To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
3 March 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00438)

Buf, Mch 3.

Friend Bliss—

Won’t you send a free copy to an old preacher-friend of my boyhood: ‸Rev.‸ L. F. Walden,1 Rolla, Mo.? {He hasn’t got a cent.}

And one also to George Routledge & Sons, 416 Broome street, N. Y.

I wrote them to know if it would pay me to go in over the Niagara river & get a British copyright, & you see what he says.2

Say—When [any ] of your family come to Buffalo, we want you to put up at 472 Delaware street if you like the accommodations—will you? We have the honor to refer to Rev. J. H. Twichell & wife, J. Langdon & wife, Mrs. A W. Fairbanks, & others. This house has been recently refitted & furnished entirely new, & supplied with all the modern improvements, & is kept wholly on the European plan. {That is to say, we get up & take breakfast when we want to,—not when we have [to.} We ]hope to merit a share of the public patronage—that is, such share of it as we officially invite. Oh, but don’t we put on airs? I reckon not!

Yrs Truly

Mark.

[letter docketed:] author [and] Mark Twain | March 3/70

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 Lewis Frank Walden: see the next letter.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2 The enclosure does not survive, but must have been a reply from Joseph L. Blamire, or some other New York representative of George Routledge and Sons, of London. He doubtless informed Clemens that no British copyright on Innocents could now be had, in Canada or elsewhere, because Clemens had not published it first in England. He might have added that temporary residence in Canada, even when a book was first published in England, would not necessarily prevent unauthorized Canadian publication, since not all Canadian publishers regarded such books as protected. The Routledges had, by May 1871, agreed to publish Roughing It in England before Bliss published it in the United States, thereby securing its British copyright (“Personal,” Buffalo Express, 12 May 70, 2; Roper, 31–35, 82; RI 1993, 855). For an account of Clemens’s developing relations with the Routledges and their rivalry with John Camden Hotten, see ET&S1, 546–55, 570–71, 586–608.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L4, 84–85; MTMF, 126–27, excerpt.

Provenance:see Mendoza Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

any • [‘ny’ conflated]

to.} We • to.}—|We