Meanwhile we find Clemens writing to Dr.John Brown, of Edinburgh, on these matters and events in general.The book MS., which he mentions as having put aside, was not touched again for nearly a year.
To Dr.John Brown, in Edinburgh:
QUARRY FARM, NEAR ELMIRA, N.Y.
Sept.4, 1874.
DEAR FRIEND,--I have been writing fifty pages of manuscript a day, on an average, for sometime now, on a book (a story) and consequently have been so wrapped up in it and so dead to anything else, that I have fallen mighty short in letter-writing.But night before last I discovered that that day's chapter was a failure, in conception, moral truth to nature, and execution--enough blemish to impair the excellence of almost any chapter--and so I must burn up the day's work and do it all over again.
It was plain that I had worked myself out, pumped myself dry.So Iknocked off, and went to playing billiards for a change.I haven't had an idea or a fancy for two days, now--an excellent time to write to friends who have plenty of ideas and fancies of their own, and so will prefer the offerings of the heart before those of the head.Day after to-morrow I go to a neighboring city to see a five-act-drama of mine brought out, and suggest amendments in it, and would about as soon spend a night in the Spanish Inquisition as sit there and be tortured with all the adverse criticisms I can contrive to imagine the audience is indulging in.But whether the play be successful or not, I hope I shall never feel obliged to see it performed a second time.My interest in my work dies a sudden and violent death when the work is done.
I have invented and patented a pretty good sort of scrap-book (I think)but I have backed down from letting it be known as mine just at present --for I can't stand being under discussion on a play and a scrap-book at the same time!
I shall be away two days, and then return to take our tribe to New York, where we shall remain five days buying furniture for the new house, and then go to Hartford and settle solidly down for the winter.After all that fallow time I ought to be able to go to work again on the book.
We shall reach Hartford about the middle of September, I judge.
We have spent the past four months up here on top of a breezy hill, six hundred feet high, some few miles from Elmira, N.Y., and overlooking that town; (Elmira is my wife's birthplace and that of Susie and the new baby).This little summer house on the hill-top (named Quarry Farm because there's a quarry on it,) belongs to my wife's sister, Mrs.Crane.
A photographer came up the other day and wanted to make some views, and I shall send you the result per this mail.
My study is a snug little octagonal den, with a coal-grate, 6 big windows, one little one, and a wide doorway (the latter opening upon the distant town.) On hot days I spread the study wide open, anchor my papers down with brickbats and write in the midst of the hurricanes, clothed in the same thin linen we make shirts of.The study is nearly on the peak of the hill; it is right in front of the little perpendicular wall of rock left where they used to quarry stones.On the peak of the hill is an old arbor roofed with bark and covered with the vine you call the "American Creeper"--its green is almost bloodied with red.The Study is 30 yards below the old arbor and 200 yards above the dwelling-house-it is remote from all noises.....
Now isn't the whole thing pleasantly situated?