The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-06-07
BIRTH OF A FAMOUS BOOK

Albert Bigelow Paine in Harper's Maga-
 zine.
 TT was during this winter that the
 \ Clemens household enjoyed it's first A real home life in Hartford-its first real home life anywhere since those earliest days of marriage The Hooker mansion was a comfortable place. The little family had comparatively good health. old friends were stanch and law ishly warm hearted and they had added many new ones. Their freside was a delightful nucleus around which gath cred those they cared for most, the Twichells, the Charles Dudley Warmers the Trumbulls-all certain of welcome there. George Warner, only a little while ago, remembering, said:
 "The Clemens house was the only. one have ever known where there was never any preoccupation in the evenings, and where visitors were always welcome. Clemens was the best kind of host; his evenings after dinner were an amending flow of stories."
 Friends living near by usually came and went at will-often without the ceremony of knocking or formal leave taking. They were more like one great family in that neighborhood, with a community of in terest, a unity of ideals. The two Warner families and the Clemenses were particu- larly intimate and out of their associa- tion grew Mark Twain's next important literary undertaking, his collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner in ."The Gilded Age"
 A number of more or less absurd stories have been printed about the origin of this book. It was a very simple matter, perfectly natural development.
 At the dinner table one night, with the Warmers present, criticisms of recent nov els were offered with the usual freedom and severity of dinner table talk The husbands were inclined to treat rather lightly. perhaps, the novels in which their wives were finding entertainment. The wives naturally retorted that the proper thing for the husbands to do was to fur nish the American people with better ones. This was regarded in the nature of challenge. and as such was accepted mutually accepted, that is to say, in part nership. On the spur of the moment Clemens and warner agreed that they would do novel together that they. would begin it immediately. That is the whole story of the books origin--so far at least as the collaboration is concerned | Clemens, in fact, had the beginning of story in his mind, but had been unwill- ing to undertake an extended work of fic- | ton alone He welcomed only too eager | ly, therefore. the proposition of joint au- thorship. His purpose was to write a taie around that lovable character of ms youth, his mothers cousin James Lamp ton-to let that gentle visionary stand as the central figure against proper-baek- ground. The idea appealed to Warner and there was no delay in the begin ming. Clemens immediately set to work and completed 399 pages of the manu7 script--the first il chapters of the book before the early flush of enthusiasm waned.
 Warner came over then, and Clemens read if aloud to him. Warner had some plans for the story and took it up at this point and continued it through the next I1e chapters; and so they worked alter nately "in the superstition, as Mark Twain long afterward declared. that we
 were writing one coherent yarn, when [ suppose. as a matter of fact, we were writing two incoherent ones"
 1 The book was begun in February and
 finished in April. so the work did not lag.
 The result, if not highly artistic, made
 astonishing good reading. Warner had the touch of romance; Clemens had the gift of creating. or at least portraying, hu-
 man realities. Most of his characters re- fected intimate personalities of his earls' life
 But there are always vexations-fiies in the ointment, as we say. It was Waxnsr
 who conferred the name of Eschol Sell
 CTS on the chief figure of the collaborated novel, Warner had known it as the name
 of an obscure person. or perhaps he had Eonly heard of it. At all events, 1t semed a good one for the character. and it had been adopted But behold. the book had lbeen issued only a little while when there rose 'out of the vasty deeps' genuine