I agree with Jim Zwick about the Howells-Twain association.  Not only the
old Gibson article but others--by Paul Carter and others--seem to simply
assume that Howells was T's good angel and turned him on at the appropriate
moment regarding "moral" matters, including ones of a public political and
social nature.  I began thinking that way, too, in studying Twain as a
"public intellectual" engaged in public discourse (especially after he
returned to the U.S. in Oct of 1900).  But the more I considered the matter,
the less this seemed true.  I'm convinced that when T. ret'd to the U.S. he
was already brimming over with convictions and was ready to speak out.
Howells didn't influence him much if any at all.  Indeed, looking at the
matter in reverse: in the late 1880s, when Howells was going after the judge
and jury in Illinois and the (governor) abouyt the Haymarket Riot, he looked
around for help: no one came to his aid--not Whittier, not Gilder, not Twain
either, who was writing Conn. Yan. at the time, an exploration about the
nature and limits of American 19th C. democracy. But he wasn't interested in
speaking up just because H. was doing so.

[As an aside, I'm sure it was Zola in the Dreyfus case that really turned
TWain on to speaking out--I've found a lot of evidence of it in his
notebooks and elsewhere.  Presented some of my thoughts in March at a
conference in S. Carolina and will do more at the Zola conference in NY in
Sept.  Dolmetsch's book is helpful in this regard, too.]

And, like Jim Z., I have noted more than once condescension from T. to
Howells in various matters--haven't noticed a pattern yet, though, except
that he surely looked in a major way to H. for advice in literary matters up
through the late 1880s; but he seems to me to have pigeonholed H.--literary
advice but no other kind.

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