The outlook was not a pleasant one.To Mr.Rogers he wrote: "Isha'n't be able to stand on the platform before we start west.Isha'n't get a single chance to practice my reading; but will have to appear in Cleveland without the essential preparation.Nothing in this world can save it from being a shabby, poor disgusting performance.I've got to stand; I can't do it and talk to a house, and how in the nation am I going to sit? Land of Goshen, it's this night week! Pray for me."The opening at Cleveland July 15th appears not to have been much of a success, though from another reason, one that doubtless seemed amusing to him later.
To H.H.Rogers, in New York City:
(Forenoon)
CLEVELAND, July 16, '95.
DEAR MR.ROGERS,-- Had a roaring success at the Elmira reformatory Sunday night.But here, last night, I suffered defeat--There were a couple of hundred little boys behind me on the stage, on a lofty tier of benches which made them the most conspicuous objects in the house.And there was nobody to watch them or keep them quiet.Why, with their scufflings and horse-play and noise, it was just a menagerie.Besides, a concert of amateurs had been smuggled into the program (to precede me,) and their families and friends (say ten per cent of the audience) kept encoring them and they always responded.So it was 20 minutes to 9 before I got the platform in front of those 2,600 people who had paid a dollar apiece for a chance to go to hell in this fashion.
I got started magnificently, but inside of half an hour the scuffling boys had the audience's maddened attention and I saw it was a gone case;so I skipped a third of my program and quit.The newspapers are kind, but between you and me it was a defeat.There ain't going to be any more concerts at my lectures.I care nothing for this defeat, because it was not my fault.My first half hour showed that I had the house, and Icould have kept it if I hadn't been so handicapped.
Yours sincerely, S.L.CLEMENS.
P.S.Had a satisfactory time at Petoskey.Crammed the house and turned away a crowd.We had $548 in the house, which was $300 more than it had ever had in it before.I believe I don't care to have a talk go off better than that one did.
Mark Twain, on this long tour, was accompanied by his wife and his daughter Clara--Susy and Jean Clemens remaining with their aunt at Quarry Farm.The tour was a financial success from the start.
By the time they were ready to sail from Vancouver five thousand dollars had been remitted to Mr.Rogers against that day of settlement when the debts of Webster & Co.were to be paid.Perhaps it should be stated here that a legal settlement had been arranged on a basis of fifty cents on the dollar, but neither Clemens nor his wife consented to this as final.They would pay in full.
They sailed from Vancouver August 23, 1895.About the only letter of this time is an amusing note to Rudyard Kipling, written at the moment of departure.
To Rudyard Kipling, in England:
August, 1895.
DEAR KIPLING,--It is reported that you are about to visit India.This has moved me to journey to that far country in order that I may unload from my conscience a debt long due to you.Years ago you came from India to Elmira to visit me, as you said at the time.It has always been my purpose to return that visit and that great compliment some day.I shall arrive next January and you must be ready.I shall come riding my ayah with his tusks adorned with silver bells and ribbons and escorted by a troop of native howdahs richly clad and mounted upon a herd of wild bungalows; and you must be on hand with a few bottles of ghee, for Ishall be thirsty.
Affectionately, S.L.CLEMENS.
Clemens, platforming in Australia, was too busy to write letters.
Everywhere he was welcomed by great audiences, and everywhere lavishly entertained.He was beset by other carbuncles, but would seem not to have been seriously delayed by them.A letter to his old friend Twichell carries the story.
To Rev.Jos.H.Twichell, in Hartford:
FRANK MOELLER'S MASONIC HOTEL, NAPIER, NEW ZEALAND, November 29, '95.
DEAR JOE,--Your welcome letter of two months and five days ago has just arrived, and finds me in bed with another carbuncle.It is No.3.Not a serious one this time.I lectured last night without inconvenience, but the doctors thought best to forbid to-night's lecture.My second one kept me in bed a week in Melbourne.
.....We are all glad it is you who is to write the article, it delights us all through.
I think it was a good stroke of luck that knocked me on my back here at Napier, instead of some hotel in the centre of a noisy city.Here we have the smooth and placidly-complaining sea at our door, with nothing between us and it but 20 yards of shingle--and hardly a suggestion of life in that space to mar it or make a noise.Away down here fifty-five degrees south of the Equator this sea seems to murmur in an unfamiliar tongue--a foreign tongue--tongue bred among the ice-fields of the Antarctic--a murmur with a note of melancholy in it proper to the vast unvisited solitudes it has come from.It was very delicious and solacing to wake in the night and find it still pulsing there.I wish you were here--land, but it would be fine!
Livy and Clara enjoy this nomadic life pretty well; certainly better than one could have expected they would.They have tough experiences, in the way of food and beds and frantic little ships, but they put up with the worst that befalls with heroic endurance that resembles contentment.
No doubt I shall be on the platform next Monday.A week later we shall reach Wellington; talk there 3 nights, then sail back to Australia.We sailed for New Zealand October 30.
Day before yesterday was Livy's birthday (under world time), and tomorrow will be mine.I shall be 60--no thanks for it.
I and the others send worlds and worlds of love to all you dear ones.
MARK.
