MY DEAR MISS GILDER,--We shall spend the summer at the same old place-the remote farm called "Rest-and-be-Thankful," on top of the hills three miles from Elmira, N.Y.Your other question is harder to answer.It is my habit to keep four or five books in process of erection all the time, and every summer add a few courses of bricks to two or three of them; but I cannot forecast which of the two or three it is going to be.It takes seven years to complete a book by this method, but still it is a good method: gives the public a rest.I have been accused of "rushing into print" prematurely, moved thereto by greediness for money; but in truth I have never done that.Do you care for trifles of information? (Well, then, "Tom Sawyer" and "The Prince and the Pauper" were each on the stocks two or three years, and "Old Times on the Mississippi" eight.
One of my unfinished books has been on the stocks sixteen years; another seventeen.This latter book could have been finished in a day, at any time during the past five years.But as in the first of these two narratives all the action takes place in Noah's ark, and as in the other the action takes place in heaven, there seemed to be no hurry, and so Ihave not hurried.Tales of stirring adventure in those localities do not need to be rushed to publication lest they get stale by waiting.In twenty-one years, with all my time at my free disposal I have written and completed only eleven books, whereas with half the labor that a journalist does I could have written sixty in that time.I do not greatly mind being accused of a proclivity for rushing into print, but at the same time I don't believe that the charge is really well founded.
Suppose I did write eleven books, have you nothing to be grateful for?
Go to--- remember the forty-nine which I didn't write.
Truly Yours S.L.CLEMENS.
Notes (added twenty-two years later):
Stormfield, April 30, 1909.It seems the letter was not sent.Iprobably feared she might print it, and I couldn't find a way to say so without running a risk of hurting her.No one would hurt Jeannette Gilder purposely, and no one would want to run the risk of doing it unintentionally.She is my neighbor, six miles away, now, and I must ask her about this ancient letter.
I note with pride and pleasure that I told no untruths in my unsent answer.I still have the habit of keeping unfinished books lying around years and years, waiting.I have four or five novels on hand at present in a half-finished condition, and it is more than three years since Ihave looked at any of them.I have no intention of finishing them.
I could complete all of them in less than a year, if the impulse should come powerfully upon me: Long, long ago money-necessity furnished that impulse once, (" Following the Equator"), but mere desire for money has never furnished it, so far as I remember.Not even money-necessity was able to overcome me on a couple of occasions when perhaps I ought to have allowed it to succeed.While I was a bankrupt and in debt two offers were made me for weekly literary contributions to continue during a year, and they would have made a debtless man of me, but I declined them, with my wife's full approval, for I had known of no instance where a man had pumped himself out once a week and failed to run "emptyings" before the year was finished.
As to that "Noah's Ark" book, I began it in Edinburgh in 1873;--[This is not quite correct.The "Noah's Ark" book was begun in Buffalo in 1870.]
I don't know where the manuscript is now.It was a Diary, which professed to be the work of Shem, but wasn't.I began it again several months ago, but only for recreation; I hadn't any intention of carrying it to a finish --or even to the end of the first chapter, in fact.
As to the book whose action "takes place in Heaven." That was a small thing, ("Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.") It lay in my pigeon-holes 40 years, then I took it out and printed it in Harper's Monthly last year.
S.L.C.
In the next letter we get a pretty and peaceful picture of "Rest-and-be-Thankful." These were Mark Twain's balmy days.The financial drain of the type-machine was heavy but not yet exhausting, and the prospect of vast returns from it seemed to grow brighter each day.His publishing business, though less profitable, was still prosperous, his family life was ideal.How gratefully, then, he could enter into the peace of that "perfect day."To Mrs.Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Ia.:
ON THE HILL NEAR ELMIRA, July 10, '87.
DEAR MOLLIE,--This is a superb Sunday for weather--very cloudy, and the thermometer as low as 65.The city in the valley is purple with shade, as seen from up here at the study.The Cranes are reading and loafing in the canvas-curtained summer-house 50 yards away on a higher (the highest)point; the cats are loafing over at "Ellerslie" which is the children's estate and dwellinghouse in their own private grounds (by deed from Susie Crane) a hundred yards from the study, amongst the clover and young oaks and willows.Livy is down at the house, but I shall now go and bring her up to the Cranes to help us occupy the lounges and hammocks--whence a great panorama of distant hill and valley and city is seeable.The children have gone on a lark through the neighboring hills and woods.
It is a perfect day indeed.
With love to you all.
SAM.
Two days after this letter was written we get a hint of what was the beginning of business trouble--that is to say, of the failing health of Charles L.Webster.Webster was ambitious, nervous, and not robust.
He had overworked and was paying the penalty.His trouble was neurasthenia, and he was presently obliged to retire altogether from the business.The "Sam and Mary" mentioned were Samuel Moffet and his wife.
To Mrs.Pamela Moffett, in Fredonia, N.Y.
ELMIRA, July 12, '87
MY DEAR SISTER,--I had no idea that Charley's case was so serious.
I knew it was bad, and persistent, but I was not aware of the full size of the matter.