June 16 Saturday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam began a long letter to Charlotte Teller Johnson he added to on June 17, 18. Several portions of pages were cut out.
I am sending you a book. You are not obliged to read it, but you are obliged to admire the pictures, for they are just as sweet & cunning as they can be. Perhaps you remember that that publisher insisted that an artist would not be able to get an variety or effectiveness into pictures of human figures where he was denied the help of drapery. I would like to exhibit him without drapery in church & see if it wouldn’t change his mind.
It is a beautiful play, Charlo, & is full of life & energy & character. The people are not specters, they are alive. Mirabeau is greatly portrayed; you have missed no detail of his rich & varied nature, he stands forth clear, winning, worshipful, a majestic & benignant colossus. The new Marie Antoinette, unstable, vascillating, sometimes queen, sometimes woman, sometimes both, is a very valuable addition.
I tried reading the play to myself, knowing I should arrive nowhere by that process—& that is where I arrived. I must read it aloud, if I would arrive somewhere. I read a couple of pages aloud to the furniture—of course that was a failure, & embarrassing; the furniture made fun of me. Then I took a liberty which you must condone: I shut off Miss Lyon’s afternoon walk, yesterday, & required her to act as audience, which she was properly glad to do. For a first- night, I doubt if any performance ever went off with a more intemperate & sustained enthusiasm. Of course it was a prejudiced audience: half of it would be prone to admire the play in any case, & the other half know it would be much healthier to admire it than to fail of that courtesy; but no matter: after all allowances, the verdict was far from valueless; the admiration was sincere, & the enthusiasm unforced.
Even by the light thrown by that ignorant & ill-prepared first-reading I established on fact, beyond question: that the play reads strongly, brightly, movingly; of course these effects would come out still more in a month & much more—forcibly in subsequent readings. I cannot see any room for doubt that it will also play. The audience (which includes myself) expressed the conviction that if it were put on the stage it would play itself. It was a prejudiced audience, it is true; but it was unanimous, it was hearty; &, the predilections notwithstanding, I attach value to its opinion.
There was to be a second reading to-day, but just as the performance was closing at 6 p.m., your letter was brought up; therefore we hurried the MS to the mail. The letter was 22 hours coming to Dublin; by the grocer’s negligence it lay there all day yesterday—10 hours. Per those terms you will not get the MS until Monday. I am sorry for the day, Charlotte, by you see how it happened.
In revising, you will naturally have out the “to-night”—but don’t forget it. Let him say, “she is my guest.” It is fine, & must not be weakened by a superfluity.
I am not competent to criticise anything but phrasings, verbal hastinesses, minced metaphors, & so on. By the time you are done revising, there won’t be any to criticise. But if by chance you shall overlook one, I shan’t. There is one bit of heedlessness that you may possibly overlook—but you mustn’t. More than once you use the word “court” where you mean the King, or the queen, or both, & not the court at all.
Yes, I want him back when you are done with him. and by & by, in the future, when you shall have finished revising him, I must have him in that form, too. That’s the one I am going to put under the verbal microscope, if you don’t object.
I am glad you have put him by & sent your steam-hammer going on other work. Don’t look at him again for three months, except some theater require it. In three months, unconscious cerebration will have done the revising for you, & there’ll be nothing to do but register the product.
I am doing nothing today. That is to say,
[remainder of page cut off. next page:]
Against all etiquette this letter—as usual—is stringing out, & stringing out, & will have to suffer what Kipling’s Mulvaney suffered. He was a corporal, & for misconduct he was “rejooced.”
[portion of page cut out]
Charlotte, you certainly are clever if you have really guessed that riddle, for I give you my word no one else has ever guessed it. Now try your hand on
[remainder of page cut off] [MTP].
Note: the pages cut off begs the question as to who did the cutting and why? If Sam, then perhaps he wanted to delete passages he felt might discourage her, as he seemed to be acting as a sort of mentor or literary counsel, and he did deal with her in a tender fashion. If Charlotte cut the passages, well there’s no telling why. Or, perhaps the letter simply got damaged over the years. The notation about the letter taking 22 hours from NY to Dublin, yet spending 10 hours at the grocers, suggests that the normal mail time was 12 hours.
Isabel Lyon’s journal:
Petit mal. [Jean]
No dictating today either. For 2½ hours this afternoon Mr. Clemens read auto-ms. to me. It is solidly interesting, & later Gladys Thayer came in for tea & the Beethoven Fifth Symphony. “All drying up for music” she has been. Mr. Clemens sat off in the dining room enjoying it too —but I thought he wasn’t there, for of late he has sometimes seemed to avoid music. He moods have been quite at variance with his former self. He is none the less great, but he is living in a world apart [MTP TS 84-85].
I am sending you a book. You are not obliged to read it, but you are obliged to admire the pictures, for they are just as sweet & cunning as they can be. Perhaps you remember that that publisher insisted that an artist would not be able to get an variety or effectiveness into pictures of human figures where he was denied the help of drapery. I would like to exhibit him without drapery in church & see if it wouldn’t change his mind.
It is a beautiful play, Charlo, & is full of life & energy & character. The people are not specters, they are alive. Mirabeau is greatly portrayed; you have missed no detail of his rich & varied nature, he stands forth clear, winning, worshipful, a majestic & benignant colossus. The new Marie Antoinette, unstable, vascillating, sometimes queen, sometimes woman, sometimes both, is a very valuable addition.
I tried reading the play to myself, knowing I should arrive nowhere by that process—& that is where I arrived. I must read it aloud, if I would arrive somewhere. I read a couple of pages aloud to the furniture—of course that was a failure, & embarrassing; the furniture made fun of me. Then I took a liberty which you must condone: I shut off Miss Lyon’s afternoon walk, yesterday, & required her to act as audience, which she was properly glad to do. For a first- night, I doubt if any performance ever went off with a more intemperate & sustained enthusiasm. Of course it was a prejudiced audience: half of it would be prone to admire the play in any case, & the other half know it would be much healthier to admire it than to fail of that courtesy; but no matter: after all allowances, the verdict was far from valueless; the admiration was sincere, & the enthusiasm unforced.
Even by the light thrown by that ignorant & ill-prepared first-reading I established on fact, beyond question: that the play reads strongly, brightly, movingly; of course these effects would come out still more in a month & much more—forcibly in subsequent readings. I cannot see any room for doubt that it will also play. The audience (which includes myself) expressed the conviction that if it were put on the stage it would play itself. It was a prejudiced audience, it is true; but it was unanimous, it was hearty; &, the predilections notwithstanding, I attach value to its opinion.
There was to be a second reading to-day, but just as the performance was closing at 6 p.m., your letter was brought up; therefore we hurried the MS to the mail. The letter was 22 hours coming to Dublin; by the grocer’s negligence it lay there all day yesterday—10 hours. Per those terms you will not get the MS until Monday. I am sorry for the day, Charlotte, by you see how it happened.
In revising, you will naturally have out the “to-night”—but don’t forget it. Let him say, “she is my guest.” It is fine, & must not be weakened by a superfluity.
I am not competent to criticise anything but phrasings, verbal hastinesses, minced metaphors, & so on. By the time you are done revising, there won’t be any to criticise. But if by chance you shall overlook one, I shan’t. There is one bit of heedlessness that you may possibly overlook—but you mustn’t. More than once you use the word “court” where you mean the King, or the queen, or both, & not the court at all.
Yes, I want him back when you are done with him. and by & by, in the future, when you shall have finished revising him, I must have him in that form, too. That’s the one I am going to put under the verbal microscope, if you don’t object.
I am glad you have put him by & sent your steam-hammer going on other work. Don’t look at him again for three months, except some theater require it. In three months, unconscious cerebration will have done the revising for you, & there’ll be nothing to do but register the product.
I am doing nothing today. That is to say,
[remainder of page cut off. next page:]
Against all etiquette this letter—as usual—is stringing out, & stringing out, & will have to suffer what Kipling’s Mulvaney suffered. He was a corporal, & for misconduct he was “rejooced.”
[portion of page cut out]
Charlotte, you certainly are clever if you have really guessed that riddle, for I give you my word no one else has ever guessed it. Now try your hand on
[remainder of page cut off] [MTP].
Note: the pages cut off begs the question as to who did the cutting and why? If Sam, then perhaps he wanted to delete passages he felt might discourage her, as he seemed to be acting as a sort of mentor or literary counsel, and he did deal with her in a tender fashion. If Charlotte cut the passages, well there’s no telling why. Or, perhaps the letter simply got damaged over the years. The notation about the letter taking 22 hours from NY to Dublin, yet spending 10 hours at the grocers, suggests that the normal mail time was 12 hours.
Isabel Lyon’s journal:
Petit mal. [Jean]
No dictating today either. For 2½ hours this afternoon Mr. Clemens read auto-ms. to me. It is solidly interesting, & later Gladys Thayer came in for tea & the Beethoven Fifth Symphony. “All drying up for music” she has been. Mr. Clemens sat off in the dining room enjoying it too —but I thought he wasn’t there, for of late he has sometimes seemed to avoid music. He moods have been quite at variance with his former self. He is none the less great, but he is living in a world apart [MTP TS 84-85].
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