_ [The preceding squib was assailed in the North American Review
in an article entitled "Mark Twain and Paul Bourget," by Max
O'Rell. The following little note is a Rejoinder to that
article. It is possible that the position assumed here--that
M. Bourget dictated the O'Rell article himself--is untenable.]
You have every right, my dear M. Bourget, to retort upon me by dictation,
if you prefer that method to writing at me with your pen; but if I may
say it without hurt--and certainly I mean no offence--I believe you would
have acquitted yourself better with the pen. With the pen you are at
home; it is your natural weapon; you use it with grace, eloquence, charm,
persuasiveness, when men are to be convinced, and with formidable effect
when they have earned a castigation. But I am sure I see signs in the
above article that you are either unaccustomed to dictating or are out of
practice. If you will re-read it you will notice, yourself, that it
lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that
it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it
wanders around; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any
more. There are some other defects, as you will notice, but I think I
have named the main ones. I feel sure that they are all due to your lack
of practice in dictating.
Inasmuch as you had not signed it I had the impression at first that you
had not dictated it. But only for a moment. Certain quite simple and
definite facts reminded me that the article had to come from you, for the
reason that it could not come from any one else without a specific
invitation from you or from me. I mean, it could not except as an
intrusion, a transgression of the law which forbids strangers to mix into
a private dispute between friends, unasked.
Those simple and definite facts were these: I had published an article in
this magazine, with you for my subject; just you yourself; I stuck
strictly to that one subject, and did not interlard any other. No one,
of course, could call me to account but you alone, or your authorized
representative. I asked some questions--asked them of myself.
I answered them myself. My article was thirteen pages long, and all
devoted to you; devoted to you, and divided up in this way: one page of
guesses as to what subjects you would instruct us in, as teacher; one
page of doubts as to the effectiveness of your method of examining us and
our ways; two or three pages of criticism of your method, and of certain
results which it furnished you; two or three pages of attempts to show
the justness of these same criticisms; half a dozen pages made up of
slight fault-findings with certain minor details of your literary
workmanship, of extracts from your 'Outre-Mer' and comments upon them;
then I closed with an anecdote. I repeat--for certain reasons--that I
closed with an anecdote.
When I was asked by this magazine if I wished to "answer" a "reply" to
that article of mine, I said "yes," and waited in Paris for the proof-
sheets of the "reply" to come. I already knew, by the cablegram, that
the "reply" would not be signed by you, but upon reflection I knew it
would be dictated by you, because no volunteer would feel himself at
liberty to assume your championship in a private dispute, unasked, in
view of the fact that you are quite well able to take care of your
matters of that sort yourself and are not in need of any one's help.
No, a volunteer could not make such a venture. It would be too immodest.
Also too gratuitously generous. And a shade too self-sufficient. No,
he could not venture it. It would look too much like anxiety to get in
at a feast where no plate had been provided for him. In fact he could
not get in at all, except by the back way, and with a false key; that is
to say, a pretext--a pretext invented for the occasion by putting into my
mouth words which I did not use, and by wresting sayings of mine from
their plain and true meaning. Would he resort to methods like those to
get in? No; there are no people of that kind. So then I knew for a
certainty that you dictated the Reply yourself. I knew you did it to
save yourself manual labor.
And you had the right, as I have already said and I am content--perfectly
content.
Yet it would have been little trouble to you, and a great kindness to me,
if you had written your Reply all out with your own capable hand.
Because then it would have replied--and that is really what a Reply is
for. Broadly speaking, its function is to refute--as you will easily
concede. That leaves something for the other person to take hold of:
he has a chance to reply to the Reply, he has a chance to refute the
refutation. This would have happened if you had written it out instead
of dictating. Dictating is nearly sure to unconcentrate the dictator's
mind, when he is out of practice, confuse him, and betray him into using
one set of literary rules when he ought to use a quite different set.
Often it betrays him into employing the RULES FOR CONVERSATION BETWEEN A
SHOUTER AND A DEAF PERSON--as in the present case--when he ought to
employ the RULES FOR CONDUCTING DISCUSSION WITH A FAULT-FINDER. The
great foundation-rule and basic principle of discussion with a fault-
finder is relevancy and concentration upon the subject; whereas the great
foundation-rule and basic principle governing conversation between a
shouter and a deaf person is irrelevancy and persistent desertion of the
topic in hand. If I may be allowed to illustrate by quoting example IV.,
section from chapter ix. of "Revised Rules for Conducting Conversation
between a Shouter and a Deaf Person," it will assist us in getting a
clear idea of the difference between the two sets of rules:
Shouter. Did you say his name is WETHERBY?
Deaf Person. Change? Yes, I think it will. Though if it should clear
off I--
Shouter. It's his NAME I want--his NAME.
Deaf Person. Maybe so, maybe so; but it will only be a shower, I think.
Shouter. No, no, no!--you have quite misunderSTOOD me. If--
Deaf Person. Ah! GOOD morning; I am sorry you must go. But call again,
and let me continue to be of assistance to you in every way I can.
You see it is a perfect kodak of the article you have dictated. It is
really curious and interesting when you come to compare it with yours;
in detail, with my former article to which it is a Reply in your hand.
I talk twelve pages about your American instruction projects, and your
doubtful scientific system, and your painstaking classification of
nonexistent things, and your diligence and zeal and sincerity, and your
disloyal attitude towards anecdotes, and your undue reverence for unsafe
statistics and far facts that lack a pedigree; and you turn around and
come back at me with eight pages of weather.
I do not see how a person can act so. It is good of you to repeat, with
change of language, in the bulk of your rejoinder, so much of my own
article, and adopt my sentiments, and make them over, and put new buttons
on; and I like the compliment, and am frank to say so; but agreeing with
a person cripples controversy and ought not to be allowed. It is
weather; and of almost the worst sort. It pleases me greatly to hear you
discourse with such approval and expansiveness upon my text:
"A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that
is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its
interior;"--[And you say: "A man of average intelligence, who has passed
six months among a people, cannot express opinions that are worth jotting
down, but he can form impressions that are worth repeating. For my part,
I think that foreigners' impressions are more interesting than native
opinions. After all, such impressions merely mean 'how the country
struck the foreigner.'"]--which is a quite clear way of saying that a
foreigner's report is only valuable when it restricts itself to
impressions. It pleases me to have you follow my lead in that glowing
way, but it leaves me nothing to combat. You should give me something to
deny and refute; I would do as much for you.
It pleases me to have you playfully warn the public against taking one of
your books seriously.--[When I published Jonathan and his Continent, I
wrote in a preface addressed to Jonathan: "If ever you should insist in
seeing in this little volume a serious study of your country and of your
countrymen, I warn you that your world-wide fame for humor will be
exploded."]--Because I used to do that cunning thing myself in earlier
days. I did it in a prefatory note to a book of mine called Tom Sawyer.
NOTICE.
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons
attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
PER G. G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE.
The kernel is the same in both prefaces, you see--the public must not
take us too seriously. If we remove that kernel we remove the life-
principle, and the preface is a corpse. Yes, it pleases me to have you
use that idea, for it is a high compliment. But is leaves me nothing to
combat; and that is damage to me.
Am I seeming to say that your Reply is not a reply at all, M. Bourget?
If so, I must modify that; it is too sweeping. For you have furnished a
general answer to my inquiry as to what France through you--can teach us.
--["What could France teach America!" exclaims Mark Twain. France can
teach America all the higher pursuits of life, and there is more artistic
feeling and refinement in a street of French workingmen than in many
avenues inhabited by American millionaires. She can teach her, not
perhaps how to work, but how to rest, how to live, how to be happy.
She can teach her that the aim of life is not money-making, but that
money-making is only a means to obtain an end. She can teach her that
wives are not expensive toys, but useful partners, friends, and
confidants, who should always keep men under their wholesome influence by
their diplomacy, their tact, their common-sense, without bumptiousness.
These qualities, added to the highest standard of morality (not angular
and morose, but cheerful morality), are conceded to Frenchwomen by
whoever knows something of French life outside of the Paris boulevards,
and Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot even so much as stain them.
I might tell Mark Twain that in France a man who was seen tipsy in his
club would immediately see his name canceled from membership. A man who
had settled his fortune on his wife to avoid meeting his creditors would
be refused admission into any decent society. Many a Frenchman has blown
his brains out rather than declare himself a bankrupt. Now would Mark
Twain remark to this: 'An American is not such a fool: when a creditor
stands in his way he closes his doors, and reopens them the following
day. When he has been a bankrupt three times he can retire from
business?']--It is a good answer.
It relates to manners, customs, and morals--three things concerning which
we can never have exhaustive and determinate statistics, and so the
verdicts delivered upon them must always lack conclusiveness and be
subject to revision; but you have stated the truth, possibly, as nearly
as any one could do it, in the circumstances. But why did you choose a
detail of my question which could be answered only with vague hearsay
evidence, and go right by one which could have been answered with deadly
facts?--facts in everybody's reach, facts which none can dispute.
I asked what France could teach us about government. I laid myself
pretty wide open, there; and I thought I was handsomely generous, too,
when I did it. France can teach us how to levy village and city taxes
which distribute the burden with a nearer approach to perfect fairness
than is the case in any other land; and she can teach us the wisest and
surest system of collecting them that exists. She can teach us how to
elect a President in a sane way; and also how to do it without throwing
the country into earthquakes and convulsions that cripple and embarrass
business, stir up party hatred in the hearts of men, and make peaceful
people wish the term extended to thirty years. France can teach us--but
enough of that part of the question. And what else can France teach us?
She can teach us all the fine arts--and does. She throws open her
hospitable art academies, and says to us, "Come"--and we come, troops and
troops of our young and gifted; and she sets over us the ablest masters
in the world and bearing the greatest names; and she, teaches us all that
we are capable of learning, and persuades us and encourages us with
prizes and honors, much as if we were somehow children of her own; and
when this noble education is finished and we are ready to carry it home
and spread its gracious ministries abroad over our nation, and we come
with homage and gratitude and ask France for the bill--there is nothing
to pay. And in return for this imperial generosity, what does America
do? She charges a duty on French works of art!
I wish I had your end of this dispute; I should have something worth
talking about. If you would only furnish me something to argue,
something to refute--but you persistently won't. You leave good chances
unutilized and spend your strength in proving and establishing
unimportant things. For instance, you have proven and established these
eight facts here following--a good score as to number, but not worth
while:
Mark Twain is--
1. "Insulting."
2. (Sarcastically speaking) "This refined humor, 1st."
3. Prefers the manure-pile to the violets.
4. Has uttered "an ill-natured sneer."
5. Is "nasty."
6. Needs a "lesson in politeness and good manners."
7. Has published a "nasty article."
8. Has made remarks "unworthy of a gentleman."--["It is more funny than
his" (Mark Twain's) "anecdote, and would have been less insulting."
A quoted remark of mine "is a gross insult to a nation friendly to
America."
"He has read La Terre, this refined humorist."
"When Mark Twain visits a garden . . . he goes in the far-away comer
where the soil is prepared."
"Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot so much as stain them" (the
Frenchwomen).
"When he" (Mark Twain) "takes his revenge he is unkind, unfair, bitter,
nasty."
"But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark," etc.
"Mark might certainly have derived from it "(M. Bourget's book)" a lesson
in politeness and good manners."
A quoted remark of mine is "unworthy of a gentleman."]--
These are all true, but really they are not valuable; no one cares much
for such finds. In our American magazines we recognize this and suppress
them. We avoid naming them. American writers never allow themselves to
name them. It would look as if they were in a temper, and we hold that
exhibitions of temper in public are not good form except in the very
young and inexperienced. And even if we had the disposition to name
them, in order to fill up a gap when we were short of ideas and
arguments, our magazines would not allow us to do it, because they think
that such words sully their pages. This present magazine is particularly
strenuous about it. Its note to me announcing the forwarding of your
proof-sheets to France closed thus--for your protection:
"It is needless to ask you to avoid anything that he might consider as
personal."
It was well enough, as a measure of precaution, but really it was not
needed. You can trust me implicitly, M. Bourget; I shall never call you
any names in print which I should be ashamed to call you with your
unoffending and dearest ones present.
Indeed, we are reserved, and particular in America to a degree which you
would consider exaggerated. For instance, we should not write notes like
that one of yours to a lady for a small fault--or a large one.--[When M.
Paul Bourget indulges in a little chaffing at the expense of the
Americans, "who can always get away with a few years' trying to find out
who their grandfathers were,"] he merely makes an allusion to an American
foible; but, forsooth, what a kind man, what a humorist Mark Twain is
when he retorts by calling France a nation of bastards! How the
Americans of culture and refinement will admire him for thus speaking in
their name!
Snobbery . . . . I could give Mark Twain an example of the American
specimen. It is a piquant story. I never published it because I feared
my readers might think that I was giving them a typical illustration of
American character instead of a rare exception.
I was once booked by my manager to give a causerie in the drawing-room of
a New York millionaire. I accepted with reluctance. I do not like
private engagements. At five o'clock on the day the causerie was to be
given, the lady sent to my manager to say that she would expect me to
arrive at nine o'clock and to speak for about an hour. Then she wrote a
postscript. Many women are unfortunate there. Their minds are full of
after-thoughts, and the most important part of their letters is generally
to be found after their signature. This lady's P. S. ran thus: "I
suppose be will not expect to be entertained after the lecture."
I fairly shorted, as Mark Twain would say, and then, indulging myself in
a bit of snobbishness, I was back at her as quick as a flash:
"Dear Madam: As a literary man of some reputation, I have many times had
the pleasure of being entertained by the members of the old aristocracy
of France. I have also many times had the pleasure of being entertained
by the members of the old aristocracy of England. If it may interest
you, I can even tell you that I have several times had the honor of being
entertained by royalty; but my ambition has never been so wild as to
expect that one day I might be entertained by the aristocracy of New
York. No, I do not expect to be entertained by you, nor do I want you to
expect me to entertain you and your friends to-night, for I decline to
keep the engagement."
Now, I could fill a book on America with reminiscences of this sort,
adding a few chapters on bosses and boodlers, on New York 'chronique
scandaleuse', on the tenement houses of the large cities, on the
gambling-hells of Denver, and the dens of San Francisco, and what not!
But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark, will make me do
it.]--We should not think it kind. No matter how much we might have
associated with kings and nobilities, we should not think it right to
crush her with it and make her ashamed of her lowlier walk in life; for
we have a saying, "Who humiliates my mother includes his own."
Do I seriously imagine you to be the author of that strange letter,
M. Bourget? Indeed I do not. I believe it to have been surreptitiously
inserted by your amanuensis when your back was turned. I think he did it
with a good motive, expecting it to add force and piquancy to your
article, but it does not reflect your nature, and I know it will grieve
you when you see it. I also think he interlarded many other things which
you will disapprove of when you see them. I am certain that all the
harsh names discharged at me come from him, not you. No doubt you could
have proved me entitled to them with as little trouble as it has cost him
to do it, but it would have been your disposition to hunt game of a
higher quality.
Why, I even doubt if it is you who furnish me all that excellent
information about Balzac and those others.--["Now the style of M.
Bourget and many other French writers is apparently a closed letter to
Mark Twain; but let us leave that alone. Has he read Erckmann-Chatrian,
Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Edmond About, Cherbuliez, Renan? Has he read
Gustave Droz's 'Monsieur, Madame, et Bebe', and those books which leave
for a long time a perfume about you? Has he read the novels of Alexandre
Dumas, Eugene Sue, George Sand, and Balzac? Has be read Victor Hugo's
'Les Miserables' and 'Notre Dame de Paris'? Has he read or heard the
plays of Sandeau, Augier, Dumas, and Sardou, the works of those Titans of
modern literature, whose names will be household words all over the world
for hundreds of years to come? He has read La Terre--this kind-hearted,
refined humorist! When Mark Twain visits a garden does he smell the
violets, the roses, the jasmine, or the honeysuckle? No, he goes in the
far-away comer where the soil is prepared. Hear what he says: 'I wish M.
Paul Bourget had read more of our novels before he came. It is the only
way to thoroughly understand a people. When I found I was coming to
Paris I read La Terre.'"]--All this in simple justice to you--and to me;
for, to gravely accept those interlardings as yours would be to wrong
your head and heart, and at the same time convict myself of being
equipped with a vacancy where my penetration ought to be lodged.
And now finally I must uncover the secret pain, the wee sore from which
the Reply grew--the anecdote which closed my recent article--and consider
how it is that this pimple has spread to these cancerous dimensions.
If any but you had dictated the Reply, M. Bourget, I would know that that
anecdote was twisted around and its intention magnified some hundreds of
times, in order that it might be used as a pretext to creep in the back
way. But I accuse you of nothing--nothing but error. When you say that
I "retort by calling France a nation of bastards," it is an error. And
not a small one, but a large one. I made no such remark, nor anything
resembling it. Moreover, the magazine would not have allowed me to use
so gross a word as that.
You told an anecdote. A funny one--I admit that. It hit a foible of our
American aristocracy, and it stung me--I admit that; it stung me sharply.
It was like this: You found some ancient portraits of French kings in the
gallery of one of our aristocracy, and you said:
"He has the Grand Monarch, but where is the portrait of his grandfather?"
That is, the American aristocrat's grandfather.
Now that hits only a few of us, I grant--just the upper crust only--but
it hits exceedingly hard.
I wondered if there was any way of getting back at you. In one of your
chapters I found this chance:
"In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied to arts
and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all the weaknesses of
the French soul."
You see? Your "higher Parisian" class--not everybody, not the nation,
but only the top crust of the Ovation--applies to debauchery all the
powers of its soul.
I argued to myself that that energy must produce results. So I built an
anecdote out of your remark. In it I make Napoleon Bonaparte say to me--
but see for yourself the anecdote (ingeniously clipped and curtailed) in
paragraph eleven of your Reply.--[So, I repeat, Mark Twain does not like
M. Paul Bourget's book. So long as he makes light fun of the great
French writer he is at home, he is pleasant, he is the American humorist
we know. When he takes his revenge (and where is the reason for taking a
revenge?) he is unkind, unfair, bitter, nasty.
For example:
See his answer to a Frenchman who jokingly remarks to him:
"I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an American, because
whenever he can't strike up any other way to put in his time, he can
always get away with a few years trying to find out who his grandfather
was."
Hear the answer:
"I reckon a Frenchman's got his little standby for a dull time, too;
because when all other interests fail, he can turn in and see if he can't
find out who his father was."
The first remark is a good-humored bit of chaffing on American snobbery.
I may be utterly destitute of humor, but I call the second remark a
gratuitous charge of immorality hurled at the French women--a remark
unworthy of a man who has the ear of the public, unworthy of a gentleman,
a gross insult to a nation friendly to America, a nation that helped Mark
Twain's ancestors in their struggle for liberty, a nation where to-day it
is enough to say that you are American to see every door open wide to
you.
If Mark Twain was hard up in search of, a French "chestnut," I might have
told him the following little anecdote. It is more funny than his, and
would have been less insulting: Two little street boys are abusing each
other. "Ah, hold your tongue," says one, "you ain't got no father."
"Ain't got no father!" replies the other; "I've got more fathers than
you."]
Now, then, your anecdote about the grandfathers hurt me. Why? Because
it had a point. It wouldn't have hurt me if it hadn't had point. You
wouldn't have wasted space on it if it hadn't had point.
My anecdote has hurt you. Why? Because it had point, I suppose. It
wouldn't have hurt you if it hadn't had point. I judged from your remark
about the diligence and industry of the high Parisian upper crust that it
would have some point, but really I had no idea what a gold-mine I had
struck. I never suspected that the point was going to stick into the
entire nation; but of course you know your nation better than I do, and
if you think it punctures them all, I have to yield to your judgment.
But you are to blame, your own self. Your remark misled me. I supposed
the industry was confined to that little unnumerous upper layer.
Well, now that the unfortunate thing has been done, let us do what we can
to undo it. There must be a way, M. Bourget, and I am willing to do
anything that will help; for I am as sorry as you can be yourself.
I will tell you what I think will be the very thing.
We will swap anecdotes. I will take your anecdote and you take mine. I
will say to the dukes and counts and princes of the ancient nobility of
France:
"Ha, ha! You must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your
grandfathers were?"
They will merely smile indifferently and not feel hurt, because they can
trace their lineage back through centuries.
And you will hurl mine at every individual in the American nation,
saying:
"And you must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your fathers
were." They will merely smile indifferently, and not feel hurt, because
they haven't any difficulty in finding their fathers.
Do you get the idea? The whole harm in the anecdotes is in the point,
you see; and when we swap them around that way, they haven't any.
That settles it perfectly and beautifully, and I am glad I thought of it.
I am very glad indeed, M. Bourget; for it was just that little wee thing
that caused the whole difficulty and made you dictate the Reply, and your
amanuensis call me all those hard names which the magazines dislike so.
And I did it all in fun, too, trying to cap your funny anecdote with
another one--on the give-and-take principle, you know--which is American.
I didn't know that with the French it was all give and no take, and you
didn't tell me. But now that I have made everything comfortable again,
and fixed both anecdotes so they can never have any point any more, I
know you will forgive me.
_________
-THE END-
Essays on Paul Bourget, by Mark Twain _