correspondence. + + +***** + + +To Miss Picard, in St.-Die, France: + + RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON, February 22, 1902. + +DEAR MISS HELENE,--If you will let me call you so, considering that my +head is white and that I have grownup daughters. Your beautiful letter +has given me such deep pleasure! I will make bold to claim you for a +friend and lock you up with the rest of my riches; for I am a miser who +counts his spoil every day and hoards it secretly and adds to it when he +can, and is grateful to see it grow. + +Some of that gold comes, like yourself, in a sealed package, and I can't +see it and may never have the happiness; but I know its value without +that, and by what sum it increases my wealth. + +I have a Club, a private Club, which is all my own. I appoint the +Members myself, and they can't help themselves, because I don't allow +them to vote on their own appointment and I don't allow them to resign! +They are all friends whom I have never seen (save one), but who have +written friendly letters to me. + +By the laws of my Club there can be only one Member in each country, and +there can be no male Member but myself. Some day I may admit males, +but I don't know--they are capricious and inharmonious, and their ways +provoke me a good deal. It is a matter which the Club shall decide. + +I have made four appointments in the past three or four months: You +as Member for France, a young Highland girl as Member for Scotland, a +Mohammedan girl as Member for Bengal, and a dear and bright young +niece of mine as Member for the United States--for I do not represent a +country myself, but am merely Member at Large for the Human Race. + +You must not try to resign, for the laws of the Club do not allow that. +You must console yourself by remembering that you are in the best of +company; that nobody knows of your membership except myself--that no +Member knows another's name, but only her country; that no taxes are +levied and no meetings held (but how dearly I should like to attend +one!). + +One of my Members is a Princess of a royal house, another is the +daughter of a village book-seller on the continent of Europe. For the +only qualification for Membership is intellect and the spirit of good +will; other distinctions, hereditary or acquired, do not count. + +May I send you the Constitution and Laws of the Club? I shall be so +pleased if I may. It is a document which one of my daughters typewrites +for me when I need one for a new Member, and she would give her eyebrows +to know what it is all about, but I strangle her curiosity by saying: +“There are much cheaper typewriters than you are, my dear, and if +you try to pry into the sacred mysteries of this Club one of your +prosperities will perish sure.” + +My favorite? It is “Joan of Arc.” My next is “Huckleberry Finn,” but the +family's next is “The Prince and the Pauper.” (Yes, you are right--I +am a moralist in disguise; it gets me into heaps of trouble when I go +thrashing around in political questions.) + +I wish you every good fortune and happiness and I thank you so much for +your letter. + + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Early in the year Clemens paid a visit to Twichell in Hartford, and + after one of their regular arguments on theology and the moral + accountability of the human race, arguments that had been going on + between them for more than thirty years--Twichell lent his visitor + Freedom of the Will, by Jonathan Edwards, to read on the way home. + The next letter was the result. + + +***** + + +To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON. + Feb. '02. + +DEAR JOE,--“After compliments.”--[Meaning “What a good time you gave +me; what a happiness it was to be under your roof again; etc., etc.” + See opening sentence of all translations of letters passing between Lord +Roberts and Indian princes and rulers.]--From Bridgeport to New York; +thence to home; and continuously until near midnight I wallowed and +reeked with Jonathan in his insane debauch; rose immediately refreshed +and fine at 10 this morning, but with a strange and haunting sense of +having been on a three days' tear with a drunken lunatic. It is years +since I have known these sensations. All through the book is the glaze +of a resplendent intellect gone mad--a marvelous spectacle. No, not all +through the book--the drunk does not come on till the last third, where +what I take to be Calvinism and its God begins to show up and shine red +and hideous in the glow from the fires of hell, their only right and +proper adornment. By God I was ashamed to be in such company. + +Jonathan seems to hold (as against the Arminian position) that the Man +(or his Soul or his Will) never creates an impulse itself, but is moved +to action by an impulse back of it. That's sound! + +Also, that of two or more things offered it, it infallibly chooses the +one which for the moment is most pleasing to ITSELF. Perfectly correct! +An immense admission for a man not otherwise sane. + +Up to that point he could have written chapters III and IV of my +suppressed “Gospel.” But there we seem to separate. He seems to concede +the indisputable and unshakable dominion of Motive and Necessity (call +them what he may, these are exterior forces and not under the man's +authority, guidance or even suggestion)--then he suddenly flies the +logic track and (to all seeming) makes the man and not these exterior +forces responsible to God for the man's thoughts, words and acts. It is +frank insanity. + +I think that when he concedes the autocratic dominion of Motive and +Necessity he grants, a third position of mine--that a man's mind is a +mere machine--an automatic machine--which is handled entirely from the +outside, the man himself furnishing it absolutely nothing: not an ounce +of its fuel, and not so much as a bare suggestion to that exterior +engineer as to what the machine shall do, nor how it shall do it nor +when. + +After that concession, it was time for him to get alarmed and shirk--for +he was pointing straight for the only rational and possible next-station +on that piece of road the irresponsibility of man to God. + +And so he shirked. Shirked, and arrived at this handsome result: + +Man is commanded to do so-and-so. It has been ordained from the +beginning of time that some men shan't and others can't. + +These are to be blamed: let them be damned. + +I enjoy the Colonel very much, and shall enjoy the rest of him with an +obscene delight. + + Joe, the whole tribe shout love to you and yours! + MARK. + + + We have not heard of Joe Goodman since the trying days of '90 and + '91, when he was seeking to promote the fortunes of the type-setting + machine. Goodman, meantime, who had in turn been miner, printer, + publisher, and farmer; had been devoting his energies and genius to + something entirely new: he had been translating the prehistoric + Mayan inscriptions of Yucatan, and with such success that his work + was elaborately published by an association of British scientists. + In due time a copy of this publication came to Clemens, who was full + of admiration of the great achievement. + + +***** + + +To J. T. Goodman, in California: + + RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON, + June 13, '02. + +DEAR JOE,--I am lost in reverence and admiration! It is now twenty-four +hours that I have been trying to cool down and contemplate with quiet +blood this extraordinary spectacle of energy, industry, perseverance, +pluck, analytical genius, penetration, this irruption of thunders +and fiery splendors from a fair and flowery mountain that nobody had +supposed was a sleeping volcano, but I seem to be as excited as ever. +Yesterday I read as much as half of the book, not understanding a word +but enchanted nevertheless--partly by the wonder of it all, the study, +the erudition, the incredible labor, the modesty, the dignity, the +majestic exclusiveness of the field and its lofty remoteness from things +and contacts sordid and mean and earthy, and partly by the grace and +beauty and limpidity of the book's unsurpassable English. Science, +always great and worshipful, goes often in hodden grey, but you have +clothed her in garments meet for her high degree. + +You think you get “poor pay” for your twenty years? No, oh no. You have +lived in a paradise of the intellect whose lightest joys were beyond +the reach of the longest purse in Christendom, you have had daily and +nightly emancipation from the world's slaveries and gross interests, you +have received a bigger wage than any man in the land, you have dreamed a +splendid dream and had it come true, and to-day you could not afford +to trade fortunes with anybody--not even with another scientist, for he +must divide his spoil with his guild, whereas essentially the world you +have discovered is your own and must remain so. + +It is all just magnificent, Joe! And no one is prouder or gladder than + + Yours always + MARK. + + + At York Harbor, Maine, where they had taken a cottage for the + summer--a pretty place, with Howells not far distant, at Kittery + Point--Mrs. Clemens's health gave way. This was at a period when + telegraphic communication was far from reliable. The old-time + Western Union had fallen from grace; its “system” no longer + justified the best significance of that word. The new day of + reorganization was coming, and it was time for it. Mark Twain's + letter concerning the service at York Harbor would hardly be + warranted today, but those who remember conditions of that earlier + time will agree that it was justified then, and will appreciate its + satire. + + +***** + + +To the President of The Western Union, in New York: + + “THE PINES” + YORK HARBOR, MAINE. + +DEAR SIR,--I desire to make a complaint, and I bring it to you, the head +of the company, because by experience I know better than to carry it to +a subordinate. + +I have been here a month and a half, and by testimony of friends, +reinforced by personal experience I now feel qualified to claim as an +established fact that the telegraphic service here is the worst in the +world except that Boston. + +These services are actually slower than was the New York and Hartford +service in the days when I last complained to you--which was fifteen +or eighteen years ago, when telegraphic time and train time between the +mentioned points was exactly the same, to-wit, three hours and a half. +Six days ago--it was that raw day which provoked so much comment--my +daughter was on her way up from New York, and at noon she telegraphed +me from New Haven asking that I meet her with a cloak at Portsmouth. Her +telegram reached me four hours and a quarter later--just 15 minutes too +late for me to catch my train and meet her. + +I judge that the telegram traveled about 200 miles. It is the best +telegraphic work I have seen since I have been here, and I am mentioning +it in this place not as a complaint but as a compliment. I think a +compliment ought always to precede a complaint, where one is possible, +because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous +and gentle reception. + +Still, there is a detail or two connected with this matter which ought +perhaps to be mentioned. And now, having smoothed the way with the +compliment, I will venture them. The head corpse in the York Harbor +office sent me that telegram altho (1) he knew it would reach me too +late to be of any value; (2) also, that he was going to send it to me +by his boy; (3) that the boy would not take the trolley and come the 2 +miles in 12 minutes, but would walk; (4) that he would be two hours +and a quarter on the road; (5) and that he would collect 25 cents for +transportation, for a telegram which the he knew to be worthless before +he started it. From these data I infer that the Western Union owes me +75 cents; that is to say, the amount paid for combined wire and land +transportation--a recoup provided for in the printed paragraph which +heads the telegraph-blank. + +By these humane and Christian stages we now arrive at the complaint +proper. We have had a grave case of illness in the family, and a +relative was coming some six hundred miles to help in the sick-room +during the convalescing period. It was an anxious time, of course, and I +wrote and asked to be notified as to the hour of the expected arrival +of this relative in Boston or in York Harbor. Being afraid of the +telegraph--which I think ought not to be used in times of hurry and +emergency--I asked that the desired message be brought to me by some +swift method of transportation. By the milkman, if he was coming this +way. But there are always people who think they know more than you do, +especially young people; so of course the young fellow in charge of +this lady used the telegraph. And at Boston, of all places! Except York +Harbor. + +The result was as usual; let me employ a statelier and exacter term, and +say, historical. + +The dispatch was handed to the h. c. of the Boston office at 9 this +morning. It said, “Shall bring A. S. to you eleven forty-five this +morning.” The distance traveled by the dispatch is forty or fifty miles, +I suppose, as the train-time is five minutes short of two hours, and the +trains are so slow that they can't give a W. U. telegram two hours and +twenty minutes start and overtake it. + +As I have said, the dispatch was handed in at Boston at 9. The expected +visitors left Boston at 9.40, and reached my house at 12 noon, beating +the telegram 2 solid hours, and 5 minutes over. + +The boy brought the telegram. It was bald-headed with age, but still +legible. The boy was prostrate with travel and exposure, but still +alive, and I went out to condole with him and get his last wishes and +send for the ambulance. He was waiting to collect transportation +before turning his passing spirit to less serious affairs. I found him +strangely intelligent, considering his condition and where he is getting +his training. I asked him at what hour the telegram was handed to the h. +c. in Boston. He answered brightly, that he didn't know. + +I examined the blank, and sure enough the wary Boston h. c. had +thoughtfully concealed that statistic. I asked him at what hour it had +started from Boston. He answered up as brightly as ever, and said he +didn't know. + +I examined the blank, and sure enough the Boston h. c. had left that +statistic out in the cold, too. In fact it turned out to be an official +concealment--no blank was provided for its exposure. And none required +by the law, I suppose. “It is a good one-sided idea,” I remarked; +“They can take your money and ship your telegram next year if they want +to--you've no redress. The law ought to extend the privilege to all of +us.” + +The boy looked upon me coldly. + +I asked him when the telegram reached York Harbor. He pointed to some +figures following the signature at the bottom of the blank--“12.14.” I +said it was now 1.45 and asked-- + +“Do you mean that it reached your morgue an hour and a half ago?” + +He nodded assent. + +“It was at that time half an hour too late to be of any use to me, if I +wanted to go and meet my people--which was the case--for by the wording +of the message you can see that they were to arrive at the station at +11.45. Why did, your h. c. send me this useless message? Can't he read? +Is he dead?” + +“It's the rules.” + +“No, that does not account for it. Would he have sent it if it had been +three years old, I in the meantime deceased, and he aware of it?” + +The boy didn't know. + +“Because, you know, a rule which required him to forward to the cemetery +to-day a dispatch due three years ago, would be as good a rule as one +which should require him to forward a telegram to me to-day which he +knew had lost all its value an hour or two before he started it. +The construction of such a rule would discredit an idiot; in fact an +idiot--I mean a common ordinary Christian idiot, you understand--would +be ashamed of it, and for the sake of his reputation wouldn't make it. +What do you think?” + +He replied with much natural brilliancy that he wasn't paid for +thinking. + +This gave me a better opinion of the commercial intelligence pervading +his morgue than I had had before; it also softened my feelings toward +him, and also my tone, which had hitherto been tinged with bitterness. + +“Let bygones be bygones,” I said, gently, “we are all erring creatures, +and mainly idiots, but God made us so and it is dangerous to criticise.” + + Sincerely + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + One day there arrived from Europe a caller with a letter of + introduction from Elizabeth, Queen of Rumania, better known as + Carmen Sylva. The visitor was Madam Hartwig, formerly an American + girl, returning now, because of reduced fortunes, to find profitable + employment in her own land. Her husband, a man of high principle, + had declined to take part in an “affair of honor,” as recognized by + the Continental code; hence his ruin. Elizabeth of Rumania was one + of the most loved and respected of European queens and an author of + distinction. Mark Twain had known her in Vienna. Her letter to him + and his own letter to the public (perhaps a second one, for its date + is two years later) follow herewith. + + + From Carmen Sylva to Mark Twain: + + BUCAREST, May 9, 1902. + +HONORED MASTER,--If I venture to address you on behalf of a poor lady, +who is stranded in Bucarest I hope not to be too disagreeable. + +Mrs. Hartwig left America at the age of fourteen in order to learn to +sing which she has done thoroughly. Her husband had quite a brilliant +situation here till he refused to partake 'dans une afaire onereuse', +so it seems. They haven't a penny and each of them must try to find a +living. She is very nice and pleasant and her school is so good that she +most certainly can give excellent singing lessons. + +I beg your pardon for being a bore to one I so deeply love and admire, +to whom I owe days and days of forgetfulness of self and troubles and +the intensest of all joys: Hero-worship! People don't always realize +what a happiness that is! God bless you for every beautiful thought you +poured into my tired heart and for every smile on a weary way! + + CARMEN SYLVA. + + + From Mark Twain to the Public: + + Nov. 16, '04. + +TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,--I desire to recommend Madame Hartwig to +my friends and the public as a teacher of singing and as a +concert-vocalist. She has lived for fifteen years at the court of +Roumania, and she brought with her to America an autograph letter in +which her Majesty the Queen of Roumania cordially certified her to me +as being an accomplished and gifted singer and teacher of singing, and +expressed a warm hope that her professional venture among us would meet +with success; through absence in Europe I have had no opportunity +to test the validity of the Queen's judgment in the matter, but that +judgment is the utterance of an entirely competent authority--the best +that occupies a throne, and as good as any that sits elsewhere, as the +musical world well knows--and therefore back it without hesitation, and +endorse it with confidence. + +I will explain that the reason her Majesty tried to do her friend a +friendly office through me instead of through someone else was, not that +I was particularly the right or best person for the office, but because +I was not a stranger. It is true that I am a stranger to some of the +monarchs--mainly through their neglect of their opportunities--but +such is not the case in the present instance. The latter fact is a high +compliment to me, and perhaps I ought to conceal it. Some people would. + + MARK TWAIN. + + + + + Mrs. Clemens's improvement was scarcely perceptible. It was not + until October that they were able to remove her to Riverdale, and + then only in a specially arranged invalid-car. At the end of the + long journey she was carried to her room and did not leave it again + for many months. + + +***** + + +To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + RIVERDALE, N. Y., Oct. 31, '02. + +DEAR JOE,--It is ten days since Susy [Twichell] wrote that you were laid +up with a sprained shoulder, since which time we have had no news about +it. I hope that no news is good news, according to the proverb; still, +authoritative confirmation of it will be gladly received in this family, +if some of you will furnish it. Moreover, I should like to know how and +where it happened. In the pulpit, as like as not, otherwise you would +not be taking so much pains to conceal it. This is not a malicious +suggestion, and not a personally-invented one: you told me yourself, +once, that you threw artificial power and impressiveness into places in +your sermons where needed, by “banging the bible”--(your own words.) You +have reached a time of life when it is not wise to take these risks. +You would better jump around. We all have to change our methods as the +infirmities of age creep upon us. Jumping around will be impressive now, +whereas before you were gray it would have excited remark. + +Poor Livy drags along drearily. It must be hard times for that turbulent +spirit. It will be a long time before she is on her feet again. It is +a most pathetic case. I wish I could transfer it to myself. Between +ripping and raging and smoking and reading, I could get a good deal of a +holiday out of it. + +Clara runs the house smoothly and capably. She is discharging a +trial-cook today and hiring another. + + A power of love to you all! + MARK. + + + Such was the state of Mrs. Clemens's health that visitors + were excluded from the sick room, and even Clemens himself + was allowed to see her no more than a few moments at a time. + These brief, precious visits were the chief interests of his + long days. Occasionally he was allowed to send her a few + lines, reporting his occupations, and these she was + sometimes permitted to answer. Only one of his notes has + been preserved, written after a day, now rare, of literary + effort. Its signature, the letter Y, stands for “Youth,” + always her name for him. + + +***** + + +To Mrs. Clemens: + + +DEAR HEART,--I've done another full day's work, and finished before 4. I +have been reading and dozing since and would have had a real sleep a +few minutes ago but for an incursion to bring me a couple of unimportant +letters. I've stuck to the bed all day and am getting back my lost +ground. Next time I will be strictly careful and make my visit very +short--just a kiss and a rush. Thank you for your dear, dear note; you +who are my own and only sweetheart. + + Sleep well! + Y. + + + + +XLII. LETTERS OF 1903. TO VARIOUS PERSONS. HARD DAYS AT RIVERDALE. LAST +SUMMER AT ELMIRA. THE RETURN TO ITALY. + + The reader may perhaps recall that H. H. Rogers, some five + or six years earlier, had taken charge of the fortunes of + Helen Keller, making it possible for her to complete her + education. Helen had now written her first book--a + wonderful book--'The Story of My Life', and it had been + successfully published. For a later generation it may be + proper to explain that the Miss Sullivan, later Mrs. Macy, + mentioned in the letter which follows, was the noble woman + who had devoted her life to the enlightenment of this blind, + dumb girl--had made it possible for her to speak and + understand, and, indeed, to see with the eyes of luminous + imagination. + + The case of plagiarism mentioned in this letter is not now + remembered, and does not matter, but it furnished a text for + Mark Twain, whose remarks on the subject in general are + eminently worth while. + + +***** + + +To Helen Keller, in Wrentham, Mass.: + + RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON, + ST. PATRICK'S DAY, '03. + +DEAR HELEN,--I must steal half a moment from my work to say how glad I +am to have your book, and how highly I value it, both for its own sake +and as a remembrances of an affectionate friendship which has subsisted +between us for nine years without a break, and without a single act of +violence that I can call to mind. I suppose there is nothing like it in +heaven; and not likely to be, until we get there and show off. I often +think of it with longing, and how they'll say, “There they come--sit +down in front!” I am practicing with a tin halo. You do the same. I was +at Henry Rogers's last night, and of course we talked of you. He is not +at all well; you will not like to hear that; but like you and me, he is +just as lovely as ever. + +I am charmed with your book-enchanted. You are a wonderful creature, +the most wonderful in the world--you and your other half together--Miss +Sullivan, I mean, for it took the pair of you to make a complete and +perfect whole. How she stands out in her letters! her brilliancy, +penetration, originality, wisdom, character, and the fine literary +competencies of her pen--they are all there. + +Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque +was that “plagiarism” farce! As if there was much of anything in any +human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the +soul--let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual +and valuable material of all human utterances--is plagiarism. For +substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously +drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer +with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he +originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them +anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental +and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in +characteristics of phrasing. When a great orator makes a great speech +you are listening to ten centuries and ten thousand men--but we call it +his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his. +But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's +battle, in some degree, and we call it his; but there are others that +contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam +engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other +important thing--and the last man gets the credit and we forget the +others. He added his little mite--that is all he did. These object +lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that +proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the +lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that. + +Then why don't we unwittingly reproduce the phrasing of a story, as well +as the story itself? It can hardly happen--to the extent of fifty words +except in the case of a child: its memory-tablet is not lumbered with +impressions, and the actual language can have graving-room there, and +preserve the language a year or two, but a grown person's memory-tablet +is a palimpsest, with hardly a bare space upon which to engrave a +phrase. It must be a very rare thing that a whole page gets so sharply +printed upon a man's mind, by a single reading, that it will stay long +enough to turn up some time or other and be mistaken by him for his own. +No doubt we are constantly littering our literature with disconnected +sentences borrowed from books at some unremembered time and now imagined +to be our own, but that is about the most we can do. In 1866 I read Dr. +Holmes's poems, in the Sandwich Islands. A year and a half later I stole +his dictation, without knowing it, and used it to dedicate my “Innocents +Abroad” with. Then years afterwards I was talking with Dr. Holmes about +it. He was not an ignorant ass--no, not he: he was not a collection of +decayed human turnips, like your “Plagiarism Court;” and so when I said, +“I know now where I stole it, but whom did you steal it from,” he said, +“I don't remember; I only know I stole it from somebody, because I have +never originated anything altogether myself, nor met anybody who had.” + +To think of those solemn donkeys breaking a little child's heart +with their ignorant rubbish about plagiarism! I couldn't sleep for +blaspheming about it last night. Why, their whole lives, their whole +histories, all their learning, all their thoughts, all their opinions +were one solid ruck of plagiarism, and they didn't know it and +never suspected it. A gang of dull and hoary pirates piously setting +themselves the task of disciplining and purifying a kitten that they +think they've caught filching a chop! Oh, dam-- + +But you finish it, dear, I am running short of vocabulary today. Ever +lovingly your friend, + + MARK. + +(Edited and modified by Clara Clemens, deputy to her mother, who for +more than 7 months has been ill in bed and unable to exercise her +official function.) + + + The burden of the Clemens household had fallen almost entirely upon + Clara Clemens. In addition to supervising its customary affairs, + she also shouldered the responsibility of an unusual combination of + misfortunes, for besides the critical condition of her mother, her + sister, Jean Clemens, was down with pneumonia, no word of which must + come to Mrs. Clemens. Certainly it was a difficult position. In + some account of it, which he set down later, Clemens wrote: “It was + fortunate for us all that Clara's reputation for truthfulness was so + well established in her mother's mind. It was our daily protection + from disaster. The mother never doubted Clara's word. Clara could + tell her large improbabilities without exciting any suspicion, + whereas if I tried to market even a small and simple one the case + would have been different. I was never able to get a reputation + like Clara's.” + + The accumulation of physical ailments in the Clemens home had + somewhat modified Mark Twain's notion of medical practice. He was + no longer radical; he had become eclectic. It is a good deal of a + concession that he makes to Twichell, after those earlier letters + from Sweden, in which osteopathy had been heralded as the anodyne + for all human ills. + + +***** + + +To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + +DEAR JOE,--Livy does really make a little progress these past 3 or +4 days, progress which is visible to even the untrained eye. The +physicians are doing good work with her, but my notion is, that no art +of healing is the best for all ills. I should distribute the ailments +around: surgery cases to the surgeons; lupus to the actinic-ray +specialist; nervous prostration to the Christian Scientist; most ills to +the allopath and the homeopath; (in my own particular case) rheumatism, +gout and bronchial attacks to the osteopathist. + +Mr. Rogers was to sail southward this morning--and here is this weather! +I am sorry. I think it's a question if he gets away tomorrow. + + Ys Ever + MARK. + + + It was through J. Y. M. MacAlister, to whom the next letter is + written, that Mark Twain had become associated with the Plasmon + Company, which explains the reference to “shares.” He had seen much + of MacAlister during the winter at Tedworth Square, and had grown + fond of him. It is a characteristic letter, and one of interesting + fact. + + +***** + + +To J. Y. M. MacAlister, in London: + + RIVERDALE, NEW YORK. + April, 7, '03. + +DEAR MACALISTER,--Yours arrived last night, and God knows I was glad to +get it, for I was afraid I had blundered into an offence in some way and +forfeited your friendship--a kind of blunder I have made so many times +in my life that I am always standing in a waiting and morbid dread of +its occurrence. + +Three days ago I was in condition--during one horribly long night--to +sympathetically roast with you in your “hell of troubles.” During that +night I was back again where I was in the black days when I was buried +under a mountain of debt. I called the daughters to me in private +council and paralysed them with the announcement, “Our outgo has +increased in the past 8 months until our expenses are now 125 per cent. +greater than our income.” + +It was a mistake. When I came down in the morning a gray and aged wreck, +and went over the figures again, I found that in some unaccountable way +(unaccountable to a business man but not to me) I had multiplied the +totals by 2. By God I dropped 75 years on the floor where I stood. + +Do you know it affected me as one is affected when he wakes out of a +hideous dream and finds that it was only a dream. It was a great comfort +and satisfaction to me to call the daughters to a private meeting of the +Board again and say, “You need not worry any more; our outgo is only a +third more than our income; in a few months your mother will be out of +her bed and on her feet again--then we shall drop back to normal and be +all right.” + +Certainly there is a blistering and awful reality about a well-arranged +unreality. It is quite within the possibilities that two or three nights +like that night of mine could drive a man to suicide. He would refuse +to examine the figures; they would revolt him so, and he could go to his +death unaware that there was nothing serious about them. I cannot get +that night out of my head, it was so vivid, so real, so ghastly. In any +other year of these 33 the relief would have been simple: go where you +can cut your cloth to fit your income. You can't do that when your wife +can't be moved, even from one room to the next. + +Clam spells the trained nurse afternoons; I am allowed to see Mrs. +Clemens 20 minutes twice a day and write her two letters a day provided +I put no news in them. No other person ever sees her except the +physician and now and then a nerve-specialist from New York. She saw +there was something the matter that morning, but she got no facts out of +me. But that is nothing--she hasn't had anything but lies for 8 months. +A fact would give her a relapse. + +The doctor and a specialist met in conspiracy five days ago, and +in their belief she will by and by come out of this as good as new, +substantially. They ordered her to Italy for next winter--which seems +to indicate that by autumn she will be able to undertake the voyage. So +Clara is writing a Florence friend to take a look round among the villas +for us in the regions near that city. It seems early to do this, but +Joan Bergheim thought it would be wise. + +He and his wife lunched with us here yesterday. They have been abroad in +Havana 4 months, and they sailed for England this morning. + +I am enclosing an order for half of my (your) Founders shares. You are +not to refuse them this time, though you have done it twice before. +They are yours, not mine, and for your family's sake if not your own you +cannot in these cloudy days renounce this property which is so clearly +yours and theirs. You have been generous long enough; be just, now to +yourself. Mr. Rogers is off yachting for 5 or 6 weeks--I'll get them +when he returns. The head of the house joins me in warmest greetings and +remembrances to you and Mrs. MacAlister. + + Ever yours, + Mark. + +May 8. Great Scott! I never mailed this letter! I addressed it, put +“Registered” on it--then left it lying unsealed on the arm of my chair, +and rushed up to my bed quaking with a chill. I've never been out of the +bed since--oh, bronchitis, rheumatism, two sets of teeth aching, land, +I've had a dandy time for 4 weeks. And to-day--great guns, one of the +very worst!... + +I'm devilish sorry, and I do apologise--for although I am not as slow +as you are about answering letters, as a rule, I see where I'm standing +this time. + +Two weeks ago Jean was taken down again--this time with measles, and I +haven't been able to go to her and she hasn't been able to come to me. + +But Mrs. Clemens is making nice progress, and can stand alone a moment +or two at a time. + +Now I'll post this. + + MARK + + + The two letters that follow, though written only a few days apart, + were separated in their arrival by a period of seven years. The + second letter was, in some way, mislaid and not mailed; and it was + not until after the writer of it was dead that it was found and + forwarded. + + Mark Twain could never get up much enthusiasm for the writings of + Scott. His praise of Quentin Durward is about the only approval he + ever accorded to the works of the great romanticist. + + +***** + + +To Brander Matthews, in New York: + + NEW YORK CITY, May 4, '03. + +DEAR BRANDER,--I haven't been out of my bed for four weeks, but--well, +I have been reading, a good deal, and it occurs to me to ask you to sit +down, some time or other when you have 8 or 9 months to spare, and jot +me down a certain few literary particulars for my help and elevation. +Your time need not be thrown away, for at your further leisure you can +make Colombian lectures out of the results and do your students a good +turn. + +1. Are there in Sir Walter's novels passages done in good +English--English which is neither slovenly or involved? + +2. Are there passages whose English is not poor and thin and +commonplace, but is of a quality above that? + +3. Are there passages which burn with real fire--not punk, fox-fire, +make believe? + +4. Has he heroes and heroines who are not cads and cadesses? + +5. Has he personages whose acts and talk correspond with their +characters as described by him? + +6. Has he heroes and heroines whom the reader admires, admires, and +knows why? + +7. Has he funny characters that are funny, and humorous passages that +are humorous? + +8. Does he ever chain the reader's interest, and make him reluctant to +lay the book down? + +9. Are there pages where he ceases from posing, ceases from admiring +the placid flood and flow of his own dilutions, ceases from being +artificial, and is for a time, long or short, recognizably sincere and +in earnest? + +10. Did he know how to write English, and didn't do it because he didn't +want to? + +11. Did he use the right word only when he couldn't think of another +one, or did he run so much to wrong because he didn't know the right one +when he saw it? + +13. Can you read him? and keep your respect for him? Of course a person +could in his day--an era of sentimentality and sloppy romantics--but +land! can a body do it today? + +Brander, I lie here dying, slowly dying, under the blight of Sir Walter. +I have read the first volume of Rob Roy, and as far as chapter XIX +of Guy Mannering, and I can no longer hold my head up nor take my +nourishment. Lord, it's all so juvenile! so artificial, so shoddy; +and such wax figures and skeletons and spectres. Interest? Why, it +is impossible to feel an interest in these bloodless shams, these +milk-and-water humbugs. And oh, the poverty of the invention! Not +poverty in inventing situations, but poverty in furnishing reasons +for them. Sir Walter usually gives himself away when he arranges for a +situation--elaborates, and elaborates, and elaborates, till if you live +to get to it you don't believe in it when it happens. + +I can't find the rest of Rob Roy, I can't stand any more Mannering--I +do not know just what to do, but I will reflect, and not quit this great +study rashly. He was great, in his day, and to his proper audience; and +so was God in Jewish times, for that matter, but why should either +of them rank high now? And do they?--honest, now, do they? Dam'd if I +believe it. + +My, I wish I could see you and Leigh Hunt! + + Sincerely Yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + +***** + + +To Brander Matthews, in New York: + + RIVERDALE, May 8,'03 (Mailed June, 1910). + +DEAR BRANDER,--I'm still in bed, but the days have lost their dulness +since I broke into Sir Walter and lost my temper. I finished Guy +Mannering--that curious, curious book, with its mob of squalid shadows +jabbering around a single flesh-and-blood being--Dinmont; a book crazily +put together out of the very refuse of the romance-artist's stage +properties--finished it and took up Quentin Durward, and finished that. + +It was like leaving the dead to mingle with the living: it was like +withdrawing from the infant class in the College of journalism to sit +under the lectures in English literature in Columbia University. + +I wonder who wrote Quentin Durward? + + Yrs ever + MARK. + + + In 1903, preparations were going on for a great world's fair, to be + held in St. Louis, and among other features proposed was a World's + Literary Convention, with a week to be set apart in honor of Mark + Twain, and a special Mark Twain Day in it, on which the National + Association would hold grand services in honor of the distinguished + Missourian. A letter asking his consent to the plan brought the + following reply. + + +***** + + +To T. F. Gatts, of Missouri: + + NEW YORK, May 30, 1903. + +DEAR MR. GATTS,--It is indeed a high compliment which you offer me in +naming an association after me and in proposing the setting apart of a +Mark Twain day at the great St. Louis fair, but such compliments are +not proper for the living; they are proper and safe for the dead only. I +value the impulse which moves you to tender me these honors. I value it +as highly as any one can, and am grateful for it, but I should stand in +a sort of terror of the honors themselves. So long as we remain alive we +are not safe from doing things which, however righteously and honorably +intended, can wreck our repute and extinguish our friendships. + +I hope that no society will be named for me while I am still alive, for +I might at some time or other do something which would cause its members +to regret having done me that honor. After I shall have joined the dead +I shall follow the customs of those people and be guilty of no conduct +that can wound any friend; but until that time shall come I shall be a +doubtful quantity like the rest of our race. + + Very truly yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The National Mark Twain Association did not surrender easily. Mr. + Gatts wrote a second letter full of urgent appeal. If Mark Twain + was tempted, we get no hint of it in his answer. + + +***** + + +To T. F. Gatts, of Missouri: + + NEW YORK, June 8, 1903. + +DEAR MR. GATTS,--While I am deeply touched by the desire of my friends +of Hannibal to confer these great honors upon me, I must still forbear +to accept them. Spontaneous and unpremeditated honors, like those which +came to me at Hannibal, Columbia, St. Louis and at the village stations +all down the line, are beyond all price and are a treasure for life +in the memory, for they are a free gift out of the heart and they +come without solicitations; but I am a Missourian and so I shrink from +distinctions which have to be arranged beforehand and with my privity, +for I then became a party to my own exalting. I am humanly fond +of honors that happen but chary of those that come by canvass and +intention. With sincere thanks to you and your associates for this high +compliment which you have been minded to offer me, I am, + + Very truly yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + We have seen in the letter to MacAlister that Mark Twain's wife had + been ordered to Italy and plans were in progress for an + establishment there. By the end of June Mrs. Clemens was able to + leave Riverdale, and she made the journey to Quarry Farm, Elmira, + where they would remain until October, the month planned for their + sailing. The house in Hartford had been sold; and a house which, + prior to Mrs. Clemens's breakdown they had bought near Tarrytown + (expecting to settle permanently on the Hudson) had been let. They + were going to Europe for another indefinite period. + + At Quarry Farm Mrs. Clemens continued to improve, and Clemens, once + more able to work, occupied the study which Mrs. Crane had built for + him thirty years before, and where Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and the + Wandering Prince had been called into being. + + +***** + + +To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford, Conn.: + + QUARRY FARM, ELMIRA, N. Y., + July 21, '03. + +DEAR JOE,--That love-letter delighted Livy beyond any like utterance +received by her these thirty years and more. I was going to answer +it for her right away, and said so; but she reserved the privilege to +herself. I judge she is accumulating Hot Stuff--as George Ade would +say.... + +Livy is coming along: eats well, sleeps some, is mostly very gay, not +very often depressed; spends all day on the porch, sleeps there a part +of the night, makes excursions in carriage and in wheel-chair; and, +in the matter of superintending everything and everybody, has resumed +business at the old stand. + +Did you ever go house-hunting 3,000 miles away? It costs three months of +writing and telegraphing to pull off a success. We finished 3 or 4 days +ago, and took the Villa Papiniano (dam the name, I have to look at it +a minutes after writing it, and then am always in doubt) for a year +by cable. Three miles outside of Florence, under Fiesole--a darling +location, and apparently a choice house, near Fiske. + +There's 7 in our gang. All women but me. It means trunks and things. +But thanks be! To-day (this is private) comes a most handsome voluntary +document with seals and escutcheons on it from the Italian Ambassador +(who is a stranger to me) commanding the Customs people to keep their +hands off the Clemens's things. Now wasn't it lovely of him? And wasn't +it lovely of me to let Livy take a pencil and edit my answer and knock a +good third of it out? + +And that's a nice ship--the Irene! new--swift--13,000 tons--rooms up in +the sky, open to sun and air--and all that. I was desperately troubled +for Livy--about the down-cellar cells in the ancient “Latin.” + +The cubs are in Riverdale, yet; they come to us the first week in +August. + + With lots and lots of love to you all, + MARK. + + + The arrangement for the Villa Papiniano was not completed, after + all, and through a good friend, George Gregory Smith, a resident of + Florence, the Villa Quarto, an ancient home of royalty, on the hills + west of Florence, was engaged. Smith wrote that it was a very + beautiful place with a south-eastern exposure, looking out toward + Valombrosa and the Chianti Hills. It had extensive grounds and + stables, and the annual rental for it all was two thousand dollars a + year. It seemed an ideal place, in prospect, and there was great + hope that Mrs. Clemens would find her health once more in the + Italian climate which she loved. + + Perhaps at this point, when Mark Twain is once more leaving America, + we may offer two letters from strangers to him--letters of + appreciation--such as he was constantly receiving from those among + the thousands to whom he had given happiness. The first is from + Samuel Merwin, one day to become a popular novelist, then in the + hour of his beginnings. + + +***** + + +To Mark Twain, from Samuel Merwin: + + PLAINFIELD, N. J. + August 4, 1903. + +DEAR MR. CLEMENS,--For a good many years I have been struggling with the +temptation to write you and thank you for the work you have done; and +to-day I seem to be yielding. + +During the past two years I have been reading through a group of writers +who seem to me to represent about the best we have--Sir Thomas Malory, +Spenser, Shakespeare, Boswell, Carlyle, Le Sage. In thinking over one +and then another, and then all of them together, it was plain to see +why they were great men and writers: each brought to his time some new +blood, new ideas,--turned a new current into the stream. I suppose +there have always been the careful, painstaking writers, the men who are +always taken so seriously by their fellow craftsmen. It seems to be the +unconventional man who is so rare--I mean the honestly unconventional +man, who has to express himself in his own big way because the +conventional way isn't big enough, because ne needs room and freedom. + +We have a group of the more or less conventional men now--men of dignity +and literary position. But in spite of their influence and of all the +work they have done, there isn't one of them to whom one can give one's +self up without reservation, not one whose ideas seem based on the deep +foundation of all true philosophy,--except Mark Twain. + +I hope this letter is not an impertinence. I have just been turning +about, with my head full of Spenser and Shakespeare and “Gil Blas,” + looking for something in our own present day literature to which I could +surrender myself as to those five gripping old writings. And nothing +could I find until I took up “Life on the Mississippi,” and “Huckleberry +Finn,” and, just now, the “Connecticut Yankee.” It isn't the first time +I have read any of these three, and it's because I know it won't be the +last, because these books are the only ones written in my lifetime that +claim my unreserved interest and admiration and, above all, my feelings, +that I've felt I had to write this letter. + +I like to think that “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn” will be looked +upon, fifty or a hundred years from now, as the picture of buoyant, +dramatic, human American life. I feel, deep in my own heart, pretty +sure that they will be. They won't be looked on then as the work of a +“humorist” any more than we think of Shakespeare as a humorist now. +I don't mean by this to set up a comparison between Mark Twain and +Shakespeare: I don't feel competent to do it; and I'm not at all sure +that it could be done until Mark Twain's work shall have its fair share +of historical perspective. But Shakespeare was a humorist and so, thank +Heaven! is Mark Twain. And Shakespeare plunged deep into the deep, sad +things of life; and so, in a different way (but in a way that has more +than once brought tears to my eyes) has Mark Twain. But after all, +it isn't because of any resemblance for anything that was ever before +written that Mark Twain's books strike in so deep: it's rather because +they've brought something really new into our literature--new, yet old +as Adam and Eve and the Apple. And this achievement, the achievement +of putting something into literature that was not there before, is, I +should think, the most that any writer can ever hope to do. It is the +one mark of distinction between the “lonesome” little group of big men +and the vast herd of medium and small ones. Anyhow, this much I am sure +of--to the young man who hopes, however feebly, to accomplish a little +something, someday, as a writer, the one inspiring example of our time +is Mark Twain. Very truly yours, + SAMUEL MERWIN. + + +Mark Twain once said he could live a month on a good compliment, and +from his reply, we may believe this one to belong in, that class. + + +***** + + +To Samuel Merwin, in Plainfield, N. J.: + + Aug. 16, '03. + +DEAR MR. MERWIN,--What you have said has given me deep pleasure--indeed +I think no words could be said that could give me more. + + Very sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The next “compliment” is from one who remains unknown, for she + failed to sign her name in full. But it is a lovely letter, and + loses nothing by the fact that the writer of it was willing to + remain in obscurity. + + +***** + + +To Mark Twain, from Margaret M----: + + PORTLAND, OREGON + Aug. 18, 1903. + +MY DEAR, DEAR MARK TWAIN,--May a little girl write and tell you how +dearly she loves and admires your writings? Well, I do and I want to +tell you your ownself. Don't think me too impertinent for indeed I don't +mean to be that! I have read everything of yours that I could get and +parts that touch me I have read over and over again. They seem such +dear friends to me, so like real live human beings talking and laughing, +working and suffering too! One cannot but feel that it is your own life +and experience that you have painted. So do not wonder that you seem a +dear friend to me who has never even seen you. I often think of you as +such in my own thoughts. I wonder if you will laugh when I tell you I +have made a hero of you? For when people seem very sordid and mean and +stupid (and it seems as if everybody was) then the thought will come +like a little crumb of comfort “well, Mark Twain isn't anyway.” And it +does really brighten me up. + +You see I have gotten an idea that you are a great, bright spirit +of kindness and tenderness. One who can twist everybody's-even your +own-faults and absurdities into hearty laughs. Even the person mocked +must laugh! Oh, Dear! How often you have made me laugh! And yet as often +you have struck something infinite away down deep in my heart so that I +want to cry while half laughing! + +So this all means that I want to thank you and to tell you. “God always +love Mark Twain!” is often my wish. I dearly love to read books, and I +never tire of reading yours; they always have a charm for me. Good-bye, +I am afraid I have not expressed what I feel. But at least I have tried. + + Sincerely yours. + MARGARET M.---- + + + Clemens and family left Elmira October the 5th for New York City. + They remained at the Hotel Grosvenor until their sailing date, + October 24th. A few days earlier, Mr. Frank Doubleday sent a volume + of Kipling's poems and de Blowitz's Memoirs for entertainment on the + ship. Mark Twain's acknowledgment follows. + + +***** + + +To F. N. Doubleday, in New York: + + THE GROSVENOR, + October 12, '03. + +DEAR DOUBLEDAY,--The books came--ever so many thanks. I have been +reading “The Bell Buoy” and “The Old Men” over and over again--my custom +with Kipling's work-and saving up the rest for other leisurely and +luxurious meals. A bell-buoy is a deeply impressive fellow-being. In +these many recent trips up and down the Sound in the Kanawha--[Mr. +Rogers's yacht.]--he has talked to me nightly, sometimes in his pathetic +and melancholy way, sometimes with his strenuous and urgent note, and I +got his meaning--now I have his words! No one but Kipling could do this +strong and vivid thing. Some day I hope to hear the poem chanted or +sung--with the bell-buoy breaking in, out of the distance. + +“The Old Men,” delicious, isn't it? And so comically true. I haven't +arrived there yet, but I suppose I am on the way.... + + Yours ever, + MARK. + +P. S. Your letter has arrived. It makes me proud and glad--what Kipling +says. I hope Fate will fetch him to Florence while we are there. I would +rather see him than any other man. + +We've let the Tarrytown house for a year. Man, you would never have +believed a person could let a house in these times. That one's for sale, +the Hartford one is sold. When we buy again may we--may I--be damned.... + +I've dipped into Blowitz and find him quaintly and curiously +interesting. I think he tells the straight truth, too. I knew him a +little, 23 years ago. + + The appreciative word which Kipling had sent Doubleday was: “I love + to think of the great and God-like Clemens. He is the biggest man + you have on your side of the water by a damn sight, and don't you + forget it. Cervantes was a relation of his.” + + + + +XLIII. LETTERS OF 1904. TO VARIOUS PERSONS. LIFE IN VILLA QUARTO. DEATH +OF MRS. CLEMENS. THE RETURN TO AMERICA. + + Mrs. Clemens stood the voyage to Italy very well and, in due + time, the family were installed in the Villa Reale di + Quarto, the picturesque old Palace of Cosimo, a spacious, + luxurious place, even if not entirely cheerful or always + comfortable during the changeable Tuscan winter. + Congratulated in a letter from MacAlister in being in the + midst of Florentine sunshine, he answered: “Florentine + sunshine? Bless you, there isn't any. We have heavy fogs + every morning, and rain all day. This house is not merely + large, it is vast--therefore I think it must always lack the + home feeling.” + + Neither was their landlady, the American wife of an Italian + count, all that could be desired. From a letter to + Twichell, however, we learn that Mark Twain's work was + progressing well. + + +***** + + +To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + VILLA DI QUARTO, + FLORENCE, Jan. 7, '04. + +DEAR JOE,--... I have had a handsome success, in one way, here. I left +New York under a sort of half promise to furnish to the Harper magazines +30,000 words this year. Magazining is difficult work because every third +page represents 2 pages that you have put in the fire; (because you +are nearly sure to start wrong twice) and so when you have finished +an article and are willing to let it go to print it represents only 10 +cents a word instead of 30. + +But this time I had the curious (and unprecedented) luck to start right +in each case. I turned out 37,000 words in 25 working days; and the +reason I think I started right every time is, that not only have I +approved and accepted the several articles, but the court of last resort +(Livy) has done the same. + +On many of the between-days I did some work, but only of an idle and not +necessarily necessary sort, since it will not see print until I am +dead. I shall continue this (an hour per day) but the rest of the year +I expect to put in on a couple of long books (half-completed ones.) No +more magazine-work hanging over my head. + +This secluded and silent solitude this clean, soft air and this +enchanting view of Florence, the great valley and the snow-mountains +that frame it are the right conditions for work. They are a persistent +inspiration. To-day is very lovely; when the afternoon arrives there +will be a new picture every hour till dark, and each of them divine--or +progressing from divine to diviner and divinest. On this (second) floor +Clara's room commands the finest; she keeps a window ten feet high wide +open all the time and frames it in. I go in from time to time, every day +and trade sass for a look. The central detail is a distant and stately +snow-hump that rises above and behind blackforested hills, and its +sloping vast buttresses, velvety and sun-polished with purple shadows +between, make the sort of picture we knew that time we walked in +Switzerland in the days of our youth. + +I wish I could show your letter to Livy--but she must wait a week or so +for it. I think I told you she had a prostrating week of tonsillitis a +month ago; she has remained very feeble ever since, and confined to the +bed of course, but we allow ourselves to believe she will regain the +lost ground in another month. Her physician is Professor Grocco--she +could not have a better. And she has a very good trained nurse. + +Love to all of you from all of us. And to all of our dear Hartford +friends. + + MARK + +P. S. 3 days later. + +Livy is as remarkable as ever. The day I wrote you--that night, I +mean--she had a bitter attack of gout or rheumatism occupying the whole +left arm from shoulder to fingers, accompanied by fever. The pains +racked her 50 or 60 hours; they have departed, now--and already she is +planning a trip to Egypt next fall, and a winter's sojourn there! This +is life in her yet. + +You will be surprised that I was willing to do so much +magazine-writing--a thing I have always been chary about--but I had good +reasons. Our expenses have been so prodigious for a year and a half, +and are still so prodigious, that Livy was worrying altogether too much +about them, and doing a very dangerous amount of lying awake on their +account. It was necessary to stop that, and it is now stopped. + +Yes, she is remarkable, Joe. Her rheumatic attack set me to cursing and +swearing, without limit as to time or energy, but it merely concentrated +her patience and her unconquerable fortitude. It is the difference +between us. I can't count the different kinds of ailments which have +assaulted her in this fiendish year and a half--and I forgive none of +them--but here she comes up again as bright and fresh and enterprising +as ever, and goes to planning about Egypt, with a hope and a confidence +which are to me amazing. + +Clara is calling for me--we have to go into town and pay calls. + + MARK. + + + In Florence, that winter, Clemens began dictating to his secretary + some autobiographical chapters. This was the work which was “not to + see print until I am dead.” He found it a pleasant, lazy occupation + and wrote his delight in it to Howells in a letter which seems not + to have survived. In his reply, Howells wrote: “You do stir me + mightily with the hope of dictating and I will try it when I get the + chance. But there is the tempermental difference. You are dramatic + and unconscious; you count the thing more than yourself; I am cursed + with consciousness to the core, and can't say myself out; I am + always saying myself in, and setting myself above all that I say, as + of more worth. Lately I have felt as if I were rotting with + egotism. I don't admire myself; I am sick of myself; but I can't + think of anything else. Here I am at it now, when I ought to be + rejoicing with you at the blessing you have found.... I'd like, + immensely, to read your autobiography. You always rather bewildered + me by your veracity, and I fancy you may tell the truth about + yourself. But all of it? The black truth which we all know of + ourselves in our hearts, or only the whity-brown truth of the + pericardium, or the nice, whitened truth of the shirtfront? Even + you won't tell the black heart's--truth. The man who could do it + would be famed to the last day the sun shone upon.” + + We gather from Mark Twain's answer that he was not deceiving himself + in the matter of his confessions. + + +***** + + +To W. D. Howells, in New York: + + VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE, + March 14, '04. + +DEAR HOWELLS,--Yes, I set up the safeguards, in the first day's +dictating; taking this position: that an autobiography is the truest of +all books; for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the +truth, shirkings of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, with +hardly an instance of plain straight truth, the remorseless truth is +there, between the lines, where the author is raking dust upon it, +the result being that the reader knows the author in spite of his wily +diligences. + +The summer in England! you can't ask better luck than that. Then you +will run over to Florence; we shall all be hungry to see you-all. We are +hunting for another villa, (this one is plenty large enough but has no +room in it) but even if we find it I am afraid it will be months before +we can move Mrs. Clemens. Of course it will. But it comforts us to let +on that we think otherwise, and these pretensions help to keep hope +alive in her. + + Good-bye, with love, Amen. + Yours ever + MARK. + + + News came of the death of Henry M. Stanley, one of Mark Twain's + oldest friends. Clemens once said that he had met Stanley in St. + Louis where he (Clemens) had delivered a lecture which Stanley had + reported. In the following letter he fixes the date of their + meeting as early in 1867, which would be immediately after Mark + Twain's return from California, and just prior to the Quaker City + excursion--a fact which is interesting only because it places the + two men together when each was at the very beginning of a great + career. + + +***** + + +To Lady Stanley, in England: + + VILLA DI QUARTO, FIRENZE, May 11, '04. + +DEAR LADY STANLEY,--I have lost a dear and honored friend--how fast +they fall about me now, in my age! The world has lost a tried and proved +hero. And you--what have you lost? It is beyond estimate--we who know +you, and what he was to you, know that. How far he stretches across my +life! I knew him when his work was all before him five years before the +great day that he wrote his name far-away up on the blue of the sky for +the world to see and applaud and remember; I have known him as friend +and intimate ever since. It is 37 years. I have known no other friend +and intimate so long, except John Hay--a friendship which dates from the +same year and the same half of it, the first half of 1867. I grieve with +you and with your family, dear Lady Stanley, it is all I can do; but +that I do out of my heart. It would be we, instead of I, if Mrs. Clemens +knew, but in all these 20 months that she has lain a prisoner in her bed +we have hidden from her all things that could sadden her. Many a friend +is gone whom she still asks about and still thinks is living. + +In deepest sympathy I beg the privilege of signing myself + + Your friend, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + +***** + + +To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + VILLA DI QUARTO, May 11, '04 + +DEAR JOE,--Yours has this moment arrived--just as I was finishing a note +to poor Lady Stanley. I believe the last country-house visit we paid in +England was to Stanley's. Lord, how my friends and acquaintances fall +about me now, in my gray-headed days! Vereschagin, Mommsen, Dvorak, +Lenbach, Jokai--all so recently, and now Stanley. I had known Stanley +37 years. Goodness, who is it I haven't known! As a rule the necrologies +find me personally interested--when they treat of old stagers. Generally +when a man dies who is worth cabling, it happens that I have run across +him somewhere, some time or other. + +Oh, say! Down by the Laurentian Library there's a marble image that +has been sitting on its pedestal some 450 Years, if my dates are +right--Cosimo I. I've seen the back of it many a time, but not the +front; but yesterday I twisted my head around after we had driven by, +and the profane exclamation burst from my mouth before I could think: +“there's Chauncey Depew!” + +I mean to get a photo of it--and use it if it confirms yesterday's +conviction. That's a very nice word from the Catholic Magazine and I am +glad you sent it. I mean to show it to my priest--we are very fond of +him. He is a stealing man, and is also learnedly scientific. He invented +the thing which records the seismatic disturbances, for the peoples of +the earth. And he's an astronomer and has an observatory of his own. + +Ah, many's the cry I have, over reflecting that maybe we could have had +Young Harmony for Livy, and didn't have wit enough to think of it. + +Speaking of Livy reminds me that your inquiry arrives at a good time +(unberufen) It has been weeks (I don't know how many!) since we could +have said a hopeful word, but this morning Katy came the minute the +day-nurse came on watch and said words of a strange and long-forgotten +sound: “Mr. Clemens, Mrs. Clemens is really and truly better!--anybody +can see it; she sees it herself; and last night at 9 o'clock she said +it.” + +There--it is heart-warming, it is splendid, it is sublime; let us +enjoy it, let us make the most of it today--and bet not a farthing on +tomorrow. The tomorrows have nothing for us. Too many times they have +breathed the word of promise to our ear and broken it to our hope. We +take no tomorrow's word any more. + +You've done a wonder, Joe: you've written a letter that can be sent in +to Livy--that doesn't often happen, when either a friend or a stranger +writes. You did whirl in a P. S. that wouldn't do, but you wrote it on +a margin of a page in such a way that I was able to clip off the margin +clear across both pages, and now Livy won't perceive that the sheet +isn't the same size it used to was. It was about Aldrich's son, and +I came near forgetting to remove it. It should have been written on a +loose strip and enclosed. That son died on the 5th of March and Aldrich +wrote me on the night before that his minutes were numbered. On the 18th +Livy asked after that patient, and I was prepared, and able to give her +a grateful surprise by telling her “the Aldriches are no longer uneasy +about him.” + +I do wish I could have been present and heard Charley Clark. When he +can't light up a dark place nobody can. + + With lots of love to you all. + MARK. + + + Mrs. Clemens had her bad days and her good days-days when there + seemed no ray of light, and others that seemed almost to promise + recovery. The foregoing letter to Twichell, and the one which + follows, to Richard Watson Gilder, reflect the hope and fear that + daily and hourly alternated at Villa Quarto + + +***** + + +To Richard Watson Gilder, in New York: + + VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE, + May 12, '04. + +DEAR GILDER,--A friend of ours (the Baroness de Nolda) was here this +afternoon and wanted a note of introduction to the Century, for she has +something to sell to you in case you'll want to make her an offer after +seeing a sample of the goods. I said “With pleasure: get the goods +ready, send the same to me, I will have Jean type-write them, then I +will mail them to the Century and tonight I will write the note to Mr. +Gilder and start it along. Also write me a letter embodying what +you have been saying to me about the goods and your proposed plan of +arranging and explaining them, and I will forward that to Gilder too.” + +As to the Baroness. She is a German; 30 years old; was married at 17; +is very pretty-indeed I might say very pretty; has a lot of sons (5) +running up from seven to 12 years old. Her husband is a Russian. They +live half the time in Russia and the other half in Florence, and supply +population alternately to the one country and then to the other. Of +course it is a family that speaks languages. This occurs at their +table--I know it by experience: It is Babel come again. The other day, +when no guests were present to keep order, the tribes were all talking +at once, and 6 languages were being traded in; at last the littlest boy +lost his temper and screamed out at the top of his voice, with angry +sobs: “Mais, vraiment, io non capisco gar nichts.” + +The Baroness is a little afraid of her English, therefore she will write +her remarks in French--I said there's a plenty of translators in New +York. Examine her samples and drop her a line. + +For two entire days, now, we have not been anxious about Mrs. Clemens +(unberufen). After 20 months of bed-ridden solitude and bodily misery +she all of a sudden ceases to be a pallid shrunken shadow, and looks +bright and young and pretty. She remains what she always was, the most +wonderful creature of fortitude, patience, endurance and recuperative +power that ever was. But ah, dear, it won't last; this fiendish malady +will play new treacheries upon her, and I shall go back to my prayers +again--unutterable from any pulpit! + + With love to you and yours, + S. L. C. + +May 13 10 A.M. I have just paid one of my pair of permitted 2 minutes +visits per day to the sick room. And found what I have learned to +expect--retrogression, and that pathetic something in the eye which +betrays the secret of a waning hope. + + + The year of the World's Fair had come, and an invitation from Gov. + Francis, of Missouri, came to Mark Twain in Florence, personally + inviting him to attend the great celebration and carry off first + prize. We may believe that Clemens felt little in the spirit of + humor, but to such an invitation he must send a cheerful, even if + disappointing, answer. + + +***** + + +To Gov. Francis, of Missouri: + + VILLA DI QUARTO, FIRENZE, + May 26, 1904. + +DEAR GOVERNOR FRANCIS,--It has been a dear wish of mine to exhibit +myself at the Great Fair and get a prize, but circumstances beyond my +control have interfered, and I must remain in Florence. Although I +have never taken prizes anywhere else I used to take them at school in +Missouri half a century ago, and I ought to be able to repeat, now, if +I could have a chance. I used to get the medal for good spelling, every +week, and I could have had the medal for good conduct if there hadn't +been so much corruption in Missouri in those days; still, I got it +several times by trading medals and giving boot. I am willing to give +boot now, if--however, those days are forever gone by in Missouri, +and perhaps it is better so. Nothing ever stops the way it was in this +changeable world. Although I cannot be at the Fair, I am going to be +represented there anyway, by a portrait, by Professor Gelli. You will +find it excellent. Good judges here say it is better than the original. +They say it has all the merits of the original and keeps still, besides. +It sounds like flattery, but it is just true. + +I suppose you will get a prize, because you have created the most +prodigious and in all ways most wonderful Fair the planet has ever seen. +Very well, you have indeed earned it: and with it the gratitude of the +State and the nation. + + Sincerely yours, + MARK TWAIN + + It was only a few days after the foregoing was written that death + entered Villa Quarto--unexpectedly at last--for with the first June + days Mrs. Clemens had seemed really to improve. It was on Sunday, + June 5th, that the end came. Clemens, with his daughter Jean, had + returned from a long drive, during which they had visited a Villa + with the thought of purchase. On their return they were told that + their patient had been better that afternoon than for three months. + Yet it was only a few hours later that she left them, so suddenly + and quietly that even those near her did not at first realize that + she was gone. + + +***** + + +To W. D. Howells, in New York. + + VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE, + June 6, '94. [1904] + +DEAR HOWELLS,--Last night at 9.20 I entered Mrs. Clemens's room to say +the usual goodnight--and she was dead--tho' no one knew it. She had been +cheerfully talking, a moment before. She was sitting up in bed--she had +not lain down for months--and Katie and the nurse were supporting her. +They supposed she had fainted, and they were holding the oxygen pipe to +her mouth, expecting to revive her. I bent over her and looked in her +face, and I think I spoke--I was surprised and troubled that she did +not 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 Theodore + 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 and 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, 1905. + +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. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 5, +1901-1906, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWAIN LETTERS, VOL. 5 *** + +***** This file should be named 3197-0.txt or 3197-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/9/3197/ + +Produced by David Widger + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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