Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

Lucerne, August the Something or Other, 1897

Dear Stanley,

I greet you from a small village in Switzerland, Weggis (about a half an hour from Lucerne). Here I am writing a new novel about my old and reassuring friends Tom and Huck — a detective story — and am getting along very well with it. My Joan of Arc book is behind me (more or less). We’ve rented a small house on a hillside overlooking a picturesque lake, the whole scenario, I think, the loveliest in the world. We have a rowboat and some bicycles, and good roads, and no visitors. Nobody knows we are here. Sunday in heaven is noisy compared to this quietness.

Sincerely yours,

S.L.C.

Hotel Metropole, Vienna

December 20, 1897

My dearest Mrs. Stanley,

What new nails have been hammered into my palms. First Susy, then my older brother Orion, who’d always wanted to make something of himself — he is gone at the age of seventy-two. A more tiresome and mournful yoke cannot be put on anyone. If I take any solace it is in the way he went out — without pain, without any particular awareness; like a clock whose springs and gears have suddenly wound down and then stopped at a certain hour and minute and second. He was working on a book, a novel about Judas Iscariot, when the very same soul who was robust and hardy in my youth simply ceased existing. Strangely, when I heard of his passing, I could not help but wonder about the last word he wrote, for his wife found him slumped over his desk in the midst of his work. Was it the word “the” or “an” or “morning” or “night,” among the countless possibilities? We will never know. (And, of course, I wonder which last word will be my own.)

Forgive my melancholy — it’s been with me for some years now. Think more about our painting sessions at Richmond Terrace, which were pleasant interludes — when I was younger! For what it is worth, Mrs. Stanley, I wouldn’t mind the idea of coming through the darting and cold rain to sit again for you once we are again in London.

As always, give my best to your mother and Stanley, my most famous friend.

Regards,

Samuel Clemens

Hotel Krantz, Neuer Markt 6, Vienna

February 15, 1898

Dear Dolly,

We’ve moved to the Hotel Krantz — and lo and behold, while we’re settling in, Livy looks around the lobby and sees over the concierge’s desk a picture, in oils, that looks suspiciously like me. The exact double, but dressed up, of the one you showed me not long ago in your studio — the initials D.S. in the corner giving it all away. How on earth did you do it? At any rate, I thank you heartily for making me more handsome than I am and for elevating the standards of good taste in that hotel.

Samuel

Richmond Terrace

February 19, 1898

My dear Samuel,

I don’t want to disappoint you in any way, but it was your dear friend Stanley who first thought you might get a charge out of it. Hearing that you were moving from the Hotel Metropole to the Krantz, I wrote the hotel manager, who was delighted to put your picture up.

With best wishes from Stanley and me,

Dolly

Hotel Krantz

February 20, 1898

Dear Stanley,

Surely you are aware of the incident in Havana harbor a few days ago (February 15), when the US battleship Maine was blown up, allegedly sunk by a Spanish torpedo. Since I have known of many a riverboat exploding over some careless act — like a fellow smoking in a munitions hold or a boiler overheating — I’m inclined to think that it was an accident of some kind, but whatever the cause, the American papers I have been reading over here (the Hearst papers in particular) are calling it an act of war and are banging the war drums, as if this action was akin to the bombing of Fort Sumter. At any rate, the coals are being stoked in reprisal, even if there’s no definitive proof. If it turns out that the Spaniards are the cause and our boys go in, I would support them, though given all the blarney going around, I would not be surprised at all if it turns out to be a pretext for invading and annexing the island, which, as you know, has been on Uncle Sam’s list of things to do for many years now.

And speaking of Cuba, by my internal calendar it is thirty-seven years since you and I were in that now-infamous city, sailing the harbor where that battleship went down, and thirty years since I paused briefly there on my way to Panama in 1866. My, how the clock ticks, even as the world goes on its one-minded way.

Yours,

Samuel Clemens

Hotel Krantz

March 17, 1898

Dear Stanley,

Vienna is beautiful, but I have never seen as much anti-Semitism in any other place as I have here. These days there’s much talk about the “Jewish question.” Here, in one of the most civilized and expensive cities in the world, the mayor, Karl Lueger, and any number of earnest and devoted family men — members of the Christian Social Party— hate the Jews! Riots are breaking out over the ethnic rights of the Germans and Czechs, and the Jews, however they stand on the issues, are caught in the middle. If I had time to run around and talk about such things — even understand what the commotion is about — I would do it; for there is much politicking going on, and it would be interesting if a body could get the hang of it. But it’s a strange atmosphere to be in. Even my first name, Samuel, has attracted the attention of the right-leaning press as sounding suspiciously Jewish — can you imagine the fuss they would make about Moses, your Welsh grandfather? I suppose I should take it as a compliment — it’s a marvelous race — by a long shot the most marvelous that the world has produced, I suppose.

In the meantime, the merde piles up higher and higher; it seems as if all this hatred, at the Jews’ expense, will cost heavily sometime in the future.

I wish I could understand these quarrels, but of course I can’t.

I will now end these few lines of my grumbling: Livy calls me a grouch, and my daughters try to stay out of my way, probably with good reason.

With best wishes,

“Mark”

(a.k.a. Samuel the Jew)

Hotel Krantz

May 20, 1898

Dear Mrs. Stanley,

You will notice that I begin this note with an actual date as absolute proof that I am capable of such subtleties. In your house in London a hundred years ago you said that my occasional omission of dates (or years, anyway) is a bad habit — and I have since tried to reform, as I would not want to disappoint you. Your remark has cost me worlds of time and torture and buckets of ink; but I thank you for the fine advice.