I felt mighty proud of that degree; in fact I could squeeze thetruth a little closer and say vain of it. And why shouldn't I be?I am the only literary animal of my particular subspecies who hasever been given a degree by any college in any age of the world asfar as I know.
To which Clark answered:
MY DEAR FRIEND, You are “the only literary animal of your particularsubspecies” in existence, and you've no cause for humility in thefact. Yale has done herself at least as much credit as she has doneyou, and “don't you forget it.”C. H. C.
Clemens could not attend the alumni dinner, being at Elmira and unable to get away, but in an address he made at Yale College later in the year he thus freely expressed himself:
I was sincerely proud and grateful to be made a Master of Arts bythis great and venerable University, and I would have come last Juneto testify this feeling, as I do now testify it, but that the suddenand unexpected notice of the honor done me found me at a distancefrom home and unable to discharge that duty and enjoy thatprivilege.Along at first, say for the first month or so, I did not quite knowhow to proceed because of my not knowing just what authorities andprivileges belonged to the title which had been granted me, butafter that I consulted some students of Trinity—in Hartford—andthey made everything clear to me. It was through them that I foundout that my title made me head of the Governing Body of theUniversity, and lodged in me very broad and severely responsiblepowers.I was told that it would be necessary to report to you at this time,and of course I comply, though I would have preferred to put it offtill I could make a better showing; for indeed I have been sopertinaciously hindered and obstructed at every turn by the facultythat it would be difficult to prove that the University is really inany better shape now than it was when I first took charge. Byadvice, I turned my earliest attention to the Greek department. Itold the Greek professor I had concluded to drop the use of Greek-written character because it is so hard to spell with, and soimpossible to read after you get it spelt. Let us draw the curtainthere. I saw by what followed that nothing but early neglect savedhim from being a very profane man. I ordered the professor ofmathematics to simplify the whole system, because the way it was Icouldn't understand it, and I didn't want things going on in thecollege in what was practically a clandestine fashion. I told himto drop the conundrum system; it was not suited to the dignity of acollege, which should deal in facts, not guesses and suppositions;we didn't want any more cases of if A and B stand at opposite polesof the earth's surface and C at the equator of Jupiter, at whatvariations of angle will the left limb of the moon appear to thesedifferent parties?—I said you just let that thing alone; it'splenty time to get in a sweat about it when it happens; as like asnot it ain't going to do any harm, anyway. His reception of theseinstructions bordered on insubordination, insomuch that I feltobliged to take his number and report him. I found the astronomerof the University gadding around after comets and other such oddsand ends—tramps and derelicts of the skies. I told him prettyplainly that we couldn't have that. I told him it was no economy togo on piling up and piling up raw material in the way of new starsand comets and asteroids that we couldn't ever have any use for tillwe had worked off the old stock. At bottom I don't really mindcomets so much, but somehow I have always been down on asteroids.There is nothing mature about them; I wouldn't sit up nights the waythat man does if I could get a basketful of them. He said it wasthe best line of goods he had; he said he could trade them toRochester for comets, and trade the comets to Harvard for nebulae,and trade the nebulae to the Smithsonian for flint hatchets. I feltobliged to stop this thing on the spot; I said we couldn't have theUniversity turned into an astronomical junk shop. And while I wasat it I thought I might as well make the reform complete; theastronomer is extraordinarily mutinous, and so, with your approval,I will transfer him to the law department and put one of the lawstudents in his place. A boy will be more biddable, more tractable,also cheaper. It is true he cannot be intrusted with important workat first, but he can comb the skies for nebulae till he gets hishand in. I have other changes in mind, but as they are in thenature of surprises I judge it politic to leave them unspecified atthis time.
Very likely it was in this new capacity, as the head of the governing body, that he wrote one morning to Clark advising him as to the misuse of a word in the Courant, though he thought it best to sign the communication with the names of certain learned friends, to give it weight with the public, as he afterward explained.
SIR,—The word “patricide” in your issue of this morning (telegrams)was an error. You meant it to describe the slayer of a father; youshould have used “parricide” instead. Patricide merely means thekilling of an Irishman—any Irishman, male or female.Respectfully,J. HAMMOND TRUMBULL.N. J. BURTON.J. H. TWICHELL.
Clemens' note-books of this time are full of the vexations of his business ventures, figures, suggestions, and a hundred imagined combinations for betterment—these things intermingled with the usual bits of philosophy and reflections, and amusing reminders.
Aldrich's man who painted the fat toads red, and naturalist chasingand trying to catch them.Man who lost his false teeth over Brooklyn Bridge when he was on hisway to propose to a widow.One believes St. Simon and Benvenuto and partly believes theMargravine of Bayreuth. There are things in the confession ofRousseau which one must believe.What is biography? Unadorned romance. What is romance? Adornedbiography. Adorn it less and it will be better than it is.If God is what people say there can be none in the universe sounhappy as he; for he sees unceasingly myriads of his creaturessuffering unspeakable miseries, and, besides this, foresees all theyare going to suffer during the remainder of their lives. One mightwell say “as unhappy as God.”
In spite of the financial complexities and the drain of the enterprises already in hand he did not fail to conceive others. He was deeply interested in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress at the moment, and from photography and scenic effect he presaged a possibility to-day realized in the moving picture.
Dress up some good actors as Apollyon, Greatheart, etc., & the otherBunyan characters, take them to a wild gorge and photograph them—Valleyof the Shadow of Death; to other effective places & photo them alongwith the scenery; to Paris, in their curious costumes, place them near theArc de l'Etoile & photo them with the crowd-Vanity Fair; to Cairo,Venice, Jerusalem, & other places (twenty interesting cities) &always make them conspicuous in the curious foreign crowds by theircostume. Take them to Zululand. It would take two or three years to do thephotographing & cost $10,000; but this stereopticon panorama ofBunyan's Pilgrim's Progress could be exhibited in all countries at thesame time & would clear a fortune in a year. By & by I will dothis.
If in 1891 I find myself not rich enough to carry out my scheme ofbuying Christopher Columbus's bones & burying them under the Statueof Liberty Enlightening the World I will give the idea to somebodywho is rich enough.
Incidentally he did an occasional piece of literary work. Early in the year, with Brander Matthews, he instructed and entertained the public with a copyright controversy in the Princeton Review. Matthews would appear to have criticized the English copyright protection, or rather the lack of it, comparing it unfavorably with American conditions. Clemens, who had been amply protected in Great Britain, replied that America was in no position to criticize England; that if American authors suffered in England they had themselves to blame for not taking the proper trouble and precautions required by the English law, that is to say, “previous publication” on English soil. He declared that his own books had been as safe in England as at home since he had undertaken to comply with English requirements, and that Professor Matthews was altogether mistaken, both as to premise and conclusion.
“You are the very wrong-headedest person in America,” he said; “and you are injudicious.” And of the article: “I read it to the cat—well, I never saw a cat carry on so before.... The American author can go to Canada, spend three days there and come home with an English and American copyright as strong as if it had been built out of railroad iron.”
Matthews replied that not every one could go to Canada, any more than to Corinth. He said:
“It is not easy for a poor author who may chance to live in Florida or Texas, those noted homes of literature, to go to Canada.”
Clemens did not reply again; that is to say, he did not publish his reply. It was a capable bomb which he prepared, well furnished with amusing instance, sarcasm, and ridicule, but he did not use it. Perhaps he was afraid it would destroy his opponent, which would not do. In his heart he loved Matthews. He laid the deadly thing away and maintained a dignified reserve.
Clemens often felt called upon to criticize American institutions, but he was first to come to their defense, especially when the critic was an alien. When Matthew Arnold offered some strictures on America. Clemens covered a good many quires of paper with caustic replies. He even defended American newspapers, which he had himself more than once violently assailed for misreporting him and for other journalistic shortcomings, and he bitterly denounced every shaky British institution, touched upon every weak spot in hereditary rule. He did not print—not then—[An article on the American press, probably the best of those prepared at this time, was used, in part, in The American Claimant, as the paper read before the Mechanics' Club, by “Parker,” assistant editor of the 'Democrat'.]—he was writing mainly for relief—without success, however, for he only kindled the fires of his indignation. He was at Quarry Farm and he plunged into his neglected story—A Yankee in King Arthur's Court—and made his astonishing hero the mouthpiece of his doctrines. He worked with an inspiration and energy born of his ferocity. To Whitmore, near the end of the summer, he wrote:
I've got 16 working-days left yet, and in that time I will add another 120,000 words to my book if I have luck.
In his memoranda of this time he says:
There was never a throne which did not represent a crime. There isno throne to-day which does not represent a crime....
Show me a lord and I will show you a man whom you couldn't tell from ajourneyman shoemaker if he were stripped, and who, in all that is worthbeing, is the shoemaker's inferior; and in the shoemaker I will show you adull animal, a poor-spirited insect; for there are enough of him to riseand chuck the lords and royalties into the sea where they belong, and hedoesn't do it.
But his violence waned, maybe, for he did not finish the Yankee in the sixteen days as planned. He brought the manuscript back to Hartford, but found it hard work there, owing to many interruptions. He went over to Twichell's and asked for a room where he might work in seclusion. They gave him a big upper chamber, but some repairs were going on below. From a letter written to Theodore Crane we gather that it was not altogether quiet.
Friday, October 5, 1888.DEAR THEO, I am here in Twichell's house at work, with the noise ofthe children and an army of carpenters to help: Of course they don'thelp, but neither do they hinder. It's like a boiler factory forracket, and in nailing a wooden ceiling on to the room under me thehammering tickles my feet amazingly sometimes and jars my table agood deal, but I never am conscious of the racket at all, and I movemy feet into positions of relief without knowing when I do it. Ibegan here Monday morning, and have done eighty pages since. I wasso tired last night that I thought I would lie abed and rest to-day;but I couldn't resist. I mean to try to knock off tomorrow, butit's doubtful if I do. I want to finish the day the machinefinishes, and a week ago the closest calculations for that indicatedOct. 22—but experience teaches me that the calculations will missfire as usual.The other day the children were projecting a purchase, Livy and I tofurnish the money—a dollar and a half. Jean discouraged the idea.She said, “We haven't got any money. Children, if you would think,you would remember the machine isn't done.”It's billiards to-night. I wish you were here.With love to you both, S. L. C.P. S. I got it all wrong. It wasn't the children, it was Marie.She wanted a box of blacking for the children's shoes. Jeanreproved her and said, “Why, Marie, you mustn't ask for things now.The machine isn't done.”
Neither the Yankee nor the machine was completed that fall, though returns from both were beginning to be badly needed. The financial pinch was not yet severe, but it was noticeable, and it did not relax.
A memorandum of this time tells of an anniversary given to Charles and Susan Warner in their own home. The guests assembled at the Clemens home, the Twichells among them, and slipped across to Warner's, entering through a window. Dinner was then announced to the Warners, who were sitting by their library fire. They came across the hall and opened the dining-room door, to be confronted by a table fully spread and lighted and an array of guests already seated.
It was the winter (1888-89) that the Bill Nye and James Whitcomb Riley entertainment combination set out on its travels. Mark Twain introduced them to their first Boston audience. Major J. B. Pond was exploiting Nye and Riley, and Clemens went on to Boston especially to hear them. Pond happened upon him in the lobby of the Parker House and insisted that nothing would do but he must introduce them. In his book of memories which he published later Pond wrote:
He replied that he believed I was his mortal enemy, and determined that he should never have an evening's enjoyment in my presence. He consented, however, and conducted his brother-humorist and the Hoosier poet to the platform. Mark's presence was a surprise to the audience, and when they recognized him the demonstration was tremendous. The audience rose in a body, and men and women shouted at the very top of their voices. Handkerchiefs waved, the organist even opened every forte key and pedal in the great organ, and the noise went on unabated for minutes. It took some time for the crowd to get down to listening, but when they did subside, as Mark stepped to the front, the silence was as impressive as the noise had been.
He presented the Nye-Riley pair as the Siamese Twins. “I saw them first,” he said, “a great many years ago, when Mr. Barnum had them, and they were just fresh from Siam. The ligature was their best hold then, but literature became their best hold later, when one of them committed an indiscretion, and they had to cut the old bond to accommodate the sheriff.”
He continued this comic fancy, and the audience was in a proper frame of mind, when he had finished, to welcome the “Twins of Genius” who were to entertain them:
Pond says:
It was a carnival of fun in every sense of the word. Bostonians will not have another such treat in this generation.
Pond proposed to Clemens a regular tour with Nye and Riley. He wrote:
I will go partners with you, and I will buy Nye and Riley's time andgive an entertainment something like the one we gave in Boston. Letit be announced that you will introduce the “Twins of Genius.”Ostensibly a pleasure trip for you. I will take one-third of theprofits and you two-thirds. I can tell you it will be the biggestthing that can be brought before the American public.
But Clemens, badly as he was beginning to need the money, put this temptation behind him. His chief diversion these days was in gratuitous appearances. He had made up his mind not to read or lecture again for pay, but he seemed to take a peculiar enjoyment in doing these things as a benefaction. That he was beginning to need the money may have added a zest to the joy of his giving. He did not respond to all invitations; he could have been traveling constantly had he done so. He consulted with Mrs. Clemens and gave himself to the cause that seemed most worthy. In January Col. Richard Malcolm Johnston was billed to give a reading with Thomas Nelson Page in Baltimore. Page's wife fell ill and died, and Colonel Johnston, in extremity, wired Charles Dudley Warner to come in Page's place. Warner, unable to go, handed the invitation to Clemens, who promptly wired that he would come. They read to a packed house, and when the audience was gone and the returns had been counted an equal division of the profits was handed to each of the authors. Clemens pushed his share over to Johnston, saying:
“That's yours, Colonel. I'm not reading for money these days.”
Colonel Johnston, to whom the sum was important, tried to thank him, but he only said:
“Never mind, Colonel, it only gave me pleasure to do you that little favor. You can pass it on some day.”
As a matter of fact, hard put to it as he was for funds, Clemens at this time regarded himself as a potential multi-millionaire. The type-setting machine which for years had been sapping his financial strength was believed to be perfected, and ship-loads of money were waiting in the offing. However, we shall come to this later.
Clemens read for the cadets at West Point and for a variety of institutions and on many special occasions. He usually gave chapters from his Yankee, now soon to be finished, chapters generally beginning with the Yankee's impression of the curious country and its people, ending with the battle of the Sun-belt, when the Yankee and his fifty-four adherents were masters of England, with twenty-five thousand dead men lying about them. He gave this at West Point, including the chapter where the Yankee has organized a West Point of his own in King Arthur's reign.
In April, '89, he made an address at a dinner given to a victorious baseball team returning from a tour of the world by way of the Sandwich Islands. He was on familiar ground there. His heart was in his words. He began:
I have been in the Sandwich Islands-twenty-three years ago—thatpeaceful land, that beautiful land, that far-off home of solitude,and soft idleness, and repose, and dreams, where life is one longslumberous Sabbath, the climate one long summer day, and the goodthat die experience no change, for they but fall asleep in oneheaven and wake up in another. And these boys have played baseballthere!—baseball, which is the very symbol, the outward and visibleexpression, of the drive and push and rush and struggle of theliving, tearing, booming nineteenth, the mightiest of all thecenturies!
He told of the curious island habits for his hearers' amusement, but at the close the poetry of his memories once more possessed him:
Ah, well, it is refreshment to the jaded, it is water to thethirsty, to look upon men who have so lately breathed the soft airof those Isles of the Blest and had before their eyes theinextinguishable vision of their beauty. No alien land in all theearth has any deep, strong charm for me but that one; no other landcould so longingly and so beseechingly haunt me, sleeping andwaking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other thingsleave me, but it abides; other things change, but it remains thesame. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seasflashing in the sun; the pulsing of its surf is in my ear; I can seeits garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsingby the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above thecloud-rack; I can feel the spirit of its woody solitudes, I hear theplashing of the brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath offlowers that perished twenty years ago.
It was the summer of 1889 that Mark Twain first met Rudyard Kipling. Kipling was making his tour around the world, a young man wholly unheard of outside of India. He was writing letters home to an Indian journal, The Pioneer, and he came to Elmira especially to see Mark Twain. It was night when he arrived, and next morning some one at the hotel directed him to Quarry Farm. In a hired hack he made his way out through the suburbs, among the buzzing planing-mills and sash factories, and toiled up the long, dusty, roasting east hill, only to find that Mark Twain was at General Langdon's, in the city he had just left behind. Mrs. Crane and Susy Clemens were the only ones left at the farm, and they gave him a seat on the veranda and brought him glasses of water or cool milk while he refreshed them with his talk-talk which Mark Twain once said might be likened to footprints, so strong and definite was the impression which it left behind. He gave them his card, on which the address was Allahabad, and Susy preserved it on that account, because to her India was a fairyland, made up of magic, airy architecture, and dark mysteries. Clemens once dictated a memory of Kipling's visit.
Kipling had written upon the card a compliment to me. This gave itan additional value in Susy's eyes, since, as a distinction, it wasthe next thing to being recognized by a denizen of the moon.Kipling came down that afternoon and spent a couple of hours withme, and at the end of that time I had surprised him as much as hehad surprised me—and the honors were easy. I believed that he knewmore than any person I had met before, and I knew that he knew thatI knew less than any person he had met before—though he did not sayit, and I was not expecting that he would. When he was gone Mrs.Langdon wanted to know about my visitor. I said:“He is a stranger to me, but he is a most remarkable man—and I amthe other one. Between us we cover all knowledge; he knows all thatcan be known, and I know the rest.”He was a stranger to me and to all the world, and remained so fortwelve months, then he became suddenly known, and universally known.From that day to this he has held this unique distinction—that ofbeing the only living person, not head of a nation, whose voice isheard around the world the moment it drops a remark; the only suchvoice in existence that does not go by slow ship and rail, butalways travels first-class—by cable.About a year after Kipling's visit in Elmira George Warner came intoour library one morning in Hartford with a small book in his handand asked me if I had ever heard of Rudyard Kipling. I said, “No.”He said I would hear of him very soon, and that the noise he wasgoing to make would be loud and continuous. The little book was thePlain Tales, and he left it for me to read, saying it was chargedwith a new and inspiriting fragrance, and would blow a refreshingbreath around the world that would revive the nations. A day or twolater he brought a copy of the London World which had a sketch ofKipling in it, and a mention of the fact that he had traveled in theUnited States. According to this sketch he had passed throughElmira. This remark, with the additional fact that he hailed fromIndia, attracted my attention—also Susy's. She went to her roomand brought his card from its place in the frame of her mirror, andthe Quarry Farm visitor stood identified.
Kipling also has left an account of that visit. In his letter recording it he says:
You are a contemptible lot over yonder. Some of you areCommissioners and some are Lieutenant-Governors, and some have theV. C., and a few are privileged to walk about the Mall arm in armwith the Viceroy; but I have seen Mark Twain this golden morning,have shaken his hand and smoked a cigar—no, two cigars—with him,and talked with him for more than two hours! Understand clearlythat I do not despise you; indeed, I don't. I am only very sorryfor you, from the Viceroy downward.A big, darkened drawing-room; a huge chair; a man with eyes, a maneof grizzled hair, a brown mustache covering a mouth as delicate as awoman's, a strong, square hand shaking mine, and the slowest,calmest, levelest voice in all the world saying:“Well, you think you owe me something, and you've come to tell meso. That's what I call squaring a debt handsomely.”“Piff!” from a cob-pipe (I always said that a Missouri meerschaumwas the best smoking in the world), and behold! Mark Twain hadcurled himself up in the big arm-chair, and I was smokingreverently, as befits one in the presence of his superior.The thing that struck me first was that he was an elderly man; yet,after a minute's thought, I perceived that it was otherwise, and infive minutes, the eyes looking at me, I saw that the gray hair wasan accident of the most trivial. He was quite young. I was shakinghis hand. I was smoking his cigar, and I was hearing him talk—thisman I had learned to love and admire fourteen thousand miles away.Reading his books, I had striven to get an idea of his personality,and all my preconceived notions were wrong and beneath the reality.Blessed is the man who finds no disillusion when he is brought faceto face with a revered writer.
The meeting of those two men made the summer of '89 memorable in later years. But it was recalled sadly, too. Theodore Crane, who had been taken suddenly and dangerously ill the previous autumn, had a recurring attack and died July 3d. It was the first death in the immediate families for more than seventeen years. Mrs. Clemens, remembering that earlier period of sorrow, was depressed with forebodings.
There was an unusual dramatic interest in the Clemens home that autumn. Abby Sage Richardson had dramatized 'The Prince and the Pauper', and Daniel Frohman had secured Elsie Leslie (Lyde) to take the double role of the Prince and Tom Canty. The rehearsals were going on, and the Clemens children were naturally a good deal excited over the outcome. Susy Clemens was inspired to write a play of her own—a pretty Greek fancy, called “The Triumph of Music,” and when it was given on Thanksgiving night, by herself, with Clara and Jean and Margaret Warner, it was really a lovely performance, and carried one back to the days when emotions were personified, and nymphs haunted the seclusions of Arcady. Clemens was proud of Susy's achievement, and deeply moved by it. He insisted on having the play repeated, and it was given again later in the year.
Pretty Elsie Leslie became a favorite of the Clemens household. She was very young, and when she visited Hartford Jean and she were companions and romped together in the hay-loft. She was also a favorite of William Gillette. One day when Clemens and Gillette were together they decided to give the little girl a surprise—a unique one. They agreed to embroider a pair of slippers for her—to do the work themselves. Writing to her of it, Mark Twain said:
Either one of us could have thought of a single slipper, but it tookboth of us to think of two slippers. In fact, one of us did thinkof one slipper, and then, quick as a flash, the other of the otherone. It shows how wonderful the human mind is....Gillette embroidered his slipper with astonishing facility andsplendor, but I have been a long time pulling through with mine.You see, it was my very first attempt at art, and I couldn't rightlyget the hang of it along at first. And then I was so busy that Icouldn't get a chance to work at it at home, and they wouldn't letme embroider on the cars; they said it made the other passengersafraid. They didn't like the light that flared into my eye when Ihad an inspiration. And even the most fair-minded people doubted mewhen I explained what it was I was making—especially brakemen.Brakemen always swore at it and carried on, the way ignorant peopledo about art. They wouldn't take my word that it was a slipper;they said they believed it was a snow-shoe that had some kind ofdisease.
He went on to explain and elucidate the pattern of the slipper, and how Dr. Root had come in and insisted on taking a hand in it, and how beautiful it was to see him sit there and tell Mrs. Clemens what had been happening while they were away during the summer, holding the slipper up toward the end of his nose, imagining the canvas was a “subject” with a scalp-wound, working with a “lovely surgical stitch,” never hesitating a moment in his talk except to say “Ouch!” when he stuck himself with the needle.
Take the slippers and wear them next your heart, Elsie dear; forevery stitch in them is a testimony of the affection which two ofyour loyalest friends bear you. Every single stitch cost us blood.I've got twice as many pores in me now as I used to have; and youwould never believe how many places you can stick a needle inyourself until you go into the embroidery line and devote yourselfto art.Do not wear these slippers in public, dear; it would only exciteenvy; and, as like as not, somebody would try to shoot you.Merely use them to assist you in remembering that among the many,many people who think all the world of you is your friend,MARK TWAIN.
The play of “The Prince and the Pauper,” dramatized by Mrs. Richardson and arranged for the stage by David Belasco, was produced at the Park Theater, Philadelphia, on Christmas Eve. It was a success, but not a lavish one. The play was well written and staged, and Elsie Leslie was charming enough in her parts, but in the duality lay the difficulty. The strongest scenes in the story had to be omitted when one performer played both Tom Canty and the little Prince. The play came to New York—to the Broadway Theater—and was well received. On the opening night there Mark Twain made a speech, in which he said that the presentation of “The Prince and the Pauper” realized a dream which fifteen years before had possessed him all through a long down-town tramp, amid the crowds and confusion of Broadway. In Elsie Leslie, he said, he had found the embodiment of his dream, and to her he offered homage as the only prince clothed in a divine right which was not rags and sham—the divine right of an inborn supremacy in art.
It seems incredible to-day that, realizing the play's possibilities as Mark Twain did, and as Belasco and Daniel Frohman must have done, they did not complete their partial triumph by finding another child actress to take the part of Tom Canty. Clemens urged and pleaded with them, but perhaps the undertaking seemed too difficult—at all events they did not find the little beggar king. Then legal complications developed. Edward House, to whom Clemens had once given a permission to attempt a dramatization of the play, suddenly appeared with a demand for recognition, backed by a lawsuit against all those who had a proprietary interest in the production. House, with his adopted Japanese daughter Koto, during a period of rheumatism and financial depression, had made a prolonged visit in the Clemens home and originally undertook the dramatization as a sort of return for hospitality. He appears not to have completed it and to have made no arrangement for its production or to have taken any definite step until Mrs. Richardson's play was profitably put on; whereupon his suit and injunction.
By the time a settlement of this claim had been reached the play had run its course, and it was not revived in that form. It was brought out in England, where it was fairly prosperous, though it seems not to have been long continued. Variously reconstructed, it has occasionally been played since, and always, when the parts of Tom Canty and the Prince were separate, with great success. Why this beautiful drama should ever be absent from the boards is one of the unexplainable things. It is a play for all times and seasons, the difficulty of obtaining suitable “twin” interpreters for the characters of the Prince and the Pauper being its only drawback.
From every point of view it seemed necessary to make the 'Yankee in King Arthur's Court' an important and pretentious publication. It was Mark Twain's first book after a silence of five years; it was a book badly needed by his publishing business with which to maintain its prestige and profit; it was a book which was to come out of his maturity and present his deductions, as to humanity at large and kings in particular, to a waiting public. It was determined to spare no expense on the manufacture, also that its illustrations must be of a sort to illuminate and, indeed, to elaborate the text. Clemens had admired some pictures made by Daniel Carter (“Dan”) Beard for a Chinese story in the Cosmopolitan, and made up his mind that Beard was the man for the Yankee. The manuscript was sent to Beard, who met Clemens a little later in the office of Webster & Co. to discuss the matter. Clemens said:
“Mr. Beard, I do not want to subject you to any undue suffering, but I wish you would read the book before you make the pictures.”
Beard replied that he had already read it twice.
“Very good,” Clemens said; “but I wasn't led to suppose that that was the usual custom among illustrators, judging from some results I have seen. You know,” he went on, “this Yankee of mine has neither the refinement nor the weakness of a college education; he is a perfect ignoramus; he is boss of a machine shop; he can build a locomotive or a Colt's revolver, he can put up and run a telegraph line, but he's an ignoramus, nevertheless. I am not going to tell you what to draw. If a man comes to me and says, 'Mr. Clemens, I want you to write me a story,' I'll write it for him; but if he undertakes to tell me what to write I'll say, 'Go hire a typewriter.'”
To Hall a few days later he wrote:
Tell Beard to obey his own inspirations, and when he sees a picturein his mind put that picture on paper, be it humorous or be itserious. I want his genius to be wholly unhampered. I sha'n't haveany fear as to results.
Without going further it is proper to say here that the pictures in the first edition of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court justified the author's faith in the artist of his selection. They are far and away Dan Beard's best work. The socialism of the text strongly appealed to him. Beard himself had socialistic tendencies, and the work inspired him to his highest flights of fancy and to the acme of his technic. Clemens examined the pictures from time to time, and once was moved to write:
My pleasure in them is as strong and as fresh as ever. I do notknow of any quality they lack. Grace, dignity, poetry, spirit,imagination, these enrich them and make them charming and beautiful;and wherever humor appears it is high and fine—easy, unforced, keptunder, masterly, and delicious.
He went on to describe his appreciation in detail, and when the drawings were complete he wrote again:
Hold me under permanent obligations. What luck it was to find you!There are hundreds of artists who could illustrate any other book ofmine, but there was only one who could illustrate this one. Yes, itwas a fortunate hour that I went netting for lightning-bugs andcaught a meteor. Live forever!
This was not too much praise. Beard realized the last shade of the author's allegorical intent and portrayed it with a hundred accents which the average reader would otherwise be likely to miss.
Clemens submitted his manuscript to Howells and to Stedman, and he read portions of it, at least, to Mrs. Clemens, whose eyes were troubling her so that she could not read for herself. Stedman suggested certain eliminations, but, on the whole, would seem to have approved of the book. Howells was enthusiastic. It appealed to him as it had appealed to Beard. Its sociology and its socialism seemed to him the final word that could be said on those subjects. When he had partly finished it he wrote:
It's a mighty great book and it makes my heart, burn with wrath. Itseems that God didn't forget to put a soul in you. He shuts mostliterary men off with a brain, merely.
A few days later he wrote again:
The book is glorious-simply noble. What masses of virgin truthnever touched in print before!
And when he had finished it:
Last night I read your last chapter. As Stedman says of the wholebook, it's titanic.
Clemens declared, in one of his replies to Howells:
I'm not writing for those parties who miscall themselves critics,and I don't care to have them paw the book at all. It's my swansong, my retirement from literature permanently, and I wish to passto the cemetery unclodded.... Well, my book is written—letit go, but if it were only to write over again there wouldn't be somany things left out. They burn in me; they keep multiplying andmultiplying, but now they can't ever be said; and besides they wouldrequire a library—and a pen warmed up in hell.
In another letter of this time to Sylvester Baxter, apropos of the tumbling Brazilian throne, he wrote:
When our great brethren, the disenslaved Brazilians, frame theirdeclaration of independence I hope they will insert this missinglink: “We hold these truths to be self-evident—that all monarchsare usurpers and descendants of usurpers, for the reason that nothrone was ever set up in this world by the will, freely exercised,of the only body possessing the legitimate right to set it up—thenumerical mass of the nation.”
He was full of it, as he had been all along, and 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court' is nothing less than a brief for human rights and human privileges. That is what it is, and it is a pity that it should be more than that. It is a pity that he should have been beset by his old demon of the burlesque, and that no one should have had the wisdom or the strength to bring it under control.
There is nothing more charming in any of Mark Twain's work than his introductory chapter, nothing more delightful than the armoring of the Yankee and the outset and the wandering with Alisande. There is nothing more powerful or inspiring than his splendid panoramic picture—of the King learning mercy through his own degradation, his daily intercourse with a band of manacled slaves; nothing more fiercely moving than that fearful incident of the woman burned to warm those freezing chattels, or than the great gallows scene, where the priest speaks for the young mother about to pay the death penalty for having stolen a halfpenny's worth, that her baby might have bread. Such things as these must save the book from oblivion; but alas! its greater appeal is marred almost to ruin by coarse and extravagant burlesque, which destroys illusion and antagonizes the reader often at the very moment when the tale should fill him with a holy fire of a righteous wrath against wrong. As an example of Mark Twain at his literary worst and best the Yankee ranks supreme. It is unnecessary to quote examples; one cannot pick up the volume and read ten pages of it, or five pages, without finding them. In the midst of some exalted passage, some towering sublimity, you are brought suddenly to earth with a phrase which wholly destroys the illusion and the diviner purpose. Howells must have observed these things, or was he so dazzled by the splendor of its intent, its righteous charge upon the ranks of oppression, that he regarded its offenses against art as unimportant. This is hard to explain, for the very thing that would sustain such a great message and make it permanent would be the care, the restraint, the artistic worthiness of its construction. One must believe in a story like that to be convinced of its logic. To lose faith in it—in its narrative—is absolutely fatal to its purpose. The Yankee in King Arthur's Court not only offended the English nation, but much of it offended the better taste of Mark Twain's own countrymen, and in time it must have offended even Mark Twain himself. Reading it, one can visualize the author as a careering charger, with a bit in his teeth, trampling the poetry and the tradition of the romantic days, the very things which he himself in his happier moods cared for most. Howells likened him to Cervantes, laughing Spain's chivalry away. The comparison was hardly justified. It was proper enough to laugh chivalry out of court when it was a reality; but Mark Twain, who loved Sir Thomas Malory to the end of his days, the beauty and poetry of his chronicles; who had written 'The Prince and the Pauper', and would one day write that divine tale of the 'Maid of Orleans'; who was himself no more nor less than a knight always ready to redress wrong, would seem to have been the last person to wish to laugh it out of romance.
And yet, when all is said, one may still agree with Howells in ranking the Yankee among Mark Twain's highest achievements in the way of “a greatly imagined and symmetrically developed tale.” It is of that class, beyond doubt. Howells goes further: