Confound you, Joe Twichell and I roamed about Bermuda day and night and never ceased to gabble and enjoy.About half the talk was--"It is a burning shame that Howells isn't here." "Nobody could get at the very meat and marrow of this pervading charm and deliciousness like Howells;""How Howells would revel in the quaintness, and the simplicity of this people and the Sabbath repose of this land." "What an imperishable sketch Howells would make of Capt.West the whaler, and Capt.Hope with the patient, pathetic face, wanderer in all the oceans for 42 years, lucky in none; coming home defeated once more, now, minus his ship--resigned, uncomplaining, being used to this." "What a rattling chapter Howells would make out of the small boy Alfred, with his alert eye and military brevity and exactness of speech; and out of the old landlady;and her sacred onions; and her daughter; and the visiting clergyman; and the ancient pianos of Hamilton and the venerable music in vogue there--and forty other things which we shall leave untouched or touched but lightly upon, we not being worthy." "Dam Howells for not being here!"(this usually from me, not Twichell.)
O, your insufferable pride, which will have a fall some day! If you had gone with us and let me pay the $50 which the trip and the board and the various nicknacks and mementoes would cost, I would have picked up enough droppings from your conversation to pay me 500 per cent profit in the way of the several magazine articles which I could have written, whereas Ican now write only one or two and am therefore largely out of pocket by your proud ways.Ponder these things.Lord, what a perfectly bewitching excursion it was! I traveled under an assumed name and was never molested with a polite attention from anybody.
Love to you all.
Yrs ever MARK
Aldrich, meantime, had invited the Clemenses to Ponkapog during the Bermuda absence, and Clemens hastened to send him a line expressing regrets.At the close he said:
To T.B.Aldrich, in Ponkapog, Mass.:
FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, June 3, 1877.
Day after tomorrow we leave for the hills beyond Elmira, N.Y.for the summer, when I shall hope to write a book of some sort or other to beat the people with.A work similar to your new one in the Atlantic is what I mean, though I have not heard what the nature of that one is.Immoral, I suppose.Well, you are right.Such books sell best, Howells says.
Howells says he is going to make his next book indelicate.He says he thinks there is money in it.He says there is a large class of the young, in schools and seminaries who--But you let him tell you.He has ciphered it all down to a demonstration.
With the warmest remembrances to the pair of you Ever Yours SAMUEL L.CLEMENS.
Clemens would naturally write something about Bermuda, and began at once, "Random Notes of an Idle Excursion," and presently completed four papers, which Howells eagerly accepted for the Atlantic.Then we find him plunging into another play, this time alone.
To W.D.Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, June 27, 1877.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--If you should not like the first 2 chapters, send them to me and begin with Chapter 3--or Part 3, I believe you call these things in the magazine.I have finished No.4., which closes the series, and will mail it tomorrow if I think of it.I like this one, I liked the preceding one (already mailed to you some time ago) but I had my doubts about 1 and 2.Do not hesitate to squelch them, even with derision and insult.
Today I am deep in a comedy which I began this morning--principal character, that old detective--I skeletoned the first act and wrote the second, today; and am dog-tired, now.Fifty-four close pages of MS in 7hours.Once I wrote 55 pages at a sitting--that was on the opening chapters of the "Gilded Age" novel.When I cool down, an hour from now, I shall go to zero, I judge.
Yrs ever, MARK.
Clemens had doubts as to the quality of the Bermuda papers, and with some reason.They did not represent him at his best.Nevertheless, they were pleasantly entertaining, and Howells expressed full approval of them for Atlantic use.The author remained troubled.
To W.D.Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, July 4,1877.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It is splendid of you to say those pleasant things.
But I am still plagued with doubts about Parts 1 and 2.If you have any, don't print.If otherwise, please make some cold villain like Lathrop read and pass sentence on them.Mind, I thought they were good, at first--it was the second reading that accomplished its hellish purpose on me.Put them up for a new verdict.Part 4 has lain in my pigeon-hole a good while, and when I put it there I had a Christian's confidence in 4aces in it; and you can be sure it will skip toward Connecticut tomorrow before any fatal fresh reading makes me draw my bet.
I've piled up 151 MS pages on my comedy.The first, second and fourth acts are done, and done to my satisfaction, too.Tomorrow and next day will finish the 3rd act and the play.I have not written less than 30pages any day since I began.Never had so much fun over anything in my life-never such consuming interest and delight.(But Lord bless you the second reading will fetch it!) And just think!--I had Sol Smith Russell in my mind's eye for the old detective's part, and hang it he has gone off pottering with Oliver Optic, or else the papers lie.
I read everything about the President's doings there with exultation.
I wish that old ass of a private secretary hadn't taken me for George Francis Train.If ignorance were a means of grace I wouldn't trade that gorilla's chances for the Archbishop of Canterbury's.
I shall call on the President again, by and by.I shall go in my war paint; and if I am obstructed the nation will have the unusual spectacle of a private secretary with a pen over one ear a tomahawk over the other.
I read the entire Atlantic this time.Wonderful number.Mrs.Rose Terry Cooke's story was a ten-strike.I wish she would write 12 old-time New England tales a year.