To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
12 August 1869 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00330)

“Daily Express” Office,
Buffalo, Aug. 12.

Friend Bliss—

Your splendid letter has arrived, & I confess I owe you one. I was in an awful sweat when I wrote you, for everything seemed going wrong end foremost with me. I had just got mad with the Cleveland Herald folks & broken off all further negotiations for a purchase, & so I let you & some others have the benefit of my ill [nature. But ] that is all gone by, & now we will b smoke the pipe of peace & bury the hatchet.1 I have bought one-third of the Buffalo “Express,”2 & it is an exceedingly thriving newspaper.3 We propose to make it more so. I expect I shall have to buckle right down to it & give up lecturing until next year.

I was at Elmira yesterday & saw the book, & my faith in it has all come back again. It is the very handsomest book of the season & you ought to be proud of your work. It will [sell. Between ] us we will make it sell. Miss Langdon has a very flattering letter about it from young Mrs. Perkins of Hartford. I will get a copy & send to you. They live in that big place at the foot of the street that starts from the front of the Episcopal [church.4 Send ] Henry Ward Beecher a copy. However, I believe I put his name in that list. I will send you the Elmira notices when they appear. I gave that handsome gilt-edged copy to my sweetheart5—I wish you would send one like it to Charley J. Langdon, Elmira, & one to my mother, Mrs. Jane Clemens, 203 South 16th street, St. Louis, Mo. I have no copy myself, but I can get along without, [ have having ] already perused it. I think it would be a good idea to send both bound & unbound copies to the Buffalo Express, the Buffalo Courier, & the Buffalo Commercial, but that is for you to judge of.6

Well, I believe I haven’t anything more to say, except that I like the circulars,7 I like the book, I like you & your style & your business vim, & believe the chebang will be a success.

Heartily & sincerely

Samℓ. L. Clemens.

“Buffalo Express” is my address hereafter—shall marry & come to anchor here during the winter.

[letter docketed:] Clemens [and] [and] Mark Twain | Aug 12/69

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Bliss’s “splendid letter” (CU-MARK) was the detailed response he had promised to Clemens’s 22 July accusations:

UCLC31936

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Despite Clemens’s eagerness to make peace with Bliss and his apparent acceptance of Bliss’s explanation, he persisted in his mistaken belief that the publication delay was thirteen months (from July 1868). In 1876 he told William Wright (Dan De Quille): “I have been through that mill (of ‘When is your book going to be out?’) so often that it long ago ceased to have any power to annoy me—though when the ‘Innocents’ was in press I confess I wished a million times that I had never written a book. . . . Bliss never yet came within 4 months of getting a book out at the time he said he would. On the Innocents he fell short overstepped his word & his contract 13 months—& I suffered questioning all that time” (SLC to Wright, 28 Jan 76). And in 1903, he asserted: “In August of that year [1869], the Company having during 13 months tried all kinds of ways to get out of publishing ‘The Innocents Abroad,’ (the late Mr. [Sidney] Drake begging me, as a charity, to take the book away, because it was not serious enough and could finish the destruction of the Company), I telegraphed from Elmira that I would bring suit if the book was not on sale in 24 hours. So it was issued, without a canvasser under engagement, a year after the subject of it had passed out of public interest, and had to be revived—if possible—by the book itself” (SLC 1903, 1–2). Actually, however, Clemens was misremembering his March ultimatum (see 13 Mar 69 to Fairbanks, n. 5). As the present letter and Clemens’s 1 August letter to Bliss make clear, no August confrontation took place. Nor has any record of the threatening telegram Clemens recalled been found.

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2 The purchase, for $25,000, was not yet complete. On 13 August John D. F. Slee, business agent and salesman for the Anthracite Coal Association in Buffalo, wrote Clemens: “In response to my letter of yesterday I have Telegram from Mr. Langdon saying he will send check to-day for $7500#—This will doubtless reach us by tomorrow mornings mail—I will give you check for $5000# makeing the $12,500—. . . will it not be well for you and Mr. Kennett to call and execute those papers this afternoon, leaving them in trust with Mr. Rogers until Mr. Kennet has his money—Say to him I expect to be ready with the funds tomorrow morning” (CU-MARK). To this loan from Jervis Langdon, Clemens added $2,500 of his own to complete the down payment—drawing $2,445 of it on 20 August from his cash account with Slote, Woodman and Company in New York (“Mr S. L. Clemens in a/c and Interest a/c to Jany 1st 1870 with Slote Woodman & Co.,” CU-MARK). The seller, Thomas Aiguier Kennett (1843–1911), a graduate of Yale and an experienced newspaperman, had bought his interest in the Express in 1866, becoming vice-president of the Express Printing Company. After selling out to Clemens, he joined a firm of stockbrokers in New York, and then, from 1873 until the end of his life, he edited trade journals such as the Carpet and Upholstery Trade Review and the Decorator and Furnisher. The Buffalo law firm of Dennis Bowen and Sherman S. Rogers handled the financial transaction between Kennett and Clemens and may have drawn up the new Express partnership agreement as well (Frank H. Severance, 334; “Editor Kennett Dead,” New York Times, 30 June 1911, 9; Buffalo Directory, 234).

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3 The Buffalo Express, according to its masthead “the official paper of the city,” was a Republican daily and weekly (issuing Thursdays) established in 1846 by Almon M. Clapp (1811–99). When the Express Printing Company was formed in 1866, Clapp’s partners were his son, Harry H. Clapp, Josephus N. Larned, George H. Selkirk, and Thomas A. Kennett. The Clapps sold their interest to the remaining partners in April 1869, four months before Clemens bought Kennett’s share. Although the Express did not publish circulation figures, its distribution, which reached Toronto and parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio, suggests that it was indeed “thriving” (Frank H. Severance, 224–25; Rowell, 66; Gregory, 445; Buffalo Directory, 252; “Valedictory,” Buffalo Express, 3 Apr 69, 2; “The Express,” Buffalo Express, 23 Apr 69, 2).

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4 Lucy Maria (Adams) Perkins (1833–93) was the wife of Charles Enoch Perkins (1832–1917), a cousin of Olivia’s friend Alice Hooker Day. Her flattering letter has not been found. The Perkins house, on Woodland Street, was at the foot of Niles Street; Trinity Episcopal Church, on Sigourney Street, was at the head. In the 1870s, after Clemens and Olivia settled in Hartford, Charles Perkins was their lawyer (Geer 1869, map facing 29, 214, 264, 477; “Nook Farm Genealogy,” 22, Beecher Addenda, ii–iv; “Hartford Residents,” Adams Family, 3).

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5 Clemens signed the flyleaf the following month: “To Miss Livy Langdon ǀ From Samℓ. L. Clemens. ǀ Sept., 1869.” In 1906, he appended a note, which said in part, “This was doubtless the first copy issued from the press” (Christie 1988, lot 1166).

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6 For the Buffalo press’s response to Innocents, see 27 Sept 69 to Bliss, n. 4.

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7 The revised version of the advertising circular that Clemens had acknowledged a month before: see 12 July 69 to Bliss, n. 1.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).

Previous publication: L3, 291–295; MTMF 102, excerpt; MTLP, 25–26.

Provenance:see Mendoza Collection, p. 587. Two typed transcriptions, at WU and ViU, may have been made by George Brownell or Dana Ayer from a lost handwritten transcription by Ayer. See Brownell Collection, pp. 581–82.

Emendations and textual notes:

nature. But • nature.—|But

sell. Between • Sell.—|Between

church. Send • church.—|Send

have having • haveing