To John T. Raymond
27 October 1876 • Hartford, Conn.
(Transcript, secretarial copy with annotation: CtHMTH, UCCL 01381)
(SUPERSEDED)

Hartford Oct. 27/76

My Dear Raymond:

I supposed we could meet & talk but that is not going to be possible & I have made arrangements to go to Europe with my family early in April to be gone a year or two.1

But I will now make one more effort to come to an understanding—to wit: 1. Leave the Laura clause out & trust it to your honesty. 2 During the next three years I will prosecute 5 cases of piracy per year, but not [more. After] that I will prosecute 3 cases per year for 2 years; after that, 1 case per year. I will do this at my own expense. But I limit these prosecutions to that portion of the United States which lies [East] of the Western boundary of Missouri, Utah & [“The Coast”] are [too] expensive, & not worth the trouble anyway.

Now the result of this will simply be that I shall [capture] & convict one pirate & maybe two, possibly 3 during the first year; & one or two afterward.

I shall be infinitely surprised if the protection of the play costs me [anything] more than a trivial sum.

There, now, Raymond, your objections are answered & removed.

If the contract thus amended will be satisfactory to you write & say so; if not, we could not mend matters by talking.

Truly Yrs

Samℓ. L. Clemens

[letter annotated by Charles E. Perkins:] [Copy Letter Clemens to Raymond
Oct 27. 76
Sent original to Raymond Oct 30. 1876—at Toronto Canada— I have compared this with the original & it is an exact copy— Hfd Oct 30. 76
C E Perkins
] [rule]

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 The Clemens family did not begin this trip, which provided the raw material for A Tramp Abroad, until April of 1878. The recent letter from Raymond that Clemens evidently answered, which proposed a meeting to discuss a revised contract for Colonel Sellers, does not survive. But Clemens also readdressed some of the issues that Raymond had raised in an earlier letter (CtHMTH):

UCLC32423

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Clemens’s 20 September 1876 letter and enclosed contracts do not survive. His answer, also lost, to Raymond’s 25 September letter presumably left unsettled just the two issues that he now attempted to resolve: the “Laura clause” and a commitment to prosecute piracies—that is, unauthorized Gilded Age plays. He had stopped one such piracy, in Salt Lake City, in February 1875 (see L6, 371–76). Unauthorized productions had continued, however. For example, on 29 September 1876, “Mark Twain’s Gilded Age” was performed at the Opera House in Warsaw, Indiana, with the husband and wife team of James A. Lord and Louie Lord as Colonel Sellers and Laura Hawkins (playbill in CU-MARK, courtesy of Kevin Mac Donnell; Malin 1956, 251, 255, 257–58). It is not known if Raymond was aware of that performance. The Colonel Sellers contract actually in force by the early fall of 1877 gave Clemens a half-interest in the play’s profits after expenses. By the terms of a contract of 11 March 1878, however, his share was reduced to twenty percent (agreement dated 21 Sept 77 temporarily transferring Clemens’s interest in Colonel Sellers to H. W. Bergen, CU-MARK; SLC to Raymond, 16 Mar 1878, CtHMTH).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Copy-text:

Transcript, secretarial copy with annotation, CtHMTH.

Previous publication: MicroPUL, reel 1.

Provenance:See Perkins Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

more. After • more.—| After

East • e East

“The Coast” • “The Coast”

too • to

capture • l capture

anything • any‸thing‸