Twain at His Worst

Relatives of Mark Twain last week began giving the world a new, important and frequently unflattering load of Twainiana. The Atlantic Monthly published the first of four articles based on letters (they go back to 1853 when Twain was 18) which Samuel Langhorne Clemens wrote to members of his family and to his onetime publishing partner, Charles L. Webster.* They often show Twain at his worst--techy, cussed, filled with distrust of his fellows, a domineering egotist. They also often show him in full comical steam. In sum, they make the difficult man a more understandable genius.

Family Troubles. Editor and author of the Atlantic's series is Charles L. Webster's son, Mark Twain's grandnephew, corncob-pipe-smoking Samuel (for Clemens) Charles (for his father) Webster of Manhattan. His helper was his tiny, chipper, 91-year-old mother, Sam Clemens' niece and his favorite youngster during his Mississippi pilot days. Mrs. Webster saved the 500-odd letters through the years --literally in an attic trunk.

Killing Susy. Editor Webster's picture of "Uncle Sam" begins with such early lore as the fun Twain had in letters to his mother. She wrote in a maternal hurry and let her mistakes go uncorrected. Thus when she meant to write, "Kiss Susy [Twain's daughter] for me," it came out "Kill Susy for me." To which Twain replied: "I said to Livy [his wife], 'It is a hard thing to ask of loving parents, but Ma is getting old and her slightest whim must be our law'; so I called in Downey, and Livy and I held the child with the tears streaming down our faces while he sawed her head off."

Editor Webster insists that Mark Twain was grossly unfair to his father's memory. Twain attributed to the senior Webster the failure of Charles L. Webster & Co. (the once enormously successful house that published Twain and others in the '80s).

Twain was at the top of his popularity in 1883, when he and Charles Webster became partners. Twain had always had troubles with publishers--"pirates, scoundrels . . . humiliating swindles." Partner Webster at once began to have Twain trouble. First it was what Twain called "Huck Finn--that God-damned book!" He was certain it would not sell (it sold some 300,000 copies the first year).

Bed Clamper. But the troubles of "Dear Charley" were not so much with Author Twain as with Inventor Twain and Businessman Twain--who never had made a nickel except by writing and publishing. From the publishing house Twain was reaping $100,000 a year--and pouring most of it into his inventions. There was Kaolatype (a chalk process for engraving). It had been going nowhere for years. There was the Twain bed clamp, designed to keep babies from getting wound up in the covers. It was Editor Webster, then an infant, who proved it unpractical. Nothing ever came of the bed clamp. There was the famed, ill-fated Twain printing machine--"the damned typesetter." It cost (in tinkering and development) $2,000 to $3,000 a month. It finally broke the publishing house and Sam Clemens.

In the Manhattan apartment, a veritable Twain museum, where Webster's widow lives with Editor Webster, an occasional visitor is Mark Twain's only surviving daughter, Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch Samossoud (TIME, May 22). The Websters say she consented to the publication of the letters. Says Editor Webster: "No more interesting, no more generous man ever lived than Uncle Sam. But we had to set the record straight."

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