Mark Twain's Letters Part 43

Mrs. Clemens sends love to Mrs. Howells--meantime she is diligently laying up material for a letter to her.

Yrs ever MARK.

The "George" of this letter was Mark Twain's colored butler, a valued and even beloved member of the household--a most picturesque character, who "one day came to wash windows," as Clemens used to say, "and remained eighteen years." The fiction of Mrs. Clemens's severity he always found amusing, because of its entire contrast with the reality of her gentle heart.

Clemens carried the Tom Sawyer MS. to Boston himself and placed it in Howells's hands. Howells had begged to be allowed to see the story, and Mrs. Clemens was especially anxious that he should do so.

She had doubts as to certain portions of it, and had the fullest faith in Howells's opinion.

It was a gratifying one when it came. Howells wrote: "I finished reading Tom Sawyer a week ago, sitting up till one A.M. to get to the end, simply because it was impossible to leave off. It's altogether the best boy's story I ever read. It will be an immense success. But I think you ought to treat it explicitly as a boy's story. Grown-ups will enjoy it just as much if you do; and if you should put it forth as a study of boy character from the grown-up point of view, you give the wrong key to it.... The adventures are enchanting. I wish I had been on that island. The treasure-hunting, the loss in the cave--it's all exciting and splendid. I shouldn't think of publishing this story serially.

Give me a hint when it's to be out, and I'll start the sheep to jumping in the right places"--meaning that he would have an advance review ready for publication in the Atlantic, which was a leader of criticism in America.

Mark Twain was writing a great deal at this time. Howells was always urging him to send something to the Atlantic, declaring a willingness to have his name appear every month in their pages, and Clemens was generally contributing some story or sketch. The "proof" referred to in the next letter was of one of these articles.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Nov. 23, '75.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Herewith is the proof. In spite of myself, how awkwardly I do jumble words together; and how often I do use three words where one would answer--a thing I am always trying to guard against. I shall become as slovenly a writer as Charles Francis Adams, if I don't look out. (That is said in jest; because of course I do not seriously fear getting so bad as that. I never shall drop so far toward his and Bret Harte's level as to catch myself saying "It must have been wiser to have believed that he might have accomplished it if he could have felt that he would have been supported by those who should have &c. &c. &c.") The reference to Bret Harte reminds me that I often accuse him of being a deliberate imitator of d.i.c.kens; and this in turn reminds me that I have charged unconscious plagiarism upon Charley Warner; and this in turn reminds me that I have been delighting my soul for two weeks over a bran new and ingenious way of beginning a novel--and behold, all at once it flashes upon me that Charley Warner originated the idea 3 years ago and told me about it! Aha! So much for self-righteousness! I am well repaid. Here are 108 pages of MS, new and clean, lying disgraced in the waste paper basket, and I am beginning the novel over again in an unstolen way. I would not wonder if I am the worst literary thief in the world, without knowing it.

It is glorious news that you like Tom Sawyer so well. I mean to see to it that your review of it shall have plenty of time to appear before the other notices. Mrs. Clemens decides with you that the book should issue as a book for boys, pure and simple--and so do I. It is surely the correct idea. As to that last chapter, I think of just leaving it off and adding nothing in its place. Something told me that the book was done when I got to that point--and so the strong temptation to put Huck's life at the Widow's into detail, instead of generalizing it in a paragraph was resisted. Just send Sawyer to me by express--I enclose money for it. If it should get lost it will be no great matter.

Company interfered last night, and so "Private Theatricals" goes over till this evening, to be read aloud. Mrs. Clemens is mad, but the story will take that all out. This is going to be a splendid winter night for fireside reading, anyway.

I am almost at a dead stand-still with my new story, on account of the misery of having to do it all over again. We--all send love to you--all. Yrs ever MARK.

The "story" referred to may have been any one of several begun by him at this time. His head was full of ideas for literature of every sort. Many of his beginnings came to nothing, for the reason that he started wrong, or with no definitely formed plan. Others of his literary enterprises were condemned by his wife for their grotesqueness or for the offense they might give in one way or another, however worthy the intention behind them. Once he wrote a burlesque on family history "The Autobiography of a d.a.m.ned Fool."

"Livy wouldn't have it," he said later, "so I gave it up."

The world is indebted to Mark Twain's wife for the check she put upon his fantastic or violent impulses. She was his public, his best public--clearheaded and wise. That he realized this, and was willing to yield, was by no means the least of his good fortunes. We may believe that he did not always yield easily, and perhaps sometimes only out of love for her. In the letter which he wrote her on her thirtieth birthday we realize something of what she had come to mean in his life.

To Mrs. Clemens on her Thirtieth Birthday:

HARTFORD, November 27, 1875.

Livy darling, six years have gone by since I made my first great success in life and won you, and thirty years have pa.s.sed since Providence made preparation for that happy success by sending you into the world. Every day we live together adds to the security of my confidence, that we can never any more wish to be separated than that we can ever imagine a regret that we were ever joined. You are dearer to me to-day, my child, than you were upon the last anniversary of this birth-day; you were dearer then than you were a year before--you have grown more and more dear from the first of those anniversaries, and I do not doubt that this precious progression will continue on to the end.

Let us look forward to the coming anniversaries, with their age and their gray hairs without fear and without depression, trusting and believing that the love we bear each other will be sufficient to make them blessed.

So, with abounding affection for you and our babies, I hail this day that brings you the matronly grace and dignity of three decades!

Always Yours S. L. C.

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1876-1885

VOLUME III.

By Mark Twain

ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

XVI. LETTERS, 1876, CHIEFLY TO W. D. HOWELLS. LITERATURE AND POLITICS.

PLANNING A PLAY WITH BRET HARTE.

The Monday Evening Club of Hartford was an a.s.sociation of most of the literary talent of that city, and it included a number of very distinguished members. The writers, the editors, the lawyers, and the ministers of the gospel who composed it were more often than not men of national or international distinction. There was but one paper at each meeting, and it was likely to be a paper that would later find its way into some magazine.

Naturally Mark Twain was one of its favorite members, and his contributions never failed to arouse interest and discussion. A "Mark Twain night" brought out every member. In the next letter we find the first mention of one of his most memorable contributions--a story of one of life's moral aspects. The tale, now included in his collected works, is, for some reason, little read to-day; yet the curious allegory, so vivid in its seeming reality, is well worth consideration.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Jan. 11, '76.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Indeed we haven't forgotten the Howellses, nor scored up a grudge of any kind against them; but the fact is I was under the doctor's hands for four weeks on a stretch and have been disabled from working for a week or so beside. I thought I was well, about ten days ago, so I sent for a short-hand writer and dictated answers to a bushel or so of letters that had been acc.u.mulating during my illness. Getting everything shipshape and cleared up, I went to work next day upon an Atlantic article, which ought to be worth $20 per page (which is the price they usually pay for my work, I believe) for although it is only 70 pages MS (less than two days work, counting by bulk,) I have spent 3 more days tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, altering and working at it. I shall put in one more day's polishing on it, and then read it before our Club, which is to meet at our house Monday evening, the 24th inst. I think it will bring out considerable discussion among the gentlemen of the Club--though the t.i.tle of the article will not give them much notion of what is to follow,--this t.i.tle being "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut"--which reminds me that today's Tribune says there will be a startling article in the current Atlantic, in which a being which is tangible bud invisible will figure-exactly the case with the sketch of mine which I am talking about! However, mine can lie unpublished a year or two as well as not--though I wish that contributor of yours had not interfered with his coincidence of heroes.

But what I am coming at, is this: won't you and Mrs. Howells come down Sat.u.r.day the 22nd and remain to the Club on Monday night? We always have a rattling good time at the Club and we do want you to come, ever so much. Will you? Now say you will. Mrs. Clemens and I are persuading ourselves that you twain will come.

My volume of sketches is doing very well, considering the times; received my quarterly statement today from Bliss, by which I perceive that 20,000 copies have been sold--or rather, 20,000 had been sold 3 weeks ago; a lot more, by this time, no doubt.

I am on the sick list again--and was, day before yesterday--but on the whole I am getting along.

Yrs ever MARK