Mark Twain: Business Man: Letters and Memoirs

Edited by SAMUEL CHARLES WEBSTER

1

IN the autumn of 1884, Mark Twain was preparing to start on a four months’ lecture tour with George W. Cable, the novelist. Cable, who was hired by Mark Twain at a salary of $450 a week plus expenses, took turns in the reading. The lecture agent, J. B. Pond, arranged the itinerary, collected the fees, and transmitted the money to Charles L. Webster & Company, who acted as bankers for Mark Twain. Lecturing was always a lucrative business for Uncle Sam, much as he disliked it. The fees Pond deposited with Charles L. Webster & Company showed an average profit of better than a thousand dollars a week for the 1884 tour.

On this tour Mark Twain drew heavily on Huckleberry Finn, which was then completed but still unpublished. Hitherto Mark Twain’s books had been published by professional publishers — the earlier books by the American Publishing Company, and the three immediately preceding Huckleberry Finn by J. R. Osgood and Company. But Mark Twain was dissatisfied with the royalties. The last of these books was Life on the Mississippi, which was manufactured by Osgood, with the author furnishing the capital. The profits from this venture were not so large as Mark Twain had expected, and in 1884 he undertook to publish his own books, in partnership with my father.

During their partnership there were six essentially similar contracts between Mark Twain and my father. The one I have before me runs from April 1885, to April 1890, and is “subject to the right of the party of the first part [Clemens] to dissolve the same as hereinafter expressed,” Under this contract, Webster was to have entire charge of the office, but he was not to make any contracts with any other authors for book publication without Mark Twain’s consent. Mark Twain was to get 70 per cent of the profits from his own books, except those already published, on which he was to get 60 per cent. The rest of the profits were to go to the Webster Company. Webster was to get a salary of $2500, and as a partner he was to get one third of the profits until he had received $20,000, and after that one tenth, and Mark Twain was to get nine tenths. Webster was responsible for his share of the losses.

Finding competent subscription agents occupied a great deal of my father’s time. From one of his notebooks it appears that he took long trips and rounded up canvassing agents in the major cities as far west as Nebraska.

The new publishing company and the Paige typesetter, which was still swallowing thousands of dollars each month, were not the only things on Mark Twain’s mind. He had plenty of other things to occupy his attention: — Oct. 31, ‘84

DEAR CHARLEY—
. . . I’ve got (for 3 months) the refusal of a half interest in a patent for keeping children from kicking the clothes off or rolling out of bed; & the only fault it has is that it is too cheap — 90 cents to $1.15. We use it all the time, now, on three beds, & it works all right. But I have invented a more expensive & more convenient one, & presently when I see you we will talk about it. Mine is not easily infringed; but any man can make the other thing for himself. Yrs. S.L.C

Copyright 1944, by the Mark Twain Company.

The Clemens children probably fell asleep exhausted after a day with Father. Webster tried out the clamp on a tougher customer, and his report of the result caught up with Uncle Sam in Toledo. Uncle Sam’s reply was written in pencil on the back of a telegraph blank: — TOLEDO, Dec. 15, ‘84

DEAR CHARLEY How in the nation can the thing tear, when it has got a couple of coverlets in its grip, & when the elastics give, & won’t let it tear?

You want to experiment more carefully. Yrs.
S. L. C.

I am the guilty party in this case. It was a tussle between me and the bed-clamp, and I won. But Uncle Sam was not discouraged.

2

THE next excitement is a page torn from a catalogue of Estes & Lauriat, booksellers, advertising Huckleberry Finn at a reduced rate when it was not yet published. In pencil across the page Mark Twain writes: —

“Charley, if this is a lie, let Alexander & Green sue them for damages instantly. And if we have no chance at them in law, tell me at once & I will publish them as thieves & swindlers. S. L. Clemens. [P.S.] Hadn’t you better send 6 witnesses to try to buy 3 copies each? Use their testimony. S. L. C.”

He encloses the following notice, with the comment: “I think you better print the enclosed in fac simile of my handwriting, & put a copy in every canvasser’s hands. S. L. C.”

HUCKLEBERRY FINN My new book is not out of the press; no man has a copy of it; yet Estes & Lauriat, of Boston announce it as “now ready,”& for sale by them — & at a reduced price. These people deliberately lied when they made that statement. Since it was a lie which could in no possible way advantage them, it was necessarily a purely malicious lie, whose only purpose was to injure me, who have in no way harmed them.

They will have an immediate opportunity to explain, in court, & pay for the opportunity of explaining. MARK TWAIN

Dec. 22, '84

DEAR CHARLEY—
Call at Everett House 10 o’clock next Sunday morning.

1. Talk about contract with that bed clothes fastener man.

2. Osgood has made me no statement for at least a year. Needs stirring up.

3. You mind, that you may appoint as many dates to issue as you please, but you will not issue till 40,000 are known to be sold. For this is my last experiment — & it shall not fail.

4. Western Union [stock]

5. Am. Exc. in Europe [stock]

6. P & P. [The Prince and the Pauper] belongs to me but is not taken into camp & canvassed.

I have notified the Am. Pub. Co. that unless they sue to enjoin those pirates at once, I will sue for annulment of my contracts, on the ground that they make no sufficient effort to protect my copyrights from infringement.

Watch the files of the advertising agencies, & see if the ad. disappears, Yrs.
S. L. C.

In October, Uncle Sam had written Webster to economize on telegrams. By January he had a new point of view: —

{Telegram)

To C. L. WEBSTER, 658 Broadway, New York

Your letter should have come by telegraph not mail. I telegraphed Rice that if you had not been heard from by next evening he could have a chapter. He telegraphed back within the hour & said Bromfield had decided to leave him a chapter without waiting for you which I thought pretty cool treatment of my orders. Go & take the chapter away from Rice if you want to. Nobody in authority has yet given it to him and in any case get an explanation of this most extraordinary proceeding. I never heard of such a performance.

S. L. CLEMENS
KEOKUK, Jan. 15, ‘85

DEAR CHARLEY:
Your letter is very blind. Bed-clamp man’s “estimate of expense” is $1200 for year exclusive of advertising; “a salary” for him of “$1000 & expenses.” Now who can guess what you mean by that. Do you mean that the first year will cost $2200 & a double bill of “expenses” added?

Try again. Tabulate the expenses of all kinds, in an intelligible way. And state some idea of what that entire expense will be, in dollars & cents; for:& expenses” means nothing.

And also state some idea of what his year’s work will bring in, judging by the past.

Also, have some arrangement in the contract (if one is made) whereby we may name the price the things are to be sold at; or in lieu of this, that the present retail price shall be doubled; otherwise there is no profit possible on the business.

Try again.

I think I telegraphed Rice that if you had not returned within a day, Mr. Bromfield might then give Bice a chapter. A telegram came back from Rice within the hour saying Mr. Bromfield had decided not to wait for you. Is Mr. B. with authority to trample my orders under his feet? If so, you had better discharge him at once.

Pond? I will fill no engagement after Feb. 28. I have said it already some 500,000 times.

You want to make a list like this, & stick it on the wall where you can see it when you go to bed & when you get up:

For weekly report: Concerning-

Historical Game.

Perpetual Calendar.

Osgood’s Quarterly Statement.

Am. Pub. Co.”

Slote & Co.

Bed-clamp man

Am. Exchange in Europe.

&c &c &c So that I can know, by a word, once a week, what is doing, without having to write & enquire.

If you have allowed Rice to keep that chapter, you will charge him 6 cents a word for the use of it. He offered me $150 for what a magazine would pay me $100. The Century paid me 4 1/2 cents a word for Hack Finn — the same price as for original matter. But if Rice played any sharp game (which is very unlikely, for he is a gentleman) I hope he did not get a chance to keep the chapter. Truly yours
S. L. CLEMENS

It sounds as if Bromfield, a clerk, perhaps knowing that Webster would not be back within a day or two, had given Rice, a magazine publisher, a chapter from Huckleberry Finn.

It must have been exasperating to my father, who was head over heels seeing agents and getting out Huckleberry Finn, to have to bother with a bedclamp that he didn’t believe in and that wouldn’t have brought in much money at best. Every now and then Uncle Sam wanted a weekly report, and other times he didn’t want to be bothered with anything related to business.

MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. Jan. 25, 1885
DEAR CHARLEY -

Even $2 is much too low for the bed-clamp. — If I go into it eventually, it must be at $2.25 each for small size, & $3 for the large. There is no money in the thing at any cheaper rate.

You didn’t give me the main item: What do the annual receipts at present reach?

I want nothing to do with business myself, & so I do not wish to lend money which I must keep track of; but I’d just as soon write J. Langdon & Co. to lend you $4,500 on those securities as not. They will do it. Shall I write them? Or, shall I buy $4,500 worth of the house at the price you paid, & thus own that proportion of the property myself? If that suits you, draw that amount from C. L. Webster & Co. and make out & send to Livy the necessary papers — for I should want my share of the house to be in her name.

If you should come across another dog-cheap house, I will buy with you — but I don’t wish to buy alone. . . .

Make Osgood furnish us his Jan. statement. On that & other data you will know how to offer him little enough for the Library & my other books. We can strike up a trade with him yet, I guess.

Osgood has only 12,000 Mississippi’s left? Then 6,000 have been sold since our last settlement, I judge.

If we can only get a twist on the Am. Pub. Co.!

As to terms, you & I will go & call on Bliss when I return, & see if he will lie to me as he has done to you.

I ought to have stayed at home & written another book. It pays better than the platform. Yrs S. L. C.

I may have an early prejudice against that bedclamp, but I can’t see the average young parent paying $3.00 for it, even with Uncle Sam’s improvements. Safety pins are much better and wouldn’t tear the sheets any worse. Any fairly intelligent parent could have made one out of nearly anything. But Uncle Sam had probably figured out how many babies were born every year and put down each one at $3.00 for his bed-clamp and was getting rich at it.

3

MY FATHER at this time was not only publishing Huckleberry Finn: he was negotiating with General Ulysses S. Grant for his autobiography, which Uncle Sam had almost persuaded Grant to give to the Webster Company. My father, who now had three children, was also buying a house in New York and wanted to raise money on his securities. The house was on 126th Street, quite a rural neighborhood, reached by the new elevated. INDIANAPOLIS,Feb. 8, ‘85
DEAR CHARLEY -

In 3 more weeks this platform-campaign will be over, & then I shall hope to get in a good humor & stay so.

It would be a grand thing if we could get the General’s book on those terms. I shouldn’t want any surer thing, seems to me. You know I read in Brooklyn Feb. 21 — I shall want to see you at the Everett that day — maybe you will know by that time.

You can bring a Huck Finn in a nice binding, & I will write in it & we will send it to Col. Fred Grant’s eldest little girl.

And we must talk over the propriety of sending out 300 press copies early — say Feb. 23d — without waiting for the magazines — Heavens & earth! the book ought to have been reviewed in the March Century & Atlantic! — how have we been dull enough to go & overlook that? It is an irreparable blunder. It should have been attended to weeks ago, when we named the day of publication. If we had but done that, we could flood the country with press copies the 25th of Feb., for then the Magazines would already have given the key-note to the reviews.

D. Appleton & Co. played off their “Artistic Homes” ($300) on me — a humiliating swindle. Now what I propose to do, is to order several hundred dollars’ worth of books of them (American Cyclopedias, &c) & tell them to send me the bill; then, after I get the books, tell them to come & cart away the Artistic Homes & pay back my $300 & they can have the other books; or, if they prefer, I will come to New York & be sued for the other books & state my case to the interviewers. Is this a good idea? Tell me. In addition, I have an idea of writing a neat & readable account of how the “A. H.” swindle was played upon me, & offering them the first chance to buy the MS for $300. Write me about these things. Yrs truly
S. L. CLEMENS

Lecturing always wore on Uncle Sam’s nerves. I won’t take sides in this Appleton matter. It was a long while ago, and Uncle Sam forgot it in time.

COLUMBUS,Feb. 10, ‘85

DEAR CHARLEY - Glad to be rid of Osgood. I am not able to see that anything can save Huck Finn from being another defeat, unless you are expecting to do it by tumbling books into the trade, & I suppose you are not calculating upon any sale there worth speaking of, since you are not binding much of an edition of the book.

As to notices, I suggest this plan: Send immediately, copies (bound & unbound) to the Evening Post, Sun, World, & the Nation; the Hartford Courant, Post & Times; & the principal Boston dailies; Baltimore American. (Never send any to N.Y. Graphic.)

Keep a sharp lookout, & if the general tone of the resulting notices is favorable, then send out your 300 press copies over the land, for that may possibly float a further canvass & at least create a bookstore demand. No use to wait for the magazines — how in hell we overlooked that unspeakably important detail, utterly beats my time. We have not even arranged to get English notices from Chatto & shove them into the papers ahead of our publication. Yrs truly
S. L. C.

This is the first note of pessimism. There was a fortune in the bed-clamp, the history game (described in the September Atlantic) would have made them all rich, the Paige typesetter was worth ten millions a year, conservatively speaking. But nothing could save Huckleberry Finn from being another defeat. Perhaps the Columbus audience had been unresponsive.

Just a few months later he said: “I am frightened at the proportions of my prosperity. It seems to me that everything I touch turns to gold.”

It is interesting to notice that in Mark Twain in Eruption, Mark Twain says that Webster coldly discounted “my prophecies about ‘Huckleberry Finn’s’ high commercial value.” I think my father did discount the Paige typesetter, which was costing Uncle Sam three thousand a month, but he certainly worked hard on Huckleberry Finn and Grant’s memoirs — with the result that they were two of the biggest publishing successes of the century.

4

THE next two letters were written by my father to Uncle Sam, both on the same day. The copies which I have are imprints of the originals. In those days hand-written letters were dampened and pressed into a book of special paper which absorbed some of the ink and thus made a copy of the letter. These are the only business letters of my father’s that I have. Feb. 14, ‘85
DEAR UNCLE SAM: I have been working like a beaver and have at last got that Grant matter in first rate train as you will see by the enclosed correspondence.

I have yet had no answer to my last of the 10th but you can judge by the copies that I send you what the result will be. There’s big money for us both in that book and on the terms indicated in my note to the General we can make it pay big.

I know it is a good deal of an undertaking but we can carry it through and make a clean sweep. I only hope we will get the book, and that seems a certainty to me now. Yours truly
CHARLES L. WEBSTER Feb. 14, ‘85
DEAR UNCLE SAM :

I have been driven hard this week; but here’s the report.

1. Perpetual Calendar: nothing.

2. Historical Game: I haven’t been able to get a competent man to perfect it yet.

3. Osgood’s statement: I haven’t got that yet but they say they are working at it.

4. Bed clamps: nothing.

5. Am. Ex. in Europe is in broker’s hands but he reports he can not sell it.

6. Estes & L. suit: I have a brief letter from the Boston lawyer saying that our application for an injunction is denied, but I have no particulars.

7. Pond’s total for week ending Jany. 31st is $673.30 Feby. 7 is 1279.53

8. Total deposited in bank since last report is: $1952.83

9.Total recd. from Pond before this is 12215.67

10. Total recd. from Pond since the beginning — $14168.50

11. Total in bank No. 2 account is $22034.78

12. Total in bank C.L.W. & Co. $2978.41

In regard to press notices of the book: That was not overlooked; you remember you told me in the start that press notices hurt the last book before it was out & that this year we would send none until the book was out.

I have sent the notices that you have suggested.

I am not afraid of Huck Finn; it is going to sell,

but you must remember it is awful hard times and I am starting in under very trying circumstances. However, we will sell that book. I have sold 1000 of L. on Miss, since I got them of Osgood & think I shall sell 1000 more next week.

Huck is a good book and I am working intelligently & hard and if it don’t sell it won’t be your fault or mine but the extreme hard times. It shall sell however. Yours truly
CHAS. L. WEBSTER

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in February. In the copy that he gave to his father, Luther Webster, my father wrote: “A merry Christmas to Luther Webster. From his son, the publisher of the book. New York, December 1884. This book is one of three cloth copies first bound, and at this date there are but ten copies of the book in the country, as the first edition of 30,000 volumes will not be issued until Feby 16th next. Charles L. Webster, Publisher.” TORONTO, Feb. 15, ‘85
DEAR CHARLEY -

You may draw up a contract in accordance with the enclosed, & have it ready for the signatures when we reach the Everett House Feb. 21. Perhaps you better add that the payment of my share shall also be weekly (after the funding of the first $10,000 of profits).

Please write or tell Whitford that the death of that Southern obscene pirate ends that suit to my satisfaction. Don’t forget. S. L. C.

The enclosure was an agreement whereby Uncle Sam went into partnership with J. B. Pond to assume the management of Minnie Maddern and her company. Uncle Sam was to put up $2500. I don’t know what happened about it. Nor do I know who the Southern obscene pirate was. All his enemies were pirates, and some of his friends.

5

NEGOTIATIONS for General Grant’s memoirs were still going on. Grant had resigned his army rank in order to accept the Presidency of the United States in 1868, and after his eight years in office found himself, as a result, without any financial resources. After an unsuccessful venture into stockbroking, Grant began work on his memoirs in the hope of repaying his debts. His first literary attempt was an article on the Battle of Shiloh. This piece was written for the Century Magazine in 1884, and its reception encouraged Grant to embark on a full-length book.

General Grant had expected to have his memoirs published by the Century Company. Albert Bigelow Paine says it was more or less by accident that Uncle Sam heard of the projected memoirs, and discovered that the Century was offering Grant terms based on the expectation of selling five or ten thousand copies of the book — a ridiculously low estimate. Uncle Sam immediately proposed to publish the memoirs himself, offering the General either 20 per cent of the list price or 70 per cent of the net profits. General Grant hesitated for some time to accept the offer; he was afraid that he might seem to be deserting the Century people. He was also afraid that Uncle Sam was trying to bankrupt himself out of pure kindness of heart.

During the months in which he worked on the memoirs, Grant was slowly dying of cancer of the throat. At first he dictated the text, but later he was obliged to make corrections and revisions by writing on small slips of paper. Even conversation was carried on in writing. The final corrections on the manuscript were made only three days before he died. The proofs were read by Colonel Fred Grant, the General’s son, and Mark Twain went over them for errors in grammar and punctuation — an extraordinary evidence of his feeling for Grant.

The contract for Grant’s memoirs was closed on February 27, 1885, after the publication of Huckleberry Finn. It was an enormous undertaking. The Webster Company employed sixteen general agents and ten thousand canvassers. Orders for 60,000 sets had been received by May 1. Webster had to move into larger quarters to accommodate the staff. I have been told that in the original office callers had to come up in a freight elevator. There was no objection to the move on Mark Twain’s part at the time, but twenty years later it seems to have upset him as an unwarranted extravagance.

Mr. Paine, on page 806 of his biography of Mark Twain, gives some idea of what it meant to start a publishing house in high gear: “The partners were sufficiently occupied. Estimates and prices for vast quantities of paper were considered, all available presses were contracted for, binderies were pledged exclusively for the Grant book. Clemens was boiling over with plans and suggestions for distribution. Webster was half wild with the tumult of the great campaign. Applications for agencies poured in.”

In Mark Twain in Eruption Uncle Sam says (p. 186): “Webster was in his glory. . . . He liked to go into statistics. He liked to tell that it took thirteen miles of gold leaf to print the gilt titles on the book backs; he liked to tell how many thousand tons the three hundred thousand sets weighed.”

I don’t know whether or not my father enjoyed these calculations. He probably did. We all do. I was also one of Uncle Sam’s faults, I’m sorry to say. He wrote in 1885: “If I pay the General in silver coin at twelve dollars per pound it will weigh seventeen tons.” (Biography, p. 811.)

I have before me the contract of which Mark Twain says in Mark Twain in Eruption: “Before we had become fairly settled in the new quarters, Webster had suggested that we abolish the existing contract and make a new one. Very well, it was done. I probably never read it nor asked anybody else to read it. I probably merely signed it and saved myself further bother in that way.”

According to Mark Twain, this contract — which he never read — made him Webster’s “slave.”“Webster was sole master. I could no longer give orders as before. I could not even make a suggestion with any considerable likelihood of its acceptance.”

The slave now speaks: —

Important. Apl. 11, ‘85 DEAR CHARLEY - Stop leaving those proofs on your table — keep them always in your safe. From now till the day of issue, the Canadian emissary will be around (how do you know but you’ve got him in your own employ) seeking to buy or steal proofsheets.
No book ever stood in such peril before as this one. Long before it is out, thieves & bribers will be thick around the printing houses & binderies, ready to buy or steal even a couple of pages & sell to somebody.
Now before you sleep, you must devise some plan of protection by insurance. I shall have to borrow $200,000, before we issue, no doubt — then if a Canadian edition comes over the border ahead of us, it is lost. . . . There is a fortune for any Canadian pirate who can get out ahead of our copyright — & the pirate knows it.
You must mark those 5 proofs with private marks, & Col. Grant must put those gentlemen on honor against reading them in other people’s presence or allowing them out of their hands for a moment. Send them through the mails in big square envelops, with letter postage, so that no one may guess they are proofsheets. Send envelops prepaid to those gentlemen.
Further — you must think up some way whereby we can get two or $300,000 insurance against these accidents. Maybe the concern that insures against embezzlement will take the risk for $10,000; in which case it must be done, even if I have to do it by myself without 70 per cent help from Mrs. Grant. These things are of the very last importance. Give them some share of your instant attention. Keep your proofs in your safe. Yrs
S. L. C.

6

THE next letter is from General Grant: — NEW YORK,May 2nd, 1885
To CHARLES L. WEBSTER & Co. DEAR SIRS
My attention has been called to a paragraph in the World newspaper of this city of Wednesday, April 29th of which the following is a part.
“The work upon his new book about which so much has been said is the work of General Adam Badeau. General Grant I have no doubt has furnished all of the material and all of the ideas in the memoirs as far as they have been prepared; but Badeau has done the work of composition. The most that General Grant has done upon this book has been to prepare the rough notes and memoranda for its various chapters.”
I will divide this into four parts and answer each of them.
First—“The work upon his new book about which so much has been said is the work of General Adam Badeau.”
This is false. Composition is entirely my own.
Second — “General Grant, I have no doubt, has furnished all of the material and all of the ideas in the memoirs as far as they have been prepared.”
This is true.
Third — “but Badeau has done the work of composition.”
The composition is entirely my own.
Fourth — “The most that General Grant has done upon this book has been to prepare the rough notes and memoranda for its various chapters.”
Whatever rough notes were made were prepared by myself and for my exclusive use.
You may take such measures as you see fit to correct this report which places me in the attitude of claiming the authorship of a book which I did not write and is also injurious to you who are publishing and advertising such book as my work.
Very truly yours
U. S. GRANT

As a matter of fact, the autobiography was entirely written by Grant. When he was well enough, the General used a special pencil. At other times, he dictated to Fred Hall, with Webster present so that he would be able to answer any charge that the work was not entirely by Grant. The manuscript was brought to Webster’s house for safekeeping every night.

General Adam Badeau was an old friend of Grant, who had served as his military secretary from 1864 to 1869. In 1870, he was appointed consul-general at London, and held the same office at Havana from 1882 to 1884. During 1884 and 1885, Badeau was in New York, and part of the time he stayed with the Grants. He was the author of several books, including The Military History of Ulysses S. Grant and Grant in Peace. The Military History came out, in three volumes, between 1868 and 1881, and it is probable that Grant used it as a reference book for his own work.

Mrs. Grant never liked General Badeau. She complained to my mother that he had staged some drunken scenes, and she was afraid that neighbors might think it was the General who was causing the racket. Finally the Grants broke with him, and he came to my mother in a maudlin mood, crying because he had been turned out of their house and had no place to go. My mother had never seen him before and didn’t know what to make of him.

Mark Twain wanted to sue the World for “damages placed at nothing less than $250,000 or $300,000; no apologies accepted from the World, & no compromise permitted for anything but a sum of money that will cripple — yes, disable — that paper financially.” But he thought better of it: — Sunday

DEAR CHARLEY - I have watched closely & have not seen a single reference to the World’s lie in any newspaper. So it is possible that it fell dead & did no harm. I suppose Alexander & Green have decided that a libel suit against a paper which hasn’t influence enough to get its lies copied, would be a waste of energy & money (as you give me no news of any kind about the matter). If that is their verdict, & if the lie has not been copied around, it is no doubt the right & sensible verdict. I recognize the fact that for General Grant to sue the World would be an enormously valuable advertisement for that daily issue of unmedicated closet-paper. Yrs.
S. L. C.