It was in June of that year that Clemens wrote his first letter to William Dean Howells the first of several hundred that would follow in the years to come, and has in it something that is characteristic of nearly all the Clemens-Howells letters--a kind of tender playfulness that answered to something in Howells's make-up, his sense of humor, his wide knowledge of a humanity which he pictured so amusingly to the world.
To William Dean Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, June z5, z872.
FRIEND HOWELLS,--Could you tell me how I could get a copy of your portrait as published in Hearth and Home? I hear so much talk about it as being among the finest works of art which have yet appeared in that journal, that I feel a strong desire to see it.Is it suitable for framing? I have written the publishers of H & H time and again, but they say that the demand for the portrait immediately exhausted the edition and now a copy cannot be had, even for the European demand, which has now begun.Bret Harte has been here, and says his family would not be without that portrait for any consideration.He says his children get up in the night and yell for it.I would give anything for a copy of that portrait to put up in my parlor.I have Oliver Wendell Holmes and Bret Harte's, as published in Every Saturday, and of all the swarms that come every day to gaze upon them none go away that are not softened and humbled and made more resigned to the will of God.If I had yours to put up alongside of them, I believe the combination would bring more souls to earnest reflection and ultimate conviction of their lost condition, than any other kind of warning would.Where in the nation can I get that portrait? Here are heaps of people that want it,--that need it.There is my uncle.He wants a copy.He is lying at the point of death.He has been lying at the point of death for two years.He wants a copy--and I want him to have a copy.And I want you to send a copy to the man that shot my dog.I want to see if he is dead to every human instinct.
Now you send me that portrait.I am sending you mine, in this letter;and am glad to do it, for it has been greatly admired.People who are judges of art, find in the execution a grandeur which has not been equalled in this country, and an expression which has not been approached in any.
Yrs truly, S.L.CLEMENS.
P.S.62,000 copies of "Roughing It" sold and delivered in 4 months.
The Clemens family did not spend the summer at Quarry Farm that year.The sea air was prescribed for Mrs.Clemens and the baby, and they went to Saybrook, Connecticut, to Fenwick Hall.Clemens wrote very little, though he seems to have planned Tom Sawyer, and perhaps made its earliest beginning, which was in dramatic form.
His mind, however, was otherwise active.He was always more or less given to inventions, and in his next letter we find a description of one which he brought to comparative perfection.
He had also conceived the idea of another book of travel, and this was his purpose of a projected trip to England.
To Orion Clemens, in Hartford:
FENWICK HALL, SAYBROOK, CONN.
Aug.11, 1872.
MY DEAR BRO.--I shall sail for England in the Scotia, Aug.21.
But what I wish to put on record now, is my new invention--hence this note, which you will preserve.It is this--a self-pasting scrap-book --good enough idea if some juggling tailor does not come along and ante-date me a couple of months, as in the case of the elastic veststrap.
The nuisance of keeping a scrap-book is: 1.One never has paste or gum tragacanth handy; 2.Mucilage won't stick, or stay, 4 weeks;3.Mucilage sucks out the ink and makes the scraps unreadable;4.To daub and paste 3 or 4 pages of scraps is tedious, slow, nasty and tiresome.My idea is this: Make a scrap-book with leaves veneered or coated with gum-stickum of some kind; wet the page with sponge, brush, rag or tongue, and dab on your scraps like postage stamps.
Lay on the gum in columns of stripes.
Each stripe of gum the length of say 20 ems, small pica, and as broad as your finger; a blank about as broad as your finger between each 2stripes--so in wetting the paper you need not wet any more of the gum than your scrap or scraps will cover--then you may shut up the book and the leaves won't stick together.
Preserve, also, the envelope of this letter--postmark ought to be good evidence of the date of this great humanizing and civilizing invention.
I'll put it into Dan Slote's hands and tell him he must send you all over America, to urge its use upon stationers and booksellers--so don't buy into a newspaper.The name of this thing is "Mark Twain's Self-Pasting Scrapbook."All well here.Shall be up a P.M.Tuesday.Send the carriage.
Yr Bro.
S.L.CLEMENS.
The Dan Slote of this letter is, of course, his old Quaker City shipmate, who was engaged in the blank-book business, the firm being Slote & Woodman, located at 119 and 121 William Street, New York.