Twains Letters vol 6 1907-1910 | Page 6

an hour or
more, those crucial phases of life which have made living a complex

problem since the days of Eve in Eden. Mrs. Glyn had never before
heard anything like Mark Twain's wonderful talk, and she was anxious
to print their interview. She wrote what she could remember of it and
sent it to him for approval. If his conversation had been frank, his
refusal was hardly less so.
To Mrs. Elinor Glyn, in New York:
Jan. 22, '08. DEAR MRS. GLYN, It reads pretty poorly--I get the sense
of it, but it is a poor literary job; however, it would have to be that
because nobody can be reported even approximately, except by a
stenographer. Approximations, synopsized speeches, translated poems,
artificial flowers and chromos all have a sort of value, but it is small. If
you had put upon paper what I really said it would have wrecked your
type-machine. I said some fetid, over-vigorous things, but that was
because it was a confidential conversation. I said nothing for print. My
own report of the same conversation reads like Satan roasting a Sunday
school. It, and certain other readable chapters of my autobiography will
not be published until all the Clemens family are dead--dead and
correspondingly indifferent. They were written to entertain me, not the
rest of the world. I am not here to do good--at least not to do it
intentionally. You must pardon me for dictating this letter; I am sick
a-bed and not feeling as well as I might. Sincerely Yours, S. L.
CLEMENS.
Among the cultured men of England Mark Twain had no greater
admirer, or warmer friend, than Andrew Lang. They were at one on
most literary subjects, and especially so in their admiration of the life
and character of Joan of Arc. Both had written of her, and both held her
to be something almost more than mortal. When, therefore, Anatole
France published his exhaustive biography of the maid of Domremy, a
book in which he followed, with exaggerated minuteness and
innumerable footnotes, every step of Joan's physical career at the
expense of her spiritual life, which he was inclined to cheapen, Lang
wrote feelingly, and with some contempt, of the performance, inviting
the author of the Personal Recollections to come to the rescue of their
heroine. "Compare every one of his statements with the passages he
cites from authorities, and make him the laughter of the world" he
wrote. "If you are lazy about comparing I can make you a complete set
of what the authorities say, and of what this amazing novelist says that

they say. When I tell you that he thinks the Epiphany (January 6,
Twelfth Night) is December 25th--Christmas Day-you begin to see
what an egregious ass he is. Treat him like Dowden, and oblige"--a
reference to Mark Twain's defense of Harriet Shelley, in which he had
heaped ridicule on Dowden's Life of the Poet--a masterly performance;
one of the best that ever came from Mark Twain's pen.
Lang's suggestion would seem to have been a welcome one.
To Andrew Lang, in London:
NEW YORK, April 25, 1908. DEAR MR. LANG,--I haven't seen the
book nor any review of it, but only not very-understandable references
to it--of a sort which discomforted me, but of course set my interest on
fire. I don't want to have to read it in French--I should lose the nice
shades, and should do a lot of gross misinterpreting, too. But there'll be
a translation soon, nicht wahr? I will wait for it. I note with joy that you
say: "If you are lazy about comparing, (which I most certainly am), I
can make you a complete set of what the authorities say, and of what
this amazing novelist says that they say."
Ah, do it for me! Then I will attempt the article, and (if I succeed in
doing it to my satisfaction,) will publish it. It is long since I touched a
pen (3 1/2 years), and I was intending to continue this happy holiday to
the gallows, but--there are things that could beguile me to break this
blessed Sabbath. Yours very sincerely, S. L. CLEMENS.
Certainly it is an interesting fact that an Englishman--one of the race
that burned Joan--should feel moved to defend her memory against the
top-heavy perversions of a distinguished French author.
But Lang seems never to have sent the notes. The copying would have
been a tremendous task, and perhaps he never found the time for it. We
may regret to-day that he did not, for Mark Twain's article on the
French author's Joan would have been at least unique.
Samuel Clemens could never accustom himself to the loss of his wife.
From the time of her death, marriage-which had brought him his
greatest joy in life-presented itself