To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
20 March 1872 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS, draft, not sent: CU-MARK, UCCL 00737)

Elmira, Mch. 20/72

Friend Bliss—

The more I think over our last [ t ] Tuesday’s1 talk about my copyright or royalty, the better I am satisfied. But I was troubled a good deal, when I went there, for I had worried myself pretty well into the impression that I was getting a smaller ratio of this book’s profits than I had ‸the spirit of our contract had authorized me to‸ promised myself; indeed, I was so nearly convinced of it that if I had not known you so well, or if you had not been so patient & good tempered with my wool-gatherings & perplexities, & taken the pains to show me by facts & figures & arguments that my present royalty gives ‸me‸ fully half & possibly even more than half the net profits of the book, I would probably have come to the settled conviction that such was not the case, & then I should have [been] about as dissatisfied. a man as could be found in the country. I think few men could have convinced me that I am getting full half the profits, in the state of mind I then was, but you have done it, & I am glad of it, for after our long & pleasant intercourse, & the confidence that has existed between us, ‸I am glad you convinced me, for‸ I would have been sorry indeed to have come away ‸from your house‸ feeling that I had put such entire trust & confidence in you & the company to finally lose by it. And I am glad that you convinced me by good solid arguments & figures instead of mere plausible generalities, for that was just & business-like, & a conviction grounded in that way is satisfying & permanent. So ‸But‸ everything is plain & open, now. I knew I was entitled to half the profits, & you will not blame me for coming frankly forward & consulting you when I felt a little unsure about it. And after thinking it over, & I feel that, the result being the same, you will not mind ‸readily assent to the‸ altering the ‸of our‸ contract in such a way that it shall express that I am to receive half the profits.2 I am sorry the idea occurs to me so late, but that, of course, is of no real [consequence. Any] friend of mine can represent me in the matter. Twichell ‸Charley Warner‸ will do as well as another.3 Let Twichell attend to it. However, I suppose he has his hands about full; & perhaps he isn’t much experienced in this sort of thing. Then let Charles Perkins do it. Contracts are in his line, at any rate. It is too [complicated] for anybody but a lawyer to handle, anyhow; I could not even conduct it myself. I will write him. ‸ask him to do it.‸

‸See page 6.‸ 4

I am at last easy & comfortable about the new book. I have sufficient testimony, derived through many people’s statements to my friends, to about satisfy me that the general verdict gives “Roughing It” the preference over “Innocents Abroad.” This is rather gratifying than otherwise. The [ reason ] given is, that they like a book about America because they understand it better. It is pleasant to believe this, because it isn’t a great deal of trouble to write books about one’s own country. Miss Anna Dickinson says the book is unprecedentedly popular—a strong term, but I believe that was it.5

We are all well & flourishing—all four of us.6

Ys

Clemens.

(Request added to send [ 25 23]½ [ morr moroccos] to friends of mine named.)7

½ profit letter to Bliss.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Tuesday, 12 March, while Clemens was still in Hartford.

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2 Clemens carefully preserved this seven-page draft as a record of the letter he actually sent, which was a fair copy (see the next letter). Orion’s recent charges of fraud in the production of Roughing It (see 7 Mar 72 to OC) had prompted Clemens to question the royalty he was receiving for it. He had signed a contract stipulating a 7½ percent royalty on the retail price (2½ percent more than he had received for The Innocents Abroad), on Bliss’s explicit assurance that this percentage was equivalent to “half the profits” (contract of 15 July 70, CU-MARK, in L4, 565–66). Orion’s revelations about production shortcuts had led Clemens to suspect that Bliss’s costs were actually less than he claimed, and that the publisher’s profit was therefore greater than the agreed-upon half. In 1875 Clemens summarized the situation for his friend Charles Henry Webb:

I came to the conclusion that an assertion of Bliss’s which had induced me to submit to a lower royalty than I had at first demanded, was an untruth. I was going to law about it; but after my lawyer (an old personal friend & the best lawyer in Hartford) [Charles Perkins] had heard me through, he remarked that Bliss’s assertion being only verbal & not a part of a written understanding, my case was weak—so he advised me to leave the law alone——& charged me $250 for it. (8 Apr 75, NBuU-PO, in MTLP, 86)

The present letter was an attempt to force Bliss to follow the logic of his own “facts & figures & arguments” and to amend the contract to state explicitly that Clemens was entitled to half the profit on the book. Such a revision would give Clemens grounds for a lawsuit if he could also prove that Bliss had overstated his manufacturing costs. Bliss evidently declined to amend the contract. Clemens decided to sue anyway, but dropped his suit long before it ever reached court, probably by late June. His sense of grievance persisted, however, and in 1906 he claimed that 7½ percent “hardly represented a sixth of the profits” (AD, 23 May 1906, CU-MARK, in MTE, 155; 15 May 72 to OC and MEC; 11 June 72 to Sutro, n. 1; RI 1993, 807–8, 878–81).

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3 Warner earned a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1858, and for two years practiced law in Chicago.

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4 When Clemens reached this point, halfway down page 5, he left the rest of the page (and the verso) blank, apparently because he stopped to make a fair copy of what he had written and revised so far. He then began on a fresh sheet, page 6, and completed the letter with virtually no revision.

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5 This report of Dickinson’s remark does not appear in either of the two known transcriptions of the fair copy that Clemens sent (see the next letter). It is possible that both transcriptions omitted it coincidentally, but somewhat more likely that Clemens himself did so, intentionally or otherwise, when he made the fair copy. Dickinson must have made her remark to the Langdons when she stayed with them after lecturing in Elmira on 1 March. In turn she heard from them about another recent visitor, Frederick Douglass, who lectured in Elmira on 23 February and stayed the night in the Langdon home (Elmira Advertiser: “Anna E. Dickinson,” 2 Mar 72, 4; “Personal” and “City and Neighborhood,” 23 Feb 72, 4). In a 30 March letter to her mother, Dickinson wrote:

At Elmira I had a delightful time, as always, with my friends the Langdons.—Mrs. L. sent her love to thee & her hope that thee would yet come to see her.—

What a gap his death has made in the house!— She was telling me of Frederick Douglass coming into the house,—taking her hand, & then the tears so choking & blinding him, as to make him drop her hand & go out to the streets.

“Thirty years ago” said he, “when it was an invitation to the incendiary, your husband took me home, sick, nursed, & cared for, & tended me as a Mother, & now it is his son who invites me, in days when hospitality yet costs something to give.”

And certainly it does. Mrs. L. told me that three of her girls refused to wait at the table, & of course got their congee, & when Frederick was leaving [he] asked Charlie to go with him to the hotel.—He stayed one night, & the next was to leave at 4 in the morning, & so did not wish to disturb them, & would go to the little hotel at the Depot, —as Charlie was bidding him good-by & was driving off, Frederick put his hand on his arm, & said “Will you please come in with me.” “Of course,” said Charlie, I went, “& found that if I hadn’t the wretched little rat who keeps the hotel would have said no to him. Fortunately he’s in my debt & had to mind his P’s & Q’s.”

Pretty state of affairs in this day, generation & region. (Anna Dickinson to Mary E. Dickinson, 30 Mar 72, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, DLC)

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6 Presumably Clemens had already sent Bliss an announcement of Susy’s birth.

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7 Clemens did not reproduce for himself his list of twenty-three friends who were to receive copies of Roughing It in half-morocco bindings. The list he sent with the fair copy has been lost, presumably because Bliss passed it on to someone at the American Publishing Company. It must have included William Dean Howells and Abraham Reeves Jackson, to whom Clemens promised copies on 18 and 21 March, respectively, and possibly James Redpath and Adolph Sutro as well. The company’s 15 April statement shows that on 30 March Clemens was charged $48.92 for “R. I. H.M. 23 & Express prepaid,” plus $2.40 for two cloth-bound copies delivered to Orion Clemens, and $1.80 for one in half-morocco sent to Jane Clemens (CU-MARK; 18 Mar 72 to Howells; Jackson to SLC, 27 Mar 72, CU-MARK; 23 Apr–14 May 72 to Bliss, n. 1; 11 June 72 to Sutro, n. 2).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L5, 65–68; MTLP, 70–71, with omissions.

Provenance:see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

t • [partly formed]

been • [‘be’ canceled, then restored]

consequence. Any • consequence.— | Any

complicated • c[] | plicated [obscured by inkblot]

reason • rea-|son

25 23 • 253 [‘5’ partly formed; possibly malformed ‘3’]

morr moroccos • morroccos