3 November 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, draft, not sent: CU-MARK, UCCL 01144)
Sir: I have been a good deal entertained by an article in your columns today Ⓐemendationwhich attempts to give a history of the drama of the “Gilded Age.” It is not thsis history that amuses me; it is the guarded & mysterious way in which it is told—as if the thing were a secret. , a wonderful a wonderful mare’s-egg, & the historian another Columbus in that he discovered it. {The metaphor is a trifle mixed, but no matter.}2explanatory note
The history of the Gilded Age drama is no secret. I have told it to dozens of people, & no doubt they have told it to dozens of others. But I told that history correctly. The one you have copied has errors in it. Let me tell the true history—it seems the shortest & easiest way of correcting the errors.
While the book called the Gilded Age was still in manuscript, I took out a dramatic copyright on it; & in England, a few weeks later, began to map out the play. But I was under contract for a book, & could not give the drama much attention.3explanatory note Not long after my return from England, I saw in a I learned that Mr. Densmore, a San Francisco friend of mine, had dramatised my book & that Mr. Raymond his drama was being played. I stopped the performance, of course. Wouldn’t not you? I had about concluded not to go into the dramatic business, by this time, fearing I might do myself more harm than good in that line. Still I had an itching desire to see Colonel Sellers on the stage—the only character in the book that I thought much of. I made Mr. Dens-more an offer for his manuscript, not his copyright—for I had he had none, his rights being annulled by my prior copyright.4explanatory note He took me up in such a prompt & gentlemanly way that he rather got the best of my human nature & I if my memory serves me I sent him double the amount I had promised.
I entirely re-wrote his play three saeparate & distinct times.
I had not expected to use any part little of his language & but little of his plot. I do not think that there are now twenty sentences of Mr. Densmore’s in the play, but I used so much of his plot that I wrote & told him that I should pay him about as much more as I had already paid him, in case the play proved a success. I shall more than keep my word. I think Mr. Densmore does not doubt that. 5explanatory note
I was by no means averse to saying that they play was written by the pair of us, but there was so little of Densmore’s handiwork left in it that it did not seem worth while. Still, if Mr. Densmore had wanted it done it should have been done, & very cheerfully, too. And it shall be done yet, at any moment that he requests it. He took possession of my literary property & worked it up into a play without asking my permssission or offering to share (a matter which he explained later,); but I have no disposition to pay him back in his own coin.
All the characters & incidents used in this play are my own creation—but I value none of them except Colonel Sellers & what he says & does. No man can claim Sellers or a word that proceeds out of his mouth but me. If Densmore is willing, he may assume the father-ship of all the rest of the characters & all the rest of the play.
To show how that there is really nothing mean about me, I hereby agree that if any theatre wants to produce the drama of the Gilded Age (with my particular & undisputed property, Colonel Sellers, left out,) the manager can hear of a very cheap trade by addressing me—provided he will agree to make the play run three nights & have two dollars in the house each time.
Do you perceive? It Ⓐemendationwas no secret. I furnished all the characters in this play, & I put in their mouths almost every individual word they utter. Most of the plot or skeleton was furnished by Densmore—& I have paid him for it. Now, as to “who wrote the drama of the Gilded Age?” have you still doubts? I supposed I wrote it, but perhaps I may there may be people who are better informed about my matters than I am myself. There’s really no telling.
Hartford, Nov. 3.
I append the following, to show that if I have grieved anybody or have hurt anybody’s feelings or outraged anybody’s sense of justice it is not Mr. Densmore’s. In the summer (August 4,) he wrote me this letter:
“Mr. Clemens—Dear Sir: Your letter reached me on the 2d inst., with check. In this place permit me to thank you for the very handsome manner in which you have acted in this matter. I had no legal rights in the play, & it would have been worthless to me had you chosen to be governed strictlly Ⓐemendation by legal considerations. I should have consulted you about dramatizing the book had I not undertaken it in such a hurry. I doubt not that you have greatly improved the whole play, & I sincerely hope that it will prove a brilliant success. Recognizing fully your claim to have created the character of Colonel Sellers, I did not for a moment suppose that my name would appear as joint author, though it is pleasant to me to know that the idea entered your mind.”
I did not leave Densmore’s name out from any mean or selfish motive, though the man who furnished the entertaining history of theis drama to the journal from which you copied it would like to have it seem that I did. This historian’s is a man whom I am well acquainted with. In a thoughtless moment I saved him went out of my way to do him a kindness, once. I had an opportunity to kill him & I did not do it. This is the thanks I get for it.7explanatory note
P. S. Ⓐemendation
postscript torn away to cancel
H. T. Sperry was the editor and co-proprietor of the Hartford Evening Post. It is not known if Clemens was personally acquainted with him (Geer 1874, 133, 260).
The Evening Post’s article read:
THE DRAMA OF THE GILDED AGE.
a romance from the pacific coast.
The following improbable story has made its appearance in a New York paper. Although names and dates are given quite liberally, we apprehend that it will be found there is precious little truth in the impression sought to be conveyed, that Mr. Clemens is not the author of his own work:
The question has been asked, “Is it possible that Mark Twain could have strung together a play so dull in its features as the ‘Gilded Age,’ with only one redeeming character of Col. Sellers to recommend it to popular favor?” There is at least a doubt in Mr. Clemens’s favor suggested by the secret history of the play.
In April or May last, a poor Bohemian attached to The Golden Era of San Francisco, entered into an arrangement with John T. Raymond, who was then playing in the California Theater, for the dramatization of Mark Twain’s “Gilded Age.” The book was then the sensation of the Pacific coast, and as Mr. Raymond’s engagement had not proved pecuniarily successful he jumped at the chance to do something. The poor author soon turned out a machine drama with the magnificent character of Colonel Sellers made especially for John T. Raymond. The piece was produced in the California theater. It won a moderate success, but was soon withdrawn.
Dennis McCarthy, managing editor of The San Francisco Chronicle, was once one of the editors and owners of The Territorial Enterprise, in Virginia City, and in that capacity he gave Mr. Clemens the first newspaper work he ever did. The two have since been like brothers, and thinking to please Clemens, Mr. McCarthy sent him a copy of The Chronicle containing a complimentary notice of the play. Two weeks afterward Mr. McCarthy received from Mr. Clemens’s home in Hartford one of Mark’s sixteen-page letters, saying that he had copyrighted every incident in “The Gilded Age” for a drama of his own. He threatened to prosecute “this Mr. Raymond,” if he produced the play again, and ended by offering the author $100 for his manuscript and his copyright, as it might aid him in the preparation of his own play. Enclosed was a check for $100.
Mr. McCarthy went with the check in one hand and the sixteen page letter in the other to the author. The poor fellow’s hands fairly ached to clutch the check, but Mr. Raymond, he said, had gone to Australia with the manuscript. He offered to prepare another for the check, but this offer was declined by Mr. McCarthy, who wanted the only manuscript extant for his friend Clemens. The check was accordingly returned to Clemens with a report of all these proceedings. Four months later “this” John T. Raymond is playing Col. Sellers in New York under the patronage of Mark Twain. The question now is, “Who dramatized the ‘Gilded Age?’” (3 Nov 74, 2)
Except for the opening paragraph, this article reprinted the New York Sun of 2 November (“The Story of The Gilded Age,” 1). The letter to Denis McCarthy it described must have been written in May 1874, around the time Clemens stopped the San Francisco production of Densmore’s unauthorized Gilded Age play (see 5 May 74 to Warner, n. 2click to open link). Clemens evidently decided that the Evening Post’s dismissal of the Sun account made his own denial unnecessary: he did not mail this draft, and no version of it has been found in the Evening Post. The Sun published no direct response from him, although on 3 November it did print the following rebuttal from Raymond, which Clemens no doubt read when the Courant reprinted it the following day (“The Gilded Age,” 2):
To the Editor of The Sun.
Sir: An article headed “Story of the Gilded Age” in The Sun of this morning calls for a statement from me. The facts in the case are simply these: In April last I commenced an engagement in San Francisco. A few days after my arrival the manager of the theater mentioned that Mr. Dinsmore, the dramatic critic of the Golden Era, had dramatized Mark Twain’s and Charles Warner’s novel of the “Gilded Age,” and would like to submit it to me. I read the play, and the character of Col. Sellers impressed me so favorably that I consented to produce the piece the last week of my engagement. I did so, the play making a most pronounced hit. I then arranged with Mr. Dinsmore for the right to perform the play throughout the country. Upon my arrival in New York I heard that Mr. Clemens had telegraphed to San Francisco protesting against the play being performed, as he had reserved all rights in his copyright of the “Gilded Age.” I at once recognized Mr. Clemens’s claim, and wrote Mr. Dinsmore to that effect. I then communicated with Clemens with a view to having him write me a play with Col. Sellers as the chief character. While the negotiation was pending I received a letter from Mr. Dinsmore requesting me to send the manuscript of his dramatization to Mr. Clemens, as he had purchased it, and that he (Mr. Clemens) had acted in a most liberal manner toward him. I sent the manuscript to Mr. Clemens, but not until after he had finished his play and read it to me, not one line of Mr. Dinsmore’s dramatization being used in the present play except that which was taken bodily from the novel of the “Gilded Age.” These are the facts in the premises. Mr. Dinsmore’s play was a most excellent one; the impression it made in San Francisco was of a most pronounced character, but in no way does it resemble the present production, which is entirely the work of Mr. Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain).
Park Theatre, Nov. 2, 1874.
In December 1873, while in England, Clemens had attempted to meet with dramatist Tom Taylor, apparently for advice about dramatizing the novel ( L5 , 541).
Clemens was mistaken in believing that his and Warner’s 1873 dramatic copyright on the title The Gilded Age: A Drama necessarily protected them against dramatizations such as Densmore’s. Even after he received copyright on his own play, on 20 July 1874 (see 15 and 16 July 74 to Watt, n. 4click to open link), his protection was uncertain and subject to judicial interpretation. The copyright statute of 1870, as revised in 1873, stipulated:
No person shall be entitled to a copyright unless he shall, before publication, deliver at the office of the Librarian of Congress or deposit in the mail addressed to the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, District of Columbia, a printed copy of the title of the book or other article . . . for which he desires a copyright, nor unless he shall also, within ten days from the publication thereof, deliver . . . or deposit . . . two copies of such copyright book or other article.
So long as these two requirements were met, authors retained the “sole liberty of . . . publicly performing or representing” a dramatic composition. “And authors may reserve the right to dramatize or to translate their own works” (Solberg, 47, 54). Two aspects of the law were under dispute in the courts, however. First, the copyright requirements did not clearly pertain to dramatic works, which often were performed without being published in book form (see 16 Feb 75 to Spofford, n. 3click to open link). Second, the phrase “may reserve the right to dramatize” was not sufficiently explicit. It was not until 1891 that the law was amended to read, “Authors or their assigns shall have exclusive right to dramatize and translate any of their works for which copyright shall have been obtained” (Solberg, 59–60).
In 1877 Clemens recalled that “the first night of Sellers we had none but dead-heads in the house”—people admitted on free passes to ensure that the theater was full (27 July 77 to OLC, CU-MARK). That stratagem was never again necessary. In 1881, in a 5 September letter to Howells, Clemens put his one-half share of the profits from the Gilded Age play at $70,000 (MH-H, in MTHL , 1:372). A notebook entry he made in 1889 confirms that figure and provides details of his financial arrangement with Densmore: “Densmore did it in 2 weeks with the scissors & charged $200 a week. R & I divided $140,000” ( N&J3 , 455). That is, Clemens paid Densmore $200 for the unauthorized play and another $200 when his own version proved successful.
None of Clemens’s letters to Densmore, nor the original of Densmore’s letter of 4 August, has been found. The following is the only known letter from Densmore (CU-MARK):
The “certain notices” that Densmore alluded to were evidently announcements of Clemens’s play that conflated it with Densmore’s. Although the following item in the New York Tribune appeared too late for Clemens to have seen it before writing Densmore, he must have seen something similar in another newspaper: “Mark Twain’s play, ‘The Gilded Age,’ which Mr. John T. Raymond will shortly produce, and act in, . . . was originally represented at the California Theatre, in San Francisco, last April. . . . John T. Raymond, as Col. Sellers, presented one of the best bits of character acting ever seen” (“Dramatic Notes,” New York Tribune, 5 Aug 74, 4). In remarking that “Raymond had failed to draw,” Densmore alluded to the actor’s unprofitable run at the California Theatre, which began on 6 April, before he first appeared as Colonel Sellers on 22 April. “Hill” was the theater’s acting manager, Barton Hill (“Amusements,” San Francisco Chronicle, 23 Apr 74, 4). In his closing sentence Densmore mentioned some of Clemens’s San Francisco Golden Era, which Densmore co-owned. J. Macdonough Foard, now employed as a compositor, had been one of its founders and an early co-editor. During the early and mid-1860s, when Clemens knew him, he was the publisher of a rival literary weekly, the San Francisco Sunday Mercury. Joseph E. Lawrence purchased the Golden Era from Foard in 1860 and was its editor until 1866, during which time he solicited contributions from Clemens. He had recently returned to that position. (For Kendall, see the next note.) Clemens must have turned down Densmore’s offer to collaborate on a new play, but no letter to that effect has been found (Walker 1969, 24, 117, 119–20, 145, 150, 153–54; Cummins, 14–17; Langley: 1863, 79, 148; 1864, 83, 161, 574; 1865, 95, 180; 1874, 202, 252, 396, 806).
The “historian” almost certainly was San Francisco poet William A. Kendall, a Golden Era editor in the early 1860s and later a contributor. Clemens had helped him in 1872 and again in 1873. Kendall seems to have had the habit of repaying kindnesses with libel (see L5 , 8–10, 317–19). The suggestion that Clemens had misused Densmore reappeared in late December 1874 (see pp. 330–31).
MS, draft, not sent, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L6 , 267–73; Paine 1912, 118, brief excerpt; MTB , 1:518, brief excerpt.
see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.