Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches Page 45
In the working season they do business in Boston sometimes, and a character in The Undiscovered Country takes accurate note of pathetic effects wrought by them upon the aspects of a street of once dignified and elegant homes whose occupants have moved away and left them a prey to neglect and gradual ruin and progressive degradation; a descent which reaches bottom at last, when the street becomes a roost for humble professionals of the faith-cure and fortune-telling sort.
What a queer, melancholy house, what a queer, melancholy street! I don’t think I was ever in a street before where quite so many professional ladies, with English surnames, preferred Madam to Mrs. on their door-plates. And the poor old place has such a desperately conscious air of going to the deuce. Every house seems to wince as you go by, and button itself up to the chin for fear you should find out it had no shirt on,—so to speak. I don’t know what’s the reason, but these material tokens of a social decay afflict me terribly: a tipsy woman isn’t dreadfuler than a haggard old house, that’s once been a home, in a street like this.
Mr. Howells’s pictures are not mere stiff, hard, accurate photographs; they are photographs with feeling in them, and sentiment, photographs taken in a dream, one might say.
As concerns his humor, I will not try to say anything, yet I would try if I had the words that might approximately reach up to its high place. I do not think any one else can play with humorous fancies so gracefully and delicately and deliciously as he does, nor has so many to play with, nor can come so near making them look as if they were doing the playing themselves and he was not aware that they were at it. For they are unobtrusive, and quiet in their ways, and well conducted. His is a humor which flows softly all around about and over and through the mesh of the page, pervasive, refreshing, health-giving, and makes no more show and no more noise than does the circulation of the blood.
There is another thing which is contentingly noticeable in Mr. Howells’s books. That is his “stage directions”—those artifices which authors employ to throw a kind of human naturalness around a scene and a conversation, and help the reader to see the one and get at meanings in the other which might not be perceived if intrusted unexplained to the bare words of the talk. Some authors overdo the stage directions, they elaborate them quite beyond necessity; they spend so much time and take up so much room in telling us how a person said a thing and how he looked and acted when he said it that we get tired and vexed and wish he hadn’t said it at all. Other authors’ directions are brief enough, but it is seldom that the brevity contains either wit or information. Writers of this school go in rags, in the matter of stage directions; the majority of them have nothing in stock but a cigar, a laugh, a blush, and a bursting into tears. In their poverty they work these sorry things to the bone. They say:
“... replied Alfred, flipping the ash from his cigar.” (This explains nothing; it only wastes space.)
“... responded Richard, with a laugh.” (There was nothing to laugh about; there never is. The writer puts it in from habit—automatically; he is paying no attention to his work, or he would see that there is nothing to laugh at; often, when a remark is unusually and poignantly flat and silly, he tries to deceive the reader by enlarging the stage direction and making Richard break into “frenzies of uncontrollable laughter.” This makes the reader sad.)
“... murmured Gladys, blushing.” This poor old shop-worn blush is a tiresome thing. We get so we would rather Gladys would fall out of the book and break her neck than do it again. She is always doing it, and usually irrelevantly. Whenever it is her turn to murmur she hangs out her blush; it is the only thing she’s got. In a little while we hate her, just as we do Richard.
“... repeated Evelyn, bursting into tears.” This kind keep a book damp all the time. They can’t say a thing without crying. They cry so much about nothing that by and by when they have something to cry about they have gone dry; they sob, and fetch nothing; we are not moved. We are only glad.
They gravel me, these stale and overworked stage directions, these carbon films that got burnt out long ago and cannot now carry any faintest thread of light. It would be well if they could be relieved from duty and flung out in the literary back yard to rot and disappear along with the discarded and forgotten “steeds” and “halidomes” and similar stage-properties once so dear to our grandfathers. But I am friendly to Mr. Howells’s stage directions; more friendly to them than to any one else’s, I think. They are done with a competent and discriminating art, and are faithful to the requirements of a stage direction’s proper and lawful office, which is to inform. Sometimes they convey a scene and its conditions so well that I believe I could see the scene and get the spirit and meaning of the accompanying dialogue if some one would read merely the stage directions to me and leave out the talk. For instance, a scene like this, from The Undiscovered Country:
“... and she laid her arms with a beseeching gesture on her father’s shoulder.”
“... she answered, following his gesture with a glance.”
“... she said, laughing nervously.”
“... she asked, turning swiftly upon him that strange, searching glance.”
“... she answered, vaguely.”
“... she reluctantly admitted.”
“... but her voice died wearily away, and she stood looking into his face with puzzled entreaty.”
Mr. Howells does not repeat his forms, and does not need to; he can invent fresh ones without limit. It is mainly the repetition over and over again, by the third-rates, of worn and commonplace and juiceless forms that makes their novels such a weariness and vexation to us, I think. We do not mind one or two deliveries of their wares, but as we turn the pages over and keep on meeting them we presently get tired of them and wish they would do other things for a change:
“... replied Alfred, flipping the ash from his cigar.”
“... responded Richard, with a laugh.”
“... murmured Gladys, blushing.”
“... repeated Evelyn, bursting into tears.”
“... replied the Earl, flipping the ash from his cigar.”
“... responded the undertaker, with a laugh.”
“... murmured the chambermaid, blushing.”
“... repeated the burglar, bursting into tears.”
“... replied the conductor, flipping the ash from his cigar.”
“... responded Arkwright, with a laugh.”
“... murmured the chief of police, blushing.”
“... repeated the housecat, bursting into tears.”
And so on and so on; till at last it ceases to excite. I always notice stage directions, because they fret me and keep me trying to get out of their way, just as the automobiles do. At first; then by and by they become monotonous and I get run over.
Mr. Howells has done much work, and the spirit of it is as beautiful as the make of it. I have held him in admiration and affection so many years that I know by the number of those years that he is old now; but his heart isn’t, nor his pen; and years do not count. Let him have plenty of them: there is profit in them for us.
July 1906
My Literary Shipyard
There has never been a time in the past thirty-five years when my literary shipyard hadn’t two or more half-finished ships on the ways, neglected and baking in the sun; generally there have been three or four. This has an unbusinesslike look, but it was not purposeless, it was intentional. As long as a book would write itself, I was a faithful and interested amanuensis, and my industry did not flag; but the minute that the book tried to shift to my head the labor of contriving its situations, inventing its adventures and conducting its conversations, I put it away and dropped it out of my mind. Then I examined my unfinished properties to see if among them there might not be one whose interest in itself had revived, through a couple of years’ restful idleness, and was ready to take me on again as amanuensis.
It was by accident that I found out that a book is pretty sure to get tired along about the middle, and r
efuse to go on with its work until its powers and its interest should have been refreshed by a rest and its depleted stock of raw materials reinforced by lapse of time. It was when I had reached the middle of Tom Sawyer that I made this invaluable find. At page 400 of my manuscript the story made a sudden and determined halt and refused to proceed another step. Day after day it still refused. I was disappointed, distressed, and immeasurably astonished, for I knew quite well that the tale was not finished, and I could not understand why I was not able to go on with it. The reason was very simple—my tank had run dry; it was empty; the stock of materials in it was exhausted; the story could not go on without materials; it could not be wrought out of nothing. When the manuscript had lain in a pigeon-hole two years I took it out one day, and read the last chapter that I had written. It was then that I made the great discovery that when the tank runs dry you’ve only to leave it alone and it will fill up again, in time, while you are asleep—also while you are at work at other things, and are quite unaware that this unconscious and profitable cerebration is going on. There was plenty of material now, and the book went on and finished itself without any trouble.
Ever since then, when I have been writing a book I have pigeonholed it without misgivings when its tank ran dry, well knowing that it would fill up again without any of my help within the next two or three years, and that then the work of completing it would be simple and easy. The Prince and the Pauper struck work in the middle, because the tank was dry, and I did not touch it again for two years. A dry interval of two years occurred in The Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. A like interval has occurred in the middle of other books of mine. Two similar intervals have occurred in a story of mine called “Which Was It?” In fact, the second interval has gone considerably over time, for it is now four years since that second one intruded itself. I am sure that the tank is full again now, and that I could take up that book and write the other half of it without a break or any lapse of interest—but I sha’n’t do it. The pen is irksome to me. I was born lazy, and dictating has spoiled me. I am quite sure I shall never touch a pen again; therefore that book will remain unfinished—a pity, too, for the idea of it is new and would spring a handsome surprise upon the reader at the end.
There is another unfinished book, which I should probably entitle The Refuge of the Derelicts. It is half finished and will remain so. There is still another one, entitled The Adventure of a Microbe During Three Thousand Years; by a Microbe. It is half finished and will remain so. There is yet another—The Mysterious Stranger. It is more than half finished. I would dearly like to finish it, and it causes me a real pang to reflect that it is not to be. These several tanks are full now, and those books would go gaily along and complete themselves if I would hold the pen, but I am tired of the pen.
There was another of these half-finished stories. I carried it as far as thirty-eight thousand words four years ago, then destroyed it for fear I might some day finish it. Huck Finn was the teller of the story, and of course Tom Sawyer and Jim were the heroes of it. But I believed that that trio had done work enough in this world and were entitled to a permanent rest.
In Rouen in ‘93 I destroyed fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of manuscript; and in Paris, in the beginning of ’94, I destroyed ten thousand dollars’ worth—I mean, estimated as magazine stuff. I was afraid to keep those piles of manuscript on hand, lest I be tempted to sell them, for I was fairly well persuaded that they were not up to the standard. Ordinarily there would have been no temptation present, and I would not think of publishing doubtful stuff—but I was heavily in debt then, and the temptation to mend my condition was so strong that I burned the manuscript to get rid of it. My wife not only made no objection, but encouraged me to do it, for she cared more for my reputation than for any other concern of ours. About that time she helped me put another temptation behind me. This was an offer of sixteen thousand dollars a year, for five years, to let my name be used as editor of a humorous periodical. I praise her for furnishing her help in resisting that temptation, for it is her due. There was no temptation about it, in fact, but she would have offered her help just the same if there had been one. I can conceive of many wild and extravagant things when my imagination is in good repair, but I can conceive of nothing quite so wild and extravagant as the idea of my accepting the editorship of a humorous periodical. I should regard that as the saddest of all occupations. If I should undertake it I should have to add to it the occupation of undertaker, to relieve it in some degree of its cheerlessness.
There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground, year after year, and will not be persuaded. It isn’t because the book is not there and worth being written—it is only because the right form for the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story, and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself. You may try a dozen wrong forms, but in each case you will not get very far before you discover that you have not found the right one—then that story will always stop and decline to go any farther. In the story of Joan of Arc I made six wrong starts, and each time that I offered the result to Mrs. Clemens she responded with the same deadly criticism—silence. She didn’t say a word, but her silence spoke with the voice of thunder. When at last I found the right form I recognized at once that it was the right one, and I knew what she would say. She said it, without doubt or hesitation.
In the course of twelve years I made six attempts to tell a simple little story which I knew would tell itself in four hours if I could ever find the right starting-point. I scored six failures; then one day in London I offered the text of the story to Robert McClure, and proposed that he publish that text in the magazine and offer a prize to the person who should tell it best. I became greatly interested and went on talking upon the text for half an hour; then he said:
“You have told the story yourself. You have nothing to do but put it on paper just as you have told it.”
I recognized that this was true. At the end of four hours it was finished, and quite to my satisfaction. So it took twelve years and four hours to produce that little bit of a story, which I have called “The Death Wafer.”
To start right is certainly an essential. I have proved this too many times to doubt it. Twenty-five or thirty years ago I began a story which was to turn upon the marvels of mental telegraphy. A man was to invent a scheme whereby he could synchronize two minds, thousands of miles apart, and enable them to freely converse together through the air without the aid of a wire. Four times I started it in the wrong way, and it wouldn’t go. Three times I discovered my mistake after writing about a hundred pages. I discovered it the fourth time when I had written four hundred pages—then I gave it up and put the whole thing in the fire.
(1922)
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1 Actually, Twain was mistaken in his belief that the tale had its origins in Boetia. As he was to learn later, the ancient Greek tale that Professor Van Dyke mentioned and that was published in the textbook Van Dyke sent Twain was in fact his own yarn. It had been adapted by Arthur Sidgwick for inclusion in his volume An Introduction to Greek Composition. At the time he wrote the “Private History of the ‘Jumping Frog’ Story,” however, Twain was acting in good faith and genuinely happy to discover the story had ancient antecedents.