In large part, their interest lies elsewhere—in what they show us about how Mark Twain worked as a writer. But it would also be a mistake to assume that they were left unpublished because he thought they fell short of his usual standard. Any random sampling will turn up the usual signs of his genius, the typical precision and sparkle of his prose, always capable of surprising us into smiling at some shameful trait of the damned human race. They are so well crafted, clear, and wickedly funny (even when he left them incomplete) that their non-publication must be explained by particular circumstances, not his judgment that they were inferior work and therefore not worth publishing.

Seven of the manuscripts are unfinished, breaking off abruptly—left sometimes without a title, let alone a conclusion. They are vivid testimony to Mark Twain’s restless and often quite daring inventiveness, his lifelong habit of seizing upon an idea for an article or story and simply plunging into the telling of it, with hardly a clue as to where he might end up. In “Whenever I Am about to Publish a Book” the text comes to a halt just as he promises to reproduce unaltered quotations from reviews of his “last book” (probably The Prince and the Pauper). Did he suddenly think better of giving such attention to foolish comments on his work? Or was he just distracted by something, and still hoping for a chance to complete the essay? We simply don’t know.

“Frank Fuller and My First New York Lecture,” which is really a draft of a lecture Mark Twain planned to use on his around-the-world-tour of 1895–96, comes to an end (not coincidentally, I think) when the bitterly remembered reason for the lecture tour—his need to pay off the debts of his bankrupt publishing house—bubbles to the surface. He never gave this lecture, the very conception of which seems palpably modern in several ways—a hilarious send-up of our foolish preoccupation with celebrity, built around the story of his own search for fame. Its modernity seems especially obvious if one takes into account its multimedia plan: he imagines projecting slides of the famous people he refers to throughout, thereby producing an illustrated lecture that begins with a more or less factual account of the run-up to his own first (highly successful) appearance on the platform in New York, in May 1867.

Although I was utterly unknown, every one of the most celebrated men of that day, was invited to come. It has always been my pride that that distinction was shown me. I hope it will not be regarded as immodest in me if I name some of these. First in the list by every right is Grant—scene-photograph—anecdote (grand description of his services.) General Grant—he was not able to come. Sheridan—scene-photograph—had just finished his great Indian campaign, and was tired—of disturbances—and—he was not present.

Sherman—scene-photo—Lt. Gen—was head of the Army and was reforming the rest of it—he did not need reforming himself—and was obliged to be absent.

Gen. Thomas—he couldn’t come.

Gen. Logan wanted to come, but was not well and could not sleep where there was noise.

Admiral Farragut—just at that time a child was born to—not to him, and I don’t remember now who it was born to, and now I come to think, I believe it was not born that year—but anyway he couldn’t come.

 

And so on, until we get the joke, and want only to see what other excuses he can come up with. Yet even after writing more than fifty pages of manuscript, he set it aside and replaced it with something entirely different. Indeed, the piece is so much an unfinished draft that it begins with what are in effect notes to himself. These shade without a break into the narrative proper, showing us quite graphically how he often felt his way into a new work.

“Conversations with Satan” begins, I think, brilliantly enough with Mark Twain’s description of “a slender and shapely gentleman” dressed, he says, like an Anglican Bishop, who turns out to be Satan himself. The author proceeds with a “modern” interview of the Devil, beginning with small talk about the excellence of the German stove, used for heating the house or apartment:

“You use it in America, of course?”

I was pleasantly surprised at that, and said—

“Is it possible that Ihre Majestät is not familiar with America?”

“Well—no. I have not been there lately. I am not needed there.”

 

This sort of thing is promising enough, but Mark Twain soon gets sidetracked into a long disquisition about cigars, and simply stops writing when he senses that the narrative has made too long a detour ever to get back to the main road. Typically, Mark Twain did not throw away or destroy even work like this, which he left unfinished, and often seemed unable to finish.

Most of these pieces were, however, finished—two or three articles for magazines or newspapers (“The Force of ‘Suggestion’” written for Harper’s Weekly, “Professor Mahaffy on Equality” and “On Postage Rates on Authors’ Manuscript” for unspecified journals); snatches of pure autobiography (“A Group of Servants,” “An Incident,” “Dr. Van Dyke as a Man and a Fisherman,” and “Happy Memories of the Dental Chair”); letters to the editor (“The Missionary in World-Politics” and “I Rise to a Question of Privilege”); a literary burlesque (“The Undertaker’s Tale”); two original fables (“The Quarrel in the Strong-Box” and “The Jungle Discusses Man”); a short story (“Telegraph Dog”); literary criticism (“Jane Austen”); and even several travel-book chapters (or passages) that he wrote for but ultimately excluded from A Tramp Abroad (“The Music Box” and “The Grand Prix”) and The Innocents Abroad (“The Devil’s Gate”). They were all written between 1868, when Clemens was thirty-three, and 1905, when he was seventy. So why didn’t he publish them? The reasons are almost as numerous as the pieces themselves.

In some cases they were experiments, practice for more ambitious or more successful work, or just something to test against one of his usual pre-publication readers. We know that Bret Harte, for instance, at Mark Twain’s request, read the entire manuscript for The Innocents Abroad and recommended several cuts, including “The Devil’s Gate,” originally part of chapter 21, where Mark Twain describes Italian scenery. Harte commented in the margin “apropos des bottes” (that is, apropos of nothing) and Mark Twain took it out. He tried again, in 1882, to weave this anecdote into Life on the Mississippi, and was again advised to take it out, which he did. That later version has been published, but “The Devil’s Gate” has not.

“The Undertaker’s Tale” stands out here as something Mark Twain had tested (unfavorably) against his own personal “focus group.” He seems to have been slow to grasp exactly why it failed, or even to agree that it did fail.