October – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Amelia D. Hookway, principal of the George Howland Elementary school in Chicago.
P. S. to my secretary’s letter:
Dear Mrs. Hookway: /Although I am full of the spirit of words this morning—a rarity with me lately—I must steal a moment or two for a word in person; for I have been reading the eloquent account in the Record-Herald & am pleasurably stirred, to my deepest deeps. The reading brings vividly back to me my pet & pride, The Children’s Theatre—of the East Side, New York. And it supports & reaffirms what I have so often & so strenuously said in public: that a children’s theatre is easily the most valuable adjunct that any educational institution for the young can have, & that no otherwise good school is complete without it.
It is much the most effective teacher of morals & promotor of good conduct that the ingenuity of man has yet devised, for the reason that its lessons are not taught wearily by book & by dreary homily, but by visible & enthusing action; & they go straight to the heart, which is the rightest of right places for them. Book-morals often get no further than the intellect, if they even get that far on their spectral & shadowy pilgrimage but when they travel from a children’s theatre they do not stop permanently at that halfway house but go on home.
The children’s theatre is the only teacher of morals & conduct & high ideals that never bores the pupil, but always leaves him sorry when the lesson is over. And as for history, no other teacher is for a moment comparable to it; no other can make the dead heroes of the world rise up & shake the dust of the ages from their bones & live & move & breathe & speak & be real to the looker & the listener; no other can make the study of the lives & times of the illustrious dead a delight, a splendid interest, a passion; & no other can paint a history-lesson in colors that will stay, & stay, & never fade.
It is my conviction that the children’s theatre is one of the very, very great inventions of the twentieth century; & that its vast educational value—now but dimly perceived & but vaguely understood—will presently come to be recognized. By the article which I have been reading I find the same things happening in the Howland School that we have become familiar with in our own Children’s Theatre (of which I am President, & sufficiently vain of the distinction.) These things, among others:
1. The educating history-study does not stop with the little players, but the whole school catches the infection & revels in it.
2. And it doesn’t even stop there: the children carry it home & infect the family with it—even the parents & grand-parents; & the whole household fall to studying history, & bygone manners & customs & costumes, with eager interest. And this interest is carried along to the studying of costumes in old book-plates; & beyond that to the selecting of the fabrics & the making of the clothes. Hundreds of our children learn the plays by listening, without book, & by making notes; then the listener goes home & plays the piece—all the parts!—to the family. And the family are glad & proud; glad to listen to the explanations & analyses, glad to learn, glad to be lifted to planes high above their dreary workaday lives. Our Children’s Theatre is educating 7,000 children—& their families. When we put on a play of Shakespeare they fall to studying it diligently, so that they may be qualified to enjoy it to the limit when the piece is staged. They know Shakspeare. They haven’t much competition in this.
3. Your Howard School children do the construction-work, & stage-decorations, etc. That is our way, too. Our young folks do everything that is needed by the Theatre, with their own hands: scene-designing, scene-painting, gas-fitting, electric work, costume-designing, costume-making —everything & all things, indeed—& their fine orchestra & its leader are from their own ranks.
The article which I have been reading, says—speaking of a historical play produced by the pupils of the Howard school—
“The question naturally arises, What has this drama done for those who so enthusiastically took part? . . . . The touching story has made a year out of the Past live for the children as could no chronology or bald statement of historical events; it has cultivated the fancy & given to the imagination strength & purity; work in composition has ceased to be drudgery, for when all other themes fall flat a subject dealing with some aspect of the drama presented never fails to arouse interest & a rapid pushing of pens over paper.”
That is entirely true. The interest is not confined to the drama’s story, it spreads out all around the period of the story, & gives to all the outlying & unrelated happenings of that period a fascinating interest—an interest which does not fade out with the years, but remains always fresh, always inspiring, always welcome. History-facts dug by the job, with sweat & tears, out of a dry & spiritless text-book—but never mind, all who have suffered know what that is.
Commendations uttered by President Eliot of Harvard are quoted in that article which I have been reading. That great man & great citizen is a strong friend of our Children’s Theatre. And what is more, he is officially connected with it. He is a subordinate of mine.
I remain, dear madam, sincerely Yours … [MTP].
Sam also inscribed a copy of his photograph, reading in bed, to Frederic Bulkeley Hyde. “To Mr. Frederic Bulkeley Hyde, with the best wishes of Mark Twain Oct’08” [MTP: eBay Mar. 25, 2002]. Note: Hyde took photographs at Stormfield in Nov. 1908.
William Wymark Jacobs (1863-1943) sent Sam a copy of his book, Salthaven, inscribing the title page: “To: Mark Twain / with the author’s compliments / Oct 1908” [MTP; Gribben 348]. Note: Clemens wrote under this inscription: “It’s a delightful book. / Mark” then below the title itself “Bay House / Bermuda, March/10 /I have read it about 5 times. The above verdict stands.” See Clemens to Jacobs of 28 October.
Jacob A. Riis for Riis Neighborhood Society sent Sam a printed form letter seeking subscriptions of one dollar per year [MTP]. Note: IVL: “Yes”