Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

“Come, Howells,” said Clemens, “we’ll take this one and I’ll drop you on the way to Dr. Rice’s place.”

“But it is out of the way . . .” protested Howells.

“In the cab, sir,” said Clemens. “It would be unseemly for two gentlemen of our age and station to be arrested for wrestling on the curb at this hour of the night.” He turned his dangerous gaze on James and Holmes. “It’s a fool’s errand you’re on, gentlemen, but this Great Fool always welcomes other fools for company. I’ll meet you all tomorrow at Grand Central Station at nine a.m.”

William Dean Howells accompanied them to Hartford that Thursday—Holmes was not sure why, since he assumed Howells had a full business day in New York—and the dreary passing countryside was surpassed only by the dreariness of the conversation. In that one railway trip, Sherlock Holmes learned more about the business of writing and publishing than he could ever use.

Clemens and the usually reticent James had been agreeing vocally while Howells mostly listened and Holmes tried to catch a nap.

“Publishing is changing rapidly, and not for the best,” Clemens was saying.

“I agree,” said James.

“The magazines want a new type of story, if they want stories at all,” said Clemens.

“I heartily agree,” said James. “My number of short story sales has dropped off abysmally. A writer of short fiction can no longer make a living.”

“And subscription novels—once my livelihood and the bread and butter of my own publishing house—are disappearing.”

“Too true, Mr. Clemens.”

“So where in blazes are we to find our wages?” demanded Clemens between puffs on his Havana cigar. “Even serialized novels are disappearing from the magazines.”

“Very difficult to place, very difficult,” murmured James.

“Henry,” said Howells, his tired eyes coming alive. “Do you remember about nine years ago—I think it was early in ’eighty-four—when my The Rise of Silas Lapham was being serialized in the Century at the same time as your The Bostonians ?”

“I was deeply honored that my modest early effort was sharing space with your masterpiece,” said James. William Dean Howells nodded his appreciation for the compliment.

Holmes noticed a very subtle, quite hidden, but still—to him—noticeable expression come over Henry James’s face. The look, gone before it could be seen for a certainty, reminded Holmes of a proper little girl who was going to say or do something mischievous.

“Mr. Clemens,” said James, “did you by any chance ever happen to read The Bostonians ?”

A strange, embarrassed look came over the confident Clemens. “Ah . . . no, sir . . . Mr. James, I’ve not yet had that pleasure.”

“I ask,” said James very softly, with more than a hint of a smile, “because an English friend mentioned to me that he’d been at a banquet in Boston around that time—eighteen eighty-four, I believe—during which you said from the podium, and I think I am quoting you properly, ‘I would rather be damned to John Bunyan’s heaven than to read The Bostonians .’ ”

Holmes was astounded at Henry James’s bold frontal attack on Clemens. Holmes had only known James for a short time, but everything he had observed in the writer’s demeanor— everything —suggested that James would avoid controversy at almost any price, and if forced to react would do so by the most subtle suggestion and most shaded ironical nuance. Yet here he was coming at Clemens like Admiral Nelson at the French or Spanish fleets—straight at ’em.

Also astounded, it was obvious, was Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain. The other writer’s face, so animated by dramatic scowls or controlled expressions of exaggerated surprise or joy in every other exchange Holmes had seen, now bore a look as blank and open and pathetically embarrassed as any 11-year-old boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“I . . . he . . . I . . .” stammered Clemens, his cheeks and nose looking as though they might burst any second from exploding capillaries, “it doesn’t . . . I certainly did not mean . . . podiums . . . banquets! ” The last two words were launched in a tone of disgust emphasized by Clemens waving his hand as if wafting away a noxious odor. Clemens worked to light a new cigar, bending to focus all his energy on the business, even though he had two-thirds of one still burning in the ashtray.

Holmes could see by William Dean Howells’s paled and absolutely frozen face that he had been the one to carry original word of the insult to James almost a decade ago.

James let a few more delicious seconds of this heavily weighted silence pass before he said, “But, sir, many readers—including this one after sufficient time had passed—fully agreed with you on the faults of The Bostonians . And I fully and heartily agree with you, sir, that it would be the worst sort of Hell to be damned to John Bunyan’s heaven.”

For a while the silence ruled. Clemens held his cigar, James and Howells smoked their cigarettes, and Holmes puffed away at his pipe. The four men peered at each other through a strained but collegial blue haze.

“Henry,” said Howells after clearing his throat, “you have diversified, as the businessmen say, into the theater, have you not?”

James nodded modestly. “Three years ago, at Mr. Edward Compton’s request, I adapted my novel The American into a play. The novel was not entirely suited to dramatization, but writing and revising the play gave me much needed theatrical experience.”

“Did it reach the stage?” asked Clemens.

“Yes,” said James. “And with some success. Both in the provinces and eventually in London. The next drama I write will be done exclusively for the theater and will not be an adaptation. In some ways, to be candid, I feel that I have finally found my true form. I find dramatical writing, with its emphasis on the scene , much more interesting than the novel or short fiction, do you not?”

Clemens grunted. “I adapted my book The Gilded Age into a play, known by most folks as Colonel Sellers because of the strength of the main character, played by John T. Raymond. Do you know Raymond, Mr. James?”

“I’ve not met him or seen any of his plays,” said James.

“He was a perfect Colonel Sellers,” said Clemens. “This was during the Grant presidency, and President Grant attended one of the New York performances and friends of mine told me that one could hear the president laughing all the way to the rear balcony rows.”

“It was a comedy then?” said James.

“In part,” said Clemens. “Certainly John T. Raymond made it so. I would have appreciated it if he had played his famous turnip-eating scene more in the spirit of the pure pathos of poverty which I’d intended rather than the broad comedy Raymond made of it. But I cannot complain. Colonel Sellers netted ten thousand dollars in its first three months and I imagine that it will make me seventy-five or a hundred thousand dollars before it, or I, or both of us together, die of old age.”

There was another silence then amongst the four men as the vulgarity of someone stating how much money he’d made from a job was left to drift away slowly with the cigar, cigarette, and pipe smoke. Holmes looked at Samuel Clemens with his most analytical gaze. Much of Holmes’s job depended upon reading people as much as reading clues. Coming to a decision on the quality of a person or the veracity of his statements or the solidity of his personality led to more revelations in detective work than did the inspection of footprints or types of cigarette ash left behind. Clemens, Holmes saw, used vulgarity as a device—not only to shock his audience (and everyone around him was, always, his audience), but to move beyond that shock at obvious vulgarity to some (hoped-for) higher level of humor or farce.