The play, "Yorick's Love," mentioned in this letter, was one which Howells had done for Lawrence Barrett.
Onion Clemens, meantime, was forwarding his manuscript, and for once seems to have won his brother's approval, so much so that Mark Twain was willing, indeed anxious, that Howells should run the "autobiography" in the Atlantic.We may imagine how Onion prized the words of commendation which follow:
To Orion Clemens:
May 6, '80.
MY DEAR BROTHER,--It is a model autobiography.
Continue to develop your character in the same gradual inconspicuous and apparently unconscious way.The reader, up to this time, may have his doubts, perhaps, but he can't say decidedly, "This writer is not such a ******ton as he has been letting on to be." Keep him in that state of mind.If, when you shall have finished, the reader shall say, "The man is an ass, but I really don't know whether he knows it or not," your work will be a triumph.
Stop re-writing.I saw places in your last batch where re-writing had done formidable injury.Do not try to find those places, else you will mar them further by trying to better them.It is perilous to revise a book while it is under way.All of us have injured our books in that foolish way.
Keep in mind what I told you--when you recollect something which belonged in an earlier chapter, do not go back, but jam it in where you are.
Discursiveness does not hurt an autobiography in the least.
I have penciled the MS here and there, but have not needed to make any criticisms or to knock out anything.
The elder Bliss has heart disease badly, and thenceforth his life hangs upon a thread.
Yr Bro SAM.
But Howells could not bring himself to print so frank a confession as Orion had been willing to make."It wrung my heart," he said, "and I felt haggard after I had finished it.The writer's soul is laid bare; it is shocking." Howells added that the best touches in it were those which made one acquainted with the writer's brother;that is to say, Mark Twain, and that these would prove valuable material hereafter--a true prophecy, for Mark Twain's early biography would have lacked most of its vital incident, and at least half of its background, without those faithful chapters, fortunately preserved.Had Onion continued, as he began, the work might have proved an important contribution to literature, but he went trailing off into by-paths of theology and discussion where the interest was lost.There were, perhaps, as many as two thousand pages of it, which few could undertake to read.
Mark Twain's mind was always busy with plans and inventions, many of them of serious intent, some semi-serious, others of a purely whimsical character.Once he proposed a "Modest Club," of which the first and main qualification for membership was modesty."At present," he wrote, "I am the only member; and as the modesty required must be of a quite aggravated type, the enterprise did seem for a time doomed to stop dead still with myself, for lack of further material; but upon reflection I have come to the conclusion that you are eligible.Therefore, I have held a meeting and voted to offer you the distinction of membership.I do not know that we can find any others, though I have had some thought of Hay, Warner, Twichell, Aldrich, Osgood, Fields, Higginson, and a few more--together with Mrs.Howells, Mrs.Clemens, and certain others of the ***."Howells replied that the only reason he had for not joining the Modest Club was that he was too modest--too modest to confess his modesty."If I could get over this difficulty I should like to join, for I approve highly of the Club and its object....It ought to be given an annual dinner at the public expense.If you think Iam not too modest you may put my name down and I will try to think the same of you.Mrs.Howells applauded the notion of the club from the very first.She said that she knew one thing: that she was modest enough, anyway.Her manner of saying it implied that the other persons you had named were not, and created a painful impression in my mind.I have sent your letter and the rules to Hay, but I doubt his modesty.He will think he has a right to belong to it as much as you or I; whereas, other people ought only to be admitted on sufferance."Our next letter to Howells is, in the main, pure foolery, but we get in it a hint what was to become in time one of Mask Twain's strongest interests, the matter of copyright.He had both a personal and general interest in the subject.His own books were constantly pirated in Canada, and the rights of foreign authors were not respected in America.We have already seen how he had drawn a petition which Holmes, Lowell, Longfellow, and others were to sign, and while nothing had come of this plan he had never ceased to formulate others.Yet he hesitated when he found that the proposed protection was likely to work a hardship to readers of the poorer class.Once he wrote: "My notions have mightily changed lately....
I can buy a lot of the copyright classics, in paper, at from three to thirty cents apiece.These things must find their way into the very kitchens and hovels of the country.....And even if the treaty will kill Canadian piracy, and thus save me an average of $5,000 a year, I am down on it anyway, and I'd like cussed well to write an article opposing the treaty."To W.D.Howells, in Belmont, Mass.:
Thursday, June 6th, 1880.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--There you stick, at Belmont, and now I'm going to Washington for a few days; and of course, between you and Providence that visit is going to get mixed, and you'll have been here and gone again just about the time I get back.Bother it all, I wanted to astonish you with a chapter or two from Orion's latest book--not the seventeen which he has begun in the last four months, but the one which he began last week.