I remember a delightful luncheon that Charles Kingsley gave for Mr.Clemens; also an evening when Lord Dunraven brought Mr. Home, themedium, Lord Dunraven telling many of the remarkable things he hadseen Mr. Home do. I remember I wanted so much to see him float outof a seven or eight story window, and enter another, which LordDunraven said he had seen him do many times. But Mr. Home had beenvery ill, and said his power had left him. My great regret was thatwe did not see Carlyle, who was too sad and ill for visits.
Among others they met Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, and found him so shy that it was almost impossible to get him to say a word on any subject.
“The shyest full-grown man, except Uncle Remus, I ever met,†Clemens once wrote. “Dr. MacDonald and several other lively talkers were present, and the talk went briskly on for a couple of hours, but Carroll sat still all the while, except now and then when he answered a question.â€
At a dinner given by George Smalley they met Herbert Spencer, and at a luncheon-party at Lord Houghton's, Sir Arthur Helps, then a world-wide celebrity.
Lord Elcho, a large, vigorous man, sat at some distance down thetable. He was talking earnestly about the town of Godalming. Itwas a deep, flowing, and inarticulate rumble, but I caught theGodalming pretty nearly every time it broke free of the rumbling,and as all the strength was on the first end of the word, itstartled me every time, because it sounded so like swearing. In themiddle of the luncheon Lady Houghton rose, remarked to the guests onher right and on her left, in a matter-of-fact way, “Excuse me, Ihave an engagement,†and without further ceremony, she went off tomeet it. This would have been doubtful etiquette in America. LordHoughton told a number of delightful stories. He told them inFrench, and I lost nothing of them but the nubs.
Little Susy and her father thrived on London life, but after a time it wore on Mrs. Clemens. She delighted in the English cordiality and culture, but the demands were heavy, the social forms sometimes trying. Life in London was interesting, and in its way charming, but she did not enter into it with quite her husband's enthusiasm and heartiness. In the end they canceled all London engagements and quietly set out for Scotland. On the way they rested a few days in York, a venerable place such as Mark Twain always loved to describe. In a letter to Mrs. Langdon he wrote:
For the present we shall remain in this queer old walled town, withits crooked, narrow lanes, that tell us of their old day that knewno wheeled vehicles; its plaster-and-timber dwellings, with upperstories far overhanging the street, and thus marking their date,say three hundred years ago; the stately city walls, the castellatedgates, the ivy-grown, foliage-sheltered, most noble and picturesqueruin of St. Mary's Abbey, suggesting their date, say five hundredyears ago, in the heart of Crusading times and the glory of Englishchivalry and romance; the vast Cathedral of York, with its worncarvings and quaintly pictured windows, preaching of still remoterdays; the outlandish names of streets and courts and byways thatstand as a record and a memorial, all these centuries, of Danishdominion here in still earlier times; the hint here and there ofKing Arthur and his knights and their bloody fights with Saxonoppressors round about this old city more than thirteen hundredyears gone by; and, last of all, the melancholy old stone coffinsand sculptured inscriptions, a venerable arch and a hoary tower ofstone that still remain and are kissed by the sun and caressed bythe shadows every day, just as the sun and the shadows have kissedand, caressed them every lagging day since the Roman Emperor'ssoldiers placed them here in the times when Jesus the Son of Marywalked the streets of Nazareth a youth, with no more name or famethan the Yorkshire boy who is loitering down this street thismoment.
They reached Edinburgh at the end of July and secluded themselves in Veitch's family hotel in George Street, intending to see no one. But this plan was not a success; the social stress of London had been too much for Mrs. Clemens, and she collapsed immediately after their arrival. Clemens was unacquainted in Edinburgh, but remembered that Dr. John Brown, who had written Rab and His Friend, lived there. He learned his address, and that he was still a practising physician. He walked around to 23 Rutland Street, and made himself known. Dr. Brown came forthwith, and Mrs. Clemens speedily recovered under his able and inspiring treatment.
The association did not end there. For nearly a month Dr. Brown was their daily companion, either at the hotel, or in his own home, or on protracted drives when he made his round of visits, taking these new friends along. Dr. John was beloved by everybody in Edinburgh, everybody in Scotland, for that matter, and his story of Rab had won him a following throughout Christendom. He was an unpretentious sovereign. Clemens once wrote of him:
His was a sweet and winning face, as beautiful a face as I have everknown. Reposeful, gentle, benignant; the face of a saint at peacewith all the world and placidly beaming upon it the sunshine of lovethat filled his heart.
He was the friend of all dogs, and of all people. It has been told of him that once, when driving, he thrust his head suddenly out of the carriage window, then resumed his place with a disappointed look.
“Who was it?†asked his companion. “Some one you know?â€
“No,†he said. “A dog I don't know.â€
He became the boon companion and playmate of little Susy, then not quite a year and a half old. He called her Megalopis, a Greek term, suggested by her eyes; those deep, burning eyes that seemed always so full of life's sadder philosophies, and impending tragedy. In a collection of Dr. Brown's letters he refers to this period. In one place he says:
Had the author of The Innocents Abroad not come to Edinburgh at thattime we in all human probability might never have met, and what adeprivation that would have been to me during the last quarter of acentury!
And in another place:
I am attending the wife of Mark Twain. His real name is Clemens.She is a quite lovely little woman, modest and clever, and she has agirlie eighteen months old, her ludicrous miniature—and such eyes!
Those playmates, the good doctor and Megalopis, romped together through the hotel rooms with that complete abandon which few grown persons can assume in their play with children, and not all children can assume in their play with grown-ups. They played “bear,†and the “bear†(which was a very little one, so little that when it stood up behind the sofa you could just get a glimpse of yellow hair) would lie in wait for her victim, and spring out and surprise him and throw him into frenzies of fear.
Almost every day they made his professional rounds with him. He always carried a basket of grapes for his patients. His guests brought along books to read while they waited. When he stopped for a call he would say:
“Entertain yourselves while I go in and reduce the population.â€
There was much sight-seeing to do in Edinburgh, and they could not quite escape social affairs. There were teas and luncheons and dinners with the Dunfermlines and the Abercrombies, and the MacDonalds, and with others of those brave clans that no longer slew one another among the grim northern crags and glens, but were as sociable and entertaining lords and ladies as ever the southland could produce. They were very gentle folk indeed, and Mrs. Clemens, in future years, found her heart going back oftener to Edinburgh than to any other haven of those first wanderings. August 24th she wrote to her sister:
We leave Edinburgh to-morrow with sincere regret; we have had such adelightful stay here—we do so regret leaving Dr. Brown and hissister, thinking that we shall probably never see them again [asindeed they never did].
They spent a day or two at Glasgow and sailed for Ireland, where they put in a fortnight, and early in September were back in England again, at Chester, that queer old city where; from a tower on the wall, Charles I. read the story of his doom. Reginald Cholmondeley had invited them to visit his country seat, beautiful Condover Hall, near Shrewsbury, and in that lovely retreat they spent some happy, restful days. Then they were in the whirl of London once more, but escaped for a fortnight to Paris, sight-seeing and making purchases for the new home.
Mrs. Clemens was quite ready to return to America, by this time.
I am blue and cross and homesick [she wrote]. I suppose what makesme feel the latter is because we are contemplating to stay in Londonanother month. There has not one sheet of Mr. Clemens's proof comeyet, and if he goes home before the book is published here he willlose his copyright. And then his friends feel that it will bebetter for him to lecture in London before his book is published,not only that it will give him a larger but a more enviablereputation. I would not hesitate one moment if it were simply forthe money that his copyright will bring him, but if his reputationwill be better for his staying and lecturing, of course he ought tostay.... The truth is, I can't bear the thought of postponing goinghome.
It is rather gratifying to find Olivia Clemens human, like that, now and then. Otherwise, on general testimony, one might well be tempted to regard her as altogether of another race and kind.
Clemens concluded to hasten the homeward journey, but to lecture a few nights in London before starting. He would then accompany his little family home, and return at once to continue the lecture series and protect his copyright. This plan was carried out. In a communication to the Standard, October 7th, he said:
SIR,—In view of the prevailing frenzy concerning the SandwichIslands, and the inflamed desire of the public to acquireinformation concerning them, I have thought it well to tarry yetanother week in England and deliver a lecture upon this absorbingsubject. And lest it should be thought unbecoming in me, astranger, to come to the public rescue at such a time, instead ofleaving to abler hands a matter of so much moment, I desire toexplain that I do it with the best motives and the most honorableintentions. I do it because I am convinced that no one can allaythis unwholesome excitement as effectually as I can, and to allayit, and allay it as quickly as possible, is surely one thing that isabsolutely necessary at this juncture. I feel and know that I amequal to this task, for I can allay any kind of an excitement bylecturing upon it. I have saved many communities in this way. Ihave always been able to paralyze the public interest in any topicthat I chose to take hold of and elucidate with all my strength.Hoping that this explanation will show that if I am seeming tointrude I am at least doing it from a high impulse, I am, sir, yourobedient servant,MARK TWAIN.
A day later the following announcement appeared:
QUEEN'S CONCERT ROOMS,HANOVER SQUARE.MR. GEORGE DOLBY begs to announce thatMR. MARK TWAINWILL DELIVER ALECTUREOF AHUMOROUS CHARACTER,AS ABOVE, ONMONDAY EVENING NEXT, OCTOBER 13th, 1873,AND REPEAT IT IN THE SAME PLACE, ONTUESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 14th,WEDNESDAY “     “ 15th,THURSDAY “     “ 16th,FRIDAY “     “ 17th,At Eight o'Clock,ANDSATURDAY AFTERNOON, OCTOBER 18th,At Three o'Clock.SUBJECT:“Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands.â€As Mr. TWAIN has spent several months in these Islands, and is wellacquainted with his subject, the Lecture may be expected to furnishmatter of interest.STALLS, 5s.    UNRESERVED SEATS, 3s.
The prospect of a lecture from Mark Twain interested the London public. Those who had not seen him were willing to pay even for that privilege. The papers were encouraging; Punch sounded a characteristic note:
WELCOME TO A LECTURER“'Tis time we Twain did show ourselves.†'Twas saidBy Caesar, when one Mark had lost his head:By Mark, whose head's quite bright, 'tis said again:Therefore, “go with me, friends, to bless this Twain.â€â€”Punch.
Dolby had managed the Dickens lectures, and he proved his sound business judgment and experience by taking the largest available hall in London for Mark Twain.
On the evening of October 13th, in the spacious Queen's Concert Rooms, Hanover Square, Mark Twain delivered his first public address in England. The subject was “Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands,†the old lecture with which he had made his first great successes. He was not introduced. He appeared on the platform in evening dress, assuming the character of a manager announcing a disappointment.
Mr. Clemens, he said, had fully expected to be present. He paused and loud murmurs arose from the audience. He lifted his hand and they subsided. Then he added, “I am happy to say that Mark Twain is present, and will now give his lecture.†Whereupon the audience roared its approval.
It would be hardly an exaggeration to say that his triumph that week was a regal one. For five successive nights and a Saturday matinee the culture and fashion of London thronged to hear him discourse of their “fellow savages.†It was a lecture event wholly without precedent. The lectures of Artemus Ward,—[“Artemus the delicious,†as Charles Reade called him, came to London in June, 1866, and gave his “piece†in Egyptian Hall. The refined, delicate, intellectual countenance, the sweet, gave, mouth, from which one might have expected philosophical lectures retained their seriousness while listeners were convulsed with laughter. There was something magical about it. Every sentence was a surprise. He played on his audience as Liszt did on a piano most easily when most effectively. Who can ever forget his attempt to stop his Italian pianist—“a count in his own country, but not much account in thisâ€â€”who went on playing loudly while he was trying to tell us an “affecting incident†that occurred near a small clump of trees shown on his panorama of the Far West. The music stormed on-we could see only lips and arms pathetically moving till the piano suddenly ceased, and we heard-it was all we heard “and, she fainted in Reginald's arms.†His tricks have been at tempted in many theaters, but Artemus Ward was inimitable. And all the time the man was dying. (Moneure D. Conway, Autobiography.)]—who had quickly become a favorite in London, had prepared the public for American platform humor, while the daily doings of this new American product, as reported by the press, had aroused interest, or curiosity, to a high pitch. On no occasion in his own country had he won such a complete triumph. The papers for a week devoted columns of space to appreciation and editorial comment. The Daily News of October 17th published a column-and-a-half editorial on American humor, with Mark Twain's public appearance as the general text. The Times referred to the continued popularity of the lectures:
They can't be said to have more than whetted the public appetite, ifwe are to take the fact which has been imparted to us, that theholding capacity of the Hanover Square Rooms has been inadequate tothe demand made upon it every night by Twain's lecturing, as acriterion. The last lecture of this too brief course was deliveredyesterday before an audience which crammed to discomfort every partof the principal apartment of the Hanover Square Rooms....
At the close of yesterday's lecture Mark Twain was so loudly applauded that he returned to the stage, and, as soon as the audience gave him a chance of being heard, he said, with much apparent emotion:
“Ladies and Gentlemen,—I won't keep you one single moment in thissuffocating atmosphere. I simply wish to say that this is the lastlecture I shall have the honor to deliver in London until I returnfrom America, four weeks from now. I only wish to say (here Mr.Clemens faltered as if too much affected to proceed) I am verygrateful. I do not wish to appear pathetic, but it is somethingmagnificent for a stranger to come to the metropolis of the worldand be received so handsomely as I have been. I simply thank you.â€
The Saturday Review devoted a page, and Once a Week, under the head of “Cracking jokes,†gave three pages, to praise of the literary and lecture methods of the new American humorist. With the promise of speedy return, he left London, gave the lecture once in Liverpool, and with his party (October 21st) set sail for home.
In mid-Atlantic he remembered Dr. Brown, and wrote him:
We have plowed a long way over the sea, and there's twenty-twohundred miles of restless water between us now, besides the railwaystretch. And yet you are so present with us, so close to us, that aspan and a whisper would bridge the distance.
So it would seem that of all the many memories of that eventful half-year, that of Dr. Brown was the most present, the most tender.
Orion Clemens records that he met “Sam and Livy†on their arrival from England, November 2d, and that the president of the Mercantile Library Association sent up his card “four times,†in the hope of getting a chance to propose a lecture engagement—an incident which impressed Orion deeply in its evidence of his brother's towering importance. Orion himself was by this time engaged in various projects. He was inventing a flying-machine, for one thing, writing a Jules Verne story, reading proof on a New York daily, and contemplating the lecture field. This great blaze of international appreciation which had come to the little boy who used to set type for him in Hannibal, and wash up the forms and cry over the dirty proof, made him gasp.
They went to see Booth in Hamlet [he says], and Booth sent for Sam to come behind the scenes, and when Sam proposed to add a part to Hamlet, the part of a bystander who makes humorous modern comment on the situations in the play, Booth laughed immoderately.
Proposing a sacrilege like that to Booth! To what heights had this printer-pilot, miner-brother not attained!—[This idea of introducing a new character in Hamlet was really attempted later by Mark Twain, with the connivance of Joe Goodman [of all men], sad to relate. So far as is known it is the one stain on Goodman's literary record.]
Clemens returned immediately to England—the following Saturday, in fact—and was back in London lecturing again after barely a month's absence. He gave the “Roughing It†address, this time under the title of “Roughing It on the Silver Frontier,†and if his audiences were any less enthusiastic, or his houses less crowded than before, the newspapers of that day have left no record of it. It was the height of the season now, and being free to do so, he threw himself into the whirl of it, and for two months, beyond doubt, was the most talked-of figure in London. The Athenaeum Club made him a visiting member (an honor considered next to knighthood); Punch quoted him; societies banqueted him; his apartments, as before; were besieged by callers. Afternoons one was likely to find him in “Poets' Corner†of the Langham smoking-room, with a group of London and American authors—Reade, Collins, Miller, and the others—frankly rioting in his bold fancies. Charles Warren Stoddard was in London at the time, and acted as his secretary. Stoddard was a gentle poet, a delightful fellow, and Clemens was very fond of him. His only complaint of Stoddard was that he did not laugh enough at his humorous yarns. Clemens once said:
“Dolby and I used to come in after the lecture, or perhaps after being out to some dinner, and we liked to sit down and talk it over and tell yarns, and we expected Stoddard to laugh at them, but Stoddard would lie there on the couch and snore. Otherwise, as a secretary, he was perfect.â€
The great Tichborne trial was in progress then, and the spectacle of an illiterate impostor trying to establish his claim as the rightful heir to a great estate was highly diverting to Mark Twain.—[In a letter of this period he speaks of having attended one of the Claimant's “Evenings.â€]—He wanted to preserve the evidence as future literary material, and Stoddard day after day patiently collected the news reports and neatly pasted them into scrap-books, where they still rest, a complete record of that now forgotten farce. The Tichborne trial recalled to Mark Twain the claimant in the Lampton family, who from time to time wrote him long letters, urging him to join in the effort to establish his rights to the earldom of Durham. This American claimant was a distant cousin, who had “somehow gotten hold of, or had fabricated a full set of documents.â€
Colonel Henry Watterson, just quoted (also a Lampton connection), adds:
During the Tichborne trial Mark and I were in London, and one day hesaid to me: “I have investigated this Durham business down at theHerald's office. There is nothing to it. The Lamptons passed outof the earldom of Durham a hundred years ago. There were never anyestates; the title lapsed; the present earldom is a new creation,not in the same family at all. But I'll tell you what: if you'llput up $500, I'll put up $500 more; we'll bring our chap over hereand set him in as claimant, and, my word for it, Kenealy's fat boywon't be a marker to him.â€
It was a characteristic Mark Twain project, one of the sort he never earned out in reality, but loved to follow in fancy, and with the pen sometimes. The “Rightful Earl of Durham†continued to send letters for a long time after that (some of them still exist), but he did not establish his claim. No one but Mark Twain ever really got anything out of it. Like the Tennessee land, it furnished material by and by for a book. Colonel Watterson goes on to say that Clemens was only joking about having looked up the matter in the peerage; that he hadn't really looked it up at all, and that the earldom lies still in the Lampton family.
Another of Clemens's friends in London at this time was Prentice Mulford, of California. In later years Mulford acquired a wide reputation for his optimistic and practical psychologies. Through them he lifted himself out of the slough of despond, and he sought to extend a helping hand to others. His “White Cross Library†had a wide reading and a wide influence; perhaps has to this day. But in 1873 Mulford had not found the tangibility of thought, the secret of strength; he was only finding it, maybe, in his frank acknowledgment of shortcoming:
Now, Mark, I am down-very much down at present; you are up-where youdeserve to be. I can't ask this on the score of any past favors,for there have been none. I have not always spoken of you in termsof extravagant praise; have sometimes criticized you, which was due,I suppose, in part to an envious spirit. I am simply human. Somepeople in the same profession say they entertain no jealousy ofthose more successful. I can't. They are divine; I am not.
It was only that he wished Clemens to speak a word for him to Routledge, to get him a hearing for his work. He adds:
I shall be up myself some day, although my line is far apart fromyours. Whether you can do anything that I ask of you or not, Ishall be happy then, as I would be now, to do you any just and rightservice.... Perhaps I have mistaken my vocation. Certainly, if Iwas back with my rocker on the Tuolumne, I'd make it rattle livelierthan ever I did before. I have occasionally thought of LondonBridge, but the Thames is now so d—-d cold and dirty, and besides Ican swim, and any attempt at drowning would, through the mereinstinct of self-preservation, only result in my swimming ashore andruining my best clothes; wherefore I should be worse off than ever.
Of course Mark Twain granted the favor Mulford asked, and a great deal more, no doubt, for that was his way. Mulford came up, as he had prophesied, but the sea in due time claimed him, though not in the way he had contemplated. Years after he was one day found drifting off the shores of Long Island in an open boat, dead.
Clemens made a number of notable dinner speeches during this second London lecture period. His response to the toast of the “Ladies,†delivered at the annual dinner of the Scottish Corporation of London, was the sensational event of the evening.
He was obliged to decline an invitation to the Lord Mayor's dinner, whereupon his Lordship wrote to urge him to be present at least at the finale, when the welcome would be “none the less hearty,†and bespoke his attendance for any future dinners.
Clemens lectured steadily at the Hanover Square Rooms during the two months of his stay in London, and it was only toward the end of this astonishing engagement that the audience began to show any sign of diminishing. Early in January he wrote to Twichell:
I am not going to the provinces because I cannot get halls that are large enough. I always felt cramped in the Hanover Square Rooms, but I find that everybody here speaks with awe and respect of that prodigious hall and wonders that I could fill it so long.
I am hoping to be back in twenty days, but I have so much to go home to and enjoy with a jubilant joy that it hardly seems possible that it can come to pass in so uncertain a world as this.
In the same letter he speaks of attending an exhibition of Landseer's paintings at the Royal Academy:
Ah, they are wonderfully beautiful! There are such rich moonlightsand dusks in the “Challenge†and the “Combat,†and in that longflight of birds across a lake in the subdued flush of sunset (orsunrise, for no man can ever tell t'other from which in a picture,except it has the filmy morning mist breathing itself up from thewater), and there is such a grave analytical profundity in the faceof the connoisseurs; and such pathos in the picture of a fawnsuckling its dead mother on a snowy waste, with only the blood inthe footprints to hint that she is not asleep. And the way that hemakes animals' flesh and blood, insomuch that if the room weredarkened ever so little, and a motionless living animal placedbeside the painted one, no man could tell which was which.
I interrupted myself here, to drop a line to Shirley Brooks and suggest a cartoon for Punch. It was this: in one of the Academy saloons (in a suite where these pictures are) a fine bust of Landseer stands on a pedestal in the center of the room. I suggested that some of Landseer's best known animals be represented as having come down out of their frames in the moonlight and grouped themselves about the bust in mourning attitudes.
He sailed January 13 (1874.), on the Paythia, and two weeks later was at home, where all was going well. The Gilded Age had been issued a day or two before Christmas, and was already in its third edition. By the end of January 26,000 copies had been sold, a sale that had increased to 40,000 a month later. The new house was progressing, though it was by no means finished. Mrs. Clemens was in good health. Little Susy was full of such American activities as to earn the name of “The Modoc.†The promise of the year was bright.
There are bound to be vexations, flies in the ointment, as we say. It was Warner who conferred the name of Eschol Sellers on the chief figure of the collaborated novel. Warner had known it as the name of an obscure person, or perhaps he had only heard of it. At all events, it seemed a good one for the character and had been adopted. But behold, the book had been issued but a little while when there rose “out of the vasty deeps†a genuine Eschol Sellers, who was a very respectable person. He was a stout, prosperous-looking man, gray and about fifty-five years old. He came into the American Publishing Company offices and asked permission to look at the book. Mr. Bliss was out at the moment, but presently arrived. The visitor rose and introduced himself.
“My name is Eschol Sellers,†he said. “You have used it in one of your publications. It has brought upon me a lot of ridicule. My people wish me to sue you for $10,000 damages.â€
He had documents to prove his identity, and there was only one thing to be done; he must be satisfied. Bliss agreed to recall as many of the offending volumes as possible and change the name on the plates. He contacted the authors, and the name Beriah was substituted for the offending Eschol. It turned out that the real Sellers family was a large one, and that the given name Eschol was not uncommon in its several branches. This particular Eschol Sellers, curiously enough, was an inventor and a promoter, though of a much more substantial sort than his fiction namesake. He was also a painter of considerable merit, a writer and an antiquarian. He was said to have been a grandson of the famous painter, Rembrandt Peale.
Clemens vowed that he would not lecture in America that winter. The irrepressible Redpath besieged him as usual, and at the end of January Clemens telegraphed him, as he thought, finally. Following it with a letter of explanation, he added:
“I said to her, 'There isn't money enough in America to hire me to leave you for one day.'â€
But Redpath was a persistent devil. He used arguments and held out inducements which even Mrs. Clemens thought should not be resisted, and Clemens yielded from time to time, and gave a lecture here and there during February. Finally, on the 3d of March (1879.) he telegraphed his tormentor:
“Why don't you congratulate me? I never expect to stand on a lecture platform again after Thursday night.â€
Howells tells delightfully of a visit which he and Aldrich paid to Hartford just at this period. Aldrich went to visit Clemens and Howells to visit Charles Dudley Warner, Clemens coming as far as Springfield to welcome them.
In the good-fellowship of that cordial neighborhood we had two suchdays as the aging sun no longer shines on in his round. There wasconstant running in and out of friendly houses where the livelyhosts and guests called one another by their Christian names ornicknames, and no such vain ceremony as knocking or ringing atdoors. Clemens was then building the stately mansion in which hesatisfied his love of magnificence as if it had been anothersealskin coat, and he was at the crest of the prosperity whichenabled him to humor every whim or extravagance.
Howells tells how Clemens dilated on the advantages of subscription sale over the usual methods of publication, and urged the two Boston authors to prepare something which canvassers could handle.
“Why, any other means of bringing out a book is privately printing it,†he declared, and added that his subscription books in Bliss's hands sold right along, “just like the Bible.â€
On the way back to Boston Howells and Aldrich planned a subscription book which would sell straight along, like the Bible. It was to be called “Twelve Memorable Murders.†They had dreamed two or three fortunes by the time they had reached Boston, but the project ended there.
“We never killed a single soul,†Howells said once to the writer of this memoir.
Clemens was always urging Howells to visit him after that. He offered all sorts of inducements.
You will find us the most reasonable people in the world. We hadthought of precipitating upon you, George Warner and his wife oneday, Twichell and his jewel of a wife another day, and CharlesPerkins and wife another. Only those—simply members of our familythey are. But I'll close the door against them all, which will“fix†all of the lot except Twichell, who will no more hesitate toclimb in the back window than nothing.And you shall go to bed when you please, get up when you please,talk when you please, read when you please.
A little later he was urging Howells or Aldrich, or both of them; to come to Hartford to live.
Mr. Hall, who lives in the house next to Mrs. Stowe's (just where wedrive in to go to our new house), will sell for $16,000 or $17,000.You can do your work just as well here as in Cambridge, can't you?Come! Will one of you boys buy that house? Now, say yes.
Certainly those were golden, blessed days, and perhaps, as Howells says, the sun does not shine on their like any more—not in Hartford, at least, for the old group that made them no longer assembles there. Hartford about this time became a sort of shrine for all literary visitors, and for other notables as well, whether of America or from overseas. It was the half-way place between Boston and New York, and pilgrims going in either direction rested there. It is said that travelers arriving in America, were apt to remember two things they wished to see: Niagara Falls and Mark Twain. But the Falls had no such recent advertising advantage as that spectacular success in London. Visitors were apt to begin in Hartford.
Howells went with considerable frequency after that, or rather with regularity, twice a year, or oftener, and his coming was always hailed with great rejoicing. They visited and ate around at one place and another among that pleasant circle of friends. But they were happiest afterward together, Clemens smoking continually, “soothing his tense nerves with a mild hot Scotch,†says Howells, “while we both talked, and talked, and tasked of everything in the heavens and on the earth, and the waters under the earth. After two days of this talk I would come away hollow, realizing myself best in the image of one of those locust-shells which you find sticking to the bark of trees at the end of summer.†Sometimes Clemens told the story of his early life, “the inexhaustible, the fairy, the Arabian Nights story, which I could never tire of even when it began to be told over again.â€
The Clemens household went to Quarry Farm in April, leaving the new house once more in the hands of the architect and builders. It was costing a vast sum of money, and there was a financial stress upon land. Mrs. Clemens, always prudent, became a little uneasy at times, though without warrant in those days, for her business statement showed that her holdings were only a little less than a quarter of a million in her own right, while her husband's books and lectures had been highly remunerative, and would be more so. They were justified in living in ample, even luxurious comfort, and how free from financial worries they could have lived for the rest of their days!
Clemens, realizing his happiness, wrote Dr. Brown:
Indeed I am thankful for the wifey and the child, and if there is one individual creature on all this footstool who is more thoroughly and uniformly and, unceasingly happy than I am I defy the world to produce him and prove him. In my opinion he don't exist. I was a mighty rough, coarse, unpromising subject when Livy took charge of me, four years ago, and I may still be to the rest of the world, but not to her. She has made a very creditable job of me.
Truly fortune not only smiled, but laughed. Every mail brought great bundles of letters that sang his praises. Robert Watt, who had translated his books into Danish, wrote of their wide popularity among his people. Madame Blanc (Th. Bentzon), who as early as 1872 had translated The Jumping Frog into French, and published it, with extended comment on the author and his work, in the 'Revue des deux mondes', was said to be preparing a review of 'The Gilded Age'. All the world seemed ready to do him honor.
Of course, one must always pay the price, usually a vexatious one. Bores stopped him on the street to repeat ancient and witless stories. Invented anecdotes, some of them exasperating ones, went the rounds of the press. Impostors in distant localities personated him, or claimed to be near relatives, and obtained favors, sometimes money, in his name. Trivial letters, seeking benefactions of every kind, took the savor from his daily mail. Letters from literary aspirants were so numerous that he prepared a “form†letter of reply:
DEAR SIR OR MADAM,—Experience has not taught me very much, still it has taught me that it is not wise to criticize a piece of literature, except to an enemy of the person who wrote it; then if you praise it that enemy admires—you for your honest manliness, and if you dispraise it he admires you for your sound judgment.
Yours truly, S. L. C.
Even Orion, now in Keokuk on a chicken farm, pursued him with manuscripts and proposals of schemes. Clemens had bought this farm for Orion, who had counted on large and quick returns, but was planning new enterprises before the first eggs were hatched. Orion Clemens was as delightful a character as was ever created in fiction, but he must have been a trial now and then to Mark Twain. We may gather something of this from a letter written by the latter to his mother and sister at this period:
I can't “encourage†Orion. Nobody can do that conscientiously, forthe reason that before one's letter has time to reach him he is offon some new wild-goose chase. Would you encourage in literature aman who the older he grows the worse he writes?I cannot encourage him to try the ministry, because he would changehis religion so fast that he would have to keep a traveling agentunder wages to go ahead of him to engage pulpits and board for him.I cannot conscientiously encourage him to do anything but potteraround his little farm and put in his odd hours contriving new andimpossible projects at the rate of 365 a year which is his customaryaverage. He says he did well in Hannibal! Now there is a man whoought to be entirely satisfied with the grandeurs, emoluments, andactivities of a hen farm.If you ask me to pity Orion I can do that. I can do it every dayand all day long. But one can't “encourage†quicksilver; becausethe instant you put your finger on it, it isn't there. No, I amsaying too much. He does stick to his literary and legalaspirations, and he naturally would elect the very two things whichhe is wholly and preposterously unfitted for. If I ever becomeable, I mean to put Orion on a regular pension without revealing thefact that it is a pension.He did presently allow the pension, a liberal one, which continueduntil neither Orion Clemens nor his wife had further earthly need ofit.
Mark Twain for some time had contemplated one of the books that will longest preserve his memory, 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'. The success of 'Roughing It' naturally made him cast about for other autobiographical material, and he remembered those days along the river-front in Hannibal—his skylarking with Tom Blankenship, the Bowen boys, John Briggs, and the rest. He had recognized these things as material—inviting material it was—and now in the cool luxury of Quarry Farm he set himself to spin the fabric of youth.
He found summer-time always his best period for literary effort, and on a hillside just by the old quarry, Mrs. Crane had built for him that spring a study—a little room of windows, somewhat suggestive of a pilot-house—overlooking the long sweep of grass and the dreamlike city below. Vines were planted that in the course of time would cover and embower it; there was a tiny fireplace for chilly days. To Twichell, of his new retreat, Clemens wrote:
It is the loveliest study you ever saw. It is octagonal, with a peaked roof, each face filled with a spacious window, and it sits perched in complete isolation on the top of an elevation that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant blue hills. It is a cozy nest and just room in it for a sofa, table, and three or four chairs, and when the storms sweep down the remote valley and the lightning flashes behind the hills beyond, and the rain beats upon the roof over my head, imagine the luxury of it.
He worked steadily there that summer. He would go up mornings, after breakfast, remaining until nearly dinner-time, say until five o'clock or after, for it was not his habit to eat luncheon. Other members of the family did not venture near the place, and if he was urgently wanted they blew a horn. Each evening he brought down his day's performance to read to the assembled family. He felt the need of audience and approval. Usually he earned the latter, but not always. Once, when for a day he put aside other matters to record a young undertaker's love-affair, and brought down the result in the evening, fairly bubbling with the joy of it, he met with a surprise. The tale was a ghastly burlesque, its humor of the most disheartening, unsavory sort. No one spoke during the reading, nobody laughed: The air was thick with disapproval. His voice lagged and faltered toward the end. When he finished there was heavy silence. Mrs. Clemens was the only one who could speak:
“Youth, let's walk a little,†she said.
The “Undertaker's Love Story†is still among the manuscripts of that period, but it is unlikely that it will ever see the light of print.—[This tale bears no relation to “The Undertaker's Story†in Sketches New and Old.]
The Tom Sawyer tale progressed steadily and satisfactorily. Clemens wrote Dr. Brown: