March 10 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave. in N.Y.C. Sam wrote to Elizabeth Garver Jordan (1867-1947) editor of Harper’s Bazar.
Dear Miss Jordan: / Once I could have written about the special faults of women—playfully, flippantly, possibly even seriously; but that time has gone by, not to come again I believe. My model would have been my wife, who was the only woman I have ever thoroughly known; she would have edited my article when it was finished, for she edited all my manuscripts, beginning this labor of love a year before we were married, continuing it 36 years, & only relinquishing it on her death-bed, when her strength was all gone & she laid down a story of mine—the first chapter of it—knowing that her dear work was ended & that she should not help me any more. I think she had no faults; if she had, I do not now remember what they were. I cannot write upon that subject, the memory of what she was has disqualified me. I will hope that another theme will suggest itself to you or to me & that it will turn out to be workable for the Bazar.
With my kindest regards & best wishes… [MTP]. Note: Miss Jordan would repeatedly try to get Sam to take part in a serial story to appear in Bazaar, at the urging of W.D. Howells. See Lyon’s journal relating to this letter below; also see May 29, 1906.
Sam also wrote again to Joe Twichell enclosing an article not in the file:
Joe dear, read it! Isn’t it a pathetic human race? And can there be anything more pathetic than the New England vote-peddling citizen’s guileless admiration of his Puritan forefathers & Revolution-ancestors, & his conviction that they averaged higher, in virtue, than he does? Well —I believed as he does until Charley Clark & John Fiske debauched me with the truth. About ’85 Charley Clark astounded me by saying that the farmer-vote of Connecticut was as purchasable as his potatoes, & at about the same price. I was an innocent person (then) & I was horrified. I had my opinion of the man who would buy a vote, or sell one, or would contribute money to be used in so degraded a commerce. Why, dang it, Joe, my own white soul surrendered, with hardly a pang, at the very first temptation! Yes sir, in our library one morning Charley Warner asked me for $25 to buy votes with, in Hawley’s interest, & I fell, there & then, never to rise again.
Do you notice the last sentence of the printed slip? Isn’t it good & sarcastic! They are going to lay Bulkeley’s matter (no doubt without a smile) before the U.S. Senate, a body which has been helping to buy the Grand Army & bounty-jumper & Revolution-great-grandchild vote every year for a generation! / Love from / …[MTP: Cushman file]. Note: Morgan Gardner Bulkeley (1837-1922), Republican Mayor of Hartford (1880-1888), Governor (1889-1893), US Senator 1905-1911. “Bulkeley’s matter,” seems here to have had some connection with the purchasing of votes, in prior days, a common occurrence in Connecticut.
Isabel Lyon’s journal: Today Mr. Clemens wrote a very beautiful letter in answer to Miss Elizabeth Jordan who wanted him to write on the “foibles of women”—to be answered by Henry James—but he said he couldn’t do that now, once he might have, but the one who would have helped him to do it is gone.
Mr. Coburn came and photographed Mr. Clemens. He came down stairs in his old gray slippers and words can never say how charming he is. Mr. Coburn was made most happy by the interview and by the chance remarks that the Signior Padrone threw in.
Tonight Mr. Clemens read his “War Prayer” after dinner. It is wonderful and strong, finishing with his eternal slap at the human race—“all machines” we are—not responsible for any action of ours [MTP: TS 43]. Note: Alvin Langdon Coburn, photographer.
Mrs. C. Griswold Bourne sent Sam an engraved invitation for tea at the Exhibition of the New York School of Applied Design for Women at 576 Fifth Ave. on Friday, March 10 at four o’clock [MTP]. Note: either the date sent is off, or Mrs. Bourne expected Sam to come on very short notice.
Sam wrote “The War Prayer” on or before this day. Budd: “Isabel Lyon recorded in her diary that Twain had read it to some friends. Hill also gives this date (p. 100). It was not published during Twain’s life, and it first appeared in 1923 in Europe and Elsewhere” [Collected 2: 1009-10]. Note: Rasmussen conjectures: “the story’s single incident may go back [to] a moment described in Life on the Mississippi, in which an apparently deranged man (Henry Clay Dean 1822-1887) delivers a speech that leaves his audience thinking that he is an archangel (chapter 57)” [A to Z 503]. Shelden writes that the piece was rejected by Harper’s Bazaar as “not quite suited to a woman’s magazine” [MTMW 60]. Perhaps Sam felt that it might only be published in such a magazine.
Jean Clemens wrote to the Harper’s Weekly editor, and her letter was published in the Apr. 1 issue:
A WORD FOR THE HORSES
New York, March 10,1005.
To the Editor of Harper’s Weekly:
Sir,—Have you ever stood perfectly still for ten or fifteen minutes with your head held a little farther back than it is your custom to hold it? If not, try it once and see how you like it. Stand stiffly in one position, or walk up and down a long flight of stairs, with your head a trifle higher and farther back than you usually carry it, for, say, fifteen minutes, and I believe you will realize some of the torture most carriage-horses have to endure. The going up and down stairs will convey partially what they feel when they have to pull a vehicle up a hill, and in order to do so can only use their muscles and none of their weight, and their sensation in descending an incline with their heads held so that they haven’t the faintest idea where they are going to step next. It is no wonder horses with high check-reins frequently misstep. They are expected to depend entirely on their drivers’ guiding, but the best of coachmen cannot see all the stones and ruts, whereas both the horses’ and the coachmen’s eyes being used, many stones would be stepped over and strained ankles thereby avoided.
I was surprised not long ago to find an intelligent gentleman who hadn’t ever noticed that such a thing as a check-rein existed. When I showed him several horses with them he realized the pain that the unnatural position a check-rein enforces must cause. He is doubtless unused to horses, but I feel certain that many ladies enter their carriages with no more than a glance at the horses to see if they are in proper trim. They do not realize the torture caused by the high check-reins, they do not understand that the constant throwing of the heads means that the horses’ necks arc aching intolerably from the strained position their heads are held in; they probably also do not know that very frequently when they are in a shop or paying a call their coachmen do not allow their slaves to bend their heads to one side occasionally to relieve a little of the pain,—they often give the wholly unoffending horse another pain by hitting him a sharp cut with the whip.
About the worst instrument of torture, aside from burred bits, is the combination of check-rein and martingale. The check obliges the horse to hold his head above a natural angle, and the martingale prevents his throwing it higher in order to relieve the horrible tension a little. If a person having horses harnessed in the above way had the patience to hold his head in a strained position until his neck ached and then continue to hold it there, moving it neither up nor down. I think that unless he were wilfully brutal and entirely without feeling, he would order at least the martingale to be removed, and possibly the check also.
Many well-bred horses hold their heads higher than their checkreins require when they are travelling, but as soon as they stand still they would naturally hold them lower, and then the pain and the restlessness caused by the check and possibly the sharp curb begin and do not end until the stable is reached and the check removed, because when once that kind of pain has started it cannot possibly stop until the horse has had the opportunity of putting his head away down as well as away up.
The chances are ten to one that when the owners of beautiful turnouts speak to their coachmen about the cruelty of checkreins, the coachmen laugh, believing that hostility to the checkreins is merely a fad, and that they do not at all strain or fatigue a horse. The coachmen are often more anxious to have the horses look as stylish as possible than the owners are, and as it is considered stylish to have horses’ heads reined up they will do their best to preserve the custom; but let the style change, and we shall see with what alacrity they will consider the employment of a cheek or a check and a martingale a useless cruelty.
I am, sir, Jean L. Clemens.
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