_ In January, 1889, Clemens believed, after his long seven years of
waiting, fruition had come in the matter of the type machine. Paige, the
inventor, seemed at last to have given it its finishing touches. The
mechanical marvel that had cost so much time, mental stress, and a
fortune in money, stood complete, responsive to the human will and touch
--the latest, and one of the greatest, wonders of the world. To George
Standring, a London printer and publisher, Clemens wrote: "The machine is
finished!" and added, "This is by far the most marvelous invention ever
contrived by man. And it is not a thing of rags and patches; it is made
of massive steel, and will last a century."
In his fever of enthusiasm on that day when he had actually seen it in
operation, he wrote a number of exuberant letters. They were more or
less duplicates, but as the one to his brother is of fuller detail and
more intimate than the others, it has been selected for preservation
here.
To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk:
HARTFORD, Jan. 5, '89.
DEAR ORION,--At 12.20 this afternoon a line of movable types was spaced
and justified by machinery, for the first time in the history of the
world! And I was there to see. It was done automatically--instantly--
perfectly. This is indeed the first line of movable types that ever was
perfectly spaced and perfectly justified on this earth.
This was the last function that remained to be tested--and so by long
odds the most amazing and extraordinary invention ever born of the brain
of man stands completed and perfect. Livy is down stairs celebrating.
But it's a cunning devil, is that machine!--and knows more than any man
that ever lived. You shall see. We made the test in this way. We set
up a lot of random letters in a stick--three-fourths of a line; then
filled out the line with quads representing 14 spaces, each space to be
35/1000 of an inch thick. Then we threw aside the quads and put the
letters into the machine and formed them into 15 two-letter words,
leaving the words separated by two-inch vacancies. Then we started up
the machine slowly, by hand, and fastened our eyes on the space-selecting
pins. The first pin-block projected its third pin as the first word came
traveling along the race-way; second block did the same; but the third
block projected its second pin!
"Oh, hell! stop the machine--something wrong--it's going to set a
30/1000 space!"
General consternation. "A foreign substance has got into the spacing
plates." This from the head mathematician.
"Yes, that is the trouble," assented the foreman.
Paige examined. "No--look in, and you can see that there's nothing of
the kind." Further examination. "Now I know what it is--what it must
be: one of those plates projects and binds. It's too bad--the first
testis a failure." A pause. "Well, boys, no use to cry. Get to work--
take the machine down.--No--Hold on! don't touch a thing! Go right
ahead! We are fools, the machine isn't. The machine knows what it's
about. There is a speck of dirt on one of those types, and the machine
is putting in a thinner space to allow for it!"
That was just it. The machine went right ahead, spaced the line,
justified it to a hair, and shoved it into the galley complete and
perfect! We took it out and examined it with a glass. You could not
tell by your eye that the third space was thinner than the others, but
the glass and the calipers showed the difference. Paige had always said
that the machine would measure invisible particles of dirt and allow for
them, but even he had forgotten that vast fact for the moment.
All the witnesses made written record of the immense historical birth--
the first justification of a line of movable type by machinery--and also
set down the hour and the minute. Nobody had drank anything, and yet
everybody seemed drunk. Well-dizzy, stupefied, stunned.
All the other wonderful inventions of the human brain sink pretty nearly
into commonplace contrasted with this awful mechanical miracle.
Telephones, telegraphs, locomotives, cotton gins, sewing machines,
Babbage calculators, jacquard looms, perfecting presses, Arkwright's
frames--all mere toys, simplicities! The Paige Compositor marches alone
and far in the lead of human inventions.
In two or three weeks we shall work the stiffness out of her joints and
have her performing as smoothly and softly as human muscles, and then we
shall speak out the big secret and let the world come and gaze.
Return me this letter when you have read it.
SAM.
Judge of the elation which such a letter would produce in Keokuk!
Yet it was no greater than that which existed in Hartford--for a
time.
Then further delays. Before the machine got "the stiffness out of
her joints" that "cunning devil" manifested a tendency to break the
types, and Paige, who was never happier than when he was pulling
things to pieces and making improvements, had the type-setter apart
again and the day of complete triumph was postponed.
There was sadness at the Elmira farm that spring. Theodore Crane,
who had long been in poor health, seemed to grow daily worse. In
February he had paid a visit to Hartford and saw the machine in
operation, but by the end of May his condition was very serious.
Remembering his keen sense of humor, Clemens reported to him
cheering and amusing incidents.
To Mrs. Theodore Crane. in Elmira, N. Y.:
HARTFORD, May 28, '89.
Susie dear, I want you to tell this to Theodore. You know how absent-
minded Twichell is, and how desolate his face is when he is in that
frame. At such times, he passes the word with a friend on the street and
is not aware of the meeting at all. Twice in a week, our Clara had this
latter experience with him within the past month. But the second
instance was too much for her, and she woke him up, in his tracks, with a
reproach. She said:
"Uncle Joe, why do you always look as if you were just going down into
the grave, when you meet a person on the street?"--and then went on to
reveal to him the funereal spectacle which he presented on such
occasions. Well, she has met Twichell three times since then, and would
swim the Connecticut to avoid meeting him the fourth. As soon as he
sights her, no matter how public the place nor how far off she is, he
makes a bound into the air, heaves arms and legs into all sorts of
frantic gestures of delight, and so comes prancing, skipping and
pirouetting for her like a drunken Indian entering heaven.
With a full invoice of love from us all to you and Theodore.
S. L. C.
The reference in the next to the "closing sentence" in a letter
written by Howells to Clemens about this time, refers to a heart-
broken utterance of the former concerning his daughter Winnie, who
had died some time before. She had been a gentle talented girl, but
never of robust health. Her death had followed a long period of
gradual decline.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Judy 13, '89.
DEAR HOWELLS,--I came on from Elmira a day or two ago, where I left a
house of mourning. Mr. Crane died, after ten months of pain and two
whole days of dying, at the farm on the hill, the 3rd inst: A man who had
always hoped for a swift death. Mrs. Crane and Mrs. Clemens and the
children were in a gloom which brought back to me the days of nineteen
years ago, when Mr. Langdon died. It is heart-breaking to see Mrs.
Crane. Many a time, in the past ten days, the sight of her has reminded
me, with a pang, of the desolation which uttered itself in the closing
sentence of your last letter to me. I do see that there is an argument
against suicide: the grief of the worshipers left behind; the awful
famine in their hearts, these are too costly terms for the release.
I shall be here ten days yet, and all alone: nobody in the house but the
servants. Can't Mrs. Howells spare you to me? Can't you come and stay
with me? The house is cool and pleasant; your work will not be
interrupted; we will keep to ourselves and let the rest of the world do
the same; you can have your choice of three bedrooms, and you will find
the Children's schoolroom (which was built for my study,) the perfection
of a retired and silent den for work. There isn't a fly or a mosquito on
the estate. Come--say you will.
With kindest regards to Mrs. Howells, and Pilla and John,
Yours Ever
MARK.
Howells was more hopeful. He wrote: "I read something in a strange book,
The Physical Theory of Another Life, that consoles a little; namely, we
see and feel the power of Deity in such fullness that we ought to infer
the infinite justice and Goodness which we do not see or feel." And a
few days later, he wrote: "I would rather see and talk with you than any
other man in the world outside my own blood."
A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court was brought to an end that
year and given to the artist and printer. Dan Beard was selected for the
drawings, and was given a free hand, as the next letter shows.
To Fred J. Hall, Manager Charles L. Webster & Co.:
[Charles L. Webster, owing to poor health, had by this time retired
from the firm.]
ELMIRA, July 20, '89.
DEAR MR. HALL,--Upon reflection--thus: tell Beard to obey his own
inspiration, and when he sees a picture in his mind put that picture on
paper, be it humorous or be it serious. I want his genius to be wholly
unhampered, I shan't have fears as to the result. They will be better
pictures than if I mixed in and tried to give him points on his own
trade.
Send this note and he'll understand.
Yr
S. L. C.
Clemens had made a good choice in selecting Beard for the
illustrations. He was well qualified for the work, and being of a
socialistic turn of mind put his whole soul into it. When the
drawings were completed, Clemens wrote: "Hold me under permanent
obligations. What luck it was to find you! There are hundreds of
artists that could illustrate any other book of mine, but there was
only one who could illustrate this one. Yes, it was a fortunate
hour that I went netting for lightning bugs and caught a meteor.
Live forever!"
Clemens, of course, was anxious for Howells to read The Yankee, and
Mrs. Clemens particularly so. Her eyes were giving her trouble that
summer, so that she could not read the MS. for herself, and she had
grave doubts as to some of its chapters. It may be said here that
the book to-day might have been better if Mrs. Clemens had been able
to read it. Howells was a peerless critic, but the revolutionary
subject-matter of the book so delighted him that he was perhaps
somewhat blinded to its literary defects. However, this is
premature. Howells did not at once see the story. He had promised
to come to Hartford, but wrote that trivial matters had made his
visit impossible. From the next letter we get the situation at this
time. The "Mr. Church" mentioned was Frederick S. Church, the well-
known artist.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, July 24, '89.
DEAR HOWELLS,--I, too, was as sorry as I could be; yes, and desperately
disappointed. I even did a heroic thing: shipped my book off to New York
lest I should forget hospitality and embitter your visit with it. Not
that I think you wouldn't like to read it, for I think you would; but not
on a holiday that's not the time. I see how you were situated--another
familiarity of Providence and wholly wanton intrusion--and of course we
could not help ourselves. Well, just think of it: a while ago, while
Providence's attention was absorbed in disordering some time-tables so as
to break up a trip of mine to Mr. Church's on the Hudson, that Johnstown
dam got loose. I swear I was afraid to pray, for fear I should laugh.
Well, I'm not going to despair; we'll manage a meet yet.
I expect to go to Hartford again in August and maybe remain till I have
to come back here and fetch the family. And, along there in August, some
time, you let on that you are going to Mexico, and I will let on that I
am going to Spitzbergen, and then under cover of this clever stratagem we
will glide from the trains at Worcester and have a time. I have noticed
that Providence is indifferent about Mexico and Spitzbergen.
Ys Ever
MARK.
Possibly Mark Twain was not particularly anxious that Howells should
see his MS., fearing that he might lay a ruthless hand on some of
his more violent fulminations and wild fancies. However this may
be, further postponement was soon at an end. Mrs. Clemens's eyes
troubled her and would not permit her to read, so she requested that
the Yankee be passed upon by soberminded critics, such as Howells
and Edmund Clarence Stedman. Howells wrote that even if he hadn't
wanted to read the book for its own sake, or for the author's sake,
he would still want to do it for Mrs. Clemens's. Whereupon the
proofs were started in his direction.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, Aug. 24, '89.
DEAR HOWELLS,--If you should be moved to speak of my book in the Study,
I shall be glad and proud--and the sooner it gets in, the better for the
book; though I don't suppose you can get it in earlier than the November
number--why, no, you can't get it in till a month later than that. Well,
anyway I don't think I'll send out any other press copy--except perhaps
to Stedman. I'm not writing for those parties who miscall themselves
critics, and I don't care to have them paw the book at all. It's my
swan-song, my retirement from literature permanently, and I wish to pass
to the cemetery unclodded.
I judge that the proofs have begun to reach you about this time, as I had
some (though not revises,) this morning. I'm sure I'm going to be
charmed with Beard's pictures. Observe his nice take-off of Middle-Age
art-dinner-table scene.
Ys sincerely
MARK.
Howells's approval of the Yankee came almost in the form of exultant
shouts, one after reading each batch of proof. First he wrote:
"It's charming, original, wonderful! good in fancy and sound to the
core in morals." And again, "It's a mighty great book, and it makes
my heart burn with wrath. It seems God did not forget to put a soul
into you. He shuts most literary men off with a brain, merely."
Then, a few days later: "The book is glorious--simply noble; what
masses of virgin truth never touched in print before!" and, finally,
"Last night I read your last chapter. As Stedman says of the whole
book, it's titanic."
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Sept. 22, '89.
DEAR HOWELLS,--It is immensely good of you to grind through that stuff
for me; but it gives peace to Mrs. Clemens's soul; and I am as grateful
to you as a body can be. I am glad you approve of what I say about the
French Revolution. Few people will. It is odd that even to this day
Americans still observe that immortal benefaction through English and
other monarchical eyes, and have no shred of an opinion about it that
they didn't get at second-hand.
Next to the 4th of July and its results, it was the noblest and the
holiest thing and the most precious that ever happened in this earth.
And its gracious work is not done yet--not anywhere in the remote
neighborhood of it.
Don't trouble to send me all the proofs; send me the pages with your
corrections on them, and waste-basket the rest. We issue the book
Dec. 10; consequently a notice that appears Dec. 20 will be just in good
time.
I am waiting to see your Study set a fashion in criticism. When that
happens--as please God it must--consider that if you lived three
centuries you couldn't do a more valuable work for this country, or a
humaner.
As a rule a critic's dissent merely enrages, and so does no good; but by
the new art which you use, your dissent must be as welcome as your
approval, and as valuable. I do not know what the secret of it is,
unless it is your attitude--man courteously reasoning with man and
brother, in place of the worn and wearisome critical attitude of all this
long time--superior being lecturing a boy.
Well, my book is written--let it go. But if it were only to write over
again there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me; and
they keep multiplying and multiplying; but now they can't ever be said.
And besides, they would require a library--and a pen warmed up in hell.
Ys Ever
MARK.
The type-setting machine began to loom large in the background.
Clemens believed it perfected by this time. Paige had got it
together again and it was running steadily--or approximately so
--setting type at a marvelous speed and with perfect accuracy. In
time an expert operator would be able to set as high as eight
thousand ems per hour, or about ten times as much as a good
compositor could set and distribute by hand. Those who saw it were
convinced--most of them--that the type-setting problem was solved by
this great mechanical miracle. If there were any who doubted, it
was because of its marvelously minute accuracy which the others only
admired. Such accuracy, it was sometimes whispered, required
absolutely perfect adjustment, and what would happen when the great
inventor--"the poet in steel," as Clemens once called him--was no
longer at hand to supervise and to correct the slightest variation.
But no such breath of doubt came to Mark Twain; he believed the
machine as reliable as a constellation.
But now there was need of capital to manufacture and market the
wonder. Clemens, casting about in his mind, remembered Senator
Jones, of Nevada, a man of great wealth, and his old friend, Joe
Goodman, of Nevada, in whom Jones had unlimited confidence. He
wrote to Goodman, and in this letter we get a pretty full exposition
of the whole matter as it stood in the fall of 1889. We note in
this communication that Clemens says that he has been at the machine
three years and seven months, but this was only the period during
which he had spent the regular monthly sum of three thousand
dollars. His interest in the invention had begun as far back as
1880.
To Joseph T. Goodman, in Nevada:
Private. HARTFORD, Oct. 7, '89.
DEAR JOE,-I had a letter from Aleck Badlam day before yesterday, and in
answering him I mentioned a matter which I asked him to consider a secret
except to you and John McComb,--[This is Col. McComb, of the Alta-
California, who had sent Mark Twain on the Quaker City excursion]--as I
am not ready yet to get into the newspapers.
I have come near writing you about this matter several times, but it
wasn't ripe, and I waited. It is ripe, now. It is a type-setting
machine which I undertook to build for the inventor(for a consideration).
I have been at it three years and seven months without losing a day, at a
cost of $3,000 a month, and in so private a way that Hartford has known
nothing about it. Indeed only a dozen men have known of the matter.
I have reported progress from time to time to the proprietors of the
N. Y. Sun, Herald, Times, World, Harper Brothers and John F. Trow; also
to the proprietors of the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe. Three
years ago I asked all these people to squelch their frantic desire to
load up their offices with the Mergenthaler (N. Y. Tribune) machine, and
wait for mine and then choose between the two. They have waited--with no
very gaudy patience--but still they have waited; and I could prove to
them to-day that they have not lost anything by it. But I reserve the
proof for the present--except in the case of the N. Y. Herald; I sent an
invitation there the other day--a courtesy due a paper which ordered
$240,000 worth of our machines long ago when it was still in a crude
condition. The Herald has ordered its foreman to come up here next
Thursday; but that is the only invitation which will go out for some time
yet.
The machine was finished several weeks ago, and has been running ever
since in the machine shop. It is a magnificent creature of steel, all of
Pratt & Whitney's super-best workmanship, and as nicely adjusted and as
accurate as a watch. In construction it is as elaborate and complex as
that machine which it ranks next to, by every right--Man--and in
performance it is as simple and sure.
Anybody can set type on it who can read--and can do it after only 15
minutes' instruction. The operator does not need to leave his seat at
the keyboard; for the reason that he is not required to do anything but
strike the keys and set type--merely one function; the spacing,
justifying, emptying into the galley, and distributing of dead matter is
all done by the machine without anybody's help--four functions.
The ease with which a cub can learn is surprising. Day before yesterday
I saw our newest cub set, perfectly space and perfectly justify 2,150 ems
of solid nonpareil in an hour and distribute the like amount in the same
hour--and six hours previously he had never seen the machine or its
keyboard. It was a good hour's work for 3-year veterans on the other
type-setting machines to do. We have 3 cubs. The dean of the trio is a
school youth of 18. Yesterday morning he had been an apprentice on the
machine 16 working days (8-hour days); and we speeded him to see what he
could do in an hour. In the hour he set 5,900 ems solid nonpareil, and
the machine perfectly spaced and justified it, and of course distributed
the like amount in the same hour. Considering that a good fair
compositor sets 700 and distributes 700 in the one hour, this boy did the
work of about 8 x a compositors in that hour. This fact sends all other
type-setting machines a thousand miles to the rear, and the best of them
will never be heard of again after we publicly exhibit in New York.
We shall put on 3 more cubs. We have one school boy and two compositors,
now,--and we think of putting on a type writer, a stenographer, and
perhaps a shoemaker, to show that no special gifts or training are
required with this machine. We shall train these beginners two or three
months--or until some one of them gets up to 7,000 an hour--then we will
show up in New York and run the machine 24 hours a day 7 days in the
week, for several months--to prove that this is a machine which will
never get out of order or cause delay, and can stand anything an anvil
can stand. You know there is no other typesetting machine that can run
two hours on a stretch without causing trouble and delay with its
incurable caprices.
We own the whole field--every inch of it--and nothing can dislodge us.
Now then, above is my preachment, and here follows the reason and purpose
of it. I want you to run over here, roost over the machine a week and
satisfy yourself, and then go to John P. Jones or to whom you please, and
sell me a hundred thousand dollars' worth of this property and take ten
per cent in cash or the "property" for your trouble--the latter, if you
are wise, because the price I ask is a long way short of the value.
What I call "property" is this. A small part of my ownership consists of
a royalty of $500 on every machine marketed under the American patents.
My selling-terms are, a permanent royalty of one dollar on every
American-marketed machine for a thousand dollars cash to me in hand paid.
We shan't market any fewer than 5,000 machines in 15 years--a return of
fifteen thousand dollars for one thousand. A royalty is better than
stock, in one way--it must be paid, every six months, rain or shine; it
is a debt, and must be paid before dividends are declared. By and by,
when we become a stock company I shall buy these royalties back for stock
if I can get them for anything like reasonable terms.
I have never borrowed a penny to use on the machine, and never sold a
penny's worth of the property until the machine was entirely finished and
proven by the severest tests to be what she started out to be--perfect,
permanent, and occupying the position, as regards all kindred machines,
which the City of Paris occupies as regards the canvas-backs of the
mercantile marine.
It is my purpose to sell two hundred dollars of my royalties at the above
price during the next two months and keep the other $300.
Mrs. Clemens begs Mrs. Goodman to come with you, and asks pardon for not
writing the message herself--which would be a pathetically-welcome
spectacle to me; for I have been her amanuensis for 8 months, now, since
her eyes failed her. Yours as always
MARK.
While this letter with its amazing contents is on its way to
astonish Joe Goodman, we will consider one of quite a different,
but equally characteristic sort. We may assume that Mark Twain's
sister Pamela had been visiting him in Hartford and was now making
a visit in Keokuk.
To Mrs. Moffett, in Keokuk:
HARTFORD, Oct 9, '89.
DEAR PAMELA,--An hour after you left I was suddenly struck with a
realizing sense of the utter chuckle-headedness of that notion of mine:
to send your trunk after you. Land! it was idiotic. None but a lunatic
would, separate himself from his baggage.
Well, I am soulfully glad the baggage fetcher saved me from consummating
my insane inspiration. I met him on the street in the afternoon and paid
him again. I shall pay him several times more, as opportunity offers.
I declined the invitation to banquet with the visiting South American
Congress, in a polite note explaining that I had to go to New York today.
I conveyed the note privately to Patrick; he got the envelope soiled,
and asked Livy to put on a clean one. That is why I am going to the
banquet; also why I have disinvited the boys I thought I was going to
punch billiards with, upstairs to-night.
Patrick is one of the injudiciousest people I ever struck. And I am the
other.
Your Brother
SAM.
The Yankee was now ready for publication, and advance sheets were
already in the reviewers' hands. Just at this moment the Brazilian
monarchy crumbled, and Clemens was moved to write Sylvester Baxter,
of the Boston Herald, a letter which is of special interest in its
prophecy of the new day, the dawn of which was even nearer than he
suspected.
DEAR MR. BAXTER, Another throne has gone down, and I swim in oceans of
satisfaction. I wish I might live fifty years longer; I believe I should
see the thrones of Europe selling at auction for old iron. I believe I
should really see the end of what is surely the grotesquest of all the
swindles ever invented by man-monarchy. It is enough to make a graven
image laugh, to see apparently rational people, away down here in this
wholesome and merciless slaughter-day for shams, still mouthing empty
reverence for those moss-backed frauds and scoundrelisms, hereditary
kingship and so-called "nobility." It is enough to make the monarchs and
nobles themselves laugh--and in private they do; there can be no question
about that. I think there is only one funnier thing, and that is the
spectacle of these bastard Americans--these Hamersleys and Huntingtons
and such--offering cash, encumbered by themselves, for rotten carcases
and stolen titles. When our great brethren the disenslaved Brazilians
frame their Declaration of Independence, I hope they will insert this
missing link: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all monarchs
are usurpers, and descendants of usurpers; for the reason that no throne
was ever set up in this world by the will, freely exercised, of the only
body possessing the legitimate right to set it up--the numerical mass of
the nation."
You already have the advance sheets of my forthcoming book in your hands.
If you will turn to about the five hundredth page, you will find a state
paper of my Connecticut Yankee in which he announces the dissolution of
King Arthur's monarchy and proclaims the English Republic. Compare it
with the state paper which announces the downfall of the Brazilian
monarchy and proclaims the Republic of the United States of Brazil, and
stand by to defend the Yankee from plagiarism. There is merely a
resemblance of ideas, nothing more. The Yankee's proclamation was
already in print a week ago. This is merely one of those odd
coincidences which are always turning up. Come, protect the Yank from
that cheapest and easiest of all charges--plagiarism. Otherwise, you
see, he will have to protect himself by charging approximate and
indefinite plagiarism upon the official servants of our majestic twin
down yonder, and then there might be war, or some similar annoyance.
Have you noticed the rumor that the Portuguese throne is unsteady, and
that the Portuguese slaves are getting restive? Also, that the head
slave-driver of Europe, Alexander III, has so reduced his usual monthly
order for chains that the Russian foundries are running on only half time
now? Also that other rumor that English nobility acquired an added
stench the other day--and had to ship it to India and the continent
because there wasn't any more room for it at home? Things are working.
By and by there is going to be an emigration, may be. Of course we shall
make no preparation; we never do. In a few years from now we shall have
nothing but played-out kings and dukes on the police, and driving the
horse-cars, and whitewashing fences, and in fact overcrowding all the
avenues of unskilled labor; and then we shall wish, when it is too late,
that we had taken common and reasonable precautions and drowned them at
Castle Garden.
There followed at this time a number of letters to Goodman, but as
there is much of a sameness in them, we need not print them all.
Clemens, in fact, kept the mails warm with letters bulging with
schemes for capitalization, and promising vast wealth to all
concerned. When the letters did not go fast enough he sent
telegrams. In one of the letters Goodman is promised "five hundred
thousand dollars out of the profits before we get anything
ourselves." One thing we gather from these letters is that Paige
has taken the machine apart again, never satisfied with its
perfection, or perhaps getting a hint that certain of its
perfections were not permanent. A letter at the end of November
seems worth preserving here.
To Joseph T. Goodman, in California:
HARTFORD, Nov. 29, '89.
DEAR JOE, Things are getting into better and more flexible shape every
day. Papers are now being drawn which will greatly simplify the raising
of capital; I shall be in supreme command; it will not be necessary for
the capitalist to arrive at terms with anybody but me. I don't want to
dicker with anybody but Jones. I know him; that is to say, I want to
dicker with you, and through you with Jones. Try to see if you can't be
here by the 15th of January.
The machine was as perfect as a watch when we took her apart the other
day; but when she goes together again the 15th of January we expect her
to be perfecter than a watch.
Joe, I want you to sell some royalties to the boys out there, if you can,
for I want to be financially strong when we go to New York. You know the
machine, and you appreciate its future enormous career better than any
man I know. At the lowest conceivable estimate (2,000 machines a year,)
we shall sell 34,000 in the life of the patent--17 years.
All the family send love to you--and they mean it, or they wouldn't say
it.
Yours ever
MARK.
The Yankee had come from the press, and Howells had praised it in
the "Editor's Study" in Harper's Magazine. He had given it his
highest commendation, and it seems that his opinion of it did not
change with time. "Of all fanciful schemes of fiction it pleases me
most," he in one place declared, and again referred to it as
"a greatly imagined and symmetrically developed tale."
In more than one letter to Goodman, Clemens had urged him to come
East without delay. "Take the train, Joe, and come along," he wrote
early in December. And we judge from the following that Joe had
decided to come.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Dec. 23, '89.
DEAR HOWELLS,--The magazine came last night, and the Study notice is just
great. The satisfaction it affords us could not be more prodigious if
the book deserved every word of it; and maybe it does; I hope it does,
though of course I can't realize it and believe it. But I am your
grateful servant, anyway and always.
I am going to read to the Cadets at West Point Jan. 11. I go from here
to New York the 9th, and up to the Point the 11th. Can't you go with me?
It's great fun. I'm going to read the passages in the "Yankee" in which
the Yankee's West Point cadets figure--and shall covertly work in a
lecture on aristocracy to those boys. I am to be the guest of the
Superintendent, but if you will go I will shake him and we will go to the
hotel. He is a splendid fellow, and I know him well enough to take that
liberty.
And won't you give me a day or two's visit toward the end of January?
For two reasons: the machine will be at work again by that time, and we
want to hear the rest of the dream-story; Mrs. Clemens keeps speaking
about it and hankering for it. And we can have Joe Goodman on hand again
by that time, and I want you to get to know him thoroughly. It's well
worth it. I am going to run up and stay over night with you as soon as I
can get a chance.
We are in the full rush of the holidays now, and an awful rush it is,
too. You ought to have been here the other day, to make that day perfect
and complete. All alone I managed to inflict agonies on Mrs: Clemens,
whereas I was expecting nothing but praises. I made a party call the day
after the party--and called the lady down from breakfast to receive it.
I then left there and called on a new bride, who received me in her
dressing-gown; and as things went pretty well, I stayed to luncheon.
The error here was, that the appointed reception-hour was 3 in the
afternoon, and not at the bride's house but at her aunt's in another part
of the town. However, as I meant well, none of these disasters
distressed me.
Yrs ever
MARK.
The Yankee did not find a very hearty welcome in England. English
readers did not fancy any burlesque of their Arthurian tales, or
American strictures on their institutions. Mark Twain's publishers
had feared this, and asked that the story be especially edited for
the English edition. Clemens, however, would not listen to any
suggestions of the sort.
To Messrs. Chatto & Windus, in London, Eng.:
GENTLEMEN,--Concerning The Yankee, I have already revised the story
twice; and it has been read critically by W. D. Howells and Edmund
Clarence Stedman, and my wife has caused me to strike out several
passages that have been brought to her attention, and to soften others.
Furthermore, I have read chapters of the book in public where Englishmen
were present and have profited by their suggestions.
Now, mind you, I have taken all this pains because I wanted to say a
Yankee mechanic's say against monarchy and its several natural props,
and yet make a book which you would be willing to print exactly as it
comes to you, without altering a word.
We are spoken of (by Englishmen) as a thin-skinned people. It is you who
are thin-skinned. An Englishman may write with the most brutal frankness
about any man or institution among us and we republish him without
dreaming of altering a line or a word. But England cannot stand that
kind of a book written about herself. It is England that is thin-
skinned. It causeth me to smile when I read the modifications of my
language which have been made in my English editions to fit them for the
sensitive English palate.
Now, as I say, I have taken laborious pains to so trim this book of
offense that you might not lack the nerve to print it just as it stands.
I am going to get the proofs to you just as early as I can. I want you
to read it carefully. If you can publish it without altering a single
word, go ahead. Otherwise, please hand it to J. R. Osgood in time for
him to have it published at my expense.
This is important, for the reason that the book was not written for
America; it was written for England. So many Englishmen have done their
sincerest best to teach us something for our betterment that it seems to
me high time that some of us should substantially recognize the good
intent by trying to pry up the English nation to a little higher level of
manhood in turn.
Very truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The English nation, at least a considerable portion of it, did not wish
to be "pried up to a higher level of manhood" by a Connecticut Yankee.
The papers pretty generally denounced the book as coarse; in fact, a
vulgar travesty. Some of the critics concluded that England, after all,
had made a mistake in admiring Mark Twain. Clemens stood this for a time
and then seems to have decided that something should be done. One of the
foremost of English critics was his friend and admirer; he would state
the case to him fully and invite his assistance.
To Andrew Lang, in London:
[First page missing.]
1889
They vote but do not print. The head tells you pretty promptly whether
the food is satisfactory or not; and everybody hears, and thinks the
whole man has spoken. It is a delusion. Only his taste and his smell
have been heard from--important, both, in a way, but these do not build
up the man; and preserve his life and fortify it.
The little child is permitted to label its drawings "This is a cow this
is a horse," and so on. This protects the child. It saves it from the
sorrow and wrong of hearing its cows and its horses criticized as
kangaroos and work benches. A man who is white-washing a fence is doing
a useful thing, so also is the man who is adorning a rich man's house
with costly frescoes; and all of us are sane enough to judge these
performances by standards proper to each. Now, then, to be fair, an
author ought to be allowed to put upon his book an explanatory line:
"This is written for the Head;" "This is written for the Belly and the
Members." And the critic ought to hold himself in honor bound to put
away from him his ancient habit of judging all books by one standard, and
thenceforth follow a fairer course.
The critic assumes, every time, that if a book doesn't meet the
cultivated-class standard, it isn't valuable. Let us apply his law all
around: for if it is sound in the case of novels, narratives, pictures,
and such things, it is certainly sound and applicable to all the steps
which lead up to culture and make culture possible. It condemns the
spelling book, for a spelling book is of no use to a person of culture;
it condemns all school books and all schools which lie between the
child's primer and Greek, and between the infant school and the
university; it condemns all the rounds of art which lie between the cheap
terra cotta groups and the Venus de Medici, and between the chromo and
the Transfiguration; it requires Whitcomb Riley to sing no more till he
can sing like Shakespeare, and it forbids all amateur music and will
grant its sanction to nothing below the "classic."
Is this an extravagant statement? No, it is a mere statement of fact.
It is the fact itself that is extravagant and grotesque. And what is the
result? This--and it is sufficiently curious: the critic has actually
imposed upon the world the superstition that a painting by Raphael is
more valuable to the civilizations of the earth than is a chromo; and the
august opera than the hurdy-gurdy and the villagers' singing society; and
Homer than the little everybody's-poet whose rhymes are in all mouths
today and will be in nobody's mouth next generation; and the Latin
classics than Kipling's far-reaching bugle-note; and Jonathan Edwards
than the Salvation Army; and the Venus de Medici than the plaster-cast
peddler; the superstition, in a word, that the vast and awful comet that
trails its cold lustre through the remote abysses of space once a century
and interests and instructs a cultivated handful of astronomers is worth
more to the world than the sun which warms and cheers all the nations
every day and makes the crops to grow.
If a critic should start a religion it would not have any object but to
convert angels: and they wouldn't need it. The thin top crust of
humanity--the cultivated--are worth pacifying, worth pleasing, worth
coddling, worth nourishing and preserving with dainties and delicacies,
it is true; but to be caterer to that little faction is no very dignified
or valuable occupation, it seems to me; it is merely feeding the over-
fed, and there must be small satisfaction in that. It is not that little
minority who are already saved that are best worth trying to uplift,
I should think, but the mighty mass of the uncultivated who are
underneath. That mass will never see the Old Masters--that sight is for
the few; but the chromo maker can lift them all one step upward toward
appreciation of art; they cannot have the opera, but the hurdy-gurdy and
the singing class lift them a little way toward that far light; they will
never know Homer, but the passing rhymester of their day leaves them
higher than he found them; they may never even hear of the Latin
classics, but they will strike step with Kipling's drum-beat, and they
will march; for all Jonathan Edwards's help they would die in their
slums, but the Salvation Army will beguile some of them up to pure air
and a cleaner life; they know no sculpture, the Venus is not even a name
to them, but they are a grade higher in the scale of civilization by the
ministrations of the plaster-cast than they were before it took its place
upon then mantel and made it beautiful to their unexacting eyes.
Indeed I have been misjudged, from the very first. I have never tried in
even one single instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes.
I was not equipped for it, either by native gifts or training. And I
never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger
game--the masses. I have seldom deliberately tried to instruct them,
but have done my best to entertain them. To simply amuse them would have
satisfied my dearest ambition at any time; for they could get instruction
elsewhere, and I had two chances to help to the teacher's one: for
amusement is a good preparation for study and a good healer of fatigue
after it. My audience is dumb, it has no voice in print, and so I cannot
know whether I have won its approbation or only got its censure.
Yes, you see, I have always catered for the Belly and the Members, but
have been served like the others--criticized from the culture-standard
--to my sorrow and pain; because, honestly, I never cared what became of
the cultured classes; they could go to the theatre and the opera--they
had no use for me and the melodeon.
And now at last I arrive at my object and tender my petition, making
supplication to this effect: that the critics adopt a rule recognizing
the Belly and the Members, and formulate a standard whereby work done for
them shall be judged. Help me, Mr. Lang; no voice can reach further than
yours in a case of this kind, or carry greater weight of authority.
Lang's reply was an article in the Illustrated London News on "The
Art of Mark Twain." Lang had no admiration to express for the
Yankee, which he confessed he had not cared to read, but he
glorified Huck Finn to the highest. "I can never forget, nor be
ungrateful for the exquisite pleasure with which I read Huckleberry
Finn for the first time, years ago," he wrote; "I read it again last
night, deserting Kenilworth for Huck. I never laid it down till I
had finished it."
Lang closed his article by referring to the story of Huck as the
"great American novel which had escaped the eyes of those who
watched to see this new planet swim into their ken." _