To
William Wright (Dan De Quille)
29 March and 4 April 1875 • Hartford, Conn.
(Transcript and MS: Morris and Anderson, CU-BANC, UCCL 11611)
Dear Dan—
Wonders never will cease. When the postman came this morning I recognized your handwriting [& ]said to my wife, “Now you shall see that human sympathies can stretch their influences further across a continent (with unbroken force), than the telegraphic spark can. (The spark must be repeated midway). I will tell you the contents of this letter without breaking the seal; & yet I have held no communication with this friend in eleven years. This letter will ask advice & information of me about publishing a book concerning the Comstock [lead], one feature of which shall be a chapter or two about the Big Bonanza. The reason this letter has been written, is, that less than five days ago, I wrote to Dan suggesting that he write this very book! My mind suggested it to his mind, for my letter to him has not been mailed, yet because I have also written my publisher & am [waiting ]for his answer before I start Dan on a book which may possibly not be wanted.1
[Then ]I broke the seal & read passages to her which showed that I had correctly stated what the contents would be.
Next I went & got my own letter out of the pigeon-hole & surprise No. 2 came! to wit: Your letter to me was dated March 22; mine to you was dated March 24—two days later. So it was your mesmeric current that had flowed across the mountains & deserts three thousand miles & acted upon me, instead of mine flowing westward & acting upon [ you. So ] you were the originator of the idea. Now as I dropped my work & began to act on the very instant that the notion occurred to me, (that [is], on the very day, possibly the very moment you were writing me—for I called the carriage & went down to my publishers on the 22d, & again on the 23d, & then wrote you on the 24th (because I despaired of catching the publisher in) three things are plainly established—namely:
1st Mesmeric sympathies can flash themselves 3000 miles within the space of 12 hours—possibly instantly. (What hour of the day did you write me?)
2d They come clear through, & don’t have to be repeated at way stations between, like land telegraphy.
3d—They travel from west to east, not from east to west.
However, this point on No. 3 is not well taken, because there isn’t any proof that they don’t travel westwardly upon occasion.
I mean to get my letter from Bliss, so you can see by the postmark that I did write him on the 24th & am not now stacking up a fanciful lie for you.2
Keep this present letter of mine. Maybe we can utilize it in some [way. 3
. . . .
]publishing [ risks ]. Can’t you make the old good soul regard that as a fair equivalent for release from [responsibility? Because], don’t you see, there ain’t any risk. I am a large [stockholder ]& director in our publishing house, & have some influence.4 And besides, if our folks don’t want the book, I will very easily find a subscription house that will want it. (I say subscription, because only insane people publish in the old author-robbing way.)
I want you, to ‸about August, to‸ canvas Virginia & Gold Hill yourself. Why not? It is but small sacrifice of dignity, & then the returns are large. You will clear about $1.75 on each book. Reserve other Nevada camps for yourself, too—that is, be General Agent for the whole State, & sublet to canvassers at 40 per cent off, you receiving the books from here at 50 per cent off & clearing 10 per cent from your underlings’ work.
Th Include that Ralston mining pamphlet in the book, & make Jones & the other big fish take hundreds of copies & agree to require only one copy of you until you shall have finished canvassing—so as not to glut & kill the [market. 5 I ]will try to make the publishers supply you with all the books you want (not to be sold outside of Nevada) at a trifle above cost. The retail prices will be $3.50; $4, & $5, according to binding. [in margin: The book to be same size as Roughing It.] The cost of a $3.50 copy is only $1.20. So if we can only manage to get them at $1.30 or $1.40, you’ll make a neat thing out of the 3 or 4000 you sell to the big fish.6 Let the big fish take the cheap copies—the $3.50 ones; your profit will be just about [they ]same, & they will get more books for their money.
Dan, there are more ways than one of writing a book; & your way is not the right one. You see, the winning card is to nail a man’s interest with Chapter 1, & never let up on him for an instant till you get him to the word “finis.” That can’t be done with detached sketches; but I’ll show you how to make a man read every one of those sketches, under the stupid impression that they are mere accidental incidents that have dropped in on you unawares in the course of your narrative. My letter of the 24th gives the correct idea of what the book should be. It isn’t any more trouble to write that book than it is to report an inquest.7
Drop your reporting & come here, right away. Whatever money you need, get it of Joe, or telegraph me.8 Come Don’t get it of any reluctant devil who will make you feel under obligations to [him. Don’t ]get it of Mackey unless you choose, ‸(if you have any delicacy about asking him,) because‸ he is already doing so handsomely. But if he prefers to lend it, all right.9 Only remember that you need go no further than Joe or [me. You ]know old Joe Goodman pretty well—& I know myself. But do not mention to anybody that I make this proposition, because it is better in the eyes of the world that you seem entirely independent.
Come right along at once. It exasperates me to think of your slaving away all night long, when there is no earthly occasion for it. To write a book felicitously a man needs to be delightfully circumstanced & entirely free from cares, interruptions & annoyances.
Here you shall stop at the best hotel, & every morning I will walk down, meet you half way, bring you to my house & we will grind literature all day long in the same room; then I’ll escort you half way home [again. Sundays ]we will smoke & lie. When you need money you will know where to get it. If ever you feel deslicate about taking it of me, there’s the publisher, who will cheerfully advance it.
If you write the book out there, it will not be more than one-half as good as it will if you write it here. Atmosphere is everything! If you prefer to write at night, you may write all night here, if you want to—there’s a most noble divan in my study to stretch your bones on when you get tired. Besides, when it comes to building a book I can show you a trick or two which I don’t teach to everybody, I can tell you! You may think I’m an old fool, Dan, but I warn you I’m a mighty sound one in some things.
Bring Joe along with you. What is the use of his staying out there till May? Joe can tell you what an inspiration it is to write in the same room with another fellow. He wrote loads of poetry while I wrote Roughing It—& between whiles we played “66.” We’ll play billiards, here, or “66,” whichever you prefer.10 You shall use all your old best sketches in your book & use them to better advantage than you are planning for, now. Bring along lots of dry statistics—it’s the very best sauce a humorous book can have. Ingeniously used, they just make a readyer smack his chops in gratitude. We must have all the Bonanza statistics you can rake & scrape. You shall get up a book that the very children will cry for.
I telegraphed you, the moment I got your letter, I was so afraid you would commit yourself to some Stenhouse or Bancroft or Worthington.11
Now as to royalty. No publisher likes to buy a pig in a poke, of course; so let us leave that alone until we can show the completed MS. to the defendant—then strike for all he will stand, of course. He shall not have it for less than 5 per cent (what I get on Innocents Abroad,) & we will try to get as much more as possible. You need never pay me back any borrowed money unless you get it out of the book.
Now you pack up & come along & go to work. Telegraph me.
[first 3 lines of page (about 12 words) torn away to cancel]
By George it was good to hear of old Steve & Daggett & Mackey once more! Give them my ancient love unimpaired.12
The reason I don’t demand that you eat & sleep in my house all the time you are here, Dan, is partly because you mightn’t want to, but mainly because my wife’s health is so unsettled that at times we can’t venture to have company, she is so apt to [torture ]herself with fears that her table is not all it ought to be, or the servants lax, or that she is failing to make the guest comfortable. She feels so about her own mother. There is only one guest in the world who gives her not the slightest dread, & that is Joe Goodman. He makes eternal sunshine for her, & she detests the day that he has to leave.
[last 6 lines of page (complimentary close, signature, and first postscript) torn away]
P. P. S.—Bring lots of photographs of mills, machinery, dumps, p◇a or anything that will make a picture, for we always try to cram our books full of pictures. Bring pohotographs of the men who have made the biggest fortunes out of the Bonanza, (Joe among the rest—& Dennis) 13 & Mackey) & get little bi personal histories ‸sketches‸ of their coast histories out of them, to use with the portraits, & hint that their glorification will be gauged by the number of books they take. 14 Strike them hard—hard—HARD! [in margin: Don’t be afraid of Stenhouse’s book.15 Bosh!]
Apl. 4—[Sunday.
I ]delayed my letter in order that I might see my publisher, & meantime my wife was taken down with [dipththeria], & so I dropped everything to look after her. I sent for my publisher twice, & he had his long trips for nothing, because I was out, both times—about the only two times I have been out in three weeks. But the third time I sent for him I had sense enough to stay in. He liked the idea of the book, & said he had dropped you a line about it.16 So I said that that was all I wanted to know; & that all in good time you should show him a MS that would make him stand & deliver a good royalty or else I was much mistaken in my author.
Ys Ever
Saml L. Clemens
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Some time ago I wrote a letter to a literary friend in the East. In about three days I received a letter
from that friend. Our letters had crossed each other, and both were about a certain matter. Soon came another
letter—a very long one—in which he (the friend) said that he knew my letter was written before his had
time to reach me. He said he was so sure he knew the contents of my letter that he took it home unopened and said to his
wife: “Here is a letter from a man from whom I have not had a letter in five years. Now I will tell you what it
is about before opening it.” He was correct in his guess and wrote me about twenty pages about
“mind-telegraphy,” as he called it. (Wright
1889) (In fact, as Clemens’s present letter, his “very long one,” shows, his and
Wright’s initial letters did not actually cross in the mail.) Clemens’s “Mental
Telegraphy” appeared in Harper’s Monthly in December 1891. He cited the exchange
of letters with Wright as “the oddest thing that ever happened to me,” and claimed it was the experience
that first called his attention to the phenomenon whereby “mind can act upon mind in a quite detailed and elaborate
way over vast stretches of land and water” (SLC 1891, 95,
97). The article included descriptions of several similar incidents involving himself and his acquaintances.
the possessor of the largest income of any person in America, if not in the world, his annual revenue
amounting to $6,000,000. He is the owner of a silver mine more productive than any on earth. His part of the
profits recently amounted to $250,000 a month, and have just been doubled by the discovery of a new vein. (Seaver 1874, 375) Fair (1831–94), originally from Ireland, was the superintendent and a principal owner of the
Consolidated Virginia and California mines. In partnership with Mackay (see note 9), he had a controlling interest in a number
of other mines, quartz mills, and was worth $30 or $40 million (Lewis, xiii; Wright 1876,
403–5).
Mr T. B. H. Stenhouse is in this city. He is a Mormon—an ex-Mormon, I should say. He has written
a big book on the Mormons. His wife has also written a book of 600 pages on the busines[s], handsomely
illustrated and all that, with preface by Harriet Beecher Stowe. You may stand in awe of all these people, but I
don’t. I have know[n] Mr & Mrs Stenhouse for 10 yrs [or] 11 years. I was at
their house in Salt Lake City in 1863 and ate of their “grub.” . . . Stenhouse
has been prying round to know “what literary labors I am engaged in outside of those upon my papers.”
I told him none and tell him truth. Thomas Brown Holmes Stenhouse (1825–82) was the author of The Rocky Mountain
Saints: A Full and Complete History of the Mormons, from the First Vision of Joseph Smith to the Last Courtship of Brigham
Young . . . and the Development of the Great Mineral Wealth of the Territory of
Utah (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1873). From 1864 to 1869 he was the editor and proprietor of the Salt Lake
City Telegraph. His wife, Fanny (b. 1829), wrote Expose of Polygamy in Utah: A
Lady’s Life among the Mormons (American News Company, 1872) and Tell It All: The Story of
a Life’s Experience in Mormonism: An Autobiography, which had a preface by Stowe and was issued by the
Hartford subscription publisher A. D. Worthington in 1874. During the 1873–74 season she lectured on
“Polygamy in Utah” for James Redpath’s Boston Lyceum Bureau (Lyceum 1873, 7).
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L6, 433–441; Berkove 1988, 7–8, transcript
portion; Lewis, xviii–xx, MS portion, and Berkove 1988, 5, brief excerpt of MS portion.
Provenance:The MS was one of nine letters from Clemens to Wright which after Wright’s death “were left with his
daughter, Mell Evans. She, in turn, passed them on to her daughter, Irma Evans Morris. Effie Mona Mack learned of them while
doing research for Mark Twain in Nevada (1947), and purchased photographic negatives of them”
(Berkove 1988, 4, 18 n. 1). Mrs. Morris bequeathed the letters to her
three children. After Evans Morris’s death in 1990, the letters were sold; although most of them were purchased from
Admirable Books in March 1993 by the Copley Library (CLjC), the present
location of this transcript is not known. The De Quille Papers were donated in 1953 by Henry L. Day, through the courtesy of
Joel E. Ferris.
Emendations and textual notes:
Hartford • Mark Twain on Telepathy. | [rule] | (Written March 29, 1875.) | ——Copy—— | Hartford
& • and [here and hereafter, to 434.34]
lead • mines lead
waiting • waitin
Then • W Then
you. So • you.—So
is • ‸is‸
way. | . . . . • way. | [rule]
risks. Can’t • risks.—|Can’t
responsibility? Because • responsibility?—|Because
stockholder • stock-|holder
market. I • market.—|I
they • [‘y’ partly formed]
him. Don’t • him.—|Don’t
me. You • me.—|You
again. Sundays • again.—|Sundays
torture • tor torture [corrected miswriting]
Sunday. [¶] I • Sunday.—| [¶] I
dipththeria • [sic]
