LETTERS 1897. LONDON, SWITZERLAND, VIENNA
Mark Twain worked steadily on his book that sad winter
and managed to keep the gloom out of his chapters,
though it is noticeable that ‘Following the
Equator’ is more serious than his other books
of travel. He wrote few letters, and these only
to his three closest friends, Howells, Twichell, and
Rogers. In the letter to Twichell, which follows,
there is mention of two unfinished manuscripts which
he expects to resume. One of these was a dream
story, enthusiastically begun, but perhaps with insufficient
plot to carry it through, for it never reached conclusion.
He had already tried it in one or two forms and would
begin it again presently. The identity of the
other tale is uncertain.
To Rev. J. H. Twichell,
in Hartford:
London,
Jan. 19, ’97. Dear Joe,—Do
I want you to write to me? Indeed I do.
I do not want most people to write, but I do want
you to do it. The others break my heart, but
you will not. You have a something divine in
you that is not in other men. You have the touch
that heals, not lacerates. And you know the
secret places of our hearts. You know our life—the
outside of it—as the others do—and
the inside of it—which they do not.
You have seen our whole voyage. You have seen
us go to sea, a cloud of sail—and the flag
at the peak; and you see us now, chartless, adrift—derelicts;
battered, water-logged, our sails a ruck of rags, our
pride gone. For it is gone. And there
is nothing in its place. The vanity of life was
all we had, and there is no more vanity left in us.
We are even ashamed of that we had; ashamed that
we trusted the promises of life and builded high—to
come to this!
I did know that Susy was part of us; I did not know
that she could go away; I did not know that she could
go away, and take our lives with her, yet leave our
dull bodies behind. And I did not know what she
was. To me she was but treasure in the bank;
the amount known, the need to look at it daily, handle
it, weigh it, count it, realize it, not necessary;
and now that I would do it, it is too late; they tell
me it is not there, has vanished away in a night,
the bank is broken, my fortune is gone, I am a pauper.
How am I to comprehend this? How am I to have
it? Why am I robbed, and who is benefited?
Ah, well, Susy died at home. She had that privilege.
Her dying eyes rested upon nothing that was strange
to them, but only upon things which they had known
and loved always and which had made her young years
glad; and she had you, and Sue, and Katy, and John,
and Ellen. This was happy fortune—I
am thankful that it was vouchsafed to her. If
she had died in another house-well, I think I could
not have borne that. To us, our house was not
unsentient matter—it had a heart, and a
soul, and eyes to see us with; and approvals, and
solicitudes, and deep sympathies; it was of us, and
we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and
in the peace of its benediction. We never came
home from an absence that its face did not light up
and speak out its eloquent welcome—and we
could not enter it unmoved. And could we now,
oh, now, in spirit we should enter it unshod.
