Interview with Samuel L. Clemens from the New York Sun, 4 April 1884, 1.

Mark Twain's April Fool.^[1]

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THE PRACTICAL JOKE PLAYED UPON HIM BY GEORGE W. CABLE.

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Bushels of Letters Mailed to Him by Authors, Poets, Preachers, and Politicians Asking for his Autograph—Col. John Hay Wants Excerpts from “Young's Night Thoughts” and Pollock's “Course of Time”—Col. Knox Wants Autographs for the King of Siam's Family—Waterproof Autographs, an Autograph for a Lame Boy, an Autograph on a Blank Check, and an Autograph Message by Telegraph Requested.

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Hartford, April 3.—“It is reported that you have received an unusual number of applications for your autograph within the last few days,” said a Sun representative^[2] to Samuel L. Clemens, at his Farmington avenue home, this morning. “Is it so?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Clemens. “They began to come on Tuesday morning, and they have been coming ever since. Tuesday at breakfast I found a pile of them by my plate as high as a silk hat. There were seventy in that pile.”

“How many have come altogether?” asked the interviewer.

“I have not counted them, but should say somewhere in the neighborhood of 250.”^[3]

“What do you suppose has caused this extraordinary call? What do you attribute it to?”

“Of course at first I attributed it to the spots on the sun, not that I can see any plausible connection between such a thing and the spots on the sun, but merely because it has become the public habit in our day to lay everything to the spots on the sun which one can't otherwise account for. But since then, upon reflecting I have come to imagine its cause to lie nearer home. If you will examine some of these letters you will see what I mean. These people are moved mainly by an affectionate impulse, but underneath it you can detect a selfish motive. These applicants consist almost wholly of authors, actors, and clergymen. They are before the public in their several capacities, and notoriety is bread and meat to them. They want my autograph—that is evident, and it is also pleasant and complimentary—but I judge that the thing which they are mainly after is to get some sort of a moral endorsement out of me which they can use as an advertisement. Take Stedman's letter for instance:

“Do you notice what an amount of schoolgirl rapture and effusiveness there is in that? Do you notice the nervous unrest and anxiety betrayed by the frequent italics? If Stedman were not so manifestly in deep and pathetic earnest you would think he was trying to imitate the sort of application which one is always receiving from the female seminaries. And how admirably exact is this unconscious imitation! But, read between the lines, you detect that Stedman has an axe to grind.^[4] I cannot divine what it is, of course, but a week or two hence he will write again, and then I shall know. When a man has a covert, uncanny purpose in his heart, how certain he is to betray it by the very methods he takes to conceal it. In trying to be complimentary, he is sure to flounder into flattery, and thence into other forms of inaccuracy. For instance: I am not Stedman's 'favorite author.' He is infatuated to insanity with Farquhar Tupper.^[5] My kindness is not 'well known:' it has always been kept private, even from my family. When a man would say the gracious thing, he ought always to be sure of his facts. Now, Stedman, with his wild reference to 'The Innocents and the Pauper,' has mixed together two entirely separate and distinct books, and thus has exposed the fact that he has never seen either of them. Thus, in overtrying to compliment me, he has inflicted upon the most sensitive spot in my nature a rankling and incurable humiliation. Now, do you think I will grind his axe when it comes?”

“Do you observe anything peculiar about these letters, Mr. Clemens? Do they differ in any noticeable way from the ordinary autograph applications?”

“In one respect they are just like those which are usually received; that is, they are couched in the same jejune and stilted language, they are framed in the same worn-out forms,^[6] they show the same incredible ignorance as to what I have written, and the same inability to spell my name correctly, and yet there is a peculiarity about these letters which I have not noticed in the customary ones, and that is that none of these people have enclosed a stamp, except in a couple of instances, and even those two were valueless, for one was a revenue stamp,^[7]" and the other a postage stamp that had already been used so many times that I probably may not be able to make it go any more.”

“Have you answered these applications?”

“No; it is impossible to do it now, because this is my busy season. It will take me five or six weeks to answer them, and so I shall not begin the task until the summer vacation.”^[8]

“Why will it take so long?”

“Because I shall have to reflect upon my answers, and frame them in such a way as to gratify these friends, and yet be so judiciously worded that they cannot be used as a moral endorsement by them.”

“Who are some of these people, and do they ask for anything more than your autograph?”

“Do they ask for anything more than the autograph? I should think so! Take this letter from Col. John Hay, for instance. He has the Arctic coolness to ask me to copy off a few hundred lines of Young's 'Night Thoughts' and Pollok's 'Course of Time' for him—wants this cargo of mush for his boy; takes me for a type writer, I suppose. To me this is a most surprising thing, coming from a man like John Hay. He ought to know better than to put such a job as that on a person who is as busy as I am. He asks me to take a 'leisure hour' for this business. A leisure hour is nonsense: it is going to take me all of a week to copy off that dismal rot. If I had nothing to do I shouldn't mind it; but I'm a breadwinner myself.^[9] Now, Henry Irving requires nothing but a signature, and that is all right. He says it is a 'matter of life and death' with him to get it, and that is very pleasant, and is neatly said, and bears the impress of candor and truth. The applications from Miss Ellen Terry, Napoleon Sarony, and Miss Clara Louise Kellogg and her mother require the signature only, and this is also the case with Mme. Modjeska's application. At least this is the case with Modjeska's as far as I can read it; but part of it is written in the Polish language, and I cannot read that, being rusty in my Polish now. Mr. Boyesen writes me a pleasant and urgent letter, but, as he has left a whole lot of the js out of his name, it is of no use to me to file away as an autograph. He says he is collecting the autographs of 'all the great criminals'—a remark which I do not understand, because it does not seem to have any relevancy.^[10] All those Madison Square Theatre people want the signature; and they stop there, with the exception of the manager. He wishes to take the signature and 'dramatize it'—which is pure and simple nonsense, because you can't dramatize a signature; and on its face the thing is impossible.^[11] Bunner and Joe Howard are perfectly reasonable in their request; but Col. Knox, not satisfied with asking for an autograph for himself, wants autographs for the King of Siam's family also. He telegraphed, later,^[12] to ask if I would furnish them. I naturally said I would, for it seemed a little thing to do. But you see by his second letter that it is not a little thing at all, for that King has 258 children. Still, it is not anybody's fault but my own. It was heedless to take that family on trust without inquiry. Stephen Fiske wants an autograph for a friend who is going abroad, and wishes to 'take it along as a mascot.' Miss Gilder wants an autograph to file away with 'other literary scalps.' Mr. Whiting of the Springfield Republican wants to know whether the 'Prince and Pauper' story is founded on 'fact or fiction.' Now, that application is what the elect call 'too thin.'^[13] It is one of the commonest forms of deception, and has fooled many an author. This sort of applicant thinks that if he ask for a sentiment he may not get it, but that if he ask an ingeniously complimentary question you will fly off the handle and answer it before you think, and thus the inquirer captures something more than the bald signature. Henry Ward Beecher wants my autograph. That is a good deal of a compliment. Now, there is a man whose intellect broadens and deepens every day. Joseph Hatton wants an autograph 'to carry around;' Mr. Johnson of the Century wants one for a lame boy; Gen. Blodgett wants one for a consumptive who is tired of life;^[14] Major Kinney wants one, at the bottom of a blank check; Laurence Hutton wants an autograph, and also wants one of my children. How humanly natural that is: Here this man must come to me, who have hardly children enough to keep the wolf from the door, and yonder is the King of Siam just rolling in them. Mr. Buel of the Century wants an 'autographic humorous article.' It seems to me that in all my life I never saw such loads of frank, simple, unconscious, case-hardened cheek crammed into one little batch of letters. Mr. Dunham, Frank Millet, Moses Beach, the Rev. Robert Collyer, William Cary, R. Swain Gifford, F. Hopkinson Smith, J. Watson Beach, Horatio C. King, Major Plunkett, Brander Matthews, Col. Fairchild, Dr. Billings of the War Department, and about a hundred others want an autograph, and would enclose a stamp,' but as they are just starting, they do not wish to establish an expensive precedent.' But if they had thought a moment these people would see that they are establishing it after all, and that I am the sufferer. However, this was perfectly natural; you take a busy man, with a clandestine axe to grind, and he hardly ever thinks on any but one side of a question. Prof. R. W. Raymond wants an autograph for an entirely imaginary uncle,^[15] and Horace E. Scudder wants a 'holograph.' I suppose he thought that if he didn't say that, I would send him only half a one; a thing which I would not think of doing, for I consider that when a man starts in to do a thing he may as well do it right as to stop half way. The Rev. J. Hyatt Smith wants an autograph, and if I am not willing to furnish it, will I 'be kind enough to write and tell him so by return mail?' Now, what pure insanity that is. One would think it would have occurred to him that my written refusal to furnish an autograph would be an autograph itself. One of the most melancholy things about this whole business is the evidence it gives us that the intellects of so many of our very best men are failing. Thomas Bailey Aldrich wants an autograph because he admires my 'Gabriel Conroy' so much. I did not write 'Gabriel Conroy;' it was written by Henry James.^[16] But I suppose they hire Atlantic editors not for what they know, but merely for what they think they can do. Col. Waring, Col. Pond, Noah Brooks, and a lot more, want autographs to be used for what I judge to be improper political purposes. Julian Hawthorne, George W. Cable, Charles Dudley Warner, and George P. Lathrop want autographs just for love. In these four cases I am unable to discover any underlying sinful motive.”

“Have you named all the applicants?” asked the reporter.

“Oh, no: that would take too long. Besides, a great number are ladies in private life. We must not drag them out of it.”

“Were there any applications by telegraph?”

“Yes. One from the city editor of the Commercial Advertiser, desiring an autograph for the fifth edition of his journal; one from Henry F. Gillig,^[17] desiring an autograph to trade off for Tennyson's now, while exchange is in our favor;^[18] one from Bloodgood Cutter, the Long Island farmer poet—in rhyme, of course; several others from various parts of the country, and one from Henry Peters, of New York, who says: 'Please send immediately, express paid, six pounds of your heaviest waterproof autographs.' This telegram reveals the novice in autograph hunting. There is no such thing as a waterproof autograph. An autograph may be written on a waterproof substance and then, by a fiction of phraseology, one may call it a waterproof autograph, but it will not in reality be one, after all. If I had time to elaborate this thought, I could make it perfectly clear to you, or, indeed, to any one, that I am right in the assertion which I have made. 'Waterproof autograph' is a form which may be used in poetry, because the exigencies of poetry require and justify a large degree of liberty; but I am quite sure that in prose—”

“Yes, I understand; I understand. What did you do about these telegraphic autographs?”

“I answered them at once, because, as they came by telegraph, it necessarily meant that the case was urgent.”

“How did you answer them?”

“By telegraph,” replied the humorist.^[19]

“That does not meet the requirements of the case. It is not your autograph.”

“Well, that is so, isn't it?” Mr. Clemens said slowly as he moved to the window and looked out.

“What are you going to do with all this cargo of letters?”

“Put them together, and have an autograph collection myself.”

“Do you answer autograph applications, as a general thing, Mr. Clemens?”

“I used to do it always, but it took up a good deal of time, and I had to stop it. Of late years I am always intending to answer them. But things interfere; and, so the matter ends with the intention.”

“Mr. Clemens, since I have been sitting here it has occurred to me that there is something suggestive in the fact that this deluge of letters occurred last Tuesday,” ventured The Sun's representative.

“What is there suggestive about that?”

“Tuesday was the first of April,” answered the reporter.

“I don't quite get your idea,” the author of “Roughing It” said. “Explain.”

“I should think that if you put this and that together, the this and that must explain themselves. This whole thing is evidently an April fool joke, Mr. Clemens.”

“Oh, nonsense—you are a thousand miles out of the way.”

“Why so?”

“Because at least two-thirds of these letters are from personal friends of mine. They could have no object in April fooling me. You can see, yourself, by the general drift of the letters, that there isn't wordly-mindedness enough in the entire gang to build so stately and gaudy a joke as this would be if it were a joke. Dear me, granting it a joke, I wouldn't like anything better than that the rest of the guild should go on and add to it and make it complete. A lot of pleasant, friendly, delightful letters like these, hailing from all the celebrities in America, would form a collection which I could be very proud of and very glad to possess. I could stand a joke like that.”^[20]

“Well, your opinion to the contrary, Mr. Clemens, I feel almost certain that this is a vast April fool joke,” ventured the caller.

“Nonsense, it is nothing of the kind. Here, I can prove it to you by one simple, unassailable fact, which will convince even you, and that is this: The very first letter of the lot came from George W. Cable.^[21] Now, Cable is not only a very particular friend of mine, and for that reason would not play jokes on me, but he is a poet by nature and breeding, and therefore, between you and me, he hasn't really got practical sin enough in him to invent a joke.”^[22]

“Well, that argument does seem unanswerable, and so I will not try to answer it, especially as my time is pressing; but will take my leave now, with thanks for the attention you have given this matter.”

The interviewer here took his departure, first leaving a copy of the following card where Mr. Clemens will presently discover it: