LETTERS OF 1880, CHIEFLY TO HOWELLS."THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER." MARKTWAIN MUGWUMP SOCIETY
The book of travel,--[A Tramp Abroad.]--which Mark Twain had hoped to finish in Paris, and later in Elmira, for some reason would not come to an end.In December, in Hartford, he was still working on it, and he would seem to have finished it, at last, rather by a decree than by any natural process of authorship.This was early in January, 1880.To Howells he reports his difficulties, and his drastic method of ending them.
To W.D.Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Jan.8, '80.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Am waiting for Patrick to come with the carriage.
Mrs.Clemens and I are starting (without the children) to stay indefinitely in Elmira.The wear and tear of settling the house broke her down, and she has been growing weaker and weaker for a fortnight.
All that time--in fact ever since I saw you--I have been fighting a life-and-death battle with this infernal book and hoping to get done some day.
I required 300 pages of MS, and I have written near 600 since I saw you--and tore it all up except 288.This I was about to tear up yesterday and begin again, when Mrs.Perkins came up to the billiard room and said, "You will never get any woman to do the thing necessary to save her life by mere persuasion; you see you have wasted your words for three weeks;it is time to use force; she must have a change; take her home and leave the children here."I said, "If there is one death that is painfuller than another, may I get it if I don't do that thing."So I took the 288 pages to Bliss and told him that was the very last line I should ever write on this book.(A book which required 2600 pages of MS, and I have written nearer four thousand, first and last.)I am as soary (and flighty) as a rocket, to-day, with the unutterable joy of getting that Old Man of the Sea off my back, where he has been roosting for more than a year and a half.Next time I make a contract before writing the book, may I suffer the righteous penalty and be burnt, like the injudicious believer.
I am mighty glad you are done your book (this is from a man who, above all others, feels how much that sentence means) and am also mighty glad you have begun the next (this is also from a man who knows the felicity of that, and means straightway to enjoy it.) The Undiscovered starts off delightfully--I have read it aloud to Mrs.C.and we vastly enjoyed it.
Well, time's about up--must drop a line to Aldrich.
Yrs ever, MARK.
In a letter which Mark Twain wrote to his brother Orion at this period we get the first hint of a venture which was to play an increasingly important part in the Hartford home and fortunes during the next ten or a dozen years.This was the type-setting machine investment, which, in the end, all but wrecked Mark Twain's finances.There is but a brief mention of it in the letter to Orion, and the letter itself is not worth preserving, but as references to the "machine" appear with increasing frequency, it seems proper to record here its first mention.In the same letter he suggests to his brother that he undertake an absolutely truthful autobiography, a confession in which nothing is to be withheld.He cites the value of Casanova's memories, and the confessions of Rousseau.Of course, any literary suggestion from "Brother Sam" was gospel to Orion, who began at once piling up manuscript at a great rate.
Meantime, Mark Twain himself, having got 'A Tramp Abroad' on the presses, was at work with enthusiasm on a story begun nearly three years before at Quarry Farm-a story for children-its name, as he called.it then, "The Little Prince and The Little Pauper." He was presently writing to Howells his delight in the new work.
To W.D.Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Mch.11, '80.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--.....I take so much pleasure in my story that I am loth to hurry, not wanting to get it done.Did I ever tell you the plot of it? It begins at 9 a.m., Jan.27, 1547, seventeen and a half hours before Henry VIII's death, by the swapping of clothes and place, between the prince of Wales and a pauper boy of the same age and countenance (and half as much learning and still more genius and imagination) and after that, the rightful small King has a rough time among tramps and ruffians in the country parts of Kent, whilst the small bogus King has a gilded and worshipped and dreary and restrained and cussed time of it on the throne--and this all goes on for three weeks--till the midst of the coronation grandeurs in Westminster Abbey, Feb.20, when the ragged true King forces his way in but cannot prove his genuineness--until the bogus King, by a remembered incident of the first day is able to prove it for him--whereupon clothes are changed and the coronation proceeds under the new and rightful conditions.
My idea is to afford a realizing sense of the exceeding severity of the laws of that day by inflicting some of their penalties upon the King himself and allowing him a chance to see the rest of them applied to others--all of which is to account for certain mildnesses which distinguished Edward VI's reign from those that preceded and followed it.
Imagine this fact--I have even fascinated Mrs.Clemens with this yarn for youth.My stuff generally gets considerable damning with faint praise out of her, but this time it is all the other way.She is become the horseleech's daughter and my mill doesn't grind fast enough to suit her.
This is no mean triumph, my dear sir.
Last night, for the first time in ages, we went to the theatre--to see Yorick's Love.The magnificence of it is beyond praise.The language is so beautiful, the passion so fine, the plot so ingenious, the whole thing so stirring, so charming, so pathetic! But I will clip from the Courant --it says it right.
And what a good company it is, and how like live people they all acted!
The "thee's" and the "thou's" had a pleasant sound, since it is the language of the Prince and the Pauper.You've done the country a service in that admirable work....
Yrs Ever, MARK.
