Mark Twain, A Biography, 1866-1875
by
Albert Bigelow Paine
Part 2 out of 5
acceptable in many respects than any I could now write. When those
letters were written my impressions were fresh, but now they have lost
that freshness; they were warm then, they are cold now. I could strike
out certain letters, and write new ones wherewith to supply their places.
If you think such a book would suit your purpose, please drop me a line,
specifying the size and general style of the volume--when the matter
ought to be ready; whether it should have pictures in it or not; and
particularly what your terms with me would be, and what amount of money
I might possibly make out of it. The latter clause has a degree of
importance for me which is almost beyond my own comprehension. But you
understand that, of course.
I have other propositions for a book, but have doubted the propriety of
interfering with good newspaper engagements, except my way as an author
could be demonstrated to be plain before me. But I know Richardson, and
learned from him some months ago something of an idea of the subscription
plan of publishing. If that is your plan invariably it looks safe.
I am on the New York Tribune staff here as an "occasional," among other
things, and a note from you addressed to
Very truly, etc.,
SAM. L. CLEMENS,
New York Tribune Bureau, Washington
will find me, without fail.
The exchange of those two letters marked the beginning of one of the most
notable publishing connections in American literary history.
Consummation, however, was somewhat delayed. Bliss was ill when the
reply came, and could not write again in detail until nearly a month
later. In this letter he recited the profits made by Richardson and
others through subscription publication, and named the royalties paid.
Richardson had received four per cent. of the sale price, a small enough
rate for these later days; but the cost of manufacture was larger then,
and the sale and delivery of books through agents has ever been an
expensive process. Even Horace Greeley had received but a fraction more
on his Great American Conflict. Bliss especially suggested and
emphasized a "humorous work--that is to say, a work humorously inclined."
He added that they had two arrangements for paying authors: outright
purchase, and royalty. He invited a meeting in New York to arrange
terms.
LXIV
OLIVIA LANGDON
Clemens did in fact go to New York that same evening, to spend Christmas
with Dan Slote, and missed Bliss's second letter. It was no matter.
Fate had his affairs properly in hand, and had prepared an event of still
larger moment than the publication even of Innocents Abroad. There was a
pleasant reunion at Dan Slote's. He wrote home about it:
Charley Langdon, Jack Van Nostrand, Dan and I (all Quaker City
night-hawks) had a blow-out at Dan's house and a lively talk over
old times. I just laughed till my sides ached at some of our
reminiscences. It was the unholiest gang that ever cavorted through
Palestine, but those are the best boys in the world.
This, however, was not the event; it was only preliminary to it. We are
coming to that now. At the old St. Nicholas Hotel, which stood on the
west of Broadway between Spring and Broome streets, there were stopping
at this time Jervis Langdon, a wealty coal-dealer and mine-owner of
Elmira, his son Charles and his daughter Olivia, whose pictured face
Samuel Clemens had first seen in the Bay of Smyrna one September day.
Young Langdon had been especially anxious to bring his distinguished
Quaker City friend and his own people together, and two days before
Christmas Samuel Clemens was invited to dine at the hotel. He went very
willingly. The lovely face of that miniature had been often a part of
his waking dreams. For the first time now he looked upon its reality.
Long afterward he said:
"It is forty years ago. From that day to this she has never been out of
my mind."
Charles Dickens was in New York then, and gave a reading that night in
Steinway Hall. The Langdons went, and Samuel Clemens accompanied them.
He remembered afterward that Dickens wore a black velvet coat with a
fiery red flower in his buttonhole, and that he read the storm scene from
Copperfield--the death of James Steerforth. But he remembered still more
clearly the face and dress of that slender girlish figure at his side.
Olivia Langdon was twenty-two years old at this time, delicate as the
miniature he had seen, fragile to look upon, though no longer with the
shattered health of her girlhood. At sixteen, through a fall upon the
ice, she had become a complete invalid, confined to her bed for two
years, unable to sit, even when supported, unable to lie in any position
except upon her back. Great physicians and surgeons, one after another,
had done their best for her but she had failed steadily until every hope
had died. Then, when nothing else was left to try, a certain Doctor
Newton, of spectacular celebrity, who cured by "laying on of hands," was
brought to Elmira to see her. Doctor Newton came into the darkened room
and said:
"Open the windows--we must have light!"
They protested that she could not bear the light, but the windows were
opened. Doctor Newton came to the bedside of the helpless girl,
delivered a short, fervent prayer, put his arm under her shoulders, and
bade her sit up. She had not moved for two years, and the family were
alarmed, but she obeyed, and he assisted her into a chair. Sensation
came back to her limbs. With his assistance she even made a feeble
attempt to walk. He left then, saying that she would gradually improve,
and in time be well, though probably never very strong. On the same day
he healed a boy, crippled and drawn with fever.
It turned out as he had said. Olivia Langdon improved steadily, and now
at twenty-two, though not robust--she was never that--she was
comparatively well. Gentle, winning, lovable, she was the family idol,
and Samuel Clemens joined in their worship from the moment of that first
meeting.
Olivia Langdon, on her part, was at first dazed and fascinated, rather
than attracted, by this astonishing creature, so unlike any one she had
ever known. Her life had been circumscribed, her experiences of a simple
sort. She had never seen anything resembling him before. Indeed, nobody
had. Somewhat carelessly, even if correctly, attired; eagerly, rather
than observantly, attentive; brilliant and startling, rather than
cultured, of speech--a blazing human solitaire, unfashioned, unset,
tossed by the drift of fortune at her feet. He disturbed rather than
gratified her. She sensed his heresy toward the conventions and forms
which had been her gospel; his bantering, indifferent attitude toward
life--to her always so serious and sacred; she suspected that he even
might have unorthodox views on matters of religion. When he had gone she
somehow had the feeling that a great fiery meteor of unknown portent had
swept across her sky.
To her brother, who was eager for her approval of his celebrity, Miss
Langdon conceded admiration. As for her father, he did not qualify his
opinion. With hearty sense of humor, and a keen perception of verity and
capability in men, Jervis Langdon accepted Samuel Clemens from the start,
and remained his stanch admirer and friend. Clemens left that night with
an invitation to visit Elmira by and by, and with the full intention of
going--soon. Fate, however, had another plan. He did not see Elmira for
the better part of a year.
He saw Miss Langdon again within the week. On New-Year's Day he set
forth to pay calls, after the fashion of the time--more lavish then than
now. Miss Langdon was receiving with Miss Alice Hooker, a niece of Henry
Ward Beecher, at the home of a Mrs. Berry; he decided to go there first.
With young Langdon he arrived at eleven o'clock in the morning, and they
did not leave until midnight. If his first impression upon Olivia
Langdon had been meteoric, it would seem that he must now have become to
her as a streaming comet that swept from zenith to horizon. One thing is
certain: she had become to him the single, unvarying beacon of his future
years. He visited Henry Ward Beecher on that trip and dined with him by
invitation. Harriet Beecher Stowe was present, and others of that
eminent family. Likewise his old Quaker City comrades, Moses S. and
Emma Beach. It was a brilliant gathering, a conclave of intellectual
gods--a triumph to be there for one who had been a printer-boy on the
banks of the Mississippi, and only a little while before a miner with
pick and shovel. It was gratifying to be so honored; it would be
pleasant to write home; but the occasion lacked something too--
everything, in fact--for when he ran his eye around the board the face of
the minature was not there.
Still there were compensations; inadequate, of course, but pleasant
enough to remember. It was Sunday evening and the party adjourned to
Plymouth Church. After services Mr. Beecher invited him to return home
with him for a quiet talk. Evidently they had a good time, for in the
letter telling of these things Samuel Clemens said: "Henry Ward Beecher
is a brick."
LXV
A CONTRACT WITH ELISHA BLISS, JR.
He returned to Washington without seeing Miss Langdon again, though he
would seem to have had permission to write--friendly letters. A little
later (it was on the evening of January 9th) he lectured in Washington--
on very brief notice indeed. The arrangement for his appearance had been
made by a friend during his absence--"a friend," Clemens declared
afterward, "not entirely sober at the time." To his mother he wrote:
I scared up a doorkeeper and was ready at the proper time, and by pure
good luck a tolerably good house assembled and I was saved. I hardly
knew what I was going to talk about, but it went off in splendid style.
The title of the lecture delivered was "The Frozen Truth"--"more truth in
the title than in the lecture," according to his own statement. What it
dealt with is not remembered now. It had to do with the Quaker City
trip, perhaps, and it seems to have brought a financial return which was
welcome enough. Subsequently he delivered it elsewhere; though just how
far the tour extended cannot be learned from the letters, and he had but
little memory of it in later years.
There was some further correspondence with Bliss, then about the 21st of
January (1868) Clemens made a trip to Hartford to settle the matter.
Bliss had been particularly anxious to meet him, personally and was a
trifle disappointed with his appearance. Mark Twain's traveling costume
was neither new nor neat, and he was smoking steadily a pipe of power.
His general make-up was hardly impressive.
Bliss's disturbance was momentary. Once he began to talk the rest did
not matter. He was the author of those letters, and Bliss decided that
personally he was even greater than they. The publisher, confined to his
home with illness, offered him the hospitality of his household. Also,
he made him two propositions: he would pay him ten thousand dollars cash
for his copyright, or he would pay five per cent. royalty, which was a
fourth more than Richardson had received. He advised the latter
arrangement.
Clemens had already taken advice and had discussed the project a good
deal with Richardson. The ten thousand dollars was a heavy temptation,
but he withstood it and closed on the royalty basis--"the best business
judgment I ever displayed," he was wont to declare. A letter written to
his mother and sister near the end of this Hartford stay is worth quoting
pretty fully here, for the information and "character" it contains. It
bears date of January 24th.
This is a good week for me. I stopped in the Herald office, as I
came through New York, to see the boys on the staff, and young James
Gordon Bennett asked me to write twice a week, impersonally, for the
Herald, and said if I would I might have full swing, and about
anybody and everything I wanted to. I said I must have the very
fullest possible swing, and he said, "All right." I said, "It's a
contract--" and that settled that matter.
I'll make it a point to write one letter a week anyhow. But the
best thing that has happened is here. This great American
Publishing Company kept on trying to bargain with me for a book till
I thought I would cut the matter short by coming up for a talk. I
met Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn, and with his usual whole-souled
way of dropping his own work to give other people a lift when he
gets a chance, he said: "Now, here, you are one of the talented men
of the age--nobody is going to deny that--but in matters of business
I don't suppose you know more than enough to come in when it rains.
I'll tell you what to do and how to do it." And he did.
And I listened well, and then came up here and made a splendid
contract for a Quaker City book of 5 or 600 large pages, with
illustrations, the manuscript to be placed in the publisher's hands
by the middle of July.--[The contract was not a formal one. There
was an exchange of letters agreeing to the terms, but no joint
document was drawn until October 16 (1868).]--My percentage is to
be a fourth more than they have ever paid any author except Greeley.
Beecher will be surprised, I guess, when he hears this.
These publishers get off the most tremendous editions of their books
you can imagine. I shall write to the Enterprise and Alta every
week, as usual, I guess, and to the Herald twice a week,
occasionally to the Tribune and the magazines (I have a stupid
article in the Galaxy, just issued), but I am not going to write to
this and that and the other paper any more.
I have had a tiptop time here for a few days (guest of Mr. Jno.
Hooker's family--Beecher's relatives--in a general way of Mr. Bliss
also, who is head of the publishing firm). Puritans are mighty
straight-laced, and they won't let me smoke in the parlor, but the
Almighty don't make any better people.
I have to make a speech at the annual Herald dinner on the 6th of
May.
So the book, which would establish his claim to a peerage in the literary
land, was arranged for, and it remained only to prepare the manuscript, a
task which he regarded as not difficult. He had only to collate the Alta
and Tribune letters, edit them, and write such new matter as would be
required for completeness.
Returning to Washington, he plunged into work with his usual terrific
energy, preparing the copy--in the mean time writing newspaper
correspondence and sketches that would bring immediate return. In
addition to his regular contributions, he entered into a syndicate
arrangement with John Swinton (brother of William Swinton, the historian)
to supply letters to a list of newspapers.
"I have written seven long newspaper letters and a short magazine article
in less than two days," he wrote home, and by the end of January he had
also prepared several chapters of his book.
The San Francisco post-mastership was suggested to him again, but he put
the temptation behind him. He refers to this more than once in his home
letters, and it is clear that he wavered.
Judge Field said if I wanted the place he could pledge me the
President's appointment, and Senator Corners said he would guarantee
me the Senate's confirmation. It was a great temptation, but it
would render it impossible to fill my book contract, and I had to
drop the idea....
And besides I did not want the office.
He made this final decision when he heard that the chief editor of the
Alta wanted the place, and he now threw his influence in that quarter.
"I would not take ten thousand dollars out of a friend's pocket," he
said.
But then suddenly came the news from Goodman that the Alta publishers had
copyrighted his Quaker City letters and proposed getting them out in a
book, to reimburse themselves still further on their investment. This
was sharper than a serpent's tooth. Clemens got confirmation of the
report by telegraph. By the same medium he protested, but to no purpose.
Then he wrote a letter and sat down to wait. He reported his troubles to
Orion:
I have made a superb contract for a book, and have prepared the
first ten chapters of the sixty or eighty, but I will bet it never
sees the light. Don't you let the folks at home hear that. That
thieving Alta copyrighted the letters, and now shows no disposition
to let me use them. I have done all I can by telegraph, and now
await the final result by mail. I only charged them for 50 letters
what (even in) greenbacks would amount to less than two thousand
dollars, intending to write a good deal for high-priced Eastern
papers, and now they want to publish my letters in book form
themselves to get back that pitiful sum.
Orion was by this time back from Nevada, setting type in St. Louis. He
was full of schemes, as usual, and his brother counsels him freely. Then
he says:
We chase phantoms half the days of our lives. It is well if we
learn wisdom even then, and save the other half.
I am in for it. I must go on chasing them, until I marry, then I am
done with literature and all other bosh--that is, literature
wherewith to please the general public.
I shall write to please myself then.
He closes by saying that he rather expects to go with Anson Burlingame on
the Chinese embassy. Clearly he was pretty hopeless as to his book
prospects.
His first meeting with General Grant occurred just at this time. In one
of his home letters he mentions, rather airily, that he will drop in
someday on the General for an interview; and at last, through Mrs. Grant,
an appointment was made for a Sunday evening when the General would be at
home. He was elated with the prospect of an interview; but when he
looked into the imperturbable, square, smileless face of the soldier he
found himself, for the first time in his life, without anything
particular to say. Grant nodded slightly and waited. His caller wished
something would happen. It did. His inspiration returned.
"General," he said, "I seem to be a little embarrassed. Are you?"
That broke the ice. There were no further difficulties.--[Mark Twain
has variously related this incident. It is given here in accordance with
the letters of the period.]
LXVI
BACK TO SAN FRANCISCO
Reply came from the Alta, but it was not promising. It spoke rather
vaguely of prior arrangements and future possibilities. Clemens gathered
that under certain conditions he might share in the profits of the
venture. There was but one thing to do; he knew those people--some of
them--Colonel McComb and a Mr. McCrellish intimately. He must confer
with them in person.
He was weary of Washington, anyway. The whole pitiful machinery of
politics disgusted him. In his notebook he wrote:
Whiskey is taken into the committee rooms in demijohns and carried
out in demagogues.
And in a letter:
This is a place to get a poor opinion of everybody in. There are
some pitiful intellects in this Congress! There isn't one man in
Washington in civil office who has the brains of Anson Burlingame,
and I suppose if China had not seized and saved his great talents to
the world this government would have discarded him when his time was
up.--[Anson Burlingame had by this time become China's special
ambassador to the nations.]
Furthermore, he was down on the climate of Washington. He decided to go
to San Francisco and see "those Alta thieves face to face." Then, if a
book resulted, he could prepare it there among friends. Also, he could
lecture.
He had been anxious to visit his people before sailing, but matters were
too urgent to permit delay. He obtained from Bliss an advance of royalty
and took passage, by way of Aspinwall, on the sidewheel steamer Henry
Chauncey, a fine vessel for those days. The name of Mark Twain was
already known on the isthmus, and when it was learned he had arrived on
the Chauncey a delegation welcomed him on the wharf, and provided him
with refreshments and entertainment. Mr. Tracy Robinson, a poet, long a
resident of that southern land, was one of the group. Beyond the isthmus
Clemens fell in again with his old captain, Ned Wakeman, who during the
trip told him the amazing dream that in due time would become Captain
Stormfield's Visit to Heaven. He made the first draft of this story soon
after his arrival in San Francisco, as a sort of travesty of Elizabeth
Stuart Phelps's Gates Ajar, then very popular. Clemens, then and later,
had a high opinion of Capt. Ned Wakeman's dream, but his story of it
would pass through several stages before finally reaching the light of
publication.--[Mr. John P. Vollmer, now of Lewiston, Idaho, a
companion of that voyage, writes of a card game which took place beyond
the isthmus. The notorious crippled gambler, "Smithy," figured in it,
and it would seem to have furnished the inspiration for the exciting
story in Chapter XXXVI of the Mississippi book.]
In San Francisco matters turned out as he had hoped. Colonel McComb was
his stanch friend; McCrellish and Woodward, the proprietors, presently
conceded that they had already received good value for the money paid.
The author agreed to make proper acknowledgments to the Alta in his
preface, and the matter was settled with friendliness all around.
The way was now clear, the book assured. First, however, he must provide
himself with funds. He delivered a lecture, with the Quaker City
excursion as his subject. On the 5th of May he wrote to Bliss:
I lectured here on the trip the other night; over $1,600 in gold in the
house; every seat taken and paid for before night.
He reports that he is steadily at work, and expects to start East with
the completed manuscript about the middle of June.
But this was a miscalculation. Clemens found that the letters needed
more preparation than he had thought. His literary vision and equipment
had vastly altered since the beginning of that correspondence. Some of
the chapters he rewrote; others he eliminated entirely. It required two
months of fairly steady work to put the big manuscript together.
Some of the new chapters he gave to Bret Harte for the Overland Monthly,
then recently established. Harte himself was becoming a celebrity about
this time. His "Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat,"
published in early numbers of the Overland, were making a great stir in
the East, arousing there a good deal more enthusiasm than in the magazine
office or the city of their publication. That these two friends, each
supreme in his own field, should have entered into their heritage so
nearly at the same moment, is one of the many seemingly curious
coincidences of literary history.
Clemens now concluded to cover his lecture circuit of two years before.
He was assured that it would be throwing away a precious opportunity not
to give his new lecture to his old friends. The result justified that
opinion. At Virginia, at Carson, and elsewhere he was received like a
returned conqueror. He might have been accorded a Roman triumph had
there been time and paraphernalia. Even the robbers had reformed, and
entire safety was guaranteed him on the Divide between Virginia and Gold
Hill. At Carson he called on Mrs. Curry, as in the old days, and among
other things told her how snow from the Lebanon Mountains is brought to
Damascus on the backs of camels.
"Sam," she said, "that's just one of your yarns, and if you tell it in
your lecture to-night I'll get right up and say so."
But he did tell it, for it was a fact; and though Mrs. Curry did not rise
to deny it she shook her finger at him in a way he knew.
He returned to San Francisco and gave one more lecture, the last he would
ever give in California. His preparatory advertising for that occasion
was wholly unique, characteristic of him to the last degree. It assumed
the form of a handbill of protest, supposed to have been issued by the
foremost citizens of San Francisco, urging him to return to the States
without inflicting himself further upon them. As signatures he made free
with the names of prominent individuals, followed by those of
organizations, institutions, "Various Benevolent Societies, Citizens on
Foot and Horseback, and fifteen hundred in the Steerage."
Following this (on the same bill) was his reply, "To the fifteen hundred
and others," in which he insisted on another hearing:
I will torment the people if I want to.... It only costs the people
$1 apiece, and if they can't stand it what do they stay here for?...
My last lecture was not as fine as I thought it was, but I have
submitted this discourse to several able critics, and they have
pronounced it good. Now, therefore, why should I withhold it?
He promised positively to sail on the 6th of July if they would let him
talk just this once. Continuing, the handbill presented a second
protest, signed by the various clubs and business firms; also others
bearing variously the signatures of the newspapers, and the clergy,
ending with the brief word:
You had better go. Yours, CHIEF OF POLICE.
All of which drollery concluded with his announcement of place and date
of his lecture, with still further gaiety at the end. Nothing short of a
seismic cataclysm--an earthquake, in fact--could deter a San Francisco
audience after that. Mark Twain's farewell address, given at the
Mercantile Library July 2 (1868), doubtless remains today the leading
literary event in San Francisco's history.--[Copy of the lecture
announcement, complete, will be found in Appendix H, at the end of last
volume.]
He sailed July 6th by the Pacific mail steamer Montana to Acapulco,
caught the Henry Chauncey at Aspinwall, reached New York on the 28th, and
a day or two later had delivered his manuscript at Hartford.
But a further difficulty had arisen. Bliss was having troubles himself,
this time, with his directors. Many reports of Mark Twain's new book had
been traveling the rounds of the press, some of which declared it was to
be irreverent, even blasphemous, in tone. The title selected, The New
Pilgrim's Progress, was in itself a sacrilege. Hartford was a
conservative place; the American Publishing Company directors were of
orthodox persuasion. They urged Bliss to relieve the company of this
impending disaster of heresy. When the author arrived one or more of
them labored with him in person, without avail. As for Bliss, he was
stanch; he believed in the book thoroughly, from every standpoint. He
declared if the company refused to print it he would resign the
management and publish the book himself. This was an alarming suggestion
to the stockholders. Bliss had returned dividends--a boon altogether too
rare in the company's former history. The objectors retired and were
heard of no more. The manuscript was placed in the hands of Fay and Cox,
illustrators, with an order for about two hundred and fifty pictures.
Fay and Cox turned it over to True Williams, one of the well-known
illustrators of that day. Williams was a man of great talent--of fine
imagination and sweetness of spirit--but it was necessary to lock him in
a room when industry was required, with nothing more exciting than cold
water as a beverage. Clemens himself aided in the illustrating by
obtaining of Moses S. Beach photographs from the large collection he had
brought home.
LXVII
A VISIT TO ELMIRA
Meantime he had skilfully obtained a renewal of the invitation to spend a
week in the Langdon home.
He meant to go by a fast train, but, with his natural gift for
misunderstanding time-tables, of course took a slow one, telegraphing his
approach from different stations along the road. Young Langdon concluded
to go down the line as far as Waverly to meet him. When the New York
train reached there the young man found his guest in the smoking-car,
travel-stained and distressingly clad. Mark Twain was always
scrupulously neat and correct of dress in later years, but in that
earlier day neatness and style had not become habitual and did not give
him comfort. Langdon greeted him warmly but with doubt. Finally he
summoned courage to say, hesitatingly--
"You've got some other clothes, haven't you?"
The arriving guest was not in the least disturbed.
"Oh yes," he said with enthusiasm, "I've got a fine brand-new outfit in
this bag, all but a hat. It will be late when we get in, and I won't see
any one to-night. You won't know me in the morning. We'll go out early
and get a hat."
This was a large relief to the younger man, and the rest of the journey
was happy enough. True to promise, the guest appeared at daylight
correctly, even elegantly clad, and an early trip to the shops secured
the hat. A gay and happy week followed--a week during which Samuel
Clemens realized more fully than ever that in his heart there was room
for only one woman in all the world: Olivia Langdon--"Livy," as they all
called her--and as the day of departure drew near it may be that the
gentle girl had made some discoveries, too.
No word had passed between them. Samuel Clemens had the old-fashioned
Southern respect for courtship conventions, and for what, in that day at
least, was regarded as honor. On the morning of the final day he said to
young Langdon:
"Charley, my week is up, and I must go home."
The young man expressed a regret which was genuine enough, though not
wholly unqualified. His older sister, Mrs. Crane, leaving just then for
a trip to the White Mountains, had said:
"Charley, I am sure Mr. Clemens is after our Livy. You mustn't let him
carry her off before our return."
The idea was a disturbing one. The young man did not urge his guest to
prolong his-visit. He said:
"We'll have to stand it, I guess, but you mustn't leave before to-night."
"I ought to go by the first train," Clemens said, gloomily. "I am in
love."
"In what!"
"In love-with your sister, and I ought to get away from here."
The young man was now very genuinely alarmed. To him Mark Twain was a
highly gifted, fearless, robust man--a man's man--and as such altogether
admirable--lovable. But Olivia--Livy--she was to him little short of a
saint. No man was good enough for her, certainly not this adventurous
soldier of letters from the West. Delightful he was beyond doubt,
adorable as a companion, but not a companion for Livy.
"Look here, Clemens," he said, when he could get his voice. "There's a
train in half an hour. I'll help you catch it. Don't wait till to-
night. Go now."
Clemens shook his head.
"No, Charley," he said, in his gentle drawl, "I want to enjoy your
hospitality a little longer. I promise to be circumspect, and I'll go
to-night."
That night, after dinner, when it was time to take the New York train, a
light two-seated wagon was at the gate. The coachman was in front, and
young Langdon and his guest took the back seat. For some reason the seat
had not been locked in its place, and when, after the good-bys, the
coachman touched the horse it made a quick spring forward, and the back
seat, with both passengers, described a half-circle and came down with
force on the cobbled street. Neither passenger was seriously hurt;
Clemens not at all--only dazed a little for a moment. Then came an
inspiration; here was a chance to prolong his visit. Evidently it was
not intended that he should take that train. When the Langdon household
gathered around with restoratives he did not recover too quickly. He
allowed them to support or carry him into the house and place him in an
arm-chair and apply remedies. The young daughter of the house especially
showed anxiety and attention. This was pure happiness. He was perjuring
himself, of course, but they say Jove laughs at such things.
He recovered in a day or two, but the wide hospitality of the handsome
Langdon home was not only offered now; it was enforced. He was still
there two weeks later, after which he made a trip to Cleveland to confide
in Mrs. Fairbanks how he intended to win Livy Langdon for his wife.
LXVIII
THE REV. "JOE" TWICHELL
He returned to Hartford to look after the progress of his book. Some of
it was being put into type, and with his mechanical knowledge of such
things he was naturally interested in the process.
He made his headquarters with the Blisses, then living at 821 Asylum
Avenue, and read proof in a little upper room, where the lamp was likely
to be burning most of the time, where the atmosphere was nearly always
blue with smoke, and the window-sill full of cigar butts. Mrs. Bliss
took him into the quiet social life of the neighborhood--to small church
receptions, society gatherings and the like--all of which he seemed to
enjoy. Most of the dwellers in that neighborhood were members of the
Asylum Hill Congregational Church, then recently completed; all but the
spire. It was a cultured circle, well-off in the world's goods, its male
members, for the most part, concerned in various commercial ventures.
The church stood almost across the way from the Bliss home, and Mark
Twain, with his picturesque phrasing, referred to it as the "stub-tailed
church," on account of its abbreviated spire; also, later, with a
knowledge of its prosperous membership, as the "Church of the Holy
Speculators." He was at an evening reception in the home of one of its
members when he noticed a photograph of the unfinished building framed
and hanging on the wall.
"Why, yes," he commented, in his slow fashion, "this is the 'Church of
the Holy Speculators.'"
"Sh," cautioned Mrs. Bliss. "Its pastor is just behind you. He knows
your work and wants to meet you." Turning, she said: "Mr. Twichell, this
is Mr. Clemens. Most people know him as Mark Twain."
And so, in this casual fashion, he met the man who was presently to
become his closest personal friend and counselor, and would remain so for
more than forty years.
Joseph Hopkins Twichell was a man about his own age, athletic and
handsome, a student and a devout Christian, yet a man familiar with the
world, fond of sports, with an exuberant sense of humor and a wide
understanding of the frailties of humankind. He had been "port waist
oar" at Yale, and had left college to serve with General "Dan" Sickles as
a chaplain who had followed his duties not only in the camp, but on the
field.
Mention has already been made of Mark Twain's natural leaning toward
ministers of the gospel, and the explanation of it is easier to realize
than to convey. He was hopelessly unorthodox--rankly rebellious as to
creeds. Anything resembling cant or the curtailment of mental liberty
roused only his resentment and irony. Yet something in his heart always
warmed toward any laborer in the vineyard, and if we could put the
explanation into a single sentence, perhaps we might say it was because
he could meet them on that wide, common ground sympathy with mankind.
Mark Twain's creed, then and always, may be put into three words,
"liberty, justice, humanity." It may be put into one word, "humanity."
Ministers always loved Mark Twain. They did not always approve of him,
but they adored him: The Rev. Mr. Rising, of the Comstock, was an early
example of his ministerial friendships, and we have seen that Henry Ward
Beecher cultivated his company. In a San Francisco letter of two years
before, Mark Twain wrote his mother, thinking it would please her:
I am as thick as thieves with the Reverend Stebbins. I am laying for the
Reverend Scudder and the Reverend Doctor Stone. I am running on
preachers now altogether, and I find them gay.
So it may be that his first impulse toward Joseph Twichell was due to the
fact that he was a young member of that army whose mission is to comfort
and uplift mankind. But it was only a little time till the impulse had
grown into a friendship that went beyond any profession or doctrine, a
friendship that ripened into a permanent admiration and love for "Joe"
Twichell himself, as one of the noblest specimens of his race.
He was invited to the Twichell home, where he met the young wife and got
a glimpse of the happiness of that sweet and peaceful household. He had
a neglected, lonely look, and he loved to gather with them at their
fireside. He expressed his envy of their happiness, and Mrs. Twichell
asked him why, since his affairs were growing prosperous, he did not
establish a household of his own. Long afterward Mr. Twichell wrote:
Mark made no answer for a little, but, with his eyes bent on the
floor, appeared to be deeply pondering. Then he looked up, and said
slowly, in a voice tremulous with earnestness (with what sympathy he
was heard may be imagined): "I am taking thought of it. I am in
love beyond all telling with the dearest and best girl in the whole
world. I don't suppose she will marry me. I can't think it
possible. She ought not to. But if she doesn't I shall be sure
that the best thing I ever did was to fall in love with her, and
proud to have it known that I tried to win her!"
It was only a brief time until the Twichell fireside was home to him. He
came and went, and presently it was "Mark" and "Joe," as by and by it
would be "Livy" and "Harmony," and in a few years "Uncle Joe" and "Uncle
Mark," "Aunt Livy" and "Aunt Harmony," and so would remain until the
end.
LXIX
A LECTURE TOUR
James Redpath, proprietor of the Boston Lyceum Bureau, was the leading
lecture agent of those days, and controlled all, or nearly all, of the
platform celebrities. Mark Twain's success at the Cooper Union the year
before had interested Redpath. He had offered engagements then and
later, but Clemens had not been free for the regular circuit. Now there
was no longer a reason for postponement of a contract. Redpath was eager
for the new celebrity, and Clemens closed with him for the season of
1868-9. With his new lecture, "The Vandal Abroad," he was presently
earning a hundred dollars and more a night, and making most of the nights
count.
This was affluence indeed. He had become suddenly a person of substance-
an associate of men of consequence, with a commensurate income. He could
help his mother lavishly now, and he did.
His new lecture was immensely popular. It was a resume of the 'Quaker
City' letters--a foretaste of the book which would presently follow.
Wherever he went, he was hailed with eager greetings. He caught such
drifting exclamations as, "There he is! There goes Mark Twain!" People
came out on the street to see him pass. That marvelous miracle which we
variously call "notoriety," "popularity," "fame," had come to him. In
his notebook he wrote, "Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the
only, earthly certainty oblivion."
The newspapers were filled with enthusiasm both as to his matter and
method. His delivery was described as a "long, monotonous drawl, with
the fun invariably coming in at the end of a sentence--after a pause."
His appearance at this time is thus set down:
Mark Twain is a man of medium height, about five feet ten, sparsely
built, with dark reddish-brown hair and mustache. His features are
fair, his eyes keen and twinkling. He dresses in scrupulous evening
attire. In lecturing he hangs about the desk, leaning on it or
flirting around the corners of it, then marching and countermarching
in the rear of it. He seldom casts a glance at his manuscript.
No doubt this fairly presents Mark Twain, the lecturer of that day. It
was a new figure on the platform, a man with a new method. As to his
manuscript, the item might have said that he never consulted it at all.
He learned his lecture; what he consulted was merely a series of
hieroglyphics, a set of crude pictures drawn by himself, suggestive of
the subject-matter underneath new head. Certain columns represented the
Parthenon; the Sphinx meant Egypt, and so on. His manuscript lay there
in case of accident, but the accident did not happen.
A number of his engagements were in the central part of New York, at
points not far distant from Elmira. He had a standing invitation to
visit the Langdon home, and he made it convenient to avail himself of
that happiness.
His was not an unruffled courtship. When at last he reached the point of
proposing for the daughter of the house, neither the daughter nor the
household offered any noticeable encouragement to his suit. Many absurd
anecdotes have been told of his first interview with Mr. Langdon on the
subject, but they are altogether without foundation. It was a proper and
dignified discussion of a very serious matter. Mr. Langdon expressed
deep regard for him and friendship but he was not inclined to add him to
the family; the young lady herself, in a general way, accorded with these
views. The applicant for favor left sadly enough, but he could not
remain discouraged or sad. He lectured at Cleveland with vast success,
and the news of it traveled quickly to Elmira. He was referred to by
Cleveland papers as a "lion" and "the coming man of the age." Two days
later, in Pittsburgh (November 19th), he "played" against Fanny Kemble,
the favorite actress of that time, with the result that Miss Kemble had
an audience of two hundred against nearly ten times the number who
gathered to hear Mark Twain. The news of this went to Elmira, too. It
was in the papers there next morning; surely this was a conquering hero--
a gay Lochinvar from out of the West--and the daughter of the house must
be guarded closely, that he did not bear her away. It was on the second
morning following the Pittsburgh triumph, when the Langdon family were
gathered at breakfast, that a bushy auburn head poked fearfully in at the
door, and a low, humble voice said:
"The calf has returned; may the prodigal have some breakfast?"
No one could be reserved or reprovingly distant, or any of those
unfriendly things with a person like that; certainly not Jervis Langdon,
who delighted in the humor and the tricks and turns and oddities of this
eccentric visitor. Giving his daughter to him was another matter, but
even that thought was less disturbing than it had been at the start. In
truth, the Langdon household had somehow grown to feel that he belonged
to them. The elder sister's husband, Theodore Crane, endorsed him fully.
He had long before read some of the Mark Twain sketches that had traveled
eastward in advance of their author, and had recognized, even in the
crudest of them, a classic charm. As for Olivia Langdon's mother and
sister, their happiness lay in hers. Where her heart went theirs went
also, and it would appear that her heart, in spite of herself, had found
its rightful keeper. Only young Langdon was irreconciled, and eventually
set out for a voyage around the world to escape the situation.
There was only a provisional engagement at first. Jervis Langdon
suggested, and Samuel Clemens agreed with him, that it was proper to know
something of his past, as well as of his present, before the official
parental sanction should be given. When Mr. Langdon inquired as to the
names of persons of standing to whom he might write for credentials,
Clemens pretty confidently gave him the name of the Reverend Stebbins and
others of San Francisco, adding that he might write also to Joe Goodman
if he wanted to, but that he had lied for Goodman a hundred times and
Goodman would lie for him if necessary, so his testimony would be of no
value. The letters to the clergy were written, and Mr. Langdon also
wrote one on his own account.
It was a long mail-trip to the Coast and back in those days. It might be
two months before replies would come from those ministers. The lecturer
set out again on his travels, and was radiantly and happily busy. He
went as far west as Illinois, had crowded houses in Chicago, visited
friends and kindred in Hannibal, St. Louis, and Keokuk, carrying the
great news, and lecturing in old familiar haunts.
LXX
INNOCENTS AT HOME--AND "THE INNOCENTS ABROAD"
He was in Jacksonville, Illinois, at the end of January (1869), and in a
letter to Bliss states that he will be in Elmira two days later, and asks
that proofs of the book be sent there. He arrived at the Langdon home,
anxious to hear the reports that would make him, as the novels might say,
"the happiest or the most miserable of men." Jervis Langdon had a rather
solemn look when they were alone together. Clemens asked:
"You've heard from those gentlemen out there?"
"Yes, and from another gentleman I wrote concerning you."
"They don't appear to have been very enthusiastic, from your manner."
"Well, yes, some of them were."
"I suppose I may ask what particular form their emotion took?"
"Oh yes, yes; they agree unanimously that you are a brilliant, able man,
a man with a future, and that you would make about the worst husband on
record."
The applicant for favor had a forlorn look.
"There's nothing very evasive about that," he said:
There was a period of reflective silence. It was probably no more than a
few seconds, but it seemed longer.
"Haven't you any other friend that you could suggest?" Langdon said.
"Apparently none whose testimony would be valuable."
Jervis Langdon held out his hand. "You have at least one," he said.
"I believe in you. I know you better than they do."
And so came the crown of happiness. The engagement of Samuel Langhorne
Clemens and Olivia Lewis Langdon was ratified next day, February 4, 1869.
But if the friends of Mark Twain viewed the idea of the carnage with
scant favor, the friends of Miss Langdon regarded it with genuine alarm.
Elmira was a conservative place--a place of pedigree and family
tradition; that a stranger, a former printer, pilot, miner, wandering
journalist and lecturer, was to carry off the daughter of one of the
oldest and wealthiest families, was a thing not to be lightly permitted.
The fact that he had achieved a national fame did not count against other
considerations. The social protest amounted almost to insurrection, but
it was not availing. The Langdon family had their doubts too, though of
a different sort. Their doubts lay in the fear that one, reared as their
daughter had been, might be unable to hold a place as the wife of this
intellectual giant, whom they felt that the world was preparing to honor.
That this delicate, sheltered girl could have the strength of mind and
body for her position seemed hard to believe. Their faith overbore such
questionings, and the future years proved how fully it was justified.
To his mother Samuel Clemens wrote:
She is only a little body, but she hasn't her peer in Christendom.
I gave her only a plain gold engagement ring, when fashion
imperatively demands a two-hundred-dollar diamond one, and told her
it was typical of her future life-namely, that she would have to
flourish on substance, rather than luxuries (but you see I know the
girl--she don't care anything about luxuries).... She spends no
money but her astral year's allowance, and spends nearly every cent
of that on other people. She will be a good, sensible little wife,
without any airs about her. I don't make intercession for her
beforehand, and ask you to love her, for there isn't any use in
that--you couldn't help it if you were to try. I warn you that
whoever comes within the fatal influence of her beautiful nature is
her willing slave forevermore.
To Mrs. Crane, absent in March, her father wrote:
DEAR SUE,--I received your letter yesterday with a great deal of
pleasure, but the letter has gone in pursuit of one S. L. Clemens,
who has been giving us a great deal of trouble lately. We cannot
have a joy in our family without a feeling, on the part of the
little incorrigible in our family, that this wanderer must share it,
so, as soon as read, into her pocket and off upstairs goes your
letter, and in the next two minutes into the mail, so it is
impossible for me now to refer to it, or by reading it over gain an
inspiration in writing you. . .
Clemens closed his lecture tour in March, acid went immediately to
Elmira. He had lectured between fifty and sixty times, with a return of
something more than $8,000, not a bad aggregate for a first season on the
circuit. He had planned to make a spring tour to California, but the
attraction at Elmira was of a sort that discouraged distant travel.
Furthermore, he disliked the platform, then and always. It was always a
temptation to him because of its quick and abundant return, but it was
none the less distasteful. In a letter of that spring he wrote:
I most cordially hate the lecture field. And after all, I shudder
to think I may never get out of it. In all conversation with Gough,
and Anna Dickinson, Nasby, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips,
and the other old stagers, I could not observe that they ever
expected or hoped to get out of the business. I don't want to get
wedded to it as they are.
He declined further engagements on the excuse that he must attend to
getting out his book. The revised proofs were coming now, and he and
gentle Livy Langdon read them together. He realized presently that with
her sensitive nature she had also a keen literary perception. What
he lacked in delicacy--and his lack was likely to be large enough in that
direction--she detected, and together they pruned it away. She became
his editor during those happy courtship days--a position which she held
to her death. The world owed a large debt of gratitude to Mark Twain's
wife, who from the very beginning--and always, so far as in her strength
she was able--inspired him to give only his worthiest to the world,
whether in written or spoken word, in counsel or in deed. Those early
days of their close companionship, spiritual and mental, were full of
revelation to Samuel Clemens, a revelation that continued from day to
day, and from year to year, even to the very end.
The letter to Bliss and the proofs were full of suggested changes that
would refine and beautify the text. In one of them he settles the
question of title, which he says is to be:
THE INNOCENTS ABROAD
or
THE NEW PILGRIM'S PROGRESS
and we may be sure that it was Olivia Langdon's voice that gave the
deciding vote for the newly adopted chief title, which would take any
suggestion of irreverence out of the remaining words.
The book was to have been issued in the spring, but during his wanderings
proofs had been delayed, and there was now considerable anxiety about it,
as the agencies had become impatient for the canvass. At the end of
April Clemens wrote: "Your printers are doing well. I will hurry the
proofs"; but it was not until the early part of June that the last
chapters were revised and returned. Then the big book, at last
completed, went to press on an edition of twenty thousand, a large number
for any new book, even to-day.
In later years, through some confusion of circumstance, Mark Twain was
led to believe that the publication of The Innocents Abroad was long and
unnecessarily delayed. But this was manifestly a mistake. The book went
to press in June. It was a big book and a large edition. The first copy
was delivered July 20 (1869), and four hundred and seventeen bound
volumes were shipped that month. Even with the quicker mechanical
processes of to-day a month or more is allowed for a large book between
the final return of proofs and the date of publication. So it is only
another instance of his remembering, as he once quaintly put it, "the
thing that didn't happen."--[In an article in the North American Review
(September 21, 1906) Mr. Clemens stated that he found it necessary to
telegraph notice that he would bring suit if the book was not immediately
issued. In none of the letters covering this period is there any
suggestion of delay on the part of the publishers, and the date of the
final return of proofs, together with the date of publication, preclude
the possibility of such a circumstance. At some period of his life he
doubtless sent, or contemplated sending, such a message, and this fact,
through some curious psychology, became confused in his mind with the
first edition of The Innocents Abroad.]
LXXI
THE GREAT BOOK OF TRAVEL
'The Innocents Abroad' was a success from the start. The machinery for
its sale and delivery was in full swing by August 1, and five thousand
one hundred and seventy copies were disposed of that month--a number that
had increased to more than thirty-one thousand by the first of the year.
It was a book of travel; its lowest price was three and a half dollars.
No such record had been made by a book of that description; none has
equaled it since.--[One must recall that this was the record only up to
1910. D.W.]
If Mark Twain was not already famous, he was unquestionably famous now.
As the author of The New Pilgrim's Progress he was swept into the domain
of letters as one riding at the head of a cavalcade--doors and windows
wide with welcome and jubilant with applause. Newspapers chorused their
enthusiasm; the public voiced universal approval; only a few of the more
cultured critics seemed hesitant and doubtful.
They applauded--most of them--but with reservation. Doctor Holland
regarded Mark Twain as a mere fun maker of ephemeral popularity, and was
not altogether pleasant in his dictum. Doctor Holmes, in a letter to the
author, speaks of the "frequently quaint and amusing conceits," but does
not find it in his heart to refer to the book as literature. It was
naturally difficult for the East to concede a serious value to one who
approached his subject with such militant aboriginality, and occasionally
wrote "those kind." William Dean Howells reviewed the book in the
Atlantic, which was of itself a distinction, whether the review was
favorable or otherwise. It was favorable on the whole, favorable to the
humor of the book, its "delicious impudence," the charm of its good-
natured irony. The review closed:
It is no business of ours to fix his rank among the humorists
California has given us, but we think he is, in an entirely
different way from all the others, quite worthy of the company of
the best.
This is praise, but not of an intemperate sort, nor very inclusive. The
descriptive, the poetic, the more pretentious phases of the book did not
receive attention. Mr. Howells was perhaps the first critic of eminence
to recognize in Mark Twain not only the humorist, but the supreme genius-
the "Lincoln of our literature." This was later. The public--the silent
public--with what Howells calls "the inspired knowledge of the simple-
hearted multitude," reached a similar verdict forthwith. And on
sufficient evidence: let the average unprejudiced person of to-day take
up the old volume and read a few chapters anywhere and decide whether it
is the work of a mere humorist, or also of a philosopher, a poet, and a
seer. The writer well remembers a little group of "the simple-hearted
multitude" who during the winter of '69 and '70 gathered each evening to
hear the Innocents read aloud, and their unanimous verdict that it was
the "best book of modern times."
It was the most daring book of its day. Passages of it were calculated
to take the breath of the orthodox reader; only, somehow, it made him
smile, too. It was all so good-natured, so openly sincere. Without
doubt it preached heresy--the heresy of viewing revered landmarks and
relics joyously, rather than lugubriously; reverentially, when they
inspired reverence; satirically, when they invited ridicule, and with
kindliness always.
The Innocents Abroad is Mark Twain's greatest book of travel. The
critical and the pure in speech may object to this verdict. Brander
Matthews regards it second to A Tramp Abroad, the natural viewpoint of
the literary technician. The 'Tramp' contains better usage without
doubt, but it lacks the "color" which gives the Innocents its perennial
charm. In the Innocents there is a glow, a fragrance, a romance of
touch, a subtle something which is idyllic, something which is not quite
of reality, in the tale of that little company that so long ago sailed
away to the harbors of their illusions beyond the sea, and, wandered
together through old palaces and galleries, and among the tombs of the
saints, and down through ancient lands. There is an atmosphere about it
all, a dream-like quality that lies somewhere in the telling, maybe, or
in the tale; at all events it is there, and the world has felt it ever
since. Perhaps it could be defined in a single word, perhaps that word
would be "youth." That the artist, poor True Williams, felt its
inspiration is certain. We may believe that Williams was not a great
draftsman, but no artist ever caught more perfectly the light and spirit
of the author's text. Crude some of the pictures are, no doubt, but they
convey the very essence of the story; they belong to it, they are a part
of it, and they ought never to perish. 'A Tramp Abroad' is a rare book,
but it cannot rank with its great predecessor in human charm. The
public, which in the long run makes mistakes, has rendered that verdict.
The Innocents by far outsells the Tramp, and, for that matter, any other
book of travel.
THE PURCHASE OF A PAPER
It is curious to reflect that Mark Twain still did not regard himself as
a literary man. He had no literary plans for the future; he scarcely
looked forward to the publication of another book. He considered himself
a journalist; his ambition lay in the direction of retirement in some
prosperous newspaper enterprise, with the comforts and companionship of a
home. During his travels he had already been casting about for a
congenial and substantial association in newspaperdom, and had at one
time considered the purchase of an interest in the Cleveland Herald. But
Buffalo was nearer Elmira, and when an opportunity offered, by which he
could acquire a third interest in the Buffalo Express for $25,000, the
purchase was decided upon. His lack of funds prompted a new plan for a
lecture tour to the Pacific coast, this time with D. R. Locke (Nasby),
then immensely popular, in his lecture "Cussed Be Canaan."
Clemens had met Nasby on the circuit, and was very fond of him. The two
had visited Boston together, and while there had called on Doctor Holmes;
this by the way. Nasby was fond of Clemens too, but doubtful about the
trip-doubtful about his lecture:
Your proposition takes my breath away. If I had my new lecture
completed I wouldn't hesitate a moment, but really isn't "Cussed Be
Canaan" too old? You know that lemon, our African brother, juicy as
he was in his day, has been squeezed dry. Why howl about his wrongs
after said wrongs have been redressed? Why screech about the
"damnable spirit of Cahst" when the victim thereof sits at the first
table, and his oppressor mildly takes, in hash, what he leaves? You
see, friend Twain, the Fifteenth Amendment busted "Cussed Be
Canaan." I howled feelingly on the subject while it was a living
issue, for I felt all that I said and a great deal more; but now
that we have won our fight why dance frantically on the dead corpse
of our enemy? The Reliable Contraband is contraband no more, but a
citizen of the United States, and I speak of him no more.
Give me a week to think of your proposition. If I can jerk a
lecture in time I will go with you. The Lord knows I would like to.
--[Nasby's lecture, "Cussed Be Canaan," opened, "We are all
descended from grandfathers!" He had a powerful voice, and always
just on the stroke of eight he rose and vigorously delivered this
sentence. Once, after lecturing an entire season--two hundred and
twenty-five nights--he went home to rest. That evening he sat,
musingly drowsing by the fire, when the clock struck eight. Without
a moment's thought Nasby sprang to his feet and thundered out, "We
are all descended from grandfathers!"]
Nasby did not go, and Clemens's enthusiasm cooled at the prospect of
setting out alone on that long tour. Furthermore, Jervis Langdon
promptly insisted on advancing the money required to complete the
purchase of the Express, and the trade was closed.--[Mr. Langdon is just
as good for $25,000 for me, and has already advanced half of it in cash.
I wrote and asked whether I had better send him my note, or a due bill,
or how he would prefer to have the indebtedness made of record, and he
answered every other topic in the letter pleasantly, but never replied to
that at all. Still, I shall give my note into a hands of his business
agent here, and pay him the interest as it falls due.--S. L. C. to his
mother.]
The Buffalo Express was at this time in the hands of three men--Col.
George F. Selkirk, J. L. Lamed, and Thomas A. Kennett. Colonel Selkirk
was business manager, Lamed was political editor. With the purchase of
Kennett's share Clemens became a sort of general and contributing editor,
with a more or less "roving commission"--his hours and duties not very
clearly defined. It was believed by his associates, and by Clemens
himself, that his known connection with the paper would give it prestige
and circulation, as Nasby's connection had popularized the Toledo Blade.
The new editor entered upon his duties August 14 (1869). The members of
the Buffalo press gave him a dinner that evening, and after the manner of
newspaper men the world over, were handsomely cordial to the "new enemy
in their midst."
There is an anecdote which relates that next morning, when Mark Twain
arrived in the Express office (it was then at 14 Swan Street), there
happened to be no one present who knew him. A young man rose very
bruskly and asked if there was any one he would like to see. It is
reported that he replied, with gentle deliberation:
"Well, yes, I should like to see some young man offer the new editor a
chair."
It is so like Mark Twain that we are inclined to accept it, though it
seems of doubtful circumstance. In any case it deserves to be true. His
"Salutatory" (August 18th) is sufficiently genuine:
Being a stranger, it would be immodest for me to suddenly and
violently assume the associate editorship of the Buffalo Express
without a single word of comfort or encouragement to the unoffending
patrons of the paper, who are about to be exposed to constant
attacks of my wisdom and learning. But the word shall be as brief
as possible. I only want to assure parties having a friendly
interest in the prosperity of the journal that I am not going to
hurt the paper deliberately and intentionally at any time. I am not
going to introduce any startling reforms, nor in any way attempt to
make trouble.... I shall not make use of slang and vulgarity upon
any occasion or under any circumstances, and shall never use
profanity except when discussing house rent and taxes. Indeed, upon
a second thought, I shall not use it even then, for it is
unchristian, inelegant, and degrading; though, to speak truly, I do
not see how house rent and taxes are going to be discussed worth a
cent without it. I shall not often meddle with politics, because we
have a political Editor who is already excellent and only needs to
serve a term or two in the penitentiary to be perfect. I shall not
write any poetry unless I conceive a spite against the subscribers.
Such is my platform. I do not see any use in it, but custom is law
and must be obeyed.
John Harrison Mills, who was connected with the Express in those days,
has written:
I cannot remember that there was any delay in getting down to his
work. I think within five minutes the new editor had assumed the
easy look of one entirely at home, pencil in hand and a clutch of
paper before him, with an air of preoccupation, as of one intent on
a task delayed. It was impossible to be conscious of the man
sitting there, and not feel his identity with all that he had
enjoyed, and the reminiscence of it he that seemed to radiate; for
the personality was so absolutely in accord with all the record of
himself and his work. I cannot say he seemed to be that vague thing
they call a type in race or blood, though the word, if used in his
case for temperament, would decidedly mean what they used to call
the "sanguine."
I thought that, pictorially, the noble costume of the Albanian would
have well become him. Or he might have been a Goth, and worn the
horned bull-pate helmet of Alaric's warriors; or stood at the prow
of one of the swift craft of the Vikings. His eyes, which have been
variously described, were, it seemed to me, of an indescribable
depth of the bluish moss-agate, with a capacity of pupil dilation
that in certain lights had the effect of a deep black....
Mr. Mills adds that in dress he was now "well groomed," and that
consequently they were obliged to revise their notions as to the careless
negligee which gossip had reported.--[From unpublished Reminiscences
kindly lent to the author by Mr. Mills]
LXXIII
THE FIRST MEETING WITH HOWELLS
Clemens' first period of editorial work was a brief one, though he made
frequent contributions to the paper: sketches, squibs, travel-notes, and
experiences, usually humorous in character. His wedding-day had been set
for early in the year, and it was necessary to accumulate a bank account
for that occasion. Before October he was out on the lecture circuit,
billed now for the first time for New England, nervous and apprehensive
in consequence, though with good hope. To Pamela he wrote
(November 9th):
To-morrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience--
4,000 critics--and on the success of this matter depends my future
success in New England. But I am not distressed. Nasby is in the same
boat. Tonight decides the fate of his brand-new lecture. He has just
left my room--been reading his lecture to me--was greatly depressed. I
have convinced him that he has little to fear.
Whatever alarm Mark Twain may have felt was not warranted. His success
with the New England public was immediate and complete. He made his
headquarters in Boston, at Redpath's office, where there was pretty sure
to be a congenial company, of which he was presently the center.
It was during one of these Boston sojourns that he first met William Dean
Howells, his future friend and literary counselor. Howells was assistant
editor of the Atlantic at this time; James T. Fields, its editor.
Clemens had been gratified by the Atlantic review, and had called to
express his thanks for it. He sat talking to Fields, when Howells
entered the editorial rooms, and on being presented to the author of the
review, delivered his appreciation in the form of a story, sufficiently
appropriate, but not qualified for the larger types.--[He said: "When I
read that review of yours, I felt like the woman who was so glad her baby
had come white."]
His manner, his humor, his quaint colloquial forms all delighted Howells
--more, in fact, than the opulent sealskin overcoat which he affected at
this period--a garment astonishing rather than esthetic, as Mark Twain's
clothes in those days of his first regeneration were likely to be
startling enough, we may believe; in the conservative atmosphere of the
Atlantic rooms. And Howells--gentle, genial, sincere--filled with the
early happiness of his calling, won the heart of Mark Twain and never
lost it, and, what is still more notable, won his absolute and unvarying
confidence in all literary affairs. It was always Mark Twain's habit to
rely on somebody, and in matters pertaining to literature and to literary
people in general he laid his burden on William Dean Howells from that
day. Only a few weeks after that first visit we find him telegraphing to
Howells, asking him to look after a Californian poet, then ill and
friendless in Brooklyn. Clemens states that he does not know the poet,
but will contribute fifty dollars if Howells will petition the steamboat
company for a pass; and no doubt Howells complied, and spent a good deal
more than fifty dollars' worth of time to get the poet relieved and
started; it would be like him.
LXXIV
THE WEDDING-DAY
The wedding was planned, at first, either for Christmas or New-Year's
Day; but as the lecture engagements continued into January it was decided
to wait until these were filled. February 2d, a date near the
anniversary of the engagement, was agreed upon, also a quiet wedding with
no "tour." The young people would go immediately to Buffalo, and take up
a modest residence, in a boardinghouse as comfortable, even as luxurious,
as the husband's financial situation justified. At least that was Samuel
Clemens's understanding of the matter. He felt that he was heavily in
debt--that his first duty was to relieve himself of that obligation.
There were other plans in Elmira, but in the daily and happy letters he
received there was no inkling of any new purpose.
He wrote to J. D. F. Slee, of Buffalo, who was associated in business
with Mr. Langdon, and asked him to find a suitable boarding-place, one
that would be sufficiently refined for the woman who was to be his wife,
and sufficiently reasonable to insure prosperity. In due time Slee
replied that, while boarding was a "miserable business anyhow," he had
been particularly fortunate in securing a place on one of the most
pleasant streets--"the family a small one and choice spirits, with no
predilection for taking boarders, and consenting to the present
arrangement only because of the anticipated pleasure of your company."
The price, Slee added, would be reasonable. As a matter of fact a house
on Delaware Avenue--still the fine residence street of Buffalo--had been
bought and furnished throughout as a present to the bride and groom. It
stands to-day practically unchanged--brick and mansard without, Eastlake
within, a type then much in vogue--spacious and handsome for that period.
It was completely appointed. Diagrams of the rooms had been sent to
Elmira and Miss Langdon herself had selected the furnishings. Everything
was put in readiness, including linen, cutlery, and utensils. Even the
servants had been engaged and the pantry and cellar had been stocked.
It must have been hard for Olivia Langdon to keep this wonderful surprise
out of those daily letters. A surprise like that is always watching a
chance to slip out unawares, especially when one is eagerly impatient to
reveal it.
However, the traveler remained completely in the dark. He may have
wondered vaguely at the lack of enthusiasm in the boarding idea, and
could he have been certain that the sales of the book would continue, or
that his newspaper venture would yield an abundant harvest, he might have
planned his domestic beginning on a more elaborate scale. If only the
Tennessee land would yield the long-expected fortune now! But these were
all incalculable things. All that he could be sure of was the coming of
his great happiness, in whatever environment, and of the dragging weeks
between.
At last the night of the final lecture came, and he was off for Elmira
with the smallest possible delay. Once there, the intervening days did
not matter. He could join in the busy preparations; he could write
exuberantly to his friends. To Laura Hawkins, long since Laura Frazer he
sent a playful line; to Jim Gillis, still digging and washing on the
slopes of the old Tuolumne hills, he wrote a letter which eminently
belongs here:
Elmira, N. Y., January 26, 1870.
DEAR Jim,--I remember that old night just as well! And somewhere
among my relics I have your remembrance stored away. It makes my
heart ache yet to call to mind some of those days. Still it
shouldn't, for right in the depths of their poverty and their
pocket-hunting vagabondage lay the germ of my coming good fortune.
You remember the one gleam of jollity that shot across our dismal
sojourn in the rain and mud of Angel's Camp--I mean that day we sat
around the tavern stove and heard that chap tell about the frog and
how they filled him with shot. And you remember how we quoted from
the yarn and laughed over it out there on the hillside while you and
dear old Stoker panned and washed. I jotted the story down in my
note-book that day, and would have been glad to get ten or fifteen
dollars for it--I was just that blind. But then we were so hard up.
I published that story, and it became widely known in America,
India, China, England, and the reputation it made for me has paid me
thousands and thousands of dollars since. Four or five months ago I
bought into the Express (I have ordered it sent to you as long as
you live, and if the bookkeeper sends you any bills you let me hear
of it). I went heavily in debt--never could have dared to do that,
Jim, if we hadn't heard the jumping Frog story that day.
And wouldn't I love to take old Stoker by the hand, and wouldn't I
love to see him in his great specialty, his wonderful rendition of
Rinalds in the "Burning Shame!" Where is Dick and what is he doing?
Give him my fervent love and warm old remembrances.
A week from to-day I shall be married-to a girl even better and
lovelier than the peerless "Chapparal Quails." You can't come so
far, Jim, but still I cordially invite you to come anyhow, and I
invite Dick too. And if you two boys were to land here on that
pleasant occasion we would make you right royally welcome.
Truly your friend,
SAML. L. CLEMENS.
P.S.---California plums are good. Jim, particularly when they are
stewed.
It had been only five years before--that day in Angel's Camp--but how
long ago and how far away it seemed to him now! So much had happened
since then, so much of which that was the beginning--so little compared
with the marvel of the years ahead, whose threshold he was now about to
cross, and not alone.
A day or two before the wedding he was asked to lecture on the night of
February 2d. He replied that he was sorry to disappoint the applicant,
but that he could not lecture on the night of February 2d, for the reason
that he was going to marry a young lady on that evening, and that he
would rather marry that young lady than deliver all the lectures in the
world.
And so came the wedding-day. It began pleasantly; the postman brought a
royalty check that morning of $4,000, the accumulation of three months'
sales, and the Rev. Joseph Twichell and Harmony, his wife, came from
Hartford--Twichell to join with the Rev. Thomas K. Beecher in
solemnizing the marriage. Pamela Moffett, a widow now, with her daughter
Annie, grown to a young lady, had come all the way from St. Louis, and
Mrs. Fairbanks from Cleveland.
Yet the guests were not numerous, not more than a hundred at most, so it
was a quiet wedding there in the Langdon parlors, those dim, stately
rooms that in the future would hold so much of his history--so much of
the story of life and death that made its beginning there.
The wedding-service was about seven o'clock, for Mr. Beecher had a
meeting at the church soon after that hour. Afterward followed the
wedding-supper and dancing, and the bride's father danced with the bride.
To the interested crowd awaiting him at the church Mr. Beecher reported
that the bride was very beautiful, and had on the longest white gloves he
had ever seen; he declared they reached to her shoulders.--[Perhaps for
a younger generation it should be said that Thomas K. Beecher was a
brother of Henry Ward Beecher. He lived and died in Elmira, the almost
worshiped pastor of the Park Congregational Church. He was a noble,
unorthodox teacher. Samuel Clemens at the time of his marriage already
strongly admired him, and had espoused his cause in an article signed
"S'cat!" in the Elmira Advertiser, when he (Beecher) had been assailed by
the more orthodox Elmira clergy. For the "S'cat" article see Appendix I,
at the end of last volume.]
It was the next afternoon when they set out for Buffalo, accompanied by
the bride's parents, the groom's relatives, the Beechers, and perhaps one
or two others of that happy company. It was nine o'clock at night when
they arrived, and found Mr. Slee waiting at the station with sleighs to
convey the party to the "boarding-house" he had selected. They drove and
drove, and the sleigh containing the bride and groom got behind and
apparently was bound nowhere in particular, which disturbed the groom a
good deal, for he thought it proper that they should arrive first, to
receive their guests. He commented on Slee's poor judgment in selecting
a house that was so hard to find, and when at length they turned into
fashionable Delaware Avenue, and stopped before one of the most
attractive places in the neighborhood, he was beset with fear concerning
the richness of the locality.
They were on the steps when the doors opened, and a perfect fairyland of
lights and decoration was revealed within. The friends who had gone
ahead came out with greetings, to lead in the bride and groom. Servants
hurried forward to take bags and wraps. They were ushered inside; they
were led through beautiful rooms, all newly appointed and garnished. The
bridegroom was dazed, unable to understand the meaning of things, the
apparent ownership and completeness of possession.
At last the young wife put her hand upon his arm:
"Don't you understand, Youth," she said; that was always her name for
him. "Don't you understand? It is ours, all ours--everything--a gift
from father!"
But even then he could not grasp it; not at first, not until Mr. Langdon
brought a little box and, opening it, handed them the deeds.
Nobody quite remembers what was the first remark that Samuel Clemens made
then; but either then or a little later he said:
"Mr. Langdon, whenever you are in Buffalo, if it's twice a year, come
right here. Bring your bag and stay overnight if you want to. It
sha'n't cost you a cent!"
They went in to supper then, and by and by the guests were gone and the
young wedded pair were alone.
Patrick McAleer, the young coachman, who would grow old in their employ,
and Ellen, the cook, came in for their morning orders, and were full of
Irish delight at the inexperience and novelty of it all. Then they were
gone, and only the lovers in their new house and their new happiness
remained.
And so it was they entered the enchanted land.
LXXV
AS TO DESTINY
If any reader has followed these chapters thus far, he may have wondered,
even if vaguely, at the seeming fatality of events. Mark Twain had but
to review his own life for justification of his doctrine of inevitability
--an unbroken and immutable sequence of cause and effect from the
beginning. Once he said:
"When the first living atom found itself afloat on the great Laurentian
sea the first act of that first atom led to the second act of that first
atom, and so on down through the succeeding ages of all life, until, if
the steps could be traced, it would be shown that the first act of that
first atom has led inevitably to the act of my standing here in my
dressing-gown at this instant talking to you."
It seemed the clearest presentment ever offered in the matter of
predestined circumstance--predestined from the instant when that primal
atom felt the vital thrill. Mark Twain's early life, however imperfectly
recorded, exemplifies this postulate. If through the years still ahead
of us the course of destiny seems less clearly defined, it is only
because thronging events make the threads less easy to trace. The web
becomes richer, the pattern more intricate and confusing, but the line of
fate neither breaks nor falters, to the end.
LXXVI
ON THE BUFFALO "EXPRESS"
With the beginning of life in Buffalo, Mark Twain had become already a
world character--a man of large consequence and events. He had no proper
realization of this, no real sense of the size of his conquest; he still
regarded himself merely as a lecturer and journalist, temporarily
popular, but with no warrant to a permanent seat in the world's literary
congress. He thought his success something of an accident. The fact
that he was prepared to settle down as an editorial contributor to a
newspaper in what was then only a big village is the best evidence of a
modest estimate of his talents.
He "worked like a horse," is the verdict of those who were closely
associated with him on the Express. His hours were not regular, but they
were long. Often he was at his desk at eight in the morning, and
remained there until ten or eleven at night.
His working costume was suited to comfort rather than show. With coat,
vest, collar, and tie usually removed (sometimes even his shoes), he
lounged in his chair, in any attitude that afforded the larger ease,
pulling over the exchanges; scribbling paragraphs, editorials, humorous
skits, and what not, as the notion came upon him. J. L. Lamed, his co-
worker (he sat on the opposite side of the same table), remembers that
Mark Twain enjoyed his work as he went along--the humor of it--and that
he frequently laughed as some whimsicality or new absurdity came into his
mind.
"I doubt," writes Lamed, "if he ever enjoyed anything more than the
jackknife engraving that he did on a piece of board of a military map of
the siege of Paris, which was printed in the Express from his original
plate, with accompanying explanations and comments. His half-day of
whittling and laughter that went with it are something that I find
pleasant to remember. Indeed, my whole experience of association with
him is a happy memory, which I am fortunate in having.... What one saw
of him was always the actual Mark Twain, acting out of his own nature
simply, frankly, without pretense, and almost without reserve. It was
that simplicity and naturalness in the man which carried his greatest
charm."
Lamed, like many others, likens Mark Twain to Lincoln in various of his
characteristics. The two worked harmoniously together: Lamed attending
to the political direction of the journal, Clemens to the literary, and
what might be termed the sentimental side. There was no friction in the
division of labor, never anything but good feeling between them. Clemens
had a poor opinion of his own comprehension of politics, and perhaps as
little regard for Lamed's conception of humor. Once when the latter
attempted something in the way of pleasantry his associate said:
"Better leave the humor on this paper to me, Lamed"; and once when Lamed
was away attending the Republican State Convention at Saratoga, and some
editorial comment seemed necessary, Clemens thought it best to sign the
utterance, and to make humor of his shortcomings.
I do not know much about politics, and am not sitting up nights to
learn . . . .
I am satisfied that these nominations are all right and sound, and
that they are the only ones that can bring peace to our distracted
country (the only political phrase I am perfectly familiar with and
competent to hurl at the public with fearless confidence--the other
editor is full of them), but being merely satisfied is not enough.
I always like to know before I shout. But I go for Mr. Curtis with
all my strength! Being certain of him, I hereby shout all I know
how. But the others may be a split ticket, or a scratched ticket,
or whatever you call it.
I will let it alone for the present. It will keep. The other young
man will be back to-morrow, and he will shout for it, split or no
split, rest assured of that. He will prance into this political
ring with his tomahawk and his war-whoop, and then you will hear a
crash and see the scalps fly. He has none of my diffidence. He
knows all about these nominees, and if he don't he will let on to in
such a natural way as to deceive the most critical. He knows
everything--he knows more than Webster's Unabridged and the American
Encyclopedia--but whether he knows anything about a subject or not
he is perfectly willing to discuss it. When he gets back he will
tell you all about these candidates as serenely as if he had been
acquainted with them a hundred years, though, speaking
confidentially, I doubt if he ever heard of any of them till to-day.
I am right well satisfied it is a good, sound, sensible ticket, and
a ticket to win; but wait till he comes.
In the mean time I go for George William Curtis and take the
chances.
MARK TWAIN.
He had become what Mr. Howells calls entirely "desouthernized" by this
time. From having been of slaveholding stock, and a Confederate soldier,
he had become a most positive Republican, a rampant abolitionist--had
there been anything left to abolish. His sympathy had been always with
the oppressed, and he had now become their defender. His work on the
paper revealed this more and more. He wrote fewer sketches and more
editorials, and the editorials were likely to be either savage assaults
upon some human abuse, or fierce espousals of the weak. They were
fearless, scathing, terrific. Of some farmers of Cohocton, who had taken
the law into their own hands to punish a couple whom they believed to be
a detriment to the community, he wrote:
"The men who did that deed are capable of doing any low, sneaking,
cowardly villainy that could be invented in perdition. They are the very
bastards of the devil."
He appended a full list of their names, and added:
"If the farmers of Cohocton are of this complexion, what on earth must a
Cohocton rough be like?"
But all this happened a long time ago, and we need not detail those
various old interests and labors here. It is enough to say that Mark
Twain on the Express was what he had been from the beginning, and would
be to the end--the zealous champion of justice and liberty; violent and
sometimes wrong in his viewpoint, but never less than fearless and
sincere. Invariably he was for the oppressed. He had a natural instinct
for the right, but, right or wrong, he was for the under dog.
Among the best of his editorial contributions is a tribute to Anson
Burlingame, who died February 23, 1870, at St. Petersburg, on his trip
around the world as special ambassador for the Chinese Empire. In this
editorial Clemens endeavored to pay something of his debt to the noble
statesman. He reviewed Burlingame's astonishing career--the career which
had closed at forty-seven, and read like a fairy-tale-and he dwelt
lovingly on his hero's nobility of character. At the close he said:
"He was a good man, and a very, very great man. America, lost a son, and
all the world a servant, when he died."
Among those early contributions to the Express is a series called "Around
the World," an attempt at collaboration with Prof. D. R. Ford, who did
the actual traveling, while Mark Twain, writing in the first person, gave
the letters his literary stamp. At least some of the contributions were
written in this way, such as "Adventures in Hayti," "The Pacific," and
"Japan." These letters exist to-day only in the old files of the
Express, and indeed this is the case with most of Clemens's work for that
paper. It was mainly ephemeral or timely work, and its larger value has
disappeared. Here and there is a sentence worth remembering. Of two
practical jokers who sent in a marriage notice of persons not even
contemplating matrimony, he said: "This deceit has been practised
maliciously by a couple of men whose small souls will escape through
their pores some day if they do not varnish their hides."
Some of the sketches have been preserved. "Journalism in Tennessee," one
of the best of his wilder burlesques, is as enjoyable to-day as when
written. "A Curious Dream" made a lasting impression on his Buffalo
readers, and you are pretty certain to hear of it when you mention Mark
Twain in that city to-day. It vividly called attention to the neglect of
the old North Street graveyard. The gruesome vision of the ancestors
deserting with their coffins on their backs was even more humiliating
than amusing, and inspired a movement for reform. It has been effective
elsewhere since then, and may still be read with profit--or satisfaction
--for in a note at the end the reader is assured that if the cemeteries
of his town are kept in good order the dream is not leveled at his town
at all, but "particularly and venomously at the next town."
LXXVII
THE "GALAXY"
Mark Twain's work on the Express represented only a portion of his
literary activities during his Buffalo residence. The Galaxy, an
ambitious New York magazine of that day--[published by Sheldon & Co. at
498 and 500 Broadway]--, proposed to him that he conduct for them a
humorous department. They would pay $2,400 a year for the work, and
allow him a free hand. There was some discussion as to book rights, but
the arrangement was concluded, and his first instalment, under the
general title of "Memoranda," appeared in the May number, 1870. In his
Introductory he outlined what the reader might expect, such as
"exhaustive statistical tables," "Patent Office reports," and "complete
instructions about farming, even from the grafting of the seed to the
harrowing of the matured crops." He declared that he would throw a
pathos into the subject of agriculture that would surprise and delight
the world. He added that the "Memoranda" was not necessarily a humorous
department.
I would not conduct an exclusively and professedly humorous
department for any one. I would always prefer to have the privilege
of printing a serious and sensible remark, in case one occurred to
me, without the reader's feeling obliged to consider himself
outraged.... Puns cannot be allowed a place in this department....
No circumstance, however dismal, will ever be considered a
sufficient excuse for the admission of that last and saddest
evidence of intellectual poverty, the pun.
The Galaxy was really a fine magazine, with the best contributors
obtainable; among them Justin McCarthy, S. M. B. Piatt, Richard Grant
White, and many others well known in that day, with names that still
flicker here and there in its literary twilight. The new department
appealed to Clemens, and very soon he was writing most of his sketches
for it. They were better literature, as a rule, than those published in
his own paper.
The first number of the "Memoranda" was fairly representative of those
that followed it. "The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract,"
a manuscript which he had undertaken three years before and mislaid, was
its initial contribution. Besides the "Beef Contract," there was a
tribute to George Wakeman, a well-known journalist of those days; a
stricture on the Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, who had delivered from the
pulpit an argument against workingmen occupying pews in fashionable
churches; a presentment of the Chinese situation in San Francisco,
depicting the cruel treatment of the Celestial immigrant; a burlesque of
the Sunday-school "good little boy" story,--["The Story of the Good
Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper" and the "Beef Contract" are included in
Sketches New and Old; also the Chinese sketch, under the title,
"Disgraceful Persecution of a Boy."]--and several shorter skits--and
anecdotes, ten pages in all; a rather generous contract.
Mark Twain's comment on Talmage was prompted by an article in which
Talmage had assumed the premise that if workingmen attended the churches
it would drive the better class of worshipers away. Among other things
he said:
I have a good Christian friend who, if he sat in the front pew in
church, and a workingman should enter the door at the other end,
would smell him instantly. My friend is not to blame for the
sensitiveness of his nose, any more than you would flog a pointer
for being keener on the scent than a stupid watch-dog. The fact is,
if you had all the churches free, by reason of the mixing of the
common people with the uncommon, you would keep one-half of
Christendom sick at their stomach. If you are going to kill the
church thus with bad smells I will have nothing to do with this work
of evangelization.
Commenting on this Mark Twain said--well, he said a good deal more than
we have room for here, but a portion of his closing paragraphs is worth
preserving. He compares the Reverend Mr. Talmage with the early
disciples of Christ--Paul and Peter and the others; or, rather, he
contrasts him with them.
They healed the very beggars, and held intercourse with people of a
villainous odor every day. If the subject of these remarks had been
chosen among the original Twelve Apostles he would not have
associated with the rest, because he could not have stood the fishy
smell of some of his comrades who came from around the Sea of
Galilee. He would have resigned his commission with some such
remark as he makes in the extract quoted above: "Master, if thou art
going to kill the church thus with bad smells I will have nothing to
do with this work of evangelization." He is a disciple, and makes
that remark to the Master; the only difference is that he makes it
in the nineteenth instead of the first century.
Talmage was immensely popular at this time, and Mark Twain's open attack
on him must have shocked a good many Galaxy readers, as perhaps his
article on the Chinese cruelties offended the citizens of San Francisco.
It did not matter. He was not likely to worry over the friends he would
lose because of any stand taken for human justice. Lamed said of him:
"He was very far from being one who tried in any way to make himself
popular." Certainly he never made any such attempt at the expense of his
convictions.
The first Galaxy instalment was a sort of platform of principles for the
campaign that was to follow. Not that each month's contribution
contained personal criticism, or a defense of the Chinese (of whom he was
always the champion as long as he lived), but a good many of them did.
In the October number he began a series of letters under the general
title of "Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again," supposed to have been written
by a Chinese immigrant in San Francisco, detailing his experience there.
In a note the author says: "No experience is set down in the following
letters which had to be invented. Fancy is not needed to give variety to
the history of the Chinaman's sojourn in America. Plain fact is amply
sufficient." The letters show how the supposed Chinese writer of them
had set out for America, believing it to be a land whose government was
based on the principle that all men are created equal, and treated
accordingly; how, upon arriving in San Francisco, he was kicked and
bruised and beaten, and set upon by dogs, flung into jail, tried and
condemned without witnesses, his own race not being allowed to testify
against Americans--Irish-Americans--in the San Francisco court. They are
scathing, powerful letters, and one cannot read them, even in this day of
improved conditions, without feeling the hot waves of resentment and
indignation which Mark Twain must have felt when he penned them.
Reverend Mr. Talmage was not the only divine to receive attention in the
"Memoranda." The Reverend Mr. Sabine, of New York, who had declined to
hold a church burial service for the old actor, George Holland, came in
for the most caustic as well as the most artistic stricture of the entire
series. It deserves preservation to-day, not only for its literary
value, but because no finer defense of the drama, no more searching
sermon on self-righteousness, has ever been put into concrete form.
--["The Indignity Put Upon the Remains of Gorge Holland by the Rev. Mr.
Sabine"; Galaxy for February, 1871. The reader will find it complete
under Appendix J, at the end of last volume.]
The "Little Church Around the Corner" on Twenty-ninth Street received
that happy title from this incident.
"There is a little church around the corner that will, perhaps, permit
the service," Mr. Sabine had said to Holland's friends.
The little church did permit the service, and there was conferred upon it
the new name, which it still bears. It has sheltered a long line of
actor folk and their friends since then, earning thereby reverence,
gratitude, and immortal memory.--[Church of the Transfiguration.
Memorial services were held there for Joseph Jefferson; and a memorial
window, by John La Farge, has been placed there in memory of Edwin
Booth.]
Of the Galaxy contributions a number are preserved in Sketches New and
Old. "How I Edited an Agricultural Paper" is one of the best of these--
an excellent example of Mark Twain's more extravagant style of humor. It
is perennially delightful; in France it has been dramatized, and is still
played.
A successful Galaxy feature, also preserved in the Sketches, was the
"Burlesque Map of Paris," reprinted from the Express. The Franco-
Prussian War was in progress, and this travesty was particularly timely.
It creates only a smile of amusement to-day, but it was all fresh and
delightful then. Schuyler Colfax, by this time Vice-President, wrote to
him: "I have had the heartiest possible laugh over it, and so have all my
family. You are a wicked, conscienceless wag, who ought to be punished
severely."
The "Official Commendations," which accompany the map, are its chief
charm. They are from Grant, Bismarck, Brigham Young, and others, the
best one coming from one J. Smith, who says:
My wife was for years afflicted with freckles, and though everything
was done for her relief that could be done, all was in vain. But,
sir, since her first glance at your map they have entirely left her.
She has nothing but convulsions now.
It is said that the "Map of Paris" found its way to Berlin, where the
American students in the beer-halls used to pretend to quarrel over it
until they attracted the attention of the German soldiers that might be
present. Then they would wander away and leave it on the table and watch
results. The soldiers would pounce upon it and lose their tempers over
it; then finally abuse it and revile its author, to the satisfaction of
everybody.
The larger number of "Memoranda" sketches have properly found oblivion
to-day. They were all, or nearly all, collected by a Canadian pirate,
C. A. Backas, in a volume bearing the title of Memoranda,--[Also by a
harpy named John Camden Hotten (of London), of whom we shall hear again.
Hotten had already pirated The Innocents, and had it on the market before
Routledge could bring out the authorized edition. Routledge later
published the "Memoranda" under the title of Sketches, including the
contents of the Jumping Frog book.]--a book long ago suppressed. Only
about twenty of the Galaxy contributions found place in Sketches New and
Old, five years later, and some of these might have been spared as
literature. "To Raise Poultry," "John Chinaman in New York," and
"History Repeats Itself" are valuable only as examples of his work at
that period. The reader may consult them for himself.
LXXVIII
THE PRIMROSE PATH
But we are losing sight of more important things. From the very
beginning Mark Twain's home meant always more to him than his work. The
life at 472 Delaware Avenue had begun with as fair a promise as any
matrimonial journey ever undertaken: There seemed nothing lacking: a
beautiful home, sufficient income, bright prospects--these things, with
health and love; constitute married happiness. Mrs. Clemens wrote to her
sister, Mrs. Crane, at the end of February: "Sue, we are two as happy
people as you ever saw. Our days seem to be made up of only bright
sunlight, with no shadow in them." In the same letter the husband added:
"Livy pines and pines every day for you, and I pine and pine every day
for you, and when we both of us are pining at once you would think it was
a whole pine forest let loose."
To Redpath, who was urging lecture engagements for the coming season, he
wrote:
DEAR RED,--I am not going to lecture any more forever. I have got
things ciphered down to a fraction now. I know just about what it
will cost to live, and I can make the money without lecturing.
Therefore, old man, count me out.
And still later, in May:
I guess I am out of the field permanently. Have got a lovely wife,
a lovely house, bewitchingly furnished, a lovely carriage, and a
coachman whose style and dignity are simply awe-in-spiring, nothing
less; and I am making more money than necessary, by considerable,
and therefore why crucify myself nightly on the platform? The
subscriber will have to be excused for the present season at least.
So they were very happy during those early months, acquiring pleasantly
the education which any matrimonial experience is sure to furnish,
accustoming themselves to the uses of housekeeping, to life in
partnership, with all the discoveries and mental and spiritual
adaptations that belong to the close association of marriage. They were
far, very far, apart on many subjects. He was unpolished, untrained,
impulsive, sometimes violent. Twichell remembers that in the earlier
days of their acquaintance he wore a slouch hat pulled down in front, and
smoked a cigar that sometimes tilted up and touched the brim of it. The
atmosphere and customs of frontier life, the Westernisms of that day,
still clung to him. Mrs. Clemens, on the other hand, was conservative,
dainty, cultured, spiritual. He adored her as little less than a saint,
and she became, indeed, his saving grace. She had all the personal
refinement which he lacked, and she undertook the work of polishing and
purifying her life companion. She had no wish to destroy his
personality, to make him over, but only to preserve his best, and she set
about it in the right way--gently, and with a tender gratitude in each
achievement.
She did not entirely approve of certain lines of his reading; or, rather,
she did not understand them in those days. That he should be fond of
history and the sciences was natural enough, but when the Life of P. T.
Barnum, Written by Himself, appeared, and he sat up nights to absorb it,
and woke early and lighted the lamp to follow the career of the great
showman, she was at a loss to comprehend this particular literary
passion, and indeed was rather jealous of it. She did not realize then
his vast interest in the study of human nature, or that such a book
contained what Mr. Howells calls "the root of the human matter," the
inner revelation of the human being at first hand.
Concerning his religious observances her task in the beginning was easy
enough. Clemens had not at that time formulated any particular doctrines
of his own. His natural kindness of heart, and especially his love for
his wife, inclined him toward the teachings and customs of her Christian
faith--unorthodox but sincere, as Christianity in the Langdon family was
likely to be. It took very little persuasion on his wife's part to
establish family prayers in their home, grace before meals, and the
morning reading of a Bible chapter. Joe Goodman, who made a trip East,
and visited them during the early days of their married life, was
dumfounded to see Mark Twain ask a blessing and join in family worship.
Just how long these forms continued cannot be known to-day; the time of
their abandonment has perished from the recollection of any one now
living.
It would seem to have been the Bible-reading that wrought the change.
The prayer and the blessing were to him sincere and gracious; but as the
readings continued he realized that he had never before considered the
Bible from a doctrinal point of view, as a guide to spiritual salvation.
To his logical reasoning mind, a large portion of it seemed absurd: a
mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology. From such material
humanity had built its mightiest edifice of hope, the doctrines of its
faith. After a little while he could stand it no longer.
"Livy," he said one day, "you may keep this up if you want to, but I must
ask you to excuse me from it. It is making me a hypocrite. I don't
believe in this Bible. It contradicts my reason. I can't sit here and
listen to it, letting you believe that I regard it, as you do, in the
light of gospel, the word of God."
He was moved to write an article on the human idea of God, ancient and
modern. It contained these paragraphs:
The difference in importance, between the God of the Bible and the
God of the present day, cannot be described, it can only be vaguely
and inadequately figured to the mind . . . . If you make figures
to represent the earth and moon, and allow a space of one inch
between them, to represent the four hundred thousand miles of
distance which lies between the two bodies, the map will have to be
eleven miles long in order to bring in the nearest fixed star.--
[His figures were far too small. A map drawn on the scale of
400,000 miles to the inch would need to be 1,100 miles long to take
in both the earth and the nearest fixed star. On such a map the
earth would be one-fiftieth of an inch in diameter--the size of a
small grain of sand.]--So one cannot put the modern heavens on a
map, nor the modern God; but the Bible God and the Bible heavens can
be set down on a slate and yet not be discommoded . . . .
The difference between that universe and the modern one revealed by
science is as the difference between a dust-flecked ray in a barn
and the sublime arch of the Milky Way in the skies. Its God was
strictly proportioned to its dimensions. His sole solicitude was
about a handful of truculent nomads. He worried and fretted over
them in a peculiarly and distractingly human way. One day he coaxed
and petted them beyond their due, the next he harried and lashed
them beyond their deserts. He sulked, he cursed, he raged, he
grieved, according to his mood and the circumstances, but all to no
purpose; his efforts were all vain, he could not govern them. When
the fury was on him he was blind to all reason--he not only
slaughtered the offender, but even his harmless little children and
dumb cattle....
To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive,
fierce and ever fickle and changeful master; to trust the true God
is to trust a Being who has uttered no promises, but whose
beneficent, exact, and changeless ordering of the machinery of his
colossal universe is proof that he is at least steadfast to his
purposes; whose unwritten laws, so far as they affect man, being
equal and impartial, show that he is just and fair; these things,
taken together, suggest that if he shall ordain us to live
hereafter, he will still be steadfast, just, and fair toward us. We
shall not need to require anything more.
It seems mild enough, obvious, even orthodox, now--so far have we
traveled in forty years. But such a declaration then would have shocked
a great number of sincerely devout persons. His wife prevailed upon him
not to print it. She respected his honesty--even his reasoning, but his
doubts were a long grief to her, nevertheless. In time she saw more
clearly with his vision, but this was long after, when she had lived more
with the world, had become more familiar with its larger needs, and the
proportions of created things.
They did not mingle much or long with the social life of Buffalo. They
received and returned calls, attended an occasional reception; but
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