No letters written between 22 December 1872 and 3 January 1873 have been found, but Clemens seems to have remained in Hartford throughout the period. Following his return from England on 25 November, he had begun to draft chapters for his English book, a project that doubtless claimed some of his time in late 1872 and early 1873. By 10 February he had prepared a substantial amount of material—or so he claimed to a New York correspondent of the Chicago Tribune (not further identified):
Clemens is now occupied with his fourth book, “John Bull,” of which he has written nearly one-third. Those who have seen the MS. say it will be indescribably funny. He looks at the native Britons at such a variety of angles, and detects them in so many grotesque positions, that they ought to be able to laugh at themselves as presented by “Twain.” (Colstoun 1873)
“John Bull” (or “Upon the Oddities and Eccentricities of the English,” as John Camden Hotten referred to it in March) was never completed, and the “nearly one-third” of the whole does not survive as a coherent manuscript (Hotten 1873, xxxvii). In fact, when all the surviving materials that may have been part of the manuscript are combined, they still do not constitute a third of a typical six-hundred-page subscription book. Only two chapters that Clemens is likely to have written before his return trip to England in May 1873 have been identified. The first, “A Memorable Midnight Experience,” was published in Mark Twain’s Sketches. Number One, identified as “From the Author’s Unpublished English Notes” (SLC 1874, 3–8; see Mark Twain's 1872 English Journalsclick to open link). The second, “Some Recollections of a Storm at Sea,” is a fictionalized account of the rescue effected during Clemens’s Atlantic crossing on the Batavia in November 1872. Clemens sent Mary Mason Fairbanks the manuscript in January 1876, to assist in one of her charitable projects, and evidently identified it as “Being an Extract from Chapter III, of a Book Begun Three Years Ago, But Afterwards Abandoned”—the description she used when printing it in “The Bazaar Record,” a pamphlet advertising her charitable event (Storkan, 1; SLC 1876). (Two additional pieces, “Rogers” and “Property in Opulent London,” could also have been written at this time: see 30 Dec 73 to Fitzgibbon, n. 2.click to open link)
By the end of 1872 Clemens had already become interested in a new project, to be written in collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner: a satirical novel about the corrupt state of American politics, published at the end of 1873 as The Gilded Age. All accounts agree that the authors conceived of the project soon after Clemens’s return from England. By late December or early January Clemens had begun writing the opening chapters, as Albert Bigelow Paine explained in his version of how the project was conceived:
At the dinner-table one night, with the Warners present, criticisms of recent novels were offered, with the usual freedom and severity of dinner-table talk. The husbands were inclined to treat rather lightly the novels in which their wives were finding entertainment. The wives naturally retorted that the proper thing for the husbands to do was to furnish the American people with better ones. This was regarded in the nature of a challenge, and as such was accepted—mutually accepted: that is to say, in partnership. On the spur of the moment Clemens and Warner agreed that they would do a novel together, that they would begin it immediately. This is the whole story of the book’s origin; so far, at least, as the collaboration is concerned. Clemens, in fact, had the beginning of a story in his mind, but had been unwilling to undertake an extended work of fiction alone. He welcomed only too eagerly, therefore, the proposition of joint authorship. His purpose was to write a tale around that lovable character of his youth, his mother’s cousin, James Lampton—to let that gentle visionary stand as the central figure against a proper background. The idea appealed to Warner, and there was no delay in the beginning. Clemens immediately set to work and completed 399 pages of the manuscript, the first eleven chapters of the book, before the early flush of enthusiasm waned. ( MTB , 1:476–77)
Paine’s account, which is doubtless substantially correct, differs in only its details from the much earlier recollection of Stephen A. Hubbard (d. 1890), a colleague of Warner’s on the Hartford Courant ( L3 , 97 n. 5), whose version of the story must have come from Warner himself:
It happened that one evening, when the Twains had the Warners at a family dinner, something was said about the success of “Innocents Abroad.” Thereupon both Mrs. Clemens and Mrs. Warner began to twit Mark Twain; they made all manner of good-natured fun of his book, called it an accidental hit, and finally ended up by defying him to write another work like it. ...
In high good humor Mark Twain turned to Mr. Warner. “You and I will show these ladies that their laughter is unseemly and a ‘cracking of thorns under a pot,’” he cried. “We’ll get together and write a story, chapter by chapter every morning, and we will so interweave our work that these wives of ours will not be able to say which part has been written by Mark Twain and which by Charles D. Warner; for once a week we will gather in my library and read the story to them as it has progressed under our pens.”
What was spoken in jest was acted upon in the spirit of jest, Mr. Warner agreeing to meet Mark Twain every morning for an hour or two, so that together they could write a story somewhat on the lines of “Innocents Abroad.” After they had been at work on their little joke for a little while, they became thoroughly interested in it, and then, when Mark Twain proposed to introduce the character of Col. Sellers in the story, both he and Mr. Warner grew actually enthusiastic over it, and their wives confessed their deep interest in it as it was read to them as the writing progressed.
So the jest was carried on until the story was about half finished, if I remember correctly, when it suddenly occurred to Mark Twain that it might be worth publishing; if it interested the wives of the authors, it ought to interest the public. Therefore, Twain approached his publishers and told them that he and Mr. Warner were jointly writing a book, and he wondered whether he could make arrangements with them to publish it. They jumped at the proposition. (E. J. Edwards)
A similar account, possibly also by Hubbard, was reported in December 1876 by the Hartford correspondent of the New York Graphic (“Eminent Authors at Home,” 23 Dec 76, 377, clipping in Scrapbook 8:5, CU-MARK).
Charles Warren Stoddard recalled a slight variant of this story, apparently as told by Clemens in London in late 1873:
Mark and Charles Dudley Warner were walking to church one Sunday in Hartford. Said Warner: “Let us write a novel!” Mark wondered what in the world there was to write a novel about, but promised to think the matter over, and proceeded to do so. On the way home it was decided that Mark should begin and write till he got tired, and that there should be a gathering of the wives and Joe Twichell—the clerical chum—for the reading of the same. He wrote a dozen chapters and read them to the domestic critics.
“Do you catch the idea?” said Mark to Warner. The latter thought he did, and took up the thread of the narrative where Mark dropped it, and spun on until he felt fagged. (Stoddard 1903, 70–71)
None of the three accounts mentions the novel’s satirical theme, which may have occurred to Clemens as early as July 1870, when he dined in Washington with Senator Samuel Clarke Pomeroy of Kansas (among others) and afterward told Olivia, “I have gathered material enough for a whole book!” ( L4 , 167, 168 n. 4). And Washington politics could also have been the subject of a project he discussed with David Gray before deciding in April 1871 that Joseph T. Goodman was the right collaborator to “do the accurate drudgery and some little other writing”—a book he was certain would be “an awful success” ( L4 , 386). In any event, once Clemens began to draft the early chapters he seems to have warmed to his theme, inspired by political events reported in late 1872 and early 1873, like the Tweed Ring inquiries, the investigation for bribery of Senator Pomeroy, and the Crédit Mobilier scandal ( Annual Cyclopaedia 1873 , 394–96; French, 87–95; 7 Mar 73 to the staff of the New York Tribune click to open link; for further discussion of the genesis and composition of The Gilded Age, see French, 25–37, and Hill 1964, 72–75; see also 17? Apr 73 to Reid, n. 1click to open link).
In early January Clemens may also have worked on the manuscript of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a story he had begun to write at Fenwick Hall the previous summer (see p. 114). On page 23 of that manuscript (the first page of chapter 2), he inserted in the top margin, in part: “Never forget the splendid jewelry that illuminated the trees on the morning of Jan. 9, ’73. Brigh Brilliant sun & gentle, swaying wind—deep, crusted snow on ground—all the forest gorgeous with gems” (SLC 1982).
The work that Clemens published at this time was closely linked to events at the New York Tribune. The unexpected death of Horace Greeley on 29 November 1872 had cast the newspaper into turmoil (5 Dec 72 to Reid, n. 1click to open link). Whitelaw Reid remained the acting editor in chief, but a faction of powerful stockholders—headed by William Orton of the Western Union Company, who had purchased the majority shares in the Tribune from its publisher, Samuel Sinclair—planned to offer the post to Schuyler Colfax, vice-president during Grant’s first term (but not renominated with Grant) and therefore a political enemy of Greeley’s. On 16 December Reid resigned, when his defeat seemed inevitable, inspiring many of his Tribune colleagues—including John Hay—to resign with him. Then Colfax, whose reputation had already been tainted by the Crédit Mobilier scandal, unexpectedly declined (or was forced to decline) the editorship. In a surprising turn of events, Reid was able to purchase Orton’s controlling interest with money borrowed from wealthy investors, chief among them Jay Gould. On 23 December, in an unsigned editorial, Reid in effect declared himself in charge of the Tribune—as both editor and proprietor—and announced his intention to make the newspaper “what Horace Greeley would have made it if God had spared him,—a frank and fearless newspaper, ... detesting neutrality in politics as the refuge of the weak-minded and the timid, but keeping its independence as the best title to honor and usefulness” (“The Tribune,” New York Tribune, 23 Dec 72, 4). On that same day Clemens wrote a satirical poem for the Hartford Evening Post, entitled “The New Cock-Robin” (SLC 1872) in mocking imitation of the nursery rhyme “Who Killed Cock Robin?” In reply to the repeated question “Who’s to be Editor of the Tribune?” Clemens proposed a different candidate in each verse. The third verse read:
(Chicago Tribune: “The New York Tribune,” 17 Dec 72, 8, and 20 Dec 72, 8; “The Tribune Transformation,” Elmira Advertiser, 20 Dec 72, 2, reprinting the New York World of 18 Dec 72; Buffalo Courier: “The New York Tribune Again,” 25 Dec 72, 1, reprinting the New York Evening Post of 23 Dec 72; “The Tribune Ownership,” 28 Dec 72, 4; Vogelback 1954, 375–83; Baehr, 116–23; Bingham Duncan, 47–48.)
Reid immediately set to work to reestablish the Tribune’s reputation and finances. On 26 December he asked Charles Dudley Warner to “write me something ... in your peculiar vein.” Two days later he made a similar request of Bret Harte (Whitelaw Reid Papers, DLC). On 28 December Reid also wrote to Clemens (CU-MARK):
Private
My Dear Twain:
I want very much to have The Tribune recognised at once as the medium of communication with the public to which men of note in letters or politics naturally resort. Why wont you write me something, no matter what, over your own signature within the next week? Say your say on any topic on which you want to say it. I cannot pay you the prices which those subscription publishers pay, but I can pay enough to make it worth your while, and you will value a great deal more than the money the fact that you are doing a kindness to
Faithfully Yours,
Whitelaw Reid
Clemens responded on 3 January, first with a telegram at 11:06 a.m., and again later in the day with a letter enclosing the requested article.