To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
26 October 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: Axelrod and CU-MARK, UCCL 00514)

Buf. Oct. [ 25 26].

Friend Bliss:

My man took my telegram down town asking for answer to my letter, & then brought your letter up from my office.1

It is all right. It is too late now to get out the annual. If I believed that writing for the Galaxy hurt the sale of [ th ]my books without anybody who didn’t make that excuse simply because they wanted an excuse of some kind, I would retire from the magazine to-morrow. But I cannot believe it. It is a good advertisement for me—as you show when you desire me to quit the Galaxy & go on your paper.2 But if I am hurting myself through the Galaxy, I want to know it—& then I will draw out of that & write for no periodical—for certainly I have chewed & drank & sworn, habitually, & have discarded them all, & am well aware that a bad thing should be killed entirely—tapering off is a foolish & dangerous business.3

A week or ten days ago I notified the Galaxy that my year would end with the April number, & although I hated to quit I might find it necessary, because the magazine interfered so much with other work & I half expected to lecture a little next year. I enclose the answer., just received.

Tell Frank to be prompt with his ac/4—my expenses have been as high as $600 & $700 a month, latterly, because of sickness & funerals, & I don’t allow my wife to help pay my bills.

Yrs

Clemens

[enclosure:]

office of the army and navy journal, 5

39 park row, new york.

22d

Dear Twain:

The portrait is all right. I will give it to the engraver immediately.

We wont talk about your giving up at the end of the year. It is something not to be even thought of for a moment. 6

Truly Yours

F. P. Church.

[letter docketed:] [and] Mark Twain | Oct 26/70

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 That is, Bliss’s reply to Clemens’s letter of 13 October. Neither it nor Clemens’s telegram, probably sent for him by his coachman, Patrick McAleer, is known to survive.

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2 Bliss’s current house paper was the Author’s Sketch Book, which he replaced in 1871 with the American Publisher (21? Sept 70 to Bliss, n. 1). In addition to objecting to “Mark Twain’s Annual—1871,” proposed in Clemens’s letter of 13 October, on the grounds that it would cut into sales of The Innocents Abroad, Bliss must have reminded Clemens of his 15 July book contract with the American Publishing Company. It stipulated that he was “not to write or furnish manuscript for any other book unless for said company during the preparation & sale of said manuscript & book” (Book Contract for Roughing It). Clemens was disinclined to be entirely restricted by that provision, however. Although he abandoned the annual, in December 1870 he contracted with its would-be publishers, Sheldon and Company of New York, for Mark Twain’s (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance. And on 29 December, still wishing to republish the old articles that would have been included in the annual, he contracted with the American Publishing Company for a sketches volume (see ET&S1, 435).

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3 Clemens had discarded these habits to please three women: Jane Lampton Clemens, Olivia Langdon, and Mary Mason Fairbanks (13 Jan 70 to OLL; L2, 122, 134, 166, 222, 234, 284, 295, 353, 354; L3, 76 n. 3, 90, 178, 436).

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4 The statement of fifth quarter sales of The Innocents Abroad, due at the end of October. Clemens acknowledged receipt of it in his letter of 7 November to Bliss.

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5 This “great weekly unofficial spokesman of the military establishment of the United States” was published by Francis P. Church and his brother, William, who had founded the magazine in 1863 and remained its editor until 1917 (Mott 1938, 547).

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6 Nevertheless, Clemens’s last “Memoranda” appeared in the April 1871 Galaxy, just a year after his debut.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS of Clemens’s letter, collection of Todd M. Axelrod; MS of enclosed letter from Francis Church, 22 Oct 71 (UCLC 31692), Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).

Previous publication: L4, 212–14; Clemens’s letter only, Parke-Bernet 1940, lot 185, brief excerpt; Christie 1981, lot 54, excerpt; Neville, item 449, excerpt.

Provenance:The present location of Clemens’s letter, owned from at least 1983 to 1989 by Axelrod, is not known; Church’s letter was probably returned to Clemens by Bliss and remained in the Mark Twain Papers.

Emendations and textual notes:

25 26 • 256 [‘5’ partly formed]

th • [partly formed]