DEAR JOHN,--Your letter of June i9 arrived just one day after we ought to have been in Elmira, N.Y.for the summer: but at the last moment the baby was seized with scarlet fever.I had to telegraph and countermand the order for special sleeping car; and in fact we all had to fly around in a lively way and undo the patient preparations of weeks--rehabilitate the dismantled house, unpack the trunks, and so on.A couple of days later, the eldest child was taken down with so fierce a fever that she was soon delirious--not scarlet fever, however.Next, I myself was stretched on the bed with three diseases at once, and all of them fatal.
But I never did care for fatal diseases if I could only have privacy and room to express myself concerning them.
We gave early warning, and of course nobody has entered the house in all this time but one or two reckless old bachelors--and they probably wanted to carry the disease to the children of former flames of theirs.The house is still in quarantine and must remain so for a week or two yet--at which time we are hoping to leave for Elmira.
Always your friend S.L.CLEMENS.
By the end of summer Howells was in Europe, and Clemens, in Elmira, was trying to finish his Mississippi book, which was giving him a great deal of trouble.It was usually so with his non-fiction books; his interest in them was not cumulative; he was prone to grow weary of them, while the menace of his publisher's contract was maddening.Howells's letters, meant to be comforting, or at least entertaining, did not always contribute to his peace of mind.The Library of American Humor which they had planned was an added burden.Before sailing, Howells had written: "Do you suppose you can do your share of the reading at Elmira, while you are writing at the Mississippi book?"In a letter from London, Howells writes of the good times he is having over there with Osgood, Hutton, John Hay, Aldrich, and Alma Tadema, excursioning to Oxford, feasting, especially "at the Mitre Tavern, where they let you choose your dinner from the joints hanging from the rafter, and have passages that you lose yourself in every time you try to go to your room.....Couldn't you and Mrs.
Clemens step over for a little while?.....We have seen lots of nice people and have been most pleasantly made of; but I would rather have you smoke in my face, and talk for half a day just for pleasure, than to go to the best house or club in London." The reader will gather that this could not be entirely soothing to a man shackled by a contract and a book that refused to come to an end.
To W.D.Howells, in London:
HARTFORD, CONN.Oct 30, 1882.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I do not expect to find you, so I shan't spend many words on you to wind up in the perdition of some European dead-letter office.I only just want to say that the closing installments of the story are prodigious.All along I was afraid it would be impossible for you to keep up so splendidly to the end; but you were only, I see now, striking eleven.It is in these last chapters that you struck twelve.
Go on and write; you can write good books yet, but you can never match this one.And speaking of the book, I inclose something which has been happening here lately.
We have only just arrived at home, and I have not seen Clark on our matters.I cannot see him or any one else, until I get my book finished.
The weather turned cold, and we had to rush home, while I still lacked thirty thousand words.I had been sick and got delayed.I am going to write all day and two thirds of the night, until the thing is done, or break down at it.The spur and burden of the contract are intolerable to me.I can endure the irritation of it no longer.I went to work at nine o'clock yesterday morning, and went to bed an hour after midnight.
Result of the day, (mainly stolen from books, tho' credit given,) 9500words, so I reduced my burden by one third in one day.It was five days work in one.I have nothing more to borrow or steal; the rest must all be written.It is ten days work, and unless something breaks, it will be finished in five.We all send love to you and Mrs.Howells, and all the family.
Yours as ever, MARK.
