There were ten pages of notes, and over 300 pages of MS when the play was done.Did it in 42 hours, by the clock; 40 pages of the Atlantic--but then of course it's very "fat." Those are the figures, but I don't believe them myself, because the thing's impossible.
But let that pass.All day long, and every day, since I finished (in the rough) I have been diligently altering, amending, re-writing, cutting down.I finished finally today.Can't think of anything else in the way of an improvement.I thought I would stick to it while the interest was hot--and I am mighty glad I did.A week from now it will be frozen--then revising would be drudgery.(You see I learned something from the fatal blunder of putting "Ah Sin" aside before it was finished.)She's all right, now.She reads in two hours and 20 minutes and will play not longer than 2 3/4 hours.Nineteen characters; 3 acts; (Ibunched 2 into 1.)
Tomorrow I will draw up an exhaustive synopsis to insert in the printed title-page for copyrighting, and then on Friday or Saturday I go to New York to remain a week or ten days and lay for an actor.Wish you could run down there and have a holiday.'Twould be fun.
My wife won't have "Balaam's Ass"; therefore I call the piece "Cap'n Simon Wheeler, The Amateur Detective."Yrs MARK.
To W.D.Howells, in Boston:
ELMIRA, Aug.29, 1877.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Just got your letter last night.No, dern that article,--[One of the Bermuda chapters.]--it made me cry when I read it in proof, it was so oppressively and ostentatiously poor.Skim your eye over it again and you will think as I do.If Isaac and the prophets of Baal can be doctored gently and made permissible, it will redeem the thing: but if it can't, let's burn all of the articles except the tail-end of it and use that as an introduction to the next article--as Isuggested in my letter to you of day before yesterday.(I had this proof from Cambridge before yours came.)Boucicault says my new play is ever so much better than "Ah Sin;" says the Amateur detective is a bully character, too.An actor is chawing over the play in New York, to see if the old Detective is suited to his abilities.Haven't heard from him yet.
If you've got that paragraph by you yet, and if in your judgment it would be good to publish it, and if you absolutely would not mind doing it, then I think I'd like to have you do it--or else put some other words in my mouth that will be properer, and publish them.But mind, don't think of it for a moment if it is distasteful--and doubtless it is.I value your judgment more than my own, as to the wisdom of saying anything at all in this matter.To say nothing leaves me in an injurious position--and yet maybe I might do better to speak to the men themselves when I go to New York.This was my latest idea, and it looked wise.
We expect to leave here for home Sept.4, reaching there the 8th--but we may be delayed a week.
Curious thing.I read passages from my play, and a full synopsis, to Boucicault, who was re-writing a play, which he wrote and laid aside 3 or 4 years ago.(My detective is about that age, you know.) Then he read a passage from his play, where a real detective does some things that are as idiotic as some of my old Wheeler's performances.Showed me the passages, and behold, his man's name is Wheeler! However, his Wheeler is not a prominent character, so we'll not alter the names.My Wheeler's name is taken from the old jumping Frog sketch.
I am re-reading Ticknor's diary, and am charmed with it, though I still say he refers to too many good things when he could just as well have told them.Think of the man traveling 8 days in convoy and familiar intercourse with a band of outlaws through the mountain fastnesses of Spain--he the fourth stranger they had encountered in thirty years--and compressing this priceless experience into a single colorless paragraph of his diary! They spun yarns to this unworthy devil, too.
I wrote you a very long letter a day or two ago, but Susy Crane wanted to make a copy of it to keep, so it has not gone yet.It may go today, possibly.
We unite in warm regards to you and yours.
Yrs ever, MARK.
The Ticknor referred to in a former letter was Professor George Ticknor, of Harvard College, a history-writer of distinction.On the margin of the "Diary" Mark Twain once wrote, "Ticknor is a Millet, who makes all men fall in love with him." And adds: "Millet was the cause of lovable qualities in people, and then he admired and loved those persons for the very qualities which he (without knowing it) had created in them.Perhaps it would be strictly truer of these two men to say that they bore within them the divine something in whose presence the evil in people fled away and hid itself, while all that was good in them came spontaneously forward out of the forgotten walls and comers in their systems where it was accustomed to hide."It is Frank Millet, the artist, he is speaking of--a knightly soul whom all the Clemens household loved, and who would one day meet his knightly end with those other brave men that found death together when the Titanic went down.
The Clemens family was still at Quarry Farm at the end of August, and one afternoon there occurred a startling incident which Mark Twain thought worth setting down in practically duplicate letters to Howells and to Dr.John Brown.It may be of interest to the reader to know that John T.Lewis, the colored man mentioned, lived to a good old age--a pensioner of the Clemens family and, in the course of time, of H.H.Rogers.Howells's letter follows.It is the "very long letter" referred to in the foregoing.
To W.D.Howells and wife, in Boston:
ELMIRA, Aug.25 '77.
MY DEAR HOWELLSES,--I thought I ought to make a sort of record of it for further reference; the pleasantest way to do that would be to write it to somebody; but that somebody would let it leak into print and that we wish to avoid.The Howellses would be safe--so let us tell the Howellses about it.
Day before yesterday was a fine summer day away up here on the summit.