20–22 December 1872 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CtY-BR, UCCL 00848)
E P.S. Enclosed
is the money.
Ⓐemendation
I wrote a note to Dr Bushnell & abused you like a pickpocket—Oh I did give it to you!1explanatory note
Now g you go straight off & get that book & take it to him this and try to make your peace & get yourself forgiven.2explanatory note And tell him we Clemenses thank him just as sincerely & as cordially as we can for letting us down so gently & so kindly. And you must say that although mother has returned to Elmira,3explanatory note we are still here & shall be very glad indeed to try to make the new acquaintanceship as pleasant as if it bore the generous flavorⒶemendation of age.
Now you go & make another lot of blunders, you splendid old muggins!
Come around, you & Harmony, & I will read to you my (bogus) protest of the Publishers against the proposed foreign copyright.4explanatory note
Good ◇ news—Susie Crane is here! Come & see her—help us worship her.
cross-written:Return the Doctor’s letter to me.
You blame yourself over much. I am the one who is principally in fault—neither you nor Twitchell. I had no right to be joking my poverty so hard as to make it appear that I cannot buy a five dollar book. I can if I do not buy too many. My joke was in my customary vein. When I have nothing better to say I talk of my poverty—which bears it excellently well
Now I see no way to make the matter easy, since you take it so much to heart., but to ask that you will let T. give me the book. Only he must not do it “by post”; for I want the chance to wreak my — — thanks on him for his services.
Meantime, if another storm in my eyes does not prevent, I and my wife will be able to make our long projected call on Mrs Langdon, as the valued friend of my valued friend T. K. Beecher, and suffer no awkward feeling on account of the present. We shall c also be allowed to claim the very pleasant new acquaintance of Mrs & Mrs Clemens, doing it the more freely for our deed of charity in accepting the book
Put my signature to the petition a long way down and let the literary gentlem[m]en have their lead—this of course.1explanatory note
Clemens’s “note” has not been found. Horace Bushnell (1802–76) was the minister of Hartford’s North Church of Christ (later Park Congregational Church) from 1833 to 1859. He was also the author of a number of controversial but influential theological works and volumes of sermons, many written in his retirement, notably Christian Nurture (1861), which urged the religious training of children, and The Vicarious Sacrifice (1866), which formulated his theory of the “moral influence” of Christ’s Atonement. Bushnell was both friend and mentor to Twichell: it was Bushnell who in 1865 recommended Twichell for the pastorate at the newly formed Asylum Hill Congregational Church, and whose unconventional theological views—with their rejection of strict Calvinism and emphasis on perceiving spirituality in man and in nature—Twichell soon embraced (Trumbull, 1:389–90; Strong, 47, 57–59; Andrews, 25–30).
Twichell had somehow confounded Clemens’s attempt to give a book to Bushnell (see the enclosure with this letter). Clemens here rectified the situation by enclosing the money for Twichell to purchase the book. The present letter has been assigned a date of 20 December or shortly thereafter, since Clemens probably wrote to Twichell soon after receiving Bushnell’s letter.
On 29 November (26 Nov 72 to JLC and PAMclick to open link).
Only a fragment of Clemens’s “(bogus) protest” has survived, in a manuscript of just over five pages, written on the blue-lined wove paper (bearing an “e. h. mfg. co.” embossment) which Clemens used from December 1872 to May 1873. Clemens had the publishers address Congress as follows:
1. Ever since literature was invented, publishers have thriven at the expense of authors, & all righteous governments have protected them in it. Would you break down this ancient & honorable precedent? Would you strike at the root of freedom? Would you undermine the Constitution?
2. While a publisher can publish only 100 books a year & clear $50,000, almost any author is able to write one book in two years & clear $700 on it. What more can they want? Have these men no bowels? Would you—can you—abet them in a pernicious lust for money which moves them to aspire in their grasping desires to the selling of their labors to two hemispheres? God forbid! . . .
5. If we stole from the shoemakers, the blacksmiths, the distillers of Europe, you might stay our thieving hands with justice—but reflect, good Congressmen, we only steal from authors. We do not steal bread or clothes or whisky, we only steal brains. We do not steal anything that a man can carry in his pocket, we only steal the hard-earned results of years of study, & travel, expenditure of money & unceasing labor of hand & brain. (SLC 1872 [MT01093], 2–3, 6–7)
Clemens was apparently reacting to recent efforts to pass a more comprehensive copyright law. On 11 December 1871, a bill “for securing to authors in certain cases the benefit of international copyright, advancing the development of American literature, and promoting the interests of publishers and book-buyers in the United States” had been introduced in the House by Samuel S. Cox, representative from New York ( Congressional Globe 1872, 2:29). It was referred to the House Library Committee, which solicited the views of prominent American publishers. Despite significant disagreement among themselves, the publishers were able to draft a document recommending that foreign authors be allowed to obtain copyright “upon the same terms and conditions as are now required of an American author” (“The International Copyright Movement—Meeting of Publishers—Appointment of a Committee to Go to Washington,” New York Times, 7 Feb 72, 8). The copyright bill languished in committee throughout 1872, however, and was finally reported adversely in February 1873: “In the opinion of the committee such legislation was inexpedient. . . . The committee was discharged from further consideration of the subject” ( Congressional Globe 1873, 2:1164).
MS, Joseph H. Twichell Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (CtY-BR), is copy-text for the letter and envelope. MS, Horace Bushnell to SLC, 20 Dec 72 (UCLC 31840), Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK), is copy-text for the enclosure.
It is not known when Twichell’s papers were deposited at Yale, although it is likely that he bequeathed them to the university upon his death in 1918 ( L2 , 570). For the enclosure see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.