There was an uncomfortable silence broken only by the change of plates by the waiters and then Howells cleared his throat.
Holmes had heard of William Dean Howells, had even read one of his novels, and found little unusual in the writer-editor-critic’s appearance: stolid form, short-cut hair thinning on the front and top to the extent that Howells combed a few curly strands forward, a full mustache turning white, an intelligent gaze, and a soft voice.
“Do you know, for me this is a most important—one might almost say ‘historical’—evening,” said Howells.
“Why is that?” asked Clemens. “Because of the overpriced mediocrity of this somewhat decrepit claret?”
Howells ignored that comment. “Tonight two of my most famous authors, and two of my oldest and dearest of friends, are dining with me. I was beginning to think it would never come about.”
“I’ve read,” said Henry James, “that Mark Twain and I are as opposite, in all things literary, as the North and South Poles.”
“I have never understood that bromide,” said Clemens. “Certainly from what we know of the Arctic and what they are now calling the Antarctic, the poles must be far more alike than different. So saying that we are Howells’s poles would mean that we’re both cold, barren, impossibly distant, impossible to reach, and dangerous to travelers.”
“However that may be,” said James, determined not to be sidetracked by Sam Clemens’s nonsense, “you, Howells, especially during your years at The Atlantic Monthly, have managed to make literary successes of both of us.”
“Nonsense,” said Howells, flicking away the tribute with his well-manicured fingers. “You both were destined for literary immortality. It was simply my honor to publish and write essays about your work.”
“You often didn’t sign the critical essays of praise that you printed in your own magazine even while our books were being serialized there, Howells,” laughed Clemens, obviously, in James’s estimate, feeling the wine. “I appreciated it, as I’m sure did Mr. James, but if there were an Editors’ Board of Ethics and Review . . .”
“You know, Mr. Clemens,” interrupted James before the joke could hatch into a full insult, “I actually met you—or at least shook hands with you—once before this.”
“Upon what occasion?” asked Clemens. They were now on the post-dinner wine-and-cigars course and James could see that Mark Twain was enjoying both vices as he worked to focus his eyes a little better on James.
“December fifteen, eighteen seventy-four,” said James. “There was a grand dinner in the Parker House in Boston to celebrate The Atlantic’s first year under its new owners. You were there, Mr. Howells . . .” James turned toward his host and nodded.
“And so were many other well-known authors—now published in The Atlantic—as well as editors, various dons from Harvard and Princeton, architects, clergymen—although not the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher that evening . . .”
“Ah,” said Clemens. “That was in the early days of the Elizabeth Tilton scandal, was it not? Alas, poor Beecher . . . I knew him, Horatio . . . his sister Harriet was my neighbor at Nook Farm in Hartford. Poor Henry Ward had all those ladies in love with him—or at least with his preaching voice—and then most of the leading suffragettes turned against him like harpies during the scandals: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Victoria Woodhull, even his other sister, Isabella Beecher Hooker. They all wanted his hide.”
“But his other sister, your neighbor in Hartford, Harriet stuck by him, did she not?” said Howells.
“She did,” said Clemens. “Until the end. And since it’s been six years this month since Reverend Beecher died of that sudden stroke, I raise a glass to him and to all poor men who are punished so by harridans and harpies for such venial sins.”
All four men solemnly drank their toast to Beecher and his adultery.
The other tables there in the restaurant of the hotel were empty. The waiters were standing, visibly waiting, their gloved hands folded over their crotches. James knew that the evening was over and that he had to speak now or lose the opportunity.
“Mr. Clemens,” he said. “Howells mentioned that you were traveling up to Hartford tomorrow.”
“Yes,” said Clemens. “A necessity. Money, debt, and business. Just for the day though. I’ll be returning to Dr. Rice’s tomorrow evening.”
James knew that Clemens was currently the house guest of Dr. Clarence C. Rice, an ear-and-throat specialist who included amongst his famous clients Miss Lillian Russell, the aging actor—referred to earlier by Clemens—Edwin Booth, and Enrico Caruso.
“We wondered if Mr. Sherlock Holmes and I might travel to Hartford with you,” said James. “And perhaps convince you to stop by your home there on Farmington Avenue.”
Clemens stared as if he’d been asked to swallow a snake.
“Would you happen to know if your typewriter is still at your Hartford house?” Holmes asked quickly.
Clemens turned his head to look at the detective. “My typewriter?”
“We mentioned earlier that certain cards typed on that machine have been coming to Henry Adams, John and Clara Hays, and Clarence King for the years since Clover Adams’s death. It might help me in my investigation if I were to see the actual machine.”
“Your investigation?” repeated Clemens. He leaned closer to Holmes. “I have been polite so far this evening, but I do have to ask . . . are you really Sherlock Holmes? The 221 B Baker Street Sherlock Holmes? The ‘Come, Watson, the game’s afoot!’ Sherlock Holmes?”
“I am,” said Holmes.
“Well then you . . . and James, and you, too, Howells, if you’re not doing anything important . . . are welcome to travel up to Hartford with me tomorrow, and perhaps we’ll be able to get into the house if I cable ahead—it’s being leased, you know—but first, Mr. Holmes, you must answer a most pressing question that has been haunting me all through this evening’s fine meal and frivolity.”
“I shall if I am able,” said Holmes.
Clemens leaned even closer to the detective. “The question is simply this, sir . . . are you real, or are you a fictional character?”
“That is one of the things I am attempting to determine in this case of Clover Adams and the Five of Hearts,” said Holmes.
Clemens looked at him and said no more.
Howells gestured for the bill, they paid, and—since James and Holmes were staying overnight at this hotel, the Hotel Glenham on Broadway—the two men walked Clemens and Howells to the cabs waiting at the curb.
“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.”
CHAPTER 23
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.
Or at least to Clemens it would seem a higher level.
As if reading Holmes’s thoughts, Clemens removed the cigar from his mouth and leaned forward into the circle of men facing each other. “What about you, Mr. James? What do you think of seeking one’s fortune by writing for mere actors?”
James smiled. “I have friends who would say that such money is tainted.”
“By Jove, it is tainted!” cried Clemens in a loud voice while slapping his knee. All of the boy’s embarrassment and guilt was gone now, replaced by a boy’s enthusiasm. “The kind of wealth being made these days by writing for the stage by, say, that Irishman Oscar Wilde is twice tainted!”
“Twice tainted?” echoed Henry James.
“Twice tainted,” repeated Clemens. “Tain’t yours, and certainly tain’t mine.”
* * *
Hartford was a dreary one-business town—insurance companies on every other dreary corner and no civic architecture of any significance—but by the time the brougham carrying the four men to Nook Farm turned onto Farmington Avenue, Holmes and James could see the beauty of Mark Twain’s old neighborhood.
The houses were large but distinct from one another, obviously designed by architects with their particular clients’ dreams and desires in mind. Each lot covered several acres and, while a house might put an iron fence around some of the front yard to separate it from the paved and gently curving avenue, the larger properties themselves tended to blend together in forest and glade with no proprietary fencing.
“See that gazebo?” said Clemens, pointing into the trees between two fine homes. “Harriet Beecher Stowe and I shared the expense of building that since it sits right on the invisible line between our properties. She and I would meet there often on a warm summer day or brisk autumn morning to swap yarns and discuss the inevitabl
e decline of Western Civilization.”
“Is she still living?” asked Holmes. Uncle Tom’s Cabin had run on the stage in London literally for decades since his boyhood.
“Oh, yes,” said Clemens. “Almost eighty-two now, I believe, and still as gracious and cussed as ever. The little woman, as President Lincoln said upon first meeting her, whose book started the great war.”
Their brougham paused to let two builders’ wagons slowly pass and since they were still gazing at the gazebo amidst the trees, Clemens went on, “Some nights when I couldn’t sleep, I’d steal out to sit on the railing in the gazebo and smoke and admire the stars or moonlight. Often I’d find Mrs. Stowe already there. We’d talk ’til almost dawn, two happy insomniacs.”
“One must wonder,” said Henry James, “what two writers of such major accomplishment and diverse talents would discuss in the starlight or moonlight. The nature of evil? The past and future of the black race in America? Thoughts on literature or dramaturgy?”
“Mostly,” said Clemens, taking the cigar from his mouth, “we talked about our aches and pains. Especially before Mr. Stowe died in ’eighty-six. She’d tell me hers; I’d tell ’er mine.”
Holmes saw Howells smile at this. Obviously some Sam Clemens story was imminent while they waited for the dray wagons to rumble past.