Don’t answer—I spare the sick.
Letters, 1882, mainly to Howells.
Wasted fury. Old scenes revisited.
The Mississippi book
A man of Mark Twain’s profession
and prominence must necessarily be the subject
of much newspaper comment. Jest, compliment,
criticism —none of these things disturbed
him, as a rule. He was pleased that his
books should receive favorable notices by men whose
opinion he respected, but he was not grieved
by adverse expressions. Jests at his expense,
if well written, usually amused him; cheap jokes only
made him sad; but sarcasms and innuendoes were likely
to enrage him, particularly if he believed them
prompted by malice. Perhaps among all the
letters he ever wrote, there is none more characteristic
than this confession of violence and eagerness for
reprisal, followed by his acknowledgment of error
and a manifest appreciation of his own weakness.
It should be said that Mark Twain and Whitelaw
Reid were generally very good friends, and perhaps
for the moment this fact seemed to magnify the
offense.
To W. D. Howells,
in Boston:
Hartford,
Jan. 28 ’82. My dear Howells,—Nobody
knows better than I, that there are times when swearing
cannot meet the emergency. How sharply I feel
that, at this moment. Not a single profane word
has issued from my lips this mornin —I
have not even had the impulse to swear, so wholly ineffectual
would swearing have manifestly been, in the circumstances.
But I will tell you about it.
About three weeks ago, a sensitive friend, approaching
his revelation cautiously, intimated that the N. Y.
Tribune was engaged in a kind of crusade against me.
This seemed a higher compliment than I deserved; but
no matter, it made me very angry. I asked many
questions, and gathered, in substance, this:
Since Reid’s return from Europe, the Tribune
had been flinging sneers and brutalities at me with
such persistent frequency “as to attract general
remark.” I was an angered—which
is just as good an expression, I take it, as an hungered.
Next, I learned that Osgood, among the rest of the
“general,” was worrying over these constant
and pitiless attacks. Next came the testimony
of another friend, that the attacks were not merely
“frequent,” but “almost daily.”
Reflect upon that: “Almost daily”
insults, for two months on a stretch. What would
you have done?
As for me, I did the thing which was the natural thing
for me to do, that is, I set about contriving a plan
to accomplish one or the other of two things:
1. Force a peace; or 2. Get revenge.
When I got my plan finished, it pleased me marvelously.
It was in six or seven sections, each section to
be used in its turn and by itself; the assault to begin
at once with No. 1, and the rest to follow, one after
the other, to keep the communication open while I
wrote my biography of Reid. I meant to wind
up with this latter great work, and then dismiss the
subject for good.
