All through this Vienna period (as during several years before and after) Henry Rogers was in full charge of Mark Twain's American affairs. Clemens wrote him almost daily, and upon every matter, small or large, that developed, or seemed likely to develop, in his undertakings. The complications growing out of the type machine and Webster failures were endless.—[“I hope to goodness I sha'n't get you into any more jobs such as the type-setter and Webster business and the Bliss-Harper campaigns have been. Oh, they were sickeners.” (Clemens to Rogers, November 15, 1898.)]—The disposal of the manuscripts alone was work for a literary agent. The consideration of proposed literary, dramatic, and financial schemes must have required not only thought, but time. Yet Mr. Rogers comfortably and genially took care of all these things and his own tremendous affairs besides, and apologized sometimes when he felt, perhaps, that he had wavered a little in his attention. Clemens once wrote him:
Oh, dear me, you don't have to excuse yourself for neglecting me;
you are entitled to the highest praise for being so limitlessly
patient and good in bothering with my confused affairs, and pulling
me out of a hole every little while.
It makes me lazy, the way that Steel stock is rising. If I were
lazier—like Rice—nothing could keep me from retiring. But I work
right along, like a poor person. I shall figure up the rise, as the
figures come in, and push up my literary prices accordingly, till I
get my literature up to where nobody can afford it but the family.
(N. B.—Look here, are you charging storage? I am not going to
stand that, you know.) Meantime, I note those encouraging illogical
words of yours about my not worrying because I am to be rich when I
am 68; why didn't you have Cheiro make it 90, so that I could have
plenty of room?
It would be jolly good if some one should succeed in making a play
out of “Is He Dead?”—[Clemens himself had attempted to make a play
out of his story “Is He Dead?” and had forwarded the MS. to Rogers.
Later he wrote: “Put 'Is He Dead?' in the fire. God will bless you.
I too. I started to convince myself that I could write a play, or
couldn't. I'm convinced. Nothing can disturb that conviction.”]
—From what I gather from dramatists, he will have his hands
something more than full—but let him struggle, let him struggle.
Is there some way, honest or otherwise, by which you can get a copy
of Mayo's play, “Pudd'nhead Wilson,” for me? There is a capable
young Austrian here who saw it in New York and wants to translate it
and see if he can stage it here. I don't think these people here
would understand it or take to it, but he thinks it will pay us to
try.
A couple of London dramatists want to bargain with me for the right
to make a high comedy out of the “Million-Pound Note.” Barkis is
willing.
This is but one of the briefer letters. Most of them were much longer and of more elaborate requirements. Also they overflowed with the gaiety of good-fortune and with gratitude. From Vienna in 1899 Clemens wrote:
Why, it is just splendid! I have nothing to do but sit around and
watch you set the hen and hatch out those big broods and make my
living for me. Don't you wish you had somebody to do the same for
you?—a magician who can turn steel and copper and Brooklyn gas into
gold. I mean to raise your wages again—I begin to feel that I can
afford it.
I think the hen ought to have a name; she must be called Unberufen.
That is a German word which is equivalent to it “sh! hush' don't let
the spirits hear you!” The superstition is that if you happen to
let fall any grateful jubilation over good luck that you've had or
are hoping to have you must shut square off and say “Unberufen!” and
knock wood. The word drives the evil spirits away; otherwise they
would divine your joy or your hopes and go to work and spoil your
game. Set her again—do!
Oh, look here! You are just like everybody; merely because I am
literary you think I'm a commercial somnambulist, and am not
watching you with all that money in your hands. Bless you, I've got
a description of you and a photograph in every police-office in
Christendom, with the remark appended: “Look out for a handsome,
tall, slender young man with a gray mustache and courtly manners and
an address well calculated to deceive, calling himself by the name
of Smith.” Don't you try to get away—it won't work.
From the note-book:
Midnight. At Miss Bailie's home for English governesses. Two
comedies & some songs and ballads. Was asked to speak & did it.
(And rung in the “Mexican Plug.”)
A Voice. “The Princess Hohenlohe wishes you to write on her fan.”
“With pleasure—where is she?”
“At your elbow.”
I turned & took the fan & said, “Your Highness's place is in a fairy
tale; & by & by I mean to write that tale,” whereat she laughed a
happy girlish laugh, & we moved through the crowd to get to a
writing-table—& to get in a strong light so that I could see her
better. Beautiful little creature, with the dearest friendly ways &
sincerities & simplicities & sweetnesses—the ideal princess of the
fairy tales. She is 16 or 17, I judge.
Mental Telegraphy. Mrs. Clemens was pouring out the coffee this
morning; I unfolded the Neue Freie Presse, began to read a paragraph
& said:
“They've found a new way to tell genuine gems from false——”
“By the Roentgen ray!” she exclaimed.
That is what I was going to say. She had not seen the paper, &
there had been no talk about the ray or gems by herself or by me.
It was a plain case of telegraphy.
No man that ever lived has ever done a thing to please God
—primarily. It was done to please himself, then God next.
The Being who to me is the real God is the one who created this
majestic universe & rules it. He is the only originator, the only
originator of thoughts; thoughts suggested from within, not from
without; the originator of colors & of all their possible
combinations; of forces & the laws that govern them; of forms &
shapes of all forms-man has never invented a new one. He is the
only originator. He made the materials of all things; He made the
laws by which, & by which only, man may combine them into the
machines & other things which outside influences suggest to him. He
made character—man can portray it but not “create” it, for He is
the only creator.
He, is the perfect artisan, the perfect artist.
CCVI. A SUMMER IN SWEDEN
A part of the tragedy of their trip around the world had been the development in Jean Clemens of a malady which time had identified as epilepsy. The loss of one daughter and the invalidism of another was the burden which this household had now to bear. Of course they did not for a moment despair of a cure for the beautiful girl who had been so cruelly stricken, and they employed any agent that promised relief.
They decided now to go to London, in the hope of obtaining beneficial treatment. They left Vienna at the end of May, followed to the station by a great crowd, who loaded their compartment with flowers and lingered on the platform waving and cheering, some of them in tears, while the train pulled away. Leschetizky himself was among them, and Wilbrandt, the author of the Master of Palmyra, and many artists and other notables, “most of whom,” writes Mrs. Clemens, “we shall probably never see again in this world.”