The year closed gloomily enough.
The type-setter seemed to be perfected, but
capital for its manufacture was not forthcoming.
The publishing business of Charles L. Webster
& Co. was returning little or no profit.
Clemens’s mother had died in Keokuk at the end
of October, and his wife’s mother, in Elmira
a month later. Mark Twain, writing a short
business letter to his publishing manager, Fred
J. Ball, closed it: “Merry Xmas to you!—and
I wish to God I could have one myself before
I die.”
Letters, 1891, to Howells, Mrs.
Clemens and others. Return
to literature. American claimant.
Leaving Hartford. Europe.
Down the Rhine
Clemens was still not without hope in the machine,
at the beginning of the new year (1891) but it was
a hope no longer active, and it presently became a
moribund. Jones, on about the middle of February,
backed out altogether, laying the blame chiefly on
Mackay and the others, who, he said, had decided not
to invest. Jones “let his victim down easy”
with friendly words, but it was the end, for the present,
at least, of machine financiering.
It was also the end of Mark Twain’s capital.
His publishing business was not good. It was
already in debt and needing more money. There
was just one thing for him to do and he did it at
once, not stopping to cry over spilt milk, but with
good courage and the old enthusiasm that never failed
him, he returned to the trade of authorship.
He dug out half-finished articles and stories, finished
them and sold them, and within a week after the Jones
collapse he was at work on a novel based an the old
Sellers idea, which eight years before he and Howells
had worked into a play. The brief letter in
which he reported this news to Howells bears no marks
of depression, though the writer of it was in his
fifty-sixth year; he was by no means well, and his
financial prospects were anything but golden.
To W. D. Howells,
in Boston:
Hartford,
Feb. 24, ’91 Dear Howells,—Mrs.
Clemens has been sick abed for near two weeks, but
is up and around the room now, and gaining.
I don’t know whether she has written Mrs. Howells
or not—I only know she was going to—and
will yet, if she hasn’t. We are promising
ourselves a whole world of pleasure in the visit,
and you mustn’t dream of disappointing us.
Does this item stir an interest in you? Began
a novel four days ago, and this moment finished chapter
four. Title of the book
“Colonel
Mulberry Sellers.
American Claimant
Of the
Great Earldom of Rossmore’
in the
Peerage of Great Britain.”
Ys
Ever
mark.
Probably Mark Twain did not return to literary work
reluctantly. He had always enjoyed writing and
felt now that he was equipped better than ever for
authorship, at least so far as material was concerned.
There exists a fragmentary copy of a letter to some
unknown correspondent, in which he recites his qualifications.
It bears evidence of having been written just at
this time and is of unusual interest at this point.
