There was one expression which perhaps you overlooked.When Huck is complaining to Tom of the rigorous system in vogue at the widow's, he says the servants harass him with all manner of compulsory decencies, and he winds up by saying: "and they comb me all to hell." (No exclamation point.) Long ago, when I read that to Mrs.Clemens, she made no comment;another time I created occasion to read that chapter to her aunt and her mother (both sensitive and loyal subjects of the kingdom of heaven, so to speak) and they let it pass.I was glad, for it was the most natural remark in the world for that boy to make (and he had been allowed few privileges of speech in the book;) when I saw that you, too, had let it go without protest, I was glad, and afraid; too--afraid you hadn't observed it.Did you? And did you question the propriety of it? Since the book is now professedly and confessedly a boy's and girl's hook, that darn word bothers me some, nights, but it never did until I had ceased to regard the volume as being for adults.
Don't bother to answer now, (for you've writing enough to do without allowing me to add to the burden,) but tell me when you see me again!
Which we do hope will be next Saturday or Sunday or Monday.Couldn't you come now and mull over the alterations which you are going to make in your MS, and make them after you go back? Wouldn't it assist the work if you dropped out of harness and routine for a day or two and have that sort of revivification which comes of a holiday-forgetfulness of the work-shop? I can always work after I've been to your house; and if you will come to mine, now, and hear the club toot their various horns over the exasperating metaphysical question which I mean to lay before them in the disguise of a literary extravaganza, it would just brace you up like a cordial.
(I feel sort of mean trying to persuade a man to put down a critical piece of work at a critical time, but yet I am honest in thinking it would not hurt the work nor impair your interest in it to come under the circumstances.) Mrs.Clemens says, "Maybe the Howellses could come Monday if they cannot come Saturday; ask them; it is worth trying." Well, how's that? Could you? It would be splendid if you could.Drop me a postal card--I should have a twinge of conscience if I forced you to write a letter, (I am honest about that,)--and if you find you can't make out to come, tell me that you bodies will come the next Saturday if the thing is possible, and stay over Sunday.
Yrs ever MARK.
Howells, however, did not come to the club meeting, but promised to come soon when they could have a quiet time to themselves together.
As to Huck's language, he declared:
"I'd have that swearing out in an instant.I suppose I didn't notice it because the locution was so familiar to my Western sense, and so exactly the thing that Huck would say." Clemens changed the phrase to, "They comb me all to thunder," and so it stands to-day.
The "Carnival of Crime," having served its purpose at the club, found quick acceptance by Howells for the Atlantic.He was so pleased with it, in fact, that somewhat later he wrote, urging that its author allow it to be printed in a dainty book, by Osgood, who made a specialty of fine publishing.Meantime Howells had written his Atlantic notice of Tom Sawyer, and now inclosed Clemens a proof of it.We may judge from the reply that it was satisfactory.
To W.D.Howells, in Boston:
Apl 3, '76.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It is a splendid notice and will embolden weak-kneed journalistic admirers to speak out, and will modify or shut up the unfriendly.To "fear God and dread the Sunday school" exactly described that old feeling which I used to have, but I couldn't have formulated it.
I want to enclose one of the illustrations in this letter, if I do not forget it.Of course the book is to be elaborately illustrated, and Ithink that many of the pictures are considerably above the American average, in conception if not in execution.
I do not re-enclose your review to you, for you have evidently read and corrected it, and so I judge you do not need it.About two days after the Atlantic issues I mean to begin to send books to principal journals and magazines.
I read the "Carnival of Crime " proof in New York when worn and witless and so left some things unamended which I might possibly have altered had I been at home.For instance, "I shall always address you in your own S-n-i-v-e-l-i-n-g d-r-a-w-l, baby." I saw that you objected to something there, but I did not understand what! Was it that it was too personal?
Should the language be altered?--or the hyphens taken out? Won't you please fix it the way it ought to be, altering the language as you choose, only making it bitter and contemptuous?
"Deuced" was not strong enough; so I met you halfway with "devilish."Mrs.Clemens has returned from New York with dreadful sore throat, and bones racked with rheumatism.She keeps her bed."Aloha nui!" as the Kanakas say.
MARK.
Henry Irving once said to Mark Twain: "You made a mistake by not adopting the stage as a profession.You would have made even a greater actor than a writer."Mark Twain would have made an actor, certainly, but not a very tractable one.His appearance in Hartford in "The Loan of a Lover"was a distinguished event, and his success complete, though he made so many extemporaneous improvements on the lines of thick-headed Peter Spuyk, that he kept the other actors guessing as to their cues, and nearly broke up the performance.It was, of course, an amateur benefit, though Augustin Daly promptly wrote, offering to put it on for a long run.
