24 March 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MH-H and DLC, UCCL 01068)
Business
All right, my boy, send along the proofs.1explanatory note
Never mind Bliss. I don’t feel around him. When you’ve a book ready, I’ll only say, “I’ve the MS here, of a book by Aldrich. Can you pay him 10 per cent royalty, or shall I carry it over the way, to Worthington, Dustin & Co?”2explanatory note The same with a book by Howells. Precious little tortuous diplomacy required when one names his price with a stiff upper lip & mentions the hated rival over the way. I’ll attend to the business details, & the framing of the contract, if you’ll let me.3explanatory note
Bliss had contracted to pay me 10 p.c. on my next book (contract made 18 months ago) so I made him pay that on Roughing Gilded Age. He paid 7½ p.c. on Roughing It & 5 p.c. on Innocents Abroad.4explanatory note I only made him pay 7½ p.c. on Joaquin Miller’s Modoc book, because I don’t think Miller much of a card in America.5explanatory note
There’s an unknown cuss in N. Y.6explanatory note who wants to write a book on a purely commercial subject & make a reputation—but I reckon the lack of a publisher was rather a stumbling block in his way. So I have commissioned him to write the book for me & am to pay him $2,000 when he hands me the MS for said book—500 pages octavo. Ⓐemendation —that is 1800 pages of note paper MS. He is to put his own name to it, & read the proofs. I’ll make $10,000 out of that books, but not by publishing it as you & Howells publish.
Grief.
There is one discomfort which I fear a man must put up with when he publishes by subscription, & that is wretched paper & vile engravings. I fancy the publisher don’t make a very large pile when he pays his author 10 p.c. You notice that the Gilded Age is rather a rubbishy looking book; well, the sale has now reached about 50,000 copies—so the royalty now due the authorship is $ is about $18,0007explanatory note—yet the Company have declared only one ten per-cent Ⓐemendation dividend since the book was issued;8explanatory note they would have declared at least 30 25 per cent in dividends on 50,000 copies of a 7½ p.c. book.
Now I think seriously of printing my own next book & publishing it thro’ this same subscription house. It will thus be a mighty starchy book, but I reckon I won’t get so much money out of it.9explanatory note
Mrs. C. gets along very, very slowly. But a week hence, if she can travel, we’ll leave for Elmira. I must get her away from household Ⓐemendation & building cares. She don’t sleep worth a cent.
We are also sorry about the “frustration” (as you call it—frustratification is the correct word) of our Cambridge plans. But then the best laid gangs of mice & men are often frustratified,11explanatory note in the providence of
Hope & Gratulation. Ⓐemendation
God. But never mind—next fall we’ll come—or rather you’ll come here, for then you’ll be no longer at Elmwood & you’d be too high-toned to receive country folk in the city, wouldn’t you?12explanatory note We did all most royally enjoy the visit of You Trinity here, & are exceeding glad that you folks enjoyed it, too.13explanatory note Old Ⓐemendation Joe Twichell, that born prince of men, was in last night, & he is still gloating over the joys of that time. He says that next to being great one’s self, is the luxury of meeting the great, face to face. You people made a rare sensation in this neighborhood.
General Observations.
Had a note from the Spectre14explanatory note last night, jolly, splendid old soul. It speaks well for your good heart that you call him s Skeleton & so please him with the harmless notion that there is something substantial about his ethereal get-up.
I’m to run back to Hartford in the course of a few weeks, & then I’ll try to come up & discuss those plans of yours over a jorum of lager (jorum’s good.)
And still no tidings from poor unnecessary but still delightful Keeler! I am getting well discouraged in that direction.15explanatory note
The Little Violinist’s prayer struck water in my lower level, as the silver miner says when he is affected. Pretty sketch—good sketch.16explanatory note
Ahoy!
All our crowd send greeting, good wishes & benediction—
Including
Page proofs for the book version of Prudence Palfrey (15 and 16 Mar 74 to Aldrich, n. 1click to open link). Aldrich’s letter asking Clemens to examine the proofs is not known to survive.
This partnership between A. D. Worthington and Charles E. Dustin had dissolved by July 1873, spawning two rival subscription publishers for Elisha Bliss’s American Publishing Company: A. D. Worthington and Company, at 4 High Street, and Dustin, Gilman and Company (with Julius S. Gilman), at 148 Asylum Street, the old firm’s address, “over the way” from Bliss’s offices at 116 Asylum Street (Geer: 1872, 59, 144, 210; 1873, 27, 34, 60, 69, 143).
The next book Aldrich had ready was Cloth of Gold and Other Poems, published in Boston by James R. Osgood and Company in October 1874 (BAL, 1:280). Clemens wished to persuade Aldrich and Howells to try subscription publishing, which promised far greater royalties than standard trade publishing (see L2 , 120 n. 1, 121 n. 4, 162–63 n. 3). Neither man ever published a book with a Hartford firm, subscription or otherwise.
The “contract made 18 months ago” actually was the agreement of 22 June 1872, which provided for a 10 percent royalty on a book to replace the South African diamond mine book that Clemens had failed to write with John Henry Riley. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer eventually fulfilled that contract. Clemens received only half of the 10 percent royalty on The Gilded Age, with the other half going to Warner. For the contracts for all of the books Clemens mentioned here, see L2 , 421–22, L4 , 565–66, and L5 , 631–36.
See L5 , 416–17.
Possibly Clemens’s friend Frank Fuller (7 Apr 74 to Mary F. Fullerclick to open link).
In the spring of 1872, shortly after the publication of Roughing It, Clemens began to suspect that Bliss had cut his production costs by using substandard paper and badly executed engravings. By now he had become resigned to the fact that this practice was typical for subscription publishers (see RI 1993 , 877–82). No statement of Gilded Age sales has been found for the period after 28 February, but American Publishing Company records show that between 1 and 24 March, 7,589 copies were received from the bindery, a figure that should approximate the number sold. At an average cover price of $3.68, the authors were due roughly $2,793, in addition to the payments they had already received in mid-March ($12,833.95). The total royalty was therefore $15,626.95, to be divided equally (28 Feb 74 to Brown, n. 3click to open link; APC 1866–79, 100).
Since January 1873, at which time Clemens owned $5,000 worth of stock, the American Publishing Company had probably paid four quarterly dividends of 10 percent each (three dividends have been confirmed, not merely one, as previously stated: see L5 , 310 n. 5; “Brief Mention,” Hartford Courant, 30 Jan 73, 2; “Dividends,” Hartford Times, 31 Mar 73, 2). The only payment due since the publication of The Gilded Age—for the quarter ending 31 December 1873—had been paid in January 1874. The next 10 percent dividend was imminent: on 1 April Clemens received a check for $500 from Elisha Bliss (check dated 1 Apr 74, CtHMTH; “Brief Mention,” Hartford Courant, 1 Apr 74, 2).
That is, in order to forestall another “rubbishy” book, Clemens would control and finance printing, limiting the American Publishing Company’s role to subscription sales agent. He did not do this with his next book, Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old (1875), or any other book the firm published.
Clemens’s musical notation approximates the rhythm and melody of the first line of “Homeward Bound” (“Out on an ocean all boundless we ride”), music by J. W. Dadmun (sometimes attributed to C. S. Harrington), words by William Fairfield Warren. Clemens had alluded to the same hymn in his notebook in late December 1866 ( N&J1 , 262; Sears, 120, 219, 240, 600; McCaskey, 30; Chapple, 11; Julian, 1234).
“The best laid schemes o’ mice and men / Gang aft a-gley” (Robert Burns, “To a Mouse”).
On 29 June 1874 the Aldriches left Elmwood, the house they were renting in Cambridge, and returned to their own house on Charles Street, in Boston. That fall they found tenants for their own house and moved to “a comfortable remodeled farmhouse in the little village of Ponkapog, which lies nestled on the slope of Blue Hill, overlooking the Neponset marshes, twelve miles south of the city” (Greenslet, 110; 8 July 74 to Aldrich, n. 1click to open link).
“You Trinity” was Aldrich, Howells, and Osgood. In 1920 Lilian Aldrich recalled the high spirits of the 7–10 March visit, typified by the following incident on 8 March, after her first night as the Clemenses’ guest, when
as we were dressing and talking of the pleasant plans of the day, there was a loud and rather authoritative knock at the bedroom door, and Mr. Clemens’s voice was heard, saying, “Aldrich, come out, I want to speak to you.” The other occupant of the room wrapped her kimono round her more closely, and crept to the door, for evidently something of serious import was happening, or about to happen. The words overheard were most disquieting. Twain’s voice had its usual calmness and slowness of speech, but was lacking in the kindly mellow quality of its accustomed tone, as he said: “In Heaven’s name, Aldrich, what are you doing? Are you emulating the kangaroos, with hob-nails in your shoes, or trying the jumping-frog business? Our bedroom is directly under yours, and poor ’Livy and her headache—do try to move more quietly, though ’Livy would rather suffer than have you give up your game on her account.” Then the sound of receding footsteps.
Our consternation was as great as our surprise at the reprimand, for we had been unconscious of walking heavily, or of making unnecessary noise. The bedroom was luxurious in its appointments, the rugs soft on the floor; we could only surmise that the floor boards had some peculiar acoustic quality that emphasized sound. On tiptoe we finished our toilets, and spoke only in whispers, much disturbed in mind that we had troubled our hostess, and hoped she knew that we would not willingly have added to her headache even the weight of a hummingbird’s wing. When the toilets were finished, slowly and softly we went down the stairs and into the breakfast room, where, behind the large silver coffee urn, sat Mrs. Clemens. With sorrowful solicitude we asked if her headache was better, and begged forgiveness for adding to her pain. To our amazement she answered, “I have no headache.” In perplexed confusion we apologized for the noise we inadvertently made. “Noise!” Mrs. Clemens replied. “We have not heard a sound. If you had shouted we should not have known it, for our rooms are in another wing of the house.” At the other end of the table Mark Twain sat, looking as guileless as a combination of cherubim and seraphim—never a word, excepting with lengthened drawl, more slow than usual, “Oh, do come to your breakfast, Aldrich, and don’t talk all day.”
It was a joyous group that came together at the table that morning, and loud was the laughter, and rapid the talk. (Lilian W. Aldrich, 146–48)
Mrs. Aldrich described other convivial breakfasts and dinners and the final gathering, on the evening of 9 March, “clustered about the blazing fire in the long red-curtained room” in the Clemenses’ rented house:
It was voted at dinner that the company would not disband until the genial morn appeared, and that there should be at midnight a wassail brewed. The rosy apples roasted at the open fire, the wine and sugar added, and the ale—but at this point Mrs. Clemens said, “Youth, we have no ale.” There was a rapid exit by Mr. Clemens, who reappeared in a moment in his historic sealskin coat and cap, but still wearing his lowcut evening shoes. He said he wanted a walk, and was going to the village for the ale and should shortly return with the ingredient. Deaf, absolutely deaf, to Mrs. Clemens’s earnest voice, that he should at least wear overshoes that snowy night, he disappeared. In an incredibly short time he reappeared, excited and hilarious, with his rapid walk in the frosty air—very wet shoes, and no cap. To Mrs. Clemens’s inquiry, “Youth, what have you done with your cap?” there was a hurried search in all his pockets, a blank and surprised look on his face, as he said: “Why, I am afraid I have thrown it away. I remember being very warm and taking it off, carrying it in my hand, and now I do remember, at such a turn in the road, my hand feeling a strain of position, opening it and throwing away in the darkness something in my hand that caused the sensation.” Then, in real anxiety, “’Livy, do you think it could have been my cap?” (Lilian W. Aldrich, 158–59)
Unidentified.
Ralph Keeler, Clemens’s friend and fellow journalist in San Francisco in the mid-1860s, had subsequently become an author and travel correspondent, a contributor to Every Saturday (which Aldrich edited), and a member of Aldrich’s and Howells’s Boston circle. Clemens is last known to have seen him at a luncheon in Boston in November 1871. Keeler was mysteriously murdered at sea off the coast of Cuba in December 1873, while working as a special correspondent for the New York Tribune. Aldrich published a tribute to him in the Tribune on 6 January 1874 and a poem recalling him, “Lost at Sea,” in the Atlantic Monthly a year later. Howells memorialized him in the Atlantic for March 1874, expressing a reluctance, which Clemens shared here, to accept that Keeler was dead ( L4 , 484–85; Thomas Bailey Aldrich 1874 [bib13310], 1875; Howells 1874 [bib11894]; see also 20 Nov 74 to Howells [1st], n. 6click to open link).
Aldrich apparently had sent Clemens a manuscript copy of “The Little Violinist,” a newly written sketch first published in 1877 in A Midnight Fantasy, and The Little Violinist. In it a six-year-old “infant violinist” feels “a pain in his heart” after a performance and just before dying offers this prayer: “Gracious God, make room for another little child in Heaven” (Thomas Bailey Aldrich 1877, 93; BAL , 1:294, 308).
Containing the page proofs (see note 1).
MS, pages 1–2 and 4–11, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1429 [1151–1191]), is copy-text for ‘Business . . .my’ (89.1–13) and ‘make’ (89.19) to the end. MS facsimile, page 3, is copy-text for ‘next . . . subject &’ (89.13–19); the editors have not seen the MS, which is in the Roy J. Friedman Mark Twain Collection at the Library of Congress (DLC). By 1937 MS page 3 had been exchanged with page 3 from a letter of 8 July 1874 to Aldrichclick to open link. At that time, the 8 July letter was sold with page 3 of the present letter (AAA/Anderson 1937, lot 76). Lot 84 of the same sale, comprising several unidentified letters to Aldrich, may have included MS pages 1–2 and 4–11 of the present letter and page 3 of the 8 July letter.
L6 , 89–94; MTLP , 80–81, excerpt.
The MS at MH-H was deposited by Talbot Aldrich in June 1942, and donated in 1949. The MS at DLC was donated by Frances R. Friedman on 15 June 1992.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.