12 February 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MH-H, UCCL 01193)
Concerning that sketch-book. I went to Bliss yesterday & told him I had got all my old sketches culled & put together & a whole lot of new ones added, & that I had about made up my mind to put them in your hands. Whereupon he went to his safe & brought back a contract four years old to give him all my old sketches, with a lot of new ones added!— royalty 7½ per cent!
I had totally forgotten the existence of such a contract—totally. He said, “It wouldn’t be like you to refuse to first fulfil this contract.”1explanatory note
I said, “You flatter me; & moreover you have got me. But I won’t fulfill it at 7½ per cent.”
“We never have shown a disposition to be mean with you—state your terms,” said Bliss.
I said, “Do you really mean that you will pay a higher royalty, with that contract at your back?”
“I mean that we will meet you in liberality half way & more than half way.”
“Very well,” I said. “The Ⓐemendationbook shall be an illustrated, & sell at $2.50. My royalty shall be 7½ per cent., if the sale does not exceed 50,000 copies. But the day it reaches 50,000 the royalty shall go up to 10 per cent, & the said 10 per cent shall also then be made good on the 50,000 already sold.”
All of which Bliss agreed to with alacrity & put in writing without an objection.2explanatory note
So you see, that although I have not been able to furnish you the book, you have been able to raise an old contract up from 7½ to 10 per cent for me, & I thank you very heartily & am glad, now, I paid your expenses on that Warwickshire excursion—a thing which I have been too prone to regret heretofore.3explanatory note
To tell the entire truth, I told Bliss I w had a mind to send the Sketches to you, the day after I came back from Boston;4explanatory note but the old fox (I don’t say it disrespectfully, but admiringly) never said a word about the old contract, but only argued with me in favor of publishing with his Company; but as soon as I had got the matter all ready for the press, (index, preface & everything,) Ⓐemendationout he comes with his blamed old document◇!5explanatory note
Osgood, Howells said he (a month or so ago) he would take steamboat at St Louis with me, in March, & go to New Orleans & back. He is not sure, now, whether he can go or not, but I hope he will. But in any case, don’t you want to take a pleasure trip about that time? I wish you would go. Think of the gaudy times you & Howells & I c would have on such a bender!6explanatory note
Clemens had first expressed an interest in publishing a book of sketches through Osgood in March 1872, but, as he told Osgood then, was prevented by his existing agreements with Elisha Bliss’s American Publishing Company. These included a 29 December 1870 sketchbook contract stipulating a 7.5 percent royalty. The sketchbook Clemens compiled by January 1871 to meet that contract had been set aside to follow Roughing It, and then some of its contents were incorporated into that book, and also into Mark Twain’s Sketches and Curious Dream, both of the latter published in London in 1872 by George Routledge and Sons. Bliss had not published a book of sketches, and the 1870 contract therefore remained unfulfilled. Even though it did not explicitly enjoin Clemens from publishing with other firms, Bliss used it to exert a claim of precedence. In 1874 Clemens had overlooked a contract with Bliss that did include an exclusivity provision when he tried to issue Mark Twain’s Sketches. Number One (see 10 May 74 to OC, n. 5click to open link; L4 , 281–82, 295–96, 319; L5 , 72–73; ET&S1 , 435–36, 595).
On the day Clemens wrote this letter, Bliss added a paragraph to the 29 December 1870 contract and sent it to Clemens for approval:
It is agreed in consideration of the great increase of Mr Clemens fame that if the book above proposed sells 50,000 not to exceed 50,000 the copyright is to remain as above, but if it exceeds 50,000 it shall be 10% on all sold, settlements to be made at rate of 7½% until sale exceeds 50000 when the other 2½ shall be paid. If all right sign & send back & I will send copyright.
Clemens signed, noting, “It is satisfactory to me, Bliss” (CtY-BR). Bliss then drew up a separate “addition,” dated 12 February, to “the contract now existing between Saml L Clemens & the American Publishing Co. dated Dec 29 1870,” restating the new terms (CU-MARK). Once he had the manuscript for Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old in hand, probably in late March 1875, he attached the following statement to the “addition”:
We have received from S. L. Clemens the Mss. for book contracted for in contract dated Dec. 29, 1870, & also recd from S L Clemens & C Dudley Warner, the Mss for book contracted for in contract dated May 8, 1873—& we have endorsed the receipt by us of same on the respective contracts—
There is no contract existing between S. L. Clemens & the Am. Pub Co., for a book or books, made prior to the latest above mentioned dates, on which the Mss. contracted for has not been delivered to us.
In writing that final paragraph, Bliss evidently overlooked Clemens’s unfulfilled contract of 22 June 1872 (see 24 Mar 74 to Aldrich, n. 4click to open link). The fulfilled “contract dated May 8, 1873” was for The Gilded Age.
Clemens and Osgood spent a day “driving about Warwickshire in an open barouche” in September 1872 ( L5 , 155).
Clemens had seen Osgood in Boston at the Atlantic Monthly dinner on 15 December 1874, and had returned to Hartford the next day.
The “index” was a handwritten list (headed “Contents”) of eighty-one sketches Clemens proposed to include in the sketchbook. It was part of the Estelle Doheny Collection at Saint John’s Seminary in Camarillo, California, until its sale in 1988. The manuscript is reproduced and discussed in ET&S1 , 619–34.
MS, Rogers Memorial Room, Houghton, Library, Harvard University (MH-H).
L6 , 380–83; MTLP , 83–85.
The Henry M. Rogers and Kathleen Rogers Collection was donated in 1930.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.