To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
4 and 6 February 1868 • Washington, D.C.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00189)

‸

E. Bliss, Jr. Esq.

Dear Sir: If you ever do such a thing as give an author an advance, I wish you would advance me a thousand dollars. I have cut my newspaper correspondence down a good deal, but I believe that in order to [ th ]give to the book the amount of attention it really requires I shall have to cut loose from everything but one, & sometimes two, newspaper letters a week. One of our Senators suggested that I apply for the San Francisco postmastership, because, in case I got it I could perform its duties by Deputy, & then, in receipt of a large salary & perquisites, I could give myself up exclusively to scribbling.1 So I went to work & I believe I have eternally ruined the chances of the most prominent of the swarm of candidates. But upon looking further into the matter I believe I have created work for myself instead of lightening prospective duties. It is a mistaken idea that the postmaster of San Francisco, the an office which wields a vast political power throughout the whole Pacific coast, can be an idle man. I have made a stupid blunder. One A Justice of the Supreme Court2 has pledged himself to secure my nomination without difficulty; the Pacific Senatorial delegations3 pledge themselves to secure its confirmation beyond a peradventure.

Feb. 6.—I have thrown away that office, when I had it in my grasp, because it was plain enough that I could not be postmaster & write the book, too. I can get another office when I want it, maybe. But it was worth from ten to twelve thousand a year.4 In consideration whereof, if you can stand an advance, I wish you would, & relieve me of this newspaper corresponding until July. I think the book will be largely the gainer by it. I am satisfied of it, for the correspondence has a constant tendency to snatch me out of the e Excursion just as I am getting well interested in it.

If I can stand the loss, on the correspondence, of $300 a month for three months, don’t you think you can stand the loan of it, you being capitalists & I being considerably otherwise? I am not making a demand—I am only making a request.5

If you have any curiosity as ‸to‸ that notable postoffice sacrifice, a note from you to Mr. Justice Field, of the Supreme Bench, & another to Senator Conness of California, will satisfy you. I perceive that I have a good deal of work before me. As nearly as I can figure it, my printed letters will fall considerably short of making one-half the book.

Yrs Very Truly

Sam L. Clemens

[letter docketed:] auth [and] Samuel J. Clements | Feb 4/68

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 This suggestion came from John Conness, senator from California. Conness (1821–1909), originally from Ireland, immigrated to the United States in 1833; after moving to California in 1849 he engaged in mining and mercantile pursuits. He twice served in the state legislature (1853–54, 1860–61), but was an unsuccessful candidate for governor in 1861. From 1863 to 1869 he served as a United States senator, first as a Democrat but later as a Union Republican. He was currently a member of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, which reported to the Senate on presidential nominees for postmasterships. Since Lincoln’s term of office, it “was generally conceded that the recommendation of a Republican congressman was the only qualification needed for appointment as postmaster,” and that “Republican senators should control the appointment of postmasters in their own home towns” (Poore, 42; Cullinan, 79).

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2 Stephen J. Field.

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3 Senators John Conness and Cornelius Cole (California); William M. Stewart and James W. Nye (Nevada); and George H. Williams and Henry W. Corbett (Oregon).

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4 The official salary of the San Francisco postmaster was only $4,000, but since postal fees collected in that city amounted to nearly $117,000 in 1867, an unscrupulous postmaster could undoubtedly contrive to supplement his official income (Interior Department, 348). In January 1869, Clemens told Olivia Langdon that the previous year he had “pledged our delegations to support me for Postmaster of San Francisco, but gave up that scheme as soon as I found that the place, honorably conducted, was only worth $4,000 a year & was too confining to allow me much time to write for newspapers” (SLC to OLL, 24 Jan 69, CU-MARK, in LLMT, 60). For a somewhat different explanation of Clemens’s decision, see the next letter.

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5 Bliss’s reply to this letter has not been found, but in 1912 Paine reported that Clemens obtained some kind of advance immediately before he sailed for California on 11 March. Newspaper rumors sometimes indicated that Clemens had received $10,000 in advance, but so large a sum seems improbable, and is not corroborated by what is known of Clemens’s royalty payments, from which any advance would have been deducted (MTB, 1:362; “Books and Authors,” Elmira Advertiser, 13 Aug 68, 3).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L2, 176–178; MTLP, 14–15, without Clemens’s revisions.

Provenance:see Mendoza Collection, pp. 516–17. An Ayer transcription of this letter is at WU; see Brownell Collection, pp. 509–11.

Emendations and textual notes:

th • [partly formed]