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Mark Twain's Letters – Volume 2 (1867-1875)
But never mind-things may revive while I am away. During the last two months my next-door neighbor, Chas. Dudley Warner, has dropped his “Back-Log Studies,” and he and I have written a bulky novel in partnership. He has worked up the fiction and I have hurled in the facts. I consider it one of the most astonishing novels that ever was written. Night after night I sit up reading it over and over again and crying. It will be published early in the Fall, with plenty of pictures. Do you consider this an advertisement? – and if so, do you charge for such things when a man is your friend?
Yours truly,SAML. L. CLEMENS,“MARK TWAIN,”
An amusing, even if annoying, incident happened about the time of Mark Twain’s departure. A man named Chew related to Twichell a most entertaining occurrence. Twichell saw great possibilities in it, and suggested that Mark Twain be allowed to make a story of it, sharing the profits with Chew. Chew agreed, and promised to send the facts, carefully set down. Twichell, in the mean time, told the story to Clemens, who was delighted with it and strongly tempted to write it at once, while he was in the spirit, without waiting on Chew. Fortunately, he did not do so, for when Chew’s material came it was in the form of a clipping, the story having been already printed in some newspaper. Chew’s knowledge of literary ethics would seem to have been slight. He thought himself entitled to something under the agreement with Twichell. Mark Twain, by this time in London, naturally had a different opinion.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
LONDON, June 9, ‘73.
DEAR OLD JOE, – I consider myself wholly at liberty to decline to pay Chew anything, and at the same time strongly tempted to sue him into the bargain for coming so near ruining me. If he hadn’t happened to send me that thing in print, I would have used the story (like an innocent fool) and would straightway have been hounded to death as a plagiarist. It would have absolutely destroyed me. I cannot conceive of a man being such a hopeless ass (after serving as a legislative reporter, too) as to imagine that I or any other literary man in his senses would consent to chew over old stuff that had already been in print. If that man weren’t an infant in swaddling clothes, his only reply to our petition would have been, “It has been in print.” It makes me as mad as the very Old Harry every time I think of Mr. Chew and the frightfully narrow escape I have had at his hands. Confound Mr. Chew, with all my heart! I’m willing that he should have ten dollars for his trouble of warming over his cold victuals – cheerfully willing to that – but no more. If I had had him near when his letter came, I would have got out my tomahawk and gone for him. He didn’t tell the story half as well as you did, anyhow.
I wish to goodness you were here this moment – nobody in our parlor but Livy and me, – and a very good view of London to the fore. We have a luxuriously ample suite of apartments in the Langham Hotel, 3rd floor, our bedroom looking straight up Portland Place and our parlor having a noble array of great windows looking out upon both streets (Portland Place and the crook that joins it to Regent Street.)
9 P.M. Full twilight – rich sunset tints lingering in the west.
I am not going to write anything – rather tell it when I get back. I love you and Harmony, and that is all the fresh news I’ve got, anyway. And I mean to keep that fresh all the time.
LovinglyMARK.
P. S. – Am luxuriating in glorious old Pepy’s Diary, and smoking.
Letters are exceedingly scarce through all this period. Mark Twain, now on his second visit to London, was literally overwhelmed with honors and entertainment; his rooms at the Langham were like a court. Such men as Robert Browning, Turgenieff, Sir John Millais, and Charles Kingsley hastened to call. Kingsley and others gave him dinners. Mrs. Clemens to her sister wrote: “It is perfectly discouraging to try to write you.” The continuous excitement presently told on her. In July all further engagements were canceled, and Clemens took his little family to Scotland, for quiet and rest. They broke the journey at York, and it was there that Mark Twain wrote the only letter remaining from this time.
Fragment of a letter to Mrs. Jervis Langdon, of Elmira, N. Y.:
For the present we shall remain in this queer old walled town, with its crooked, narrow lanes, that tell us of their old day that knew no wheeled vehicles; its plaster-and-timber dwellings, with upper stories far overhanging the street, and thus marking their date, say three hundred years ago; the stately city walls, the castellated gates, the ivy-grown, foliage-sheltered, most noble and picturesque ruin of St. Mary’s Abbey, suggesting their date, say five hundred years ago, in the heart of Crusading times and the glory of English chivalry and romance; the vast Cathedral of York, with its worn carvings and quaintly pictured windows, preaching of still remoter days; the outlandish names of streets and courts and byways that stand as a record and a memorial, all these centuries, of Danish dominion here in still earlier times; the hint here and there of King Arthur and his knights and their bloody fights with Saxon oppressors round about this old city more than thirteen hundred years gone by; and, last of all, the melancholy old stone coffins and sculptured inscriptions, a venerable arch and a hoary tower of stone that still remain and are kissed by the sun and caressed by the shadows every day, just as the sun and the shadows have kissed and caressed them every lagging day since the Roman Emperor’s soldiers placed them here in the times when Jesus the Son of Mary walked the streets of Nazareth a youth, with no more name or fame than the Yorkshire boy who is loitering down this street this moment.
Their destination was Edinburgh, where they remained a month. Mrs. Clemens’s health gave way on their arrival there, and her husband, knowing the name of no other physician in the place, looked up Dr. John Brown, author of Rab and His Friends, and found in him not only a skilful practitioner, but a lovable companion, to whom they all became deeply attached. Little Susy, now seventeen months old, became his special favorite. He named her Megalops, because of her great eyes.
Mrs. Clemens regained her strength and they returned to London. Clemens, still urged to lecture, finally agreed with George Dolby to a week’s engagement, and added a promise that after taking his wife and daughter back to America he would return immediately for a more extended course. Dolby announced him to appear at the Queen’s Concert Rooms, Hanover Square, for the week of October 13-18, his lecture to be the old Sandwich Islands talk that seven years before had brought him his first success. The great hall, the largest in London, was thronged at each appearance, and the papers declared that Mark Twain had no more than “whetted the public appetite” for his humor. Three days later, October 1873, Clemens, with his little party, sailed for home. Half-way across the ocean he wrote the friend they had left in Scotland:
To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:
MID-ATLANTIC, Oct. 30, 1873.
OUR DEAR FRIEND THE DOCTOR, – We have plowed a long way over the sea, and there’s twenty-two hundred miles of restless water between us, now, besides the railway stretch. And yet you are so present with us, so close to us that a span and a whisper would bridge the distance.
The first three days were stormy, and wife, child, maid, and Miss Spaulding were all sea-sick 25 hours out of the 24, and I was sorry I ever started. However, it has been smooth, and balmy, and sunny and altogether lovely for a day or two now, and at night there is a broad luminous highway stretching over the sea to the moon, over which the spirits of the sea are traveling up and down all through the secret night and having a genuine good time, I make no doubt.
Today they discovered a “collie” on board! I find (as per advertisement which I sent you) that they won’t carry dogs in these ships at any price. This one has been concealed up to this time. Now his owner has to pay L10 or heave him overboard. Fortunately the doggie is a performing doggie and the money will be paid. So after all it was just as well you didn’t intrust your collie to us.
A poor little child died at midnight and was buried at dawn this morning – sheeted and shotted, and sunk in the middle of the lonely ocean in water three thousand fathoms deep. Pity the poor mother.
With our love.S. L. CLEMENS.
Mark Twain was back in London, lecturing again at the Queen’s Concert Rooms, after barely a month’s absence. Charles Warren Stoddard, whom he had known in California, shared his apartment at the Langham, and acted as his secretary – a very necessary office, for he was besieged by callers and bombarded with letters. He remained in London two months, lecturing steadily at Hanover Square to full houses. It is unlikely that there is any other platform record to match it. One letter of this period has been preserved. It is written to Twichell, near the end of his engagement.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
LONDON, Jan. 5 1874.
MY DEAR OLD JOE, – I knew you would be likely to graduate into an ass if I came away; and so you have – if you have stopped smoking. However, I have a strong faith that it is not too late, yet, and that the judiciously managed influence of a bad example will fetch you back again.
I wish you had written me some news – Livy tells me precious little. She mainly writes to hurry me home and to tell me how much she respects me: but she’s generally pretty slow on news. I had a letter from her along with yours, today, but she didn’t tell me the book is out. However, it’s all right. I hope to be home 20 days from today, and then I’ll see her, and that will make up for a whole year’s dearth of news. I am right down grateful that she is looking strong and “lovelier than ever.” I only wish I could see her look her level best, once – I think it would be a vision.
I have just spent a good part of this day browsing through the Royal Academy Exhibition of Landseer’s paintings. They fill four or five great salons, and must number a good many hundreds. This is the only opportunity ever to see them, because the finest of them belong to the queen and she keeps them in her private apartments. Ah, they’re wonderfully beautiful! There are such rich moonlights and dusks in “The Challenge” and “The Combat;” and in that long flight of birds across a lake in the subdued flush of sunset (or sunrise – for no man can ever tell tother from which in a picture, except it has the filmy morning mist breathing itself up from the water). And there is such a grave analytical profundity in the faces of “The Connoisseurs;” and such pathos in the picture of the fawn suckling its dead mother, on a snowy waste, with only the blood in the footprints to hint that she is not asleep. And the way he makes animals absolute flesh and blood – insomuch that if the room were darkened ever so little and a motionless living animal placed beside a painted one, no man could tell which was which.
I interrupted myself here, to drop a line to Shirley Brooks and suggest a cartoon for Punch. It was this. In one of the Academy salons (in the suite where these pictures are), a fine bust of Landseer stands on a pedestal in the centre of the room. I suggest that some of Landseer’s best known animals be represented as having come down out of their frames in the moonlight and grouped themselves about the bust in mourning attitudes.
Well, old man, I am powerful glad to hear from you and shall be powerful glad to see you and Harmony. I am not going to the provinces because I cannot get halls that are large enough. I always felt cramped in Hanover Square Rooms, but I find that everybody here speaks with awe and respect of that prodigious place, and wonder that I could fill it so long.
I am hoping to be back in 20 days, but I have so much to go home to and enjoy with a jubilant joy, that it seems hardly possible that it can ever come to pass in so uncertain a world as this.
I have read the novel – [The Gilded Age, published during his absence, December, 1873.] – here, and I like it. I have made no inquiries about it, though. My interest in a book ceases with the printing of it.
With a world of love,SAML.
XIII. LETTERS 1874. HARTFORD AND ELMIRA. A NEW STUDY. BEGINNING “TOM SAWYER.” THE SELLERS PLAY
Naturally Redpath would not give him any peace now. His London success must not be wasted. At first his victim refused point-blank, and with great brevity. But he was overborne and persuaded, and made occasional appearances, wiring at last this final defiant word:
Telegram to James Redpath, in Boston:
HARTFORD, March 3, 1874.
JAMES REDPATH, – Why don’t you congratulate me?
I never expect to stand on a lecture platform again after Thursday night.
MARK.
That he was glad to be home again we may gather from a letter sent at this time to Doctor Brown, of Edinburgh.
To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:
FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORDFeby. 28, 1874.
MY DEAR FRIEND, – We are all delighted with your commendations of the Gilded Age-and the more so because some of our newspapers have set forth the opinion that Warner really wrote the book and I only added my name to the title page in order to give it a larger sale. I wrote the first eleven chapters, every word and every line. I also wrote chapters 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 21, 42, 43, 45, 51, 52. 53, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, and portions of 35, 49 and 56. So I wrote 32 of the 63 chapters entirely and part of 3 others beside.
The fearful financial panic hit the book heavily, for we published it in the midst of it. But nevertheless in the 8 weeks that have now elapsed since the day we published, we have sold 40,000 copies; which gives L3,000 royalty to be divided between the authors. This is really the largest two-months’ sale which any American book has ever achieved (unless one excepts the cheaper editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin). The average price of our book is 16 shillings a copy – Uncle Tom was 2 shillings a copy. But for the panic our sale would have been doubled, I verily believe. I do not believe the sale will ultimately go over 100,000 copies.
I shipped to you, from Liverpool, Barley’s Illustrations of Judd’s “Margaret” (the waiter at the Adelphi Hotel agreeing to ship it securely per parcel delivery,) and I do hope it did not miscarry, for we in America think a deal of Barley’s – [Felix Octavius Carr barley, 1822-1888, illustrator of the works of Irving, Cooper, etc. Probably the most distinguished American illustrator of his time.] – work. I shipped the novel (“Margaret”) to you from here a week ago.
Indeed I am thankful for the wife and the child – and if there is one individual creature on all this footstool who is more thoroughly and uniformly and unceasingly happy than I am I defy the world to produce him and prove him. In my opinion, he doesn’t exist. I was a mighty rough, coarse, unpromising subject when Livy took charge of me 4 years ago, and I may still be, to the rest of the world, but not to her. She has made a very creditable job of me.
Success to the Mark Twain Club! – and the novel shibboleth of the Whistle. Of course any member rising to speak would be required to preface his remark with a keen respectful whistle at the chair-the chair recognizing the speaker with an answering shriek, and then as the speech proceeded its gravity and force would be emphasized and its impressiveness augmented by the continual interjection of whistles in place of punctuation-pauses; and the applause of the audience would be manifested in the same way…
They’ve gone to luncheon, and I must follow. With strong love from us both.
Your friend,
SAML. L. CLEMENS.
These were the days when the Howells and Clemens families began visiting back and forth between Boston and Hartford, and sometimes Aldrich came, though less frequently, and the gatherings at the homes of Warner and Clemens were full of never-to-be-forgotten happiness. Of one such visit Howells wrote:
“In the good-fellowship of that cordial neighborhood we had two such days as the aging sun no longer shines on in his round. There was constant running in and out of friendly houses, where the lively hosts and guests called one another by their christian names or nicknames, and no such vain ceremony as knocking or ringing at doors. Clemens was then building the stately mansion in which he satisfied his love of magnificence as if it had been another sealskin coat, and he was at the crest of the prosperity which enabled him to humor every whim or extravagance.” It was the delight of such a visit that kept Clemens constantly urging its repetition. One cannot but feel the genuine affection of these letters.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
Mch. 1, 1876.
MY DEAR HOWELLS, – Now you will find us the most reasonable people in the world. We had thought of precipitating upon you George Warner and wife one day; Twichell and his jewel of a wife another day, and Chas. Perkins and wife another. Only those – simply members of our family, they are. But I’ll close the door against them all – which will “fix” all of the lot except Twichell, who will no more hesitate to climb in at the back window than nothing.
And you shall go to bed when you please, get up when you please, talk when you please, read when you please. Mrs. Howells may even go to New York Saturday if she feels that she must, but if some gentle, unannoying coaxing can beguile her into putting that off a few days, we shall be more than glad, for I do wish she and Mrs. Clemens could have a good square chance to get acquainted with each other. But first and last and all the time, we want you to feel untrammeled and wholly free from restraint, here.
The date suits – all dates suit.
Yrs everMARK.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, Mch. 20, 1876.
DEAR HOWELLS, – You or Aldrich or both of you must come to Hartford to live. Mr. Hall, who lives in the house next to Mrs. Stowe’s (just where we drive in to go to our new house) will sell for $16,000 or $17,000. The lot is 85 feet front and 150 deep – long time and easy payments on the purchase? You can do your work just as well here as in Cambridge, can’t you? Come, will one of you boys buy that house? Now say yes.
Mrs. Clemens is an invalid yet, but is getting along pretty fairly.
We send best regards. MARK.
April found the Clemens family in Elmira. Mrs. Clemens was not over-strong, and the cares of house-building were many. They went early, therefore, remaining at the Langdon home in the city until Quarry Farm should feel a touch of warmer sun, Clemens wrote the news to Doctor Brown.
To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:
ELMIRA, N. Y., April 27, ‘86.
DEAR DOCTOR, – This town is in the interior of the State of New York – and was my wife’s birth-place. We are here to spend the whole summer. Although it is so near summer, we had a great snow-storm yesterday, and one the day before. This is rather breaking in upon our plans, as it may keep us down here in the valley a trifle longer than we desired. It gets fearfully hot here in the summer, so we spend our summers on top of a hill 6 or 700 feet high, about two or three miles from here – it never gets hot up there.
Mrs. Clemens is pretty strong, and so is the “little wifie” barring a desperate cold in the head the child grows in grace and beauty marvellously. I wish the nations of the earth would combine in a baby show and give us a chance to compete. I must try to find one of her latest photographs to enclose in this. And this reminds me that Mrs. Clemens keeps urging me to ask you for your photograph and last night she said, “and be sure to ask him for a photograph of his sister, and Jock-but say Master Jock – do not be headless and forget that courtesy; he is Jock in our memories and our talk, but he has a right to his title when a body uses his name in a letter.” Now I have got it all in – I can’t have made any mistake this time. Miss Clara Spaulding looked in, a moment, yesterday morning, as bright and good as ever. She would like to lay her love at your feet if she knew I was writing – as would also fifty friends of ours whom you have never seen, and whose homage is as fervent as if the cold and clouds and darkness of a mighty sea did not lie between their hearts and you. Poor old Rab had not many “friends” at first, but if all his friends of today could gather to his grave from the four corners of the earth what a procession there would be! And Rab’s friends are your friends.
I am going to work when we get on the hill-till then I’ve got to lie fallow, albeit against my will. We join in love to you and yours.
Your friend ever,SAML. L. CLEMENS.
P. S. I enclose a specimen of villainy. A man pretends to be my brother and my lecture agent – gathers a great audience together in a city more than a thousand miles from here, and then pockets the money and elopes, leaving the audience to wait for the imaginary lecturer! I am after him with the law.
It was a historic summer at the Farm. A new baby arrived in June; a new study was built for Mark Twain by Mrs. Crane, on the hillside near the old quarry; a new book was begun in it – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – and a play, the first that Mark Twain had really attempted, was completed – the dramatization of The Gilded Age.
An early word went to Hartford of conditions at the Farm.
To Rev. and Mrs. Twichell, in Hartford:
ELMIRA, June 11, 1874.
MY DEAR OLD JOE AND HARMONY, – The baby is here and is the great American Giantess – weighing 7 3/4 pounds. We had to wait a good long time for her, but she was full compensation when she did come.
The Modoc was delighted with it, and gave it her doll at once. There is nothing selfish about the Modoc. She is fascinated with the new baby. The Modoc rips and tears around out doors, most of the time, and consequently is as hard as a pine knot and as brown as an Indian. She is bosom friend to all the ducks, chickens, turkeys and guinea hens on the place. Yesterday as she marched along the winding path that leads up the hill through the red clover beds to the summer-house, there was a long procession of these fowls stringing contentedly after her, led by a stately rooster who can look over the Modoc’s head. The devotion of these vassals has been purchased with daily largess of Indian meal, and so the Modoc, attended by her bodyguard, moves in state wherever she goes.
Susie Crane has built the loveliest study for me, you ever saw. It is octagonal, with a peaked roof, each octagon filled with a spacious window, and it sits perched in complete isolation on top of an elevation that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant blue hills. It is a cosy nest, with just room in it for a sofa and a table and three or four chairs – and when the storms sweep down the remote valley and the lightning flashes above the hills beyond, and the rain beats upon the roof over my head, imagine the luxury of it! It stands 500 feet above the valley and 2 1/2 miles from it.
However one must not write all day. We send continents of love to you and yours.
Affectionately
MARK
We have mentioned before that Clemens had settled his mother and sister at Fredonia, New York, and when Mrs. Clemens was in condition to travel he concluded to pay them a visit. It proved an unfortunate journey; the hot weather was hard on Mrs. Clemens, and harder still, perhaps, on Mark Twain’s temper. At any period of his life a bore exasperated him, and in these earlier days he was far more likely to explode than in his mellower age. Remorse always followed – the price he paid was always costly. We cannot know now who was the unfortunate that invited the storm, but in the next letter we get the echoes of it and realize something of its damage.
To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia:
ELMIRA, Aug. 15.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER, – I came away from Fredonia ashamed of myself; – almost too much humiliated to hold up my head and say good-bye. For I began to comprehend how much harm my conduct might do you socially in your village. I would have gone to that detestable oyster-brained bore and apologized for my inexcusable rudeness to him, but that I was satisfied he was of too small a calibre to know how to receive an apology with magnanimity.
Pamela appalled me by saying people had hinted that they wished to visit Livy when she came, but that she had given them no encouragement. I feared that those people would merely comprehend that their courtesies were not wanted, and yet not know exactly why they were not wanted.
I came away feeling that in return for your constant and tireless efforts to secure our bodily comfort and make our visit enjoyable, I had basely repaid you by making you sad and sore-hearted and leaving you so. And the natural result has fallen to me likewise – for a guilty conscience has harassed me ever since, and I have not had one short quarter of an hour of peace to this moment.
You spoke of Middletown. Why not go there and live? Mr. Crane says it is only about a hundred miles this side of New York on the Erie road. The fact that one or two of you might prefer to live somewhere else is not a valid objection – there are no 4 people who would all choose the same place – so it will be vain to wait for the day when your tastes shall be a unit. I seriously fear that our visit has damaged you in Fredonia, and so I wish you were out of it.
The baby is fat and strong, and Susie the same. Susie was charmed with the donkey and the doll.
Ys affectionately
SAML
P. S. – DEAR MA AND PAMELA – I am mainly grieved because I have been rude to a man who has been kind to you – and if you ever feel a desire to apologize to him for me, you may be sure that I will endorse the apology, no matter how strong it may be. I went to his bank to apologize to him, but my conviction was strong that he was not man enough to know how to take an apology and so I did not make it.
William Dean Howells was in those days writing those vividly realistic, indeed photographic stories which fixed his place among American men of letters. He had already written ‘Their Wedding Journey’ and ‘A Chance Acquaintance’ when ‘A Foregone Conclusion’ appeared. For the reason that his own work was so different, and perhaps because of his fondness for the author, Clemens always greatly admired the books of Howells. Howells’s exact observation and his gift for human detail seemed marvelous to Mark Twain, who with a bigger brush was inclined to record the larger rather than the minute aspects of life. The sincerity of his appreciation of Howells, however, need not be questioned, nor, for that matter, his detestation of Scott.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, Aug. 22, 1874.
DEAR HOWELLS, – I have just finished reading the ‘Foregone Conclusion’ to Mrs. Clemens and we think you have even outdone yourself. I should think that this must be the daintiest, truest, most admirable workmanship that was ever put on a story. The creatures of God do not act out their natures more unerringly than yours do. If your genuine stories can die, I wonder by what right old Walter Scott’s artificialities shall continue to live.
I brought Mrs. Clemens back from her trip in a dreadfully broken-down condition – so by the doctor’s orders we unpacked the trunks sorrowfully to lie idle here another month instead of going at once to Hartford and proceeding to furnish the new house which is now finished. We hate to have it go longer desolate and tenantless, but cannot help it.
By and by, if the madam gets strong again, we are hoping to have the Grays there, and you and the Aldrich households, and Osgood, down to engage in an orgy with them.
Ys EverMARK
Howells was editor of the Atlantic by this time, and had been urging Clemens to write something suitable for that magazine. He had done nothing, however, until this summer at Quarry Farm. There, one night in the moonlight, Mrs. Crane’s colored cook, who had been a slave, was induced to tell him her story. It was exactly the story to appeal to Mark Twain, and the kind of thing he could write. He set it down next morning, as nearly in her own words and manner as possible, without departing too far from literary requirements. He decided to send this to Howells. He did not regard it very highly, but he would take the chance. An earlier offering to the magazine had been returned. He sent the “True Story,” with a brief note:
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, Sept. 2, ‘74.
MY DEAR HOWELLS, – …I enclose also a “True Story” which has no humor in it. You can pay as lightly as you choose for that, if you want it, for it is rather out of my line. I have not altered the old colored woman’s story except to begin at the beginning, instead of the middle, as she did – and traveled both ways…
Yrs EverMARK.
But Howells was delighted with it. He referred to its “realest kind of black talk,” and in another place added, “This little story delights me more and more. I wish you had about forty of them.” Along with the “True Story” Mark Twain had sent the “Fable for Good Old Boys and Girls”; but this Howells returned, not, as he said, because he didn’t like it, but because the Atlantic on matters of religion was just in that “Good Lord, Good Devil condition when a little fable like yours wouldn’t leave it a single Presbyterian, Baptist, Unitarian, Episcopalian, Methodist, or Millerite paying subscriber, while all the deadheads would stick to it and abuse it in the denominational newspapers!”
But the shorter MS. had been only a brief diversion. Mark Twain was bowling along at a book and a play. The book was Tom Sawyer, as already mentioned, and the play a dramatization from The Gilded Age. Clemens had all along intended to dramatize the story of Colonel Sellers, and was one day thunderstruck to receive word from California that a San Francisco dramatist had appropriated his character in a play written for John T. Raymond. Clemens had taken out dramatic copyright on the book, and immediately stopped the performance by telegraph. A correspondence between the author and the dramatist followed, leading to a friendly arrangement by which the latter agreed to dispose of his version to Mark Twain. A good deal of discussion from time to time having arisen over the authorship of the Sellers play, as presented by Raymond, certain among the letters that follow may be found of special interest. Meanwhile we find Clemens writing to Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh, on these matters and events in general. The book MS., which he mentions as having put aside, was not touched again for nearly a year.
To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:
