MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Just as soon as you consented I realized all the
atrocity of my request, and straightway blushed and weakened. I
telegraphed my theatrical agent to come here and carry off the MS and
copy it.
But I will gladly send it to you if you will do as follows: dramatize
it, if you perceive that you can, and take, for your remuneration, half
of the first $6000 which I receive for its representation on the stage.
You could alter the plot entirely, if you chose. I could help in the
work, most cheerfully, after you had arranged the plot. I have my eye
upon two young girls who can play “Tom” and “Huck.” I believe a good
deal of a drama can be made of it. Come--can't you tackle this in the
odd hours of your vacation? or later, if you prefer?
I do wish you could come down once more before your holiday. I'd give
anything!
Yrs ever,
MARK.
Howells wrote that he had no time for the dramatization and
urged Clemens to undertake it himself. He was ready to read
the story, whenever it should arrive. Clemens did not
hurry, however, The publication of Tom Sawyer could wait.
He already had a book in press--the volume of Sketches New
and Old, which he had prepared for Bliss several years
before.
Sketches was issued that autumn, and Howells gave it a good
notice--possibly better than it deserved.
Considered among Mark Twain's books to-day, the collection
of sketches does not seem especially important. With the
exception of the frog story and the “True Story” most of
those included--might be spared. Clemens himself confessed
to Howells that He wished, when it was too late, that he had
destroyed a number of them. The book, however, was
distinguished in a special way: it contains Mark Twain's
first utterance in print on the subject of copyright, a
matter in which he never again lost interest. The absurdity
and injustice of the copyright laws both amused and
irritated him, and in the course of time he would be largely
instrumental in their improvement. In the book his open
petition to Congress that all property rights, as well as
literary ownership, should be put on the copyright basis and
limited to a “beneficent term of forty-two years,” was more
or less of a joke, but, like so many of Mark Twain's jokes,
it was founded on reason and justice.
He had another idea, that was not a joke: an early plan in
the direction of international copyright. It was to be a
petition signed by the leading American authors, asking the
United States to declare itself to be the first to stand for
right and justice by enacting laws against the piracy of
foreign books. It was a rather utopian scheme, as most
schemes for moral progress are, in their beginning. It
would not be likely ever to reach Congress, but it would
appeal to Howells and his Cambridge friends. Clemens wrote,
outlining his plan of action.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Sept. 18, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--My plan is this--you are to get Mr. Lowell and Mr.
Longfellow to be the first signers of my copyright petition; you must
sign it yourself and get Mr. Whittier to do likewise. Then Holmes will
sign--he said he would if he didn't have to stand at the head. Then
I'm fixed. I will then put a gentlemanly chap under wages and send him
personally to every author of distinction in the country, and corral
the rest of the signatures. Then I'll have the whole thing lithographed
(about a thousand copies) and move upon the President and Congress in
person, but in the subordinate capacity of a party who is merely the
agent of better and wiser men--men whom the country cannot venture to
laugh at.
I will ask the President to recommend the thing in his message (and if
he should ask me to sit down and frame the paragraph for him I should
blush--but still I would frame it.)
Next I would get a prime leader in Congress: I would also see that votes
enough to carry the measure were privately secured before the bill was
offered. This I would try through my leader and my friends there.
And then if Europe chose to go on stealing from us, we would say with
noble enthusiasm, “American lawmakers do steal but not from foreign
authors--Not from foreign authors!”
You see, what I want to drive into the Congressional mind is the simple
fact that the moral law is “Thou shalt not steal”--no matter what Europe
may do.
I swear I can't see any use in robbing European authors for the benefit
of American booksellers, anyway.
If we can ever get this thing through Congress, we can try making
copyright perpetual, some day. There would be no sort of use in it,
since only one book in a hundred millions outlives the present copyright
term--no sort of use except that the writer of that one book have his
rights--which is something.
If we only had some God in the country's laws, instead of being in such
a sweat to get Him into the Constitution, it would be better all around.
The only man who ever signed my petition with alacrity, and said
that the fact that a thing was right was all-sufficient, was Rev. Dr.
Bushnell.
I have lost my old petition, (which was brief) but will draft and
enclose another--not in the words it ought to be, but in the substance.
I want Mr. Lowell to furnish the words (and the ideas too,) if he will
do it.
Say--Redpath beseeches me to lecture in Boston in November--telegraphs
that Beecher's and Nast's withdrawal has put him in the tightest kind of
a place. So I guess I'll do that old “Roughing It” lecture over again in
November and repeat it 2 or 3 times in New York while I am at it.
Can I take a carriage after the lecture and go out and stay with you
that night, provided you find at that distant time that it will not
inconvenience you? Is Aldrich home yet?
With love to you all
Yrs ever,
S. L. C.
Of course the petition never reached Congress. Holmes's comment
that governments were not in the habit of setting themselves up as
high moral examples, except for revenue, was shared by too many
others. The petition was tabled, but Clemens never abandoned his
purpose and lived to see most of his dream fulfilled. Meantime,
Howells's notice of the Sketches appeared in the Atlantic, and
brought grateful acknowledgment from the author.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Oct. 19, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--That is a perfectly superb notice. You can easily
believe that nothing ever gratified me so much before. The newspaper
praises bestowed upon the “Innocents Abroad” were large and generous,
but somehow I hadn't confidence in the critical judgement of the parties
who furnished them. You know how that is, yourself, from reading the
newspaper notices of your own books. They gratify a body, but they
always leave a small pang behind in the shape of a fear that the
critic's good words could not safely be depended upon as authority.
Yours is the recognized critical Court of Last Resort in this country;
from its decision there is no appeal; and so, to have gained this decree
of yours before I am forty years old, I regard as a thing to be right
down proud of. Mrs. Clemens says, “Tell him I am just as grateful to him
as I can be.” (It sounds as if she were grateful to you for heroically
trampling the truth under foot in order to praise me but in reality it
means that she is grateful to you for being bold enough to utter a truth
which she fully believes all competent people know, but which none has
heretofore been brave enough to utter.) You see, the thing that gravels
her is that I am so persistently glorified as a mere buffoon, as if that
entirely covered my case--which she denies with venom.
The other day Mrs. Clemens was planning a visit to you, and so I am
waiting with a pleasurable hope for the result of her deliberations. We
are expecting visitors every day, now, from New York; and afterward
some are to come from Elmira. I judge that we shall then be free to
go Bostonward. I should be just delighted; because we could visit in
comfort, since we shouldn't have to do any shopping--did it all in New
York last week, and a tremendous pull it was too.
Mrs. C. said the other day, “We will go to Cambridge if we have to walk;
for I don't believe we can ever get the Howellses to come here again
until we have been there.” I was gratified to see that there was one
string, anyway, that could take her to Cambridge. But I will do her
the justice to say that she is always wanting to go to Cambridge,
independent of the selfish desire to get a visit out of you by it. I
want her to get started, now, before children's diseases are fashionable
again, because they always play such hob with visiting arrangements.
With love to you all
Yrs Ever
S. L. CLEMENS.
Mark Twain's trips to Boston were usually made alone. Women require
more preparation to go visiting, and Mrs. Clemens and Mrs. Howells
seem to have exchanged visits infrequently. For Mark Twain,
perhaps, it was just as well that his wife did not always go with
him; his absent-mindedness and boyish ingenuousness often led him
into difficulties which Mrs. Clemens sometimes found embarrassing.
In the foregoing letter they were planning a visit to Cambridge. In
the one that follows they seem to have made it--with certain
results, perhaps not altogether amusing at the moment.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
Oct. 4, '75.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We had a royal good time at your house, and have had
a royal good time ever since, talking about it, both privately and with
the neighbors.
Mrs. Clemens's bodily strength came up handsomely under that cheery
respite from household and nursery cares. I do hope that Mrs. Howells's
didn't go correspondingly down, under the added burden to her cares
and responsibilities. Of course I didn't expect to get through without
committing some crimes and hearing of them afterwards, so I have taken
the inevitable lashings and been able to hum a tune while the punishment
went on. I “caught it” for letting Mrs. Howells bother and bother about
her coffee when it was “a good deal better than we get at home.” I
“caught it” for interrupting Mrs. C. at the last moment and losing her
the opportunity to urge you not to forget to send her that MS when the
printers are done with it. I “caught it” once more for personating that
drunken Col. James. I “caught it” for mentioning that Mr. Longfellow's
picture was slightly damaged; and when, after a lull in the storm, I
confessed, shame-facedly, that I had privately suggested to you that
we hadn't any frames, and that if you wouldn't mind hinting to Mr.
Houghton, &c., &c., &c., the Madam was simply speechless for the space
of a minute. Then she said:
“How could you, Youth! The idea of sending Mr. Howells, with his
sensitive nature, upon such a repulsive er--”
“Oh, Howells won't mind it! You don't know Howells. Howells is a man
who--” She was gone. But George was the first person she stumbled on in
the hall, so she took it out of George. I was glad of that, because it
saved the babies.
I've got another rattling good character for my novel! That great work
is mulling itself into shape gradually.
Mrs. Clemens sends love to Mrs. Howells--meantime she is diligently
laying up material for a letter to her.
Yrs ever
MARK.
The “George” of this letter was Mark Twain's colored butler, a
valued and even beloved member of the household--a most picturesque
character, who “one day came to wash windows,” as Clemens used to
say, “and remained eighteen years.” The fiction of Mrs. Clemens's
severity he always found amusing, because of its entire contrast
with the reality of her gentle heart.
Clemens carried the Tom Sawyer MS. to Boston himself and placed it
in Howells's hands. Howells had begged to be allowed to see the
story, and Mrs. Clemens was especially anxious that he should do so.
She had doubts as to certain portions of it, and had the fullest
faith in Howells's opinion.
It was a gratifying one when it came. Howells wrote: “I finished
reading Tom Sawyer a week ago, sitting up till one A.M. to get to
the end, simply because it was impossible to leave off. It's
altogether the best boy's story I ever read. It will be an immense
success. But I think you ought to treat it explicitly as a boy's
story. Grown-ups will enjoy it just as much if you do; and if you
should put it forth as a study of boy character from the grown-up
point of view, you give the wrong key to it.... The adventures
are enchanting. I wish I had been on that island. The
treasure-hunting, the loss in the cave--it's all exciting and
splendid. I shouldn't think of publishing this story serially.
Give me a hint when it's to be out, and I'll start the sheep to
jumping in the right places”--meaning that he would have an advance
review ready for publication in the Atlantic, which was a leader of
criticism in America.
Mark Twain was writing a great deal at this time. Howells was
always urging him to send something to the Atlantic, declaring a
willingness to have his name appear every month in their pages, and
Clemens was generally contributing some story or sketch. The
“proof” referred to in the next letter was of one of these articles.
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Nov. 23, '75.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Herewith is the proof. In spite of myself, how
awkwardly I do jumble words together; and how often I do use three words
where one would answer--a thing I am always trying to guard against. I
shall become as slovenly a writer as Charles Francis Adams, if I don't
look out. (That is said in jest; because of course I do not seriously
fear getting so bad as that. I never shall drop so far toward his and
Bret Harte's level as to catch myself saying “It must have been wiser to
have believed that he might have accomplished it if he could have felt
that he would have been supported by those who should have &c. &c. &c.”)
The reference to Bret Harte reminds me that I often accuse him of being
a deliberate imitator of Dickens; and this in turn reminds me that I
have charged unconscious plagiarism upon Charley Warner; and this in
turn reminds me that I have been delighting my soul for two weeks over a
bran new and ingenious way of beginning a novel--and behold, all at once
it flashes upon me that Charley Warner originated the idea 3 years ago
and told me about it! Aha! So much for self-righteousness! I am well
repaid. Here are 108 pages of MS, new and clean, lying disgraced in
the waste paper basket, and I am beginning the novel over again in an
unstolen way. I would not wonder if I am the worst literary thief in the
world, without knowing it.
It is glorious news that you like Tom Sawyer so well. I mean to see to
it that your review of it shall have plenty of time to appear before the
other notices. Mrs. Clemens decides with you that the book should issue
as a book for boys, pure and simple--and so do I. It is surely the
correct idea. As to that last chapter, I think of just leaving it off
and adding nothing in its place. Something told me that the book was
done when I got to that point--and so the strong temptation to put
Huck's life at the Widow's into detail, instead of generalizing it in
a paragraph was resisted. Just send Sawyer to me by express--I enclose
money for it. If it should get lost it will be no great matter.
Company interfered last night, and so “Private Theatricals” goes over
till this evening, to be read aloud. Mrs. Clemens is mad, but the story
will take that all out. This is going to be a splendid winter night for
fireside reading, anyway.
I am almost at a dead stand-still with my new story, on account of the
misery of having to do it all over again. We--all send love to you--all. Yrs ever
MARK.
The “story” referred to may have been any one of several
begun by him at this time. His head was full of ideas for
literature of every sort. Many of his beginnings came to
nothing, for the reason that he started wrong, or with no
definitely formed plan. Others of his literary enterprises
were condemned by his wife for their grotesqueness or for
the offense they might give in one way or another, however
worthy the intention behind them. Once he wrote a burlesque
on family history “The Autobiography of a Damned Fool.”
“Livy wouldn't have it,” he said later, “so I gave it up.”
The world is indebted to Mark Twain's wife for the check she
put upon his fantastic or violent impulses. She was his
public, his best public--clearheaded and wise. That he
realized this, and was willing to yield, was by no means the
least of his good fortunes. We may believe that he did not
always yield easily, and perhaps sometimes only out of love
for her. In the letter which he wrote her on her thirtieth
birthday we realize something of what she had come to mean
in his life.
*****
To Mrs. Clemens on her Thirtieth Birthday:
HARTFORD, November 27, 1875.
Livy darling, six years have gone by since I made my first great success
in life and won you, and thirty years have passed since Providence made
preparation for that happy success by sending you into the world. Every
day we live together adds to the security of my confidence, that we
can never any more wish to be separated than that we can ever imagine a
regret that we were ever joined. You are dearer to me to-day, my child,
than you were upon the last anniversary of this birth-day; you were
dearer then than you were a year before--you have grown more and more
dear from the first of those anniversaries, and I do not doubt that this
precious progression will continue on to the end.
Let us look forward to the coming anniversaries, with their age and
their gray hairs without fear and without depression, trusting and
believing that the love we bear each other will be sufficient to make
them blessed.
So, with abounding affection for you and our babies, I hail this day
that brings you the matronly grace and dignity of three decades!
Always Yours
S. L. C.