Autobiography of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  419.5–8 he proposed that he and I should collaborate in a play . . . remained with us two weeks] Clemens wrote to Howells on 11 October 1876:

  Bret Harte came up here the other day & asked me to help him write a play & divide the swag, & I agreed. I am to put in Scotty Briggs (see Buck Fanshaw’s Funeral, in Roughing It), & he is to put in a Chinaman (a wonderfully funny creature, as Bret presents him—for 5 minutes—in his Sandy Bar play.) This Chinaman is to be the character of the play, & both of us will work on him & develop him. Bret is to draw a plot, & I am to do the same; we shall use the best of the two, or gouge from both & build a third. My plot is built—finished it yesterday—six days’ work, 8 or 9 hours a day, & has nearly killed me. (Letters 1876–1880)

  Harte stayed in Hartford to work on the play, Ah Sin, for two weeks in late October. It was by no means finished, however, when he departed. Clemens continued to revise it, even traveling to Baltimore in late April and early May 1877 to oversee the rehearsals before its premiere in Washington on 7 May (27 Apr 1877 and 1 May 1877 to Howells, Letters 1876–1880).

  419.11–12 He came to us once . . . “Faithful Blossom”] Harte returned to Hartford on 5 December and stayed at least four days. During his visit he worked on the later installments of “Thankful Blossom,” serialized in the New York Sun on four Sundays, from 3 to 24 December (Harte to Osgood, 5 Dec 1876, Harte 1997, 142–143; Harte 1876). On 5 December Clemens wrote to George Bentley, editor of the English journal Temple Bar: “Mr Bret Harte has been reading to me his charming little love story. As I consider it the best piece of literary work he has ever done, I wanted it to go to Temple Bar. I said if it got there in time and was otherwise useable in the magazine, you would pay him whatever was fair for such use of it” (Letters 1876–1880). The story did not appear in Temple Bar.

  419.14 Mr. Dana] Charles A. Dana (1819–97) was the editor and part owner of the New York Sun from 1868 until his death.

  419.25 George] George Griffin.

  419.35–36 young girls’ club—by name the Saturday Morning Club—arrived in our library] This club was organized in the spring of 1876 at the suggestion of Boston publisher James T. Fields. It had a charter membership of nineteen or twenty young women who met regularly on Saturday mornings to engage in discussions and debates and listen to invited speakers. Clemens was a frequent speaker and host. In 1881 he presented the women with membership pins that he commissioned from Tiffany and Company in New York. The meeting described here must have taken place on 9 December 1876 (Saturday Morning Club 1976, 7–12, 59; N&J2, 370–71 n. 49).

  420.10–11 After this fashion we worked . . . and produced a comedy that was good and would act] Ah Sin was first staged briefly in Washington in May 1877, and was well received. Before its opening in New York, however, Clemens had already grown disatisfied with it, especially Harte’s contribution. He told his mother on 12 July:

  It took Bret Harte & me 14 working days (long ones, too) to plot out that play of ours (“Ah Sin”,) in skeleton; it took the two of us 8 days to write it after it was plotted out. We didn’t trim & polish it at all—& we shall live to repent it, too. It was not my fault; it was wholly that of that natural liar, swindler, bilk, & literary thief, Bret Harte, son of an Albany Jew-pedlar. I shall shed no tears if that play should fail, in October. It ought to—I know that pretty well. (Letters 1876–1880)

  420.11–14 His part of it was the best . . . The piece perished] Ah Sin opened in New York on 31 July. The audience response was favorable, as Clemens wrote Howells on 3 August, alluding to Colonel Sellers, his dramatization of The Gilded Age, first produced in 1874:

  “Ah Sin” went a-booming at the Fifth Avenue. The reception of Col. Sellers was calm compared to it. If Bret Harte had suppressed his name (it didn’t occur to me to suggest it) the play would have received as great applause in the papers as it did in the Theatre. The criticisms were just; the criticisms of the great New York dailies are just, always intelligent, & square & honest. (Letters 1876–1880)

  The critical reception was mixed. The New York Herald declared the play “a popular success,” but believed that “it cannot be justly called a good play.” The Tribune noted that the dialog was “sparkling with wit,” while the Sun declared the plot “weak, commonplace, and not at all original . . . and the characters are mere sketches. . . . As a piece of dramatic work the play is beneath criticism. As an entertainment it is laughable and lively, owing to the clever manner in which it is played” (reviews quoted in SLC 1961, xiii, xv). But Clemens’s opinion of Harte’s contribution had not improved, as he told Howells in his 3 August letter:

  I have been putting in a deal of hard work on that play in New York, & have left hardly a foot-print of Harte in it anywhere. But it is full of incurable defects: to-wit, Harte’s deliberate thefts & plagiarisms, & my own unconscious ones. I don’t believe Harte ever had an idea that he came by honestly. He is the most abandoned thief that defiles the earth. (Letters 1876–1880)

  After a brief unsuccessful road tour in the fall Clemens finally pronounced the play “a most abject & incurable failure” and withdrew it from the stage (15 Oct 1877 to Howells, Letters 1876–1880; Duckett 1964, 158; for the text of the play see SLC 1961).

  420.40–421.1 you sponge upon your hard-working widowed sister . . . creditors who are on watch for you] Harte’s older sister, Eliza C. T. Harte (1831–1912), married Frederick Knaufft (1810–92) in 1851. The couple maintained a residence in New York at 45 Fifth Avenue and ran a boardinghouse, or family hotel, in Morristown, New Jersey. The Hartes moved frequently in the 1870s, often staying at one or the other of these residences. In addition, Harte borrowed a substantial sum of money from Knaufft, which he had difficulty repaying, and was perpetually in debt. While touring on the lecture circuit he often sent money to his sister to cover his overdue bills, but he tried to avoid paying his tailors and haberdashers even after they had won court judgments against him (Scharnhorst 2000a, 87, 115; Harte to SLC: 25 July 1872, 8 Aug 1874, 24 Dec 1875, and 16 Dec 1876, CU-MARK, in Harte 1997, 69–70, 97–99, 125–27, 143–45; Scharnhorst 2000b, 200, 204–5, 208–9, 216–17).

  421.6 Harte owed me fifteen hundred dollars at that time] In an attempt to recover some of the money he was owed, Clemens wrote to his attorney the following summer: “Mine & Bret Harte’s shares from the new play ‘Ah Sin’ will come to you. . . . Please place both shares to my credit at Bissell’s & tell me the amount. Harte shan’t have a cent until his entire indebtedness to me is paid” (3 Aug 1877 to Perkins [2nd], Letters 1876–1880). It is not clear when—or even if—Clemens delivered the scathing rebuke he recalls here. The rupture in his friendship with Harte did not occur until March 1877; in the meantime, they had discussed another collaboration. On 1 March Harte replied angrily to a letter from Clemens (now lost): “Had I written the day after receiving your letter, I hardly think we would have had any further correspondence or business together.” Later in the letter he added, “No, Mark, I do not think it advisable for us to write another play together.” On the back of the letter Clemens wrote, “I have read two pages of this ineffable idiotcy—it is all I can stand of it” (Harte to SLC, 1 Mar 1877, CU-MARK, in Duckett 1964, 134–37).

  421.16–22 He entered into an engagement to write the novel, “Gabriel Conroy,” . . . for an advance of royalties] At the request of Elisha Bliss, Clemens persuaded Harte to publish a book through the American Publishing Company. In September 1872 Bliss drew up a contract with Harte for a six-hundred-page novel, paying him an advance of $1,000. The manuscript for the book, Gabriel Conroy, was not completed until June 1875, two and a half years after the stipulated date of delivery (contract dated 8 Sept 1872, CLU-SC; Scharnhorst 2000a, 116; Duckett 1964, 101–3).

  421.35–40 He had advanced to Harte thus far . . . book-rights were hardly worth the duplicate of it] By the end of 1875 Bliss had paid Harte “between $3 & $4000” (Harte to SLC, 24 Dec 1875, CU-MARK, in Harte 1997, 125–26). Bliss had by then recovered some of this outlay by selling the seriali
zation rights to Scribner’s Monthly for $6,000, which he split with Harte. The novel appeared in ten installments, beginning in November 1875, and was issued as a book shortly afterward. Its few merits—several memorable scenes and some shrewd social commentary about the misperception and mistreatment of Chinese immigrants—were not enough to rescue its preposterous plot, which involved several love stories interwoven with improbable coincidences, impersonations, seduction, suicide, fraud, and intimations of cannibalism. Gabriel Conroy was a critical and commercial failure in America, selling fewer than 3,500 copies in the first two years. (It was translated into several languages, however, and became quite popular in Germany.) Harte was convinced that Bliss had failed to market the book aggressively, and he complained that his requests for accurate royalty statements were ignored (Scharnhorst 2000a, 116–17; Scharnhorst 1995, 144, 198; Duckett 1964, 106, 109; APC 1866–79, 90). Harte held Clemens partly to blame for Bliss’s behavior, and devoted more than five pages of his 1 March 1877 letter to airing his grievance:

  Even Bliss’ advances of $6,000 cannot cover the loss I shall have from respectable publishers by publishing with him. Now, this is somewhere wrong, Mark, and as my friend you should have looked into Bliss’s books and Bliss’s methods, quite as much with a desire of seeing justice done your friend, as with the desire of seeing what chance you had of recovering any possible advance of $500 on our mutual work, if it failed. (CU-MARK, in Duckett 1964, 125)

  422.4–7 he kept a woman who was twice his age . . . in the house of one of them he died] Only one of these women has been identified: Hydeline de Seigneux Van de Velde (1853–1913). Fluent in three languages, she was by all accounts a charming hostess and brilliant conversationalist who collaborated with Harte on several plays. She became to some extent his patron, fostering his talent and providing “surroundings and conditions to stimulate his powers” (“Broadway Note-book,” New York Tribune, 26 Aug 1883, 4, quoted in Harte 1997, 302–3 n. 2). In 1882 Harte explained his situation to his wife:

  I suppose I am most at ease with my friends the Van de Veldes in London. A friendship of four years has resulted in my making their comfortable London home my home when I am in London. . . . There are nine children in all and nearly as many servants. It is the most refined, courteous, simple, elegant and unaffected household that can be imagined. The father and mother are each foreigners of rank and title; Madame is the daughter of Count de Launay the Italian Ambassador at Berlin. Sir Arthur Van de Velde is the Chancellor of the Belgian Legation. They have adopted me into their family,—Heaven knows how or why—as simply as if I had known them for years. (Harte to Anna Harte, 11 Oct 1882, Harte 1997, 291–92)

  Not only were Mrs. Van de Velde’s attitudes and comportment unconventional, she was reportedly still married to her first husband; her association with Harte therefore provided an entrée into literary and social circles that would otherwise have been closed to her. The gossip and speculation about the nature of their relationship increased after Mr. Van de Velde’s death in 1892, when she and Harte moved together to a new residence. There is little doubt that at some point their friendship evolved into something more intimate: in 1895 they traveled together for six weeks, leaving England separately and reuniting in Switzerland. Harte died in 1902 from throat cancer at her country home in Camberley, in Surrey (Scharnhorst 2000a, 163–65, 169–74, 197–99, 204–6, 228–29; Harte to Hydeline Van de Velde, 10 Sept 1880, Harte 1997, 271–73).

  422.9–10 Orion’s thoughtful carefulness enabled my “Hale and Norcross” stock-speculation to ruin me] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 5 April 1906, note at 20.35–21.5.

  422.11–12 I went to Jackass Gulch and cabined for a while with some friends of mine, surface-miners] Clemens’s mining comrades were Jim and Billy Gillis and their partner, Dick Stoker (AutoMT1, 552–53 n. 261.21–24; see AD, 12 June 1906, note at 113.21–23, and AD, 23 Jan 1907, note at 384.16–19).

  422.28–29 These friends of mine had been seeking that fortune . . . they had never found it] The miners’ luck was not entirely bad; in January 1864 Billy Gillis had discovered a “pocket from which, in the next three days, we panned out seven thousand dollars” (Gillis 1930, 10–11).

  423.20 Parsloe, the lessee of it] Clemens and Harte persuaded Charles T. Parsloe (1836–98), the celebrated comic actor who had portrayed Hop Sing in Harte’s Two Men of Sandy Bar, to enact the title role of the Chinese laundryman in Ah Sin. They hoped that Parsloe could repeat the popular and financial success of John T. Raymond in Colonel Sellers. Parsloe leased the play and was given “sole right for the entire world” (29 Dec 1876 to Conway per Fanny C. Hesse, Letters 1876–1880; “Death List of a Day,” New York Times, 23 Jan 1898, 7).

  423.26 gallus] From “gallows,” meaning “rakish, dashing” (“Mark Twain’s 1872 English Journals,” L5, 598 n. 23).

  424.10–13 Edward Everett Hale . . . “A Man Without a Country.”] Hale (1822–1909) was a Unitarian minister, editor, and the author of numerous novels, histories, and stories. “The Man without a Country,” a patriotic parable published anonymously in the Atlantic Monthly in December 1863 (not when the Civil War was “about to break out”), brought him world-wide fame and inspired support for the Union cause (Hale 1863).

  424.26–29 one of the Republican party’s most cold-blooded swindles of the American people . . . I was an ardent Hayes man] The presidential election of 7 November 1876 was the second in history in which the defeated candidate, Samuel J. Tilden (Democratic governor of New York), received more popular votes than the winner, Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican governor of Ohio). On 9 November Clemens sent a jubilant telegram to Howells to celebrate Hayes’s apparent early victory (Letters 1876–1880). Hayes was not officially declared the winner, however, until March 1877, after an electoral commission created by Congress awarded him 185 electoral votes to Tilden’s 184. As part of a compromise between the parties, the Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South, which brought Reconstruction to an end. It is not known when, or why, Clemens changed his opinion and came to view the election as a “cold-blooded” swindle.

  425.9 the man without a country got his consulship] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 14 June 1906, note at 119.37–38, for more information about Harte’s appointment.

  425.10–11 John McCullough, the tragedian] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 16 January 1906 (AutoMT1, 284, 564–65 n. 284.31).

  425.18–38 One day a young man appeared in his quarters . . . John McCullough stood by the boy] Harte contacted the noted playwright, actor, and producer Dion Boucicault (1820–90) as well as McCullough on behalf of his son Frank. In a letter of 15 December 1882 he wrote to Frank:

  Mr. Boucicault left or was to leave London on the 8th inst. for New York. I had another interview with him regarding your affairs a few days ago. He said he would see you whenever you could call or make an appointment with him, and that he would give you his advice frankly, and, in case he thought you were fit for an immediate engagement, would do all in his power to help you to it. Whether this means that he will be ready to take you himself in hand, I cannot say; he is a man immersed in his own business, but as that is dramatic, theatrical, and managerial, your interests may come together. Of one thing you can count surely; I believe he will be frank with you; not to discourage you solely, if you are not all that you think you are, but to show you what you can do in the way of a beginning. This is what McCullough said he would do for you, at my request—and not, as your mother writes to me that he said to you—‘be rude to you, if necessary, to keep you off the stage.’ It is scarcely worth while repeating that I never could nor did say anything of the kind or write anything like it to McCullough. I told him that if it were true that you were physically not up to the active requirements of the stage, he ought to dissuade you from it. (Harte 1926, 220)

  Despite what Harte wrote to McCullough, it is clear that he had doubts about his son’s acting ability. Frank nevertheless secured a position playing small parts with Bouci
cault’s troupe; in 1885–86 he worked with Lawrence Barrett, and then returned to Boucicault; in 1887–88 he acted in Edwin Booth’s company. After four years on the stage Frank abandoned his acting career, and by 1889 he was working as a secretary in Boucicault’s acting school. In 1895 Harte wrote his wife, “I fail also to see where Frank ‘has suffered’; during his whole misplaced career on the stage, he had advantages that the greatest actors have never had, and availed him nothing” (Harte to Anna Harte, 15 Feb 1884, 15 June 1884, 3 Apr 1886, 30 Mar 1895, and 15 Feb 1889, Harte 1997, 308–10, 313–15, 332–34, 355–57, 396–97; Harte to Anna Harte, 16 Nov 1885 and 15 July 1887, and Harte to Frank Harte, 28 Dec 1885, Harte 1926, 290–91, 294–95, 317–19; “Faithless Wives,” San Francisco Chronicle, 28 Nov 1889, 1).

  426.11–12 arts of drawing] Jessamy Harte was an artist of modest talent; she exhibited her work at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1892–93 (Harte to Anna Harte, 19 Nov 1893, Harte 1997, 388–90).

  426.31–34 Possibly he writes them . . . he has never sent them a dollar] Clemens had no personal contact with Harte after 1878. He relied on gossip and reports in the press for most of his information, which is inaccurate in several ways. In fact, Harte sent regular payments to his family. From Crefeld, he sent an average of $150 a month; from Glasgow he forwarded his entire consular salary, $3,000 a year. In addition, he provided money for Christmas gifts, and whatever additional sums he could scrape together for expenses like vacations, relying on his writing for his own meager income. According to his grandson, in his first fifteen years abroad Harte sent home over $60,000. It is true that he seemed ambivalent about reuniting with his wife, telling her soon after his arrival about the discomforts of living in Germany and discouraging Frank from visiting because he could not provide a home, but on more than one occasion in 1883–84 he invited his family to come to Glasgow, which they declined to do. He rarely saw his wife again, despite writing long, affectionate letters regularly to her and his children, and eagerly awaiting their replies (Harte to Anna Harte, 4 Aug 1883, 16 Oct 1878, 17 Sept 1883, and 15 June 1884, Harte 1997, 191–96, 300–302, 313; Duckett 1964, 184–85, 200–201, 232).