April 17, 1909 Saturday

April 17 Saturday - At 3 a.m. in Redding, Conn., Sam began a letter to William Dean Howells, that he added to at 10 a.m.

My pen has gone dry, & the ink is out of reach. Howells, Did you write me day-before-day-before yesterday, or did I dream it? In my mind’s eye I most vividly see your handwrite on a square blue envelop in the mail-pile. I have hunted the house over but there is no such letter. Was it an illusion?

I am reading Lowell’s letters, & smoking. I woke an hour ago & am reading to keep from wasting the time. On page 305, vol I., I have just margined a note:

“Young friend! I like that! You ought to see him now,”

It seemed startlingly strange to heat a person call you young, It was a brick out of a blue sky, & knocked me grogey for a moment. Ah me, the pathos of it is, that we were young then. And he—why, so was he, but he didn’t know it. He didn’t even know it 9 years later, when we saw him approaching & you warned me, saying,

“Don’t say anything about age—he has just turned 50, & thinks he is old, & broods over it.”

Well, Clara did sing! And you wrote her a dear letter.

Time to go to sleep. Yours ever / Mark.

To W.D. Howells

When I wrote you at 3 this morning I did not know I was laying an egg that would hatch out in the course of a few hours & produce a cunning & handy scheme, but I know it now. I am glad. For I like to see my mind perform according to the law which I have laid down in “What is Man”: the law that the mind works automatically, & plans & perfects many a project without its owner suspecting what it is about; the mind being merely a machine, & not in even the slightest degree under the control of its owner or subject to his influence.

My mind’s present scheme is a good one; I could not like it better if I had invented it myself. It is this: to write letters to friends & not send them.

I will now try it on you as a beginning, & see how it works. Dictating Autobiography has certain irremovable drawbacks.

1. A stenographer is a lecture-audience; you are always conscious of him; he is a restraint, because there is only one of him, & one alien auditor can seldom be an inspiration; you pay out to him from your own treasury, whereas if there are five hundred of him you would pay out from his: he would furnish the valuable part of your discourse—that is, the soul & spirit of it—& you would only have to furnish the words.

2. You are not talking to yourself; you are not thinking aloud—processes which insure a free & unembarrassed delivery—for that petrified audience-person is always there, to block that game.

3. If it’s a she person, there are so many thousands & thousands of things you are suffering to say, every day, but mustn’t, because they are indecent.

4. If it’s a religious person, your jaw is locked again, several times a day: profane times & theological times. I had a person of that breed for a year or two. The profanity cruelly shocked her at first; soon she became reconciled to it; presently she got to liking it, next she couldn’t get along without it; but from the beginning to the end there was never a time when she could stand my theology. She said she wouldn’t give a Gatun Dam for it. [likely Josephine Hobby.|

5. Often you ate burning to pour out a sluice of intimately personal, & particularly private things—& there you are again! You can’t make your mouth say them. It won’t say them to any but a very close personal friend, like Howells, or Twichell, or Henry Rogers.

But that scheme—that newborn scheme—that splendid scheme—that all-comforting, all-satisfying, all-competent scheme—blows all these obstructing and irritating difficulties to the winds! I will fire the profanities at Rogers, the indecencies at Howells, the theologies at Twichell. Oh, to think—I am a free man at last!

Do you see? Talking to the same, same, same old one-character stenographer all the time, is talking to the vague—there’s no definite target; but the scheme furnishes a definite target for each letter, & you can choose the target that’s going to be the most sympathetic for what you are hungering & thirsting to say at that particular moment. And you can talk with a quite unallowable frankness & freedom, because you are not going to send the letter. When you are on fire with theology, you’ll not write it to Rogers, who wouldn’t be an inspiration, you'll write it to Twichell, because it would make him writhe & squirm & break the furniture. When you are on fire with a good thing that’s indecent, you won’t waste it on Twichell, you'll save it for Howells, who will love it. As he will never see it, you can make it really indecenter than he could stand; & so no harm is done, yet a vast advantage is gained [MTHHR 2: 843-5]. Note: some pages missing; see notes in source.

Sam also wrote to Garnet Joseph Wolseley (Lord Wolseley; 1833-1913).

My dear Lord Wolseley:

It is long ago—8 or 9 years. I arrived late—it was a Fourth of July dinner & the last speakers were gasping out their feelings to half a crowd & many empty & emptying seats, & you halted me on my way & I sat down & had a pleasant chat with you. You see I am trying to identify myself.

With this purpose in view: to inquire if you asked me for a copy of “1603?” I believe it was your very self, but truly & sincerely I am not changing it, & would not charge it upon any innocent man, since the classic I speak of, being a quite free conversation between Queen Elizabeth, Shakspeare, Raleigh, etc., is not a proper thing to charge any unoffending person with wanting.

When I came home I ransacked this country & searched several foreign countries where it had been republished in the dark, but I failed to find a copy. I had promised three copies while in England, & I had to fall short of those promises.

Was your lordship one of the three? I am merely a well-meaning person who is trying to keep his word, so I know you will forgive me if I am off the right track. Perhaps I ought not to have written “1603” but I was young then (34 years ago) & familiar with misdoing. Once I expurgated it, but then—well then there wasn't anything left, of course.

With the pleasantest recollections of that now ancient Fourth of July chat, I am

Your lordship’s / Obedient servant to command, ... [MTP]. Note: Sam miswrote “7603” for “1607.”

Sam’s new guestbook:

Charles Heinrich for The Germania Press, NYC wrote to Sam. “Why should not the Centennial of the Baptism of American be commemorated?” Heinrich listed the coining of the term “America” to May 5, 1507 in the town of St. Die, in the Vosges, Lorraine. “Now that the misconception of the naming of America can be rectified, and the mystery elucidated...  Will you kindly let me know what is in your opinion the most appropriate procedure” [MTP].