Dear Mr. Rogers,—I throw
up the sponge. I pull down the flag. Let
us begin on the debts. I cannot bear the weight
any longer. It totally unfits me for work.
I have lost three entire months now. In that
time I have begun twenty magazine articles and books—and
flung every one of them aside in turn. The debts
interfered every time, and took the spirit out of
any work. And yet I have worked like a bond slave
and wasted no time and spared no effort——
Rogers wrote, proposing a plan for beginning immediately
upon the debts. Clemens replied enthusiastically,
and during the next few weeks wrote every few days,
expressing his delight in liquidation.
Extracts
from letters to H. H. Rogers, in New York:
. . . We all delighted with your plan.
Only don’t leave B—out. Apparently
that claim has been inherited by some women—daughters,
no doubt. We don’t want to see them lose
any thing. B----- is an ass, and disgruntled,
but I don’t care for that. I am responsible
for the money and must do the best I can to pay it.....
I am writing hard--writing for the creditors.
Dec.
29. Land we are glad to see those debts diminishing.
For the first time in my life I am getting more pleasure
out of paying money out than pulling it in.
Jan.
2. Since we have begun to pay off the debts
I have abundant peace of mind again—no
sense of burden. Work is become a pleasure again—it
is not labor any longer.
March
7. Mrs. Clemens has been reading the creditors’
letters over and over again and thanks you deeply
for sending them, and says it is the only really happy
day she has had since Susy died.
Letters, 1898, to Howells and
Twichell. Life in Vienna.
Payment of the debts. Assassination
of the Empress
The end of January saw the payment of the last of
Mark Twain’s debts. Once more he stood
free before the world—a world that sounded
his praises. The latter fact rather amused him.
“Honest men must be pretty scarce,” he
said, “when they make so much fuss over even
a defective specimen.” When the end was
in sight Clemens wrote the news to Howells in a letter
as full of sadness as of triumph.
To W. D. Howells,
in New York:
HotelMetropole,
Vienna,
Jan. 22, ’98.
Dear Howells,—Look at those ghastly
figures. I used to write it “Hartford,
1871.” There was no Susy then—there
is no Susy now. And how much lies between—one
long lovely stretch of scented fields, and meadows,
and shady woodlands, and suddenly Sahara! You
speak of the glorious days of that old time—and
they were. It is my quarrel—that
traps like that are set. Susy and Winnie given
us, in miserable sport, and then taken away.
