by Mark Twain
One day in Fairhaven, while playing billiards with a member of the family, a chance remark called to my mind an early sweetheart of mine, and I fell to talking about her. I hadn’t seen her for forty-eight years; but no matter, I found that I remembered her quite vividly, and that she possessed a lively interest for me notwithstanding that prodigious interval of time that had spread its vacancy between her and me. She wasn’t yet fifteen when I knew her. It was in the summertime, and she had gone down the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Orleans as guest of a relative of hers who was a pilot on the John J. Roe, a steamboat whose officers I knew very well, as I had served a term as steersman in that boat’s pilot-house. She was a freighter. She was not licensed to carry passengers, but she always had a dozen on board, and they were privileged to be there because they were not registered; they paid no fare; they were guests of the Captain, and nobody was responsible for them if anything of a fatal nature happened to them. It was a delightful old tug, and she had a very spacious boiler-deck—just the place for moonlight dancing and daylight frolics, and such things were always happening. She was a charmingly leisurely boat, and the slowest one on the planet. Up-stream she couldn’t even beat an island; down-stream she was never able to overtake the current. But she was a love of a steamboat. Mark Leavenworth, her captain, was a giant, and hospitable and good-natured, which is the way of giants. Zeb, his brother, was another giant possessed of the same qualities, and of a laugh which could be heard from Vicksburg to Nebraska. He was one of the pilots, and Beck Jolly was another. Jolly was very handsome, very graceful, very intelligent, companionable—a fine character—and he had the manners of a duke. If that is too strong I will say a viscount. Beck Jolly was a beautiful creature to look at. But it’s different now. I saw him four years ago, and he had white hair, and not much of it; two sets of cheeks; a cataract of chins; and by and large he looked like a gasometer. The clerks, the mates, the chief steward, and all officials, big and little, of the John J. Roe, were simple-hearted folk and overflowing with good-fellowship and the milk of human kindness. They had all been reared on farms in the interior of Indiana, and they had brought the simple farm ways and farm spirit to that steamboat and had domesticated it there. When she was on a voyage there was nothing in her to suggest a steamboat. One didn’t seem to be on board a steamboat at all. He was floating around on a farm. Nothing in this world pleasanter than this can be imagined.
At the time I speak of I had fallen out of the heaven of the John J. Roe and was steering for Brown, on the swift passenger packet, the Pennsylvania, a boat which presently blew up and killed my brother Henry. On a memorable trip, the Pennsylvania arrived at New Orleans, and when she was berthed I discovered that her stern lapped the fo’castle of the John J. Roe. I went aft, climbed over the rail of the ladies’ cabin, and from that point jumped aboard the Roe, landing on that spacious boiler-deck of hers. It was like arriving at home at the farm-house after a long absence. It was the same delight to me to meet and shake hands with the Leavenworths and the rest of that dear family of steamboating backwoodsmen and hay-seeds as if they had all been blood kin to me. As usual, there were a dozen passengers, male and female, young and old; and as usual they were of the hearty and likable sort affected by the John J. Roe farmers. Now, out of their midst, floating upon my enchanted vision, came that slip of a girl of whom I have spoken—that instantly elected sweetheart out of the remotenesses of interior Missouri—a frank and simple and winsome child who had never been away from home in her life before, and had brought with her to these distant regions the freshness and the fragrance of her own prairies.
I can state the rest, I think, in a very few words. I was not four inches from that girl’s elbow during our waking hours for the next three days. Then there came a sudden interruption. Zeb Leavenworth came flying aft shouting “The Pennsylvania is backing out.” I fled at my best speed, and as I broke out upon that great boiler-deck the Pennsylvania was gliding sternward past it. I made a flying leap and just did manage to make the connection, and nothing to spare. My toes found room on the guard; my finger-ends hooked themselves upon the guard-rail, and a quartermaster made a snatch for me and hauled me aboard.
That comely child, that charming child, was Laura M. Wright, and I could see her with perfect distinctness in the unfaded bloom of her youth, with her plaited tails dangling from her young head and her white summer frock puffing about in the wind of that ancient Mississippi time—I could see all this with perfect distinctness when I was telling about it over the billiard table in Fairhaven last Saturday. And I finished with the remark “I never saw her afterward. It is now forty-eight years, one month and twenty-seven days, since that parting, and no word has ever passed between us since.”
I reached home from Fairhaven last Wednesday and found a letter from Laura Wright. It shook me to the foundations. The plaited tails fell away; the peachy young face vanished; the fluffy short frock along with it; and in the place of that care-free little girl of forty-eight years ago, I imagined the world-worn and trouble-worn widow of sixty-two. Laura’s letter was an appeal to me for pecuniary help for herself and for her disabled son, who, as she incidentally mentioned, is thirty-seven years old. She is a school-teacher. She is in need of a thousand dollars, and I sent it.
It is an awful world—it is a fiendish world. When I knew that child her father was an honored Judge of a high court in the middle of Missouri, and was a rich man, as riches were estimated in that day and region. What had that girl done, what crime had she committed, that she must be punished with poverty and drudgery in her old age? However, let me get right away from this subject before I get warmed up and say indiscreet things—BeJesus!
Tuesday, July 31, 1906
Colonel Harvey arrives to-night—Letter from Clara Clemens—Mr. Clemens receives copy of Mr. Duneka’s “Library of Humor”—Seventy-eight other humorists contained therein—Letter from Mr. Orr referring to “1601”—Three letters from John Hay referring to same—Mr. Clemens’s reply—Mr. Clemens tells why he wrote “1601” and what it is, and of the private printing of several copies.
Colonel Harvey will arrive here to-night, to remain a day or two, and we shall have no trouble in straightening out the tangle which has been made in our affairs.
Since I got back here I have received a letter from my daughter Clara, who is spending her summer at Norfolk, Connecticut, and I shall at once dispatch a copy of it to Howells, for it contains a miracle which he and I were talking privately about last year—a compliment from child to father. We were remarking upon the fact that illustrious authors can by their talents compel compliments from everybody but their own children. We are so close to them that our magnitude does not impress them. It is a commonplace to them, and does not thrill, does not stun, does not overawe. Naturally, we particularly want the compliments which we can’t get. When at last it comes spontaneously from the child—a thing which almost never happens—we are not merely gratified beyond all reason, but are struck dumb with pleasant astonishment. I shall insert Clara’s compliment here, where it can’t get lost.
Uncle Joe* came to see me to-day and I really can’t imagine what prompted him to do such a generous thing, but I appreciated it though I found no way to prove or even express it.
He reminded me more than ever of you in his vivid, dramatic, moving, masterly way of painting an impressionist picture whenever he spoke—you two are alike also in tones of voice and anticipatory gesture. I had a rich enjoyment in his visit and felt very much like the kings that command private amusements that they share with no one.
Uncle Joe sent you his love and spoke warmly of your Howells article which I have just this minute read with utmost delight. It has led me to read “Venetian Days”—or rather to the intention of reading it—as soon as I can procure it, and has given me many minutes of laughter over the delicious criticism of stage-directions. Of course your thoughts are funny in themselves, but not commandingly funny till you have dressed them up in that never-failing style o
f yours. The extract from “Venetian Days” is so beautiful that when one has finished it one seems to have been lying on a floating support of snowflakes, and one dreads to leave it, in the same way that one hates to be pulled from a moment of reverie at sea, when, half hypnotized, one’s vague thoughts seem to move deliciously with the waves.
The western pirate of whom Duneka had heard rumor has really published his book, and my copyright lawyer has sent me a copy of it—a great fat, coarse, offensive volume, not with my name on it as perpetrator, but with its back inflamed with a big picture of me in lurid colors; placed there, of course, to indicate that I am the author of the crime. This book is a very interesting curiosity, in one way. It reveals the surprising fact that within the compass of these forty years wherein I have been playing professional humorist before the public, I have had for company seventy-eight other American humorists. Each and every one of the seventy-eight rose in my time, became conspicuous and popular, and, by and by, vanished. A number of these names were as familiar in their day as are the names of George Ade and Dooley to-day—yet they have all so completely passed from sight now that there is probably not a youth of fifteen years of age in the country whose eye would light with recognition at the mention of any one of the seventy-eight names.
This book is a cemetery; and as I glance through it I am reminded of my visit to the cemetery in Hannibal, Missouri, four years ago, where almost every tombstone recorded a forgotten name that had been familiar and pleasant to my ear when I was a boy there fifty years before.
In this mortuary volume I find Nasby, Artemus Ward, Yawcob Strauss, Derby, Burdette, Eli Perkins, the “Danbury News Man,” Orpheus C. Kerr, Smith O’Brien, Josh Billings, and a score of others, maybe twoscore, whose writings and sayings were once in everybody’s mouth but are now heard of no more, and are no longer mentioned. Seventy-eight seems an incredible crop of well-known humorists for one forty-year period to have produced, and yet this book has not harvested the entire crop—far from it. It has no mention of Ike Partington, once so welcome and so well known; it has no mention of Doesticks, nor of the Pfaff crowd—nor of Artemus Ward’s numerous and perishable imitators; nor of three very popular Southern humorists whose names I am not able to recall; nor of a dozen other sparkling transients whose light shone for a time but has now, years ago, gone out.
Why have they perished? Because they were merely humorists. Humorists of the “mere” sort cannot survive. Humor is only a fragrance, a decoration. Often it is merely an odd trick of speech and spelling, as in the case of Ward and Billings and Nasby and the “Disbanded Volunteer,” and presently the fashion passes, and the fame along with it. There are those who say a novel should be a work of art solely, and you must not preach in it, you must not teach in it. That may be true as regards novels, but it is not true as regards humor. Humor must not professedly teach, it must not professedly preach; but it must do both if it would live forever. By forever, I mean thirty years. With all its preaching it is not likely to outlive so long a term as that. The very things it preaches about, and which are novelties when it preaches about them, can cease to be novelties and become commonplaces in thirty years. Then that sermon can thenceforth interest no one.
I have always preached. That is the reason that I have lasted thirty years. If the humor came of its own accord and uninvited, I have allowed it a place in my sermon, but I was not writing the sermon for the sake of the humor. I should have written the sermon just the same, whether any humor applied for admission or not. I am saying these vain things in this frank way because I am a dead person speaking from the grave. Even I would be too modest to say them in life. I think we never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead—and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead, and then they would be honest so much earlier.
Among the letters awaiting me when I got back from New York was this one:
Cleveland June 28 1906
My dear Sir
Having seen some letters of the late John Hay, copies of which I enclose, I am somewhat anxious to know the title of the piece mentioned, or whether it is printed in your published writings.
Did you know Alexander Gunn, to whom Hay’s letters were addressed?
An answer at your convenience will greatly oblige.
Very truly yours
Chas. Orr
The letters referred to by Mr. Orr are the following:
June 21 1880
Dear Gunn
Are you in Cleveland for all this week? If you will say yes by return mail I have a masterpiece to submit to your consideration which is only in my hands for a few days.
Yours, very much worritted by the depravity of Christendom,
Hay
Letter No. 2 discloses Hay’s own high opinion of the effort and his deep concern for its safety.
June 24 1880
My dear Gunn
Here it is. It was written by Mark Twain in a serious effort to bring back our literature and philosophy to the sober and chaste Elizabethan standard. But the taste of the present day is too corrupt for anything so classic. He has not yet been able even to find a publisher. The Globe has not yet recovered from Downey’s inroad, and they won’t touch it.
I send it to you as one of the few lingering relics of that race of appreciative critics who know a good thing when they see it.
Read it with reverence and gratitude and send it back to me; for Mark is impatient to see once more his wandering offspring.
Yours
HAY
No. 3 makes it quite clear that Gunn had confirmed the judgment of Hay.
Washington DC July 7 1880
My dear Gunn
I have your letter, and the proposition which you make to pull a few proofs of the masterpiece is highly attractive, and of course highly immoral. I cannot properly consent to it, and I am afraid the great man would think I was taking an unfair advantage of his confidence. Please send back the document as soon as you can, and if, in spite of my prohibition, you take these proofs, save me one.
Very truly yours
John Hay
I replied to Mr. Orr as follows:
Dublin, New Hampshire.
July 30, 1906.
Dear Mr. Orr:
I cannot thank you enough for sending me copies of John Hay’s notes to Mr. Gunn. In the matter of humor, what an unsurpassable touch John Hay had! I may have known Alexander Gunn in those ancient days, but the name does not sound familiar to me.
The title of the piece is “1601.” The piece is a supposititious conversation which takes place in Queen Elizabeth’s closet in that year, between the Queen and Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Francis Bacon, Beaumont, Sir Walter Raleigh, the Duchess of Bilgewater, and one or two others; and is not—as John Hay mistakenly supposes—“a serious effort to bring back our literature and philosophy to the sober and chaste Elizabethan standard;” no, the object was only a serious attempt to reveal to Rev. Joe Twichell the picturesqueness of parlor conversation in Elizabeth’s time; therefore if there is a decent or delicate word findable in it, it is because I overlooked it. I hasten to assure you that it is not printed in my published writings.
“1601” was so be-praised by the archeological scholars of a quarter of a century ago, that I was rather inordinately vain of it. At that time it had been privately printed in several countries, among them Japan. A sumptuous edition on large paper, rough-edged, was made by Lieut. C. E. S. Wood at West Point—an edition of 50 copies—and distributed among popes and kings and such people. In England copies of that issue were worth 20 guineas when I was there six years ago, and none to be had. I thank you again, and am,
Yours very truly,
S. L. Clemens.
Dear me, but John Hay’s letters do carry me back over a long stretch of time! Joe Twichell’s head was black then; mine was brown. To-day both are as white and sparkly as a London footman’s.
“1601” was a letter which I wrote to Twichell, about 187
6, from my study at Quarry Farm one summer day when I ought to have been better employed. I remember the incident very well. I had been diligently reading up for a story which I was minded to write—“The Prince and the Pauper.” I was reading ancient English books with the purpose of saturating myself with archaic English to a degree which would enable me to do plausible imitations of it in a fairly easy and unlabored way. In one of these old books I came across a brief conversation which powerfully impressed me, as I had never been impressed before, with the frank indelicacies of speech permissible among ladies and gentlemen in that ancient time. I was thus powerfully impressed because this conversation seemed real, whereas that kind of talk had not seemed real to me before. It had merely seemed Rabelaisian—exaggerated, artificial, made up by the author for his passing needs. It had not seemed to me that the blushful passages in Shakspeare were of a sort which Shakspeare had actually heard people use, but were inventions of his own—liberties which he had taken with the facts, under the protection of a poet’s license.