Stedman’s letter to Mark Twain suggesting revisions in the text of A Connecticut Yankee is reproduced here in full. (It has been published previously, with omissions and minor alterations, in Laura Stedman and George M. Gould, Life and Letters of Edmund Clarence Stedman [New York: Moffat, Yard and Co., 1910[, 2:370–372.) Stedman read the typescript of A Connecticut struck through: 39. The parts of the text which Stedman singled out for comment are identified in footnotes in this appendix, and those which Mark Twain changed may be found in the list of emendations.
44 East 26th St.
& Hot as an Iron-Clad,
Sunday, July 7th ’89
My dear Clemens,—
Yes, I read your “Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court”, last week—i.e. as soon as the package came to me—and didn’t need any stimulus, either. Fact is, I went through it in two evenings, with great wonderment and satisfaction: as completely out of my present world & its toils & troubles, as I was when I first read the “Arabian Nights”. Then I was a boy of ten years; a Connecticut Yankee boy at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. There were two deaths in old Judge Stedman, my great-Uncle’s, house,—at Norwich where I was “raised”,—and they had to filch & hide the Arabian Nights to make me wash up and go to the funerals.
After living out of the real world with you, for two nights, I had to go to the Chinese Theatre on the third, where I found equally unusual entertainment, & so let myself down easily to everyday life.
[begin page 520]My belief is, on the whole, that you have written a great book: in some respect your most original, most imaginative,—certainly the most effective and sustained. It isn’t so learned & pedantic as “Pantagruel”, & it don’t need to be; but why it should not be preserved, somewhat as Rabelais’ work has been, even in this age of endless bookmaking by “Type-Setters & Distributors”, is more than I can see. Whether the ordinary critical reader will taken in its real claims to importance, is a serious question. But here & there somebody will; & that somebody, soon or late, will open the senses of the dullards.
To some extent, this Ms. is an extension of the text called “The Prince & the Pauper”—& perhaps ’twould not have been written, or not written as well, but for that pioneer. But of course ’tis very much else besides. The little book was checkers: this is chess.
Some blasted fool will surely jump up & say that Cervantes polished off “chivalry”, centuries ago, etc., etc., etc. After a time he’ll discover, perhaps, that you are going at the still existing radical principles or fallacies which made “chivalry” possible once, & servility & flunkeyism & tyranny possible now.
However, I am most impressed by the magnificently riotous & rollicking imagination & humor, & often poetry, of the whole work. You have let your whole nature loose in it, at the prime of your powers.
Of course, when you let yourself loose, ’tis somewhat like a stallion just out of the paddock. But ’tis remarkable how finished, and in what good taste, your whole work—considering the theme & its possibilities—is. There is scarcely anything which I wished to change: in so long a book one finds a few matters out of tone, & to these I now refer you; fearlessly, in spite of your just anathemas scored against the type-writer. “If you don’t like it, you may lump it!”
I have handed, then, to Mr. Hall, the following notes, all I cared to make (after very close and hostile reading):
1. Sir Thomas Malory—not Mallory.1
Page 39 34 (line 7) “at myself” (?)2
[begin page 521]Pages 34, 119, 120—“soil a sewer”3—“sewer” try soap “on a sewer”,4 &c. &c. The illustration is poor & commonplace, the word offensive, the image not happily chosen. Unworthy of the writer. Too superlative: hence ineffective.
127, &c.5 I presume you have thoroughly foreseen, & are ready to meet, the holy horror of the Church in general & the “Protestant Episcopal Church” in particular, at this & other mentions here & there. You yourself bear down on the dull persistency with which both the oppressors & oppressed stick to their systems. No matter how elevated your aim, how inoffensive your general meaning, the Church will say: Our title, like a lady’s name, shouldn’t be made free with, &c. &c. There will be various rows & rumpuses. But these, as I understand it, you calculate upon,—& will not lose your head, or try to explain, or get mad over public stupidity?
p. 139. “damned & welcome for all I care” a trifle out of tone for a Brother Jonathan?.6
p. 183. [185.?]7 The peculiar early-manner-of-Mark-Twain-ish exaggeration, first half of this page, is out of keeping, & mars the vraisemblance.
p. 189 “Stood to windward”.—“of the other sex, that she never washed any part of herself but her fingers”.8 Oh, oh, oh,! oh!! oh!!! Some civet, good apothecary!
p. 204. “Suffocated a polecat”?9
p. 222. You have queried this page, but there is nothing on it which I object to in the least.10
pp. 383 & 384. It seems to me that a good deal of this technical humor (as I should call it) is rather a failure, & might be rewritten to [begin page 522] advantage. The 4,000,000-lbs.-of-meat calculation is a lapse toward your very early manner. ’Tis important to be in keeping, near the climax & end of the book.11
—Nothing can be finer than the chapter where the Yankee Knight at Arms, in his new suit of mail, starts forth with the Damosel. Poetry and prose, by turns, and perfect as a whole. The entire story is managed with great skill, so as to seem quite possible, even probable, throughout. Personally, I have no doubt of its absolute truth as a narrative.
I suppose the sale of this unusual book will depend somewhat on the “working capacity” of your firm. But it will make a great noise, at all events, if sent to every prominent critical journal & newspaper here and in Great Britain.
With kind regards,
Yours truly,
Edmund C. Stedman.