December 5 Friday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam replied to William Denison McCrackan’s Dec. 4 letters:
I am glad to have the book and the other printed matter and I thank you. But as helps in “verifying or correcting statements of fact” in my articles they will not be of service to me. I have made no statements of fact that can require that sort of doctoring.
Now that you are going to write an article—and that is certainly the best course—I will leave all the correcting to you. I suppose you will “correct” by assertion—as you did in the ms. which you left here yesterday. It is the easiest way.
The book which I am going to publish will be set up and printed in February. It is not a book on Xn Science—that is only a part of it; it will contain matter on various subjects—stories, essays, etc. If your article shall turn out to be very brief, I shall hope to get it in, but not otherwise, for there is not going to be much room to share; particularly if I should conclude to finish my series with a portrait of Mrs. Eddy “drawn with her own pen—” a thing which I want to do if I find the time; for my irreverence and disrespect are pretty exclusively for her, not for her flock. I believe the flock to be honest and sincere, and that she is neither. If I have room for your article I will put it in.
Yours very truly
S. L. Clemens.
I am suggesting to Munro that he get your article into the Feb. number—otherwise short or long it might be too late for my book. P. S. In the meantime can you send me “Retrospection and Introspection” [MTP]. Notes: McCrackan’s article ran in the N.A. Review for Mar. 1903, “Mrs. Eddy’s Relation to Christian Science.” The book Sam requested Mary Baker Eddy’s Retrospection and Introspection (1902). See Gribben p.212 and 440. McCrackan is sometimes seen as MacCrackan.
Paine writes of the proposed collaboration between Twain and McCrackan:
He was putting together a book on the subject, comprised of his various published papers and some added chapters. It would not be a large volume, and he offered to let his Christian Science opponents share it with him, stating their side of the case. Mr. William D. McCrackan, one of the church’s chief advocates, was among those invited to participate. McCrackan and Clemens, from having begun as enemies, had become quite friendly, and had discussed their differences face to face at considerable length. Early in the controversy Clemens one night wrote McCrackan a pretty savage letter. He threw it on the hall table for mailing, but later got out of bed and slipped down-stairs to get it. It was too late—the letters had been gathered up and mailed. Next evening a truly Christian note came from McCrackan, returning the hasty letter, which he said he was sure the writer would wish to recall. Their friendship began there. For some reason, however, the collaborated volume did not materialize. In the end, publication was delayed a number of years, by which time Clemens’s active interest was a good deal modified, though the practice itself never failed to invite his attention [MTB 1187-8].
Sam also wrote a letter and a postcard to Frederick William Peabody. Peabody (Boston lawyer and outspoken opponent of the doctrines of Mary Baker Eddy) had written on Dec. 2, taking exception to some ideas in Sam’s Dec. 1902 article, “Christian Science” in the North American Review. Sam’s letter reply in full:
Dear Sir:
Yes, I think they [Christian Scientists] make a great many cures—of curable diseases—there is no reason why they shouldn’t. Cures by their methods have been made for 10,000 years.
A sale of 250,000 copies of that book means that many families—& the children are a more important factor than their parents (To estimate the future by.) Nothing can stay the Xn Science epidemic. For a hundred years it will supplant all the other religions & boss all the governments.
Have I given you the impression that I was combating Xn Science? or that I am caring how the Xn Scientists ‘hail’ my articles? Relieve yourself of those errors. I wrote the articles to please myself; & it had not occurred to me to cure what the Scientists might think of them. I am not combating Xn Science—I haven’t a thing in the world against it. Making fun of that shameless old swindler, Mother Eddy, is the only thing about it I take any interest on. At bottom I suppose I take a private delight in seeing the human race making an ass of itself again—which it has always done whenever it had a chance. That’s its affair—it has the right—& it will sweat blood for it—century hence, & for many centuries thereafter.
It distresses me a little to hear you talk about ‘sanity in the affairs of men.’ So far as I know, men have never shown any noticeable degree of sanity in their affairs, & to me it seems rather larger flattery to intimate that they are capable of it. See them get down & worship that old creature! A century hence they’ll all be at it. Sanity—in the human race! This is really fulsome.
You ask my opinion of your address. I read it with extreme interest—but I [illegible] its large defect all along” You show temper, acrimony, detestation. It is bad art—exceedingly bad art. You should have aroused those feelings in the reader only; & you should have made him storm at you for not showing them yourself. You threw away half of your case.
Can’t you get hold of a page or two of that Stoughton Ms & a page of Mrs. Eddy’s undisputed handwriting of about that time & facsimile them, & support their genuineness by trustworthy testimony? It would be a troublesome snag for the new Member of the Holy Family to get around [www.historyforsale.com document 31404 with Oct. 18, 1983 notes by Robert H. Hirst of the MTP]. Note:
Sam’s additional articles on Christian Science ran in the Jan., Feb., and Apr. 1903 issues of the magazine.
Sam’s postcard to Peabody, probably an afterthought to the above letter:
Have you a copy of those Rules, which you synopsize on your page 36? If you are done with it I should like to have it [www.historyforsale.com document 31409 with Oct. 28, 1983 notes by Robert H. Hirst of the MTP].
Sam also wrote to Wilbur H. Siebert.
I think it was Davis that did it, but I don’t know, because I was standing at the end of the hall by the couple & the clergyman, umpiring the marriage at the time, & so I didn’t see him do it. He was under contract to do it, & he collected the money, so I suppose it is mainly right. Mainly only; for he didn’t kick it 35 yards— the hall is only 15 long—& he didn’t kick it to Wentworth, for Wentworth was purposely not invited, & wasn’t there.
Yes, you must have a kicker at weddings now—it is custom—& Davis wears the belt [MTP].
Notes: this may be Wilbur Henry Siebert (1866-1961), History professor at Ohio State University, whose book, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom, was published in 1902. The references Sam makes here, however, are likely of the Nov. 29 wedding of his niece, Julia Langdon.
Sam also wrote to A.H. Tyson, who was one of those who responded to the Dec. issue of Harper’s Monthly Magazine and Mark Twain’s article, “Was it Heaven? or Hell?” Tyson had suffered the same experience told in Sam’s tale, with his dead daughter even having the same name—Helen.
Yours is a heart-breaking story. I thank you for telling it to me.
I think the similarity of the two stories is very remarkable: the child’s age and quality and character; and the child’s little transgression; the laying it before the sick mother; the mother’s disease not known at the moment; the child’s acquiring it, the doctor’s reproaches; the kindly deception practiced later upon the mother to account for the child’s absence; the concealment of the poor child’s death; the pathetic forgery of her dead hand; her name—Helen—it is a marvellous chain of coincidences.
But I suppose they are only coincidences—unless you mentally telegraphed the name to me, but that I doubt. Helen is a favorite name with me and I would be likely to use it.
If I had invented my story I should say that it was all mental telegraphy. But the only thing in it that I invented were (besides the young girl’s name) the doctor’s outburst and his lecture and the dying girl’s mistaking the old aunt for her mother. My own dying daughter (26 years old)—blind the previous 3 hours, and out of her mind, rapturously embraced the maid who had tended her from childhood, and died happy, thinking she was her mother. (Her mother was in mid-Atlantic flying to herside, but destined to be too late.)
So I was merely telling a true story, just as it had been told to me by one who well knew the mother and the daughter and all the beautiful & pathetic details. I was living in the house where it had happened three years before; and I put it on paper at once, while it was still fresh in my mind and its pathos still straining at my heartstrings [MTP: Cyril Clemens, Mark Twain: The Letter Writer 1932 p.108]. Note: See also MTB 1189-90.
Sam’s notebook: “Jean fell on the ice” [NB 45 TS 34].
Henry W. Fisher (Fischer) wrote from NY to Sam: “I would like to say something more appropriate, but can’t. So let Brisbane do the talking.” Fisher’s comment was written above a pasted clipping, entitled “One of Mankind’s Truest Benefactors,” a short, unsigned article about Sam turning 67 the previous Sunday [MTP].
Richard Watson Gilder wrote to Sam, thanking him for “a great night you gave us at the Metropolitan Club”. He enclosed a clipping notice of a book by Gouverneur Morris (b. 1876) Aladdin O’Brien (1902) “which seems to justify your interest in the lad” [MTP]. Note: See Gribben, p.486.
Howard E. Wright for the Plasmon Co. of America wrote from NY to Sam, sorry that his letter of Nov. 28 had asked for $500 when he should have asked for $5,000. He was sending under separate package Plasmon rolled wheat [MTP].