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$Unique_ID{bob01316}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, The
How This Book Came To Be}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{mark
webster
finn
huckleberry
tom
book
copies
sawyer
new
twain}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title: Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, The
Author: Twain, Mark
How This Book Came To Be
By John T. Winterich
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were born in the same town - not
Hannibal, Missouri, but Elmira, New York. Huck was four years younger than
Tom and took much longer to grow up. Tom was indubitably the favored child.
But Huck has triumphantly overcome these handicaps. His bare feet will go
pattering down the corridors of Time (an edifice which must awe him
considerably) as long as paper and printer's ink shall last. Tom Sawyer is
there, too, playing an eternal second fiddle. For not the least remarkable
facet of the coronation diamond that is Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (not
The Adventures, if you please) is that it is the only sequel in literary
history that is a surpassingly greater book than the original from which it
stemmed. This is not to belittle Tom Sawyer. There are a good many million
Americans (I am one) who consider Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the greatest
book ever written in America.
Mark Twain did not think so. We have seen how the idea of a sequel -
"by and by I shall take a boy of twelve and run him through life (in the
first person)" - had occurred to him no later than the moment he finished Tom
Sawyer. That was in July, 1875.
"By and by" turned out to be almost exactly a year. There is no
evidence as to the identical instant Mark embarked on Huckleberry Finn, but
by midsummer of 1876 he was well along with the story. His zest for it soon
flagged - "I like it only tolerably well, as far as I have gone, and may
possibly pigeonhole or burn the manuscript when it is done." At least he was
going to have the courage and application to finish what he had started.
But courage and application were a long time getting in gear. Almost
exactly seven years elapsed before he took up the onerous task again. Much
had happened in the interval. He had made the European journey that produced
A Tramp Abroad (1880); he had had differences with the American Publishing
Company and had given his next two books, The Prince and the Pauper and The
Stolen White Elephant (both 1882), to James R. Osgood & Company of Boston.
The following year Osgood brought out Life on the Mississippi.
To refresh his memory of pilot days Mark went down the river again. The
experience revived his long-hibernating interest in the Huckleberry Finn
manuscript. Characteristically he now went to work on it in a veritable
frenzy of industry. From his home in Hartford, late in August, 1883, he
wrote William Dean Howells, who had wet-nursed Tom Sawyer:
I have written eight or nine hundred manuscript pages in such
a brief space of time that I mustn't name the number of days; I
shouldn't believe it myself, and of course couldn't expect you to. I
used to restrict myself to four and five hours a day and five days in
the week, but this time I have wrought from breakfast till 5.15 P.M. six
days in the week, and once or twice I smouched a Sunday when the boss
wasn't looking. Nothing is half so good as literature hooked on Sunday,
on the sly.
He does not say that he actually finished the story in this violent
eruption of overtime; the presumption is that he did. Anyway, a few months
later the manuscript was in the hands of Charley Webster.
Charley - Charles L. - Webster was a nephew of Mark Twain by marriage.
(Mrs. Webster was Annie Moffett, daughter of Mark's sister Pamela). Mark had
backed Charley in an attempt to exploit the kaolatype process (a half-baked
forerunner of the half-tone engraving). This little flier cost Mark around
fifty thousand dollars. "Let the cobbler stick to his last" was not an
epigram of Mark Twain's devising.
The kaolatype blowup was hardly Webster's fault. Webster was what a
later age would denominate a go-getter, an exponent of the three P's (pep,
punch, personality), the apotheosis of the Dale Carnegie theory born out of
time. Mark got Webster a job with his new publisher, Osgood - nothing less
than the subscription managership of Osgood's New York office, with full
charge of the general agencies. Soon he was virtually Mark Twain's business
manager, and no man ever needed business managing more. And almost before
you could say bankruptcy Charley Webster was in the publishing business on
his own, with Mark Twain putting up the money.
The proof-sheets of Huckleberry Finn began to trickle through from the
Webster offices. There were not many mistakes, Mark wrote Howells, but what
there were were of a sort to "make a man swear his teeth loose." Howells
volunteered to handle the proofs. He was under a mild obligation to Mark at
the moment, for Mark had been active on behalf of a patent grape-scissors
which Howells's father had invented. One wonders how it happened, with
Mark's passion for gadgetry, that he did not think up this device by himself.
Meanwhile Mark was actively concerned in the promotion of the new book.
When the prospectus was in process he wrote Webster:
Keep it diligently in mind that we don't issue until we have made a
big sale.
Get at your canvassing early and drive it with all your might, with
an intent and purpose of issuing on the 10th or 15th of next December
(the best time in the year to tumble a big pile into the trade); but if
we haven't 40,000 subscriptions we simply postpone publication till
we've got them.
Three readily detachable units of Huckleberry Finn were serialized in
the Century Magazine for December, 1884, and January and February, 1885. But
this was not the reason why copies of the finished book were not ready for
delivery until February.
Actually at least some copies were ready for distribution by the end of
November, 1884, when an appalling discovery was made. Either by accident or
by design, the engraving of one of Kemble's illustrations had developed an
anatomical idiosyncrasy of such a sort as is frequently encountered in casual
addenda to billboard portraiture. The New York Herald printed this
explanatory paragraph in its November 29th issue:
Mr. Charles L. Webster, nephew of Mark Twain, yesterday offered a
reward of $500 for the apprehension and conviction of the person who so
altered an engraving in "Huckleberry Finn" as to make it obnoxious. Mr.
Webster said yesterday: "The book was examined before the final printing
by W. D. Howells, Mr. Clemens, the proof-reader and myself. Nothing
improper was discovered. On page 283 was a small illustration with the
subscription 'Who do you reckon it is?' By the punch of an awl or
graver, the illustration became an immoral one. But 250 copies left the
office, I believe, before the mistake was discovered. Had the first
edition been run off our loss would have been $25,000. Had the mistake
not been discovered, Mr. Clemens' credit for decency and morality would
have been destroyed."
Just how "Mr. Clemens' credit for decency and morality" was put in such
grave jeopardy by the defect is not altogether clear - is Sir Joshua
Reynolds's reputation compromised whenever an urchin affixes a pair of
moustaches and a Van Dyke beard to the print of one of Reynolds's portraits
of Dr. Samuel Johnson?
Copies of the book, units in the offending 250, which were already in
canvassers' hands were recalled, immediately and successfully. No matter how
eager a canvasser may have been to hold out one copy, the home office had an
accurate count on every representative, and a shortage would have meant
instant discharge. New leaves had to be tipped in before the books could go
out again. No such disaster overtook the London edition, which appeared
December 10, 1884, three days before the Library of Congress copies of the
American edition were received - nothing like the interval which separated
the transoceanic editions of Tom Sawyer.
Like Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn was available in cloth and in several
more elaborate and expensive bindings. Unlike Tom Sawyer, the cloth-bound
Hucks were available in either green or blue - the subscriber took hischoice.
Copies in blue cloth are far rarer today because in 1884 and 1885 most
subscribers preferred green - Irving S. Underhill, friend of Mark Twain and
assiduous collector of his first editions, discovered a prospectus in which
eighty-six orders were listed, fifty-six for green cloth copies and thirty
for leather. A note in every prospectus said that green cloth copies would
be sent unless otherwise ordered. The blue was presumably a concession to
owners of Tom Sawyers, who might want an identically accoutred Tom-Huck set.
The genuine rarity of blue-cloth Hucks has given such copies a reclame (and
hence a dollars-and-cents value) far exceeding that of the green. But the
blues are no firster than the greens.
Mark Twain, we have seen, was singularly inattentive to Huckleberry Finn
during his long period of gestation. While the parent was not altogether
indifferent to the delivered child, he did not lavish on it the affection
generally bestowed by an author on a masterpiece. But Mark had a most valid
reason for this attitude. He was not only author but co-publisher of Huck,
and a publisher cannot live by one book alone - the statement is arguable,
but let it pass. Seeking new worlds to conquer, Mark learned that General
Ulysses Simpson Grant was projecting his memoirs. After protracted
negotiations Mark secured the contract; the book was published, as the world
knows, after Grant's death, and on February 27, 1886, Charles L. Webster &
Co. handed his widow a check for two-hundred thousand dollars - to this date
the largest single royalty check ever paid. Huck Finn did pretty well for
all concerned, but for every dollar he brought into the Webster coffers
Grant's memoirs brought three.
Eight years later the house of Charles L. Webster & Co. lay in ruins.
It was a terrible anticlimax to one of the most auspicious beginnings in
publishing history. But the souls of General Grant and Huckleberry Finn go
marching on.