To James R. Osgood
17 January 1876 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: MH-H, UCCL 01298)
(SUPERSEDED)

Hartford, Jan. 17/76.

My Dear Osgood:

Yes, hand the check to the lawyers.

What I desire, now, is, to go for Mr. Gill once more, at law—& this time, let us mean “business.” Can you go in with me, & divide the expense? ,& has he 1

How would it do for us to go in together, but nobody appear in it but me; & if I win my case then we to join issue & try him on your case, I not appearing to be a party?

I want ‸Gill‸ tried—

1. Simply for violating my trademark—copyright not to be mentioned. (I suppose the lawyers have got the decision of the N. Y. court in my former case from Simon Sterne, attorney.)2

2.—Damages for said violation—say $5 ‸$1,‸000 or $10‸3,‸000. ‸(or more,)‸

3.—No compromise but on these terms: Gill to pay me $500 cash & sign a paper confessing in soft language that he is a detected liar & thief.

I think our lawyers will know how to handle Mr. Gill this time, after the experience they have had with him.

Keep the book you mention & don’t mislay it.3

If you don’t wish to go in with me, Osgood, I want you to put my case in our lawyers’ hands at once, anyhow, & I’ll play a “lone hand” (such as used to be too many for you at Warwick!)4

Yrs Ever

S. L. Clemens

P. S.—No—on second thoughts I don’t want to compromise with Gill for less than $1.000—& a written confession that he is a liar & thief—& a promise to take my article & name out of his book at once—with a penalty of $5 dollars per copy on every book issued afterward with name & article (or either) in it.
Yrs
S. L. Clemens
Sue for $1,000 to $10,000 damages, & permanent injunction.

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

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1 The letter from Osgood that Clemens answered does not survive. Since the summer of 1875, he and Clemens had been contending with Boston publisher William F. Gill, who had included Clemens’s “Encounter with an Interviewer” in Burlesque, volume one of a projected twelve-volume Treasure-Trove anthology, despite Clemens’s strenuous objections (see L6, 489 n. 1, 505 n. 6, 511–12, 514–15, 516–19, 524–25; SLC 1875).

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2 That is, the decision in Clemens’s 1873 lawsuit against Benjamin J. Such. It was not the unqualified victory Clemens believed it to be, nor did it validate his claim of trademark on his nom de plume (see L5, 368, 370 n. 5, and L6, 495 n. 5).

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3 This book, if not a copy of Burlesque, has not been identified.

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4 While in England in the fall of 1872, Clemens had spent a pleasant day with Osgood “driving about Warwickshire in an open barouche,” visiting historical sites (L5, 155). Nothing is known of the “lone hand” episode.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Copy-text:

MS, MH-H, Rogers Room.

Previous publication: MTLP, 93.

Provenance:The Henry M. Rogers and Kathleen Rogers Collection was donated in 1930.