Clemens was able to write pretty steadily that summer in Nauheim and turned off a quantity of copy. He completed several short articles and stories, and began, or at least continued work on, two books—'Tom Sawyer Abroad' and 'Those Extraordinary Twins'—the latter being the original form of 'Pudd'nhead Wilson'. As early as August 4th he wrote to Hall that he had finished forty thousand words of the "Tom Sawyer" story, and that it was to be offered to some young people's magazine, Harper's Young People or St. Nicholas; but then he suddenly decided that his narrative method was altogether wrong. To Hall on the 10th he wrote:
I have dropped that novel I wrote you about because I saw a more effective way of using the main episode—to wit, by telling it through the lips of Huck Finn. So I have started Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer (still 15 years old) & their friend the freed slave Jim around the world in a stray balloon, with Huck as narrator, & somewhere after the end of that great voyage he will work in that original episode & then nobody will suspect that a whole book has been written & the globe circumnavigated merely to get that episode in in an effective (& at the same time apparently unintentional) way. I have written 12,000 words of this new narrative, & find that the humor flows as easily as the adventures & surprises—so I shall go along and make a book of from 50,000 to 100,000 words.
It is a story for boys, of course, & I think it will interest any boy between 8 years & 80.
When I was in New York the other day Mrs. Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas, wrote and offered me $5,000 for (serial right) a story for boys 50,000 words long. I wrote back and declined, for I had other matter in my mind then.
I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys, but will also strongly interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.
Now, this story doesn't need to be restricted to a child's magazine —it is proper enough for any magazine, I should think, or for a syndicate. I don't swear it, but I think so.
Proposed title—New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
He was full of his usual enthusiasm in any new undertaking, and writes of the Extraordinary Twins:
By and by I shall have to offer (for grown folks' magazine) a novel entitled, 'Those Extraordinary Twins'. It's the howling farce I told you I had begun awhile back. I laid it aside to ferment while I wrote Tom Sawyer Abroad, but I took it up again on a little different plan lately, and it is swimming along satisfactorily now. I think all sorts of folks will read it. It is clear out of the common order—it is a fresh idea—I don't think it resembles anything in literature.
He was quite right; it did not resemble anything in literature, nor did it greatly resemble literature, though something at least related to literature would eventually grow out of it.
In a letter written many years afterward by Frank Mason, then consul-general at Frankfort, he refers to "that happy summer at Nauheim." Mason was often a visitor there, and we may believe that his memory of the summer was justified. For one thing, Clemens himself was in better health and spirits and able to continue his work. But an even greater happiness lay in the fact that two eminent physicians had pronounced Mrs. Clemens free from any organic ills. To Orion, Clemens wrote:
We are in the clouds because the bath physicians say positively that Livy has no heart disease but has only weakness of the heart muscles and will soon be well again. That was worth going to Europe to find out.
It was enough to change the whole atmosphere of the household, and financial worries were less considered. Another letter to Orion relates history:
The Twichells have been here four days & we have had good times with them. Joe & I ran over to Homburg, the great pleasure-resort, Saturday, to dine with friends, & in the morning I went walking in the promenade & met the British ambassador to the Court of Berlin and he introduced me to the Prince of Wales. I found him a most unusually comfortable and unembarrassing Englishman.
Twichell has reported Mark Twain's meeting with the Prince (later Edward VII) as having come about by special request of the latter, made through the British ambassador. "The meeting," he says, "was a most cordial one on both sides, and presently the Prince took Mark Twain's arm and the two marched up and down, talking earnestly together, the Prince, solid, erect, and soldierlike, Clemens weaving along in his curious, swinging gait in a full tide of talk, and brandishing a sun-umbrella of the most scandalous description."
When they parted Clemens said:
"It has been, indeed, a great pleasure to meet your Royal Highness."
The Prince answered:
"And it is a pleasure, Mr. Clemens, to have met you—again."
Clemens was puzzled to reply.
"Why," he said, "have we met before?"
The Prince smiled happily.
"Oh yes," he said; "don't you remember that day on the Strand when you were on the top of a bus and I was heading a procession and you had on your new overcoat with flap-pockets?"—[See chap. clxiii, "A Letter to the Queen of England."]
It was the highest compliment he could have paid, for it showed that he had read, and had remembered all those years. Clemens expressed to Twichell regret that he had forgotten to mention his visit to the Prince's sister, Louise, in Ottawa, but he had his opportunity at a dinner next day. Later the Prince had him to supper and they passed an entire evening together.
There was a certain uneasiness in the Nauheim atmosphere that year, for the cholera had broken out at Hamburg, and its victims were dying at a terrific rate. It was almost impossible to get authentic news as to the spread of the epidemic, for the German papers were curiously conservative in their reports. Clemens wrote an article on the subject but concluded not to print it. A paragraph will convey its tenor.
What I am trying to make the reader understand is the strangeness of the situation here—a mighty tragedy being played upon a stage that is close to us, & yet we are as ignorant of its details as we should be if the stage were in China. We sit "in front," & the audience is in fact the world; but the curtain is down, & from behind it we hear only an inarticulate murmur. The Hamburg disaster must go into history as the disaster without a history.
He closes with an item from a physician's letter—an item which he says"gives you a sudden and terrific sense of the situation there."For in a line it flashes before you—this ghastly picture—a thingseen by the physician: a wagon going along the street with five sickpeople in it, and with them four dead ones.
'The American Claimant', published in May l (1892), did not bring a very satisfactory return. For one thing, the book-trade was light, and then the Claimant was not up to his usual standard. It had been written under hard circumstances and by a pen long out of practice; it had not paid, and its author must work all the harder on the new undertakings. The conditions at Nauheim seemed favorable, and they lingered there until well into September. To Mrs. Crane, who had returned to America, Clemens wrote on the 18th, from Lucerne, in the midst of their travel to Italy:
We remained in Nauheim a little too long. If we had left four or five days earlier we should have made Florence in three days. Hard trip because it was one of those trains that gets tired every 7 minutes and stops to rest three-quarters of an hour. It took us 3 1/2 hours to get there instead of the regulation 2 hours. We shall pull through to Milan to-morrow if possible. Next day we shall start at 10 AM and try to make Bologna, 5 hours. Next day, Florence, D. V. Next year we will walk. Phelps came to Frankfort and we had some great times—dinner at his hotel; & the Masons, supper at our inn—Livy not in it. She was merely allowed a glimpse, no more. Of course Phelps said she was merely pretending to be ill; was never looking so well & fine.
A Paris journal has created a happy interest by inoculating one of its correspondents with cholera. A man said yesterday he wished to God they would inoculate all of them. Yes, the interest is quite general and strong & much hope is felt.
Livy says I have said enough bad things, and better send all our loves & shut up. Which I do—and shut up.
They lingered at Lucerne until Mrs. Clemens was rested and better able to continue the journey, arriving at last in Florence, September 26th. They drove out to the Villa Viviani in the afternoon and found everything in readiness for their reception, even to the dinner, which was prepared and on the table. Clemens, in his notes, speaks of this and adds:
It takes but a sentence to state that, but it makes an indolent person tired to think of the planning & work and trouble that lie concealed in it.
Some further memoranda made at this time have that intimate interest which gives reality and charm. The 'contadino' brought up their trunks from the station, and Clemens wrote:
The 'contadino' is middle-aged & like the rest of the peasants—that is to say, brown, handsome, good-natured, courteous, & entirely independent without making any offensive show of it. He charged too much for the trunks, I was told. My informer explained that this was customary.
September 27. The rest of the trunks brought up this morning. He charged too much again, but I was told that this was also customary. It's all right, then. I do not wish to violate the customs. Hired landau, horses, & coachman. Terms, 480 francs a month & a pourboire to the coachman, I to furnish lodging for the man & the horses, but nothing else. The landau has seen better days & weighs 30 tons. The horses are feeble & object to the landau; they stop & turn around every now & then & examine it with surprise & suspicion. This causes delay. But it entertains the people along the road. They came out & stood around with their hands in their pockets & discussed the matter with each other. I was told that they said that a 30-ton landau was not the thing for horses like those—what they needed was a wheelbarrow.
His description of the house pictures it as exactly today as it did then,for it has not changed in these twenty years, nor greatly, perhaps, inthe centuries since it was built.It is a plain, square building, like a box, & is painted lightyellow & has green window-shutters. It stands in a commandingposition on the artificial terrace of liberal dimensions, which iswalled around with masonry. From the walls the vineyards & oliveorchards of the estate slant away toward the valley. There areseveral tall trees, stately stone-pines, also fig-trees & trees ofbreeds not familiar to me. Roses overflow the retaining-walls, &the battered & mossy stone urn on the gate-posts, in pink & yellowcataracts exactly as they do on the drop-curtains in the theaters.The house is a very fortress for strength. The main walls—allbrick covered with plaster—are about 3 feet thick. I have severaltimes tried to count the rooms of the house, but the irregularitiesbaffle me. There seem to be 28. There are plenty of windows &worlds of sunlight. The floors are sleek & shiny & full ofreflections, for each is a mirror in its way, softly imaging allobjects after the subdued fashion of forest lakes. The curiousfeature of the house is the salon. This is a spacious & loftyvacuum which occupies the center of the house. All the rest of thehouse is built around it; it extends up through both stories & itsroof projects some feet above the rest of the building. The senseof its vastness strikes you the moment you step into it & cast youreyes around it & aloft. There are divans distributed along itswalls. They make little or no show, though their aggregate lengthis 57 feet. A piano in it is a lost object. We have tried toreduce the sense of desert space & emptiness with tables & things,but they have a defeated look, & do not do any good. Whateverstands or moves under that soaring painted vault is belittled.
He describes the interior of this vast room (they grew to love it), dwelling upon the plaster-relief portraits above its six doors, Florentine senators and judges, ancient dwellers there and former owners of the estate.
The date of one of them is 1305—middle-aged, then, & a judge—he could have known, as a youth, the very greatest Italian artists, & he could have walked & talked with Dante, & probably did. The date of another is 1343—he could have known Boccaccio & spent his afternoons wandering in Fiesole, gazing down on plague-reeking Florence & listening to that man's improper tales, & he probably did. The date of another is 1463—he could have met Columbus & he knew the magnificent Lorenzo, of course. These are all Cerretanis —or Cerretani-Twains, as I may say, for I have adopted myself into their family on account of its antiquity—my origin having been heretofore too recent to suit me.
We are considering the details of Viviani at some length, for it was in this setting that he began and largely completed what was to be his most important work of this later time—in some respects his most important of any time—the 'Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc'. If the reader loves this book, and he must love it if he has read it, he will not begrudge the space here given to the scene of its inspiration. The outdoor picture of Viviani is of even more importance, for he wrote oftener out-of-doors than elsewhere. Clemens added it to his notes several months later, but it belongs here.
The situation of this villa is perfect. It is three miles from Florence, on the side of a hill. Beyond some hill-spurs is Fiesole perched upon its steep terraces; in the immediate foreground is the imposing mass of the Ross castle, its walls and turrets rich with the mellow weather-stains of forgotten centuries; in the distant plain lies Florence, pink & gray & brown, with the ruddy, huge dome of the cathedral dominating its center like a captive balloon, & flanked on the right by the smaller bulb of the Medici chapel & on the left by the airy tower of the Palazzo Vecchio; all around the horizon is a billowy rim of lofty blue hills, snowed white with innumerable villas. After nine months of familiarity with this panorama I still think, as I thought in the beginning, that this is the fairest picture on our planet, the most enchanting to look upon, the most satisfying to the eye & the spirit. To see the sun sink down, drowned in his pink & purple & golden floods, & overwhelm Florence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim & faint & turn the solid city into a city of dreams, is a sight to stir the coldest nature & make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy.
The Clemens household at Florence consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Clemens, Susy, and Jean. Clara had soon returned to Berlin to attend Mrs. Willard's school and for piano instruction. Mrs. Clemens improved in the balmy autumn air of Florence and in the peaceful life of their well-ordered villa. In a memorandum of October 27th Clemens wrote:
The first month is finished. We are wonted now. This carefree life at a Florentine villa is an ideal existence. The weather is divine, the outside aspects lovely, the days and nights tranquil and reposeful, the seclusion from the world and its worries as satisfactory as a dream. Late in the afternoons friends come out from the city & drink tea in the open air & tell what is happening in the world; & when the great sun sinks down upon Florence & the daily miracle begins they hold their breath & look. It is not a time for talk.
No wonder he could work in that environment. He finished 'Tom SawyerAbroad', also a short story, 'The L 1,000,000 Bank-Note' (planned manyyears before), discovered the literary mistake of the 'ExtraordinaryTwins' and began converting it into the worthier tale, 'Pudd'nheadWilson', soon completed and on its way to America.
With this work out of his hands, Clemens was ready for his great new undertaking. A seed sown by the wind more than forty years before was ready to bloom. He would write the story of Joan of Arc.
In a note which he made many years later Mark Twain declared that he was fourteen years at work on Joan of Arc; that he had been twelve years preparing for it, and that he was two years in writing it.
There is nothing in any of his earlier notes or letters to indicate that he contemplated the story of Joan as early as the eighties; but there is a bibliographical list of various works on the subject, probably compiled for him not much later than 1880, for the latest published work of the list bears that date. He was then too busy with his inventions and publishing schemes to really undertake a work requiring such vast preparation; but without doubt he procured a number of books and renewed that old interest begun so long ago when a stray wind had blown a leaf from that tragic life into his own. Joan of Arc, by Janet Tuckey, was apparently the first book he read with the definite idea of study, for this little volume had been recently issued, and his copy, which still exists, is filled with his marginal notes. He did not speak of this volume in discussing the matter in after-years. He may have forgotten it. He dwelt mainly on the old records of the trial which had been dug out and put into modern French by Quicherat; the 'Jeanne d'Arc' of J. Michelet, and the splendid 'Life of the Maid' of Lord Ronald Gower, these being remembered as his chief sources of information.—[The book of Janet Tuckey, however, and ten others, including those mentioned, are credited as "authorities examined in verification" on a front page of his published book. In a letter written at the conclusion of "Joan" in 1895, the author states that in the first two-thirds of the story he used one French and one English authority, while in the last third he had constantly drawn from five French and five English sources.]
"I could not get the Quicherat and some of the other books in English," he said, "and I had to dig them out of the French. I began the story five times."
None of these discarded beginnings exists to-day, but we may believe they were wisely put aside, for no story of the Maid could begin more charmingly, more rarely, than the one supposedly told in his old age by Sieur Louis de Conte, secretary of Joan of Arc, and translated by Jean Francois Alden for the world to read. The impulse which had once prompted Mark Twain to offer The Prince and the Pauper anonymously now prevailed. He felt that the Prince had missed a certain appreciation by being connected with his signature, and he resolved that its companion piece (he so regarded Joan) should be accepted on its merits and without prejudice. Walking the floor one day at Viviani, smoking vigorously, he said to Mrs. Clemens and Susy:
"I shall never be accepted seriously over my own signature. People always want to laugh over what I write and are disappointed if they don't find a joke in it. This is to be a serious book. It means more to me than anything I have ever undertaken. I shall write it anonymously."
So it was that that gentle, quaint Sieur de Conte took up the pen, and the tale of Joan was begun in that beautiful spot which of all others seems now the proper environment for its lovely telling.
He wrote rapidly once he got his plan perfected and his material arranged. The reading of his youth and manhood, with the vivid impressions of that earlier time, became now something remembered, not merely as reading, but as fact.
Others of the family went down into the city almost daily, but he remained in that still garden with Joan as his companion—the old Sieur de Conte, saturated with memories, pouring out that marvelous and tragic tale. At the end of each day he would read to the others what he had written, to their enjoyment and wonder.
How rapidly he worked may be judged from a letter which he wrote to Hall in February, in which he said:
I am writing a companion piece to 'The Prince and the Pauper', which is half done & will make 200,000 words.
That is to say, he had written one hundred thousand words in a period of perhaps six weeks, marvelous work when one remembers that after all he was writing history, some of which he must dig laboriously from a foreign source. He had always, more or less, kept up his study of the French, begun so long ago on the river and it stood him in good stead now. Still, it was never easy for him, and the multitude of notes along the margin of his French authorities bears evidence of his faithfulness and the magnitude of his toil. No previous work had ever required so much of him, such thorough knowledge; none had ever so completely commanded his interest. He would have been willing to remain shut away from visitors, to have been released altogether from social obligations; and he did avoid most of them. Not all, for he could not always escape, and perhaps did not always really wish to. Florence and its suburbs were full of delightful people—some of them his old friends. There were luncheons, dinners, teas, dances, concerts, operas always in progress somewhere, and not all of these were to be resisted even by an absorbed author who was no longer himself, but sad old Sieur de Conte, following again the banner of the Maid of Orleans, marshaling her twilight armies across his illumined page.
If all human events had not been ordered in the first act of the primal atom, and so become inevitable, it would seem a pity now that he must abandon his work half-way, and make another hard, distracting trip to America.
But it was necessary for him to go. Even Hall was no longer optimistic. His letters provided only the barest shreds of hope. Times were hard and there was every reason to believe they would be worse. The World's Fair year promised to be what it speedily became—one of the hardest financial periods this country has ever seen. Chicago could hardly have selected a more profitless time for her great exposition. Clemens wrote urging Hall to sell out all, or a portion, of the business—to do anything, indeed, that would avoid the necessity of further liability and increased dread. Every payment that could be spared from the sales of his manuscript was left in Hall's hands, and such moneys as still came to Mrs. Clemens from her Elmira interests were flung into the general fund. The latter were no longer large, for Langdon & Co. were suffering heavily in the general depression, barely hoping to weather the financial storm.
It is interesting to note that age and misfortune and illness had a tempering influence on Mark Twain's nature. Instead of becoming harsh and severe and bitter, he had become more gentle, more kindly. He wrote often to Hall, always considerately, even tenderly. Once, when something in Hall's letter suggested that he had perhaps been severe, he wrote:
Mrs. Clemens is deeply distressed, for she thinks I have been blaming you or finding fault with you about something. But most assuredly that cannot be. I tell her that although I am prone to write hasty and regrettable things to other people I am not a bit likely to write such things to you. I can't believe I have done anything so ungrateful. If I have, pile coals of fire upon my head for I deserve it. You have done magnificently with the business, & we must raise the money somehow to enable you to reap a reward for all that labor.
He was fond of Hall. He realized how honest and resolute and industrious he had been. In another letter he wrote him that it was wonderful he had been able to "keep the ship afloat in the storm that has seen fleets and fleets go down"; and he added: "Mrs. Clemens says I must tell you not to send us any money for a month or two, so that you may be afforded what little relief is in our power."
The type-setter situation seemed to promise something. In fact, the machine once more had become the principal hope of financial salvation. The new company seemed really to begetting ahead in spite of the money stringency, and was said to have fifty machines well under way: About the middle of March Clemens packed up two of his shorter manuscripts which he had written at odd times and forwarded them to Hall, in the hope that they would be disposed of and the money waiting him on his arrival; and a week later, March 22, 1893, he sailed from Genoa on the Kaiser Wilhelm II, a fine, new boat. One of the manuscripts was 'The Californian's Tale' and the other was 'Adam's Diary'.—[It seems curious that neither of these tales should have found welcome with the magazines. "The Californian's Tale" was published in the Liber Scriptorum, an Authors' Club book, edited by Arthur Stedman. The 'Diary' was disposed of to the Niagara Book, a souvenir of Niagara Falls, which contained sketches by Howells, Clemens, and others. Harper's Magazine republished both these stories in later years—the Diary especially with great success.]
Some joke was likely to be played on Mark Twain during these ocean journeys, and for this particular voyage an original one was planned. They knew how he would fume and swear if he should be discovered with dutiable goods and held up in the Custom House, and they planned for this effect. A few days before arriving in New York one passenger after another came to him, each with a box of expensive cigars, and some pleasant speech expressing friendship and appreciation and a hope that they would be remembered in absence, etc., until he had perhaps ten or a dozen very choice boxes of smoking material. He took them all with gratitude and innocence. He had never declared any dutiable baggage, entering New York alone, and it never occurred to him that he would need to do so now. His trunk and bags were full; he had the cigars made into a nice package, to be carried handily, and on his arrival at the North German Lloyd docks stood waiting among his things for the formality of Customs examination, his friends assembled for the explosion.
They had not calculated well; the Custom-House official came along presently with the usual "Open your baggage, please," then suddenly recognizing the owner of it he said:
"Oh, Mr. Clemens, excuse me. We have orders to extend to you the courtesies of the port. No examination of your effects is necessary."
It was the evening of Monday, April 3d, when he landed in New York and went to the Hotel Glenham. In his notes he tells of having a two-hour talk with Howells on the following night. They had not seen each other for two years, and their correspondence had been broken off. It was a happy, even if somewhat sad, reunion, for they were no longer young, and when they called the roll of friends there were many vacancies. They had reached an age where some one they loved died every year. Writing to Mrs. Crane, Clemens speaks of the ghosts of memory; then he says:
I dreamed I was born & grew up & was a pilot on the Mississippi & a miner & a journalist in Nevada & a pilgrim in the Quaker City & had a wife & children & went to live in a villa at Florence—& this dream goes on & on & sometimes seems so real that I almost believe it is real. I wonder if it is? But there is no way to tell, for if one applies tests they would be part of the dream, too, & so would simply aid the deceit. I wish I knew whether it is a dream or real.
He was made handsomely welcome in New York. His note-book says:
Wednesday. Dined with Mary Mapes Dodge, Howells, Rudyard Kipling &wife, Clarke,—[ William Fayal Clarke, now editor of St. NicholasMagazine.]—Jamie Dodge & wife.
Thursday, 6th. Dined with Andrew Carnegie, Prof. Goldwin Smith,John Cameron, Mr. Glenn. Creation of league for absorbing Canadainto our Union. Carnegie also wants to add Great Britain & Ireland.
It was on this occasion that Carnegie made his celebrated maxim about the basket and the eggs. Clemens was suggesting that Carnegie take an interest in the typesetter, and quoted the old adage that one should not put all of his eggs into one basket. Carnegie regarded him through half-closed lids, as was his custom, and answered:
"That's a mistake; put all your eggs into one basket—and watch that basket."
He had not come to America merely for entertainment. He was at the New York office of the type-setter company, acquiring there what seemed to be good news, for he was assured that his interests were being taken care of, and that within a year at most his royalty returns would place him far beyond the fear of want. He forwarded this good news to Italy, where it was sorely needed, for Mrs. Clemens found her courage not easy to sustain in his absence. That he had made his letter glowing enough, we may gather from her answer.
It does not seem credible that we are really again to have money to spend. I think I will jump around and spend money just for fun, and give a little away, if we really get some. What should we do and how should we feel if we had no bright prospects before us, and yet how many people are situated in that way?
He decided to make another trip to Chicago to verify, with his own eyes, the manufacturing reports, and to see Paige, who would appear to have become more elusive than ever as to contracts, written and implied. He took Hall with him, and wrote Orion to meet him at the Great Northern Hotel. This would give him a chance to see Orion and would give Orion a chance to see the great Fair. He was in Chicago eleven days, and in bed with a heavy cold almost the whole of that time. Paige came to see him at his rooms, and, as always, was rich in prospects and promises; full of protestations that, whatever came, when the tide of millions rolled in, they would share and share alike. The note-book says:
Paige shed even more tears than usual. What a talker he is! He could persuade a fish to come out and take a walk with him. When he is present I always believe him; I can't help it.
Clemens returned to New York as soon as he was able to travel. Going down in the elevator a man stepped in from one of the floors swearing violently. Clemens, leaning over to Hall, with his hand to his mouth, and in a whisper audible to every one, said:
"Bishop of Chicago."
The man, with a quick glance, recognized his fellow-passenger and subsided.
On May 13th Clemens took the Kaiser Wilhelm II. for Genoa. He had accomplished little, but he was in better spirits as to the machine. If only the strain of his publishing business had slackened even for a moment! Night and day it was always with him. Hall presently wrote that the condition of the money-market was "something beyond description. You cannot get money on anything short of government bonds." The Mount Morris Bank would no longer handle their paper. The Clemens household resorted to economies hitherto undreamed of. Mrs. Clemens wrote to her sister that she really did not see sometimes where their next money would come from. She reported that her husband got up in the night and walked the floor in his distress.
He wrote again to Hall, urging him to sell and get rid of the debts and responsibilities at whatever sacrifice:
I am terribly tired of business. I am by nature and disposition unfit for it, & I want to get out of it. I am standing on the Mount Morris volcano with help from the machine a long, long way off—& doubtless a long way further off than the Connecticut company imagine.
Get me out of business!
He knew something of the delays of completing a typesetting machine, and he had little faith in any near relief from that source. He wrote again go Hall, urging him to sell some of his type-setter royalties. They should be worth something now since the manufacturing company was actually in operation; but with the terrible state of the money-market there was no sale for anything. Clemens attempted to work, but put in most of his time footing up on the margin of his manuscript the amount of his indebtedness, the expenses of his household, and the possibilities of his income. It was weary, hard, nerve-racking employment. About the muddle of June they closed Viviani. Susy Clemens went to Paris to cultivate her voice, a rare soprano, with a view to preparing for the operatic stage. Clemens took Mrs. Clemens, with little Jean, to Germany for the baths. Clara, who had graduated from Mrs. Willard's school in Berlin, joined them in Munich, and somewhat later Susy also joined them, for Madame Marchesi, the great master of voice-culture, had told her that she must acquire physique to carry that voice of hers before she would undertake to teach her.
In spite of his disturbed state of mind Clemens must have completed some literary work during this period, for we find first mention, in a letter to Hall, of his immortal defense of Harriet Shelley, a piece of writing all the more marvelous when we consider the conditions of its performance. Characteristically, in the same letter, he suddenly develops a plan for a new enterprise—this time for a magazine which Arthur Stedman or his father will edit, and the Webster company will publish as soon as their present burdens are unloaded. But we hear no more of this project.
But by August he was half beside himself with anxiety. On the 6th he wrote Hall:
Here we never see a newspaper, but even if we did I could not come anywhere near appreciating or correctly estimating the tempest you have been buffeting your way through—only the man who is in it can do that—but I have tried not to burden you thoughtlessly or wantonly. I have been overwrought & unsettled in mind by apprehensions, & that is a thing that is not helpable when one is in a strange land & sees his resources melt down to a two months' supply & can't see any sure daylight beyond. The bloody machine offers but a doubtful outlook—& will still offer nothing much better for a long time to come; for when the "three weeks" are up, there will be three months' tinkering to follow, I guess. That is unquestionably the boss machine of the world, but is the toughest one on prophets when it is in an incomplete state that has ever seen the light.
And three days later:
Great Scott, but it's a long year—for you & me! I never knew the almanac to drag so. At least not since I was finishing that other machine.
I watch for your letters hungrily—just as I used to watch for the telegram saying the machine's finished—but when "next week certainly" suddenly swelled into "three weeks sure" I recognized the old familiar tune I used to hear so much. W——don't know what sick-heartedness is—but he is in a way to find out.
And finally, on the 4th:
I am very glad indeed if you and Mr. Langdon are able to see any daylight ahead. To me none is visible. I strongly advise that every penny that comes in shall be applied to paying off debts. I may be in error about this, but it seems to me that we have no other course open. We can pay a part of the debts owing to outsiders —none to Clemenses. In very prosperous times we might regard our stock & copyrights as assets sufficient, with the money owing to us, to square up & quit even, but I suppose we may not hope for such luck in the present condition of things.
What I am mainly hoping for is to save my book royalties. If they come into danger I hope you will cable me so that I can come over & try to save them, for if they go I am a beggar.
I would sail to-day if I had anybody to take charge of my family &help them through the difficult journeys commanded by the doctors.
A few days later he could stand it no longer, and on August 29 (1893) sailed, the second time that year, for New York.
Clemens took a room at The Players—"a cheap room," he wrote, "at $1.50 per day." It was now the end of September, the beginning of a long half-year, during which Mark Twain's fortunes were at a lower ebb than ever before; lower, even, than during those mining days among the bleak Esmeralda hills. Then he had no one but him self and was young. Now, at fifty-eight, he had precious lives dependent upon him, and he was weighed down with a vast burden of debt. The liabilities of Charles L. Webster & Co. were fully two hundred thousand dollars. Something like sixty thousand dollars of this was money supplied by Mrs. Clemens, but the vast remaining sum was due to banks, to printers, to binders, and to dealers in various publishing materials. Somehow it must be paid. As for their assets, they looked ample enough on paper, but in reality, at a time like this, they were problematical. In fact, their value was very doubtful indeed. What he was to do Clemens did not know. He could not even send cheerful reports to Europe. There was no longer anything to promise concerning the type-setter. The fifty machines which the company had started to build had dwindled to ten machines; there was a prospect that the ten would dwindle to one, and that one a reconstruction of the original Hartford product, which had cost so much money and so many weary years. Clemens spent a good part of his days at The Players, reading or trying to write or seeking to divert his mind in the company of the congenial souls there, waiting for-he knew not what.
Yet at this very moment a factor was coming into his life, a human element, a man to whom in his old age Mark Twain owed more than to any other of his myriad of friends. One night, when he was with Dr. Clarence C. Rice at the Murray Hill Hotel, Rice said:
"Clemens, I want you to know my friend, Mr. H. H. Rogers. He is an admirer of your books."
Clemens turned and was looking into the handsome, clean-cut features of the great financier, whose name was hardly so familiar then as it became at a later period, but whose power was already widely known and felt among his kind.
"Mr. Clemens," said Mr. Rogers, "I was one of your early admirers. I heard you lecture a long time ago on the Sandwich Islands. I was interested in the subject in those days, and I heard that Mark Twain was a man who had been there. I didn't suppose I'd have any difficulty getting a seat, but I did; the house was jammed. When I came away I realized that Mark Twain was a great man, and I have read everything of yours since that I could get hold of."
They sat down at a table, and Clemens told some of his amusing stories. Rogers was in a perpetual gale of laughter. When at last he rose to go the author and the financier were as old friends. Mr. Rogers urged him to visit him at his home. He must introduce him to Mrs. Rogers, he said, who was also his warm admirer. It was only a little while after this that Dr. Rice said to the millionaire:
"Mr. Rogers, I wish you would look into Clemens's finances a little: I am afraid they are a good deal confused."
This would be near the end of September, 1893. On October 18 Clemens wrote home concerning a possible combination of Webster & Co. with John Brisben Walker, of the 'Cosmopolitan', and added:
I have got the best and wisest man of the whole Standard Oil group-a multi-millionaire—a good deal interested in looking into the type- setter. He has been searching into that thing for three weeks and yesterday he said to me:
"I find the machine to be all you represent it. I have here exhaustive reports from my own experts, and I know every detail of its capacity, its immense construction, its cost, its history, and all about its inventor's character. I know that the New York company and the Chicago company are both stupid, and that they are unbusinesslike people, destitute of money and in a hopeless boggle."
Then he told me the scheme he had planned and said:
"If I can arrange with these people on this basis—it will take several weeks to find out—I will see to it that they get the money they need. In the mean time you 'stop walking the floor'."
Of course, with this encouragement, Clemens was in the clouds again. Furthermore, Rogers had suggested to his son-in-law, William Evarts Benjamin, also a subscription publisher, that he buy from the Webster company The Library of American Literature for fifty thousand dollars, a sum which provided for the more insistent creditors. There was hope that the worst was over. Clemens did in reality give up walking the floor, and for the time, at least, found happier diversions. He must not return to Europe as yet, for the type-setter matter was still far from conclusion. On the 11th of November he was gorgeously entertained by the Lotos Club in its new building. Introducing him, President Frank Lawrence said:
"What name is there in literature that can be likened to his? Perhaps some of the distinguished gentlemen about this table can tell us, but I know of none. Himself his only parallel, it seems to me. He is all our own—a ripe and perfect product of the American soil."
Those were feverish weeks of waiting, with days of alternate depression and exaltation as the pendulum swung to and fro between hope and despair. By daylight Clemens tried to keep himself strenuously busy; evenings and nights he plunged into social activities—dinners, amusements, suppers, balls, and the like. He was besieged with invitations, sought for by the gayest and the greatest; "Jamie" Dodge conferred upon him the appropriate title: of "The Belle of New York." In his letters home he describes in detail many of the festivities and the wildness with which he has flung himself into them, dilating on his splendid renewal of health, his absolute immunity from fatigue. He attributes this to his indifference to diet and regularities of meals and sleep; but we may guess that it was due to a reaction from having shifted his burden to stronger financial shoulders. Henry Rogers had taken his load upon him.
"It rests me," Rogers said, "to experiment with the affairs of a friend when I am tired of my own. You enjoy yourself. Let me work at the puzzle a little."
And Clemens, though his conscience pricked him, obeyed, as was his habit at such times. To Mrs. Clemens (in Paris now, at the Hotel Brighton) he wrote:
He is not common clay, but fine-fine & delicate. I did hate to burden his good heart & overworked head, but he took hold with avidity & said it was no burden to work for his friends, but a pleasure. When I arrived in September, Lord! how black the prospect was & how desperate, how incurably desperate! Webster & Co. had to have a small sum of money or go under at once. I flew to Hartford —to my friends—but they were not moved, not strongly interested, & I was ashamed that I went. It was from Mr. Rogers, a stranger, that I got the money and was by it saved. And then—while still a stranger—he set himself the task of saving my financial life without putting upon me (in his native delicacy) any sense that I was the recipient of a charity, a benevolence. He gave time to me —time, which could not be bought by any man at $100,000 a month—no, nor for three times the money.
He adds that a friend has just offered to Webster & Co. a book that arraigns the Standard Oil magnates individual by individual.
I wanted to say the only man I care for in the world, the only man I would give a d—-n for, the only man who is lavishing his sweat & blood to save me & mine from starvation is a Standard Oil magnate. If you know me, you know whether I want the book or not.
But I didn't say that. I said I didn't want any book; I wanted to get out of this publishing business & out of all business & was here for that purpose & would accomplish it if I could.
He tells how he played billiards with Rogers, tirelessly as always, until the millionaire had looked at him helplessly and asked:
"Don't you ever get tired?"
And he answered:
"I don't know what it is to get tired. I wish I did."
He wrote of going with Mr. Rogers to the Madison Square Garden to see an exhibition of boxing given by the then splendid star of pugilism, James J. Corbett. Dr. Rice accompanied him, and painters Robert Reid and Edward Simmons, from The Players. They had five seats in a box, and Stanford White came along presently and took Clemens into the champion's dressing-room.
Corbett has a fine face and is modest and diffident, besides being the most perfectly & beautifully constructed human animal in the world. I said:
"You have whipped Mitchell & maybe you will whip Jackson in June—but you are not done then. You will have to tackle me."
He answered, so gravely that one might easily have thought him inearnest:
"No, I am not going to meet you in the ring. It is not fair or right to require it. You might chance to knock me out, by no merit of your own, but by a purely accidental blow, & then my reputation would be gone & you would have a double one. You have got fame enough & you ought not to want to take mine away from me."
Corbett was for a long time a clerk in the Nevada Bank, in SanFrancisco.
There were lots of little boxing-matches to entertain the crowd; then at last Corbett appeared in the ring & the 8,000 people present went mad with enthusiasm. My two artists went mad about his form. They said they had never seen anything that came reasonably near equalling its perfection except Greek statues, & they didn't surpass it.
Corbett boxed 3 rounds with the middle-weight Australian champion —oh, beautiful to see!—then the show was over and we struggled out through a perfect mash of humanity. When we reached the street I found I had left my arctics in the box. I had to have them, so Simmons said he would go back & get them, & I didn't dissuade him. I wouldn't see how he was going to make his way a single yard into that solid incoming wave of people—yet he must plow through it full 50 yards. He was back with the shoes in 3 minutes!
How do you reckon he accomplished that miracle? By saying:
"Way, gentlemen, please—coming to fetch Mr. Corbett's overshoes."
The word flew from mouth to mouth, the Red Sea divided, & Simmons walked comfortably through & back, dry-shod. This is Fire-escape Simmons, the inveterate talker, you know: Exit—in case of Simmons.
I had an engagement at a beautiful dwelling close to The Players for 10.30; I was there by 10.45. Thirty cultivated & very musical ladies & gentlemen present—all of them acquaintances & many of them personal friends of mine. That wonderful Hungarian band was there (they charge $500 for an evening). Conversation and band until midnight; then a bite of supper; then the company was compactly grouped before me & I told them about Dr. B. E. Martin & the etchings, & followed it with the Scotch-Irish christening. My, but the Martin is a darling story! Next, the head tenor from the Opera sang half a dozen great songs that set the company wild, yes, mad with delight, that nobly handsome young Damrosch accompanying on the piano.
Just a little pause, then the band burst out into an explosion of weird and tremendous dance-music, a Hungarian celebrity & his wife took the floor; I followed—I couldn't help it; the others drifted in, one by one, & it was Onteora over again.
By half past 4. I had danced all those people down—& yet was not tired; merely breathless. I was in bed at 5 & asleep in ten minutes. Up at 9 & presently at work on this letter to you. I think I wrote until 2 or half past. Then I walked leisurely out to Mr. Rogers's (it is called 3 miles, but is short of it), arriving at 3.30, but he was out—to return at 5.30—so I didn't stay, but dropped over and chatted with Howells until five.
—[Two Mark Twain anecdotes are remembered of that winter at The Players:
Just before Christmas a member named Scott said one day:
"Mr. Clemens, you have an extra overcoat hanging in the coatroom. I've got to attend my uncle's funeral and it's raining very hard. I'd like to wear it."
The coat was an old one, in the pockets of which Clemens kept a melancholy assortment of pipes, soiled handkerchiefs, neckties, letters, and what not.
"Scott," he said, "if you won't lose anything out of the pockets of that coat you may wear it."
An hour or two later Clemens found a notice in his mail-box that a package for him was in the office. He called for it and found a neat bundle, which somehow had a Christmas look. He carried it up to the reading-room with a showy, air.
"Now, boys," he said, "you may make all the fun of Christmas you like, but it's pretty nice, after all, to be remembered."
They gathered around and he undid the package. It was filled with the pipes, soiled handkerchiefs, and other articles from the old overcoat. Scott had taken special precautions against losing them.
Mark Twain regarded them a moment in silence, then he drawled:
"Well—, d—-n Scott. I hope his uncle's funeral will be a failure!"
The second anecdote concerns The Player egg-cups. They easily hold two eggs, but not three. One morning a new waiter came to take the breakfast order. Clemens said:
"Boy, put three soft eggs in that cup for me."
By and by the waiter returned, bringing the breakfast. Clemens looked at the egg portion and asked:
"Boy, what was my order?"
"Three soft eggs broken in the cup, Mr. Clemens."
"And you've filled that order, have you?"
"Yes, Mr. Clemens."
"Boy, you are trifling with the truth; I've been trying all winter to get three eggs into that cup."]
In one letter he tells of a dinner with his old Comstock friend, John Mackay—a dinner without any frills, just soup and raw oysters and corned beef and cabbage, such as they had reveled in sometimes, in prosperous moments, thirty years before.
"The guests were old gray Pacific coasters," he said, "whom I knew when they were young and not gray. The talk was of the days when we went gipsying-along time ago—thirty years."
Indeed, it was a talk of the dead. Mainly that. And of how they looked & the harum-scarum things they did & said. For there were no cares in that life, no aches & pains, & not time enough in the day (& three-fourths of the night) to work off one's surplus vigor & energy. Of the midnight highway-robbery joke played upon me with revolvers at my head on the windswept & desolate Gold Hill Divide no witness was left but me, the victim. Those old fools last night laughed till they cried over the particulars of that old forgotten crime.
In still another letter he told of a very wonderful entertainment atRobert Reid's studio. There were present, he says:
Coquelin;Richard Harding Davis;Harrison, the great outdoor painter;Wm. H. Chase, the artist;Bettini, inventor of the new phonograph;Nikola Tesla, the world-wide illustrious electrician; see articleabout him in Jan. or Feb. Century.John Drew, actor;James Barnes, a marvelous mimic; my, you should see him!Smedley, the artist;Zorn, " "Zogbaum, " "Reinhart, " "Metcalf, " "Ancona, head tenor at the Opera;
Oh, & a great lot of others. Everybody there had done something &was in his way famous.
Somebody welcomed Coquelin in a nice little French speech, John Drew did the like for me in English, & then the fun began. Coquelin did some excellent French monologues—one of them an ungrammatical Englishman telling a colorless historiette in French. It nearly killed the fifteen or twenty people who understood it.
I told a yarn, Ancona sang half a dozen songs, Barnes did his darling imitations, Handing Davis sang the hanging of Danny Deever, which was of course good, but he followed it with that mast fascinating (for what reason I don't know) of all Kipling's poems, "On the Road to Mandalay," sang it tenderly, & it searched me deeper & charmed me more than the Deever.
Young Gerrit Smith played some ravishing dance-music, & we all danced about an hour. There couldn't be a pleasanter night than that one was. Some of those people complained of fatigue, but I don't seem to know what the sense of fatigue is.
In his reprieve he was like some wild thing that had regained liberty.
He refers to Susy's recent illness and to Mrs. Clemens's own poor state of health.
Dear, dear Susy! My strength reproaches me when I think of her andyou.
It is an unspeakable pity that you should be without any one to go about with the girls, & it troubles me, & grieves me, & makes me curse & swear; but you see, dear heart, I've got to stick right where I am till I find out whether we are rich or whether the poorest person we are acquainted with in anybody's kitchen is better off than we are. . I stand on the land-end of a springboard, with the family clustered on the other end; if I take my foot——
He realized his hopes to her as a vessel trying to make port; once he wrote:
The ship is in sight now ….
When the anchor is down then I shall say:
"Farewell—a long farewell—to business! I will never touch it again!"
I will live in literature, I will wallow in it, revel in it; I will swim in ink! 'Joan of Arc'—but all this is premature; the anchor is not down yet.
Sometimes he sent her impulsive cables calculating to sustain hope. Mrs.Clemens, writing to her sister in January, said:
Mr. Clemens now for ten days has been hourly expecting to send me word that Paige had signed the (new) contract, but as yet no despatch comes . . . . On the 5th of this month I received a cable, "Expect good news in ten days." On the 15th I receive a cable, "Look out for good news." On the 19th a cable, "Nearing success."
It appealed to her sense of humor even in these dark days. She added:
They make me laugh, for they are so like my beloved "Colonel."
Mr. Rogers had agreed that he would bring Paige to rational terms, and with Clemens made a trip to Chicago. All agreed now that the machine promised a certain fortune as soon as a contract acceptable to everybody could be concluded—Paige and his lawyer being the last to dally and dicker as to terms. Finally a telegram came from Chicago saying that Paige had agreed to terms. On that day Clemens wrote in his note-book:
This is a great date in my history. Yesterday we were paupers with but 3 months' rations of cash left and $160,000 in debt, my wife & I, but this telegram makes us wealthy.
But it was not until a fortnight later that Paige did actually sign. This was on the 1st of February, '94, and Clemens that night cabled to Paris, so that Mrs. Clemens would have it on her breakfast-plate the morning of their anniversary:
"Wedding news. Our ship is safe in port. I sail the moment Rogers can spare me."
So this painted bubble, this thing of emptiness, had become as substance again—the grand hope. He was as concerned with it as if it had been an actual gold-mine with ore and bullion piled in heaps—that shadow, that farce, that nightmare. One longs to go back through the years and face him to the light and arouse him to the vast sham of it all.
Clemens might have lectured that winter with profit, and Major Pond did his best to persuade him; but Rogers agreed that his presence in New York was likely to be too important to warrant any schedule of absence. He went once to Boston to lecture for charity, though his pleasure in the experience was a sufficient reward. On the evening before the lecture Mrs. James T. Fields had him to her house to dine with Dr. Holmes, then not far from the end of his long, beautiful life.—[He died that same year, October, 1894.]
Clemens wrote to Paris of their evening together:
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes never goes out (he is in his 84th year), but he came out this time—said he wanted to "have a time" once more with me.
Mrs. Fields said Aldrich begged to come, & went away crying because she wouldn't let him. She allowed only her family (Sarah Orne Jewett & sister) to be present, because much company would overtax Dr. Holmes.
Well, he was just delightful! He did as brilliant and beautiful talking (& listening) as he ever did in his life, I guess. Fields and Jewett said he hadn't been in such splendid form for years. He had ordered his carriage for 9. The coachman sent in for him at 9, but he said, "Oh, nonsense!—leave glories & grandeurs like these? Tell him to go away & come in an hour!"
At 10 he was called for again, & Mrs. Fields, getting uneasy, rose, but he wouldn't go—& so we rattled ahead the same as ever. Twice more Mrs. Fields rose, but he wouldn't go—& he didn't go till half past 10—an unwarrantable dissipation for him in these days. He was prodigiously complimentary about some of my books, & is having Pudd'nhead read to him. I told him you & I used the Autocrat as a courting book & marked it all through, & that you keep it in the sacred green box with the loveletters, & it pleased him.
One other address Clemens delivered that winter, at Fair Haven, on the opening of the Millicent Library, a present to the town from Mrs. Rogers. Mrs. Rogers had suggested to her husband that perhaps Mr. Clemens would be willing to say a few words there. Mr. Rogers had replied, "Oh, Clemens is in trouble. I don't like to ask him," but a day or two later told him of Mrs. Rogers's wish, adding:
"Don't feel at all that you need to do it. I know just how you are feeling, how worried you are."
Clemens answered, "Mr. Rogers, do you think there is anything I could do for you that I wouldn't do?"
It was on this occasion that he told for the first time the "stolen watermelon" story, so often reprinted since; how once he had stolen a watermelon, and when he found it to be a green one, had returned it to the farmer, with a lecture on honesty, and received a ripe one in its place.
In spite of his cares and diversions Clemens's literary activities of this time were considerable. He wrote an article for the Youth's Companion—"How to Tell a Story"—and another for the North American Review on Fenimore Cooper's "Literary Offenses." Mark Twain had not much respect for Cooper as a literary artist. Cooper's stilted artificialities and slipshod English exasperated him and made it hard for him to see that in spite of these things the author of the Deerslayer was a mighty story-teller. Clemens had also promised some stories to Walker, of the Cosmopolitan, and gave him one for his Christmas number, "Traveling with a Reformer," which had grown out of some incidents of that long-ago journey with Osgood to Chicago, supplemented by others that had happened on the more recent visit to that city with Hall. This story had already appeared when Clemens and Rogers had made their Chicago trip. Rogers had written for passes over the Pennsylvania road, and the president, replying, said:
"No, I won't give Mark Twain a pass over our road. I've been reading his 'Traveling with a Reformer,' in which he abuses our road. I wouldn't let him ride over it again if I could help it. The only way I'll agree to let him go over it at all is in my private car. I have stocked it with everything he can possibly want, and have given orders that if there is anything else he wants the train is to be stopped until they can get it."
"Pudd'nhead Wilson" was appearing in the Century during this period, and "Tom Sawyer Abroad" in the St. Nicholas. The Century had issued a tiny calendar of the Pudd'nhead maxims, and these quaint bits of philosophy, the very gems of Mark Twain mental riches, were in everybody's mouth. With all this going on, and with his appearance at various social events, he was rather a more spectacular figure that winter than ever before.
From the note-book:
The Haunted Looking-glass. The guest (at midnight a dim light burning) wakes up & sees appear & disappear the faces that have looked into the glass during 3 centuries.
Love seems the swiftest but is the slowest of all growths. No man and woman really know what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right.
Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made theslave of the lash—that one is the cat.
Truth is stranger than fiction—to some people, but I am measurablyfamiliar with it.