In spite of his success with the Sellers play and his itch to follow it up, Mark Twain realized what he believed to be his literary limitations. All his life he was inclined to consider himself wanting in the finer gifts of character- shading and delicate portrayal. Remembering Huck Finn, and the rare presentation of Joan of Arc, we may not altogether agree with him. Certainly, he was never qualified to delineate those fine artificialities of life which we are likely to a.s.sociate with culture, and perhaps it was something of this sort that caused the hesitation confessed in the letter that follows. Whether the plan suggested interested Howells or not we do not know. In later years Howells wrote a novel called The Story of a Play; this may have been its beginning.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, Apl. 26, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--An actor named D. H. Harkins has been here to ask me to put upon paper a 5-act play which he has been mapping out in his mind for 3 or 4 years. He sat down and told me his plot all through, in a clear, bright way, and I was a deal taken with it; but it is a line of characters whose fine shading and artistic development requires an abler hand than mine; so I easily perceived that I must not make the attempt.
But I liked the man, and thought there was a good deal of stuff in him; and therefore I wanted his play to be written, and by a capable hand, too. So I suggested you, and said I would write and see if you would be willing to undertake it. If you like the idea, he will call upon you in the course of two or three weeks and describe his plot and his characters. Then if it doesn"t strike you favorably, of course you can simply decline; but it seems to me well worth while that you should hear what he has to say. You could also "average" him while he talks, and judge whether he could play your priest--though I doubt if any man can do that justice.
Shan"t I write him and say he may call? If you wish to communicate directly with him instead, his address is "Larchmont Manor, Westchester Co., N. Y."
Do you know, the chill of that 19th of April seems to be in my bones yet? I am inert and drowsy all the time. That was villainous weather for a couple of wandering children to be out in.
Ys ever MARK.
The sinister typewriter did not find its way to Howells for nearly a year. Meantime, Mark Twain had refused to allow the manufacturers to advertise his ownership. He wrote to them:
HARTFORD, March 19, 1875.
Please do not use my name in any way. Please do not even divulge the fact that I own a machine. I have entirely stopped using the typewriter, for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail that I would not only describe the machine, but state what progress I had made in the use of it, etc., etc. I don"t like to write letters, and so I don"t want people to know I own this curiosity-breeding little joker.
Three months later the machine was still in his possession. Bliss had traded a twelve-dollar saddle for it, but apparently showed little enthusiasm in his new possession.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
June 25, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I told Patrick to get some carpenters and box the machine and send it to you--and found that Bliss had sent for the machine and earned it off.
I have been talking to you and writing to you as if you were present when I traded the machine to Bliss for a twelve-dollar saddle worth $25 (cheating him outrageously, of course--but conscience got the upper hand again and I told him before I left the premises that I"d pay for the saddle if he didn"t like the machine--on condition that he donate said machine to a charity)
This was a little over five weeks ago--so I had long ago concluded that Bliss didn"t want the machine and did want the saddle--wherefore I jumped at the chance of shoving the machine off onto you, saddle or no saddle so I got the blamed thing out of my sight.
The saddle hangs on Tara"s walls down below in the stable, and the machine is at Bliss"s grimly pursuing its appointed mission, slowly and implacably rotting away another man"s chances for salvation.
I have sent Bliss word not to donate it to a charity (though it is a pity to fool away a chance to do a charity an ill turn,) but to let me know when he has got his dose, because I"ve got another candidate for d.a.m.nation. You just wait a couple of weeks and if you don"t see the Type-Writer come tilting along toward Cambridge with an unsatisfied appet.i.te in its eye, I lose my guess.
Don"t you be mad about this blunder, Howells--it only comes of a bad memory, and the stupidity which is inseparable from true genius. Nothing intentionally criminal in it.
Yrs ever MARK.
It was November when Howells finally fell under the baleful influence of the machine. He wrote:
"The typewriter came Wednesday night, and is already beginning to have its effect on me. Of course, it doesn"t work: if I can persuade some of the letters to get up against the ribbon they won"t get down again without digital a.s.sistance. The treadle refuses to have any part or parcel in the performance; and I don"t know how to get the roller to turn with the paper. Nevertheless I have begun several letters to My d-a-r lemans, as it prefers to spell your respected name, and I don"t despair yet of sending you something in its beautiful handwriting--after I"ve had a man out from the agent"s to put it in order. It"s fascinating in the meantime, and it wastes my time like an old friend."
The Clemens family remained in Hartford that summer, with the exception of a brief season at Bateman"s Point, R. I., near Newport. By this time Mark Twain had taken up and finished the Tom Sawyer story begun two years before. Naturally he wished Howells to consider the MS.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, July 5th, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I have finished the story and didn"t take the chap beyond boyhood. I believe it would be fatal to do it in any shape but autobiographically--like Gil Blas. I perhaps made a mistake in not writing it in the first person. If I went on, now, and took him into manhood, he would just like like all the one-horse men in literature and the reader would conceive a hearty contempt for him. It is not a boy"s book, at all. It will only be read by adults. It is only written for adults.
Moreover the book is plenty long enough as it stands. It is about 900 pages of MS, and may be 1000 when I shall have finished "working up" vague places; so it would make from 130 to 150 pages of the Atlantic--about what the Foregone Conclusion made, isn"t it?
I would dearly like to see it in the Atlantic, but I doubt if it would pay the publishers to buy the privilege, or me to sell it. Bret Harte has sold his novel (same size as mine, I should say) to Scribner"s Monthly for $6,500 (publication to begin in September, I think,) and he gets a royalty of 7 1/2 per cent from Bliss in book form afterwards.
He gets a royalty of ten per cent on it in England (issued in serial numbers) and the same royalty on it in book form afterwards, and is to receive an advance payment of five hundred pounds the day the first No. of the serial appears. If I could do as well, here, and there, with mine, it might possibly pay me, but I seriously doubt it though it is likely I could do better in England than Bret, who is not widely known there.
You see I take a vile, mercenary view of things--but then my household expenses are something almost ghastly.
By and by I shall take a boy of twelve and run him on through life (in the first person) but not Tom Sawyer--he would not be a good character for it.
I wish you would promise to read the MS of Tom Sawyer some time, and see if you don"t really decide that I am right in closing with him as a boy--and point out the most glaring defects for me. It is a tremendous favor to ask, and I expect you to refuse and would be ashamed to expect you to do otherwise. But the thing has been so many months in my mind that it seems a relief to snake it out. I don"t know any other person whose judgment I could venture to take fully and entirely. Don"t hesitate about saying no, for I know how your time is taxed, and I would have honest need to blush if you said yes.
Osgood and I are "going for" the puppy G---- on infringement of trademark. To win one or two suits of this kind will set literary folks on a firmer bottom. I wish Osgood would sue for stealing Holmes"s poem.
Wouldn"t it be gorgeous to sue R---- for petty larceny? I will promise to go into court and swear I think him capable of stealing pea-nuts from a blind pedlar.
Yrs ever, CLEMENS.
Of course Howells promptly replied that he would read the story, adding: "You"ve no idea what I may ask you to do for me, some day.
I"m sorry that you can"t do it for the Atlantic, but I succ.u.mb. Perhaps you will do Boy No. 2 for us." Clemens, conscience-stricken, meantime, hastily put the MS. out of reach of temptation.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
July 13, 1875