To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
22 January 1870 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00415)

Elmira, Jan. 22., 1870.

Friend Bliss—

Our boys in Buffalo wrote you something about a ratio of prices for clubs & books, &c., & they are anxious to get an answer—been waiting 2 or 3 weeks. Tell them about it. They are much pleased with your sending their bills & circulars to your agents.1

I don’t copyright the “Round the World” letters because it don’t hurt anything to be well advertised—& these are getting pretty well advertised—but you see out of 50 letters not more than 6 ‸or 10‸ will be copied into any one newspaper—& that don’t hurt.2

I mean to take plenty of time & pains with the Noah’s Ark book—maybe it will be several years before it is all written—but it will be a perfect lightning-striker when it is done.3 I [wish ] You can have the first say * on that or any other book I may prepare for the press. As long as you deal in a fair, open & [honorable ] way with me, I do not [think ] you will ever find me doing otherwise with you.

I wish Fairbanks would keep still about that Noah’s Ark book—somebody will steal the idea from me. I had no business ever mentioning it to a man of his limitless gab.4

I am prosecuting Webb in the N. Y. Courts—think the result will be that he will yield up the copyright & plates of the Jumping Frog, if I let him off from paying me money. Then I shall break up those plates, & prepare a new vol. of Sketches, but on a different & more “taking” model.5

I can get a book ready for you any time you want it—but you can’t want one before this time next year—& so I have plenty of time.

I wish you could have the quarterly statement here by Feb. 1—because we are to be married Feb. 2, & would like to know what we are doing it on, & whether we can afford it or not. But no matter—if it isn’t ready then, forward it to Buffalo. We leave for Buffalo at noon, Feb. 3. You may telegraph the amount to us here, Feb. 1st or 2d—that is what I chiefly want to know. I have been keeping fine large stories afloat about our sales.6

Miss Nellie did no harm, in opening the letter.7

Yrs Truly

Samℓ. L. Clemens.

*That is plain enough.

[letter docketed:] auth [and] Mark Twain | Jan 22/70

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Bliss soon asked Clemens for another copy of this proposal from the Buffalo Express “boys” (28 Jan 70 to Bliss). The earliest evidence of his reply to it was an 18 February advertisement for the Buffalo Weekly Express that offered terms to clubs (groups of subscribers), ranging from a single extra copy of the paper, up to reduced rates for fifty subscribers and a free copy of The Innocents Abroad “to each person who raises a club of 20 or more new subscribers.” The same advertisement also called for agents to sell Innocents “in every town and district of the United States and Canada” (“The Press,” Buffalo Express, 18 Feb 70, 3).

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2 Clemens’s “Around the World” letters began appearing in the Buffalo Express on Saturdays in late 1869. Seven letters had appeared to date; one final letter by Clemens appeared on 29 January, followed by two from Darius R. Ford, on 12 February and 5 March. Most of Clemens’s letters were devoted to western memories and were soon absorbed into the manuscript of Roughing It (SLC 1869 [MT00842], 1869 [MT00845], 1869 [MT00849], 1869 [MT00856], 1869 [MT00857], 1870 [MT00871], 1870 [MT00873], 1870 [MT00874]; Ford 1870 [bib00366], 1870 [bib00367]; RI 1993, 805–6).

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3 Clemens first planned a “Deluge” or “Noah’s Ark” book in 1866, produced “70 or 80 pages of it” by late June 1869, and returned to it fitfully throughout his life without managing to complete it (L3, 312, 313 n. 3, 313–14 n. 7).

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4 Clemens had last seen Abel Fairbanks in Cleveland in mid-July 1869, when he might have told him about the “Noah’s Ark book” (L3, 281 n. 4). Fairbanks’s “limitless gab” could allude to a report in the Herald, but none has been found.

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5 The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, And other Sketches (New York: C. H. Webb, 1867) had been a disappointment on several counts, especially its lack of royalties (L2, 39–40, 48–49 n. 1, 58 n. 1, 369–70). Since Webb had copyrighted the book in his own name, Clemens wished to secure his rights to its contents, and to prevent Webb from reissuing it, before proceeding with his own plans. Probably late in 1869, he hired a lawyer, but no evidence of court proceedings has been found (26 Nov 70 to Webb; Feinstein, 12–14). For an account of the Jumping Frog book, see ET&S1, 503–46.

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6 Royalty payments for The Innocents Abroad were due Clemens at the end of October, January, April, and July. Mary Mason Fairbanks had printed one “fine large” story about sales (7 Jan 70 to Fairbanks, n. 8). Whitelaw Reid’s New York Tribune printed another on 15 January: “The American Publishing Company of Hartford inform us that they have sold 45,000 copies of Mark Twain’s ‘Innocents Abroad,’ and are now running six presses to keep up with the demand for the book” (“New Publications,” 8). That report was reprinted in the Hartford Times on 17 January (“Literary Announcements,” 2) and in the Jamestown Journal on 28 January, a week after Clemens’s lecture there (“Literary Items,” 4). By the end of January, total sales were 6,000 short of the reported figure (28 Jan 70 to Bliss, n. 5).

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7 Miss Nellie (last name unknown) was evidently a clerk for Bliss at this time. She became a typesetter on Sketches, New and Old (1875) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) (5 Nov 70 to OC; ET&S1, 642; TS, 512).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L4, 33–35; MTB 1:420, excerpt; MTMF, 118, 144, excerpts; Hill, 39, excerpt; MTLP, 29–30, with omissions.

Provenance:see Mendoza Collection in Description of Provenance. The MS evidently remained among the American Publishing Company’s files until it was sold, and may have been at that time copied by Dana Ayer. A handwritten Ayer transcription is at CtHMTH, and a typed transcription made from it is at WU (Brownell Collection, Description of Provenance).

Emendations and textual notes:

wish • [‘h’ partly formed]

honorable • horabnorable [canceled ‘b’ partly formed]

think • thin nk [corrected miswriting]