The effrontery of amateur literary efforts—The playing of charades to-night—From Susy’s BiographyⒶtextual note: the presentation of “The Prince and Pauper” at Mr. Warner’s house.
There is one great trouble about dictating an autobiography, and that is the multiplicity of texts that offer themselves when you sit down and let your mouth fall open and are ready to begin. Sometimes the texts come flooding from twenty directions at once, and for a time you are overwhelmed with this Niagara and submerged and suffocated under it. You can use only one text at a time, and you don’t know which one to choose out of the twenty—still you must choose; there is no help for it, and you choose with the understanding that the nineteen left over are probably left over for good, and lost, since they may never suggest themselves again. But this time a text is forced upon me. This is mainly because it is the latest one that has suggested itself in the last quarter of an hour, and therefore the warmest one, because it has not had a chance to cool off yet. It is a couple of amateur literary offerings. From old experience I know that amateur productions,Ⓐtextual note offered ostensibly for one’s honestⒶtextual note cold judgment, to be followed by an uncompromisingly sincere verdict, are not really offered in that spirit at all. TheⒶtextual note thing [begin page 163] really wanted and expected is compliment and encouragement. AlsoⒶtextual note, my experience has taught me that in almost all amateurⒶtextual note cases compliment and encouragement are impossible—if they are to be backed by sincerity.
I have this moment finished reading this morning’s pair of offerings, and am a little troubled. If they had come from strangers I should not have given myself the pain of reading them, but should have returned them unread, according to my custom, upon the plea that I lack an editor’s training and therefore am not qualified to sit in judgment upon any one’s literature but my own. But this morning’s harvest came from friends, and that alters the case. I have read them, and the result is as usual: they are not literature. They do contain meat, but the meat is only half cooked. The meat is certainly there, and if it could pass through the hands of an expert cook the result would be a very satisfactory dish indeed. One of this morning’s samples does really come near to being literature, but the amateur hand is exposed with a fatal frequency, and the exposureⒶtextual note spoils it. The author’s idea is, in case I shall render a favorable verdict,Ⓐtextual note to offer the manuscript to a magazine.
There is something about this naïveⒶtextual note intrepidity that compels admirationⒶtextual note. It is a lofty and reckless daring which I suppose is exhibited in no field but one—the field of literature. We see something approaching it in war, but approaching it only distantly. The untrained common soldier has often offered himself as one of a forlorn hopeⒺexplanatory note and stood cheerfully ready to encounterⒶtextual note all its perils—but we draw the line there. NotⒶtextual note even the most confident untrained soldier offers himself as a candidate for a brigadier-generalship, yet this is what the amateur author does. With his untrained pen he puts together his crudities and offers them to all the magazines, one after the other—that is to say, he proposes them for posts restricted to literary generals who have earned their rank and place by years and even decades of hard and honest training in the lower grades of the service.
I am sure that this affront is offered to no trade but ours. A person untrained to shoemaking does not offer his services as a shoemaker to the foreman of a shop—not even the crudest literary aspirant would be so unintelligent as to do that. He would see the humor of it; he would see the impertinence of it; he would recognize as the most commonplace of facts that an apprenticeship is necessary in order to qualify a person to be tinner, bricklayer, stone masonⒶtextual note, printer, horse-doctor, butcher, brakeman, car conductor, midwife—and any and every other occupation whereby a human being acquires bread and fame. But when it comes to doing literature, his wisdoms vanish all of a sudden and he thinks he finds himself now in the presence of a profession which requires no apprenticeship, no experience, no training—nothing whatever but conscious talent and a lion’s courage.
We do not realize how strange and curious a thing this is until we look around for an object lesson whereby to realize it to us. We must imagine a kindred case—the aspirant to operatic distinction and cash, for instance. The aspirant applies to the managementⒶtextual note for a billet as second tenorⒶtextual note. The managementⒶtextual note accepts him, arranges the terms, and puts him on the pay-roll. Understand, this is an imaginary case; I am not pretending that it has happened.Ⓐtextual note Let us proceed.
[begin page 164]After the first act the managerⒶtextual note calls the second tenorⒶtextual note to account, and wants to know. HeⒶtextual note says:
“Have you ever studied music?”
“A little—yes, by myself, at odd times, for amusement.”
“You have never gone into regular and laborious training, then, for the opera, under the masters of the art?”
“No.”
“Then what made you think you could do second-tenorⒶtextual note stunts in ‘Lohengrin’Ⓐtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note?”
“I thought I could. I wanted to try. I seemed to have a voice.”
“Yes, you have a voice, and with five years of diligent training under competent masters you could be successful, perhaps, but I assure you you are not ready for second tenorⒶtextual note yet. You have a voice; you have presence; you have a noble and childlike confidence; youⒶtextual note have a courage that is stupendous, and even superhumanⒶtextual note. These are all essentials, and they are in your favor, but there are other essentials in this great trade,Ⓐtextual note which you still lack. If you can’t afford the time and labor necessary to acquire them, leave opera alone and try something which does not require training and experience. Go away, now, and try for a jobⒶtextual note in surgery.”
Surgery. What does that remind me of? AllⒶtextual note our thoughts come from the outside. TheyⒶtextual note come always by suggestion. WeⒶtextual note never originate one ourselves. It ought not to take me five minutes to trace out the origin of this one—surgery. . . .Ⓐtextual note I see now where it originated,Ⓐtextual note I see it without spending even so much as two minutes upon it. It comes from the charades. There is to be a surgeon in the charades to-night. I am to be that surgeon; I had forgotten it. But it will be an easy part, although I don’t know anything about surgery; as easy as authorship to an amateur. We have taken with energyⒶtextual note to charading, of late. About once a week we get together the youths and maidens of the region,Ⓐtextual note to the number of fifteen or twenty, and after supper we play impromptu charades until bedtime. We are busyⒶtextual note choosing the words for to-night, and the household are busy contriving the costumes. A quite variegated talent is required in these performances. You have to act several parts in the course of an evening. The charaders are divided into two squads; the leaders are chosen beforehand; then, when we are ready to begin, the leaders choose a subordinate, turn about, until the panel is exhausted. Meantime, the leaders have selected the words that are to be played. While one squad is playing, the other squad acts as audience. I am to lead one side this evening, and have chosen four words, to wit: cocktail, champagne, catastrophe—and another, I can’t recall it now, but I’ve got it on a piece of paper up stairsⒶtextual note. If my side plays two charades and the other side two, that is all that we shall have time for; but we generally select more words than we are going to need, in order that we may have a choice. On our side, to-night, we shall get no further than those two drinks—cocktail and champagne—because it will take all the time at our side’s disposal, theseⒶtextual note being long-winded charades,Ⓐtextual note the kind that string out pretty liberally in performance. There is going to be opportunity for a wide spread of histrionic talent. I am to be a rooster, a surgeon, a teacher of reading, spelling, arithmetic, geography, singing, and the art of story-telling (with an illustration).Ⓐtextual note I am to be several other things, also. I am to be a teething child, [begin page 165] nine months old, in long clothes; also an Indian chief; also an emperor in a party of emperors; also some other things too tedious to describe. Necessarily there is going to be a good deal of noise and fun—there always is.
It brings back the lost and lamented days of a quarter of a century ago—days which I have already described in earlier chapters of this autobiography—when the children were little creatures and we and the children of the neighbors used so often to play impromptu charades. Naturally this reminds me of Susy’s BiographyⒶtextual note, and that it is months since we have taken a text from it, because such a multitude of things have forced themselves into these talks through the compulsion of passing and flying interests, and have crowded the BiographyⒶtextual note out of our minds. But we will look at it now and draw a remark or two from it.
From Susy’s Biography. Ⓐtextual note
PapaⒶtextual note went to Europe to lecture and after staying in Scotland and England and making a flying tripp through Ireland he returned home with mamma.
LastⒶtextual note winter papa was away for many months reading with Mr. G. W. CableⒺexplanatory note, and while he was gone we composed a plan of surprising him when he came home by acting scenes from “The Prince and Pauper.”* It took us a great while to commit all that was necesary but at last we were almost ready and we expected him to come home the next day on which evening we had planned to surprise him. But we received a telegram from him stating that he would reach Hartford “to-day at two o’clock.” We were all dismayed for we were by no means prepared to receive him and the library was strune with costumes which were to be tried on for the last time and we had planned a dress rehearsal over at Mr. Warners for that afternoon.
But mamma gathered the things up as quickly as possible and hustled them into
the mahogany-room. Soon we heard the carriage roll over the pavement in front ofⒶtextual note the house and we all rushed to the doore. After we had partially gotten over our
surprise
and delightⒶtextual note at seeing papa we all went into the library. We all sat with papa a little while
and then mamma dissapeared into the
mahogany-room. Clara and I sat with papa a while so as to prevent his being surprised
of our seemingly uncalled for disertion of him.
But soon we too had to withdraw to the mahogany-room so as to help mamma sew on bucles
ontoⒶtextual note slippers and pack costumes into a clothes-basket. Papa was left all alone; exeptⒶtextual note that one of us every once in a while would slipp in and stay with him a little while.
Any one but papa would have wondered at
mamma’s unwonted absence but papa is so absence minded, he very seldom notices things
as accurately as other people do; although
I do not believe in this instance he could have been wholly without suspicion.† At last he went up to the billiard-room and Jean went with him. Mamma
as a special favor let Jean into this secret on condition
that she would not breathe a whisper to any one on the subject, especially to papa,
and Jean had promised but when alone up in
papa’s room, it was very hard for her not to tell papa the whole thing. As it was
she was undecided whether to tell him or not.
She did go so far as to begin with “It’s a secret, papa,” and then dropping varius
other hints about the secret
and she went so far that papa said afterwards that if he had been any one else he
should have guessed it in a minute.
*Dramatized from the book by her mother. S.L.C.Ⓐtextual note
†But I was. S.L.C.Ⓐtextual note [begin page 166] At ½ past three o’clock we all started for Mr. Warners house, there to have our rehearsal. Jean and the nurseⒺexplanatory note went with us, so papa was left absolutely alone.
The next day the first information that papa got was that he was invited for the evening and he did not know that anything unusual was going to happen until he sat before the curtain.
We got through the scenes quite successfully and had some delightful dancing afterwards. After we had danced for about ½ an hour mamma seemed in quite a hurry to get home, so we put on our things and started for home. When we entered the library a lady was sitting in one of the arm-chairs. I did not recognize her and wondered why mamma did not introduce me to her, but on drawing nearer to her chair I saw it was Aunt Clara SpauldingⒺexplanatory note!
Mamma told Aunt Clara that we would have the “Prince and Pauper” again in a few weeks so she could see it. So it was decided that we should have it again in a few weeks.
At length the time was sett and we were nearly prepared, when Frank WarnerⒺexplanatory note who took the “Miles Hendon” part got a severe cold and could not play it, so papa said that he would take the part. Papa had only three days to learn the part in, but still we were all sure that he could do it. The scene that he acted in was the scene between Miles Hendon and the Prince, “The Prithee pour the water!” scene. I was the Prince and papa and I rehearsed together two or three times a day for the three days before the appointed evening. Papa acted his part beautifully and he added to the scene, making it a good deal longer. He was inexpressibly funny, with his great slouch hat and gait! Oh such a gait! Papa made the Miles Hendon scene a splendid success and every one was delighted with the scene, and papa too. We had great great funn with our “Prince and Pauper” and I think we none of us shall forget how imensely funny papa was in it. He certainly could have been an actor as well as an author.*
I have already described that monumental night in an earlier chapter of this autobiographyⒺexplanatory note. In the quoted passages you have an exhibition of that thing which I was talking about a while ago—untrained, inexperienced amateur authorship. It has merits, and very noticeable ones. ThisⒶtextual note time the result is literature. The writer is a child, and we do not want a child to write as a grown person writes. The proprieties, the accuracies, andⒶtextual note the reserves which we require of the grown person we will not endure in the child. Susy is all alive with her subject. Her heart is in it, and her interest isⒶtextual note so intense that she makes us see the episodes as she saw them, and also makes us see her very self in the flesh, her glad self, her eager self, her excited self,Ⓐtextual note with the flush in her cheeks and the glow in her eyes. If it were a grown person writing, we would not have it; it would not be literature. But as it stands, it is literature, and no grown person, trained or untrained, can successfully imitate it:Ⓐtextual note the innocent simplicities and childish eagernesses and exaltations which give it its charm and make literature of it, would elude him.
If we only had Susy here to-night!Ⓐtextual note
*Susy’s opinion stands now justified,Ⓐtextual note and mightily reinforced, after sixteen or seventeen years, for at dinner the other night, after I had told about—I forget what—Sir Henry Irving let fall the same remark. Riverdale, November 1901. S.L.C.Ⓐtextual note
forlorn hope] In military language, a detachment of soldiers, usually volunteers, selected to perform some especially perilous service.
‘Lohengrin’] Clemens saw a performance of this opera by Richard Wagner in Mannheim in 1878, which he described in chapter 9 of A Tramp Abroad as a “shivaree” (Gribben 1980, 2:731).
Papa went to Europe to lecture . . . reading with Mr. G. W. Cable] Susy made a leap in time here. Clemens and Olivia took Susy to England, Scotland, and Ireland from May to October 1873; Clemens lectured in London near the end of the trip. The reading tour with Cable took place over the winter of 1884–85.
the nurse] Rosina Hay (see AD, 3 Oct 1906, note at 242.34).
Frank Warner] Frank (1867–1931), then aged seventeen, was the son of George H. and Elisabeth (Lilly) Gillette Warner, Nook Farm neighbors. George was the brother of Charles Dudley Warner (“Nook Farm Genealogy” 1974, 30; AutoMT1 580 n. 327.14).
Source documents.
TS1 ribbon Typescript, leaves numbered 1015–26, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.TS1 carbon Typescript carbon, leaves numbered 1015–26, revised.
Clemens revised TS1 ribbon and TS1 carbon, differently, and clearly at different times. TS1 carbon was revised with a proposed NAR installment in mind. This revision probably occurred after 1 February 1907; Clemens’s notations on the AD of 18 June 1906 show that at one time he intended to pair an excerpt from this dictation with selections from the ADs of 18 June 1906 and 1 February 1907. The marginal notes here on TS1 carbon (see the “Marginal Notes” table). indicate that he also considered combining the present AD with two others, the ADs of 8 October 1906 and 22 January 1907, which were published in NAR 15, on 5 April 1907.
There must have been a decent interval between the revisions of the ribbon and the carbon; for it is plain from the collation that different things, different opportunities, attract Clemens’s attention in the process of re-engaging with his dictated text.
TS2 is absent again. TS4 was typed from the revised TS1 ribbon copy; since we don’t know what purpose TS4 was conceived as serving in the first place, this is of questionable value as evidence.
In line with our practice elsewhere of accepting all authorial alterations (except “softenings”), it might seem best to accept all of Clemens’s revisions; against that view, three considerations can be adduced:
1) Our practice elsewhere concerns situations where revisions are assumed to be aspects of a continuous, cumulative process. That is, revisions Clemens made to TS1 are assumed to be “before his eyes”—incorporated into TS2—by the time he is looking at TS2, and so forward through the sequence of iterations. In this case, however, the revisions are discrete and not part of a cumulative process. Where a revision is effected on TS1 but not on TS1 carbon, can we say whether Clemens intended it on the ribbon copy, but “forgot” to render it on the carbon? No; we could just as well say that by the later time he had “realized” that he didn’t wish to make that revision after all. (In any case, we do not in fact know which document is the later-revised.)
2) The two sets of revisions cannot fully be “merged” anyway, since in several places the same word is revised in two different ways.
3) To merge the two sets of corrections would be justified, naturally, as creating a text with “all the author’s alterations”; yet it would, ironically, fail to represent either of the two occasions we have where the author himself undertook a revision. There is no reason to suppose that either of the revised documents met with his disapproval.
Under the circumstances it seems best to base the text on one of the two revisions. The revisions on TS1 ribbon have been followed for this purpose. TS1 ribbon is chosen (1) because it is not under suspicion of being revised “for NAR”; and (2) because it seems, on the whole, a slightly more “considered” act of revision.
Marginal Notes on TS1 carbon Concerning Publication in NAR
Begin here. (3 pages—let them follow precede p. 1655. p. 1319