22 January 1870 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00415)
Our boys in Buffalo wrote you something about a ratio of prices for clubs & books, &c., & they are anxious to get an answer—been waiting 2 or 3 weeks. Tell them about it. They are much pleased with your sending their bills & circulars to your agents.1explanatory note
I don’t copyright the “Round the World” letters because it don’t hurt anything to be well advertised—& these are getting pretty well advertised—but you see out of 50 letters not more than 6 or 10 will be copied into any one newspaper—& that don’t hurt.2explanatory note
I mean to take plenty of time & pains with the Noah’s Ark book—maybe it will be several years before it is all written—but it will be a perfect lightning-striker when it is done.3explanatory note I wish Ⓐemendation You can have the first say * on that or any other book I may prepare for the press. As long as you deal in a fair, open & honorable Ⓐemendation way with me, I do not think Ⓐemendation you will ever find me doing otherwise with you.
I wish Fairbanks would keep still about that Noah’s Ark book—somebody will steal the idea from me. I had no business ever mentioning it to a man of his limitless gab.4explanatory note
I am prosecuting Webb in the N. Y. Courts—think the result will be that he will yield up the copyright & plates of the Jumping Frog, if I let him off from paying me money. Then I shall break up those plates, & prepare a new vol. of Sketches, but on a different & more “taking” model.5explanatory note
I can get a book ready for you any time you want it—but you can’t want one before this time next year—& so I have plenty of time.
I wish you could have the quarterly statement here by Feb. 1—because we are to be married Feb. 2, & would like to know what we are doing it on, & whether we can afford it or not. But no matter—if it isn’t ready then, forward it to Buffalo. We leave for Buffalo at noon, Feb. 3. You may telegraph the amount to us here, Feb. 1st or 2d—that is what I chiefly want to know. I have been keeping fine large stories afloat about our sales.6explanatory note
Miss Nellie did no harm, in opening the letter.7explanatory note
*That is plain enough.
letter docketed: ✓ auth and Mark Twain | Jan 22/70
Bliss soon asked Clemens for another copy of this proposal from the Buffalo Express “boys” (28 Jan 70 to Blissclick to open link). The earliest evidence of his reply to it was an 18 February advertisement for the Buffalo Weekly Express that offered terms to clubs (groups of subscribers), ranging from a single extra copy of the paper, up to reduced rates for fifty subscribers and a free copy of The Innocents Abroad “to each person who raises a club of 20 or more new subscribers.” The same advertisement also called for agents to sell Innocents “in every town and district of the United States and Canada” (“The Press,” Buffalo Express, 18 Feb 70, 3).
Clemens’s “Around the World” letters began appearing in the Buffalo Express on Saturdays in late 1869. Seven letters had appeared to date; one final letter by Clemens appeared on 29 January, followed by two from Darius R. Ford, on 12 February and 5 March. Most of Clemens’s letters were devoted to western memories and were soon absorbed into the manuscript of Roughing It (SLC 1869 [MT00842], 1869 [MT00845], 1869 [MT00849], 1869 [MT00856], 1869 [MT00857], 1870 [MT00871], 1870 [MT00873], 1870 [MT00874]; Ford 1870 [bib00366], 1870 [bib00367]; RI 1993 , 805–6).
Clemens first planned a “Deluge” or “Noah’s Ark” book in 1866, produced “70 or 80 pages of it” by late June 1869, and returned to it fitfully throughout his life without managing to complete it ( L3 , 312, 313 n. 3, 313–14 n. 7).
Clemens had last seen Abel Fairbanks in Cleveland in mid-July 1869, when he might have told him about the “Noah’s Ark book” ( L3 , 281 n. 4). Fairbanks’s “limitless gab” could allude to a report in the Herald, but none has been found.
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, And other Sketches (New York: C. H. Webb, 1867) had been a disappointment on several counts, especially its lack of royalties ( L2 , 39–40, 48–49 n. 1, 58 n. 1, 369–70). Since Webb had copyrighted the book in his own name, Clemens wished to secure his rights to its contents, and to prevent Webb from reissuing it, before proceeding with his own plans. Probably late in 1869, he hired a lawyer, but no evidence of court proceedings has been found (26 Nov 70 to Webbclick to open link; Feinstein, 12–14). For an account of the Jumping Frog book, see ET&S1 , 503–46.
Royalty payments for The Innocents Abroad were due Clemens at the end of October, January, April, and July. Mary Mason Fairbanks had printed one “fine large” story about sales (7 Jan 70 to Fairbanks, n. 8click to open link). Whitelaw Reid’s New York Tribune printed another on 15 January: “The American Publishing Company of Hartford inform us that they have sold 45,000 copies of Mark Twain’s ‘Innocents Abroad,’ and are now running six presses to keep up with the demand for the book” (“New Publications,” 8). That report was reprinted in the Hartford Times on 17 January (“Literary Announcements,” 2) and in the Jamestown Journal on 28 January, a week after Clemens’s lecture there (“Literary Items,” 4). By the end of January, total sales were 6,000 short of the reported figure (28 Jan 70 to Bliss, n. 5click to open link).
Miss Nellie (last name unknown) was evidently a clerk for Bliss at this time. She became a typesetter on Sketches, New and Old (1875) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) (5 Nov 70 to OCclick to open link; ET&S1 , 642; TS , 512).
References
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
- Machlis, Paul, ed. Union Catalog of Clemens Letters. Edited by Paul Machlis. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. [In some cases, UCCL catalog numbers cited in this volume supersede those assigned in 1986 and reflect corrections or additions to the catalog since publication. An updated version of the catalog can be consulted via the Letters Search page at MTPO.] 1986
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 4: 1870–1871. Edited by Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Lin Salamo. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1995
- Paine, Albert Bigelow. Mark Twain: A Biography. By Albert Bigelow Paine. 3 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers. [Volume numbers in citations are to this edition; page numbers are the same in all editions.] 1912
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain to Mrs. Fairbanks. Edited by Dixon Wecter. San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library. 1949
- Hill, Hamlin. “Escol Sellers from Uncharted Space: A Footnote to The Gilded Age.” American Literature 34 (March): 107–13. 1962
- Hill, Hamlin, ed. Mark Twain’s Letters to His Publishers, 1867–1894. Edited by Hamlin Hill. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1967
- Mark Twain House and Museum, Hartford, Conn.
- Madison Memorial Union Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). “Around the World. Letter No. One.” Letter dated 10 October. Buffalo Express, 16 October, 1. 1869
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). “Around the World. Letter Number 6. ‘Early Days’ in Nevada.” Undated letter. Buffalo Express, 8 January, 2–3. 1870
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). “Around the World. Letter Number 7. Pacific Coast—Concluded.” Undated letter. Buffalo Express, 22 January, 2. 1870
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). “Around the World. Letter Number 8. Dining with a Cannibal.” Letter dated 20 November 1869. Buffalo Express, 29 January, 2. 1870
- Ford, Darius R. “Around the World. Letter Number IX. The Pacific.” Letter dated 19 November 1869, signed “D. R. F.” Buffalo Express, 12 February, 2. 1870
- Ford, Darius R. “Around the World. Letter Number X. Japan.” Letter dated 17 and 24 January, signed “D. R. F.” Buffalo Express, 5 March, 2. 1870
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Roughing It. Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, Edgar Marquess Branch, Lin Salamo, and Robert Pack Browning. The Works of Mark Twain. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. This edition supersedes the one published in 1972. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1993
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 3: 1869. Edited by Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Dahlia Armon. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1992
- Webb, Charles Henry [John Paul, pseud.]. “To the Editor of Every Saturday.” Every Saturday, n.s. 2 (28 January): 91. 1871
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 2: 1867–1868. Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, Richard Bucci, and Lin Salamo. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1990
- Feinstein, Herbert Charles Verschleisser. “Mark Twain’s Lawsuits.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley. 1968
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Early Tales & Sketches, Volume 1 (1851–1864). Edited by Edgar Marquess Branch and Robert H. Hirst, with the assistance of Harriet Elinor Smith. The Works of Mark Twain. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1979
- Typescript
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L4 , 33–35; MTB 1:420, excerpt; MTMF , 118, 144, excerpts; Hill, 39, excerpt; MTLP , 29–30, with omissions.
see Mendoza Collection in Description of Provenance. The MS evidently remained among the American Publishing Company’s files until it was sold, and may have been at that time copied by Dana Ayer. A handwritten Ayer transcription is at CtHMTH, and a typed transcription made from it is at WU (Brownell Collection, Description of Provenance).
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.