10 April 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 11910)
I forgot half of my errand today. I wanted to show you h House’s printed MS & talk about it. I enclose it now. Take care of it. He writes as if he had made his entire book only a military report upon that small & entirely uninteresting riotⒶemendation out there which the Gr Japanese ies have an idea was a “War.” If that proves to be the case it won’t sell as many copies as Webb’s book, I am afraid. I have written him that you will fulfill your contract & publish it if he says so, but that no one in this country will be likely to either buy or read an account of that war. I suggested that he write the sort of book I once mapped out for him. Don’t write House without first talking with me. I As soon as you get a chance, drop in on me.1explanatory note
Perhaps you’d better keep Gill’s letter for future reference. That “whirligig of time” will bring round another revenge by & by I suspect.2explanatory note
letter docketed: Sam’l Clemens | Apr. 10 ″75
In the summer and fall of 1874 Edward H. House had corresponded for the New York Herald on Japan’s incursion into Formosa, begun that spring to punish native tribes for acts of murder and piracy. House included his Herald material in a book-length monograph, The Japanese Expedition to Formosa, which he printed in Tokyo in 1875. He sent an early copy to Clemens for transmission to Bliss, hoping that Bliss would accept it as the book on Japan for which they had been negotiating, partly through Clemens, since 1871 (see 22 May 74 to Bliss, n. 1click to open link). Bliss’s American Publishing Company did not publish it or anything else by House. House did publish a travel volume and a novel, both about Japan, with other firms, however (see L4 , 389 n. 1, 713; House, iii, 1–2, 6; Annual Cyclopaedia 1874, 125–26, 428–31).
William F. Gill had written a letter (now lost) refusing Clemens permission to reprint “An Encounter with an Interviewer” in Sketches, New and Old (see 12–28 Feb 75 to Bliss, n. 1click to open link). Clemens’s quotation from Twelfth Night here suggests that the “half” of his errand which he did not forget was to discuss Webb’s complaint, also referred to indirectly in the first paragraph (see the previous letter).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L6 , 444–445.
The MS was laid in a copy of the first volume of The Innocents Abroad, volume 1 of the Royal Edition of the Writings of Mark Twain (American Publishing Company, 1899–1907), donated in July 1996 by Mrs. David Potter.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.