Mark Twain's Letters Part 47

To Mr. Burrough, of St. Louis:

HARTFORD, Nov. 1, 1876.

MY DEAR BURROUGHS,--As you describe me I can picture myself as I was 20 years ago. The portrait is correct. You think I have grown some; upon my word there was room for it. You have described a callow fool, a self-sufficient a.s.s, a mere human tumble-bug.... imagining that he is remodeling the world and is entirely capable of doing it right.

Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-a.s.sertion, opaque perception, dense and pitiful chuckle-headedness--and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of it all. That is what I was at 19 and 20; and that is what the average Southerner is at 60 today. Northerners, too, of a certain grade. It is of children like this that voters are made. And such is the primal source of our government! A man hardly knows whether to swear or cry over it.

I think I comprehend the position there--perfect freedom to vote just as you choose, provided you choose to vote as other people think--social ostracism, otherwise. The same thing exists here, among the Irish. An Irish Republican is a pariah among his people. Yet that race find fault with the same spirit in Know-Nothingism.

Fortunately a good deal of experience of men enabled me to choose my residence wisely. I live in the freest corner of the country. There are no social disabilities between me and my Democratic personal friends.

We break the bread and eat the salt of hospitality freely together and never dream of such a thing as offering impertinent interference in each other's political opinions.

Don't you ever come to New York again and not run up here to see me. I Suppose we were away for the summer when you were East; but no matter, you could have telegraphed and found out. We were at Elmira N. Y. and right on your road, and could have given you a good time if you had allowed us the chance.

Yes, Will Bowen and I have exchanged letters now and then for several years, but I suspect that I made him mad with my last--shortly after you saw him in St. Louis, I judge. There is one thing which I can't stand and won't stand, from many people. That is sham sentimentality--the kind a school-girl puts into her graduating composition; the sort that makes up the Original Poetry column of a country newspaper; the rot that deals in the "happy days of yore," the "sweet yet melancholy past," with its "blighted hopes" and its "vanished dreams" and all that sort of drivel.

Will's were always of this stamp. I stood it years. When I get a letter like that from a grown man and he a widower with a family, it gives me the stomach ache. And I just told Will Bowen so, last summer. I told him to stop being 16 at 40; told him to stop drooling about the sweet yet melancholy past, and take a pill. I said there was but one solitary thing about the past worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is the past--can't be restored. Well, I exaggerated some of these truths a little--but only a little--but my idea was to kill his sham sentimentality once and forever, and so make a good fellow of him again.

I went to the unheard-of trouble of re-writing the letter and saying the same harsh things softly, so as to sugarcoat the anguish and make it a little more endurable and I asked him to write and thank me honestly for doing him the best and kindliest favor that any friend ever had done him--but he hasn't done it yet. Maybe he will, sometime. I am grateful to G.o.d that I got that letter off before he was married (I get that news from you) else he would just have s...o...b..red all over me and drowned me when that event happened.

I enclose photograph for the young ladies. I will remark that I do not wear seal-skin for grandeur, but because I found, when I used to lecture in the winter, that nothing else was able to keep a man warm sometimes, in these high lat.i.tudes. I wish you had sent pictures of yourself and family--I'll trade picture for picture with you, straight through, if you are commercially inclined.

Your old friend, SAML L. CLEMENS.

XVII. LETTERS, 1877. TO BERMUDA WITH TWICh.e.l.l. PROPOSITION TO TH. NAST.

THE WHITTIER DINNER.

Mark Twain must have been too busy to write letters that winter.

Those that have survived are few and unimportant. As a matter of fact, he was writing the play, "Ah Sin," with Bret Harte, and getting it ready for production. Harte was a guest in the Clemens home while the play was being written, and not always a pleasant one. He was full of requirements, critical as to the 'menage,' to the point of sarcasm. The long friends.h.i.+p between Clemens and Harte weakened under the strain of collaboration and intimate daily intercourse, never to renew its old fiber. It was an unhappy outcome of an enterprise which in itself was to prove of little profit. The play, "Ah Sin," had many good features, and with Charles T. Parsloe in an amusing Chinese part might have been made a success, if the two authors could have harmoniously undertaken the needed repairs. It opened in Was.h.i.+ngton in May, and a letter from Parsloe, written at the moment, gives a hint of the situation.

From Charles T. Parsloe to S. L. Clemens:

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D. C. May 11th, 1877.

MR. CLEMENS,--I forgot whether I acknowledged receipt of check by telegram. Harte has been here since Monday last and done little or nothing yet, but promises to have something fixed by tomorrow morning.

We have been making some improvements among ourselves. The last act is weak at the end, and I do hope Mr. Harte will have something for a good finish to the piece. The other acts I think are all right, now.

Hope you have entirely recovered. I am not very well myself, the excitement of a first night is bad enough, but to have the annoyance with Harte that I have is too much for a beginner. I ain't used to it.

The houses have been picking up since Tuesday Mr. Ford has worked well and hard for us.

Yours in, haste, CHAS. THOS. PARSLOE.

The play drew some good houses in Was.h.i.+ngton, but it could not hold them for a run. Never mind what was the matter with it; perhaps a very small change at the right point would have turned it into a fine success. We have seen in a former letter the obligation which Mark Twain confessed to Harte--a debt he had tried in many ways to repay--obtaining for him a liberal book contract with Bliss; advancing him frequent and large sums of money which Harte could not, or did not, repay; seeking to advance his fortunes in many directions. The mistake came when he introduced another genius into the intricacies of his daily life. Clemens went down to Was.h.i.+ngton during the early rehearsals of "Ah Sin."

Meantime, Rutherford B. Hayes had been elected President, and Clemens one day called with a letter of introduction from Howells, thinking to meet the Chief Executive. His own letter to Howells, later, probably does not give the real reason of his failure, but it will be amusing to those who recall the erratic personality of George Francis Train. Train and Twain were sometimes confused by the very unlettered; or pretendedly, by Mark Twain's friends.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

BALTIMORE, May 1, '77.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Found I was not absolutely needed in Was.h.i.+ngton so I only staid 24 hours, and am on my way home, now. I called at the White House, and got admission to Col. Rodgers, because I wanted to inquire what was the right hour to go and infest the President. It was my luck to strike the place in the dead waste and middle of the day, the very busiest time. I perceived that Mr. Rodgers took me for George Francis Train and had made up his mind not to let me get at the President; so at the end of half an hour I took my letter of introduction from the table and went away. It was a great pity all round, and a great loss to the nation, for I was brim full of the Eastern question. I didn't get to see the President or the Chief Magistrate either, though I had sort of a glimpse of a lady at a window who resembled her portraits.

Yrs ever, MARK.

Howells condoled with him on his failure to see the President, "but," he added, "if you and I had both been there, our combined skill would have no doubt procured us to be expelled from the White House by Fred Dougla.s.s. But the thing seems to be a complete failure as it was." Dougla.s.s at this time being the Marshal of Columbia, gives special point to Howells's suggestion.

Later, in May, Clemens took Twich.e.l.l for an excursion to Bermuda.

He had begged Howells to go with them, but Howells, as usual, was full of literary affairs. Twich.e.l.l and Clemens spent four glorious days tramping the length and breadth of the beautiful island, and remembered it always as one of their happiest adventures. "Put it down as an Oasis!" wrote Twich.e.l.l on his return, "I'm afraid I shall not see as green a spot again soon. And it was your invention and your gift. And your company was the best of it. Indeed, I never took more comfort in being with you than on this journey, which, my boy, is saying a great deal."

To Howells, Clemens triumphantly reported the success of the excursion.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, May 29, 1877.

Confound you, Joe Twich.e.l.l and I roamed about Bermuda day and night and never ceased to gabble and enjoy. About half the talk was--"It is a burning shame that Howells isn't here." "n.o.body could get at the very meat and marrow of this pervading charm and deliciousness like Howells;"

"How Howells would revel in the quaintness, and the simplicity of this people and the Sabbath repose of this land." "What an imperishable sketch Howells would make of Capt. West the whaler, and Capt. Hope with the patient, pathetic face, wanderer in all the oceans for 42 years, lucky in none; coming home defeated once more, now, minus his s.h.i.+p--resigned, uncomplaining, being used to this." "What a rattling chapter Howells would make out of the small boy Alfred, with his alert eye and military brevity and exactness of speech; and out of the old landlady; and her sacred onions; and her daughter; and the visiting clergyman; and the ancient pianos of Hamilton and the venerable music in vogue there--and forty other things which we shall leave untouched or touched but lightly upon, we not being worthy." "Dam Howells for not being here!" (this usually from me, not Twich.e.l.l.)

O, your insufferable pride, which will have a fall some day! If you had gone with us and let me pay the $50 which the trip and the board and the various nicknacks and mementoes would cost, I would have picked up enough droppings from your conversation to pay me 500 per cent profit in the way of the several magazine articles which I could have written, whereas I can now write only one or two and am therefore largely out of pocket by your proud ways. Ponder these things. Lord, what a perfectly bewitching excursion it was! I traveled under an a.s.sumed name and was never molested with a polite attention from anybody.

Love to you all.

Yrs ever MARK

Aldrich, meantime, had invited the Clemenses to Ponkapog during the Bermuda absence, and Clemens hastened to send him a line expressing regrets. At the close he said: