Complete Letters of Mark Twain

My idea is not to fatten the lecture agents and lyceums on the spoils, but put all the ducats religiously into two equal piles, and say to the artist and lecturer, “Absorb these.”

For instance – [Here follows a plan and a possible list of cities to be visited. The letter continues]

Call the gross receipts $100,000 for four months and a half, and the profit from $60,000 to $75,000 (I try to make the figures large enough, and leave it to the public to reduce them.)

I did not put in Philadelphia because Pugh owns that town, and last winter when I made a little reading-trip he only paid me $300 and pretended his concert (I read fifteen minutes in the midst of a concert) cost him a vast sum, and so he couldn’t afford any more. I could get up a better concert with a barrel of cats.

I have imagined two or three pictures and concocted the accompanying remark to see how the thing would go. I was charmed.

Well, you think it over, Nast, and drop me a line. We should have some fun.

Yours truly,

Samuel L. Clemens.

The plan came to nothing. Nast, like Clemens, had no special taste for platforming, and while undoubtedly there would have been large profits in the combination, the promise of the venture did not compel his acceptance.

In spite of his distaste for the platform Mark Twain was always giving readings and lectures, without charge, for some worthy Hartford cause. He was ready to do what he could to help an entertainment along, if he could do it in his own way – an original way, sometimes, and not always gratifying to the committee, whose plans were likely to be prearranged.

For one thing, Clemens, supersensitive in the matter of putting himself forward in his own town, often objected to any special exploitation of his name. This always distressed the committee, who saw a large profit to their venture in the prestige of his fame. The following characteristic letter was written in self-defense when, on one such occasion, a committee had become sufficiently peevish to abandon a worthy enterprise.

*****

To an Entertainment Committee, in Hartford:

Nov. 9.

E. S. Sykes, Esq:

Dr. Sir, – Mr. Burton’s note puts upon me all the blame of the destruction of an enterprise which had for its object the succor of the Hartford poor. That is to say, this enterprise has been dropped because of the “dissatisfaction with Mr. Clemens’s stipulations.” Therefore I must be allowed to say a word in my defense.

There were two “stipulations”—exactly two. I made one of them; if the other was made at all, it was a joint one, from the choir and me.

My individual stipulation was, that my name should be kept out of the newspapers. The joint one was that sufficient tickets to insure a good sum should be sold before the date of the performance should be set. (Understand, we wanted a good sum – I do not think any of us bothered about a good house; it was money we were after).

Now you perceive that my concern is simply with my individual stipulation. Did that break up the enterprise?

Eugene Burton said he would sell $300 worth of the tickets himself. – Mr. Smith said he would sell $200 or $300 worth himself. My plan for Asylum Hill Church would have ensured $150 from that quarter. – All this in the face of my “Stipulation.” It was proposed to raise $1000; did my stipulation render the raising of $400 or $500 in a dozen churches impossible?

My stipulation is easily defensible. When a mere reader or lecturer has appeared 3 or 4 times in a town of Hartford’s size, he is a good deal more than likely to get a very unpleasant snub if he shoves himself forward about once or twice more. Therefore I long ago made up my mind that whenever I again appeared here, it should be only in a minor capacity and not as a chief attraction.

Now, I placed that harmless and very justifiable stipulation before the committee the other day; they carried it to headquarters and it was accepted there. I am not informed that any objection was made to it, or that it was regarded as an offense. It seems late in the day, now, after a good deal of trouble has been taken and a good deal of thankless work done by the committees, to, suddenly tear up the contract and then turn and bowl me down from long range as being the destroyer of it.

If the enterprise has failed because of my individual stipulation, here you have my proper and reasonable reasons for making that stipulation.

If it has failed because of the joint stipulation, put the blame there, and let us share it collectively.

I think our plan was a good one. I do not doubt that Mr. Burton still approves of it, too. I believe the objections come from other quarters, and not from him. Mr. Twichell used the following words in last Sunday’s sermon, (if I remember correctly):

“My hearers, the prophet Deuteronomy says this wise thing: ’Though ye plan a goodly house for the poor, and plan it with wisdom, and do take off your coats and set to to build it, with high courage, yet shall the croaker presently come, and lift up his voice, (having his coat on,) and say, Verily this plan is not well planned – and he will go his way; and the obstructionist will come, and lift up his voice, (having his coat on,) and say, Behold, this is but a sick plan – and he will go his way; and the man that knows it all will come, and lift up his voice, (having his coat on,) and say, Lo, call they this a plan? then will he go his way; and the places which knew him once shall know him no more forever, because he was not, for God took him. Now therefore I say unto you, Verily that house will not be budded. And I say this also: He that waiteth for all men to be satisfied with his plan, let him seek eternal life, for he shall need it.’”

This portion of Mr. Twichell’s sermon made a great impression upon me, and I was grieved that some one had not wakened me earlier so that I might have heard what went before.

S. L. Clemens.

Mr. Sykes (of the firm of Sykes & Newton, the Allen House Pharmacy) replied that he had read the letter to the committee and that it had set those gentlemen right who had not before understood the situation. “If others were as ready to do their part as yourself our poor would not want assistance,” he said, in closing.

We come now to an incident which assumes the proportions of an episode-even of a catastrophe – in Mark Twain’s career. The disaster was due to a condition noted a few pages earlier – the inability of genius to judge its own efforts. The story has now become history – printed history – it having been sympathetically told by Howells in My Mark Twain, and more exhaustively, with a report of the speech that invited the lightning, in a former work by the present writer.

The speech was made at John Greenleaf Whittier’s seventieth birthday dinner, given by the Atlantic staff on the evening of December 17, 1877. It was intended as a huge joke – a joke that would shake the sides of these venerable Boston deities, Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes, and the rest of that venerated group. Clemens had been a favorite at the Atlantic lunches and dinners – a speech by him always an event. This time he decided to outdo himself.

He did that, but not in the way he had intended. To use one of his own metaphors, he stepped out to meet the rainbow and got struck by lightning. His joke was not of the Boston kind or size. When its full nature burst upon the company – when the ears of the assembled diners heard the sacred names of Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes lightly associated with human aspects removed – oh, very far removed – from Cambridge and Concord, a chill fell upon the diners that presently became amazement, and then creeping paralysis. Nobody knew afterward whether the great speech that he had so gaily planned ever came to a natural end or not. Somebody – the next on the program – attempted to follow him, but presently the company melted out of the doors and crept away into the night. It seemed to Mark Twain that his career had come to an end. Back in Hartford, sweating and suffering through sleepless nights, he wrote Howells his anguish.

*****

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Sunday Night. 1877.

My dear Howells, – My sense of disgrace does not abate. It grows. I see that it is going to add itself to my list of permanencies – a list of humiliations that extends back to when I was seven years old, and which keep on persecuting me regardless of my repentancies.

I feel that my misfortune has injured me all over the country; therefore it will be best that I retire from before the public at present. It will hurt the Atlantic for me to appear in its pages, now. So it is my opinion and my wife’s that the telephone story had better be suppressed. Will you return those proofs or revises to me, so that I can use the same on some future occasion?

It seems as if I must have been insane when I wrote that speech and saw no harm in it, no disrespect toward those men whom I reverenced so much. And what shame I brought upon you, after what you said in introducing me! It burns me like fire to think of it.

The whole matter is a dreadful subject – let me drop it here – at least on paper.

Penitently yrs,

Mark.

Howells sent back a comforting letter. “I have no idea of dropping you out of the Atlantic,” he wrote; “and Mr. Houghton has still less, if possible. You are going to help and not hurt us many a year yet, if you will…. You are not going to be floored by it; there is more justice than that, even in this world.”

Howells added that Charles Elliot Norton had expressed just the right feeling concerning the whole affair, and that many who had not heard the speech, but read the newspaper reports of it, had found it without offense.

Clemens wrote contrite letters to Holmes, Emerson, and Longfellow, and received most gracious acknowledgments. Emerson, indeed, had not heard the speech: His faculties were already blurred by the mental mists that would eventually shut him in. Clemens wrote again to Howells, this time with less anguish.

*****

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Hartford, Friday, 1877.

My dear Howells, – Your letter was a godsend; and perhaps the welcomest part of it was your consent that I write to those gentlemen; for you discouraged my hints in that direction that morning in Boston – rightly, too, for my offense was yet too new, then. Warner has tried to hold up our hands like the good fellow he is, but poor Twichell could not say a word, and confessed that he would rather take nearly any punishment than face Livy and me. He hasn’t been here since.

It is curious, but I pitched early upon Mr. Norton as the very man who would think some generous thing about that matter, whether he said it or not. It is splendid to be a man like that – but it is given to few to be.

I wrote a letter yesterday, and sent a copy to each of the three. I wanted to send a copy to Mr. Whittier also, since the offense was done also against him, being committed in his presence and he the guest of the occasion, besides holding the well-nigh sacred place he does in his people’s estimation; but I didn’t know whether to venture or not, and so ended by doing nothing. It seemed an intrusion to approach him, and even Livy seemed to have her doubts as to the best and properest way to do in the case. I do not reverence Mr. Emerson less, but somehow I could approach him easier.

Send me those proofs, if you have got them handy; I want to submit them to Wylie; he won’t show them to anybody.

Had a very pleasant and considerate letter from Mr. Houghton, today, and was very glad to receive it.

You can’t imagine how brilliant and beautiful that new brass fender is, and how perfectly naturally it takes its place under the carved oak. How they did scour it up before they sent it! I lied a good deal about it when I came home – so for once I kept a secret and surprised Livy on a Christmas morning!

I haven’t done a stroke of work since the Atlantic dinner; have only moped around. But I’m going to try tomorrow. How could I ever have.

Ah, well, I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God’s fool, and all His works must be contemplated with respect.

Livy and I join in the warmest regards to you and yours,

Yrs ever,

Mark.

Longfellow, in his reply, said: “I do not believe anybody was much hurt. Certainly I was not, and Holmes tells me he was not. So I think you may dismiss the matter from your mind without further remorse.”

Holmes wrote: “It never occurred to me for a moment to take offense, or feel wounded by your playful use of my name.”

Miss Ellen Emerson replied for her father (in a letter to Mrs. Clemens) that the speech had made no impression upon him, giving at considerable length the impression it had made on herself and other members of the family.

Clearly, it was not the principals who were hurt, but only those who held them in awe, though one can realize that this would not make it much easier for Mark Twain.

XVIII. Letters From Europe, 1878-79. Tramping With Twichell. Writing A New Travel Book. Life In Munich

Whether the unhappy occurrence at the Whittier dinner had anything to do with Mark Twain’s resolve to spend a year or two in Europe cannot be known now. There were other good reasons for going, one in particular being a demand for another book of travel. It was also true, as he explains in a letter to his mother, that his days were full of annoyances, making it difficult for him to work. He had a tendency to invest money in almost any glittering enterprise that came along, and at this time he was involved in the promotion of a variety of patent rights that brought him no return other than assessment and vexation.

Clemens’s mother was by this time living with her son Onion and his wife, in Iowa.

*****

To Mrs. Jane Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:

Hartford, Feb. 17, 1878

My dear mother, – I suppose I am the worst correspondent in the whole world; and yet I grow worse and worse all the time. My conscience blisters me for not writing you, but it has ceased to abuse me for not writing other folks.

Life has come to be a very serious matter with me. I have a badgered, harassed feeling, a good part of my time. It comes mainly of business responsibilities and annoyances, and the persecution of kindly letters from well meaning strangers – to whom I must be rudely silent or else put in the biggest half of my time bothering over answers. There are other things also that help to consume my time and defeat my projects. Well, the consequence is, I cannot write a book at home. This cuts my income down. Therefore, I have about made up my mind to take my tribe and fly to some little corner of Europe and budge no more until I shall have completed one of the half dozen books that lie begun, up stairs. Please say nothing about this at present.

We propose to sail the 11th of April. I shall go to Fredonia to meet you, but it will not be well for Livy to make that trip I am afraid. However, we shall see. I will hope she can go.

Mr. Twichell has just come in, so I must go to him. We are all well, and send love to you all.

Affly,

Sam.

He was writing few letters at this time, and doing but little work. There were always many social events during the winter, and what with his European plans and a diligent study of the German language, which the entire family undertook, his days and evenings were full enough. Howells wrote protesting against the European travel and berating him for his silence:

“I never was in Berlin and don’t know any family hotel there. I should be glad I didn’t, if it would keep you from going. You deserve to put up at the Sign of the Savage in Vienna. Really, it’s a great blow to me to hear of that prospected sojourn. It’s a shame. I must see you, somehow, before you go. I’m in dreadfully low spirits about it.

“I was afraid your silence meant something wicked.”

Clemens replied promptly, urging a visit to Hartford, adding a postscript for Mrs. Howells, characteristic enough to warrant preservation.

P. S. to Mrs. Howells, in Boston:

Feb. ’78. Dear Mrs. Howells. Mrs. Clemens wrote you a letter, and handed it to me half an hour ago, while I was folding mine to Mr. Howells. I laid that letter on this table before me while I added the paragraph about R,’s application. Since then I have been hunting and swearing, and swearing and hunting, but I can’t find a sign of that letter. It is the most astonishing disappearance I ever heard of. Mrs. Clemens has gone off driving – so I will have to try and give you an idea of her communication from memory. Mainly it consisted of an urgent desire that you come to see us next week, if you can possibly manage it, for that will be a reposeful time, the turmoil of breaking up beginning the week after. She wants you to tell her about Italy, and advise her in that connection, if you will. Then she spoke of her plans – hers, mind you, for I never have anything quite so definite as a plan. She proposes to stop a fortnight in (confound the place, I’ve forgotten what it was,) then go and live in Dresden till sometime in the summer; then retire to Switzerland for the hottest season, then stay a while in Venice and put in the winter in Munich. This program subject to modifications according to circumstances. She said something about some little by-trips here and there, but they didn’t stick in my memory because the idea didn’t charm me.

(They have just telephoned me from the Courant office that Bayard Taylor and family have taken rooms in our ship, the Holsatia, for the 11th April.)

Do come, if you possibly can! – and remember and don’t forget to avoid letting Mrs. Clemens find out I lost her letter. Just answer her the same as if you had got it.

Sincerely yours,

S. L. Clemens.

The Howellses came, as invited, for a final reunion before the breaking up. This was in the early half of March; the Clemenses were to sail on the 11th of the following month.

Orion Clemens, meantime, had conceived a new literary idea and was piling in his Ms. as fast as possible to get his brother’s judgment on it before the sailing-date. It was not a very good time to send Ms., but Mark Twain seems to have read it and given it some consideration. “The Journey in Heaven,” of his own, which he mentions, was the story published so many years later under the title of “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.” He had began it in 1868, on his voyage to San Francisco, it having been suggested by conversations with Capt. Ned Wakeman, of one of the Pacific steamers. Wakeman also appears in ‘Roughing It,’ Chap. L, as Capt. Ned Blakely, and again in one of the “Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion,” as “Captain Hurricane Jones.”

*****

To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk:

Hartford, Mch. 23, 1878.

My dear Bro., – Every man must learn his trade – not pick it up. God requires that he learn it by slow and painful processes. The apprentice-hand, in black-smithing, in medicine, in literature, in everything, is a thing that can’t be hidden. It always shows.

But happily there is a Mark.t for apprentice work, else the “Innocents Abroad” would have had no sale. Happily, too, there’s a wider Mark.t for some sorts of apprentice literature than there is for the very best of journey-work. This work of yours is exceedingly crude, but I am free to say it is less crude than I expected it to be, and considerably better work than I believed you could do, it is too crude to offer to any prominent periodical, so I shall speak to the N. Y. Weekly people. To publish it there will be to bury it. Why could not same good genius have sent me to the N. Y. Weekly with my apprentice sketches?

You should not publish it in book form at all – for this reason: it is only an imitation of Verne – it is not a burlesque. But I think it may be regarded as proof that Verne cannot be burlesqued.

In accompanying notes I have suggested that you vastly modify the first visit to hell, and leave out the second visit altogether. Nobody would, or ought to print those things. You are not advanced enough in literature to venture upon a matter requiring so much practice. Let me show you what a man has got to go through:

Nine years ago I mapped out my “Journey in Heaven.” I discussed it with literary friends whom I could trust to keep it to themselves.

I gave it a deal of thought, from time to time. After a year or more I wrote it up. It was not a success. Five years ago I wrote it again, altering the plan. That Ms is at my elbow now. It was a considerable improvement on the first attempt, but still it wouldn’t do – last year and year before I talked frequently with Howells about the subject, and he kept urging me to do it again.

So I thought and thought, at odd moments and at last I struck what I considered to be the right plan! Mind I have never altered the ideas, from the first – the plan was the difficulty. When Howells was here last, I laid before him the whole story without referring to my Ms and he said: “You have got it sure this time. But drop the idea of making mere magazine stuff of it. Don’t waste it. Print it by itself – publish it first in England – ask Dean Stanley to endorse it, which will draw some of the teeth of the religious press, and then reprint in America.” I doubt my ability to get Dean Stanley to do anything of the sort, but I shall do the rest – and this is all a secret which you must not divulge.

Now look here – I have tried, all these years, to think of some way of “doing” hell too – and have always had to give it up. Hell, in my book, will not occupy five pages of Ms I judge – it will be only covert hints, I suppose, and quickly dropped, I may end by not even referring to it.

And mind you, in my opinion you will find that you can’t write up hell so it will stand printing. Neither Howells nor I believe in hell or the divinity of the Savior, but no matter, the Savior is none the less a sacred Personage, and a man should have no desire or disposition to refer to him lightly, profanely, or otherwise than with the profoundest reverence.

The only safe thing is not to introduce him, or refer to him at all, I suspect. I have entirely rewritten one book 3 (perhaps 4.) times, changing the plan every time—1200 pages of Ms. wasted and burned – and shall tackle it again, one of these years and maybe succeed at last. Therefore you need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God’s adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.

Mr. Perkins will send you and Ma your checks when we are gone. But don’t write him, ever, except a single line in case he forgets the checks – for the man is driven to death with work.

I see you are half promising yourself a monthly return for your book. In my experience, previously counted chickens never do hatch. How many of mine I have counted! and never a one of them but failed! It is much better to hedge disappointment by not counting. – Unexpected money is a delight. The same sum is a bitterness when you expected more.

My time in America is growing mighty short. Perhaps we can manage in this way: Imprimis, if the N. Y. Weekly people know that you are my brother, they will turn that fact into an advertisement – a thing of value to them, but not to you and me. This must be prevented. I will write them a note to say you have a friend near Keokuk, Charles S. Miller, who has a Ms for sale which you think is a pretty clever travesty on Verne; and if they want it they might write to him in your care. Then if any correspondence ensues between you and them, let Mollie write for you and sign your name – your own hand writing representing Miller’s. Keep yourself out of sight till you make a strike on your own merits there is no other way to get a fair verdict upon your merits.

Later-I’ve written the note to Smith, and with nothing in it which he can use as an advertisement. I’m called – Good bye-love to you both.

We leave here next Wednesday for Elmira: we leave there Apl. 9 or 10—and sail 11th.

Yr Bro.

Sam.

In the letter that follows the mention of Annie and Sam refers, of course, to the children of Mrs. Moffett, who had been, Pamela Clemens. They were grown now, and Annie Moffett was married to Charles L. Webster, who later was to become Mark Twain’s business partner. The Moffetts and Websters were living in Fredonia at this time, and Clemens had been to pay them a good-by visit. The Taylor dinner mentioned was a farewell banquet given to Bayard Taylor, who had been appointed Minister to Germany, and was to sail on the ship with Mark Twain. Mark Twain’s mother was visiting in Fredonia when this letter was written.