It was the first week in March before it was thought to be safe for Clemens to return to France, even for a brief visit to his family. He hurried across and remained with them what seemed an infinitesimal time, a bare three weeks, and was back again in New York by the middle of April. The Webster company difficulties had now reached an acute stage. Mr. Rogers had kept a close watch on its financial affairs, hoping to be able to pull it through or to close it without failure, paying all the creditors in full; but on the afternoon of the 16th of April, 1894, Hall arrived at Clemens's room at The Players in a panic. The Mount Morris Bank had elected a new president and board of directors, and had straightway served notice on him that he must pay his notes—two notes of five thousand dollars each in a few days when due. Mr. Rogers was immediately notified, of course, and said he would sleep on it and advise them next day. He did not believe that the bank would really push them to the wall. The next day was spent in seeing what could be done, and by evening it was clear that unless a considerable sum of money was raised a voluntary assignment was the proper course. The end of the long struggle had come. Clemens hesitated less on his own than on his wife's account. He knew that to her the word failure would be associated with disgrace. She had pinched herself with a hundred economies to keep the business afloat, and was willing to go on economizing to avert this final disaster. Mr. Rogers said:
“Mr. Clemens, assure her from me that there is not even a tinge of disgrace in making this assignment. By doing it you will relieve yourself of a fearful load of dread, and in time will be able to pay everything and stand clear before the world. If you don't do it you will probably never be free from debt, and it will kill you and Mrs. Clemens both. If there is any disgrace it would be in not taking the course that will give you and her your freedom and your creditors a better chance for their claims. Most of them will be glad enough to help you.”
It was on the afternoon of the next day, April 18, 1894, that the firm of Charles L. Webster & Co. executed assignment papers and closed its doors. A meeting of the creditors was called, at which H. H. Rogers was present, representing Clemens. For the most part the creditors were liberal and willing to agree to any equitable arrangement. But there were a few who were grumpy and fussy. They declared that Mark Twain should turn over his copyrights, his Hartford home, and whatever other odds and ends could be discovered. Mr. Rogers, discussing the matter in 1908, said:
“They were bent on devouring every pound of flesh in sight and picking the bones afterward, as Clemens and his wife were perfectly willing they should do. I was getting a little warm all the time at the highhanded way in which these few men were conducting the thing, and presently I got on my feet and said, 'Gentlemen, you are not going to have this thing all your way. I have something to say about Mr. Clemens's affairs. Mrs. Clemens is the chief creditor of this firm. Out of her own personal fortune she has lent it more than sixty thousand dollars. She will be a preferred creditor, and those copyrights will be assigned to her until her claim is paid in full. As for the home in Hartford, it is hers already.'
“There was a good deal of complaint, but I refused to budge. I insisted that Mrs. Clemens had the first claims on the copyrights, though, to tell the truth, these did not promise much then, for in that hard year the sale of books was small enough. Besides Mrs. Clemens's claim the debts amounted to one hundred thousand dollars, and of course there must be a definite basis of settlement, so it was agreed that Clemens should pay fifty cents on the dollar, when the assets were finally realized upon, and receive a quittance. Clemens himself declared that sooner or later he would pay the other fifty cents, dollar for dollar, though I believe there was no one besides himself and his wife and me who believed he would ever be able to do it. Clemens himself got discouraged sometimes, and was about ready to give it up, for he was getting on in years—nearly sixty—and he was in poor health. Once when we found the debt, after the Webster salvage, was going to be at least seventy thousand dollars, he said, 'I need not dream of paying it. I never could manage it.' But he stuck to it. He was at my house a good deal at first. We gave him a room there and he came and went as he chose. The worry told upon him. He became frail during those weeks, almost ethereal, yet it was strange how brilliant he was, how cheerful.”
The business that had begun so promisingly and prosperously a decade before had dwindled to its end. The last book it had in hand was 'Tom Sawyer Abroad', just ready for issue. It curiously happened that on the day of the failure copies of it were filed in Washington for copyright. Frank Bliss came over from Hartford, and Clemens arranged with him for the publication of 'Pudd'nhead Wilson', thereby renewing the old relationship with the American Publishing Company after a break of a dozen years.
Naturally, the failure of Mark Twain's publishing firm made a public stir, and it showed how many and sincere were his friends, how ready they were with sympathy and help of a more material kind. Those who understood best, congratulated him on being out of the entanglement.
Poultney Bigelow, Douglas Taylor, Andrew Carnegie, Charles Dudley Warner, and others extended financial help, Bigelow and Taylor each inclosing him a check of one thousand dollars for immediate necessities. He was touched by these things, but the checks were returned. Many of his creditors sent him personal letters assuring him that he was to forget his obligation to them completely until such time as the remembering would cost him no uneasiness.
Clemens, in fact, felt relieved, now that the worst had come, and wrote bright letters home. In one he said:
Mr. Rogers is perfectly satisfied that our course was right, absolutely right and wise—cheer up, the best is yet to come.
And again:
Now & then a good and dear Joe Twichell or Susy Warner condoles withme & says, “Cheer up-don't be downhearted,” and some other friendsays, “I'm glad and surprised to see how cheerful you are & howbravely you stand it,” & none of them suspect what a burden has beenlifted from me & how blithe I am inside. Except when I think ofyou, dear heart—then I am not blithe; for I seem to see yougrieving and ashamed, & dreading to look people in the face. For inthe thick of the fight there is cheer, but you are far away & cannothear the drum nor see the wheeling squadrons. You only seem to seerout, retreat, & dishonored colors dragging in the dirt—whereasnone of these things exist. There is temporary defeat, but nodishonor—& we will march again. Charley Warner said to-day, “Sho,Livy isn't worrying. So long as she's got you and the children shedoesn't care what happens. She knows it isn't her affair.” Whichdidn't convince me.
Olivia Clemens wrote bravely and encouragingly to him, and more cheerfully than she felt, for in a letter to her sister she said:
The hideous news of Webster & Co.'s failure reached me by cable onThursday, and Friday morning Galignani's Messenger had a squib aboutit. Of course I knew it was likely to come, but I had great hopethat it would be in some way averted. Mr. Rogers was so sure therewas no way out but failure that I suppose it was true. But I have aperfect horror and heart-sickness over it. I cannot get away fromthe feeling that business failure means disgrace. I suppose italways will mean that to me. We have put a great deal of money intothe concern, and perhaps there would have been nothing but to keepputting it in and losing it. We certainly now have not much tolose. We might have mortgaged the house; that was the only thing Icould think of to do. Mr. Clemens felt that there would never beany end, and perhaps he was right. At any rate, I know that he wasconvinced that it was the only thing, because when he went back hepromised me that if it was possible to save the thing he would do soif only on account of my sentiment in the matter.Sue, if you were to see me you would see that I have grown old veryfast during this last year. I have wrinkled.Most of the time I want to lie down and cry. Everything seems to meso impossible. I do not make things go very well, and I feel thatmy life is an absolute and irretrievable failure. Perhaps I amthankless, but I so often feel that I should like to give it up anddie. However, I presume that if I could have the opportunity Ishould at once desire to live.
Clemens now hurried back to Paris, arriving about the middle of May, his second trip in two months. Scarcely had he got the family settled at La Bourboule-les-Bains, a quiet watering-place in the southern part of France, when a cable from Mr. Rogers, stating that the typesetter was perfected, made him decide to hurry back to America to assist in securing the new fortune. He did not go, however. Rogers wrote that the machine had been installed in the Times-Herald office, Chicago, for a long and thorough trial. There would be plenty of time, and Clemens concluded to rest with his family at La Bourboule-les-Bains. Later in the summer they went to Etretat, where he settled down to work.
That summer (July, '94.) the 'North American Review' published “In Defense of Harriet Shelley,” a rare piece of literary criticism and probably the most human and convincing plea ever made for that injured, ill-fated woman. An admirer of Shelley's works, Clemens could not resist taking up the defense of Shelley's abandoned wife. It had become the fashion to refer to her slightingly, and to suggest that she had not been without blame for Shelley's behavior. A Shelley biography by Professor Dowden, Clemens had found particularly irritating. In the midst of his tangle of the previous year he had paused to give it attention. There were times when Mark Twain wrote without much sequence, digressing this way and that, as his fancy led him, charmingly and entertainingly enough, with no large, logical idea. He pursued no such method in this instance. The paper on Harriet Shelley is a brief as direct and compact and cumulative as could have been prepared by a trained legal mind of the highest order, and it has the added advantage of being the utterance of a human soul voicing an indignation inspired by human suffering and human wrong. By no means does it lack humor, searching and biting sarcasm. The characterization of Professor Dowden's Life of Shelley as a “literary cake-walk” is a touch which only Mark Twain could have laid on. Indeed, the “Defense of Harriet Shelly,” with those early chapters of Joan at Florence, maybe counted as the beginning for Mark Twain of a genuine literary renaissance. It was to prove a remarkable period less voluminous than the first, but even more choice, containing, as it would, besides Joan and the Shelley article, the rest of that remarkable series collected now as Literary Essays; the Hadleyburg story; “Was it Heaven or Hell?”; those masterly articles on our national policies; closing at last with those exquisite memories, in his final days.
The summer of 1894 found Mark Twain in the proper frame of mind for literary work. He was no longer in a state of dread. At Etretat, a watering-place on the French coast, he returned eagerly to the long-neglected tale of Joan—“a book which writes itself,” he wrote Mr. Rogers—a tale which tells itself; I merely have to hold the pen.” Etretat, originally a fishing-village, was less pretentious than to-day, and the family had taken a small furnished cottage a little way back from the coast—a charming place, and a cheap one—as became their means. Clemens worked steadily at Etretat for more than a month, finishing the second part of his story, then went over to Rouen to visit the hallowed precincts where Joan dragged out those weary months that brought her to the stake. Susy Clemens was taken ill at Rouen, and they lingered in that ancient city, wandering about its venerable streets, which have been changed but slowly by the centuries, and are still full of memories.
They returned to Paris at length—to the Brighton; their quarters of the previous winter—but presently engaged for the winter the studio home of the artist Pomroy at 169 rue de l'Universite, beyond the Seine. Mark Twain wrote of it once:
It was a lovely house; large, rambling, quaint, charmingly furnishedand decorated, built upon no particular plan, delightfully uncertainand full of surprises. You were always getting lost in it, andfinding nooks and corners which you did not know were there andwhose presence you had not suspected before. It was built by a richFrench artist, and he had also furnished it and decorated ithimself. The studio was coziness itself. With us it served as adrawing-room, sitting-room, living-room, dancing-room—we used itfor everything. We couldn't get enough of it. It is odd that itshould have been so cozy, for it was 40 feet long, 40 feet high, and30 feet wide, with a vast fireplace on, each side, in the middle,and a musicians' gallery at one end.
Mrs. Clemens had hoped to return to America, to their Hartford home. That was her heart's desire—to go back once more to their old life and fireside, to forget all this period of exile and wandering. Her letters were full of her home-longing; her three years of absence seemed like an eternity.
In its way, the Pomroy house was the best substitute for home they had found. Its belongings were of the kind she loved. Susy had better health, and her husband was happy in his work. They had much delightful and distinguished company. Her letters tell of these attractive things, and of their economies to make their income reach.
It was near the end of the year that the other great interest—the machine—came finally to a conclusion. Reports from the test had been hopeful during the summer. Early in October Clemens, receiving a copy of the Times-Herald, partly set by the machine, wrote: “The Herald has just arrived, and that column is healing for sore eyes. It affects me like Columbus sighting land.” And again on the 28th:
It seems to me that things couldn't well be going better at Chicagothan they are. There's no other machine that can set type eighthours with only seventeen minutes' stoppage through cussedness. Theothers do rather more stopping than working. By and by our machineswill be perfect; then they won't stop at all.
But that was about the end of the good news. The stoppages became worse and worse. The type began to break—the machine had its old trouble: it was too delicately adjusted—too complicated.
“Great guns, what is the matter with it?” wrote Clemens in November when he received a detailed account of its misconduct.
Mr. Rogers and his son-in-law, Mr. Broughton, went out to Chicago to investigate. They went to the Times-Herald office to watch the type-setter in action. Mr. Rogers once told of this visit to the writer of these chapters. He said:
“Certainly it was a marvelous invention. It was the nearest approach to a human being in the wonderful things it could do of any machine I have ever known. But that was just the trouble; it was too much of a human being and not enough of a machine. It had all the complications of the human mechanism, all the liability of getting out of repair, and it could not be replaced with the ease and immediateness of the human being. It was too costly; too difficult of construction; too hard to set up. I took out my watch and timed its work and counted its mistakes. We watched it a long time, for it was most interesting, most fascinating, but it was not practical—that to me was clear.”
It had failed to stand the test. The Times-Herald would have no more of it. Mr. Rogers himself could see the uselessness of the endeavor. He instructed Mr. Broughton to close up the matter as best he could and himself undertook the harder task of breaking the news to Mark Twain. His letters seem not to have been preserved, but the replies to them tell the story.
169 rue de l'Universite,PARIS, December 22, 1894.DEAR MR. ROGERS,—I seemed to be entirely expecting your letter, andalso prepared and resigned; but Lord, it shows how little we knowourselves and how easily we can deceive ourselves. It hit me like athunder-clap. It knocked every rag of sense out of my head, and Iwent flying here and there and yonder, not knowing what I was doing,and only one clearly defined thought standing up visible andsubstantial out of the crazy storm-drift—that my dream of ten yearswas in desperate peril and out of the 60,000 or 70,000 projects forits rescue that came flocking through my skull not one would holdstill long enough for me to examine it and size it up. Have youever been like that? Not so much, I reckon.There was another clearly defined idea—I must be there and see itdie. That is, if it must die; and maybe if I were there we mighthatch up some next-to-impossible way to make it take up its bed andtake a walk.So, at the end of four hours I started, still whirling, and walkedover to the rue Scribe—4 p.m.—and asked a question or two and wastold I should be running a big risk if I took the 9 p.m. train forLondon and Southampton; “better come right along at 6.52 per Havrespecial and step aboard the New York all easy and comfortable.”Very! and I about two miles from home and no packing done.Then it occurred to me that none of these salvation notions thatwere whirlwinding through my head could be examined or madeavailable unless at least a month's time could be secured. So Icabled you, and said to myself that I would take the French steamerto-morrow (which will be Sunday).By bedtime Mrs. Clemens had reasoned me into a fairly rational andcontented state of mind; but of course it didn't last long. So Iwent on thinking—mixing it with a smoke in the dressing-room oncean hour—until dawn this morning. Result—a sane resolution; nomatter what your answer to my cable might be I would hold still andnot sail until I should get an answer to this present letter which Iam now writing or a cable answer from you saying “Come” or “Remain.”I have slept 6 hours, my pond has clarified, and I find the sedimentof my 70,000 projects to be of this character:
He follows with a detailed plan for reconstructing the machine, using brass type, etc., and concludes:
Don't say I'm wild. For really I'm sane again this morning.I am going right along with Joan now, and wait untroubled till Ihear from you. If you think I can be of the least use cable me“Come.” I can write Joan on board ship and lose no time. Also Icould discuss my plan with the publisher for a de luxe Joan, timebeing an object, for some of the pictures could be made over here,cheaply and quickly, that would cost much more time and money inAmerica.
The second letter followed five days later:
169 rue de l'Universite,PARIS, December 27, 1894.DEAR MR. ROGERS,—Notwithstanding your heart is “old and hard” youmake a body choke up. I know you “mean every word you say” and I dotake it “in the same spirit in which you tender it.” I shall keepyour regard while we two live—that I know; for I shall alwaysremember what you have done for me, and that will insure me againstever doing anything that could forfeit it or impair it.It is six days or seven days ago that I lived through thatdespairing day, and then through a night without sleep; then settleddown next day into my right mind (or thereabouts) and wrote you. Iput in the rest of that day till 7 P.m. plenty comfortably enoughwriting a long chapter of my book; then went to a masked ballblacked up as Uncle Remus, taking Clara along, and we had a goodtime. I have lost no day since, and suffered no discomfort to speakof, but drove my troubles out of my mind and had good success inkeeping them out—through watchfulness. I have done a good week'swork and put the book a good way ahead in the Great Trial [of Joan],which is the difficult part: the part which requires the mostthought and carefulness. I cannot see the end of the Trial yet, butI am on the road. I am creeping surely toward it.“Why not leave them all to me?” My business brothers? I take you bythe hand! I jump at the chance!I ought to be ashamed and I am trying my best to be ashamed—and yetI do jump at the chance in spite of it. I don't want to writeIrving and I don't want to write Stoker. It doesn't seem as if Icould. But I can suggest something for you to write them; and thenif you see that I am unwise you can write them something quitedifferent. Now this is my idea:1. To return Stoker's $100 to him and keep his stock.2. And tell Irving that when luck turns with me I will makegood to him what the salvage from the dead Co. fails to pay himof his $500.[P. S. Madam says No, I must face the music. So I inclose myeffort—to be used if you approve, but not otherwise.]We shall try to find a tenant for our Hartford house; not an easymatter, for it costs heavily to live in. We can never live in itagain; though it would break the family's hearts if they couldbelieve it.Nothing daunts Mrs. Clemens or makes the world look black to her—which is the reason I haven't drowned myself.I got the Xmas journals which you sent and I thank you for that Xmasremembrance.We all send our deepest and warmest greetings to you and all ofyours and a Happy New Year!S. L. CLEMENS.—[Brain Stoker and Sir Henry Irving had each taken a small interest inthe machine. The inclosure for Stoker ran as follows:]MY DEAR STOKER,—I am not dating this, because it is not to bemailed at present.When it reaches you it will mean that there is a hitch in my machineenterprise—a hitch so serious as to make it take to itself theaspect of a dissolved dream. This letter, then, will contain chequefor the $100 which you have paid. And will you tell Irving for me—I can't get up courage enough to talk about this misfortune myself,except to you, whom by good luck I haven't damaged yet—that whenthe wreckage presently floats ashore he will get a good deal of his$500 back; and a dab at a time I will make up to him the rest.I'm not feeling as fine as I was when I saw you there in your home.Please remember me kindly to Mrs. Stoker. I gave up that Londonlecture-project entirely. Had to—there's never been a chance sinceto find the time.Sincerely yours,S. L. CLEMENS.
A week later he added what was about his final word on the subject:
Yours of December 21 has arrived, containing the circular tostockholders, and I guess the Co. will really quit—there doesn'tseem to be any other wise course.There's one thing which makes it difficult for me to soberly realizethat my ten-year dream is actually dissolved; and that is that itreverses my horoscope. The proverb says, “Born lucky, alwayslucky.”It was usual for one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drownedin the Mississippi or in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in adrowned condition 9 times before I learned to swim, and wasconsidered to be a cat in disguise. When the Pennsylvania blew upand the telegraph reported my brother as fatally injured (with 60others) but made no mention of me, my uncle said to my mother “itmeans that Sam was somewhere else, after being on that boat a yearand a half—he was born lucky.” Yes, I was somewhere else. I am sosuperstitious that I have always been afraid to have businessdealings with certain relatives and friends of mine because theywere unlucky people. All my life I have stumbled upon lucky chancesof large size, and whenever they were wasted it was because of myown stupidity and carelessness. And so I have felt entirely certainthat the machine would turn up trumps eventually. It disappointedme lots of times, but I couldn't shake off the confidence of alifetime in my luck.Well, whatever I get out of the wreckage will be due to good luck—the good luck of getting you into the scheme—for, but for thatthere wouldn't be any wreckage; it would be total loss.I wish you had been in at the beginning. Then we should have hadthe good luck to step promptly ashore.
So it was that the other great interest died and was put away forever. Clemens scarcely ever mentioned it again, even to members of his family. It was a dead issue; it was only a pity that it had ever seemed a live one. A combination known as the Regius Company took over Paige's interest, but accomplished nothing. Eventually—irony of fate—the Mergenthaler Company, so long scorned and derided, for twenty thousand dollars bought out the rights and assets and presented that marvelous work of genius, the mechanical wonder of the age, to the Sibley College of Engineering, where it is shown as the costliest piece of machinery, for its size, ever constructed. Mark Twain once received a letter from an author who had written a book calculated to assist inventors and patentees, asking for his indorsement. He replied:
DEAR SIR,—I have, as you say, been interested in patents andpatentees. If your books tell how to exterminate inventors send menine editions. Send them by express.Very truly yours,S. L. CLEMENS.
The collapse of the “great hope” meant to the Clemens household that their struggle with debt was to continue, that their economies were to become more rigid. In a letter on her wedding anniversary, February 2, (1895), Mrs. Clemens wrote to her sister:
As I was starting down the stairs for my breakfast this morning Mr.Clemens called me back and took out a five-franc piece and gave it to me,saying: “It is our silver-wedding day, and so I give you a present.”
It was a symbol of their reduced circumstances—of the change that twenty-five years had brought.
Literary matters, however, prospered. The new book progressed amazingly. The worst had happened; other and distracting interests were dead. He was deep in the third part-the story of Joan's trial and condemnation, and he forgot most other things in his determination to make that one a reality.
As at Viviani, Clemens read his chapters to the family circle. The story was drawing near the end now; tragedy was closing in on the frail martyr; the farce of her trial was wringing their hearts. Susy would say, “Wait, wait till I get a handkerchief,” and one night when the last pages had been written and read, and Joan had made the supreme expiation for devotion to a paltry king, Susy wrote in her diary, “To-night Joan of Arc was burned at the stake,” meaning that the book was finished.
Susy herself had literary taste and might have written had it not been that she desired to sing. There are fragments of her writing that show the true literary touch. Her father, in an unpublished article which he once wrote of her, quoted a paragraph, doubtless intended some day to take its place at the end of a story:
And now at last when they lie at rest they must go hence. It isalways so. Completion; perfection, satisfaction attained—a humanlife has fulfilled its earthly destiny. Poor human life! It maynot pause and rest, for it must hasten on to other realms andgreater consummations.
She was a deep reader, and she had that wonderful gift of brilliant, flowing, scintillating speech. From her father she had inherited a rare faculty of oral expression, born of a superior depth of mind, swiftness and clearness of comprehension, combined with rapid, brilliant, and forceful phrasing. Her father wrote of her gift:
Sometimes in those days of swift development her speech was rocket-like for vividness and for the sense it carried of visibility. Iseem to see it stream into the sky and burst full in a shower ofcolored fire.
We are dwelling here a moment on Susy, for she was at her best that winter.
She was more at home than the others. Her health did not permit her to go out so freely and her father had more of her companionship. They discussed many things—the problems of life and of those beyond life, philosophies of many kinds, and the subtleties of literary art. He recalled long after how once they lost themselves in trying to solve the mystery of the emotional effect of certain word-combinations—certain phrases and lines of verse—as, for instance, the wild, free breath of the open that one feels in “the days when we went gipsying a long time ago” and the tender, sunlit, grassy slope and mossy headstones suggested by the simple words, “departed this life.” Both Susy and her father cared more for Joan than any of the former books. To Mr. Rogers, Clemens wrote:
“Possibly the book may not sell, but that is nothing—it was written for love.” A memorandum which he made at the time, apparently for no one but himself, brings us very close to the personality behind it.
Do you know that shock? I mean when you come at your regular hourinto the sick-room where you have watched for months and find themedicine-bottles all gone, the night-table removed, the bedstripped, the furniture set stiffly to rights, the windows up, theroom cold, stark, vacant—& you catch your breath & realize what hashappened.Do you know that shock?The man who has written a long book has that experience the morningafter he has revised it for the last time & sent it away to theprinter. He steps into his study at the hour established by thehabit of months—& he gets that little shock. All the litter &confusion are gone. The piles of dusty reference-books are gonefrom the chairs, the maps from the floor; the chaos of letters,manuscripts, note-books, paper-knives, pipes, matches, photographs,tobacco-jars, & cigar-boxes is gone from the writing-table, thefurniture is back where it used to be in the long-ago. Thehousemaid, forbidden the place for five months, has been there &tidied it up & scoured it clean & made it repellent & awful.I stand here this morning contemplating this desolation, & I realizethat if I would bring back the spirit that made this hospital home-like & pleasant to me I must restore the aids to lingeringdissolution to their wonted places & nurse another patient through& send it forth for the last rites, With many or few to assistthere, as may happen; & that I will do.
The tragedy of 'Pudd'nhead Wilson', with its splendid illustrations by Louis Loeb, having finished its course in the Century Magazine, had been issued by the American Publishing Company. It proved not one of Mark Twain's great books, but only one of his good books. From first to last it is interesting, and there are strong situations and chapters finely written. The character of Roxy is thoroughly alive, and her weird relationship with her half-breed son is startling enough. There are not many situations in fiction stronger than that where half-breed Tom sells his mother down the river into slavery. The negro character is well drawn, of course-Mark Twain could not write it less than well, but its realism is hardly to be compared with similar matter in his other books—in Tom Sawyer, for instance, or Huck Finn. With the exceptions of Tom, Roxy, and Pudd'nhead the characters are slight. The Twins are mere bodiless names that might have been eliminated altogether. The character of Pudd'nhead Wilson is lovable and fine, and his final triumph at the murder trial is thrilling in the extreme. Identification by thumb-marks was a new feature in fiction then—in law, too, for that matter. But it is chiefly Pudd'nhead Wilson's maxims, run at the head of each chapter, that will stick in the memory of men. Perhaps the book would live without these, but with them it is certainly immortal.
Such aphorisms as: “Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits”; “Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example”; “When angry count four, and when very angry swear,” cannot perish; these, with the forty or so others in this volume and the added collection of rare philosophies that head the chapters of Following the Equator, have insured to Philosopher Pudd'nhead a respectful hearing for all time.—[The story of Pudd'nhead Wilson was dramatized by Frank Mayo, who played it successfully as long as he lived. It is by no means dead, and still pays a royalty to the Mayo and Clemens estates.]
Clemens had meant to begin another book, but he decided first to make a trip to America, to give some personal attention to publishing matters there. They were a good deal confused. The Harpers had arranged for the serial and book publication of Joan, and were negotiating for the Webster contracts. Mr. Rogers was devoting priceless time in an effort to establish amicable relations between the Harpers and the American Company at Hartford so that they could work on some general basis that would be satisfactory and profitable to all concerned. It was time that Clemens was on the scene of action. He sailed on the New York on the 23rd of February, and a little more than a month later returned by the Paris—that is, at the end of March. By this time he had altogether a new thought. It was necessary to earn a large sum of money as promptly as possible, and he adopted the plan which twice before in his life in 1872 and in 1884:—had supplied him with needed funds. Loathing the platform as he did, he was going back to it. Major Pond had proposed a lecture tour soon after his failure.
“The loss of a fortune is tough,” wrote Pond, “but there are other resources for another fortune. You and I will make the tour together.”
Now he had resolved to make a tour-one that even Pond himself had not contemplated. He would go platforming around the world! He would take Pond with him as far as the Pacific coast, arranging with some one equally familiar with the lecture circuit on the other side of the Pacific. He had heard of R. S. Smythe, who had personally conducted Henry M. Stanley and other great lecturers through Australia and the East, and he wrote immediately, asking information and advice concerning such a tour. Clemens himself has told us in one of his chapters how his mental message found its way to Smythe long before his written one, and how Smythe's letter, proposing just such a trip, crossed his own.
He sailed for America, with the family on the 11th of May, and a little more than a week later, after four years of exile, they found themselves once more at beautiful Quarry Farm. We may imagine how happy they were to reach that peaceful haven. Mrs. Clemens had written:
“It is, in a way, hard to go home and feel that we are not able to open our house. But it is an immense delight to me to think of seeing our friends.”
Little at the farm was changed. There were more vines on the home—the study was overgrown—that was all. Even Ellerslie remained as the children had left it, with all the small comforts and utensils in place. Most of the old friends were there; only Mrs. Langdon and Theodore Crane were missing. The Beechers drove up to see them, as formerly, and the old discussions on life and immortality were taken up in the old places.
Mrs. Beecher once came with some curious thin layers of leaves of stone which she had found, knowing Mark Twain's interest in geology. Later, when they had been discussing the usual problems, he said he would write an agreement on those imperishable leaves, to be laid away until the ages should solve their problems. He wrote it in verse:
If you prove right and I prove wrong,A million years from now,In language plain and frank and strongMy error I'll avowTo your dear waking face.If I prove right, by God His grace,Full sorry I shall be,For in that solitude no traceThere'll be of you and me.A million years, O patient stone,You've waited for this message.Deliver it a million hence;(Survivor pays expressage.)MARK TWAINContract with Mrs. T. K. Beecher, July 2, 1895.
Pond came to Elmira and the route westward was arranged. Clemens decided to give selections from his books, as he had done with Cable, and to start without much delay. He dreaded the prospect of setting out on that long journey alone, nor could Mrs. Clemens find it in her heart to consent to such a plan. It was bitterly hard to know what to do, but it was decided at last that she and one of the elder daughters should accompany him, the others remaining with their aunt at Quarry Farm. Susy, who had the choice, dreaded ocean travel, and felt that she would be happier and healthier to rest in the quiet of that peaceful hilltop. She elected to remain with her aunt and Jean; and it fell to Clara to go. Major Pond and his wife would accompany them as far as Vancouver. They left Elmira on the night of the 14th of July. When the train pulled away their last glimpse was of Susy, standing with the others under the electric light of the railway platform, waving them good-by.
Clemens had been ill in Elmira with a distressing carbuncle, and was still in no condition to undertake steady travel and entertainment in that fierce summer heat. He was fearful of failure. “I sha'n't be able to stand on a platform,” he wrote Mr. Rogers; but they pushed along steadily with few delays. They began in Cleveland, thence by the Great Lakes, traveling by steamer from one point to another, going constantly, with readings at every important point—Duluth, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Winnipeg, Butte, and through the great Northwest, arriving at Vancouver at last on August 16th, but one day behind schedule time.
It had been a hot, blistering journey, but of immense interest, for none of them had traveled through the Northwest, and the wonder and grandeur of it all, its scenery, its bigness, its mighty agriculture, impressed them. Clemens in his notes refers more than once to the “seas” and “ocean” of wheat.
There is the peace of the ocean about it and a deep contentment, aheaven-wide sense of ampleness, spaciousness, where pettiness andall small thoughts and tempers must be out of place, not suited toit, and so not intruding. The scattering, far-off homesteads, withtrees about them, were so homelike and remote from the warringworld, so reposeful and enticing. The most distant and faintestunder the horizon suggested fading ships at sea.
The Lake travel impressed him; the beauties and cleanliness of the Lake steamers, which he compares with those of Europe, to the disadvantage of the latter. Entering Port Huron he wrote:
The long approach through narrow ways with flat grass and woodedland on both sides, and on the left a continuous row of summercottages, with small-boat accommodations for visiting across thelittle canals from family to family, the groups of summer-dressedyoung people all along waving flags and handkerchiefs and firingcannon, our boat replying with toots of the hoarse whistle and nowand then a cannon, and meeting steamers in the narrow way, and oncethe stately sister-ship of the line crowded with summer-dressedpeople waving-the rich browns and greens of the rush-grown, far-reaching flat-lands, with little glimpses of water away on theirfarther edges, the sinking sun throwing a crinkled broad carpet ofgold on the water-well, it is the perfection of voyaging.
It had seemed a doubtful experiment to start with Mrs. Clemens on that journey in the summer heat; but, strange to say, her health improved, and she reached Vancouver by no means unfit for the long voyage ahead. No doubt the change and continuous interest and their splendid welcome everywhere and their prosperity were accountable. Everywhere they were entertained; flowers filled their rooms; carriages and committees were always waiting. It was known that Mark Twain had set out for the purpose of paying his debts, and no cause would make a deeper appeal to his countrymen than that, or, for that matter, to the world at large.
From Winnipeg he wrote to Mr. Rogers: