12 November 1877 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: NN-BGC, UCCL 02518)
I did not think I should ever stand on a platform again until the time was come for me to say, “I die innocent.” But the same old offers keep arriving that have arrived arriven every year & been every year declined—$500 for Louisville, $500 for St Louis, $1000 gold for 2 nights in Toronto, half gross proceeds for New York, Boston, Brooklyn, &c. I have declined them all, just as usual—though sorely tempted, as usual.
Now I do not decline because I mind talking to an audience, but because, (1.) traveling alone is so heart-breakingly dreary, & (2), shouldering the whole show is such a cheer-killing responsibility.
Therefore, I now propose to you what you proposed to me in November ’67—ten years ago (when I was unknown,)—viz., that you stand on the platform & make pictures, & I stand by you & blackguard the audience. I should enormously enjoy meandering around, (to big towns—don’t want to go to little ones)—with you for company.1explanatory note
My idea is, not to fatten lecture-agents & lyceums on the spoils, but put all the ducats religiously into two equal piles & say to the artist & the lecturer, “Absorb these.”
For instance—this being the plan: Pay the lecture bureau 2 per cent of gross receipts to engage halls & arrange dates & route for us. Take an agent with us to tend door, at & shoulder all details, at $70 or $75 per week, he to pay his own expenses. Perform at a dollar a ticket, & only in towns capable of furnishing from eight to 1200-dollar audiences.
Have 50-cent or 75c admissions, also, in halls & theatres where there are galleries, if considered expedient.
Take a hall in New York for 2 weeks (with privilege of extending the time if it is were if necessary); go from there elsewhere, & come back & finish there with 2 to 3 weeks more, at the end of the trip.
Begin Feb 1st & perform 100 times (not including Wednesday & Saturday matinées)—call the gross result $100,000 for 4 months & a half, & the profit from $60,000 to $75,000. (I try to make the figures large nough enough, & leave it to the public to reduce them.)
I lectured 2 nights in Steinway Hall once, on for half of the gross receipts. We packed the house both nights at a dollar a head. The rent of the hall was either $200 or $250 per night, & the advertising little or nothing, because there was not time to do much.2explanatory note Norw I think know you & I could pack that hall 6 nights & 2 matineés—& double this ti that time in a smaller hall. We could clear $3000Ⓐemendation apiece for a Steinway week with no trouble at all.
We can pack Music Hall in Boston (it seats near about 2500) 2 nights & one matinée, or run a week in a smaller hall.
| New York,– – | 12 days (or 24) |
| (small hall & 4 matinees) | |
| Baltimore– – | 2 (& 1 matinee) |
| Washington | 2— |
| Boston—– | 2 (& 1 matinèe) |
| (Music Hall) | |
| Providence— | 1 |
| Chelsea—– | 1 |
| Portland— | 1 |
| Binghamton | 1 |
| Elmira—–– | 1 |
| Buffalo—– | 2 |
| Cleveland— | 2 |
| Pittsburgh— | 2 |
| Columbus— | 1 |
| Detroit—– | 1 |
| Chicago—– | 6 4 (& 2 1 matinees[)] |
| St Louis— | 4 |
| Cincinnati— | 4 (& 1 mat.) |
| Louisville— | 2 (or 3) |
| Toronto— | 2 |
| Hamilton— | 1 |
| New Haven— | 1 |
| Stamford— | 1 |
| Bridgeport— | 1 |
| Hartford— | 1 |
| New York | 12 (again) |
| & 4 mat) | |
| ———— | |
| ———— | |
| Total 75. |
I have no mapⒶemendation by me, else I could easily pick out & add 25 one-thousand dollar towns scattered about n New England & along that route.
You & I can cram any house in America just as full as it can hold.
I did not put in Philadelphia because Pugh owns that town, & last winter when I made a little reading-trip he only paid me $300 & pretended his concert (I read 15 minutes in the midst of a concert) cost him $600 a vast sum, & so he couldn’t afford any more. I could get up a better concert with a barrel full of cats.3explanatory note
I am deep in a book, which I can have ready for the printers & the dramatist (for I want it dramatised) by the end of January, & be ready for you then, if you like the project.4explanatory note
I have imagined two or three pictures & concocted the accompanying remarks to see how the thing would go. I was charmed.
Well, you think it over, Nast, & drop me a line.5explanatory note I am not proposing a novelty in business. In California & Nevada I always ran my own show, took all the risks myself & pocketed the whole profit. My agent got nothing but a salary.6explanatory note I know this business from A to Z.
By George, w We should have some fun!
In his autobiographical dictation of 3 April 1906, Clemens inserted an article from that morning’s New York Times, reporting that the present letter “brought $43 yesterday at the auction by the Merwin-Clayton Company of the library and correspondence of the late Thomas Nast, cartoonist” (“Mark Twain Letter Sold,” 2). He remarked:
This is as it should be. This is worthy of all praise. I say it myself lest other competent persons should forget to do it. It appears that four of my ancient letters were sold at auction, three of them at twenty-seven dollars, twenty-eight dollars, and twenty-nine dollars respectively, and the one above mentioned at forty-three dollars. There is one very gratifying circumstance about this, to wit: that my literature has more than held its own as regards money value through this stretch of thirty-six years. I judge that the forty-three-dollar letter must have gone at about ten cents a word, whereas if I had written it to-day its market rate would be thirty cents—so I have increased in value two or three hundred per cent. I note another gratifying circumstance—that a letter of General Grant’s sold at something short of eighteen dollars. I can’t rise to General Grant’s lofty place in the estimation of this nation, but it is a deep happiness to me to know that when it comes to epistolary literature he can’t sit in the front seat along with me. (AutoMT2, 10)
In his dictation of 4 April, Clemens inserted that day’s continuing Times account of the sale (“30 Cents for McCurdy Poem,” 9), which listed the prices brought for letters by Theodore Roosevelt (five letters, $1.50–$2.25), William T. Sherman (one letter, $6.00), Philip H. Sheridan (one letter, $12.25), and Abraham Lincoln (one letter, $38.00). He commented:
It is a great satisfaction to me to notice that I am still ahead—ahead of Roosevelt, ahead of Sherman, ahead of Sheridan, even ahead of Lincoln. These are fine laurels, but they will not last. A time is coming when some of them will wither. A day will come when a mere scratch of Mr. Lincoln’s pen will outsell a whole basketful of my letters. A time will come when a scratch of the pens of those immortal soldiers, Sherman and Sheridan, will outsell a thousand scratches of mine, and so I shall enjoy my supremacy now, while I may. I shall read that clipping over forty or fifty times, now, while it is new and true, and let the desolating future take care of itself. (AutoMT2, 13)
MS, NN-BGC.
MTL , 1:311–12, partial publication; MTB , 2:612, partial publication.
Sold for $43 by Merwin-Clayton after Nast’s death (“For Twain Letter, $43,” New York Tribune, 3 Apr 1906, 7). It is not known when the MS became part of the Berg Collection, given by Dr. Albert A. Berg to NN in 1940, but continuously enlarged since then.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.