To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
15 May 1871 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: ViU, UCCL 00612)

Elmira, Monday.

Friend Bliss:

Yrs rec’d enclosing check for $703.35. The old “Innocents” holds out handsomely.

I feel confident that House will make a most readable [book.] Shall write him what you say.1

I have MS. enough on hand now, to make (allowing for engravings) about 400 pages of the book—consequently am two-thirds done. I intended to run up to Hartford about the middle of the week & take it along; but I am because it has chapters in it that ought by all means to be in the prospectus; but I find myself so thoroughly interested in my work, now (a thing I have not experienced for months) that I can’t bear to lose a single moment of the inspiration. So I will stay here & peg away as long as it lasts. My present idea is to write as much more as I have already written, & then cull from the mass the very best chapters & discard the rest. I am not half as well satisfied with the first part of the book as I am with what I am writing now. When I get it done I want to see the man who will begin to read it & not finish it. If it falls short of the Innocents in any respect I shall lose my guess.

When I was writing the Innocents my daily “stent” was 30 pages of MS & I hardly ever got beyond it; but I have gone over that nearly every day for the last ten. That shows that I am writing with a red-hot interest. Nothing grieves me now—nothing troubles, me, bothers me or gets my attention—I don’t think of anything [ boo but]the book, & don’t have [ am an]hour’s unhappiness about anything & don’t care two cents whether school keeps or not. It will be a bully book. If I keep up my present lick three weeks more I shall be able & willing to scratch out half of the chapters [ ov of] the Overland narrative—& shall do it.

You do not mention having received my second batch of MS, sent a week or two ago—about 100 pages.2

If you want to issue a prospectus & go right to canvassing, say the word & I will forward some more MS—or send it by hand.—special messenger. Whatever chapters you think are unquestionably good, we will retain of course, & so they can go into a prospectus as well one time as another. The book will be done soon, now. I have 1200 pages of MS already written, & am now writing 200 a week—more than that, in fact; during past week wrote 23 one day, then 30, 33, 35, 52, & [65 . —part ] of the latter, ‸say,‸ nearly half, being a re-print sketch. How’s that?3

It will be a starchy book, & should be full of snappy pictures—especially pictures worked in with the letter-press.4 The dedication will be worth the price of the volume—thus:

To the Late Cain,

This Book is Dedicated:

Not on account of respect for his memory, for it merits little respect; not on account of sympathy with him, for his bloody deed placed him without the pale of sympathy, strictly speaking: but out of a mere humane commiseration for him in that it was his misfortune to live in a dark age that knew not the beneficent Insanity Plea.5

I think it will do.

Ys

Clemens.

P. S. The reaction is beginning & my stock is looking up. I am getting the bulliest offers for books & almanacs, am flooded with lecture invitations, & one periodical offers me $6,000 cash for 12 articles, of any length & on any subject, treated humorously or otherwise.6

[letter docketed:] Mark Twain | May 15/71 | Author7

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Bliss’s letter about House’s proposal does not survive (3 May 71 to Bliss, n. 1). The royalty check was for seventh-quarter (1 Feb–30 Apr 71) sales of some 3,800 copies of The Innocents Abroad, well below sixth-quarter sales (15 Feb 71 to Bliss, n. 1; Hirst 1975, 318).

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2 What was then chapters 12–15 (30 Apr 71 to OC, n. 2; 3 May 71 to Bliss).

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3 “Clemens had clearly shifted to counting by equivalent pages” by the time he wrote this letter (RI 1993, 853). Equivalent pages were those containing revised clippings, each of which Clemens multiplied by a factor of four to reflect the larger number of words they contained. A total of 1,200 equivalent pages (equal at this point to about 1,100 real pages) would have put him close to the end of what became chapter 51. His increased progress over the preceding ten or so days was due both to his subject—his experiences as a reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise—and to his incorporating more clippings than before into this part of his manuscript. The six daily stints described here correspond roughly to what became chapters 44 (8 May), 45 (9 May), 46 (10 May), 47 (11 May), 48 and 50 (12 May), and 51 (13 May). See RI 1993, 853–54, for a detailed account of this stage of composition.

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4 Bliss employed at least three artists on Roughing It: True W. Williams, Roswell Morse Shurtleff, and Edward F. Mullen. He supplemented their work by borrowing engravings from other books, including five issued by the American Publishing Company and its subsidiaries: Albert D. Richardson’s Beyond the Mississippi (1867 and 1869), Thomas W. Knox’s Overland through Asia (1870), Nelson Winch Green’s Mormonism (1870), Albert S. Evans’s Our Sister Republic (1870), and Junius Henri Browne’s Sights and Sensations in Europe (1872). For further details of Bliss’s borrowings and the three artists’ contributions, see RI 1993, 857–59.

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5 Possibly an allusion to a recent failed attempt to appeal the conviction of Edward H. Ruloff on the grounds of insanity. Having followed the Ruloff case closely (29 Apr 71 to Reid), Clemens would have known that on 12 May a two-man lunacy commission appointed by the governor of New York had declared Ruloff sane (“Ruloff. Report and Conclusions of Drs. Gray and Vanderpool,” New York Times, 13 May 71, 8). Well before November 1871, when the first prospectus for Roughing It issued, he supplanted this dedication with one to Calvin H. Higbie (RI 1993, xxiii, 637, 876).

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6 None of these offers has been further documented.

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7 Bliss replied to Clemens on 17 May:

UCLC31773

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The postscript suggests that Clemens also telegraphed Bliss on 15 or 16 May to say that he was not coming to Hartford as planned. Apparently Bliss had intended to meet Clemens in New York, perhaps in order to assign parts of his manuscript to illustrators, and then return with him to Hartford.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (ViU).

Previous publication: L4, 390–91; 1:438, 440, excerpt; MTL, 1:187–88, with omissions; MTMF, 154 n. 1, brief excerpt; AAA/Anderson 1934, lot 126, excerpt (includes facsimile of MS page 3); McElderry, xiv, excerpt.

Provenance:A Brownell typescript is at WU (see Brownell Collection in Description of Provenance). The MS, part of the collection of Edmund W. Evans until its sale in 1934, was deposited at ViU by Clifton Waller Barrett on 17 December 1963.

Emendations and textual notes:

book • blook book

boo but • boout

am an • amn

ov of • ovf

65. —part • [deletion of dash implied]