If a critic should start a religion it would not have any object but to convert angels: and they wouldn't need it.The thin top crust of humanity--the cultivated--are worth pacifying, worth pleasing, worth coddling, worth nourishing and preserving with dainties and delicacies, it is true; but to be caterer to that little faction is no very dignified or valuable occupation, it seems to me; it is merely feeding the over-fed, and there must be small satisfaction in that.It is not that little minority who are already saved that are best worth trying to uplift, I should think, but the mighty mass of the uncultivated who are underneath.That mass will never see the Old Masters--that sight is for the few; but the chromo maker can lift them all one step upward toward appreciation of art; they cannot have the opera, but the hurdy-gurdy and the singing class lift them a little way toward that far light; they will never know Homer, but the passing rhymester of their day leaves them higher than he found them; they may never even hear of the Latin classics, but they will strike step with Kipling's drum-beat, and they will march; for all Jonathan Edwards's help they would die in their slums, but the Salvation Army will beguile some of them up to pure air and a cleaner life; they know no sculpture, the Venus is not even a name to them, but they are a grade higher in the scale of civilization by the ministrations of the plaster-cast than they were before it took its place upon then mantel and made it beautiful to their unexacting eyes.
Indeed I have been misjudged, from the very first.I have never tried in even one single instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes.
I was not equipped for it, either by native gifts or training.And Inever had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger game--the masses.I have seldom deliberately tried to instruct them, but have done my best to entertain them.To simply amuse them would have satisfied my dearest ambition at any time; for they could get instruction elsewhere, and I had two chances to help to the teacher's one: for amusement is a good preparation for study and a good healer of fatigue after it.My audience is dumb, it has no voice in print, and so I cannot know whether I have won its approbation or only got its censure.
Yes, you see, I have always catered for the Belly and the Members, but have been served like the others--criticized from the culture-standard --to my sorrow and pain; because, honestly, I never cared what became of the cultured classes; they could go to the theatre and the opera--they had no use for me and the melodeon.
And now at last I arrive at my object and tender my petition, making supplication to this effect: that the critics adopt a rule recognizing the Belly and the Members, and formulate a standard whereby work done for them shall be judged.Help me, Mr.Lang; no voice can reach further than yours in a case of this kind, or carry greater weight of authority.
Lang's reply was an article in the Illustrated London News on "The Art of Mark Twain." Lang had no admiration to express for the Yankee, which he confessed he had not cared to read, but he glorified Huck Finn to the highest."I can never forget, nor be ungrateful for the exquisite pleasure with which I read Huckleberry Finn for the first time, years ago," he wrote; "I read it again last night, deserting Kenilworth for Huck.I never laid it down till Ihad finished it."
Lang closed his article by referring to the story of Huck as the "great American novel which had escaped the eyes of those who watched to see this new planet swim into their ken."LETTERS, 1890, CHIEFLY TO JOS.T.GOODMAN.THE GREAT MACHINE ENTERPRISEDr.John Brown's son, whom Mark Twain and his wife had known in 1873as "Jock," sent copies of Dr.John Brown and His Sister Isabella, by E.T.McLaren.It was a gift appreciated in the Clemens home.
To Mr.John Brown, in Edinburgh, Scotland:
HARTFORD, Feby 11, 1890.
DEAR MR.BROWN,--Both copies came, and we are reading and re-reading the one, and lending the other, to old time adorers of "Rab and his Friends."It is an exquisite book; the perfection of literary workmanship.It says in every line, "Don't look at me, look at him"--and one tries to be good and obey; but the charm of the painter is so strong that one can't keep his entire attention on the developing portrait, but must steal side-glimpses of the artist, and try to divine the trick of her felicitous brush.In this book the doctor lives and moves just as he was.He was the most extensive slave-holder of his time, and the kindest; and yet he died without setting one of his bondmen free.We all send our very, very kindest regards.
Sincerely yours S.L.CLEMENS.
If Mark Twain had been less interested in the type-setting machine he might possibly have found a profit that winter in the old Sellers play, which he had written with Howells seven years before.The play had eventually been produced at the Lyceum Theatre in New York, with A.P.Burbank in the leading role, and Clemens and Howells as financial backers.But it was a losing investment, nor did it pay any better when Clemens finally sent Burbank with it on the road.
Now, however, James A.Herne, a well-known actor and playwright, became interested in the idea, after a discussion of the matter with Howells, and there seemed a probability that with changes made under Herne's advisement the play might be made sensible and successful.
But Mark Twain's greater interest was now all in the type-machine, and certainly he had no money to put into any other venture.His next letter to Goodman is illuminating--the urgency of his need for funds opposed to that conscientiousness which was one of the most positive forces of Mark Twain's body spiritual.The Mr.Arnot of this letter was an Elmira capitalist.
To Jos.T.Goodman, in California:
HARTFORD, March 31, '90.
