Of course Howells promptly replied that he would read the story, adding: "You've no idea what I may ask you to do for me, some day.
I'm sorry that you can't do it for the Atlantic, but I succumb.
Perhaps you will do Boy No.2 for us." Clemens, conscience-stricken, meantime, hastily put the MS.out of reach of temptation.
To W.D.Howells, in Boston:
July 13, 1875
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 ****** 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 ****** 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.