24 July 1876 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: NNC, UCCL 01351)
My English copy of “Tom” hasn’t arrived yet.—miscarried.
I’ve found out where the wildly-floating extracts that puzzled me so much, came from. From your Cincinnati letter, you shrewdⒶemendation man! I happened to run across the entire letter in a Hartford paper, extracts & all.1explanatory note Much obliged to you, but you know that. Chas. Dudley Warner y (just arrived home,) writes me yesterday: “I read & greatly enjoyed Tom Sawyer coming over on the steamer. You know Conway reads it to his Congregation, Sundays.”2explanatory note
Look here;—if you know, pretty certainly, what Toole and Sothern3explanatory note clear per week in London on a fair average, please drop me a cablegram like this:
“Mark Twain, Hartford. One. One.” T
The first “One” stands for Toole, & means £100. The second stands for Sothern & means £100. But suppose Toole’s average one man’s average per week is £50 or £30 or £20, put the word Fifty or t Thirty or twenty; & suppose ’tother man’s average is £150 or £250, put it thus: “One-half”—(meaning one-&-a-half,) or “two-half.”
Remember, the right left hand word in your telegram stands for Toole’s average & the right-hand one for Sothern’s. If you say “Three” or “Four” it means £300 or £400.
You see I am friends with Raymond again, & want to arrange English terms with him if I can.4explanatory note
If you haven’t had any talk with Mr. Tom Taylor yet about dramatizing Tom Sawyer, what do you think about preferring Henry J. Byron? He is a humorist himself, & maybe Taylor isn’t.5explanatory note
I wrote Byron 6 or 8 months ago, through my lawyer (Mr. Perkins,) inquiring if he would join me in getting up a play. (I had S Tom Sawyer in my mind but did not say so, if I remember rightly.) He lost the letter—found it ten days ago, & writes me that he thinks he would like to. I have instructed Perkins to write him & say you will see him about “Tom” if you have made no dramatic arrangements already. (Did not say you were going to apply to Taylor—mentioned no names.)6explanatory note
I wish to you to get Tom dramatized & charge me £50 for your trouble & bother, whether the play succeeds or fails. I want my name coupled with the dramatist’s, & take out copyright on both sides. If the dramatist is willing to own the play in Great Britain & her provinces for his share, & let me own the play exclusively in the United States, that is satisfactory. Or I will pay him a sum down, for the MS., & a further sum contingent upon success. Or, if I can’t do any better, I will own ⅔ of the play & he the other ⅓, on bothⒶemendation sides of the water. Or, if that won’t do, we will just own the play equally on both sides of the water.
And I do hope Byron or Taylor will do the job. If they won’t, can you find another man?
If you’ll get the thing done for me & it makes a success, I insist upon paying you an additional £50, so as to partly pay you for your trouble.
Byrons
I have a young genius of a girl in my eye, here, to take the part of Tom or Huck (whichever turns out to be the principal character7explanatory note—for I want the play to depart from the book as widely as the dramatist chooses, even though he leave the book’s incidents out entirely). I would enlarge that part myself, if it did not already preponderate in the play, & try to make a lucrative “one-character” drama of it——wherein lies the cash. “Sellers” has paid me $23,000 clear, this season.
Byron’s address is “Southern Lodge, St. Ann’s Road, Brixton, London. , G. I.
P. S.—What I would like still better, is this: I to own the play wholly, both in Britain & America; & the dramatist to be paid in this way: he to receive one-half of the play’s earnings until his share, so received, shall am have reached £1000; or, if that is too little, £1500; or, if that is too little, £2000; & after that, he to receive nothing more. I like this plan better than any other.—& it is the justest. If he can dramatize it on a acceptably at all, he can do it in a month, & the second or third of these sums is good enough pay for a month’s literary work where your materials are mainly furnished to hand. So I think I would try him with this proposition first, & then fall back on the others if necessary. I suppose it is likely possible he will require some pay, whether the play succeeds or not. If he does, we’ll get his figure.
My idea is to have the several parts parts (both sexes) played by small women, unless I can get a good juvenile gang to go with my juvenile “first walking lady.”8explanatory note
Originally, when I thought of dramatizing the book myself, it was my purpose to close with just one scene where Tom or Huck, after an interval of fifty years, an absence from the village of half that of 40 ‸or‸ 50 or 60 years, comes on the stage, addle-pated with age, and thinks he recognizes on & is again united to his former schoolmates, whereas it is only their grandchildren; & they are unpleasantly disturbed by the old chap’s gushing attentions. Whereupon, enter Jo Harper & some more of the superannuated.9explanatory note The main trouble is, those parts would always be taken by local sticks. But suggest it to [the] dramatist.10explanatory note
Conway’s 10 June 1876 “London Letter” appeared in the Cincinnati Commercial on 26 June (Conway 1876f). Devoted entirely to the English edition of Tom Sawyer, published on 9 June, it contained numerous quotations, brief extracts, and bits of plot summary, as well as the entire fence-painting episode from chapter 2. (For the full text see the Appendix “Reviews of The Adventures of Tom Sawyerclick to open link.”) That episode and other extracts were reprinted from the Commercial in the New York Evening Post on 28 June; the Boston Evening Transcript on 29 June, 30 June, and 6 July; the Hartford Courant on 30 June; The Chicago Tribune on 3 July; The St. Louis Post-Dispatch on 10 July; the Philadelphia Sunday Republic on 23 July; and no doubt in other papers as well. The Hartford Times reprinted the full Conway letter on 8 July. Clemens evidently was so pleased with this means of generating publicity that he adopted it himself. “The Boy, the Beetle and the Dog,” an extract from chapter 5 of the book not in Conway’s Commercial letter, was reprinted in the Chicago Tribune on 15 July, the Hartford Courant on 26 July, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on 28 August, and probably elsewhere (Budd 1999, 167).
Warner had returned to Hartford from Europe and the Near East on 1 July (see 1 Jan 1876 to Howellsclick to open link, n. 1). Clemens quoted his 23 July letter verbatim, except for the last few words, which were “Conway reads it to his congregation, on Sunday” (CU-MARK). Conway, a Unitarian, was pastor of South Place Chapel, Finsbury, London.
John L. Toole (1830–1906) and Edward A. Sothern (1826–81), leading English comic actors. Clemens knew Toole well, and may also have been acquainted with Sothern, whom he had seen perform inhartford in March 1874 ( L5 : 15 Sept 1872 to OLC, 159–60; 22 Sept 1872 to Conway [2nd of 2], 175 n. 1; L6 : 4 Mar 1874 to Howells, 62 n. 2; 16 Jan 1875 to Toole, 352; AutoMT3, 225, 563).
Clemens had a somewhat troubled relationship with John T. Raymond, star of Colonel Sellers, disliking his performance as Sellers and clashing with him about the play’s finances (see L6 , passim). Raymond finally took the play to London in 1880, opening at the Gaiety Theatre on 19 July and closing prematurely after only three weeks, a decided failure (“‘Colonel Sellers’ at the Gaiety,” London Examiner, 24 July 1880, 889–90; “At the Play,” London Observer, 25 July 1880, 3, and 8 Aug 1880, 7;“ From Our London Correspondent,” Manchester Guardian, 21 July 1880, 5).
In late 1873 and early 1874 Clemens had attempted unsuccessfully to meet with Taylor, a playwright and staff member of Punch, to discuss dramatizing The Gilded Age ( L5 : 29 Dec 1873 to Taylor, 538–39; 30 Dec 1873 to Warner, 541–42; 5 Jan 1874 to Taylor, L6 , 10). Henry J. Byron (1834–84) was the author of numerous farces and comedies and also appeared on the stage in his own works.
None of the correspondence between Clemens, Perkins, and Byron has been found.
Twelve-year-old Bijou Heron, who had experience in boy roles. For details, see 14 Aug 1876 to Eustace Conwayclick to open link, n. 3).
On 21 July 1875, the date that copyright was entered under number 7620 for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , copyright was entered under number 7621, on the basis of a one-page synopsis, for Tom Sawyer. A Drama. That synopsis concluded: “Fifty Years Later.—Ovation to General Sawyer, Rear-Admiral Harper, Bishop Finn, and Inspector Sid Sawyer, the celebrated detective” (SLC 1875e). Subsequently, in 1875 and 1876, Clemens evidently wrote thirty-three pages of this play. On 1 February 1884 copyright was entered under number 2377, on the basis of a scene-by-scene synopsis, for a second, completed drama, Tom Sawyer. A Play in 4 Acts (SLC 1875–84; SLC 1884; Lehr 1982, 1, 12; Dramatic Compositions 1918, 2:2346). For further details of these dramatizations and a text of the 1884 play, as well as discussion of Clemens’s nearly thirty years of plans to portray Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn as adults, see HH&T , 15–20, 243–324, 400–402.
Conway replied (CU-MARK):
Scottish-born William Black (1841–98) was especially known for his popular novels that successfully blended fiction and travel writing and featured charming portrayals of female characters. It is not known if he ever called on Clemens.
MS, Conway Papers, NNC.
MicroPUL, reel 1.
The Conway Papers were acquired by NNC sometime after Conway’s death in 1907.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.