My wife was for years afflicted with freckles, and though everythingwas done for her relief that could be done, all was in vain. But,sir, since her first glance at your map they have entirely left her.She has nothing but convulsions now.
It is said that the “Map of Paris” found its way to Berlin, where the American students in the beer-halls used to pretend to quarrel over it until they attracted the attention of the German soldiers that might be present. Then they would wander away and leave it on the table and watch results. The soldiers would pounce upon it and lose their tempers over it; then finally abuse it and revile its author, to the satisfaction of everybody.
The larger number of “Memoranda” sketches have properly found oblivion to-day. They were all, or nearly all, collected by a Canadian pirate, C. A. Backas, in a volume bearing the title of Memoranda,—[Also by a harpy named John Camden Hotten (of London), of whom we shall hear again. Hotten had already pirated The Innocents, and had it on the market before Routledge could bring out the authorized edition. Routledge later published the “Memoranda” under the title of Sketches, including the contents of the Jumping Frog book.]—a book long ago suppressed. Only about twenty of the Galaxy contributions found place in Sketches New and Old, five years later, and some of these might have been spared as literature. “To Raise Poultry,” “John Chinaman in New York,” and “History Repeats Itself” are valuable only as examples of his work at that period. The reader may consult them for himself.
But we are losing sight of more important things. From the very beginning Mark Twain's home meant always more to him than his work. The life at 472 Delaware Avenue had begun with as fair a promise as any matrimonial journey ever undertaken: There seemed nothing lacking: a beautiful home, sufficient income, bright prospects—these things, with health and love; constitute married happiness. Mrs. Clemens wrote to her sister, Mrs. Crane, at the end of February: “Sue, we are two as happy people as you ever saw. Our days seem to be made up of only bright sunlight, with no shadow in them.” In the same letter the husband added: “Livy pines and pines every day for you, and I pine and pine every day for you, and when we both of us are pining at once you would think it was a whole pine forest let loose.”
To Redpath, who was urging lecture engagements for the coming season, he wrote:
DEAR RED,—I am not going to lecture any more forever. I have gotthings ciphered down to a fraction now. I know just about what itwill cost to live, and I can make the money without lecturing.Therefore, old man, count me out.
And still later, in May:
I guess I am out of the field permanently. Have got a lovely wife,a lovely house, bewitchingly furnished, a lovely carriage, and acoachman whose style and dignity are simply awe-in-spiring, nothingless; and I am making more money than necessary, by considerable,and therefore why crucify myself nightly on the platform? Thesubscriber will have to be excused for the present season at least.
So they were very happy during those early months, acquiring pleasantly the education which any matrimonial experience is sure to furnish, accustoming themselves to the uses of housekeeping, to life in partnership, with all the discoveries and mental and spiritual adaptations that belong to the close association of marriage. They were far, very far, apart on many subjects. He was unpolished, untrained, impulsive, sometimes violent. Twichell remembers that in the earlier days of their acquaintance he wore a slouch hat pulled down in front, and smoked a cigar that sometimes tilted up and touched the brim of it. The atmosphere and customs of frontier life, the Westernisms of that day, still clung to him. Mrs. Clemens, on the other hand, was conservative, dainty, cultured, spiritual. He adored her as little less than a saint, and she became, indeed, his saving grace. She had all the personal refinement which he lacked, and she undertook the work of polishing and purifying her life companion. She had no wish to destroy his personality, to make him over, but only to preserve his best, and she set about it in the right way—gently, and with a tender gratitude in each achievement.
She did not entirely approve of certain lines of his reading; or, rather, she did not understand them in those days. That he should be fond of history and the sciences was natural enough, but when the Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself, appeared, and he sat up nights to absorb it, and woke early and lighted the lamp to follow the career of the great showman, she was at a loss to comprehend this particular literary passion, and indeed was rather jealous of it. She did not realize then his vast interest in the study of human nature, or that such a book contained what Mr. Howells calls “the root of the human matter,” the inner revelation of the human being at first hand.
Concerning his religious observances her task in the beginning was easy enough. Clemens had not at that time formulated any particular doctrines of his own. His natural kindness of heart, and especially his love for his wife, inclined him toward the teachings and customs of her Christian faith—unorthodox but sincere, as Christianity in the Langdon family was likely to be. It took very little persuasion on his wife's part to establish family prayers in their home, grace before meals, and the morning reading of a Bible chapter. Joe Goodman, who made a trip East, and visited them during the early days of their married life, was dumfounded to see Mark Twain ask a blessing and join in family worship. Just how long these forms continued cannot be known to-day; the time of their abandonment has perished from the recollection of any one now living.
It would seem to have been the Bible-reading that wrought the change. The prayer and the blessing were to him sincere and gracious; but as the readings continued he realized that he had never before considered the Bible from a doctrinal point of view, as a guide to spiritual salvation. To his logical reasoning mind, a large portion of it seemed absurd: a mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology. From such material humanity had built its mightiest edifice of hope, the doctrines of its faith. After a little while he could stand it no longer.
“Livy,” he said one day, “you may keep this up if you want to, but I must ask you to excuse me from it. It is making me a hypocrite. I don't believe in this Bible. It contradicts my reason. I can't sit here and listen to it, letting you believe that I regard it, as you do, in the light of gospel, the word of God.”
He was moved to write an article on the human idea of God, ancient and modern. It contained these paragraphs:
The difference in importance, between the God of the Bible and theGod of the present day, cannot be described, it can only be vaguelyand inadequately figured to the mind.... If you make figuresto represent the earth and moon, and allow a space of one inchbetween them, to represent the four hundred thousand miles ofdistance which lies between the two bodies, the map will have to beeleven miles long in order to bring in the nearest fixed star.—[His figures were far too small. A map drawn on the scale of400,000 miles to the inch would need to be 1,100 miles long to takein both the earth and the nearest fixed star. On such a map theearth would be one-fiftieth of an inch in diameter—the size of asmall grain of sand.]—So one cannot put the modern heavens on amap, nor the modern God; but the Bible God and the Bible heavens canbe set down on a slate and yet not be discommoded....The difference between that universe and the modern one revealed byscience is as the difference between a dust-flecked ray in a barnand the sublime arch of the Milky Way in the skies. Its God wasstrictly proportioned to its dimensions. His sole solicitude wasabout a handful of truculent nomads. He worried and fretted overthem in a peculiarly and distractingly human way. One day he coaxedand petted them beyond their due, the next he harried and lashedthem beyond their deserts. He sulked, he cursed, he raged, hegrieved, according to his mood and the circumstances, but all to nopurpose; his efforts were all vain, he could not govern them. Whenthe fury was on him he was blind to all reason—he not onlyslaughtered the offender, but even his harmless little children anddumb cattle....To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive,fierce and ever fickle and changeful master; to trust the true Godis to trust a Being who has uttered no promises, but whosebeneficent, exact, and changeless ordering of the machinery of hiscolossal universe is proof that he is at least steadfast to hispurposes; whose unwritten laws, so far as they affect man, beingequal and impartial, show that he is just and fair; these things,taken together, suggest that if he shall ordain us to livehereafter, he will still be steadfast, just, and fair toward us. Weshall not need to require anything more.
It seems mild enough, obvious, even orthodox, now—so far have we traveled in forty years. But such a declaration then would have shocked a great number of sincerely devout persons. His wife prevailed upon him not to print it. She respected his honesty—even his reasoning, but his doubts were a long grief to her, nevertheless. In time she saw more clearly with his vision, but this was long after, when she had lived more with the world, had become more familiar with its larger needs, and the proportions of created things.
They did not mingle much or long with the social life of Buffalo. They received and returned calls, attended an occasional reception; but neither of them found such things especially attractive in those days, so they remained more and more in their own environment. There is an anecdote which seems to belong here.
One Sunday morning Clemens noticed smoke pouring from the upper window of the house across the street. The owner and his wife, comparatively newcomers, were seated upon the veranda, evidently not aware of impending danger. The Clemens household thus far had delayed calling on them, but Clemens himself now stepped briskly across the street. Bowing with leisurely politeness, he said:
“My name is Clemens; we ought to have called on you before, and I beg your pardon for intruding now in this informal way, but your house is on fire.”
Almost the only intimate friends they had in Buffalo were in the family of David Gray, the poet-editor of the Courier. Gray was a gentle, lovable man. “The gentlest spirit and the loveliest that ever went clothed in clay, since Sir Galahad laid him to rest,” Mark Twain once said of him. Both Gray and Clemens were friends of John Hay, and their families soon became intimate. Perhaps, in time, the Clemens household would have found other as good friends in the Buffalo circles; but heavy clouds that had lain unseen just beyond the horizon during those earlier months of marriage rose suddenly into view, and the social life, whatever it might have become, was no longer a consideration.
Jervis Langdon was never able to accept his son-in-law's invitation to the new home. His health began to fail that spring, and at the end of March, with his physician and Mrs. Langdon, he made a trip to the South. In a letter written at Richmond he said, “I have thrown off all care,” and named a list of the four great interests in which he was involved. Under “number 5,” he included “everything,” adding, “so you see how good I am to follow the counsel of my children.” He closed: “Samuel, I love your wife and she loves me. I think it is only fair that you should know it, but you need not flare up. I loved her before you did, and she loved me before she did you, and has not ceased since. I see no way but for you to make the most of it.” He was already a very ill man, and this cheerful letter was among the last he ever wrote.
He was absent six weeks and seemed to improve, but suffered an attack early in May; in June his condition became critical. Clemens and his wife were summoned to Elmira, and joined in the nursing, day and night. Clemens surprised every one by his ability as a nurse. His delicacy and thoughtfulness were unfailing; his original ways of doing things always amused and interested the patient. In later years Mark Twain once said:
“How much of the nursing did I do? My main watch was from midnightto four in the morning, nearly four hours. My other watch was amidday watch, and I think it was nearly three hours. The twosisters divided the remaining seventeen hours of the twenty-fourhours between them, and each of them tried generously andpersistently to swindle the other out of a part of her watch. Iwent to bed early every night, and tried to get sleep enough bymidnight to fit me for my work, but it was always a failure. I wenton watch sleepy and remained miserable, sleepy, and wretched,straight along through the four hours. I can still see myselfsitting by that bed in the melancholy stillness of the swelteringnight, mechanically waving a palm-leaf fan over the drawn, whiteface of the patient. I can still recall my noddings, my fleetingunconsciousness, when the fan would come to a standstill in my hand,and I woke up with a start and a hideous shock. During all thatdreary time I began to watch for the dawn long before it came. Whenthe first faint gray showed through the window-blinds I felt as nodoubt a castaway feels when the dim threads of the looked-for shipappear against the sky. I was well and strong, but I was a man,afflicted with a man's infirmity—lack of endurance.”
He always dealt with himself in this unsparing way; but those who were about him then have left a different story.
It was all without avail. Mr. Langdon rallied, and early in July there was hope for his recovery. He failed again, and on the afternoon of the 6th of August he died. To Mrs. Clemens, delicate and greatly worn with the anxiety and strain of watching, the blow was a crushing one. It was the beginning of a series of disasters which would mark the entire remaining period of their Buffalo residence.
There had been a partial plan for spending the summer in England, and a more definite one for joining the Twichells in the Adirondacks. Both of these projects were now abandoned. Mrs. Clemens concluded that she would be better at home than anywhere else, and invited an old school friend, a Miss Emma Nye, to visit her.
But the shadow of death had not been lifted from the Clemens household. Miss Nye presently fell ill with typhoid fever. There followed another long period of anxiety and nursing, ending with the death of the visitor in the new home, September 29th. The young wife was now in very delicate health; genuinely ill, in fact. The happy home had become a place of sorrow-of troubled nights and days. Another friend came to cheer them, and on this friend's departure Mrs. Clemens drove to the railway station. It was a hurried trip over rough streets to catch the train. She was prostrated on her return, and a little later, November 7, 1870, her first child, Langdon, was prematurely born. A dangerous illness followed, and complete recovery was long delayed. But on the 12th the crisis seemed passed, and the new father wrote a playful letter to the Twichells, as coming from the late arrival:
DEAR UNCLE AND AUNT,—I came into the world on the 7th inst., andconsequently am about five days old now. I have had wretched healthever since I made my appearance... I am not corpulent, nor amI robust in any way. At birth I only weighed four and one-halfpounds with my clothes on—and the clothes were the chief feature ofthe weight, too, I am obliged to confess, but I am doing finely, allthings considered.... My little mother is very bright andcheery, and I guess she is pretty happy, but I don't know whatabout. She laughs a great deal, notwithstanding she is sick abed.P. S.—Father says I had better write because you will be moreinterested in me, just now, than in the rest of the family.
A week later Clemens, as himself, wrote:
Livy is up and the prince keeps her busy and anxious these latterdays and nights, but I am a bachelor up-stairs and don't have tojump up and get the soothing sirup, though I would as soon do it asnot, I assure you. (Livy will be certain to read this letter.)Tell Harmony that I do hold the baby, and do it pretty handily too,though with occasional apprehensions that his loose head will falloff. I don't have to quiet him; he hardly ever utters a cry. He isalways thinking about something. He is a patient, good little baby.
Further along he refers to one of his reforms:
Smoke? I always smoke from three till five on Sunday afternoons,and in New York, the other day, I smoked a week, day and night. Butwhen Livy is well I smoke only those two hours on Sunday. I'm bossof the habit now, and shall never let it boss me any more.Originally I quit solely on Livy's account (not that I believedthere was the faintest reason in the matter, but just as I woulddeprive myself of sugar in my coffee if she wished it, or quitwearing socks if she thought them immoral), and I stick to it yet onLivy's account, and shall always continue to do so without a pang.But somehow it seems a pity that you quit, for Mrs. T. didn't mindit, if I remember rightly. Ah, it is turning one's back upon akindly Providence to spurn away from us the good creature he sent tomake the breath of life a luxury as well as a necessity, enjoyableas well as useful. To go quit smoking, when there ain't anysufficient excuse for it!—why, my old boy, when they used to tellme I would shorten my life ten years by smoking, they little knewthe devotee they were wasting their puerile words upon; they littleknew how trivial and valueless I would regard a decade that had nosmoking in it! But I won't persuade you, Twichell—I won't until Isee you again—but then we'll smoke for a week together, and thenshut off again.
The success of the Innocents naturally made a thrifty publisher like Bliss anxious for a second experiment. He had begun early in the year to talk about another book, but nothing had come of it beyond a project or two, more or less hazy and unpursued. Clemens at one time developed a plan for a Noah's Ark book, which was to detail the cruise of the Ark in diaries kept by various members of it-Shem, Ham, and the others. He really wrote some of it at the time, and it was an idea he never entirely lost track of. All along among his manuscripts appear fragments from those ancient voyagers. One of the earlier entries will show the style and purpose of the undertaking. It is from Shem's record:
Friday: Papa's birthday. He is 600 years old. We celebrated it ina big, black tent. Principal men of the tribe present. Afterwardthey were shown over the ark, which was looking desolate and emptyand dreary on account of a misunderstanding with the workmen aboutwages. Methuselah was as free with his criticisms as usual, and asvoluble and familiar, which I and my brothers do not like; for weare past our one hundredth year and married. He still calls meShemmy, just as he did when I was a child of sixty. I am still buta youth, it is true, but youth has its feelings, and I do not likethis....Saturday: Keeping the Sabbath.Sunday: Papa has yielded the advance and everybody is hard at work.The shipyard is so crowded that the men hinder each other; everybodyhurrying or being hurried; the rush and confusion and shouting andwrangling are astonishing to our family, who have always been usedto a quiet, country life.
It was from this germ that in a later day grew the diaries of Adam and Eve, though nothing very satisfactory ever came of this preliminary attempt. The author had faith in it, however. To Bliss he wrote:
I mean to take plenty of time and pains with the Noah's Ark book;maybe it will be several years before it is all written, but it willbe a perfect lightning striker when it is done.You can have the first say (that is plain enough) on that or anyother book I may prepare for the press, as long as you deal in afair, open, and honorable way with me. I do not think you will everfind me doing otherwise with you. I can get a book ready for youany time you want it; but you can't want one before this time nextyear, so I have plenty of time.
Bliss was only temporarily appeased. He realized that to get a book ready by the time he wanted it-a book of sufficient size and importance to maintain the pace set by the Innocents meant rather more immediate action than his author seemed to contemplate. Futhermore, he knew that other publishers were besieging the author of the Innocents; a disquieting thought. In early July, when Mr. Langdon's condition had temporarily improved, Bliss had come to Elmira and proposed a book which should relate the author's travels and experiences in the Far West. It was an inviting subject, and Clemens, by this time more attracted by the idea of authorship and its rewards, readily enough agreed to undertake the volume. He had been offered half profits, and suggested that the new contract be arranged upon these terms. Bliss, figuring on a sale of 100,000 copies, proposed seven and one-half per cent. royalty as an equivalent, and the contract was so arranged. In after-years, when the cost of manufacture and paper had become greatly reduced, Clemens, with but a confused notion of business details, believed he had been misled by Bliss in this contract, and was bitter and resentful accordingly. The figures remain, however, to show that Bliss dealt fairly. Seven and one-half per cent. of a subscription book did represent half profits up to 100,000 copies when the contract was drawn; but it required ten years to sell that quantity, and in that time conditions had changed. Bliss could hardly foresee that these things would be so, and as he was dead when the book touched the 100,000 mark he could not explain or readjust matters, whatever might have been his inclination.
Clemens was pleased enough with the contract when it was made. To Orion he wrote July 15 (1870):
Per contract I must have another six-hundred-page book ready for mypublisher January 1st, and I only began it to-day. The subject ofit is a secret, because I may possibly change it. But as it standsI propose to do up Nevada and California, beginning with the tripacross the country in the stage. Have you a memorandum of the routewe took, or the names of any of the stations we stopped at? Do youremember any of the scenes, names, incidents, or adventures of thecoach trip?—for I remember next to nothing about the matter. Jotdown a foolscap page of items for me. I wish I could have two days'talk with you.I suppose I am to get the biggest copyright this time ever paid on asubscription book in this country.
The work so promptly begun made little progress. Hard days of illness and sorrow followed, and it was not until September that it was really under way. His natural enthusiasm over any new undertaking possessed him. On the 4th he wrote Bliss:
During the past week I have written the first four chapters of the book, and I tell you 'The Innocents Abroad' will have to get up early to beat it. It will be a book that will jump straight into continental celebrity the first month it is issued.
He prophesied a sale of 90,000 copies during the first twelve months and declared, “I see the capabilities of the subject.”
But further disasters, even then impending, made continued effort impossible; the prospect of the new book for a time became gloomy, the idea of it less inspiring. Other plans presented themselves, and at one time he thought of letting the Galaxy publishers get out a volume of his sketches. In October he wrote Bliss that he was “driveling along tolerably fair on the book, getting off from twelve to twenty pages of manuscript a day.” Bliss naturally discouraged the Galaxy idea, and realizing that the new book might be long delayed, agreed to get out a volume of miscellany sufficiently large and important for subscription sales. He was doubtful of the wisdom of this plan, and when Clemens suddenly proposed a brand-new scheme his publisher very readily agreed to hold back the publication of Sketches indefinitely.
The new book was to be adventures in the diamond mines of South Africa, then newly opened and of wide public interest. Clemens did not propose to visit the mines himself, but to let another man do the traveling, make the notes, and write or tell him the story, after which Clemens would enlarge and elaborate it in his own fashion. His adaptation of the letters of Professor Ford, a year earlier, had convinced him that his plan would work out successfully on a larger scale; he fixed upon his old friend, J. H. Riley, of Washington—[“Riley-Newspaper Correspondent.” See Sketches.]—(earlier of San Francisco), as the proper person to do the traveling. At the end of November he wrote Bliss:
I have put my greedy hands upon the best man in America for mypurpose, and shall start him to the diamond field in South Africawithin a fortnight at my expense... that the book will have aperfectly beautiful sale.
He suggested that Bliss advance Riley's expense money, the amount to be deducted from the first royalty returns; also he proposed an increased royalty, probably in view of the startling splendor of the new idea. Bliss was duly impressed, and the agreement was finally made on a basis of eight and one-half per cent., with an advance of royalty sufficient to see Riley to South Africa and return.
Clemens had not yet heard from Riley definitely when he wrote his glowing letter to Bliss. He took it for granted that Riley, always an adventurous sort, would go. When Riley wrote him that he felt morally bound to the Alta, of which he was then Washington correspondent, also in certain other directions till the end of the session, Clemens wrote him at great length, detailing his scheme in full and urging him to write instantly to the Alta and others, asking a release on the ground of being offered a rare opportunity to improve his fortunes.
You know right well that I would not have you depart a hair from any obligation for any money. The boundless confidence that I have in you is born of a conviction of your integrity in small as well as in great things. I know plenty of men whose integrity I would trust to here, but not off yonder in Africa.
His proposal, in brief, to Riley was that the latter should make the trip to Africa without expense to himself, collect memoranda, and such diamond mines as might be found lying about handy. Upon his return he was to take up temporary residence in the Clemens household until the book was finished, after which large benefits were to accrue to everybody concerned. In the end Riley obtained a release from his obligations and was off for the diamond mines and fortune.
Poor fellow! He was faithful in his mission, and it is said that he really located a mining claim that would have made him and his independent for all time to come; but returning home with his precious memoranda and the news of good fortune, he accidentally wounded himself with a fork while eating; blood-poisoning set in (they called it cancer then), and he was only able to get home to die. His memoranda were never used, his mining claim was never identified. Certainly, death was closely associated with Mark Twain's fortunes during those earlier days of his married life.
On the whole the Buffalo residence was mainly a gloomy one; its ventures were attended by ill-fortune. For some reason Mark Twain's connection with the Express, while it had given the paper a wide reputation, had not largely increased its subscription. Perhaps his work on it was too varied and erratic. Nasby, who had popularized the Toledo Blade, kept steadily to one line. His farmer public knew always just what to expect when their weekly edition arrived.
Clemens and his wife dreamed of a new habitation, and new faces and surroundings. They agreed to offer their home and his interests in the Express for sale. They began to talk of Hartford, where Twichell lived, and where Orion Clemens and his wife had recently located.
Mark Twain's new fortunes had wrought changes in the affairs of his relatives. Already, before his marriage, he had prospected towns here and there with a view to finding an Eastern residence for his mother and sister, and he had kept Orion's welfare always in mind. When Pamela and her daughter came to his wedding he told them of a little city by the name of Fredonia (New York), not far from Buffalo, where he thought they might find a pleasant home.
“I went in there by night and out by night,” he said, “so I saw none of it, but I had an intelligent, attractive audience. Prospect Fredonia and let me know what it is like. Try to select a place where a good many funerals pass. Ma likes funerals. If you can pick a good funeral corner she will be happy.”
It was in her later life that Jane Clemens had developed this particular passion. She would consult the morning paper for any notice of obsequies and attend those that were easy of access. Watching the processions go by gave her a peculiar joy. Mrs. Moffett and her daughter did go to Fredonia immediately following the wedding. They found it residentially attractive, and rented a house before returning to St. Louis, a promptness that somewhat alarmed the old lady, who did not altogether fancy the idea of being suddenly set down in a strange house, in a strange land, even though it would be within hailing distance of Sam and his new wife. Perhaps the Fredonia funerals were sufficiently numerous and attractive, for she soon became attached to the place, and entered into the spirit of the life there, joining its temperance crusades, and the like, with zest and enjoyment.
Onion remained in St. Louis, but when Bliss established a paper called The Publisher, and wanted an editor, he was chosen for the place, originally offered to his brother; the latter, writing to Onion, said:
If you take the place with an air of perfect confidence in yourself, never once letting anything show in your bearing but a quiet, modest, entire, and perfect confidence in your ability to do pretty much anything in the world, Bliss will think you are the very man he needs; but don't show any shadow of timidity or unsoldierly diffidence, for that sort of thing is fatal to advancement.
I warn you thus because you are naturally given to knocking your pot over in this way, when a little judicious conduct would make it boil.
Meantime The Innocents Abroad had continued to prosper. Its author ranked mainly as a humorist, but of such colossal proportions that his contemporaries had seemed to dwindle; the mighty note of the “Frog of Calaveras” had dwarfed a score of smaller peepers. At the end of a year from its date of publication the book had sold up to 67,000 and was continuing at the rate of several thousand monthly.
“You are running it in staving, tiptop, first-class style,” Clemens wrote to Bliss. “On the average ten people a day come and hunt me up to tell me I am a benefactor! I guess that is a part of the program we didn't expect, in the first place.”
Apparently the book appealed to readers of every grade. One hundred and fifteen copies were in constant circulation at the Mercantile Library, in New York, while in the most remote cabins of America it was read and quoted. Jack Van Nostrand, making a long horseback tour of Colorado, wrote:
I stopped a week ago in a ranch but a hundred miles from nowhere. The occupant had just two books: the Bible and The Innocents Abroad—the former in good repair.
Across the ocean the book had found no less favor, and was being translated into many and strange tongues. By what seems now some veritable magic its author's fame had become literally universal. The consul at Hongkong, discussing English literature with a Chinese acquaintance, a mandarin, mentioned The Pilgrim's Progress.
“Yes, indeed, I have read it!” the mandarin said, eagerly. “We are enjoying it in China, and shall have it soon in our own language. It is by Mark Twain.”
In England the book had an amazing vogue from the beginning, and English readers were endeavoring to outdo the Americans in appreciation. Indeed, as a rule, English readers of culture, critical readers, rose to an understanding of Mark Twain's literary value with greater promptness than did the same class of readers at home. There were exceptions, of course. There were English critics who did not take Mark Twain seriously, there were American critics who did. Among the latter was a certain William Ward, an editor of a paper down in Macon, Georgia—The Beacon. Ward did not hold a place with the great magazine arbiters of literary rank. He was only an obscure country editor, but he wrote like a prophet. His article—too long to quote in full—concerned American humorists in general, from Washington Irving, through John Phoenix, Philander Doesticks, Sut Lovingwood, Artemus Ward, Josh Billings and Petroleum V. Nasby, down to Mark Twain. With the exception of the first and last named he says of them:
They have all had, or will have, their day. Some of them areresting beneath the sod, and others still live whose work willscarcely survive them. Since Irving no humorist in prose has heldthe foundation of a permanent fame except it be Mark Twain, andthis, as in the case of Irving, is because he is a pure writer.Aside from any subtle mirth that lurks through his composition, thegrace and finish of his more didactic and descriptive sentencesindicate more than mediocrity.
The writer then refers to Mark Twain's description of the Sphinx, comparing it with Bulwer's, which he thinks may have influenced it. He was mistaken in this, for Clemens had not read Bulwer—never could read him at any length.
Of the English opinions, that of The Saturday Review was perhaps most doubtful. It came along late in 1870, and would hardly be worth recalling if it were not for a resulting, or collateral, interest. Clemens saw notice of this review before he saw the review itself. A paragraph in the Boston Advertiser spoke of The Saturday Review as treating the absurdities of the Innocents from a serious standpoint. The paragraph closed:
We can imagine the delight of the humorist in reading this tributeto his power; and indeed it is so amusing in itself that he canhardly do better than reproduce the article in full in his nextmonthly “Memoranda.”
The old temptation to hoax his readers prompted Mark Twain to “reproduce” in the Galaxy, not the Review article, which he had not yet seen, but an imaginary Review article, an article in which the imaginary reviewer would be utterly devoid of any sense of humor and treat the most absurd incidents of The New Pilgrim's Progress as if set down by the author in solemn and serious earnest. The pretended review began:
Lord Macaulay died too soon. We never felt this so deeply as whenwe finished the last chapter of the above-named extravagant work.Macaulay died too soon; for none but he could mete out complete andcomprehensive justice to the insolence, the impudence, thepresumption, the mendacity, and, above all, the majestic ignoranceof this author.
The review goes on to cite cases of the author's gross deception. It says:
Let the cultivated English student of human nature picture tohimself this Mark Twain as a person capable of doing the followingdescribed things; and not only doing them, but, with incredibleinnocence, printing them tranquilly and calmly in a book. Forinstance:He states that he entered a hair-dresser's in Paris to get a shave,and the first “rake” the barber gave him with his razor it loosenedhis “hide,” and lifted him out of the chair.This is unquestionably extravagant. In Florence he was so annoyedby beggars that he pretends to have seized and eaten one in afrantic spirit of revenge. There is, of course, no truth in this.He gives at full length the theatrical program, seventeen oreighteen hundred years old, which he professes to have found in theruins of the Colosseum, among the dirt-and mold and rubbish. It isa sufficient comment upon this subject to remark that even a cast-iron program would not have lasted so long under the circumstances.
There were two and one-half pages of this really delightful burlesque which the author had written with huge-enjoyment, partly as a joke on the Review, partly to trick American editors, who he believed would accept it as a fresh and startling proof of the traditional English lack of humor.
But, as in the early sage-brush hoaxes, he rather overdid the thing. Readers and editors readily enough accepted it as genuine, so far as having come from The Saturday Review; but most of them, regarded it as a delicious bit of humor which Mark Twain himself had taken seriously, and was therefore the one sold. This was certainly startling, and by no means gratifying. In the next issue he undertook that saddest of all performances with tongue or pen: he explained his joke, and insisted on the truth of the explanation. Then he said:
If any man doubts my word now I will kill him. No, I will not killhim; I will win his money. I will bet him twenty to one, and letany New York publisher hold the stakes, that the statements I haveabove made as to the authorship of the article in question areentirely true.
But the Cincinnati Enquirer persisted in continuing the joke—in “rubbing it in,” as we say now. The Enquirer declared that Mark Twain had been intensely mortified at having been so badly taken in; that his explanation in the Galaxy was “ingenious, but unfortunately not true.” The Enquirer maintained that The Saturday Review of October 8, 1870, did contain the article exactly as printed in the “Memoranda,” and advised Mark Twain to admit that he was sold, and say no more about it.
This was enraging. Mark Twain had his own ideas as to how far a joke might be carried without violence, and this was a good way beyond the limits. He denounced the Enquirer's statement as a “pitiful, deliberate falsehood,” in his anger falling into the old-time phrasing of newspaper editorial abuse. He offered to bet them a thousand dollars in cash that they could not prove their assertions, and asked pointedly, in conclusion: “Will they swallow that falsehood ignominiously, or will they send an agent to the Galaxy office? I think the Cincinnati Enquirer must be edited by children.” He promised that if they did not accept his financial proposition he would expose them in the next issue.
The incident closed there. He was prevented, by illness in his household, from contributing to the next issue, and the second issue following was his final “Memoranda” installment. So the matter perished and was forgotten. It was his last editorial hoax. Perhaps he concluded that hoaxes in any form were dangerous playthings; they were too likely to go off at the wrong end.
It was with the April number (1871) that he concluded his relations with the Galaxy. In a brief valedictory he gave his reasons:
I have now written for the Galaxy a year. For the last eightmonths, with hardly an interval, I have had for my fellows andcomrades, night and day, doctors and watchers of the sick! Duringthese eight months death has taken two members of my home circle andmalignantly threatened two others. All this I have experienced, yetall the time have been under contract to furnish “humorous” matter,once a month, for this magazine. I am speaking the exact truth inthe above details. Please to put yourself in my place andcontemplate the grisly grotesqueness of the situation. I think thatsome of the “humor” I have written during this period could havebeen injected into a funeral sermon without disturbing the solemnityof the occasion.The “Memoranda” will cease permanently with this issue of themagazine. To be a pirate on a low salary, and with no share in theprofits of the business, used to be my idea of an uncomfortableoccupation, but I have other views now. To be a monthly humorist ina cheerless time is drearier.
Without doubt he felt a glad relief in being rid of this recurrent, imperative demand. He wrote to Orion that he had told the Galaxy people he would not write another article, long or short, for less than $500, and preferred not to do it at all.
The Galaxy department and the work on the Express were Mark Twain's farewell to journalism; for the “Memoranda” was essentially journalistic, almost as much so, and as liberally, as his old-time Enterprise position. Apparently he wrote with absolute freedom, unhampered by editorial policy or restriction. The result was not always pleasant, and it was not always refined. We may be certain that it was because of Mrs. Clemens's heavy burdens that year, and her consequent inability to exert a beneficent censorship, that more than one—more than a dozen—of the “Memoranda” contributions were permitted to see the light of print.
As a whole, the literary result of Mark Twain's Buffalo period does not reach the high standard of The Innocents Abroad. It was a retrogression—in some measure a return to his earlier form. It had been done under pressure, under heavy stress of mind, as he said. Also there was another reason; neither the subject treated nor the environment of labor had afforded that lofty inspiration which glorified every step of the Quaker City journey. Buffalo was a progressive city—a beautiful city, as American cities go—but it was hardly an inspiring city for literature, and a dull, dingy newspaper office was far, very far, from the pleasant decks of the Quaker City, the camp-fires of Syria, the blue sky and sea of the Mediterranean.