To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
22 December 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: CtY-BR, ViU, Axelrod, UCCL 02785)

c

Buffalo, Dec. 22/70.

Friend Bliss:

This is to acknowledge receipt of the fifteen e hundred dollars for the foreign expedition. Thanks.

‸Samℓ. L. Clemens‸

The contract has gone to you, approved & signed. Send me one.

You’d better go to canvassing for the vol. of sketches now, hadn’t you? You must illustrate it—& mind you, [the man] to do the choicest of [the pictures] is Mullin—the [Sisters] are reforming him & [he] is sadly in need of work & [money]. Write to Launt Thompson the Sculptor, (Albemarle Hotel, New York) about him. I did [ w ] so want him for that satire but didn’t know he was sober now & in hospital.1

Make out a contract for the sketch-book (7½ per cent.) & mail to me.2

I think the sketch-book should be as profusely illustrated as the Innocents.

To-day I arranged enough sketches to make 200 134 pages of the book (200 words on a page, I estimated—size of De Witt Talmage’s new book of rubbish.)3 I shall go right on till I have finished selecting, & then write an new sketch or so. One hundred of the pages selected to-day are scarcely known.

I bought my Jumping Frog from [Webb. ]—gave him what he owed me ($60000,), and $800 cash, & 300 remaining copies of the book, & also took $128 worth of [ fresh ] unprinted paper off his hands.4

I think of a Jumping Frog pamphlet (illustrated) for next Christmas—do you want it?5

Ys Ever

Mark

[letter docketed by Bliss:] Write L. Thompson sculptor about Mullins Albemarle Hotel [and, in another hand:] [and] Mark Twain | Dec 22/70 | Author

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Edward F. Mullen had contributed illustrations to humorous books by three of Clemens’s contemporaries: “Drifting About”; or, What “Jeems Pipes, of Pipesville,” Saw-and-Did (New York: G. W. Carleton, 1863), by Stephen C. Massett; The Life and Adventures, Songs, Services and Speeches of Private Miles O’Reilly; (New York: G. W. Carleton, 1864), by Charles G. Halpine; and Artemus Ward; His Travels (New York: G. W. Carleton, 1865), by Charles Farrar Browne. The satire Clemens had wanted Mullen for was “The House that Jack Built,” an attack on the promoters of the Erie Railroad, in Mark Twain’s (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance. (It instead featured cartoons by Henry Louis Stephens.) Bliss, who had been dissatisfied with Mullen in the past, agreed to use him again (see note 5, below, and 4 and 5 Jan 71 to Bliss, n. 4). Launt Thompson (1833–94), whose studio was at 51 West Tenth Street, was temporarily living at the Albemarle Hotel between lodgings (Hamilton, 189–90, 208, 210; Wilson: 1870, 1200; 1871, 1142).

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2 Bliss sent Clemens a copy of the signed diamond mine book contract (see Contract for Diamond Mine Book) and a draft sketch book contract (ET&S1, 435) on 29 December.

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3 Talmage, whose writing Clemens had ridiculed in the May 1870 Galaxy (30? Apr 70 to Converse, n. 1), had published his first book, Crumbs Swept Up, a popular collection of instructive tales, anecdotal essays, and travel articles, in the fall of 1870.

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4 Clemens’s copy of a statement from New York printer and binder Samuel W. Green, itemizing work done for Charles Henry Webb on The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, And other Sketches, survives in the Mark Twain Papers. Dated 10 December 1870, and prepared for Clemens and Webb’s negotiations in New York, it shows that 4,076 copies of the Jumping Frog book were bound between 30 April 1867 and 21 October 1870, with an additional 250 copies remaining in unbound sheets. The statement does not indicate the cost to Webb for printing or binding. Nor does it mention the 50 bound copies that apparently remained unsold. Since Clemens’s royalty probably was 10 percent of the retail price ($1.00 paperbound, $1.50 cloth), the total amount owed to him—discounting the unsold books, and not allowing for review copies—would have been between $402.60 and $603.90 (Wilson 1870, 469; L2, 48–49, 53; ET&S1, 545 nn. 43, 44). [Figures corrected 2011.]

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5 Bliss replied on 28 December (misdating his letter 29 December; CU-MARK):

UCLC31724

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On 29 December, in his letter enclosing the sketchbook contract, Bliss asked Clemens to revise his old sketches and include some new ones so that “a new copyright” could be secured on the volume (CU-MARK). The contract for it made this a requirement (ET&S1, 435). For Clemens’s plans for the plates of the Jumping Frog book, see 17 Dec 70 to Fairbanks. He responded to Bliss’s Jumping Frog proposals and submitted some portion of the sketchbook contents in early January 1871 (3 Jan 71, 4 and 5 Jan 71, both to Bliss).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Willard S. Morse Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (CtY-BR), is copy-text for ‘ c . . . Albemarle’ and ‘’ (281.1–12 and 281.31); MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (ViU), is copy-text for ‘Hotel . . . known.’ and ‘Write . . . Hotel’ (281.12–21 and 281.30–31); and MS, collection of Todd M. Axelrod, is copy-text for ‘I . . . Mark’ and ‘Mark . . . Author’ (281.22–28 and 281.31–32). The left margin of MS page 2 (CtY-BR) is torn, obliterating some characters or portions of characters.

Previous publication: L4, 281–283; MTLP, 52–53 (CtY-BR text only).

Provenance:MS donated to CtY by Walter F. Frear in 1942; MS deposited at ViU by Clifton Waller Barrett on 17 December 1963; present location of the MS owned by Noël J. Cortés in 1975 and by Axelrod in 1983 is not known.

Emendations and textual notes:

the man • [h]e man [torn]

the pictures • [th]e pictures [torn]

Sisters • [Si]sters [torn]

he • [h]e [torn]

money • [m]oney [torn]

w • [partly formed]

Webb. • [deletion implied]

fresh • [‘h’ partly formed]