Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

by Mark Twain

  Third Paragraph. It was sound English before you decayed it. Sell it to the museum.

  Fourth Paragraph. I note the compliment you pay yourself, margined opposite the closing sentence: “Easier translation.” But it has two defects. In the first place it is a mistranslation, and in the second place it translates half of the grace out of Joan’s remark.

  Fifth Paragraph. Why are you so prejudiced against fact, and so indecently fond of fiction? Her generalship was not “that of a tried and trained military experience,” for she hadn’t had any, and no one swore that she had had any. I had stated the facts, you should have reserved your fictions. Note: To be intelligible, that whole paragraph must consist of a single sentence; in breaking it up into several, you have knocked the sense all out of it.

  Eighth Paragraph. “When the flames leapt up and enveloped her frail form” is handsome, very handsome, even elegant, but it isn’t yours; you hooked it out of “The Costermonger’s Bride; or The Fire-Fiend’s Foe,” price 3 farthings; boards 2d. To take other people’s things is not right, and God will punish you. “Parched” lips? How do you know they were? Why do you make statements which you cannot verify, when you have no motive for it but to work in a word which you think is nobby?

  III. THE REHABILITATION. “Their statements were taken down as evidence.” Wonderful! If you had failed to mention that particular, many persons might have thought they were taken down as entertainment.

  IV. THE RIDDLE OF ALL TIME. I note your marginal remark: “Riddle—Anglice?” Look in your spelling-book. “We can understand how the genius was created,” etc., “by steady and congenial growth.” We can’t understand anything of the kind; genius is not “created” by any farming process—it is born. You are thinking of potatoes. Note: Whenever I say “circumstances” you change it to “environment;” and you persistently change my thats into whiches and my whiches into thats. This is merely silly, you know.

  Second Paragraph. I note your marginal remark, “2 comprehends.” I suppose some one has told you that repetition is tautology, and then has left you to believe that repetition is always tautology. But let it go; with your limitations one would not be able to teach you how to distinguish between the repetition which isn’t tautology and the repetition which is.

  Closing Sentence. Your tipsy emendation, when straightened up on its legs and examined, is found to say this: We fail to see her issue thus equipped, and we cannot understand why. That is to say, she did not issue so equipped, and you cannot make out why she didn’t. That is the riddle that defeats you, labor at it as you may? Why, if that had happened, it wouldn’t be a riddle at all—except to you—but a thing likely to happen to nearly anybody, and not matter for astonishment to any intelligent person standing by at the time—or later. There is a riddle, but you have mistaken the nature of it. I cannot tell how, labor at it as I may; and I will try to point it out to you so that you can see some of it. We do not fail to see her issue so equipped, we do see her. That is the whole marvel, mystery, riddle. That she, an ignorant country girl, sprang upon the world equipped with amazing natural gifts is not the riddle—it could have happened to you if you had been some one else; but the fact that those talents were instantly and effectively usable without previous training is the mystery which we cannot master, the riddle which we cannot solve. Do you get it?

  Third Paragraph. Drunk.

  V. AS PROPHET. “And in every case realized the complete fulfilment.” How do you know she did that? There is no testimony to back up that wild assertion. I was particular not to claim that all her prophecies came true; for that would have been to claim that we have her whole list, whereas it is likely that she made some that failed and did not get upon the record. People do not record prophecies that failed. Such is not the custom.

  VI. HER CHARACTER. “Comforted” is a good change, and quite sane. But you are not playing fair; you are getting some sane person to help you. Note: When I wrote “counseled her, advised her,” that was tautology; the “2 comprehends” was a case of repetition which was not tautological. But I am sure you will never be able to learn the difference. Note: “But she, Jeanne d’Arc, when presently she found,” etc. That is the funniest yet, and the commonplacest. But it isn’t original, you got it out of “How to Write Literary Without Any Apprenticeship,” sixpence to the trade; retail, sevenpence farthing. Erased Passage: I note with admiration your marginal remark explaining your objection to it: “Is it warrantable to assert that she bragged? Is it in good taste? It was assuredly foreign to her character.” I will admit that my small effort at playfulness was not much of a pearl; but such as it was, I realize that I threw it into the wrong trough.

  VII. HER FACE AND FORM. You have misunderstood me again. I did not mean that the artist had several ideas and one prevailing one, I meant that he had only one idea. In that same sentence, “omits” and “forgets” have just the same meaning; have you any clear idea, then, why you made the change? Is it your notion that “gross” is an improvement on “big,” “perform” an improvement on “do,” “inquiring” an improvement on “asking,” and “in such wise” an improvement on “then,” or have you merely been seduced by the fine large sound of those words? Are you incurably hostile to simplicity of speech? And finally, do you not see that you have edited all the dignity out of the paragraph and substituted simpering commonplace for it, and that your addition at the end is a deliciously flat and funny anti-climax? Still, I note your command in the margin, “Insert this remark,” and I dutifully obey.

  Second Paragraph. “Exploited” was worth a shilling, there; you have traded it for a word not worth tuppence-ha’penny, and got cheated, and serves you right. Read “rightly,” if it shocks you. Close of Paragraph: You have exploited another anti-climax—and in the form, too, of an impudent advertisement of your book. It seems to me that for a person of your elegance of language you are curiously lacking in certain other delicacies.

  Third Paragraph. I must reserve my thanks. “Moreover” is a parenthesis, when interjected in that fashion; a parenthesis is evidence that the man who uses it does not know how to write English or is too indolent to take the trouble to do it; a parenthesis usually throws the emphasis upon the wrong word, and has done it in this instance; a man who will wantonly use a parenthesis will steal. For these reasons I am unfriendly to the parenthesis. When a man puts one into my mouth his life is no longer safe. “Breaking a lance” is a knightly and sumptuous phrase, and I honor it for its hoary age and for the faithful service it has done in the prize-composition of the school-girl, but I have ceased from employing it since I got my puberty, and must solemnly object to fathering it here. And besides, it makes me hint that I have broken one of those things before, in honor of the Maid, an intimation not justified by the facts. I did not break any lances or other furniture, I only wrote a book about her.

  Truly Yours

  Mark Twain

  It cost me something to restrain myself and say these smooth and half-flattering things to this immeasurable idiot, but I did it, and have never regretted it. For it is higher and nobler to be kind to even a shad like him than just. If we should deal out justice only, in this world, who would escape? No, it is better to be generous; and in the end more profitable, for it gains gratitude for us, and love, and it is far better to have the love of a literary strumpet like this than the reproaches of his wounded spirit. Therefore I am glad I said no harsh things to him, but spared him, the same as I would a tape-worm. It is reward enough for me to know that my children will be proud of their father for this, when I am gone. I could have said hundreds of unpleasant things about this tadpole, but I did not even feel them.

  This untitled manuscript of twenty-two leaves in the Mark Twain Papers, here assigned the title “Reflections on a Letter and Book,” was probably written in late April or early May 1903. Clemens designated it “Auto.” on the first page, which transcribes a letter to him from one Hilary Trent (pseudonym of R.M. Manley), author of Mr. Claghorn’s Daughter. Manley a
sked Clemens to read his book, obviously hoping that he would comment on it. Clemens used the occasion to ridicule the selfishness of the entire human race, himself included: “We do no benevolences whose first benefit is not for ourselves.” On 26 April 1903 he wrote Manley that he had read the book “with a strong interest, because I am in sympathy with its sermon” and because he approved of “the grace & vigor of your style & because of the attractions of the story as a story” (transcript in CU-MARK; Clemens allowed a condensed version of this “puff” to be used in advertisements for the book). Manley’s “sermon” was in fact an attack on Presbyterian doctrine in general and the Westminster Confession of Faith in particular. Near the end of his manuscript Clemens inserted clippings of three articles about recent events that he thought were relevant to his argument, but he made no attempt to actually integrate them into his text. In the four concluding pages, however, he did devote one paragraph to the Westminster Catechism, which the first article had reported as being under revision.

  All of the physical evidence (ink, paper, pagination) establishes that these pages make up a single work, but the connection between the first seventeen and the last four seemed so tentative to Paine that he actually turned them (by virtue of penciled titles) into separate works. He published the first section in “Unpublished Chapters from the Autobiography of Mark Twain” in the August 1922 issue of Harper’s Monthly (SLC 1922c, 312–15), supplying the title “A Young Author Sends Mark Twain a Book,” but he did not reprint it in his edition of the autobiography. He did not publish the second section, on which he penciled what seemed to him an appropriate title, “Moral and Intellectual Man.” Neider declined to include even the first part, and the present text is therefore the first time the manuscript has been published in full.

  [Reflections on a Letter and a Book]

  Another of those peculiarly depressing letters—a letter cast in artificially humorous form, whilst no art could make the subject humorous: to me.

  Dear Sir:—I have written a book—naturally, which fact, however, since I am not your enemy need give you no occasion to rejoice. Nor need you grieve, though I am sending you a copy. If I knew of any way of compelling you to read it I would do so, but unless the first few pages have that effect, I can do nothing. Try the first few pages. I have done a great deal more than that with your books, so perhaps you owe me something—say ten pages. If after that attempt you put it aside, I shall be sorry—for you!

  I am afraid that the above looks flippant—but think of the twitterings of the soul of him who brings in his hand an unbidden book, written by himself. To such a one much is due in the way of indulgence. Will you remember that? Have you forgotten early twitterings of your own?

  The coat-of-arms of the human race ought to consist of a man with an axe on his shoulder proceeding toward a grindstone. Or, it ought to represent the several members of the human race holding out the hat to each other. For we are all beggars. Each in his own way. One beggar is too proud to beg for pennies, but will beg a loan of dollars, knowing he can’t repay; another will not beg a loan, but will beg for a postmastership; another will not do that but will beg for an introduction to “society;” one, being rich, will not beg a hod of coal of the railway company, but will beg a pass; his neighbor will not beg coal, nor pass, but in social converse with a lawyer will place before him a supposititious case in the hope of getting an opinion out of him for nothing; one who would disdain to beg for any of these things will beg frankly for the Presidency. None of the lot is ashamed of himself, but he despises the rest of the mendicants. Each admires his own dignity, and carefully guards it, but in his opinion the others haven’t any.

  Mendicancy is a matter of taste and temperament, no doubt, but certainly no human being is without a form of it. I know my own form, you know yours; let us curtain it from view and abuse the others. To every man cometh, at intervals, a man with an axe to grind. To you, reader, among the rest. By and by that axe’s aspect becomes familiar to you—when you are the proprietor of the grindstone—and the moment you catch sight of it you perceive that it is the same old axe; then you withdraw within yourself, and stick out your spines. If you are the Governor, you know that this stranger wants a position. The first six times the axe came, you were deceived—after that, humiliated. The bearer of it poured out such noble praises of you and of your political record that your lips trembled, the moisture dimmed your eyes, there was a lump in your throat, and you were thankful that you had lived to have this happiness; then the stranger disclosed his axe and his real motive in coming and in applauding, and you were ashamed of yourself and of your race, recognizing that you had been coarsely affronted by this person whom you had treated hospitably. Six repetitions are sure to cure you. After that, (if you are not a candidate for re-election), you interrupt the compliments and say—

  “Yes-yes, that is all right, never mind about that; come down to business—what is it you want?”

  No matter how big or how little your place in life may be, you have a grindstone, and people will bring axes to you. None escapes.

  Also, you are in the business yourself. You privately rage at the man who brings his axe to you, but every now and then you carry yours to somebody and ask a whet. I don’t carry mine to strangers, I draw the line there; perhaps that is your way. This is bound to set us up on a high and holy pinnacle and make us look down in cold rebuke upon persons who carry their axes to strangers.

  Now, then, since we all carry axes, and must, and cannot break ourselves of it, why has not a best way to do it been invented by some wise and thoughtful person? There can be no reason but one: from the beginning of time each member of the human race, while recognizing with shame and angry disapproval that everybody else is an axe-bearer and beggar, has all the while deceived himself with the superstition that he is free of the taint. And so it would never occur to him to plan out for the help and benefit of the race a scheme which could not advantage himself. For that is human nature.

  But—let us recognize it and confess it—we are all concerned to plan out a best way to approach a person’s grindstone, for we are all beggars; a best way, a way which shall as nearly as possible avoid offensiveness, a way which shall best promise to secure a grinding for the axe. How would this plan answer, for instance:

  Never convey the axe yourself; send it by another stranger; or by your friend; or by the grindstone-man’s friend; or by a person who is friend to both of you.

  Of course this last is best-best, but the others are good. You see, when you dispatch the axe yourself, (along with your new book, for instance,) you are making one thing absolutely certain: the grindstone-man will be all ready with a prejudice against it and an aversion, before he has even looked at it. Because—why, merely because you have tied his hands, you have not left him independent, he feels himself cornered, and he frets at this, he chafes, he resents as an impertinence your taking this unfair advantage of him—and he is right. He knows you meant to take a mean advantage of him—with all your clumsy arts you have not deceived him. He knows you framed your letter with deliberation, to a distinct end: to compel an answer. You have paid him homage: by all the laws of courtesy, he has got to pay for it. And he cannot choose the way: he has to pay for it in thanks and return-compliments. Your ingenuities resemble those of the European professional beggar: to head you off from pretending you did not receive his letter, he registers it—and he’s got you!

  I respect my own forms of passing the hat, but not other people’s. I realize that this is natural. Among my forms is not that of sending my books to strangers. To do that is to beg for a puff—it has that object, whether the object is confessed in words or not. Since that is not my form of soliciting alms, I look down upon it with a polar disdain. It seems to me that this also is natural. The first time a stranger ever sent me his book, I was as pleased as a child, and I took all the compliments at par; I supposed the letter was written just to get in those compliments. I didn’t read between the lines, I didn’t know the
re was anything between the lines. However, as the years dragged along and brought experience I became an expert on invisibles, and could find more meat between the lines than anywhere else. After that, those letters gave me no pleasure; they inarticulately, but strenuously, demanded pay for the compliments, and they made me ashamed of the offerer; and also of myself, for being a person who, by the offerer’s estimate, was on a low enough grade to value compliments on those terms.

  Although I am finding so much fault with this matter I am not ignorant of the fact that compliments are not often given away. A return is expected. And one gets it, too—though not always when the compliments are sent by letter. When an audience applauds, it isn’t aware that it is requiring pay for that compliment. But it is; and if the applause is not in some way thankfully acknowledged by the recipient of it,—by bow and smile, for instance—the audience will discover that it was expecting an equivalent. Also, it will withdraw its trade, there and then; it is not going to give something for nothing, not if it knows itself. When a beautiful girl catches a compliment in our eye, she pays spot cash for it with a dear little blush. We did not know we were expecting pay, but if she should flash offended dignity at us, instead of that little blush, we should then know better. She would get no more of our trade on those terms. But in truth, compliments are sometimes actually given away, and no bill presented. I know it can occur as much as once in a century, for it has happened once to me, and I am not a century old, yet. It was twenty-nine years ago. I was lecturing in London at the time. I received a most lovely letter, sparkling and glowing with cordial and felicitous praises—and there was no name signed, and no address!

  It was all mine—all free—all gratis—no bill enclosed, nothing to pay, no possible way to pay—an absolutely free gift! It is the only gratis compliment I have ever received, it is the only gratis compliment I have ever even heard of. Whenever a stranger tags his compliment with his name and address, it stands for C.O.D. He may not consciously and deliberately intend it so, but that is because he has not the habit of searching his motives to the bottom. People avoid that. And that is wise in its way, for the most of one’s motives are best concealed from oneself. I know this by long experience and close examination of my own.