1 August 1876 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS facsimile: CU-MARK, UCCL 01354)
Your last just received.1explanatory note I sent you the price of the pictures entirely too late for your first edition (P. S.—No I didn’t either; I sent the price in April or May 1st) 2explanatory note—which was to be a cheap edition, as I understood it—but with ample time to let Chatto say he didn’t want them for his fall high-priced edition, if he should not like the cost. I suppose the first edition was already in press before I received the order to forward the electros—& it was printed before the plates started from here; so the first edition was evidently not waiting for them. If Chatto did not want the pictures, why did he put me to all that bother about them. I could have earned their cost a couple of times with the running I did on their account.
I got Bliss’s figures for the electros & forwarded them; (25 cents per square inch, I think it was.) I suppose, of course, Chatto ordered them upon that clear basis; he does not like their cost, now; who is to blame but himself? How am I to “do my best to favor him?” Bliss makes the plates—not me. It is no object to Bliss to favor Chatto; Bliss is in no wise concerned. If I ask Bliss to favor Chatto by reducing the contract price of the electros, what argument (not sentimental, but business commercial,) am I to offer him to that end? I am sure I know of none which he would not smile a godless smile at.
Now in order to accomplish anything in this matter, I would have to go to work & correspond with Bliss every three days for a couple of weeks, before a comfortable & satisfactory result could be reached. Life is too short. Manuscript is too valuable. Let Chatto ship the electros back to Bliss & Bliss shall use them himself if he can, & if he can’t he must charge them to me. This is the simplest way out of the tangle. You have already issued your high-priced edition—there is no money in another one.3explanatory note
We are up here at the farm for the summer. You never have been here, I believe; therefore you don’t know what peace & comfort are; & you never can know till you come here one of these days & spend a week or so with us. Which I hope you will do, & bring Mrs. Conway. We are in the air, overhanging the valley 700 feet, & my study is 100 yards from the house. This is not my vacation, mind you—I take that in winter. I am booming along with my new book—have written ⅓ of it & shall finish it in 6 working weeks.4explanatory note
Tom Sawyer proofs come in slowly; received & read Chapter 8 yesterday.
With warmest regards & best wishes—
Mrs. Clemens says you do not need to be a prophetⒶemendation in order to convince her that she would “enjoy London” now
Moncure Conway’s “last,” sent around mid-July, does not survive, except for the words Clemens quoted in the second and the final paragraphs here, his enclosure in 8 Aug 1876 to Blissclick to open link, and his brief paraphrase in the fourth paragraph of 14 Aug 1876 to Eustace Conwayclick to open link. Conway’s response to the present letter also does not survive.
The price went to Conway in Clemens’s letter of 16 April 1876click to open link. No letter of 1 May has been found.
Clemens had begun writing Adventures of Huckleberry Finn around 9 July (see 9 Aug 1876 to Howellsclick to open link). He stopped work on it twice, for extended periods, before finally finishing it in 1884 (for a full discussion of its composition and revision, see HF2003 , 666–715).
MS facsimile, CU-MARK.
MTLP , 102–4.
A typed transcript in CU-MARK indicates that the MS was at one time in the Justin Turner Collection.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.