September 15 Friday – In Sanna, Sweden Sam began a letter to Major H.F. Gordon Forbes, author, living at this time in Boulogne. (Sam added a PS on Sept. 23.) Forbes’ letter had taken over three months to reach Sam, but from postmarks where the delay was Sam could not tell. He informed Forbes he would be in Sanna until Sept. 27 and at the Queen Anne Mansions for the winter starting Sept. 30.
Now as to Valentine Baker: I am as glad as any one can be, to hear the other side of that case. I’d like to talk it out with you when I see you—& I hope I may have this pleasure. To my mind there is one thing rather sure: that to continue his exclusion from the British army all these years would have been over-punishment even if he had raped the entire family, including the male members. The trouble with most punishments is that they go far beyond “fitting the crime.” I do not know of any really light punishment but death; & by a curious absence of cold common sense we put that one at the top.
Next, as to that South African battle. It isn’t I that make the mistake—it is the school history I quote from. It is a text-book down there, & was not written by a Boer, but by a Briton. Cecil Rhodes. …
….
It was Rhodes who slew the Boers who fell in it; & he slew the Britons, too, but they were consenting parties. Rhodes was chief of a friendly State when he perpetrated that prodigious outrage. If you should tell me you would have done the same thing in Rhodes’s place, I shouldn’t say I didn’t believe you, but I wouldn’t, all the same.
No, a man’s deeds must be separated & judged apart. No doubt the Court respected Eugene Aram’s learning, & eloquence, & the valuable service he had rendered by his industries in his vocation; but it didn’t allow these things to offset the murder. That Court would have hanged Rhodes, sure. …
I am gradually hatching out maxims—mainly absurd ones, I guess—with the intent to publish, one of these years. I made one, a minute ago, and enclose it—text for it, to wit: Reading the S. African news here in bed, I said to myself, there’s going to be a war, & then what?—for England is more in the wrong than is the Transvaal. And so, thinking along, I arrived at this: when a collision comes, in this world, a man is sure to stop reasoning, & swing to the side of his own people in the quarrel; for politics come from a man’s heart, hardly ever from his head—perhaps never. And so, when the fight begins down there I must soon expect to find myself unable to discover virtue in a Boer. This human race is always thinking it thinks: it is a superstition, it really never does anything but feel—& translate its emotions into something which it mistakes for thought [MTP].
Notes: Forbes was a member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and the author of The Road from Simla to Shipki in Chinese Thibet and various other minor routes: With a few hints for travelers, with map (1893). Valentine Baker, aka Baker Pasha (1827-1887), British soldier arrested in 1875 on the charge of indecent assault on a young woman in a railroad car. He offered no defense, and was fined and imprisoned for a year, then cashiered out of the service. Two years later he entered the Turkish army in the war against Russia. Afterwards he directed the Egyptian police force and when the war in Sudan broke out he accompanied the British troops to El Teb, where the force was wiped out, though he managed to escape and returned to El Teb with another force, where he was wounded. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used elements of the events that led to Baker’s imprisonment and cashiering from the British Army in his Sherlock Holmes’ short story, “The Adventure of the Bruce Partington Plans.”
The Second Boer War 1899-1902, unlike the first Boer War 1880-1, was long and bloody with great numbers of British troops against the Boer republics, Transvaal and the Orange Free State. British victory established these colonies as part of the Union of South Africa. Many were alarmed by the level of bloodshed, the use by the British of concentration camps, and the suffering of civilians.
Eugene Aram (1704-1759), English philologist, executed for killing his wife’s lover. He was celebrated by Thomas Hood in his ballad, The Dream of Eugene Aram, and by Bulwer Lytton in his romance of Eugene Aram. See Gribben 431 for Sam’s 1871 read and opinion of Eugene Aram.
Sam also wrote (with insertions and cancellations by Livy) to nephew Samuel E. Moffett.
I’m sorry you didn’t tell McClure to advertise the compliments—family as be pleased—they were good ones, & favored with judgement & dignity. (canceled by OLC) As I remember the cable, it said: “McClure’s compliments—see letter.” That is the impression that is left with me, but I don’t swear to the wording. I ought to have cabled & inquired, but I was absorbed in work, & whenever that is the case I can’t get a grip on an outside idea. …
I wish you would send the Forum article. Tear it out & send it as a letter—that is the sure way.
No—I’m afraid we shan’t sail for home till midwinter or spring—can’t tell. Depends on Jean. She mustn’t stop the gymnastic treatment till the disease is eradicated. She began here on the 11th July, & has vastly improved.
Sam took another page or two to criticize regular doctors and medicines [MTP].
Sam also wrote to T. Douglas Murray:
There is something very Frenchy about the cheeky interest (and complacent) which that excrescence of the human race take in Joan of Arc. In a bookshop window in Rouen I saw a bibliography of their contributions to her literature containing 3,000 titles, 99 hundredths of that must have been written since 1848; five centuries hence they will find something to be vain about in their treatment of Dreyfus.
How lucky that they condemned him again. If I hadn’t been supported and encouraged by my deep trust in their innate and hereditary rottenness, I should have been afraid, at times, that they would strike a lucid interval and save their country that final smirch [MTP: Chicago Book Auctions catalogs, 18 Feb. 1937, Item 106].
Sam also replied to Francis H. Skrine, whose incoming letter is not extant.
It’s a darling anecdote; & like most Scotch ones, full of the right to live forever.
We have had a perfect summer in this remote hamlet; it is fast shortening up, now. We shall be quartered in the Queen Anne Mansions the 1st of October—on the 7th floor; & I do hope to goodness they will take some pains to make our sojourn there comfortable & satisfactory.
After his signature Sam added a PS asking if Skrine would inscribe the book to him. Also, Sam was reminded about words he used in writing that he never used in speaking because he wasn’t sure how to pronounce them and was too lazy to look them up. “Other lazy people have this way, no doubt” [MTP]. Note: Skrine’s 1899 book co-authored by Edward Denison Ross: The Heart of Asia: A History of Russian Turkestan and the Central Asian Khanates from the Earliest Times, (published by Methuen & Co., London) is likely the one referred to here. (Not in Gribben.)
Sam also replied to Simon Wolf (1836-1923), powerful Jewish political attorney and philanthropist who founded the American Jewish Historical Society. Wolf’s letter is not extant, but he referred to it in The Presidents I have Known 1860-1918:
“Mark Twain, in an article in Harper’s Magazine, made a statement reflecting on the loyalty of the Jews during the Civil War. Coming as it did from a literary celebrity, I promptly wrote to him, calling his attention to my book, ‘The American Jew,’ sending him a copy thereof which he acknowledged as follows:” [149]. Sam’s reply:
I wish to thank you for the books now, for if they should get lost on the way, you might think I got them & was derelict in the matter of courtesy. …
I perceive that the Jews did wisely in keeping quiet during the Dreyfus agitation—the other course would have hurt Dreyfus’s cause, & I see now that nothing could have helped it.
Dreyfus has now won, for a second time, the highest honor in the gift of France—expulsion from her Army. I hope he knows how to value that, but I am afraid he doesn’t. But he mustn’t accept a pardon, anyway; an innocent man should spare himself that smirch—& Dreyfus would, I think; he is a manly man.
I thank you. I wanted one complimentary word from a competent source; with that support I can stand the rest [MTP].
Notes: “Twain described ‘Concerning the Jews’ as ‘my gem of the ocean,’ but predicted ‘neither Jew nor Christian will approve it.’ In the case of America’s Jewish leadership, he proved correct. Jewish critics acknowledged Twain’s respect for Jews but bemoaned his errors of fact. They denied that Jews had played a minimal role in gaining American liberty, or that they dominated commerce, or that they shirked military duty. Several critics were especially offended by Twain’s saying that Jews had done nothing to help acquit Captain Dreyfus.
“His friendliest critics believed that Twain was innocently ignorant of the facts. Simon Wolf, a founder of the American Jewish Historical Society, sent Twain a copy of his book, The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen, to correct some of his misconceptions” [by permission of Jewish virtual library. Org: Baird: “Mark Twain and the Jews”; emphasis added].
Sam also wrote an unnamed poem on this day [Scott, MT Poetry 123-5].
Sam’s essay, “My Boyhood Dreams” signed “Sanna, Sweden, Sept. 15th” 1899, and would run in McClure’s for Jan. 1900.
Frank Bliss wrote to Sam, enclosing financial statements for books sold to July 1, giving 2946.34 due, of which $700 was paid to Whitmore. The Uniform set was “progressing,” although subscriptions were poor during summer.
Regarding the English edition, there seems to be a delay in getting the matter of the copyright with Harper settled. I do not know yet how it is coming out, although Rogers told me the last time I saw him that he thought it would be fixed satisfactorily. It is in his hands and has been for some considerable time, and I suppose that he will get it fixed just as soon as he can. I don’t like to annoy him by crowding too hard. I have just written Chatto & Windus that we would proceed to get the books out, and do our utmost to get them over there at the earliest possible moment….There is one change which they have asked, however, which is quite serious. They want all our copyright marks taken off, and our lawyer here tells us it will not do; that we shall imperil our copyrights here if we issue the books that way. He says notwithstanding the books are made for the English market, that we are really the publishers of the books, and they are virtually issued from us in this country, and we shall lose our copyrights if we take the marks off [MTHHR 413-4n1; MTP].
Sam dated a poem, “To the Above Old People” Sept. 15, 1899. It was published in the Jan. 1900 issue of McClure’s [Camfield’s Bibliog.].