To Moncure D. Conway
per Fanny C. Hesse
29 December 1876 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: NNC, UCCL 01397)
(SUPERSEDED)

Hartford. Conn.
Dec 29. 1876.

Dear Conway1

Hart and I have written a play, the chief character in which, is a Chinaman, and we have leased it for life to a man who will play that part.

We give him sole right for the entire world. When he plays in England, his contract will bind him to pay to us our shares of the profit, & is our ample security that far. It would be well for him, & for us to have the play protected there by [copywright], but I hardly see how it is to be done. I think he is the best Chinaman that ever stepped on a stage. So I want no public representation of it in England, until he produces it there himself.

Couldn’t it be covered by a private representation in your back yard, by people who read their parts instead of recited them?

I promise to simultane Atlantic articles in Temple Bar, but I have always forgotten to do it, [except] in a single instance. I had abundant time to do it in the case of this last Atlantic article, but as usual never thought of it, until it was too late. So I threw away2

[one or more MS pages missing]

the 3. 10, for telegrams & things, and ‸send‸ me a bill of exchange for the rest at your convenience.

Behold the trouble you have made by sending Mrs Clemens the article about finger rings! She has long ago lost, or given away, a volume which exhaustively treated the subject of finger rings, the customs, traditions & superstitions, appertaining to them in all lands, and now she is suffering for that book. She had forgotten her loss until you reminded her of it. Now you tell Chatto to hunt up ‸a copy of‸ that book and send it here, and charge it to me, and you shall be forgiven.

Ever thine

Samℓ L. Clemens

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens replied to the following letter (CU-MARK):

UCLC32453

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In addition to the unidentified Cincinnati Commercial paragraph, Conway alluded to: Dion Boucicault’s popular play The Shaughraun (“The Vagabond”), which had opened at Wallack’s Theatre in New York in November 1874; W. S. Gilbert’s Dan’l Druce, Blacksmith, which had opened at the Haymarket Theatre in London on 11 September 1876; and Gilbert’s Pygmalion and Galatea, which began its original run at the Haymarket Theatre on 9 December 1871. John T. Raymond took Colonel Sellers to London in 1880 (see 24 July 76 to Conway, n. 4). The enclosed Chatto and Windus statement for the period 29 May–14 December 1876 showed earnings of 162 pounds, 10 shillings, 8 pence, or about $813, on sales of the English edition of Tom Sawyer, from which were deducted charges for proof sheets, for telegrams to Clemens and to Belford Brothers in Toronto, for transfer of the English copyright (see 2 Nov 76 to Conway, nn. 2, 3), and for two copies of the book, bringing the net amount owed Clemens to 157 pounds, 13 shillings, 10 pence, or about $788. The enclosed clipping from the Newcastle Chronicle does not survive and has not been identified. The “attached fingerring lore” evidently was “Finger Ring Lore,” an unidentified clipping discussing William Jones’s Finger-Ring Lore: Historical, Legendary, Anecdotal (London: Chatto and Windus, 1877). It survives in one of Clemens’s scrapbooks (Scrapbook 8:2–3, CU-MARK; L6, 388 n. 3; Gilbert and Sullivan Archive 2006).

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2 For the “single instance,” see 6 July 76 to Bentley, n. 2. Clemens’s “last Atlantic article,” which he may have enclosed for Conway, was “The Canvasser’s Tale,” published in the December number. Andrew Chatto would have published it simultaneously in his Belgravia magazine (see 2 Nov 76 to Conway, n. 3; SLC 1876).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Copy-text:

MS, Conway Papers, NNC.

Previous publication: MicroPUL, reel 1.

Provenance:The Conway Papers were acquired by NNC sometime after Conway’s death in 1907.

Emendations and textual notes:

copywright • [sic]

except • exceppt