Preface to the Routledge Gilded Age
Clemens wrote Olivia on 13 December 1873, “I have been writing after-dinner speeches & a preface for the book,” referring to The Gilded Age, which Routledge and Sons would publish in England on 22 December: “Read proof of the preface this evening. I state some plain facts in it,—so I have appended a postscript to say that Warner isn’t to blame, because he don’t know what I am writing” (13 and 15 Dec 73 to OLC). Robert Routledge noted on the following day, “The preface came to hand to-day & is now in the printers’ hands” (12 Dec 73 to Routledge, n. 2). The text transcribed below appeared in the first volume of the three-volume English edition. Clemens evidently revised it after writing to Olivia, since it contains no “postscript” exonerating Warner.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE LONDON EDITION.
In America nearly every man has his dream, his pet scheme, whereby he is to advance himself socially or pecuniarily. It is this all-pervading speculativeness which we have tried to illustrate in “The Gilded Age.” It is a characteristic which is both bad and good, for both the individual and the nation. Good, because it allows neither to stand still, but drives both for ever on, toward some point or other which is a-head, not behind nor at one side. Bad, because the chosen point is often badly chosen, and then the individual is wrecked; the aggregation of such cases affects the nation, and so is bad for the nation. Still, it is a trait which it is of course better for a people to have and sometimes suffer from than to be without.
We have also touched upon one sad feature, and it is one which we found little pleasure in handling. That is the shameful corruption which lately crept into our politics, and in a handful of years has spread until the pollution has affected some portion of every State and every Territory in the Union.
But I have a great strong faith in a noble future for my country. A vast majority of the people are straightforward and honest; and this late state of things is stirring them to action. If it would only keep on stirring them until it became the habit of their lives to attend to the politics of the country personally, and put only their very best men into positions of trust and authority! That day will come.
Our improvement has already begun. Mr. Tweed (whom Great Britain furnished to us), after laughing at our laws and courts for a good while, has at last been sentenced to thirteen years’ imprisonment, with hard labour.1 It is simply bliss to think of it. It will be at least two years before any governor will dare to pardon him out, too. A great New York judge, who continued a vile, a shameless career, season after season, defying the legislature and sneering at the newspapers, was brought low at last, stripped of his dignities, and by public sentence debarred from ever again holding any office of honour or profit in the State.2 Another such judge (furnished to us by Great Britain) had the grace to break his heart and die in the palace built with his robberies when he saw the same blow preparing for his own head and sure to fall upon it.3
MARK TWAIN.
The Langham Hotel,
London, Dec. 11th, 1873.
Explanatory Notes
