Mark Twain's Letters Part 20

I found out at 10 o'clock, last night, that I was to lecture tomorrow evening and so you must be aware that I have been working like sin all night to get a lecture written. I have finished it, I call it "Frozen Truth." It is a little top-heavy, though, because there is more truth in the t.i.tle than there is in the lecture.

But thunder, I mustn't sit here writing all day, with so much business before me.

Good by, and kind regards to all.

Yrs affy SAM L. CLEMENS.

Jack Van Nostrand of this letter is "Jack" of the Innocents. Emma Beach was the daughter of Moses S. Beach, of the 'New York Sun.'

Later she became the wife of the well-known painter, Abbot H.

Thayer.

We do not hear of Miss Langdon again in the letters of that time, but it was not because she was absent from his thoughts. He had first seen her with her father and brother at the old St. Nicholas Hotel, on lower Broadway, where, soon after the arrival of the Quaker City in New York, he had been invited to dine. Long afterward he said: "It is forty years ago; from that day to this she has never been out of my mind."

From his next letter we learn of the lecture which apparently was delivered in Washington.

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

WASH. Jan. 9, 1868.

MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--That infernal lecture is over, thank Heaven!

It came near being a villainous failure. It was not advertised at all.

The manager was taken sick yesterday, and the man who was sent to tell me, never got to me till afternoon today. There was the d.i.c.kens to pay.

It was too late to do anything--too late to stop the lecture. I scared up a door-keeper, and was ready at the proper time, and by pure good luck a tolerably good house a.s.sembled and I was saved! I hardly knew what I was going to talk about, but it went off in splendid style. I was to have preached again Sat.u.r.day night, but I won't--I can't get along without a manager.

I have been in New York ever since Christmas, you know, and now I shall have to work like sin to catch up my correspondence.

And I have got to get up that book, too. Cut my letters out of the Alta's and send them to me in an envelop. Some, here, that are not mailed yet, I shall have to copy, I suppose.

I have got a thousand things to do, and am not doing any of them. I feel perfectly savage.

Good bye Yrs aff SAM.

On the whole, matters were going well with him. His next letter is full of his success--overflowing with the boyish radiance which he never quite outgrew.

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

HARTFORD, CONN. Jan. 24-68.

DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--This is a good week for me. I stopped in the Herald office as I came through New York, to see the boys on the staff, and young James Gordon Bennett asked me to write twice a week, impersonally, for the Herald, and said if I would I might have full swing, and (write) about anybody and everybody I wanted to. I said I must have the very fullest possible swing, and he said "all right." I said "It's a contract--" and that settled that matter.

I'll make it a point to write one letter a week, any-how.

But the best thing that has happened was here. This great American Publishing Company kept on trying to bargain with me for a book till I thought I would cut the matter short by coming up for a talk. I met Rev.

Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn, and with his usual whole-souled way of dropping his own work to give other people a lift when he gets a chance, he said, "Now, here, you are one of the talented men of the age--n.o.body is going to deny that---but in matters of business, I don't suppose you know more than enough to came in when it rains. I'll tell you what to do, and how to do it." And he did.

And I listened well, and then came up here and made a splendid contract for a Quaker City book of 5 or 600 large pages, with ill.u.s.trations, the ma.n.u.script to be placed in the publishers' hands by the middle of July.

My percentage is to be a fifth more than they have ever paid any author, except Horace Greeley. Beecher will be surprised, I guess, when he hears this.

But I had my mind made up to one thing--I wasn't going to touch a book unless there was money in it, and a good deal of it. I told them so. I had the misfortune to "bust out" one author of standing. They had his ma.n.u.script, with the understanding that they would publish his book if they could not get a book from me, (they only publish two books at a time, and so my book and Richardson's Life of Grant will fill the bill for next fall and winter)--so that ma.n.u.script was sent back to its author today.

These publishers get off the most tremendous editions of their books you can imagine. I shall write to the Enterprise and Alta every week, as usual, I guess, and to the Herald twice a week--occasionally to the Tribune and the Magazines (I have a stupid article in the Galaxy, just issued) but I am not going to write to this, that and the other paper any more.

The Chicago Tribune wants letters, but I hope and pray I have charged them so much that they will not close the contract. I am gradually getting out of debt, but these trips to New York do cost like sin.

I hope you have cut out and forwarded my printed letters to Washington--please continue to do so as they arrive.

I have had a tip-top time, here, for a few days (guest of Mr. Jno.

Hooker's family--Beecher's relatives-in a general way of Mr. Bliss, also, who is head of the publishing firm.) Puritans are mighty straight-laced and they won't let me smoke in the parlor, but the Almighty don't make any better people.

Love to all-good-bye. I shall be in New York 3 days--then go on to the Capital.

Yrs affly, especially Ma., Yr SAM.

I have to make a speech at the annual Herald dinner on the 6th of May.

No formal contract for the book had been made when this letter was written. A verbal agreement between Bliss and Clemens had been reached, to be ratified by an exchange of letters in the near future. Bliss had made two propositions, viz., ten thousand dollars, cash in hand, or a 5-per-cent. royalty on the selling price of the book. The cash sum offered looked very large to Mark Twain, and he was sorely tempted to accept it. He had faith, however, in the book, and in Bliss's ability to sell it. He agreed, therefore, to the royalty proposition; "The best business judgment I ever displayed" he often declared in after years. Five per cent.

royalty sounds rather small in these days of more liberal contracts.

But the American Publishing Company sold its books only by subscription, and the agents' commissions and delivery expenses ate heavily into the profits. Clemens was probably correct in saying that his percentage was larger than had been paid to any previous author except Horace Greeley. The John Hooker mentioned was the husband of Henry Ward Beecher's sister, Isabel. It was easy to understand the Beecher family's robust appreciation of Mark Twain.

From the office of Dan Slote, his room-mate of the Quaker City --"Dan" of the Innocents--Clemens wrote his letter that closed the agreement with Bliss.

To Elisha Bliss, Jr., in Hartford:

Office of SLOTE & WOODMAN, Blank Book Manufacturers,

Nos. 119-121 William St.

NEW YORK, January 27, 1868.

Mr. E. Bliss, Jr.