19 - My Mark Twain by William Dean Howells

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) forged a deep friendship with Mark Twain beginning in 1869, when Twain entered The Atlantic Monthlys Boston office to express his gratitude for Howells positive review of *Innocents Abroad*. As Howells later assumed the role of editor, The Atlantic Monthly became a pivotal platform for many of Twains works, including his acclaimed non-fiction piece, *Life on the Mississippi*. In *My Mark Twain*, Howells shares a captivating literary memoir filled with remarkable anecdotes, including their encounters with former President Ulysses Grant, who was then crafting his own classic autobiography—a project Twain would support through a groundbreaking publishing deal. Howells also beautifully captures the warmth of Twains family life during his numerous visits to the Twain residences in Hartford and Stormfield. (Summary by Dennis Sayers).

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Chapter nineteen of My Mark Twain. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox dot org. My Mark
Twain by William Dean Howells, Chapter nineteen. He satisfied the

(00:27):
impassioned demand of his nature for incessant activities of every
kind by taking a personal as well as a pecuniary
interest in the inventions of others. At one moment, the
damned human race was almost to be redeemed by a
process of founding brass without air bubbles in it. If

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this could once be accomplished, as I understood or misunderstood,
brass could be used in art prerinsantine to a degree
hitherto impossible. I dare say I have got it wrong,
But I am not mistaken as to Clemens's enthusiasm for
the process and his heavy losses in pain its way

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to ultimate He was simultaneously absorbed in the perfection of
a type setting machine, which he was paying the inventor
a salary to bring to a perfection so expensive that
it was practically impracticable. We were both printers by trade,
and I could take the same interest in this wonderful

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piece of mechanism that he could, and it was so
truly wonderful that it did everything but walk and talk.
Its ingenious creator was so bent upon realizing the highest
ideal in it that he produced a machine of quite
unimpeachable efficiency. But it was so costly when finished that

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it could not be made for less than twenty thousand
dollars if the parts were made by hand. This sum
was prohibitive of its introduction unless the requisite capital could
be found for making the parts by machinery, and Clement
spent many months in vainly trying to get this money together.
In the meantime, simpler machines had been invented and the

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market filled, and his investment of three hundred thousand dollars
in the beautiful Miracle remained permanent, but not profitable. I
once went with him to witness its performance, and it
did seem to me the last word in its way,
But it had been spoken too exquisitely, too fastidiously. I

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never heard him devote the inventor to the infernal gods,
as he was apt to with the geniuses he lost
money by, and so I think he did not regard
him as a trader. In these things, and in his
other schemes for the subiti guagnagni of the speculator, and

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the sudden making of splendid names for the benefactors of
our species. Clemens satisfied the Colonel Seller's nature in himself,
from which he drew the picture of that wild and
lovable creature, and perhaps made as good use of his
money as he could. He did not much care for

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money in itself, but he luxuriated in the lavish use
of it, and he was as generous with it as
ever a man was. He liked giving it, but he
commonly wearied of giving it himself. And wherever he lived
he established an almoner, whom he fully trusted to keep

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his left hand ignorant of what his right hand was doing.
I believe he felt no finality in charity, but did
it because, in its provisional way, it was the only
thing a man could do. I never heard him go
really into any sociological inquiry, and I have a feeling

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that that sort of thing baffled and dispirited him. No
one can read the Connecticut Yankee and not be aware
of the length and breadth of his sympathies with poverty,
but apparently he had not thought out any scheme for

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the economic wrongs we abound in. I cannot remember our
ever getting quite down to a discussion of the matter.
We came very near at once in the day of
the vast wave of emotion sent over the world by
looking backward and a again, when we were all so

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troubled by the great coal strike in Pennsylvania. In considering that,
he seemed to be for the time doubtful of the
justice of the working man's cause. At all other times
he seemed to know that whatever wrongs the working man committed,
work was always in the right. When Clemens returned to

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America with his family after lecturing around the world, I
again saw him in New York, where I so often
saw him while he was shaping himself for that heroic enterprise.
He would come to me and talk sorrowfully over his
financial ruin, and picture it to himself as the stuff

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of some unhappy dream which, after long prosperity, had culminated
the wrong way. It was very melancholy, very touching. But
the sorrow to which he had come home from his
long journey had not that forlorn bewilderment in it. He

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was looking wonderfully well, and when I asked for him
the name of his elixir, he said it was Plasmon.
He was apt for a man who had put faith
so decidedly away from him to take it back and
pin it to some superstition, usually of a hygienic sort. Once,

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when he was well on in years, he came to
New York without glasses and announced that he and all
his family, so astigmatic and myopic and old sighted, had
so to speak, burned their spectacles behind them upon the

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instruction of some sage who had found out that they
were a delusion. The next time he wore spectacles freely,
almost ostentatiously, and I heard from others that the whole
Clemens family had been near losing their eyesight by the

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miracle worked in their behalf. Now I was not surprised
to learn that the damned human race was to be
saved by Plasmon, if anything, and that my first duty
was to visit the Plasmon agency with him and procure

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enough Plasmon to secure my family against the ills it
was heir to for Evermore, I did not immediately understand
that Plasmon was one of the investments which he had
made from the substance of things hoped for and in
the destiny of a disastrous disappointment. But after paying off

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all the creditors of his late publishing firm, he had
to do something with his money, and it was not
his fault if he did not make a fortune out
of Plasmon. End of Chapter nineteen, read by Dennis Sayers
in Modesto, California, for LibriVox Winter two thousand and seven.