The hideous news of Webster & Co.'s failure reached me by cable on
Thursday, and Friday morning Galignani's Messenger had a squib about
it. Of course I knew it was likely to come, but I had great hope
that it would be in some way averted. Mr. Rogers was so sure there
was no way out but failure that I suppose it was true. But I have a
perfect horror and heart-sickness over it. I cannot get away from
the feeling that business failure means disgrace. I suppose it
always will mean that to me. We have put a great deal of money into
the concern, and perhaps there would have been nothing but to keep
putting it in and losing it. We certainly now have not much to
lose. We might have mortgaged the house; that was the only thing I
could think of to do. Mr. Clemens felt that there would never be
any end, and perhaps he was right. At any rate, I know that he was
convinced that it was the only thing, because when he went back he
promised me that if it was possible to save the thing he would do so
if only on account of my sentiment in the matter.
Sue, if you were to see me you would see that I have grown old very
fast during this last year. I have wrinkled.
Most of the time I want to lie down and cry. Everything seems to me
so impossible. I do not make things go very well, and I feel that
my life is an absolute and irretrievable failure. Perhaps I am
thankless, but I so often feel that I should like to give it up and
die. However, I presume that if I could have the opportunity I
should at once desire to live.
Clemens now hurried back to Paris, arriving about the middle of May, his second trip in two months. Scarcely had he got the family settled at La Bourboule-les-Bains, a quiet watering-place in the southern part of France, when a cable from Mr. Rogers, stating that the typesetter was perfected, made him decide to hurry back to America to assist in securing the new fortune. He did not go, however. Rogers wrote that the machine had been installed in the Times-Herald office, Chicago, for a long and thorough trial. There would be plenty of time, and Clemens concluded to rest with his family at La Bourboule-les-Bains. Later in the summer they went to Etretat, where he settled down to work.
CLXXXIX. AN EVENTFUL YEAR ENDS
That summer (July, '94.) the 'North American Review' published “In Defense of Harriet Shelley,” a rare piece of literary criticism and probably the most human and convincing plea ever made for that injured, ill-fated woman. An admirer of Shelley's works, Clemens could not resist taking up the defense of Shelley's abandoned wife. It had become the fashion to refer to her slightingly, and to suggest that she had not been without blame for Shelley's behavior. A Shelley biography by Professor Dowden, Clemens had found particularly irritating. In the midst of his tangle of the previous year he had paused to give it attention. There were times when Mark Twain wrote without much sequence, digressing this way and that, as his fancy led him, charmingly and entertainingly enough, with no large, logical idea. He pursued no such method in this instance. The paper on Harriet Shelley is a brief as direct and compact and cumulative as could have been prepared by a trained legal mind of the highest order, and it has the added advantage of being the utterance of a human soul voicing an indignation inspired by human suffering and human wrong. By no means does it lack humor, searching and biting sarcasm. The characterization of Professor Dowden's Life of Shelley as a “literary cake-walk” is a touch which only Mark Twain could have laid on. Indeed, the “Defense of Harriet Shelly,” with those early chapters of Joan at Florence, maybe counted as the beginning for Mark Twain of a genuine literary renaissance. It was to prove a remarkable period less voluminous than the first, but even more choice, containing, as it would, besides Joan and the Shelley article, the rest of that remarkable series collected now as Literary Essays; the Hadleyburg story; “Was it Heaven or Hell?”; those masterly articles on our national policies; closing at last with those exquisite memories, in his final days.
The summer of 1894 found Mark Twain in the proper frame of mind for literary work. He was no longer in a state of dread. At Etretat, a watering-place on the French coast, he returned eagerly to the long-neglected tale of Joan—“a book which writes itself,” he wrote Mr. Rogers—a tale which tells itself; I merely have to hold the pen.” Etretat, originally a fishing-village, was less pretentious than to-day, and the family had taken a small furnished cottage a little way back from the coast—a charming place, and a cheap one—as became their means. Clemens worked steadily at Etretat for more than a month, finishing the second part of his story, then went over to Rouen to visit the hallowed precincts where Joan dragged out those weary months that brought her to the stake. Susy Clemens was taken ill at Rouen, and they lingered in that ancient city, wandering about its venerable streets, which have been changed but slowly by the centuries, and are still full of memories.
They returned to Paris at length—to the Brighton; their quarters of the previous winter—but presently engaged for the winter the studio home of the artist Pomroy at 169 rue de l'Universite, beyond the Seine. Mark Twain wrote of it once:
It was a lovely house; large, rambling, quaint, charmingly furnished
and decorated, built upon no particular plan, delightfully uncertain
and full of surprises. You were always getting lost in it, and
finding nooks and corners which you did not know were there and
whose presence you had not suspected before. It was built by a rich
French artist, and he had also furnished it and decorated it
himself. The studio was coziness itself. With us it served as a
drawing-room, sitting-room, living-room, dancing-room—we used it
for everything. We couldn't get enough of it. It is odd that it
should have been so cozy, for it was 40 feet long, 40 feet high, and
30 feet wide, with a vast fireplace on, each side, in the middle,
and a musicians' gallery at one end.
Mrs. Clemens had hoped to return to America, to their Hartford home. That was her heart's desire—to go back once more to their old life and fireside, to forget all this period of exile and wandering. Her letters were full of her home-longing; her three years of absence seemed like an eternity.
In its way, the Pomroy house was the best substitute for home they had found. Its belongings were of the kind she loved. Susy had better health, and her husband was happy in his work. They had much delightful and distinguished company. Her letters tell of these attractive things, and of their economies to make their income reach.