LETTERS, 1882, MAINLY TO HOWELLS.WASTED FURY.OLD SCENES REVISITED.
THE MISSISSIPPI BOOK
A man of Mark Twain's profession and prominence must necessarily be the subject of much newspaper comment.Jest, compliment, criticism --none of these things disturbed him, as a rule.He was pleased that his books should receive favorable notices by men whose opinion he respected, but he was not grieved by adverse expressions.Jests at his expense, if well written, usually amused him; cheap jokes only made him sad; but sarcasms and innuendoes were likely to enrage him, particularly if he believed them prompted by malice.Perhaps among all the letters he ever wrote, there is none more characteristic than this confession of violence and eagerness for reprisal, followed by his acknowledgment of error and a manifest appreciation of his own weakness.It should be said that Mark Twain and Whitelaw Reid were generally very good friends, and perhaps for the moment this fact seemed to magnify the offense.
To W.D.Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Jan.28 '82.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Nobody knows better than I, that there are times when swearing cannot meet the emergency.How sharply I feel that, at this moment.Not a single profane word has issued from my lips this mornin --I have not even had the impulse to swear, so wholly ineffectual would swearing have manifestly been, in the circumstances.But I will tell you about it.
About three weeks ago, a sensitive friend, approaching his revelation cautiously, intimated that the N.Y.Tribune was engaged in a kind of crusade against me.This seemed a higher compliment than I deserved; but no matter, it made me very angry.I asked many questions, and gathered, in substance, this: Since Reid's return from Europe, the Tribune had been flinging sneers and brutalities at me with such persistent frequency "as to attract general remark." I was an angered--which is just as good an expression, I take it, as an hungered.Next, I learned that Osgood, among the rest of the "general," was worrying over these constant and pitiless attacks.Next came the testimony of another friend, that the attacks were not merely "frequent," but "almost daily." Reflect upon that: "Almost daily" insults, for two months on a stretch.What would you have done?
As for me, I did the thing which was the natural thing for me to do, that is, I set about contriving a plan to accomplish one or the other of two things: 1.Force a peace; or 2.Get revenge.When I got my plan finished, it pleased me marvelously.It was in six or seven sections, each section to be used in its turn and by itself; the assault to begin at once with No.1, and the rest to follow, one after the other, to keep the communication open while I wrote my biography of Reid.I meant to wind up with this latter great work, and then dismiss the subject for good.
Well, ever since then I have worked day and night making notes and collecting and classifying material.I've got collectors at work in England.I went to New York and sat three hours taking evidence while a stenographer set it down.As my labors grew, so also grew my fascination.Malice and malignity faded out of me--or maybe I drove them out of me, knowing that a malignant book would hurt nobody but the fool who wrote it.I got thoroughly in love with this work; for I saw that Iwas going to write a book which the very devils and angels themselves would delight to read, and which would draw disapproval from nobody but the hero of it, (and Mrs.Clemens, who was bitter against the whole thing.) One part of my plan was so delicious that I had to try my hand on it right away, just for the luxury of it.I set about it, and sure enough it panned out to admiration.I wrote that chapter most carefully, and I couldn't find a fault with it.(It was not for the biography--no, it belonged to an immediate and deadlier project.)Well, five days ago, this thought came into my mind(from Mrs.Clemens's):
"Wouldn't it be well to make sure that the attacks have been 'almost daily'?--and to also make sure that their number and character will justify me in doing what I am proposing to do?"I at once set a man to work in New York to seek out and copy every unpleasant reference which had been made to me in the Tribune from Nov.
1st to date.On my own part I began to watch the current numbers, for Ihad subscribed for the paper.
The result arrived from my New York man this morning.O, what a pitiable wreck of high hopes! The "almost daily" assaults, for two months, consist of--1.Adverse criticism of P.& P.from an enraged idiot in the London Atheneum; 2.Paragraph from some indignant Englishman in the Pall Mall Gazette who pays me the vast compliment of gravely rebuking some imaginary ass who has set me up in the neighborhood of Rabelais; 3.Aremark of the Tribune's about the Montreal dinner, touched with an almost invisible satire; 4.A remark of the Tribune's about refusal of Canadian copyright, not complimentary, but not necessarily malicious--and of course adverse criticism which is not malicious is a thing which none but fools irritate themselves about.
There--that is the prodigious bugaboo, in its entirety! Can you conceive of a man's getting himself into a sweat over so diminutive a provocation?
I am sure I can't.What the devil can those friends of mine have been thinking about, to spread these 3 or 4 harmless things out into two months of daily sneers and affronts? The whole offense, boiled down, amounts to just this: one uncourteous remark of the Tribune about my book--not me between Nov.1 and Dec.20; and a couple of foreign criticisms (of my writings, not me,) between Nov.1 and Jan.26! If Ican't stand that amount of friction, I certainly need reconstruction.
Further boiled down, this vast outpouring of malice amounts to simply this: one jest from the Tribune (one can make nothing more serious than that out of it.) One jest--and that is all; for the foreign criticisms do not count, they being matters of news, and proper for publication in anybody's newspaper.