Complete Letters of Mark Twain

Dear red, – I am different from other women; my mind changes oftener. People who have no mind can easily be steadfast and firm, but when a man is loaded down to the guards with it, as I am, every heavy sea of foreboding or inclination, maybe of indolence, shifts the cargo. See? Therefore, if you will notice, one week I am likely to give rigid instructions to confine me to New England; next week, send me to Arizona; the next week withdraw my name; the next week give you full untrammelled swing; and the week following modify it. You must try to keep the run of my mind, Redpath, it is your business being the agent, and it always was too many for me. It appears to me to be one of the finest pieces of mechanism I have ever met with. Now about the West, this week, I am willing that you shall retain all the Western engagements. But what I shall want next week is still with God.

Let us not profane the mysteries with soiled hands and prying eyes of sin.

Yours,

Mark.

P. S. Shall be here 2 weeks, will run up there when Nasby comes.

Elmira, N. Y. Sept. 15, 1871.

Dear Redpath, – I wish you would get me released from the lecture at Buffalo. I mortally hate that society there, and I don’t doubt they hired me. I once gave them a packed house free of charge, and they never even had the common politeness to thank me. They left me to shift for myself, too, a la Bret Harte at Harvard. Get me rid of Buffalo! Otherwise I’ll have no recourse left but to get sick the day I lecture there. I can get sick easy enough, by the simple process of saying the word – well never mind what word – I am not going to lecture there.

Yours,

Mark.

Buffalo, Sept. 26, 1871.

Dear Redpath, – We have thought it all over and decided that we can’t possibly talk after Feb. 2.

We shall take up our residence in Hartford 6 days from now.

Yours,

Mark.

XI. Letters 1871-72. Removal To Hartford. A Lecture Tour. “Roughing It.” First Letter To Howells

The house they had taken in Hartford was the Hooker property on Forest Street, a handsome place in a distinctly literary neighborhood. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Dudley Warner, and other well-known writers were within easy walking distance; Twichell was perhaps half a mile away.

It was the proper environment for Mark Twain. He settled his little family there, and was presently at Redpath’s office in Boston, which was a congenial place, as we have seen before. He did not fail to return to the company of Nasby, Josh Billings, and those others of Redpath’s “attractions” as long and as often as distance would permit. Bret Harte, who by this time had won fame, was also in Boston now, and frequently, with Howells, Aldrich, and Mark Twain, gathered in some quiet restaurant corner for a luncheon that lasted through a dim winter afternoon – a period of anecdote, reminiscence, and mirth. They were all young then, and laughed easily. Howells, has written of one such luncheon given by Ralph Keeler, a young Californian – a gathering at which James T. Fields was present “Nothing remains to me of the happy time but a sense of idle and aimless and joyful talk-play, beginning and ending nowhere, of eager laughter, of countless good stories from Fields, of a heat-lightning shimmer of wit from Aldrich, of an occasional concentration of our joint mockeries upon our host, who took it gladly.”

But a lecture circuit cannot be restricted to the radius of Boston. Clemens was presently writing to Redpath from Washington and points farther west.

*****

To James Redpath, in Boston:

Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 1871.

Dear red, – I have come square out, thrown “Reminiscences” overboard, and taken “Artemus Ward, Humorist,” for my subject. Wrote it here on Friday and Saturday, and read it from Ms last night to an enormous house. It suits me and I’ll never deliver the nasty, nauseous “Reminiscences” any more.

Yours,

Mark.

The Artemus Ward lecture lasted eleven days, then he wrote:

*****

To Redpath and Fall, in Boston:

Buffalo depot, Dec. 8, 1871.

Redpath & fall, Boston, – Notify all hands that from this time I shall talk nothing but selections from my forthcoming book “Roughing It.” Tried it last night. Suits me tip-top.

SAM’L L. Clemens.

The “Roughing It” chapters proved a success, and continued in high favor through the rest of the season.

*****

To James Redpath, in Boston:

Logansport, Ind. Jan. 2, 1872.

Friend Redpath, – Had a splendid time with a splendid audience in Indianapolis last night – a perfectly jammed house, just as I have had all the time out here. I like the new lecture but I hate the “Artemus Ward” talk and won’t talk it any more. No man ever approved that choice of subject in my hearing, I think.

Give me some comfort. If I am to talk in New York am I going to have a good house? I don’t care now to have any appointments cancelled. I’ll even “fetch” those Dutch Pennsylvanians with this lecture.

Have paid up $4000 indebtedness. You are the last on my list. Shall begin to pay you in a few days and then I shall be a free man again.

Yours,

Mark.

With his debts paid, Clemens was anxious to be getting home. Two weeks following the above he wrote Redpath that he would accept no more engagements at any price, outside of New England, and added, “The fewer engagements I have from this time forth the better I shall be pleased.” By the end of February he was back in Hartford, refusing an engagement in Boston, and announcing to Redpath, “If I had another engagement I’d rot before I’d fill it.” From which we gather that he was not entirely happy in the lecture field.

As a matter of fact, Mark Twain loathed the continuous travel and nightly drudgery of platform life. He was fond of entertaining, and there were moments of triumph that repaid him for a good deal, but the tyranny of a schedule and timetables was a constant exasperation.

Meantime, Roughing It had appeared and was selling abundantly. Mark Twain, free of debt, and in pleasant circumstances, felt that the outlook was bright. It became even more so when, in March, the second child, a little girl, Susy, was born, with no attending misfortunes. But, then, in the early summer little Langdon died. It was seldom, during all of Mark Twain’s life, that he enjoyed more than a brief period of unmixed happiness.

It was in June of that year that Clemens wrote his first letter to William Dean Howells the first of several hundred that would follow in the years to come, and has in it something that is characteristic of nearly all the Clemens-Howells letters – a kind of tender playfulness that answered to something in Howells’s make-up, his sense of humor, his wide knowledge of a humanity which he pictured so amusingly to the world.

*****

To William Dean Howells, in Boston:

Hartford, June 15, 1872.

Friend Howells, – Could you tell me how I could get a copy of your portrait as published in Hearth and Home? I hear so much talk about it as being among the finest works of art which have yet appeared in that journal, that I feel a strong desire to see it. Is it suitable for framing? I have written the publishers of H & H time and again, but they say that the demand for the portrait immediately exhausted the edition and now a copy cannot be had, even for the European demand, which has now begun. Bret Harte has been here, and says his family would not be without that portrait for any consideration. He says his children get up in the night and yell for it. I would give anything for a copy of that portrait to put up in my parlor. I have Oliver Wendell Holmes and Bret Harte’s, as published in Every Saturday, and of all the swarms that come every day to gaze upon them none go away that are not softened and humbled and made more resigned to the will of God. If I had yours to put up alongside of them, I believe the combination would bring more souls to earnest reflection and ultimate conviction of their lost condition, than any other kind of warning would. Where in the nation can I get that portrait? Here are heaps of people that want it, – that need it. There is my uncle. He wants a copy. He is lying at the point of death. He has been lying at the point of death for two years. He wants a copy – and I want him to have a copy. And I want you to send a copy to the man that shot my dog. I want to see if he is dead to every human instinct.

Now you send me that portrait. I am sending you mine, in this letter; and am glad to do it, for it has been greatly admired. People who are judges of art, find in the execution a grandeur which has not been equalled in this country, and an expression which has not been approached in any.

Yrs truly,

S. L. Clemens.