I expect to go to Hartford again in August and maybe remain till I have to come back here and fetch the family.And, along there in August, some time, you let on that you are going to Mexico, and I will let on that Iam going to Spitzbergen, and then under cover of this clever stratagem we will glide from the trains at Worcester and have a time.I have noticed that Providence is indifferent about Mexico and Spitzbergen.
Ys Ever MARK.
Possibly Mark Twain was not particularly anxious that Howells should see his MS., fearing that he might lay a ruthless hand on some of his more violent fulminations and wild fancies.However this may be, further postponement was soon at an end.Mrs.Clemens's eyes troubled her and would not permit her to read, so she requested that the Yankee be passed upon by soberminded critics, such as Howells and Edmund Clarence Stedman.Howells wrote that even if he hadn't wanted to read the book for its own sake, or for the author's sake, he would still want to do it for Mrs.Clemens's.Whereupon the proofs were started in his direction.
To W.D.Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, Aug.24, '89.
DEAR HOWELLS,--If you should be moved to speak of my book in the Study, I shall be glad and proud--and the sooner it gets in, the better for the book; though I don't suppose you can get it in earlier than the November number--why, no, you can't get it in till a month later than that.Well, anyway I don't think I'll send out any other press copy--except perhaps to Stedman.I'm not writing for those parties who miscall themselves critics, and I don't care to have them paw the book at all.It's my swan-song, my retirement from literature permanently, and I wish to pass to the cemetery unclodded.
I judge that the proofs have begun to reach you about this time, as I had some (though not revises,) this morning.I'm sure I'm going to be charmed with Beard's pictures.Observe his nice take-off of Middle-Age art-dinner-table scene.
Ys sincerely MARK.
Howells's approval of the Yankee came almost in the form of exultant shouts, one after reading each batch of proof.First he wrote:
"It's charming, original, wonderful! good in fancy and sound to the core in morals." And again, "It's a mighty great book, and it makes my heart burn with wrath.It seems God did not forget to put a soul into you.He shuts most literary men off with a brain, merely."Then, a few days later: "The book is glorious--simply noble; what masses of virgin truth never touched in print before!" and, finally, "Last night I read your last chapter.As Stedman says of the whole book, it's titanic."To W.D.Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Sept.22, '89.
DEAR HOWELLS,--It is immensely good of you to grind through that stuff for me; but it gives peace to Mrs.Clemens's soul; and I am as grateful to you as a body can be.I am glad you approve of what I say about the French Revolution.Few people will.It is odd that even to this day Americans still observe that immortal benefaction through English and other monarchical eyes, and have no shred of an opinion about it that they didn't get at second-hand.
Next to the 4th of July and its results, it was the noblest and the holiest thing and the most precious that ever happened in this earth.
And its gracious work is not done yet--not anywhere in the remote neighborhood of it.
Don't trouble to send me all the proofs; send me the pages with your corrections on them, and waste-basket the rest.We issue the book Dec.10; consequently a notice that appears Dec.20 will be just in good time.
I am waiting to see your Study set a fashion in criticism.When that happens--as please God it must--consider that if you lived three centuries you couldn't do a more valuable work for this country, or a humaner.
As a rule a critic's dissent merely enrages, and so does no good; but by the new art which you use, your dissent must be as welcome as your approval, and as valuable.I do not know what the secret of it is, unless it is your attitude--man courteously reasoning with man and brother, in place of the worn and wearisome critical attitude of all this long time--superior being lecturing a boy.
Well, my book is written--let it go.But if it were only to write over again there wouldn't be so many things left out.They burn in me; and they keep multiplying and multiplying; but now they can't ever be said.
And besides, they would require a library--and a pen warmed up in hell.
Ys Ever MARK.
The type-setting machine began to loom large in the background.
Clemens believed it perfected by this time.Paige had got it together again and it was running steadily--or approximately so --setting type at a marvelous speed and with perfect accuracy.In time an expert operator would be able to set as high as eight thousand ems per hour, or about ten times as much as a good compositor could set and distribute by hand.Those who saw it were convinced--most of them--that the type-setting problem was solved by this great mechanical miracle.If there were any who doubted, it was because of its marvelously minute accuracy which the others only admired.Such accuracy, it was sometimes whispered, required absolutely perfect adjustment, and what would happen when the great inventor--"the poet in steel," as Clemens once called him--was no longer at hand to supervise and to correct the slightest variation.
But no such breath of doubt came to Mark Twain; he believed the machine as reliable as a constellation.