How Mark Twain handled a client's 'corrections'
WARNING - this is quite long, but if you have ever been edited by an ignorant client, you should enjoy it.
At the turn of the previous century, Mark Twain agreed to write an introduction for a new English translation of the Trials of Joan of Arc.
The client, who fancied himself a man of letters, had the gall to mark up the manuscript with corrections.
Below is Twain's response.
----------------------------------------
DEAR MR. X:
I have examined the first page of my amended Introduction and will begin now and jot down some notes upon your corrections. If I find any changes which shall not seem to me to be improvements, I will point out my reasons for thinking so. In this way I may chance to be helpful to you and thus profit you, perhaps, as much as you have desired to profit me.
NOTES
Section I. First Paragraph, "Jeanne d'Arc." This is rather cheaply pedantic, and is not in very good taste. Joan is not known by that name among plain people of our race and tongue. I notice that the name of the Deity occurs several times in the brief installment of the Trials which you have favored me with; to be consistent, it will be necessary that you strike out "God" and put in "Dieu." Do not neglect this.
First line. What is the trouble with "at the"? And why "Trial?" Has some uninstructed person deceived you into the notion that there was but one, instead of half a dozen?
Amongst. Wasn't "among" good enough?
Next half-dozen Corrections. Have you failed to perceive that by taking the word "both" out of its proper place you have made foolishness of the sentence? And don't you see that your smug "of which" has turned that sentence into reporter's English? "Quite." Why do you intrude that shopworn favorite of yours where there is nothing useful for it to do? Can't you rest easy in your literary grave without it?
Next sentence. You have made no improvement in it. Did you change it merely to be changing something?
Second Paragraph. Now you have begun on my punctuation. Don't you realize that you ought not to intrude your help in a delicate art like that, with your limitations? And do you think you have added just the right smear of polish to the closing clause of the sentence?
Second Paragraph. How do you know it was his "own" sword? It could have been a borrowed one, I am cautious in matters of history, and you should not put statements in my mouth for which you cannot produce vouchers. Your other corrections are rubbish.
Third Paragraph. Ditto.
Fourth Paragraph. Your word "directly" is misleading; it could be construed to mean "at once." Plain clarity is better than ornate obscurity. I note your sensitive marginal remark: "Rather unkind to French feelings--referring to Moscow." Indeed, I have not been concerning myself about French feelings, but only about stating the facts. I have said several uncourteous things about the French--calling them a "nation of ingrates," in one place--but you have been so busy editing commas and semicolons that you overlooked them and failed to get scared at them. The next paragraph ends with a slur at the French, but I have reasons for thinking you mistook it for a compliment. It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it. And you ought to use it sometimes; that would help. If you had done this every now and then along through life, it would not have petrified.
Fifth Paragraph. Thus far, I regard this as your masterpiece! You are really perfect in the great art of reducing simple and dignified speech to clumsy and vapid commonplace.
Sixth Paragraph. You have a singularly fine and aristocratic disrespect for homely and unpretending English. Every time I use "go back" you get out your polisher and slick it up to "return." "Return" is suited only to the drawing-room--it is ducal, and says itself with a simper and a smirk.
Seventh Paragraph. "Permission" is ducal. Ducal and affected. "Her" great days were not "over"; they were only half over. Didn't you know that? Haven't you read anything at all about Joan of Arc? The truth is, you do not pay any attention; I told you on my very first page that the public part of her career lasted two years, and you have forgotten it already. You really must get your mind out and have it repaired; you see, yourself, that it is all caked together.
Eighth Paragraph. She "rode away to assault and capture a stronghold." Very well; but you do not tell us whether she succeeded or not. You should not worry the reader with uncertainties like that. I will remind you once more that clarity is a good thing in literature. An apprentice cannot do better than keep this useful rule in mind. Closing Sentences. Corrections which are not corrections.
Ninth Paragraph. "Known" history. That word is a polish which is too delicate for me; there doesn't seem to be any sense in it. This would have surprised me, last week.
Second Sentence. It cost me an hour's study before I found out what it meant. I see, now, that it is intended to mean what it meant before. It really does accomplish its intent, I think, though in a most intricate and slovenly fashion. What was your idea in reframing it? Merely in order that you might add this to your other editorial contributions and be able to say to people that the most of the Introduction was your work? I am afraid that that was really your sly and unparliamentary scheme. Certainly we do seem to live in a very wicked world.
Closing Sentence. There is your empty "however" again. I cannot think what makes you so flatulent.
II. In Captivity. "Remainder." It is curious and interesting to notice what an attraction a fussy, mincing, nickel-plated artificial word has for you. This is not well.
Third Sentence. But she was held to ransom; it wasn't a case of "should have been" and it wasn't a case of "if it had been offered"; it was offered, and also accepted, as the second paragraph shows. You ought never to edit except when awake.
Fourth Sentence. Why do you wish to change that? It was more than "demanded"; it was required. Have you no sense of shades of meaning in words?
Fifth Sentence. Changing it to "benefactress" takes the dignity out of it. If I had called her a braggart, I suppose you would have polished her into a braggartess, with your curious and random notions about the English tongue.
Closing Sentence. "Sustained" is sufficiently nickel-plated to meet the requirements of your disease, I trust. "Wholly" adds nothing; the sentence means just what it meant before. In the rest of the sentence you sacrifice simplicity to airy fussiness.
Second Paragraph. It was not blood money, unteachable ass, any more than is the money that buys a house or a horse; it was an ordinary business transaction of the time, and was not dishonorable. "With her hands, feet and neck both chained," etc. The restricted word "both" cannot be applied to three things, but only to two. "Fence:" You "lifted" that word from further along--and with what valuable result? The next sentence--after your doctoring of it--has no meaning. The one succeeding it--after your doctoring of it--refers to nothing, wanders around in space, has no meaning and no reason for existing, and is by a shade or two more demented and twaddlesome than anything hitherto ground out of your strange and interesting editorial mill.
Closing Sentence, "Neither" for "either." Have you now debauched the grammar to your taste?
Third Paragraph. It was sound English before you decayed it. Sell it to the museum.
Fourth Paragraph. I note the compliment you pay yourself, margined opposite the closing sentence: "Easier translation." But it has two defects. In the first place it is a mistranslation, and in the second place it translates half of the grace out of Joan's remark.
Fifth Paragraph. Why are you so prejudiced against fact and so indecently fond of fiction? Her generalship was not" that of a tried and trained military experience," for she hadn't had any, and no one swore that she had had any. I had stated the facts; you should have reserved your fictions.
Note: To be intelligible, that whole paragraph must consist of a single sentence; in breaking it up into several, you have knocked the sense all out of it.
Eighth Paragraph. "When the flames leapt up and enveloped her frail form" is handsome, very handsome, even elegant, but it isn't yours; you hooked it out of "The Costermonger's Bride; or The Fire Fiend's Foe." To take other people's things is not right, and God will punish you. "Parched" lips? How do you know they were? Why do you make statements which you cannot verify, when you have no motive for it but to work in a word which you think is nobby?
III. The Rehabilitation. "Their statements were taken down as evidence." Wonderful! If you had failed to mention that particular, many persons might have thought they were taken down as entertainment.
IV. The Riddle of All Time. I note your marginal remark: "Riddle--Anglice?" Look in your spelling book. "We can understand how the genius was created," etc., "by steady and congenial growth." We can't understand anything of the kind; genius is not "created" by any farming process--it is born. You are thinking of potatoes. Note: Whenever I say "circumstances" you change it to "environment"; and you persistently change my thats into whiches and my whiches into thats. This is merely silly, you know.
Second Paragraph. I note your marginal remark, "2 comprehends." I suppose some one has told you that repetition is tautology, and then has left you to believe that repetition is always tautology. But let it go; with your limitations one would not be able to teach you how to distinguish between the repetition which isn't tautology and the repetition which is.
Closing Sentence. Your tipsy emendation, when straightened up on its legs and examined, is found to say this: "We fail to see her issue thus equipped, and we cannot understand why." That is to say, she did not issue so equipped, and you cannot make out why she didn't. That is the riddle that defeats you, labor at it as you may? Why, if that had happened, it wouldn't be a riddle at all--except to you--but a thing likely to happen to nearly anybody, and not matter for astonishment to any intelligent person standing by at the time--or later. There is a riddle, but you have mistaken the nature of it, I cannot tell how, labor at it as I may; and I will try to point it out to you so that you can see some of it. We do not fail to see her issue so equipped, we do see her. That is the whole marvel, mystery, riddle. That she, an ignorant country girl, sprang upon the world equipped with amazing natural gifts is not the riddle--it could have happened to you if you had been some one else; but the fact that those talents were instantly and effectively usable without previous training is the mystery which we cannot master, the riddle which we cannot solve. Do you get it?
Third Paragraph. Drunk.
V. As Prophet. "And in every case realized the complete fulfillment." How do you know she did that? There is no testimony to back up that wild assertion. I was particular not to claim that all her prophecies came true; for that would have been to claim that we have her whole list, whereas it is likely that she made some that failed and did not get upon the record. People do not record prophecies that failed. Such is not the custom.
VI. Her Character. "Comforted" is a good change, and quite sane. But you are not playing fair; you are getting some sane person to help you. Note: When I wrote "counselled her, advised her," that was tautology; the "2 comprehends" was a case of repetition which was not tautological. But I am sure you will never be able to learn the difference. Note: "But she, Jeanne d'Arc, when presently she found," etc. That is the funniest yet, and the common-placest. But it isn't original, you got it out of "How to Write Literary Without Any Apprenticeship," sixpence to the trade; retail, sevenpence farthing. Erased Passage. I note with admiration your marginal remark explaining your objection to it: "Is it warrantable to assert that she bragged? Is it in good taste? It was assuredly foreign to her character." I will admit that my small effort at playfulness was not much of a pearl; but such as it was, I realize that I threw it into the wrong trough.
VII. Her Face and Form. You have misunderstood me again. I did not mean that the artist had several ideas and one prevailing one; I meant that he had only one idea. In that same sentence, "omits" and "forgets" have just the same meaning; have you any clear idea, then, why you made the change? Is it your notion that "gross" is an improvement on "big," "perform" an improvement on "do," "inquiring" an improvement on "asking," and "in such wise" an improvement on "then," or have you merely been seduced by the fine, large sounds of those words? Are you incurably hostile to simplicity of speech? And finally, do you not see that you have edited all the dignity out of the paragraph and substituted simpering commonplace for it, and that your addition at the end is a deliciously flat and funny anticlimax? Still, I note your command in the margin, "Insert this remark," and I dutifully obey.
Second Paragraph. "Exploited" was worth a shilling, there; you have traded it for a word not worth tuppence ha'penny, and got cheated, and serves you right. Read "rightly," if it shocks you.
Close of Paragraph. You have exploited another anticlimax--and in the form, too, of an impudent advertisement of your book. It seems to me that for a person of your elegance of language you are curiously lacking in certain other delicacies.
Third Paragraph. I must reserve my thanks. "Moreover" is a parenthesis, when interjected in that fashion; a parenthesis is evidence that the man who uses it does not know how to write English or is too indolent to take the trouble to do it; a parenthesis usually throws the emphasis upon the wrong word, and has done it in this instance; a man who will wantonly use a parenthesis will steal. For these reasons I am unfriendly to the parenthesis. When a man puts one into my mouth his life is no longer safe. "Break another lance" is a knightly and sumptuous phrase, and I honor it for its hoary age and for the faithful service it has done in the prize-composition of the schoolgirl, but I have ceased from employing it since I got my puberty, and must solemnly object to fathering it here. And besides, it makes me hint that I have broken one of those things before, in honor of the Maid, an intimation not justified by the facts. I did not break any lances or other furniture, I only wrote a book about her.
Truly yours,
MARK TWAIN.
At the turn of the previous century, Mark Twain agreed to write an introduction for a new English translation of the Trials of Joan of Arc.
The client, who fancied himself a man of letters, had the gall to mark up the manuscript with corrections.
Below is Twain's response.
----------------------------------------
DEAR MR. X:
I have examined the first page of my amended Introduction and will begin now and jot down some notes upon your corrections. If I find any changes which shall not seem to me to be improvements, I will point out my reasons for thinking so. In this way I may chance to be helpful to you and thus profit you, perhaps, as much as you have desired to profit me.
NOTES
Section I. First Paragraph, "Jeanne d'Arc." This is rather cheaply pedantic, and is not in very good taste. Joan is not known by that name among plain people of our race and tongue. I notice that the name of the Deity occurs several times in the brief installment of the Trials which you have favored me with; to be consistent, it will be necessary that you strike out "God" and put in "Dieu." Do not neglect this.
First line. What is the trouble with "at the"? And why "Trial?" Has some uninstructed person deceived you into the notion that there was but one, instead of half a dozen?
Amongst. Wasn't "among" good enough?
Next half-dozen Corrections. Have you failed to perceive that by taking the word "both" out of its proper place you have made foolishness of the sentence? And don't you see that your smug "of which" has turned that sentence into reporter's English? "Quite." Why do you intrude that shopworn favorite of yours where there is nothing useful for it to do? Can't you rest easy in your literary grave without it?
Next sentence. You have made no improvement in it. Did you change it merely to be changing something?
Second Paragraph. Now you have begun on my punctuation. Don't you realize that you ought not to intrude your help in a delicate art like that, with your limitations? And do you think you have added just the right smear of polish to the closing clause of the sentence?
Second Paragraph. How do you know it was his "own" sword? It could have been a borrowed one, I am cautious in matters of history, and you should not put statements in my mouth for which you cannot produce vouchers. Your other corrections are rubbish.
Third Paragraph. Ditto.
Fourth Paragraph. Your word "directly" is misleading; it could be construed to mean "at once." Plain clarity is better than ornate obscurity. I note your sensitive marginal remark: "Rather unkind to French feelings--referring to Moscow." Indeed, I have not been concerning myself about French feelings, but only about stating the facts. I have said several uncourteous things about the French--calling them a "nation of ingrates," in one place--but you have been so busy editing commas and semicolons that you overlooked them and failed to get scared at them. The next paragraph ends with a slur at the French, but I have reasons for thinking you mistook it for a compliment. It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it. And you ought to use it sometimes; that would help. If you had done this every now and then along through life, it would not have petrified.
Fifth Paragraph. Thus far, I regard this as your masterpiece! You are really perfect in the great art of reducing simple and dignified speech to clumsy and vapid commonplace.
Sixth Paragraph. You have a singularly fine and aristocratic disrespect for homely and unpretending English. Every time I use "go back" you get out your polisher and slick it up to "return." "Return" is suited only to the drawing-room--it is ducal, and says itself with a simper and a smirk.
Seventh Paragraph. "Permission" is ducal. Ducal and affected. "Her" great days were not "over"; they were only half over. Didn't you know that? Haven't you read anything at all about Joan of Arc? The truth is, you do not pay any attention; I told you on my very first page that the public part of her career lasted two years, and you have forgotten it already. You really must get your mind out and have it repaired; you see, yourself, that it is all caked together.
Eighth Paragraph. She "rode away to assault and capture a stronghold." Very well; but you do not tell us whether she succeeded or not. You should not worry the reader with uncertainties like that. I will remind you once more that clarity is a good thing in literature. An apprentice cannot do better than keep this useful rule in mind. Closing Sentences. Corrections which are not corrections.
Ninth Paragraph. "Known" history. That word is a polish which is too delicate for me; there doesn't seem to be any sense in it. This would have surprised me, last week.
Second Sentence. It cost me an hour's study before I found out what it meant. I see, now, that it is intended to mean what it meant before. It really does accomplish its intent, I think, though in a most intricate and slovenly fashion. What was your idea in reframing it? Merely in order that you might add this to your other editorial contributions and be able to say to people that the most of the Introduction was your work? I am afraid that that was really your sly and unparliamentary scheme. Certainly we do seem to live in a very wicked world.
Closing Sentence. There is your empty "however" again. I cannot think what makes you so flatulent.
II. In Captivity. "Remainder." It is curious and interesting to notice what an attraction a fussy, mincing, nickel-plated artificial word has for you. This is not well.
Third Sentence. But she was held to ransom; it wasn't a case of "should have been" and it wasn't a case of "if it had been offered"; it was offered, and also accepted, as the second paragraph shows. You ought never to edit except when awake.
Fourth Sentence. Why do you wish to change that? It was more than "demanded"; it was required. Have you no sense of shades of meaning in words?
Fifth Sentence. Changing it to "benefactress" takes the dignity out of it. If I had called her a braggart, I suppose you would have polished her into a braggartess, with your curious and random notions about the English tongue.
Closing Sentence. "Sustained" is sufficiently nickel-plated to meet the requirements of your disease, I trust. "Wholly" adds nothing; the sentence means just what it meant before. In the rest of the sentence you sacrifice simplicity to airy fussiness.
Second Paragraph. It was not blood money, unteachable ass, any more than is the money that buys a house or a horse; it was an ordinary business transaction of the time, and was not dishonorable. "With her hands, feet and neck both chained," etc. The restricted word "both" cannot be applied to three things, but only to two. "Fence:" You "lifted" that word from further along--and with what valuable result? The next sentence--after your doctoring of it--has no meaning. The one succeeding it--after your doctoring of it--refers to nothing, wanders around in space, has no meaning and no reason for existing, and is by a shade or two more demented and twaddlesome than anything hitherto ground out of your strange and interesting editorial mill.
Closing Sentence, "Neither" for "either." Have you now debauched the grammar to your taste?
Third Paragraph. It was sound English before you decayed it. Sell it to the museum.
Fourth Paragraph. I note the compliment you pay yourself, margined opposite the closing sentence: "Easier translation." But it has two defects. In the first place it is a mistranslation, and in the second place it translates half of the grace out of Joan's remark.
Fifth Paragraph. Why are you so prejudiced against fact and so indecently fond of fiction? Her generalship was not" that of a tried and trained military experience," for she hadn't had any, and no one swore that she had had any. I had stated the facts; you should have reserved your fictions.
Note: To be intelligible, that whole paragraph must consist of a single sentence; in breaking it up into several, you have knocked the sense all out of it.
Eighth Paragraph. "When the flames leapt up and enveloped her frail form" is handsome, very handsome, even elegant, but it isn't yours; you hooked it out of "The Costermonger's Bride; or The Fire Fiend's Foe." To take other people's things is not right, and God will punish you. "Parched" lips? How do you know they were? Why do you make statements which you cannot verify, when you have no motive for it but to work in a word which you think is nobby?
III. The Rehabilitation. "Their statements were taken down as evidence." Wonderful! If you had failed to mention that particular, many persons might have thought they were taken down as entertainment.
IV. The Riddle of All Time. I note your marginal remark: "Riddle--Anglice?" Look in your spelling book. "We can understand how the genius was created," etc., "by steady and congenial growth." We can't understand anything of the kind; genius is not "created" by any farming process--it is born. You are thinking of potatoes. Note: Whenever I say "circumstances" you change it to "environment"; and you persistently change my thats into whiches and my whiches into thats. This is merely silly, you know.
Second Paragraph. I note your marginal remark, "2 comprehends." I suppose some one has told you that repetition is tautology, and then has left you to believe that repetition is always tautology. But let it go; with your limitations one would not be able to teach you how to distinguish between the repetition which isn't tautology and the repetition which is.
Closing Sentence. Your tipsy emendation, when straightened up on its legs and examined, is found to say this: "We fail to see her issue thus equipped, and we cannot understand why." That is to say, she did not issue so equipped, and you cannot make out why she didn't. That is the riddle that defeats you, labor at it as you may? Why, if that had happened, it wouldn't be a riddle at all--except to you--but a thing likely to happen to nearly anybody, and not matter for astonishment to any intelligent person standing by at the time--or later. There is a riddle, but you have mistaken the nature of it, I cannot tell how, labor at it as I may; and I will try to point it out to you so that you can see some of it. We do not fail to see her issue so equipped, we do see her. That is the whole marvel, mystery, riddle. That she, an ignorant country girl, sprang upon the world equipped with amazing natural gifts is not the riddle--it could have happened to you if you had been some one else; but the fact that those talents were instantly and effectively usable without previous training is the mystery which we cannot master, the riddle which we cannot solve. Do you get it?
Third Paragraph. Drunk.
V. As Prophet. "And in every case realized the complete fulfillment." How do you know she did that? There is no testimony to back up that wild assertion. I was particular not to claim that all her prophecies came true; for that would have been to claim that we have her whole list, whereas it is likely that she made some that failed and did not get upon the record. People do not record prophecies that failed. Such is not the custom.
VI. Her Character. "Comforted" is a good change, and quite sane. But you are not playing fair; you are getting some sane person to help you. Note: When I wrote "counselled her, advised her," that was tautology; the "2 comprehends" was a case of repetition which was not tautological. But I am sure you will never be able to learn the difference. Note: "But she, Jeanne d'Arc, when presently she found," etc. That is the funniest yet, and the common-placest. But it isn't original, you got it out of "How to Write Literary Without Any Apprenticeship," sixpence to the trade; retail, sevenpence farthing. Erased Passage. I note with admiration your marginal remark explaining your objection to it: "Is it warrantable to assert that she bragged? Is it in good taste? It was assuredly foreign to her character." I will admit that my small effort at playfulness was not much of a pearl; but such as it was, I realize that I threw it into the wrong trough.
VII. Her Face and Form. You have misunderstood me again. I did not mean that the artist had several ideas and one prevailing one; I meant that he had only one idea. In that same sentence, "omits" and "forgets" have just the same meaning; have you any clear idea, then, why you made the change? Is it your notion that "gross" is an improvement on "big," "perform" an improvement on "do," "inquiring" an improvement on "asking," and "in such wise" an improvement on "then," or have you merely been seduced by the fine, large sounds of those words? Are you incurably hostile to simplicity of speech? And finally, do you not see that you have edited all the dignity out of the paragraph and substituted simpering commonplace for it, and that your addition at the end is a deliciously flat and funny anticlimax? Still, I note your command in the margin, "Insert this remark," and I dutifully obey.
Second Paragraph. "Exploited" was worth a shilling, there; you have traded it for a word not worth tuppence ha'penny, and got cheated, and serves you right. Read "rightly," if it shocks you.
Close of Paragraph. You have exploited another anticlimax--and in the form, too, of an impudent advertisement of your book. It seems to me that for a person of your elegance of language you are curiously lacking in certain other delicacies.
Third Paragraph. I must reserve my thanks. "Moreover" is a parenthesis, when interjected in that fashion; a parenthesis is evidence that the man who uses it does not know how to write English or is too indolent to take the trouble to do it; a parenthesis usually throws the emphasis upon the wrong word, and has done it in this instance; a man who will wantonly use a parenthesis will steal. For these reasons I am unfriendly to the parenthesis. When a man puts one into my mouth his life is no longer safe. "Break another lance" is a knightly and sumptuous phrase, and I honor it for its hoary age and for the faithful service it has done in the prize-composition of the schoolgirl, but I have ceased from employing it since I got my puberty, and must solemnly object to fathering it here. And besides, it makes me hint that I have broken one of those things before, in honor of the Maid, an intimation not justified by the facts. I did not break any lances or other furniture, I only wrote a book about her.
Truly yours,
MARK TWAIN.
Available Here