第77章

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 Ever MARK

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 Ever MARK.

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.