Twains Letters vol 3 1876-1885 | Page 6

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 I think 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.
The "skeleton novelette" mentioned in the next letter refers to a plan
concocted by Howells and Clemens, by which each of twelve authors
was to write a story, using the same plot, "blindfolded" as to what the
others had written. It was a regular "Mark Twain" notion, and it is hard
to-day to imagine Howells's continued enthusiasm in it. Neither he nor
Clemens gave up the idea for a long time. It appears in their letters
again and again, though perhaps it was just as well for literature that it
was never carried out.
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
Apl. 22, 1876. MY DEAR HOWELLS, You'll see per enclosed slip
that I appear for the first time on the stage next Wednesday. You and
Mrs. H. come down and you shall skip in free.
I wrote my skeleton novelette yesterday and today. It will make a little
under 12 pages.
Please tell Aldrich I've got a photographer engaged, and tri-weekly
issue is about to begin. Show him the canvassing specimens and
beseech him to subscribe. Ever yours, S. L. C.
In his next letter Mark Twain explains why Tom Sawyer is not to
appear as soon as planned. The reference to "The Literary Nightmare"
refers to the "Punch, Conductor, Punch with Care" sketch, which had

recently appeared in the Atlantic. Many other versifiers had had their
turn at horse-car poetry, and now a publisher was anxious to collect it
in a book, provided he could use the Atlantic sketch. Clemens does not
tell us here the nature of Carlton's insult, forgiveness of which he was
not yet qualified to grant, but there are at least two stories about it, or
two halves of the same incident, as related afterward by Clemens and
Canton. Clemens said that when he took the Jumping Frog book to
Carlton, in 1867, the latter, pointing to his stock, said, rather scornfully:
"Books? I don't want your book; my shelves are full of books now,"
though the reader may remember that it was Carlton himself who had
given the frog story to the Saturday Press and had seen it become
famous. Carlton's half of the story was that he did not accept Mark
Twain's book because the author looked so disreputable. Long
afterward, when the two men met in Europe, the publisher said to the
now rich and famous author: "Mr. Clemens, my one claim on
immortality is that I declined your first book."
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Apl. 25, 1876 MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Thanks for
giving me the place of honor.
Bliss made a failure in the matter of getting Tom Sawyer ready on
time-- the engravers assisting, as usual. I went down to see how much
of a