per Fanny C. Hesse
10 January 1877 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: NNC, UCCL 01400)
slc
You did not enclose me the decision you speak of, but no matter about that. I see I am not so well situated here to fight Belford as you & Chatto are. The English copywrightⒶemendation stands in your name—Ⓐemendationor Chatto’s—so you & C. go to work & prosecute Belford and collect that royalty. I couldnt do it without having your copywrightⒶemendation transferred to me. Commercially speaking, Toronto is twice as far from Hartford as it is from London, & you & Chatto can prosecute Belford more conveniently than I can. The lawyer that won that other decision, is the very lawyer to conduct this suit for my benefit: royaltiesⒶemendation. Therefore I wish Chatto & you would go ahead & prosecute Belford in my interest & send the bill to me.
Can you do it?
Clemens replied to the following letter (CU-MARK; one leaf is damaged at the right edge, and the missing letters are supplied in brackets):
2 pembroke gardens, kenisington. w.
Hamlet House
Hammersmith
London Dec 25/76
Dear Clemens,
“Peace on earth an[d] good will to all” exc[ept] the Belfords!
I have received you[r] lugubrious letter in which you rest your belief that it is hopeless to pursue those literary Bashi Bazouks because an English copyright m[ust] be registered sixty days before publication, in Canada. But you do not seem to have observed that in the Toronto decision which I sent you in print Smiles won his royalty from Belfords despite that purely Canadian provision about sixty days. Smiles had not so registered—nor at all. You may, of course, and your lawyer may have considered all this, but still I write to mention it. The decision that the English copyright overrides colonial law is complete for an English subject, and neither Chatto nor I think that the case would be altered by the fact that I am American. Suppose the copyright I took out here to be my property: if I die it is a part of my assets. Could an Englishman, to whom I owed a debt, lose his claim to the full benefit of that part of my assets, (the copyright) because I was an American? It would not be so with regard to any other property.
Nor does your claim seem to me beyond practical recovery. What you want is not the booksellers who have been selling the book in America, but Belford's books to show how may many copies he has printed. The difference between that figure & the number he can show in stock represents the royalties he owes you.
Ever yours, & ever much hurried
M D Conway
added in margin of page 1: Somewhere in the neighbourhood of £100 will reach you about middle of Jan. on the Chatto note and the rest somewhat later.
Conway alluded to the decision in Smiles v. Belford, an 1876 suit for literary piracy in the Toronto courts. He had sent Clemens a summary of the case from an “American paper” with his letter of 16 November 1876 (2 Nov 1876 to Conway, n. 3). For the “Canadian provision about sixty days” see 13 Dec 1876 to Conway, n. 3. “Bashi Bazouks” were irregular troops of the Ottoman Army, considered to be undisciplined bandits. They figured in the news in 1877 because of their actions in the Russo-Turkish War.
MS, signed and with a note by SLC: 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.