Complete Letters of Mark Twain
Truly yours,
Mark Twain.
P. S. This is not a private letter. I am getting tired of private letters.
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
Vienna, hotel Metropole, Nov. 19, ’97.
Dear Joe, – Above is our private (and permanent) address for the winter. You needn’t send letters by London.
I am very much obliged for Forrest’s Austro-Hungarian articles. I have just finished reading the first one: and in it I find that his opinion and Vienna’s are the same, upon a point which was puzzling me – the paucity (no, the absence) of Austrian Celebrities. He and Vienna both say the country cannot afford to allow great names to grow up; that the whole safety and prosperity of the Empire depends upon keeping things quiet; can’t afford to have geniuses springing up and developing ideas and stirring the public soul. I am assured that every time a man finds himself blooming into fame, they just softly snake him down and relegate him to a wholesome obscurity. It is curious and interesting.
Three days ago the New York World sent and asked a friend of mine (correspondent of a London daily) to get some Christmas greetings from the celebrities of the Empire. She spoke of this. Two or three bright Austrians were present. They said “There are none who are known all over the world! none who have achieved fame; none who can point to their work and say it is known far and wide in the earth: there are no names; Kossuth (known because he had a father) and Lecher, who made the 12 hour speech; two names-nothing more. Every other country in the world, perhaps, has a giant or two whose heads are away up and can be seen, but ours. We’ve got the material – have always had it – but we have to suppress it; we can’t afford to let it develop; our political salvation depends upon tranquillity – always has.”
Poor Livy! She is laid up with rheumatism; but she is getting along now. We have a good doctor, and he says she will be out of bed in a couple of days, but must stay in the house a week or ten.
Clara is working faithfully at her music, Jean at her usual studies, and we all send love.
Mark.
Mention has already been made of the political excitement in Vienna. The trouble between the Hungarian and German legislative bodies presently became violent. Clemens found himself intensely interested, and was present in one of the galleries when it was cleared by the police. All sorts of stories were circulated as to what happened to him, one of which was cabled to America. A letter to Twichell sets forth what really happened.
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
Hotel Metropole,
Vienna, Dec. 10, ’97.
Dear Joe, – Pond sends me a Cleveland paper with a cablegram from here in it which says that when the police invaded the parliament and expelled the 11 members I waved my handkerchief and shouted ‘Hoch die Deutschen!’ and got hustled out. Oh dear, what a pity it is that one’s adventures never happen! When the Ordner (sergeant-at-arms) came up to our gallery and was hurrying the people out, a friend tried to get leave for me to stay, by saying, “But this gentleman is a foreigner – you don’t need to turn him out – he won’t do any harm.”
“Oh, I know him very well – I recognize him by his pictures; and I should be very glad to let him stay, but I haven’t any choice, because of the strictness of the orders.”
And so we all went out, and no one was hustled. Below, I ran across the London Times correspondent, and he showed me the way into the first gallery and I lost none of the show. The first gallery had not misbehaved, and was not disturbed.
… We cannot persuade Livy to go out in society yet, but all the lovely people come to see her; and Clara and I go to dinner parties, and around here and there, and we all have a most hospitable good time. Jean’s woodcarving flourishes, and her other studies.
Good-bye Joe – and we all love all of you.
Mark.
Clemens made an article of the Austrian troubles, one of the best things he ever wrote, and certainly one of the clearest élucidations of the Austro-Hungarian confusions. It was published in Harper’s Magazine, and is now included in his complete works.
Thus far none of the Webster Company debts had been paid – at least, none of importance. The money had been accumulating in Mr. Rogers’s hands, but Clemens was beginning to be depressed by the heavy burden. He wrote asking for relief.
*****
Fragment of a letter to H. H. Rogers, in New York:
Dear Mr. Rogers, – I throw up the sponge. I pull down the flag. Let us begin on the debts. I cannot bear the weight any longer. It totally unfits me for work. I have lost three entire months now. In that time I have begun twenty magazine articles and books – and flung every one of them aside in turn. The debts interfered every time, and took the spirit out of any work. And yet I have worked like a bond slave and wasted no time and spared no effort—
Rogers wrote, proposing a plan for beginning immediately upon the debts. Clemens replied enthusiastically, and during the next few weeks wrote every few days, expressing his delight in liquidation.
Extracts from letters to H. H. Rogers, in New York:
… We all delighted with your plan. Only don’t leave B – out. Apparently that claim has been inherited by some women – daughters, no doubt. We don’t want to see them lose any thing. B– is an ass, and disgruntled, but I don’t care for that. I am responsible for the money and must do the best I can to pay it….. I am writing hard-writing for the creditors.
Dec. 29.
Land we are glad to see those debts diminishing. For the first time in my life I am getting more pleasure out of paying money out than pulling it in.
Jan. 2.
Since we have begun to pay off the debts I have abundant peace of mind again – no sense of burden. Work is become a pleasure again – it is not labor any longer.
March 7.
Mrs. Clemens has been reading the creditors’ letters over and over again and thanks you deeply for sending them, and says it is the only really happy day she has had since Susy died.
XXXVII. Letters, 1898, To Howells And Twichell. Life In Vienna. Payment Of The Debts. Assassination Of The Empress
The end of January saw the payment of the last of Mark Twain’s debts. Once more he stood free before the world – a world that sounded his praises. The latter fact rather amused him. “Honest men must be pretty scarce,” he said, “when they make so much fuss over even a defective specimen.” When the end was in sight Clemens wrote the news to Howells in a letter as full of sadness as of triumph.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
Hotel Metropole,
Vienna, Jan. 22, ’98.
Dear Howells, – Look at those ghastly figures. I used to write it “Hartford, 1871.” There was no Susy then – there is no Susy now. And how much lies between – one long lovely stretch of scented fields, and meadows, and shady woodlands, and suddenly Sahara! You speak of the glorious days of that old time – and they were. It is my quarrel – that traps like that are set. Susy and Winnie given us, in miserable sport, and then taken away.
About the last time I saw you I described to you the culminating disaster in a book I was going to write (and will yet, when the stroke is further away) – a man’s dead daughter brought to him when he had been through all other possible misfortunes – and I said it couldn’t be done as it ought to be done except by a man who had lived it – it must be written with the blood out of a man’s heart. I couldn’t know, then, how soon I was to be made competent. I have thought of it many a time since. If you were here I think we could cry down each other’s necks, as in your dream. For we are a pair of old derelicts drifting around, now, with some of our passengers gone and the sunniness of the others in eclipse.
I couldn’t get along without work now. I bury myself in it up to the ears. Long hours—8 and 9 on a stretch, sometimes. And all the days, Sundays included. It isn’t all for print, by any means, for much of it fails to suit me; 50,000 words of it in the past year. It was because of the deadness which invaded me when Susy died. But I have made a change lately – into dramatic work – and I find it absorbingly entertaining. I don’t know that I can write a play that will play: but no matter, I’ll write half a dozen that won’t, anyway. Dear me, I didn’t know there was such fun in it. I’ll write twenty that won’t play. I get into immense spirits as soon as my day is fairly started. Of course a good deal of this friskiness comes of my being in sight of land – on the Webster & Co. debts, I mean. (Private.) We’ve lived close to the bone and saved every cent we could, and there’s no undisputed claim, now, that we can’t cash. I have Mark.d this “private” because it is for the friends who are attending to the matter for us in New York to reveal it when they want to and if they want to. There are only two claims which I dispute and which I mean to look into personally before I pay them. But they are small. Both together they amount to only $12,500. I hope you will never get the like of the load saddled onto you that was saddled onto me 3 years ago. And yet there is such a solid pleasure in paying the things that I reckon maybe it is worth while to get into that kind of a hobble, after all. Mrs. Clemens gets millions of delight out of it; and the children have never uttered one complaint about the scrimping, from the beginning.
We all send you and all of you our love.
Mark.
Howells wrote: “I wish you could understand how unshaken you are, you old tower, in every way; your foundations are struck so deep that you will catch the sunshine of immortal years, and bask in the same light as Cervantes and Shakespeare.”
The Clemens apartments at the Metropole became a sort of social clearing-house of the Viennese art and literary life, much more like an embassy than the home of a mere literary man. Celebrities in every walk of life, persons of social and official rank, writers for the press, assembled there on terms hardly possible in any other home in Vienna. Wherever Mark Twain appeared in public he was a central figure. Now and then he read or spoke to aid some benefit, and these were great gatherings attended by members of the royal family. It was following one such event that the next letter was written.
(Private)
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
Hotel Metropole,
Vienna, Feb. 3, ’98.
Dear Joe, There’s that letter that I began so long ago – you see how it is: can’t get time to finish anything. I pile up lots of work, nevertheless. There may be idle people in the world, but I’m not one of them. I say “Private” up there because I’ve got an adventure to tell, and you mustn’t let a breath of it get out. First I thought I would lay it up along with a thousand others that I’ve laid up for the same purpose – to talk to you about, but – those others have vanished out of my memory; and that must not happen with this.
The other night I lectured for a Vienna charity; and at the end of it Livy and I were introduced to a princess who is aunt to the heir apparent of the imperial throne – a beautiful lady, with a beautiful spirit, and very cordial in her praises of my books and thanks to me for writing them; and glad to meet me face to face and shake me by the hand – just the kind of princess that adorns a fairy tale and makes it the prettiest tale there is.
Very well, we long ago found that when you are noticed by supremacies, the correct etiquette is to go, within a couple of days, and pay your respects in the quite simple form of writing your name in the Visitors’ Book kept in the office of the establishment. That is the end of it, and everything is squared up and ship-shape.
So at noon today Livy and I drove to the Archducal palace, and got by the sentries all right, and asked the grandly-uniformed porter for the book and said we wished to write our names in it. And he called a servant in livery and was sending us up stairs; and said her Royal Highness was out but would soon be in. Of course Livy said “No – no – we only want the book;” but he was firm, and said, “You are Americans?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are expected, please go up stairs.”
“But indeed we are not expected – please let us have the book and—”
“Her Royal Highness will be back in a very little while – she commanded me to tell you so – and you must wait.”
Well, the soldiers were there close by – there was no use trying to resist – so we followed the servant up; but when he tried to beguile us into a drawing-room, Livy drew the line; she wouldn’t go in. And she wouldn’t stay up there, either. She said the princess might come in at any moment and catch us, and it would be too infernally ridiculous for anything. So we went down stairs again – to my unspeakable regret. For it was too darling a comedy to spoil. I was hoping and praying the princess would come, and catch us up there, and that those other Americans who were expected would arrive, and be taken for impostors by the portier, and shot by the sentinels – and then it would all go into the papers, and be cabled all over the world, and make an immense stir and be perfectly lovely. And by that time the princess would discover that we were not the right ones, and the Minister of War would be ordered out, and the garrison, and they would come for us, and there would be another prodigious time, and that would get cabled too, and – well, Joe, I was in a state of perfect bliss. But happily, oh, so happily, that big portier wouldn’t let us out – he was sorry, but he must obey orders – we must go back up stairs and wait. Poor Livy – I couldn’t help but enjoy her distress. She said we were in a fix, and how were we going to explain, if the princess should arrive before the rightful Americans came? We went up stairs again – laid off our wraps, and were conducted through one drawing room and into another, and left alone there and the door closed upon us.
Livy was in a state of mind! She said it was too theatrically ridiculous; and that I would never be able to keep my mouth shut; that I would be sure to let it out and it would get into the papers – and she tried to make me promise—“Promise what?” I said—“to be quiet about this? Indeed I won’t – it’s the best thing that ever happened; I’ll tell it, and add to it; and I wish Joe and Howells were here to make it perfect; I can’t make all the rightful blunders myself – it takes all three of us to do justice to an opportunity like this. I would just like to see Howells get down to his work and explain, and lie, and work his futile and inventionless subterfuges when that princess comes raging in here and wanting to know.” But Livy could not hear fun – it was not a time to be trying to be funny – we were in a most miserable and shameful situation, and if—
Just then the door spread wide and our princess and 4 more, and 3 little princes flowed in! Our princess, and her sister the Archduchess Marie Therese (mother to the imperial Heir and to the young girl Archduchesses present, and aunt to the 3 little princes) – and we shook hands all around and sat down and had a most sociable good time for half an hour – and by and by it turned out that we were the right ones, and had been sent for by a messenger who started too late to catch us at the hotel. We were invited for 2 o’clock, but we beat that arrangement by an hour and a half.
Wasn’t it a rattling good comedy situation? Seems a kind of pity we were the right ones. It would have been such nuts to see the right ones come, and get fired out, and we chatting along comfortably and nobody suspecting us for impostors.
We send lots and lots of love.
Mark.
The reader who has followed these pages has seen how prone Mark Twain was to fall a victim to the lure of a patent-right – how he wasted several small fortunes on profitless contrivances, and one large one on that insatiable demon of intricacy and despair, the Paige type-setter. It seems incredible that, after that experience and its attending disaster, he should have been tempted again. But scarcely was the ink dry on the receipts from his creditors when he was once more borne into the clouds on the prospect of millions, perhaps even billions, to be made from a marvelous carpet-pattern machine, the invention of Sczezepanik, an Austrian genius. That Clemens appreciated his own tendencies is shown by the parenthetic line with which he opens his letter on the subject to Mr. Rogers. Certainly no man was ever a more perfect prototype of Colonel Sellers than the creator of that lovely, irrepressible visionary.
*****
To Mr. Rogers, in New York:
March 24, ’98.
Dear Mr. Rogers, – (I feel like Col. Sellers).
Mr. Kleinberg[41] came according to appointment, at 8.30 last night, and brought his English-speaking Secretary. I asked questions about the auxiliary invention (which I call “No. 2 “) and got as good an idea of it as I could. It is a machine. It automatically punches the holes in the jacquard cards, and does it with mathematical accuracy. It will do for $1 what now costs $3. So it has value, but “No. 2” is the great thing (the designing invention.) It saves $9 out of $10 and the jacquard looms must have it.
Then I arrived at my new project, and said to him in substance, this:
“You are on the point of selling the No. 2 patents to Belgium, Italy, etc. I suggest that you stop those negotiations and put those people off two or three months. They are anxious now, they will not be less anxious then – just the reverse; people always want a thing that is denied them.
“So far as I know, no great world-patent has ever yet been placed in the grip of a single corporation. This is a good time to begin.
“We have to do a good deal of guess-work here, because we cannot get hold of just the statistics we want. Still, we have some good statistics – and I will use those for a test.
“You say that of the 1500 Austrian textile factories, 800 use the jacquard. Then we will guess that of the 4,000 American factories 2,000 use the jacquard and must have our No. 2.
“You say that a middle-sized Austrian factory employs from 20 to 30 designers and pays them from 800 to 3,000 odd florins a year – (a florin is 2 francs). Let us call the average wage 1500 florins ($600).
“Let us apply these figures (the low wages too) to the 2,000 American factories – with this difference, to guard against over-guessing; that instead of allowing for 20 to 30 designers to a middle-sized factory, we allow only an average of 10 to each of the 2,000 factories – a total of 20,000 designers. Wages at $600, a total of $12,000,000. Let us consider that No. 2 will reduce this expense to $2,000,000 a year. The saving is $5,000,000 per each of the $200,000,000 of capital employed in the jacquard business over there.
“Let us consider that in the countries covered by this patent, an aggregate of $1,500,000,000 of capital is employed in factories requiring No. 2.
“The saving (as above) is $75,000,000 a year. The Company holding in its grip all these patents would collar $50,000,000 of that, as its share. Possibly more.
“Competition would be at an end in the Jacquard business, on this planet. Price-cutting would end. Fluctuations in values would cease. The business would be the safest and surest in the world; commercial panics could not seriously affect it; its stock would be as choice an investment as Government bonds. When the patents died the Company would be so powerful that it could still keep the whole business in its hands. Would you like to grant me the privilege of placing the whole jacquard business of the world in the grip of a single Company? And don’t you think that the business would grow-grow like a weed?”
“Ach, America – it is the country of the big! Let me get my breath – then we will talk.”
So then we talked – talked till pretty late. Would Germany and England join the combination? I said the Company would know how to persuade them.
Then I asked for a Supplementary Option, to cover the world, and we parted.
I am taking all precautions to keep my name out of print in connection with this matter. And we will now keep the invention itself out of print as well as we can. Descriptions of it have been granted to the “Dry Goods Economist” (New York) and to a syndicate of American papers. I have asked Mr. Kleinberg to suppress these, and he feels pretty sure he can do it.
With love,
S. L. C.
If this splendid enthusiasm had not cooled by the time a reply came from Mr. Rogers, it must have received a sudden chill from the letter which he inclosed – the brief and concise report from a carpet-machine expert, who said: “I do not feel that it would be of any value to us in our mills, and the number of jacquard looms in America is so limited that I am of the opinion that there is no field for a company to develop the invention here. A cursory examination of the pamphlet leads me to place no very high value upon the invention, from a practical standpoint.”
With the receipt of this letter carpet-pattern projects would seem to have suddenly ceased to be a factor in Mark Twain’s calculations. Such a letter in the early days of the type-machine would have saved him a great sum in money and years of disappointment. But perhaps he would not have heeded it then.
The year 1898 brought the Spanish-American War. Clemens was constitutionally against all wars, but writing to Twichell, whose son had enlisted, we gather that this one was an exception.
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
Kaltenleutgeben, near Vienna,
June 17, ’98.
Dear Joe, – You are living your war-days over again in Dave, and it must be a strong pleasure, mixed with a sauce of apprehension – enough to make it just schmeck, as the Germans say. Dave will come out with two or three stars on his shoulder-straps if the war holds, and then we shall all be glad it happened.
We started with Bull Run, before. Dewey and Hobson have introduced an improvement on the game this time.
I have never enjoyed a war-even in written history – as I am enjoying this one. For this is the worthiest one that was ever fought, so far as my knowledge goes. It is a worthy thing to fight for one’s freedom; it is another sight finer to fight for another man’s. And I think this is the first time it has been done.
Oh, never mind Charley Warner, he would interrupt the raising of Lazarus. He would say, the will has been probated, the property distributed, it will be a world of trouble to settle the rows – better leave well enough alone; don’t ever disturb anything, where it’s going to break the soft smooth flow of things and wobble our tranquillity.
Company! (Sh! it happens every day – and we came out here to be quiet.)
Love to you all.
Mark.
They were spending the summer at Kaltenleutgeben, a pleasant village near Vienna, but apparently not entirely quiet. Many friends came out from Vienna, including a number of visiting Americans. Clemens, however, appears to have had considerable time for writing, as we gather from the next to Howells.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in America:
Kaltenleutgeben, bei Wien,
Aug. 16, ’98.
Dear Howells, – Your letter came yesterday. It then occurred to me that I might have known (per mental telegraph) that it was due; for a couple of weeks ago when the Weekly came containing that handsome reference to me I was powerfully moved to write you; and my letter went on writing itself while I was at work at my other literature during the day. But next day my other literature was still urgent – and so on and so on; so my letter didn’t get put into ink at all. But I see now, that you were writing, about that time, therefore a part of my stir could have come across the Atlantic per mental telegraph. In 1876 or ’75 I wrote 40,000 words of a story called “Simon Wheeler” wherein the nub was the preventing of an execution through testimony furnished by mental telegraph from the other side of the globe. I had a lot of people scattered about the globe who carried in their pockets something like the old mesmerizer-button, made of different metals, and when they wanted to call up each other and have a talk, they “pressed the button” or did something, I don’t remember what, and communication was at once opened. I didn’t finish the story, though I re-began it in several new ways, and spent altogether 70,000 words on it, then gave it up and threw it aside.
