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Complete Letters of Mark Twain
In my despair and unassuageable misery I upbraid myself for ever parting with her. But there is no use in that. Since it was to happen it would have happened.
With love,
S. L. C.
The life at Tedworth Square that winter was one of almost complete privacy. Of the hundreds of friends which Mark Twain had in London scarcely half a dozen knew his address. He worked steadily on his book of travels, ‘Following the Equator’, and wrote few letters beyond business communications to Mr. Rogers. In one of these he said, “I am appalled! Here I am trying to load you up with work again after you have been dray-horsing over the same tiresome ground for a year. It’s too bad, and I am ashamed of it.”
But late in November he sent a letter of a different sort – one that was to have an important bearing on the life of a girl today of unique and world-wide distinction.
*****
To Mrs. H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
For and in behalf of Helen Keller, stone blind and deaf, and formerly dumb.
Dear Mrs. Rogers, – Experience has convinced me that when one wishes to set a hard-worked man at something which he mightn’t prefer to be bothered with, it is best to move upon him behind his wife. If she can’t convince him it isn’t worth while for other people to try.
Mr. Rogers will remember our visit with that astonishing girl at Lawrence Hutton’s house when she was fourteen years old. Last July, in Boston, when she was 16 she underwent the Harvard examination for admission to Radcliffe College. She passed without a single condition. She was allowed the same amount of time that is granted to other applicants, and this was shortened in her case by the fact that the question papers had to be read to her. Yet she scored an average of 90 as against an average of 78 on the part of the other applicants.
It won’t do for America to allow this marvelous child to retire from her studies because of poverty. If she can go on with them she will make a fame that will endure in history for centuries. Along her special lines she is the most extraordinary product of all the ages.
There is danger that she must retire from the struggle for a College degree for lack of support for herself and for Miss Sullivan, (the teacher who has been with her from the start – Mr. Rogers will remember her.) Mrs. Hutton writes to ask me to interest rich Englishmen in her case, and I would gladly try, but my secluded life will not permit it. I see nobody. Nobody knows my address. Nothing but the strictest hiding can enable me to write my long book in time.
So I thought of this scheme: Beg you to lay siege to your husband and get him to interest himself and Mess. John D. and William Rockefeller and the other Standard Oil chiefs in Helen’s case; get them to subscribe an annual aggregate of six or seven hundred or a thousand dollars – and agree to continue this for three or four years, until she has completed her college course. I’m not trying to limit their generosity – indeed no, they may pile that Standard Oil, Helen Keller College Fund as high as they please, they have my consent.
Mrs. Hutton’s idea is to raise a permanent fund the interest upon which shall support Helen and her teacher and put them out of the fear of want. I shan’t say a word against it, but she will find it a difficult and disheartening job, and meanwhile what is to become of that miraculous girl?
No, for immediate and sound effectiveness, the thing is for you to plead with Mr. Rogers for this hampered wonder of your sex, and send him clothed with plenary powers to plead with the other chiefs – they have spent mountains of money upon the worthiest benevolences, and I think that the same spirit which moved them to put their hands down through their hearts into their pockets in those cases will answer “Here!” when its name is called in this one. 638
There – I don’t need to apologize to you or to H. H. for this appeal that I am making; I know you too well for that.
Good-bye with love to all of you,
S. L. Clemens.
Laurence Hutton is on the staff of Harper’s Monthly – close by, and handy when wanted.
The plea was not made in vain. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers interested themselves most liberally in Helen Keller’s fortune, and certainly no one can say that any of those who contributed to her success ever had reason for disappointment.
In his letter of grateful acknowledgment, which follows, Clemens also takes occasion to thank Mr. Rogers for his further efforts in the matter of his own difficulties. This particular reference concerns the publishing, complications which by this time had arisen between the American Publishing Company, of Hartford, and the house in Franklin Square.
London, Dec. 22, ’96.
Dear Mrs. Rogers, – It is superb! And I am beyond measure grateful to you both. I knew you would be interested in that wonderful girl, and that Mr. Rogers was already interested in her and touched by her; and I was sure that if nobody else helped her you two would; but you have gone far and away beyond the sum I expected – may your lines fall in pleasant places here and Hereafter for it!
The Huttons are as glad and grateful as they can be, and I am glad for their sakes as well as for Helen’s.
I want to thank Mr. Rogers for crucifying himself again on the same old cross between Bliss and Harper; and goodness knows I hope he will come to enjoy it above all other dissipations yet, seeing that it has about it the elements of stability and permanency. However, at any time that he says sign, we’re going to do it.
Ever sincerely Yours,
S. L. Clemens.
XXXVI. Letters 1897. London, Switzerland, Vienna
Mark Twain worked steadily on his book that sad winter and managed to keep the gloom out of his chapters, though it is noticeable that ‘Following the Equator’ is more serious than his other books of travel. He wrote few letters, and these only to his three closest friends, Howells, Twichell, and Rogers. In the letter to Twichell, which follows, there is mention of two unfinished manuscripts which he expects to resume. One of these was a dream story, enthusiastically begun, but perhaps with insufficient plot to carry it through, for it never reached conclusion. He had already tried it in one or two forms and would begin it again presently. The identity of the other tale is uncertain.
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
London, Jan. 19, ’97.
Dear Joe, – Do I want you to write to me? Indeed I do. I do not want most people to write, but I do want you to do it. The others break my heart, but you will not. You have a something divine in you that is not in other men. You have the touch that heals, not lacerates. And you know the secret places of our hearts. You know our life – the outside of it – as the others do – and the inside of it – which they do not. You have seen our whole voyage. You have seen us go to sea, a cloud of sail – and the flag at the peak; and you see us now, chartless, adrift – derelicts; battered, water-logged, our sails a ruck of rags, our pride gone. For it is gone. And there is nothing in its place. The vanity of life was all we had, and there is no more vanity left in us. We are even ashamed of that we had; ashamed that we trusted the promises of life and builded high – to come to this!
I did know that Susy was part of us; I did not know that she could go away; I did not know that she could go away, and take our lives with her, yet leave our dull bodies behind. And I did not know what she was. To me she was but treasure in the bank; the amount known, the need to look at it daily, handle it, weigh it, count it, realize it, not necessary; and now that I would do it, it is too late; they tell me it is not there, has vanished away in a night, the bank is broken, my fortune is gone, I am a pauper. How am I to comprehend this? How am I to have it? Why am I robbed, and who is benefited?
Ah, well, Susy died at home. She had that privilege. Her dying eyes rested upon nothing that was strange to them, but only upon things which they had known and loved always and which had made her young years glad; and she had you, and Sue, and Katy, and John, and Ellen. This was happy fortune – I am thankful that it was vouchsafed to her. If she had died in another house-well, I think I could not have borne that. To us, our house was not unsentient matter – it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with; and approvals, and solicitudes, and deep sympathies; it was of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction. We never came home from an absence that its face did not light up and speak out its eloquent welcome – and we could not enter it unmoved. And could we now, oh, now, in spirit we should enter it unshod.
I am trying to add to the “assets” which you estimate so generously. No, I am not. The thought is not in my mind. My purpose is other. I am working, but it is for the sake of the work – the “surcease of sorrow” that is found there. I work all the days, and trouble vanishes away when I use that magic. This book will not long stand between it and me, now; but that is no matter, I have many unwritten books to fly to for my preservation; the interval between the finishing of this one and the beginning of the next will not be more than an hour, at most. Continuances, I mean; for two of them are already well along – in fact have reached exactly the same stage in their journey: 19,000 words each. The present one will contain 180,000 words—130,000 are done. I am well protected; but Livy! She has nothing in the world to turn to; nothing but housekeeping, and doing things for the children and me. She does not see people, and cannot; books have lost their interest for her. She sits solitary; and all the day, and all the days, wonders how it all happened, and why. We others were always busy with our affairs, but Susy was her comrade – had to be driven from her loving persécutions—sometimes at 1 in the morning. To Livy the persécutions were welcome. It was heaven to her to be plagued like that. But it is ended now. Livy stands so in need of help; and none among us all could help her like you.
Some day you and I will walk again, Joe, and talk. I hope so. We could have such talks! We are all grateful to you and Harmony – how grateful it is not given to us to say in words. We pay as we can, in love; and in this coin practicing no economy.
Good bye, dear old Joe!
Mark.
The letters to Mr. Rogers were, for the most part, on matters of business, but in one of them he said: “I am going to write with all my might on this book, and follow it up with others as fast as I can in the hope that within three years I can clear out the stuff that is in me waiting to be written, and that I shall then die in the promptest kind of a way and no fooling around.” And in one he wrote: “You are the best friend ever a man had, and the surest.”
*****
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
London, Feb. 23, ’97.
Dear Howells, – I find your generous article in the Weekly, and I want to thank you for its splendid praises, so daringly uttered and so warmly. The words stir the dead heart of me, and throw a glow of color into a life which sometimes seems to have grown wholly wan. I don’t mean that I am miserable; no – worse than that – indifferent. Indifferent to nearly everything but work. I like that; I enjoy it, and stick to it. I do it without purpose and without ambition; merely for the love of it.
This mood will pass, some day – there is history for it. But it cannot pass until my wife comes up out of the submergence. She was always so quick to recover herself before, but now there is no rebound, and we are dead people who go through the motions of life. Indeed I am a mud image, and it will puzzle me to know what it is in me that writes, and has comedy-fancies and finds pleasure in phrasing them. It is a law of our nature, of course, or it wouldn’t happen; the thing in me forgets the presence of the mud image and goes its own way, wholly unconscious of it and apparently of no kinship with it. I have finished my book, but I go on as if the end were indefinitely away – as indeed it is. There is no hurry – at any rate there is no limit.
Jean’s spirits are good; Clara’s are rising. They have youth – the only thing that was worth giving to the race.
These are sardonic times. Look at Greece, and that whole shabby muddle. But I am not sorry to be alive and privileged to look on. If I were not a hermit I would go to the House every day and see those people scuffle over it and blether about the brotherhood of the human race. This has been a bitter year for English pride, and I don’t like to see England humbled – that is, not too much. We are sprung from her loins, and it hurts me. I am for republics, and she is the only comrade we’ve got, in that. We can’t count France, and there is hardly enough of Switzerland to count. Beneath the governing crust England is sound-hearted – and sincere, too, and nearly straight. But I am appalled to notice that the wide extension of the surface has damaged her manners, and made her rather Americanly uncourteous on the lower levels.
Won’t you give our love to the Howellses all and particular?
Sincerely yours,
S. L. Clemens.
The travel-book did not finish easily, and more than once when he thought it completed he found it necessary to cut and add and change. The final chapters were not sent to the printer until the middle of May, and in a letter to Mr. Rogers he commented: “A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.” Clemens was at the time contemplating a uniform edition of his books, and in one of his letters to Mr. Rogers on the matter he wrote, whimsically, “Now I was proposing to make a thousand sets at a hundred dollars a set, and do the whole canvassing myself….. I would load up every important jail and saloon in America with de luxe editions of my books. But Mrs. Clemens and the children object to this, I do not know why.” And, in a moment of depression: “You see the lightning refuses to strike me – there is where the defect is. We have to do our own striking as Barney Barnato did. But nobody ever gets the courage until he goes crazy.”
They went to Switzerland for the summer to the village of Weggis, on Lake Lucerne—“The charmingest place we ever lived in,” he declared, “for repose, and restfulness, and superb scenery.” It was here that he began work on a new story of Tom and Huck, and at least upon one other manuscript. From a brief note to Mr. Rogers we learn something of his employments and economies.
*****
To Henry H. Rogers, in New York:
Lucerne, August the something or other, 1897.
Dear Mr. Rogers, – I am writing a novel, and am getting along very well with it.
I believe that this place (Weggis, half an hour from Lucerne,) is the loveliest in the world, and the most satisfactory. We have a small house on the hillside all to ourselves, and our meals are served in it from the inn below on the lake shore. Six francs a day per head, house and food included. The scenery is beyond comparison beautiful. We have a row boat and some bicycles, and good roads, and no visitors. Nobody knows we are here. And Sunday in heaven is noisy compared to this quietness.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. C.
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
Lucerne, Aug. 22, ’97.
Dear Joe, – Livy made a noble find on the Lucerne boat the other day on one of her shopping trips – George Williamson Smith – did I tell you about it? We had a lovely time with him, and such intellectual refreshment as we had not tasted in many a month.
And the other night we had a detachment of the jubilee Singers—6. I had known one of them in London 24 years ago. Three of the 6 were born in slavery, the others were children of slaves. How charming they were – in spirit, manner, language, pronunciation, enunciation, grammar, phrasing, matter, carriage, clothes – in every detail that goes to make the real lady and gentleman, and welcome guest. We went down to the village hotel and bought our tickets and entered the beer-hall, where a crowd of German and Swiss men and women sat grouped at round tables with their beer mugs in front of them – self-contained and unimpressionable looking people, an indifferent and unposted and disheartened audience – and up at the far end of the room sat the Jubilees in a row. The Singers got up and stood – the talking and glass jingling went on. Then rose and swelled out above those common earthly sounds one of those rich chords the secret of whose make only the Jubilees possess, and a spell fell upon that house. It was fine to see the faces light up with the pleased wonder and surprise of it. No one was indifferent any more; and when the singers finished, the camp was theirs. It was a triumph. It reminded me of Launcelot riding in Sir Kay’s armor and astonishing complacent Knights who thought they had struck a soft thing. The Jubilees sang a lot of pieces. Arduous and painstaking cultivation has not diminished or artificialized their music, but on the contrary – to my surprise – has mightily reinforced its eloquence and beauty. Away back in the beginning – to my mind – their music made all other vocal music cheap; and that early notion is emphasized now. It is utterly beautiful, to me; and it moves me infinitely more than any other music can. I think that in the Jubilees and their songs America has produced the perfectest flower of the ages; and I wish it were a foreign product, so that she would worship it and lavish money on it and go properly crazy over it.
Now, these countries are different: they would do all that, if it were native. It is true they praise God, but that is merely a formality, and nothing in it; they open out their whole hearts to no foreigner.
The musical critics of the German press praise the Jubilees with great enthusiasm – acquired technique etc, included.
One of the jubilee men is a son of General Joe Johnson, and was educated by him after the war. The party came up to the house and we had a pleasant time.
This is paradise, here – but of course we have got to leave it by and by. The 18th of August[40] has come and gone, Joe – and we still seem to live.
With love from us all.
Mark.
Clemens declared he would as soon spend his life in Weggis “as anywhere else in the geography,” but October found them in Vienna for the winter, at the Hotel Metropole. The Austrian capital was just then in a political turmoil, the character of which is hinted in the following:
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
Hotel Metropole,
Vienna, Oct. 23, ’97.
Dear Joe, – We are gradually getting settled down and wonted. Vienna is not a cheap place to live in, but I have made one small arrangement which: has a distinctly economical aspect. The Vice Consul made the contract for me yesterday-to-wit: a barber is to come every morning 8.30 and shave me and keep my hair trimmed for $2.50 a month. I used to pay $1.50 per shave in our house in Hartford.
Does it suggest to you reflections when you reflect that this is the most important event which has happened to me in ten days – unless I count – in my handing a cabman over to the police day before yesterday, with the proper formalities, and promised to appear in court when his case comes up.
If I had time to run around and talk, I would do it; for there is much politics agoing, and it would be interesting if a body could get the hang of it. It is Christian and Jew by the horns – the advantage with the superior man, as usual – the superior man being the Jew every time and in all countries. Land, Joe, what chance would the Christian have in a country where there were 3 Jews to 1 Christians! Oh, not the shade of a shadow of a chance. The difference between the brain of the average Christian and that of the average Jew – certainly in Europe – is about the difference between a tadpole’s and an Archbishop’s. It’s a marvelous, race – by long odds the most marvelous that the world has produced, I suppose.
And there’s more politics – the clash between Czech and Austrian. I wish I could understand these quarrels, but of course I can’t.
With the abounding love of us all,
Mark.
In Following the Equator there was used an amusing picture showing Mark Twain on his trip around the world. It was a trick photograph made from a picture of Mark Twain taken in a steamer-chair, cut out and combined with a dilapidated negro-cart drawn by a horse and an ox. In it Clemens appears to be sitting luxuriously in the end of the disreputable cart. His companions are two negroes. To the creator of this ingenious effect Mark Twain sent a characteristic acknowledgment.
*****
To T. S. Frisbie:
Vienna, Oct. 25, ’97.
Mr. T. S. Frisbie, – Dear Sir: The picture has reached me, and has moved me deeply. That was a steady, sympathetic and honorable team, and although it was not swift, and not showy, it pulled me around the globe successfully, and always attracted its proper share of attention, even in the midst of the most costly and fashionable turnouts. Princes and dukes and other experts were always enthused by the harness and could hardly keep from trying to buy it. The barouche does not look as fine, now, as it did earlier-but that was before the earthquake.
The portraits of myself and uncle and nephew are very good indeed, and your impressionist reproduction of the palace of the Governor General of India is accurate and full of tender feeling.
I consider that this picture is much more than a work of art. How much more, one cannot say with exactness, but I should think two-thirds more.
Very truly yours,
Mark Twain.
Following the Equator was issued by subscription through Mark Twain’s old publishers, the Blisses, of Hartford. The sale of it was large, not only on account of the value of the book itself, but also because of the sympathy of the American people with Mark Twain’s brave struggle to pay his debts. When the newspapers began to print exaggerated stories of the vast profits that were piling up, Bliss became worried, for he thought it would modify the sympathy. He cabled Clemens for a denial, with the following result:
*****
To Frank E. Bliss, in Hartford:
Vienna, Nov. 4, 1897.
Dear bliss, – Your cablegram informing me that a report is in circulation which purports to come from me and which says I have recently made $82,000 and paid all my debts has just reached me, and I have cabled back my regret to you that it is not true. I wrote a letter – a private letter – a short time ago, in which I expressed the belief that I should be out of debt within the next twelvemonth. If you make as much as usual for me out of the book, that belief will crystallize into a fact, and I shall be wholly out of debt. I am encoring you now.
It is out of that moderate letter that the Eighty-Two Thousand-Dollar mare’s nest has developed. But why do you worry about the various reports? They do not worry me. They are not unfriendly, and I don’t see how they can do any harm. Be patient; you have but a little while to wait; the possible reports are nearly all in. It has been reported that I was seriously ill – it was another man; dying – it was another man; dead – the other man again. It has been reported that I have received a legacy it was another man; that I am out of debt – it was another man; and now comes this $82,000—still another man. It has been reported that I am writing books – for publication; I am not doing anything of the kind. It would surprise (and gratify) me if I should be able to get another book ready for the press within the next three years. You can see, yourself, that there isn’t anything more to be reported – invention is exhausted. Therefore, don’t worry, Bliss – the long night is breaking. As far as I can see, nothing remains to be reported, except that I have become a foreigner. When you hear it, don’t you believe it. And don’t take the trouble to deny it. Merely just raise the American flag on our house in Hartford, and let it talk.
Truly yours,
Mark Twain.
P. S. This is not a private letter. I am getting tired of private letters.
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
Vienna, hotel Metropole, Nov. 19, ’97.
Dear Joe, – Above is our private (and permanent) address for the winter. You needn’t send letters by London.
I am very much obliged for Forrest’s Austro-Hungarian articles. I have just finished reading the first one: and in it I find that his opinion and Vienna’s are the same, upon a point which was puzzling me – the paucity (no, the absence) of Austrian Celebrities. He and Vienna both say the country cannot afford to allow great names to grow up; that the whole safety and prosperity of the Empire depends upon keeping things quiet; can’t afford to have geniuses springing up and developing ideas and stirring the public soul. I am assured that every time a man finds himself blooming into fame, they just softly snake him down and relegate him to a wholesome obscurity. It is curious and interesting.
Three days ago the New York World sent and asked a friend of mine (correspondent of a London daily) to get some Christmas greetings from the celebrities of the Empire. She spoke of this. Two or three bright Austrians were present. They said “There are none who are known all over the world! none who have achieved fame; none who can point to their work and say it is known far and wide in the earth: there are no names; Kossuth (known because he had a father) and Lecher, who made the 12 hour speech; two names-nothing more. Every other country in the world, perhaps, has a giant or two whose heads are away up and can be seen, but ours. We’ve got the material – have always had it – but we have to suppress it; we can’t afford to let it develop; our political salvation depends upon tranquillity – always has.”
Poor Livy! She is laid up with rheumatism; but she is getting along now. We have a good doctor, and he says she will be out of bed in a couple of days, but must stay in the house a week or ten.
Clara is working faithfully at her music, Jean at her usual studies, and we all send love.
Mark.
Mention has already been made of the political excitement in Vienna. The trouble between the Hungarian and German legislative bodies presently became violent. Clemens found himself intensely interested, and was present in one of the galleries when it was cleared by the police. All sorts of stories were circulated as to what happened to him, one of which was cabled to America. A letter to Twichell sets forth what really happened.
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
Hotel Metropole,
Vienna, Dec. 10, ’97.
Dear Joe, – Pond sends me a Cleveland paper with a cablegram from here in it which says that when the police invaded the parliament and expelled the 11 members I waved my handkerchief and shouted ‘Hoch die Deutschen!’ and got hustled out. Oh dear, what a pity it is that one’s adventures never happen! When the Ordner (sergeant-at-arms) came up to our gallery and was hurrying the people out, a friend tried to get leave for me to stay, by saying, “But this gentleman is a foreigner – you don’t need to turn him out – he won’t do any harm.”
“Oh, I know him very well – I recognize him by his pictures; and I should be very glad to let him stay, but I haven’t any choice, because of the strictness of the orders.”
And so we all went out, and no one was hustled. Below, I ran across the London Times correspondent, and he showed me the way into the first gallery and I lost none of the show. The first gallery had not misbehaved, and was not disturbed.
… We cannot persuade Livy to go out in society yet, but all the lovely people come to see her; and Clara and I go to dinner parties, and around here and there, and we all have a most hospitable good time. Jean’s woodcarving flourishes, and her other studies.
Good-bye Joe – and we all love all of you.
Mark.
Clemens made an article of the Austrian troubles, one of the best things he ever wrote, and certainly one of the clearest élucidations of the Austro-Hungarian confusions. It was published in Harper’s Magazine, and is now included in his complete works.
Thus far none of the Webster Company debts had been paid – at least, none of importance. The money had been accumulating in Mr. Rogers’s hands, but Clemens was beginning to be depressed by the heavy burden. He wrote asking for relief.
*****
Fragment of a letter to H. H. Rogers, in New York:
Dear Mr. Rogers, – I throw up the sponge. I pull down the flag. Let us begin on the debts. I cannot bear the weight any longer. It totally unfits me for work. I have lost three entire months now. In that time I have begun twenty magazine articles and books – and flung every one of them aside in turn. The debts interfered every time, and took the spirit out of any work. And yet I have worked like a bond slave and wasted no time and spared no effort—
Rogers wrote, proposing a plan for beginning immediately upon the debts. Clemens replied enthusiastically, and during the next few weeks wrote every few days, expressing his delight in liquidation.
Extracts from letters to H. H. Rogers, in New York:
… We all delighted with your plan. Only don’t leave B – out. Apparently that claim has been inherited by some women – daughters, no doubt. We don’t want to see them lose any thing. B– is an ass, and disgruntled, but I don’t care for that. I am responsible for the money and must do the best I can to pay it….. I am writing hard-writing for the creditors.
Dec. 29.
Land we are glad to see those debts diminishing. For the first time in my life I am getting more pleasure out of paying money out than pulling it in.
Jan. 2.
Since we have begun to pay off the debts I have abundant peace of mind again – no sense of burden. Work is become a pleasure again – it is not labor any longer.
March 7.
Mrs. Clemens has been reading the creditors’ letters over and over again and thanks you deeply for sending them, and says it is the only really happy day she has had since Susy died.
