To all,
If a hardcore Janeite getting to know Mark Twain is welcome here, I would
like to jump in and answer Hal's query:
"I believe there is, perhaps in a letter, a passage where Twain tells
Howells, after Susy's passing, that they were both now members of the
"club" that nobody ever wished to join. Or the club nobody wanted to
join. Or something along those lines. Of course, Twain witnessed Howells's
own encounter with that club, about 7 years earlier... meaning, the club
of parental grief. Does that ring a bell for anyone? Perhaps it's WDH
saying it to Twain."
Hal,
I am guessing that the passage I will present, below, is not the one
you're remembering, and yet, it has a great deal of resonance with your
recollection, so perhaps it is? or at least, will somehow point to the
correct one?
Anyway, it's really cool from my perspective as a Janeite, because, as my
Subject Line proclaims, I read it as a particularly elegant, veiled
emulation of Jane Austen.
[By the wayy, in regard to Jane Austen, I am in the process of writing up
an article in which I will hope to deliver a decisive blow to the dogma
that Mark Twain meant what he said when he wrote about hating Jane
Austen's writing. But in the interim, I thought I'd share this little
item, because it stands on its own two feet, so to speak, as evidence in
that regard.]
OK, on to what I just found via Googling "Mark Twain", "club" and "dead":
Apropos my most recent post about Mark Twain and Jane Austen in my blog...
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2013/04/calling-all-janeites-twainites-mark.html
...here is a quintessential example of veiled emulation by one great
put-on artist of another even greater put-on artist:
“I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors,
because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is
dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well
myself.”— From a speech given by Mark Twain to the Savage Club in London,
published in 1907.
"Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor, which is one very
strong argument in favour of matrimony" -- Jane Austen, letter of March
13, 1816, first published in 1884.
I think it highly unlikely that the striking parallelism between the above
two quotes was coincidental, or was unconscious on Mark Twain's part.
Rather, it seems to me to be entirely intentional on his part, and in
exactly the same spirit of veiled homage as the following previously
recognized gem-ulation of Jane Austen:
"Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her
over the skull with her own shin-bone" — Mark Twain writing to Janeite
pal William Dean Howells, the operative satirical words being “Every
time”, mock-betraying that Mark Twain rereads P&P regularly.
"From the very beginning—from the first moment, I may almost say—of my
acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief
of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings
of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which
succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known
you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I
could ever be prevailed on to marry." — In Pride & Prejudice, Elizabeth
Bennet betraying that she considered marrying Mr. Darcy during the first
month of their acquaintance.
I suggest that Mark Twain had the very good taste to emulate a great
master. And…the best part of his “sad habit of dying off” homage, is that
overtly it is about dead great authors, and yet covertly, in its comic
phrasing, it bears the telltale fingerprints of about another dead great
author who is NOT one of the four (men) named — i.e., Jane Austen! So, in
a way, the ghost of Jane Austen hovers over Twain's formulation.
So, it tells me that Mark Twain loved to play the part of the sexist snob,
but in his heart of hearts, the author he actually emulated was a woman--
Jane Austen.
Does that ring any bells for anyone to what Hal described?
Cheers,
Arnie
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
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