第122章

The weather continued bad in France and they left there in July to find it little better in England.They had planned a journey to Scotland to visit Doctor Brown, whose health was not very good.In after years Mark Twain blamed himself harshly for not making the trip, which he declared would have meant so much to Mrs.Clemens.

He had forgotten by that time the real reasons for not going--the continued storms and uncertainty of trains (which made it barely possible for them to reach Liverpool in time for their sailing-date), and with characteristic self-reproach vowed that only perversity and obstinacy on his part had prevented the journey to Scotland.From Liverpool, on the eve of sailing, he sent Doctor Brown a good-by word.

To Dr.John Brown, in Edinburgh:

WASHINGTON HOTEL, LIME STREET, LIVERPOOL.

Aug.(1879)

MY DEAR MR.BROWN,--During all the 15 months we have been spending on the continent, we have been promising ourselves a sight of you as our latest and most prized delight in a foreign land--but our hope has failed, our plan has miscarried.One obstruction after another intruded itself, and our short sojourn of three or four weeks on English soil was thus frittered gradually away, and we were at last obliged to give up the idea of seeing you at all.It is a great disappointment, for we wanted to show you how much "Megalopis" has grown (she is 7 now) and what a fine creature her sister is, and how prettily they both speak German.There are six persons in my party, and they are as difficult to cart around as nearly any other menagerie would be.My wife and Miss Spaulding are along, and you may imagine how they take to heart this failure of our long promised Edinburgh trip.We never even wrote you, because we were always so sure, from day to day, that our affairs would finally so shape themselves as to let us get to Scotland.But no,--everything went wrong we had only flying trips here and there in place of the leisurely ones which we had planned.

We arrived in Liverpool an hour ago very tired, and have halted at this hotel (by the advice of misguided friends)--and if my instinct and experience are worth anything, it is the very worst hotel on earth, without any exception.We shall move to another hotel early in the morning to spend to-morrow.We sail for America next day in the "Gallic."We all join in the sincerest love to you, and in the kindest remembrance to "Jock"--[Son of Doctor Brown.]--and your sister.

Truly yours, S.L.CLEMENS.

It was September 3, 1879, that Mark Twain returned to America by the steamer Gallic.In the seventeen months of his absence he had taken on a "traveled look" and had added gray hairs.A New York paper said of his arrival that he looked older than when he went to Germany, and that his hair had turned quite gray.

Mark Twain had not finished his book of travel in Paris--in fact, it seemed to him far from complete--and he settled down rather grimly to work on it at Quarry Farm.When, after a few days no word of greeting came from Howells, Clemens wrote to ask if he were dead or only sleeping.Howells hastily sent a line to say that he had been sleeping "The sleep of a torpid conscience.I will feign that I did not know where to write you; but I love you and all of yours, and I am tremendously glad that you are home again.When and where shall we meet? Have you come home with your pockets full of Atlantic papers?" Clemens, toiling away at his book, was, as usual, not without the prospect of other plans.Orion, as literary material, never failed to excite him.

To W.D.Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, Sept.15, 1879.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--When and where? Here on the farm would be an elegant place to meet, but of course you cannot come so far.So we will say Hartford or Belmont, about the beginning of November.The date of our return to Hartford is uncertain, but will be three or four weeks hence, I judge.I hope to finish my book here before migrating.

I think maybe I've got some Atlantic stuff in my head, but there's none in MS, I believe.

Say--a friend of mine wants to write a play with me, I to furnish the broad-comedy cuss.I don't know anything about his ability, but his letter serves to remind me of our old projects.If you haven't used Orion or Old Wakeman, don't you think you and I can get together and grind out a play with one of those fellows in it? Orion is a field which grows richer and richer the more he mulches it with each new top-dressing of religion or other guano.Drop me an immediate line about this, won't you? I imagine I see Orion on the stage, always gentle, always melancholy, always changing his politics and religion, and trying to reform the world, always inventing something, and losing a limb by a new kind of explosion at the end of each of the four acts.Poor old chap, he is good material.I can imagine his wife or his sweetheart reluctantly adopting each of his new religious in turn, just in time to see him waltz into the next one and leave her isolated once more.

(Mem.Orion's wife has followed him into the outer darkness, after 30years' rabid membership in the Presbyterian Church.)Well, with the sincerest and most abounding love to you and yours, from all this family, I am, Yrs ever MARK.

The idea of the play interested Howells, but he had twinges of conscience in the matter of using Orion as material.He wrote:

"More than once I have taken the skeleton of that comedy of ours and viewed it with tears.....I really have a compunction or two about helping to put your brother into drama.You can say that he is your brother, to do what you like with him, but the alien hand might inflict an incurable hurt on his tender heart."As a matter of fact, Orion Clemens had a keen appreciation of his own shortcomings, and would have enjoyed himself in a play as much as any observer of it.Indeed, it is more than likely that he would have been pleased at the thought of such distinguished dramatization.From the next letter one might almost conclude that he had received a hint of this plan, and was bent upon supplying rich material.

To W.D.Howells, in Boston: