I've got a swollen ear; so I take advantage of it to lie abed most of the day, and read and smoke and scribble and have a good time.Last evening Livy said with deep concern, "O dear, I believe an abscess is forming in your ear."I responded as the poet would have done if he had had a cold in the head--"Tis said that abscess conquers love, But O believe it not."This made a coolness.
Been reading Daniel Webster's Private Correspondence.Have read a hundred of his diffuse, conceited, "eloquent," bathotic (or bathostic)letters written in that dim (no, vanished) Past when he was a student;and Lord, to think that this boy who is so real to me now, and so booming with fresh young blood and bountiful life, and sappy cynicisms about girls, has since climbed the Alps of fame and stood against the sun one brief tremendous moment with the world's eyes upon him, and then--f-z-t-!
where is he? Why the only long thing, the only real thing about the whole shadowy business is the sense of the lagging dull and hoary lapse of time that has drifted by since then; a vast empty level, it seems, with a formless spectre glimpsed fitfully through the smoke and mist that lie along its remote verge.
Well, we are all getting along here first-rate; Livy gains strength daily, and sits up a deal; the baby is five weeks old and--but no more of this; somebody may be reading this letter 80 years hence.And so, my friend (you pitying snob, I mean, who are holding this yellow paper in your hand in 1960,) save yourself the trouble of looking further; I know how pathetically trivial our small concerns will seem to you, and I will not let your eye profane them.No, I keep my news; you keep your compassion.Suffice it you to know, scoffer and ribald, that the little child is old and blind, now, and once more toothless; and the rest of us are shadows, these many, many years.Yes, and your time cometh!
MARK.
At the Farm that year Mark Twain was working on The Prince and the Pauper, and, according to a letter to Aldrich, brought it to an end September 19th.It is a pleasant letter, worth preserving.The book by Aldrich here mentioned was 'The Stillwater Tragedy.'
To T.B.Aldrich, in Ponkapog, Mass.:
ELMIRA, Sept.15, '80.
MY DEAR ALDRICH,--Thank you ever so much for the book--I had already finished it, and prodigiously enjoyed it, in the periodical of the notorious Howells, but it hits Mrs.Clemens just right, for she is having a reading holiday, now, for the first time in same months; so between-times, when the new baby is asleep and strengthening up for another attempt to take possession of this place, she is going to read it.
Her strong friendship for you makes her think she is going to like it.
I finished a story yesterday, myself.I counted up and found it between sixty and eighty thousand words--about the size of your book.It is for boys and girls--been at work at it several years, off and on.
I hope Howells is enjoying his journey to the Pacific.He wrote me that you and Osgood were going, also, but I doubted it, believing he was in liquor when he wrote it.In my opinion, this universal applause over his book is going to land that man in a Retreat inside of two months.
I notice the papers say mighty fine things about your book, too.
You ought to try to get into the same establishment with Howells.
But applause does not affect me--I am always calm--this is because I am used to it.
Well, good-bye, my boy, and good luck to you.Mrs.Clemens asks me to send her warmest regards to you and Mrs.Aldrich--which I do, and add those of Yrs ever MARK.
While Mark Twain was a journalist in San Francisco, there was a middle-aged man named Soule, who had a desk near him on the Morning Call.Soule was in those days highly considered as a poet by his associates, most of whom were younger and less gracefully poetic.
But Soule's gift had never been an important one.Now, in his old age, he found his fame still local, and he yearned for wider recognition.He wished to have a volume of poems issued by a publisher of recognized standing.Because Mark Twain had been one of Soule's admirers and a warm friend in the old days, it was natural that Soule should turn to him now, and equally natural that Clemens should turn to Howells.
To W.D.Howells, in Boston:
Sunday, Oct.2 '80.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Here's a letter which I wrote you to San Francisco the second time you didn't go there....I told Soule he needn't write you, but simply send the MS.to you.O dear, dear, it is dreadful to be an unrecognized poet.How wise it was in Charles Warren Stoddard to take in his sign and go for some other calling while still young.
I'm laying for that Encyclopedical Scotchman--and he'll need to lock the door behind him, when he comes in; otherwise when he hears my proposed tariff his skin will probably crawl away with him.He is accustomed to seeing the publisher impoverish the author--that spectacle must be getting stale to him--if he contracts with the undersigned he will experience a change in that programme that will make the enamel peel off his teeth for very surprise--and joy.No, that last is what Mrs.Clemens thinks--but it's not so.The proposed work is growing, mightily, in my estimation, day by day; and I'm not going to throw it away for any mere trifle.If I make a contract with the canny Scot, I will then tell him the plan which you and I have devised (that of taking in the humor of all countries)--otherwise I'll keep it to myself, I think.Why should we assist our fellowman for mere love of God?
Yrs ever MARK.
One wishes that Howells might have found value enough in the verses of Frank Soule to recommend them to Osgood.To Clemens he wrote:
"You have touched me in regard to him, and I will deal gently with his poetry.Poor old fellow! I can imagine him, and how he must have to struggle not to be hard or sour."The verdict, however, was inevitable.Soule's graceful verses proved to be not poetry at all.No publisher of standing could afford to give them his imprint.