Mark Twain A Biography Part 187

APPENDIX M

LETTER WRITTEN TO MRS. CLEMENS FROM BOSTON, NOVEMBER, 1874, PROPHESYING A MONARCHY IN SIXTY-ONE YEARS.

(See Chapter xcvii)

BOSTON, November 16, 1935.

DEAR LIVY,--You observe I still call this beloved old place by the name it had when I was young. Limerick! It is enough to make a body sick.

The gentlemen-in-waiting stare to see me sit here telegraphing this letter to you, and no doubt they are smiling in their sleeves. But let them! The slow old fas.h.i.+ons are good enough for me, thank G.o.d, and I will none other. When I see one of these modern fools sit absorbed, holding the end of a telegraph wire in his hand, and reflect that a thousand miles away there is another fool hitched to the other end of it, it makes me frantic with rage; and then I am more implacably fixed and resolved than ever to continue taking twenty minutes to telegraph you what I might communicate in ten seconds by the new way if I would so debase myself. And when I see a whole silent, solemn drawing-room full of idiots sitting with their hands on each other's foreheads "communing"

I tug the white hairs from my head and curse till my asthma brings me the blessed relief of suffocation. In our old day such a gathering talked pure drivel and "rot," mostly, but better that, a thousand times, than these dreary conversational funerals that oppress our spirits in this mad generation.

It is sixty years since I was here before. I walked hither then with my precious old friend. It seems incredible now that we did it in two days, but such is my recollection. I no longer mention that we walked back in a single day, it makes me so furious to see doubt in the face of the hearer. Men were men in those old times. Think of one of the puerile organisms in this effeminate age attempting such a feat.

My air-s.h.i.+p was delayed by a collision with a fellow from China loaded with the usual cargo of jabbering, copper-colored missionaries, and so I was nearly an hour on my journey. But by the goodness of G.o.d thirteen of the missionaries were crippled and several killed, so I was content to lose the time. I love to lose time anyway because it brings soothing reminiscences of the creeping railroad days of old, now lost to us forever.

Our game was neatly played, and successfully. None expected us, of course. You should have seen the guards at the ducal palace stare when I said, "Announce his Grace the Archbishop of Dublin and the Right Honorable the Earl of Hartford." Arrived within, we were all eyes to see the Duke of Cambridge and his d.u.c.h.ess, wondering if we might remember their faces and they ours. In a moment they came tottering in; he, bent and withered and bald; she, blooming with wholesome old age. He peered through his gla.s.ses a moment, then screeched in a reedy voice, "Come to my arms! Away with t.i.tles--I'll know ye by no names but Twain and Twich.e.l.l!" Then fell he on our necks and jammed his trumpet in his ear, the which we filled with shoutings to this effect: "G.o.d bless you, old Howells, what is left of you!"

We talked late that night--none of your silent idiot "communings" for us--of the olden time. We rolled a stream of ancient anecdotes over our tongues and drank till the Lord Archbishop grew so mellow in the mellow past that Dublin ceased to be Dublin to him, and resumed its sweeter, forgotten name of New York. In truth he almost got back into his ancient religion, too, good Jesuit as he has always been since O'Mulligan the First established that faith in the empire.

And we canva.s.sed everybody. Bailey Aldrich, Marquis of Ponkapog, came in, got n.o.bly drunk, and told us all about how poor Osgood lost his earldom and was hanged for conspiring against the second Emperor; but he didn't mention how near he himself came to being hanged, too, for engaging in the same enterprise. He was as chaffy as he was sixty years ago, too, and swore the Archbishop and I never walked to Boston; but there was never a day that Ponkapog wouldn't lie, so be it by the grace of G.o.d he got the opportunity.

The Lord High Admiral came in, a hale gentleman close upon seventy and bronzed by the suns and storms of many climes and scarred by the wounds got in many battles, and I told him how I had seen him sit in a high-chair and eat fruit and cakes and answer to the name of Johnny. His granddaughter (the eldest) is but lately married to the youngest of the Grand Dukes, and so who knows but a day may come when the blood of the Howellses may reign in the land? I must not forget to say, while I think of it, that your new false teeth are done, my dear, and your wig. Keep your head well bundled with a shawl till the latter comes, and so cheat your persecuting neuralgias and rheumatisms. Would you believe it?--the d.u.c.h.ess of Cambridge is deafer than you--deafer than her husband. They call her to breakfast with a salvo of artillery; and usually when it thunders she looks up expectantly and says, "Come in." But she has become subdued and gentle with age and never destroys the furniture now, except when uncommonly vexed. G.o.d knows, my dear, it would be a happy thing if you and old Lady Harmony would imitate this spirit. But indeed the older you grow the less secure becomes the furniture. When I throw chairs through the window I have sufficient reason to back it. But you--you are but a creature of pa.s.sion.

The monument to the author of 'Gloverson and His Silent Partners' is finished.--[Ralph Keeler. See chap. lx.x.xiii.]--It is the stateliest and the costliest ever erected to the memory of any man. This n.o.ble cla.s.sic has now been translated into all the languages of the earth and is adored by all nations and known to all creatures. Yet I have conversed as familiarly with the author of it as I do with my own great-grandchildren.

I wish you could see old Cambridge and Ponkapog. I love them as dearly as ever, but privately, my dear, they are not much improvement on idiots. It is melancholy to hear them jabber over the same pointless anecdotes three and four times of an evening, forgetting that they had jabbered them over three or four times the evening before. Ponkapog still writes poetry, but the old-time fire has mostly gone out of it.

Perhaps his best effort of late years is this:

O soul, soul, soul of mine!

Soul, soul, soul of throe!

Thy soul, my soul, two souls entwine, And sing thy lauds in crystal wine!

This he goes about repeating to everybody, daily and nightly, insomuch that he is become a sore affliction to all that know him.

But I must desist. There are draughts here everywhere and my gout is something frightful. My left foot hath resemblance to a snuff-bladder.

G.o.d be with you. HARTFORD.

These to Lady Hartford, in the earldom of Hartford, in the upper portion of the city of Dublin.

APPENDIX N

MARK TWAIN AND COPYRIGHT

I. PEt.i.tION

Concerning Copyright (1875) (See Chapter cii)

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES IN CONGRESS a.s.sEMBLED.

We, your pet.i.tioners, do respectfully represent as follows, viz.: That justice, plain and simple, is a thing which right-feeling men stand ready at all times to accord to brothers and strangers alike. All such men will concede that it is but plain, simple justice that American authors should be protected by copyright in Europe; also, that European authors should be protected by copyright here.

Both divisions of this proposition being true, it behooves our government to concern itself with that division of it which comes peculiarly within its province--viz., the latter moiety--and to grant to foreign authors with all convenient despatch a full and effective copyright in America without marring the grace of the act by stopping to inquire whether a similar justice will be done our own authors by foreign governments. If it were even known that those governments would not extend this justice to us it would still not justify us in withholding this manifest right from their authors. If a thing is right it ought to be done--the thing called "expediency" or "policy" has no concern with such a matter. And we desire to repeat, with all respect, that it is not a grace or a privilege we ask for our foreign brethren, but a right--a right received from G.o.d, and only denied them by man.

We hold no owners.h.i.+p in these authors, and when we take their work from them, as at present, without their consent, it is robbery. The fact that the handiwork of our own authors is seized in the same way in foreign lands neither excuses nor mitigates our sin.

With your permission we will say here, over our signatures, and earnestly and sincerely, that we very greatly desire that you shall grant a full copyright to foreign authors (the copyright fee for the entry in the office of the Congressional Librarian to be the same as we pay ourselves), and we also as greatly desire that this grant shall be made without a single hampering stipulation that American authors shall receive in turn an advantage of any kind from foreign governments.

Since no author who was applied to hesitated for a moment to append his signature to this pet.i.tion we are satisfied that if time had permitted we could have procured the signature of every writer in the United States, great and small, obscure or famous. As it is, the list comprises the names of about all our writers whose works have at present a European market, and who are therefore chiefly concerned in this matter.

No objection to our proposition can come from any reputable publisher among us--or does come from such a quarter, as the appended signatures of our greatest publis.h.i.+ng firms will attest. A European copyright here would be a manifest advantage to them. As the matter stands now the moment they have thoroughly advertised a desirable foreign book, and thus at great expense aroused public interest in it, some small-spirited speculator (who has lain still in his kennel and spent nothing) rushes the same book on the market and robs the respectable publisher of half the gains.

Then, since neither our authors nor the decent among our publis.h.i.+ng firms will object to granting an American copyright to foreign authors and artists, who can there be to object? Surely n.o.body whose protest is ent.i.tled to any weight.

Trusting in the righteousness of our cause we, your pet.i.tioners, will ever pray, etc. With great respect, Your Ob't Serv'ts.

CIRCULAR TO AMERICAN AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS

DEAR SIR,--We believe that you will recognize the justice and the righteousness of the thing we desire to accomplish through the accompanying pet.i.tion. And we believe that you will be willing that our country shall be the first in the world to grant to all authors alike the free exercise of their manifest right to do as they please with the fruit of their own labor without inquiring what flag they live under. If the sentiments of the pet.i.tion meet your views, will you do us the favor to sign it and forward it by post at your earliest convenience to our secretary?

}Committee Address -------------------Secretary of the Committee.

II. Communications supposed to have been written by the Tsar of Russia and the Sultan of Turkey to Mark Twain on the subject of International Copyright, about 1890.

ST. PETERSBURG, February.

COL. MARK TWAIN, Was.h.i.+ngton.

Your cablegram received. It should have been transmitted through my minister, but let that pa.s.s. I am opposed to international copyright.

At present American literature is harmless here because we doctor it in such a way as to make it approve the various beneficent devices which we use to keep our people favorable to fetters as jewelry and pleased with Siberia as a summer resort. But your bill would spoil this. We should be obliged to let you say your say in your own way. 'Voila'! my empire would be a republic in five years and I should be sampling Siberia myself.

If you should run across Mr. Kennan--[George Kennan, who had graphically pictured the fearful conditions of Siberian exile.]--please ask him to come over and give some readings. I will take good care of him.

ALEXANDER III.

144--Collect.