31 August 1881 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS, damage emended: NPV, UCCL 02020)
1. As soon as you are in New York, send a messenger to Mr. Lawrence’s rooms in the Studio Building (everybody knows the place,) & get a distinct answer to the question: “Where will a cablegram reach Mr. Ⓐemendation Lawrence?” Say Mark TwainⒶemendation wants to know. Telegraph me the answer.
2. If anything happened to the 4 acting copies of Hamlet, buy them again, of Samuel French, Nassau st., (see Directory,) & mail them to me.
3. The keeping back a day’s wages is all right, provided it is a custom, or the men are cheerfully willing. Otherwise it will be regarded as an indignity, & will get you the ill will of the men. The men’s ill will can’t be anything but a most costly luxury. Institute as many reforms as you want to; but examine them carefully on all sides, first, & make sure—first, that you are right & the thing just; & secondly, that you are strong enough.
4. But—as I have always contended, the brass end of this business is the big end of it. Without question, iron stamps are just as good as brass ones, & they can be cast in finer & sharper lines. Now the thing for you to do, (having already proved that you can make album stamps,) is to go to Osgood, in Boston, & get from copy, in spelter, (properly beveled for casting,) three or four fine stamps from books; let one of them be the very finest & most delicate that can be cut in Kaolatype, & the others a graduated scale of coarser work. Get Osgood to lend you the None of these need be large—needn’t copy an entire book-back, but only a fairly distinctiveⒶemendation ¼ of it. Go to Osgood &Ⓐemendation borrow the dainty little portrait-stampⒶemendation of Tennyson whichⒶemendation appears on the back of thatⒶemendation thin little volume of his poemsⒶemendation which appeared several mos. Ⓐemendation ago. Use the brassⒶemendation stamp itself, to cast from. Take these various stampsⒶemendation over the way, to the ChelseaⒶemendation foundry, & get them castⒶemendation by their best workmen & askⒶemendation if they will contract to do such casting for us by the year, & do all we bring. Get a price. First ask your album man & Osgood if iron stamps will answer just as well as brass. If they won’t, then get that foundry to make duplicates each plate in both metals, brass & iron. If it turns boxed in margin: overⒶemendation out that they can cast the various ordinary grades of work stamps satisfactorily, I will advertise, send out drummers, knock the price of stamps down 30 or 40 per cent., & gobble up all the low-grade but the very high grade brass business. As soon as we have proved that we can make satisfactory stamps & make them very cheap, then I want to take immediate steps to protect the English Kaolatype patent from lapsing; & if I don’t own it all, I shall want to get hold of the rest of it. Meantime, post yourself concerning the brass-stamp business whenever you get a chance at an expert.
We shan’t want the nuisance of a foundry of our own, if we can strike up a contract with the Chelsea people to do our casting for us.
Possibly Osgood can smootheⒶemendation your way to the foundry people with a note of introduction. Or Frank Millet can,—if he happens to be in Boston—Osgood knows him, & so do I. He is mentioned in the newspaper slip which I enclose from the Tribune.
P. S. When you get Lawrence’s address, send him the following dispatch by cable. Put no date after “New York”: (Put his initials—I don’t know them.)
New York.
. . Lawrence,
(Insert address.)
What is earliest date you can begin decorating our house? Answer paid.
S. L. Clemens.
Leave money to pay the answer; or pay when you get answer—whichever is required. Terms, now If he names a date before the middle of October, cable him again, immediately, & say, “That will suit me.” Otherw If a later date is named, return no answer.
S L C boxed: overⒶemendation
Have Lawrence’s answer sent to you in New York—not to me.
MS, damage emended, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Special Collections, NPV. The MS has been mutilated in two places by someone who cut out “Mark Twain” on the first page and “Ys Truly, S. L. Clemens” on a later page. The latter excision removed parts of several lines written on the verso of sheet. Since the writing on the verso was perpendicular to the writing on the recto, the pattern of loss was vertical rather than horizontal—that is, the first two inches (roughly) of eleven lines of text are now lost. The missing words have been conjecturally restored on the evidence of context and spacing.
MTBus, 167, partial publication; MicroPUL, reel 2.
See McKinney Family Papers in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.