Complete Letters of Mark Twain

Goodbye,

Sam Clemens.

As we do not hear of this “attack” again, the recovery was probably prompt. His letters are not frequent enough for us to keep track of his boats, but we know that he was associated with Bixby from time to time, and now and again with one of the Bowen boys, his old Hannibal schoolmates. He was reveling in the river life, the ease and distinction and romance of it. No other life would ever suit him as well. He was at the age to enjoy just what it brought him – at the airy, golden, overweening age of youth.

To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:

St. Louis, Mch. 1860.

My dear Bro., – Your last has just come to hand. It reminds me strongly of Tom Hood’s letters to his family, (which I have been reading lately). But yours only remind me of his, for although there is a striking likeness, your humour is much finer than his, and far better expressed. Tom Hood’s wit, (in his letters) has a savor of labor about it which is very disagreeable. Your letter is good. That portion of it wherein the old sow figures is the very best thing I have seen lately. Its quiet style resembles Goldsmith’s “Citizen of the World,” and “Don Quixote,”—which are my beau ideals of fine writing.

You have paid the preacher! Well, that is good, also. What a man wants with religion in these breadless times, surpasses my comprehension.

Pamela and I have just returned from a visit to the most wonderfully beautiful painting which this city has ever seen – Church’s “Heart of the Andes”—which represents a lovely valley with its rich vegetation in all the bloom and glory of a tropical summer – dotted with birds and flowers of all colors and shades of color, and sunny slopes, and shady corners, and twilight groves, and cool cascades – all grandly set off with a majestic mountain in the background with its gleaming summit clothed in everlasting ice and snow! I have seen it several times, but it is always a new picture – totally new – you seem to see nothing the second time which you saw the first. We took the opera glass, and examined its beauties minutely, for the naked eye cannot discern the little wayside flowers, and soft shadows and patches of sunshine, and half-hidden bunches of grass and jets of water which form some of its most enchanting features. There is no slurring of perspective effect about it – the most distant – the minutest object in it has a Mark.d and distinct personality – so that you may count the very leaves on the trees. When you first see the tame, ordinary-looking picture, your first impulse is to turn your back upon it, and say “Humbug”—but your third visit will find your brain gasping and straining with futile efforts to take all the wonder in – and appreciate it in its fulness – and understand how such a miracle could have been conceived and executed by human brain and human hands. You will never get tired of looking at the picture, but your reflections – your efforts to grasp an intelligible Something – you hardly know what – will grow so painful that you will have to go away from the thing, in order to obtain relief. You may find relief, but you cannot banish the picture – It remains with you still. It is in my mind now – and the smallest feature could not be removed without my detecting it. So much for the “Heart of the Andes.”

Ma was delighted with her trip, but she was disgusted with the girls for allowing me to embrace and kiss them – and she was horrified at the Schottische as performed by Miss Castle and myself. She was perfectly willing for me to dance until 12 o’clock at the imminent peril of my going to sleep on the after watch – but then she would top off with a very inconsistent sermon on dancing in general; ending with a terrific broadside aimed at that heresy of hérésies, the Schottische.

I took Ma and the girls in a carriage, round that portion of New Orleans where the finest gardens and residences are to be seen, and although it was a blazing hot dusty day, they seemed hugely delighted. To use an expression which is commonly ignored in polite society, they were “hell-bent” on stealing some of the luscious-looking oranges from branches which overhung the fences, but I restrained them. They were not aware before that shrubbery could be made to take any queer shape which a skilful gardener might choose to twist it into, so they found not only beauty but novelty in their visit. We went out to Lake Pontchartrain in the cars.

Your Brother,

Sam Clemens.

We have not before heard of Miss Castle, who appears to have been one of the girls who accompanied Jane Clemens on the trip which her son gave her to New Orleans, but we may guess that the other was his cousin and good comrade, Ella Creel. One wishes that he might have left us a more extended account of that long-ago river journey, a fuller glimpse of a golden age that has vanished as completely as the days of Washington.

We may smile at the natural youthful desire to air his reading, and his art appreciation, and we may find his opinions not without interest. We may even commend them – in part. Perhaps we no longer count the leaves on Church’s trees, but Goldsmith and Cervantes still deserve the place assigned them.

He does not tell us what boat he was on at this time, but later in the year he was with Bixby again, on the Alonzo Child. We get a bit of the pilot in port in his next.

To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:

“Alonzo child,” N. Orleans, Sep. 28th 1860.

Dear brother, – I just received yours and Mollies letter yesterday – they had been here two weeks – forwarded from St. Louis. We got here yesterday – will leave at noon to-day. Of course I have had no time, in 24 hours, to do anything. Therefore I’ll answer after we are under way again. Yesterday, I had many things to do, but Bixby and I got with the pilots of two other boats and went off dissipating on a ten dollar dinner at a French restaurant breathe it not unto Ma! – where we ate sheep-head, fish with mushrooms, shrimps and oysters – birds – coffee with brandy burnt in it, &c &c, – ate, drank and smoked, from 2 p.m. until 5 o’clock, and then – then the day was too far gone to do any thing.

Please find enclosed and acknowledge receipt of—$20.00

In haste,

Sam Clemens.

It should be said, perhaps, that when he became pilot Jane Clemens had released her son from his pledge in the matter of cards and liquor. This license did not upset him, however. He cared very little for either of these dissipations. His one great indulgence was tobacco, a matter upon which he was presently to receive some grave counsel. He reports it in his next letter, a sufficiently interesting document. The clairvoyant of this visit was Madame Caprell, famous in her day. Clemens had been urged to consult her, and one idle afternoon concluded to make the experiment. The letter reporting the matter to his brother is fragmentary, and is the last remaining to us of the piloting period.

Fragment of a letter to Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:

New Orleans February 6, 1862.

… She’s a very pleasant little lady – rather pretty – about 28,—say 5 feet 2 and one quarter – would weigh 116—has black eyes and hair – is polite and intelligent – used good language, and talks much faster than I do.

She invited me into the little back parlor, closed the door; and we were alone. We sat down facing each other. Then she asked my age. Then she put her hands before her eyes a moment, and commenced talking as if she had a good deal to say and not much time to say it in. Something after this style:

Madame. Yours is a watery planet; you gain your livelihood on the water; but you should have been a lawyer – there is where your talents lie: you might have distinguished yourself as an orator, or as an editor; you have written a great deal; you write well – but you are rather out of practice; no matter – you will be in practice some day; you have a superb constitution, and as excellent health as any man in the world; you have great powers of endurance; in your profession your strength holds out against the longest sieges, without flagging; still, the upper part of your lungs, the top of them is slightly affected – you must take care of yourself; you do not drink, but you use entirely too much tobacco; and you must stop it; mind, not moderate, but stop the use of it totally; then I can almost promise you 86 when you will surely die; otherwise look out for 28, 31, 34, 47, and 65; be careful – for you are not of a long-lived race, that is on your father’s side; you are the only healthy member of your family, and the only one in it who has anything like the certainty of attaining to a great age – so, stop using tobacco, and be careful of yourself….. In some respects you take after your father, but you are much more like your mother, who belongs to the long-lived, energetic side of the house…. You never brought all your energies to bear upon any subject but what you accomplished it – for instance, you are self-made, self-educated.

S. L. C. Which proves nothing.

Madame. Don’t interrupt. When you sought your present occupation you found a thousand obstacles in the way – obstacles unknown – not even suspected by any save you and me, since you keep such matters to yourself – but you fought your way, and hid the long struggle under a mask of cheerfulness, which saved your friends anxiety on your account. To do all this requires all the qualities I have named.

S. L. C. You flatter well, Madame.

Madame. Don’t interrupt: Up to within a short time you had always lived from hand to mouth-now you are in easy circumstances – for which you need give credit to no one but yourself. The turning point in your life occurred in 1840-7-8.

S. L. C. Which was?

Madame. A death perhaps, and this threw you upon the world and made you what you are; it was always intended that you should make yourself; therefore, it was well that this calamity occurred as early as it did. You will never die of water, although your career upon it in the future seems well sprinkled with misfortune. You will continue upon the water for some time yet; you will not retire finally until ten years from now…. What is your brother’s age? 35—and a lawyer? and in pursuit of an office? Well, he stands a better chance than the other two, and he may get it; he is too visionary – is always flying off on a new hobby; this will never do – tell him I said so. He is a good lawyer – a, very good lawyer – and a fine speaker – is very popular and much respected, and makes many friends; but although he retains their friendship, he loses their confidence by displaying his instability of character….. The land he has now will be very valuable after a while—

S. L. C. Say a 50 years hence, or thereabouts. Madame—

Madame. No – less time-but never mind the land, that is a secondary consideration – let him drop that for the present, and devote himself to his business and politics with all his might, for he must hold offices under the Government…..

After a while you will possess a good deal of property – retire at the end of ten years – after which your pursuits will be literary – try the law – you will certainly succeed. I am done now. If you have any questions to ask – ask them freely – and if it be in my power, I will answer without reserve – without reserve.

I asked a few questions of minor importance – paid her $2—and left, under the decided impression that going to the fortune teller’s was just as good as going to the opera, and the cost scarcely a trifle more – ergo, I will disguise myself and go again, one of these days, when other amusements fail. Now isn’t she the devil? That is to say, isn’t she a right smart little woman?

When you want money, let Ma know, and she will send it. She and Pamela are always fussing about change, so I sent them a hundred and twenty quarters yesterday – fiddler’s change enough to last till I get back, I reckon.

Sam.

It is not so difficult to credit Madame Caprell with clairvoyant powers when one has read the letters of Samuel Clemens up to this point. If we may judge by those that have survived, her prophecy of literary distinction for him was hardly warranted by anything she could have known of his past performance. These letters of his youth have a value to-day only because they were written by the man who later was to become Mark Twain. The squibs and skits which he sometimes contributed to the New Orleans papers were bright, perhaps, and pleasing to his pilot associates, but they were without literary value. He was twenty-five years old. More than one author has achieved reputation at that age. Mark Twain was of slower growth; at that age he had not even developed a definite literary ambition: Whatever the basis of Madame Caprell’s prophecy, we must admit that she was a good guesser on several matters, “a right smart little woman,” as Clemens himself phrased it.

She overlooked one item, however: the proximity of the Civil War. Perhaps it was too close at hand for second sight. A little more than two months after the Caprell letter was written Fort Sumter was fired upon. Mask Twain had made his last trip as a pilot up the river to St. Louis – the nation was plunged into a four years’ conflict.

There are no letters of this immediate period. Young Clemens went to Hannibal, and enlisting in a private company, composed mainly of old schoolmates, went soldiering for two rainy, inglorious weeks, by the end of which he had had enough of war, and furthermore had discovered that he was more of a Union abolitionist than a slave-holding secessionist, as he had at first supposed. Convictions were likely to be rather infirm during those early days of the war, and subject to change without notice. Especially was this so in a border State.

III. Letters 1861-62. On The Frontier. Mining Adventures. Journalistic Beginnings

Clemens went from the battle-front to Keokuk, where Orion was preparing to accept the appointment prophesied by Madame Caprell. Orion was a stanch Unionist, and a member of Lincoln’s Cabinet had offered him the secretaryship of the new Territory of Nevada. Orion had accepted, and only needed funds to carry him to his destination. His pilot brother had the funds, and upon being appointed “private” secretary, agreed to pay both passages on the overland stage, which would bear them across the great plains from St. Jo to Carson City. Mark Twain, in Roughing It, has described that glorious journey and the frontier life that followed it. His letters form a supplement of realism to a tale that is more or less fictitious, though marvelously true in color and background. The first bears no date, but it was written not long after their arrival, August 14, 1861. It is not complete, but there is enough of it to give us a very fair picture of Carson City, “a wooden town; its population two thousand souls.”

Part of a letter to Mrs. Jane Clemens, in St. Louis:

(Date not given, but Sept, or Oct., 1861.)

My dear mother, – I hope you will all come out here someday. But I shan’t consent to invite you, until we can receive you in style. But I guess we shall be able to do that, one of these days. I intend that Pamela shall live on Lake Bigler until she can knock a bull down with her fist – say, about three months.

“Tell everything as it is – no better, and no worse.”

Well, “Gold Hill” sells at $5,000 per foot, cash down; “Wild cat” isn’t worth ten cents. The country is fabulously rich in gold, silver, copper, lead, coal, iron, quick silver, marble, granite, chalk, plaster of Paris, (gypsum,) thieves, murderers, desperadoes, ladies, children, lawyers, Christians, Indians, Chinamen, Spaniards, gamblers, sharpers, coyotes (pronounced Ki-yo-ties,) poets, preachers, and jackass rabbits. I overheard a gentleman say, the other day, that it was “the d – dest country under the sun.”—and that comprehensive conception I fully subscribe to. It never rains here, and the dew never falls. No flowers grow here, and no green thing gladdens the eye. The birds that fly over the land carry their provisions with them. Only the crow and the raven tarry with us. Our city lies in the midst of a desert of the purest – most unadulterated, and compromising sand – in which infernal soil nothing but that fag-end of vegetable creation, “sage-brush,” ventures to grow. If you will take a Lilliputian cedar tree for a model, and build a dozen imitations of it with the stiffest article of telegraph wire – set them one foot apart and then try to walk through them, you’ll understand (provided the floor is covered 12 inches deep with sand,) what it is to wander through a sage-brush desert. When crushed, sage brush emits an odor which isn’t exactly magnolia and equally isn’t exactly polecat but is a sort of compromise between the two. It looks a good deal like grease-wood, and is the ugliest plant that was ever conceived of. It is gray in color. On the plains, sage-brush and grease-wood grow about twice as large as the common geranium – and in my opinion they are a very good substitute for that useless vegetable. Grease-wood is a perfect – most perfect imitation in miniature of a live oak tree-barring the color of it. As to the other fruits and flowers of the country, there ain’t any, except “Pulu” or “Tuler,” or what ever they call it, – a species of unpoetical willow that grows on the banks of the Carson – a river, 20 yards wide, knee deep, and so villainously rapid and crooked, that it looks like it had wandered into the country without intending it, and had run about in a bewildered way and got lost, in its hurry to get out again before some thirsty man came along and drank it up. I said we are situated in a flat, sandy desert – true. And surrounded on all sides by such prodigious mountains, that when you gaze at them awhile, – and begin to conceive of their grandeur – and next to feel their vastness expanding your soul – and ultimately find yourself growing and swelling and spreading into a giant – I say when this point is reached, you look disdainfully down upon the insignificant village of Carson, and in that instant you are seized with a burning desire to stretch forth your hand, put the city in your pocket, and walk off with it.

As to churches, I believe they have got a Catholic one here, but like that one the New York fireman spoke of, I believe “they don’t run her now:” Now, although we are surrounded by sand, the greatest part of the town is built upon what was once a very pretty grassy spot; and the streams of pure water that used to poke about it in rural sloth and solitude, now pass through on dusty streets and gladden the hearts of men by reminding them that there is at least something here that hath its prototype among the homes they left behind them. And up “King’s Canon,” (please pronounce canyon, after the manner of the natives,) there are “ranches,” or farms, where they say hay grows, and grass, and beets and onions, and turnips, and other “truck” which is suitable for cows – yes, and even Irish potatoes; also, cabbage, peas and beans.