Mark Twain: Business Man: Letters and Memoirs

by SAMUEL CHARLES WEBSTER

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MARK TWAIN went into publishing on his own with my father as his partner and titular head of Charles L. Webster & Company. Both partners were on the lookout for new books and it was Mark Twain who came up with the prize plum, the Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. This work, which broke all records in American biography, was to be printed in two volumes, and Volume One came off the press late in 1885. But Grant himself did not live to see his autobiography published; he died on July 23, less than one week after his final correcting of the manuscript. Actually his last bit of writing was the revision of the prospectus advertising the book: he made the changes, as he explained on the margin, because he was afraid feelings might be hurt by something he had said.

The printing and promotion of the Memoirs proceeded at a vigorous pace through 1885 and into the new year. A host of general agents, employing 10,000 canvassers, covered the country, and their job was complicated by the intrusion of several pirate publishers offering bogus editions. Uncle Sam wanted them punished by law:

ELMIRA, Wednesday, 5 P.M. [1885]
To CHARLES L. WEBSTER & Co.
The letter concerning which you telegraphed me, has not yet arrived. I look for it at 7 this evening.
Our canvasser here tells me this region is infested with canvassers for the several bogus Grant books, & that they are doing a large business among the uninformed.
I make this suggestion: that Mr. Hall employ detectives, or trustworthy friends to write something like this to the several fraudulent publishers:

NEW YORK, Aug. —
Sirs: I would like to canvass in this city or vicinity for your book written by Gen. Grant. If agreeable, please send me canvassing-book & circulars C.O.D.
Yrs truly
Then we could prosecute the head-devils, couldn’t we? If you approve the idea, will you send word to Mr. Hall to proceed?
Truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS

Apparently the suit was never brought. Perhaps my father did not approve.

The next letter shows that Uncle Sam never lost his love of the Sandwich Islands (now the Hawaiians), which he had personally discovered years before on his first trip outside the United States, and made the subject of his first lecture:

HARTFORD, NOV. 11, ‘85
DEAR CHARLEY:
R. W. Daggett, late U. S. Minister to the Sandwich Islands (an old friend of mine), has submitted to me a book which I shall be very glad to have, under certain conditions. It would make a book the size of one of Gen. Grant’s volumes. It was constructed by Daggett & the king of the Sandwich Islands, working together, & consists of the (historical) traditions & legends of the natives, reaching back connectedly 1500 years, & of course is very curious — & new. It is fresh ground — untouched, unworn, & full of romantic interest. I have read three of the legends, & they impress me favorably.
I told Daggett that what was required for success was a good book; & that the other nine-tenths of the requisite of success was that there should be a big name back of the good book. So I said that if he could get the King to let his name appear as part author, we wanted the book. (In fact I wanted it anyhow, but I didn’t say so.) I said we preferred to keep up our standard, & be known in the world as a house that publishes only for Kings & full Generals.
It is the King who tells the ancient native legends (or Sagas) to Daggett, & Daggett writes them down — & connects them, very plausibly into an historical chain, with names & dates & details. . . .
This is what I suggest:
1. That without the King’s expressed collaboration, we will pay what I was paid on the Innocents Abroad— 15 per cent of the profit above cost of manufacture.
2. With mention of the King as collaborator in the introduction, we will pay 40 per cent of the profits.
3. With both names in the title page as authors, we will pay 60 per cent of the profits.
Keep this thing quiet. We will talk when I come down. And keep this letter handy for reference.
Daggett thinks he can get the King to consent to nearly any reasonable thing. With a sufficient concession from him, I would rather have this book than any that is offering now. It can be fascinatingly illustrated. . . .
Yr. truly
S. L. C.

Copyright 1944 the Mark Twain Company.

Daggett was an old friend. He had been one of the Virginia City Enterprise group, and later, when he was in Congress, he had coöperated with Uncle Sam in copyright matters, so naturally Uncle Sam liked his book. It was published by the Webster Company and decidedly was not a success. Uncle Sam ignored it in his reminiscences.

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Dec. 16, ‘85. 6 P.M.
DEAR CHARLEY —
I am plotting out a new book, & am full of it; so unless there is use for me down there, I shall not come yet awhile.
Telegraph me as soon as you have settled the mask matter, for I am full of solicitude & shan’t feel easy & comfortable till it is settled to Mrs. Grant’s satisfaction. Don’t forget.
Yr truly
S. L. C.

The book was probably A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. It is too bad that Mark Twain ran into trouble about the death mask of General Grant at this time, when he was in a writing mood. Albert Bigelow Paine makes no mention of the “mask matter” in his biography, but Uncle Sam tells about it in his Notebook. Karl Gerhardt was a young sculptor whose studies in Paris Uncle Sam had financed; a photograph of Gerhardt’s portrait bust of his benefactor was used as the frontispiece of Huckleberry Finn. Shortly before the death of General Grant, Gerhardt wrote to Mark Twain, asking that he persuade the Grant family to allow the sculptor to take a death mask of the General.

Mark Twain felt a little uncomfortable about the project, so he told Gerhardt to get in touch with General Badeau, Grant’s old friend. Badeau had been on Grant’s staff and served as his secretary during the Civil War. Grant liked him. Uncle Sam also asked Badeau to coöperate with Gerhardt, which he did; General Badeau was not troubled by undue sensitiveness, and on Grant’s death the mask was made. Unfortunately, the question of who owned the mask seems to have come up. Apparently no agreement was reached at the time the mask was made which is not surprising. Evidently Gerhardt wanted to keep title to the original mask, so that he could sell reproductions of it.

The estimated loss of $100,000 due to this quarrel sounds high to me, but $100,000 was Mark Twain’s favorite figure for losses, $1,000,000 for profits.

HARTFORD, Dec. 17, ‘85
DEAR CHARLEY —
Well, I am at my wit’s end. Gerhardt is obdurate in the belief that his position is right and unassailable. I do not know any way out of the deadlock except the one proposed by Col. Grant. It will make scandal & newspaper talk, & injure the book a hundred thousand dollars’ worth, but nevertheless it is the course which I would advise the Colonel to take, for it will settle the matter & settle it permanently. Whether the thing shall go into court now, or wait till the Ward and Grant proceedings are ended & silenced & the second volume safely out & distributed to the subscribers, is a question for you to determine with the Colonel — but into court I would certainly go with it, sooner or later.
Yrs truly
S. L. CLEMENS

HARTFORD, Dec. 18, '85
Private
DEAR CHARLEY —
The more I think of it, the more dreadful seems the idea of going into court & dragging General Grant’s name out of the rest & peace of the grave again. This degrading scandal must be prevented — it just simply must.
Now I have an idea which you may think is a wild one, but I want you to consider it; not lightly, but thoughtfully — & then tell me your verdict. To-wit:
Mrs. Grant offers to remunerate Gerhardt for his trouble, & take the mask, but — well, I have stopped discussing that: his price is too high. But I have been figuring, & I find that he owes me more money than I supposed. Of borrowed money he owes me nine or ten thousand dollars, & I am responsible for eight thousand more — seventeen or eighteen thousand altogether: a sum which he cannot expect to pay me for years if he loses the mask. Now then, what I want to do is to propose to him that he hand over the mask to Mrs. Grant & I will give him a receipt in full for all he owes me & assume also the payment of the outstanding obligations. It is the same as giving him $17,000 or $18,000 for the mask. But it will restore Mrs. Grant’s peace of mind, & keep the scandal out of court & out of the papers.
Mrs. Grant proposes to publish the General’s letters to her — letters extending over a period of forty years. Two or three volumes, perhaps. If she is willing to give us the book at any figure under 70 per cent of the profits — even though it be but half a cent — good; it will be her contribution toward helping to keep this unpleasant thing out of court & out of the press. But if she isn’t walling, she mustn’t do it, nor think of it, & I will make the above offer to Gerhardt & shoulder all the expense of it myself. For that matter must be kept out of the mouths of the scandal-loving gossips of the country.
I have not hinted this idea to Gerhardt, & shall not until I hear from you. But to my mind it is the only hopeful solution I have struck yet.
Yr truly
S. L. C.

P.S. Read this letter between the lines. So read, it means: Sign & seal a contract for those letters before you sleep. They are enormously valuable — especially if there will be more than one volume; & I think there will be as many as three. They can be edited in such a way that whoever possesses them will have to go out & buy the Memoirs, too. You will speak of our publishing them as a foregone conclusion, a mere matter of course. I have already done that, myself. You don’t want to name a date for the publication, though — with absoluteness. They ought not to appear till 2 years from now, perhaps.

To make & secure that contract is the main thing. If you get it for less than 70 per cent, on the suggested excuse, all well & good — but get it. Get it, & sign it, & seal it, and shove it in the safe—& then I’ll go for Gerhardt & expect to convince him — will convince him if the contract is ready to be signed & only waiting to hear that I have convinced him. He will kick, & kick hard: I know that, before hand. S. L. C.

[P.P.S.] Your contract should cover & secure every letter forever against publication anywhere but in the book. S. L. C.

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Dec. 28, ‘85
DEAR CHARLEY —
Your letter looked like an autograph application, & so I laid it aside for next week, & only opened it this moment by accident. Of course I approve your “stet.” It won’t do to leave things out & make unnecessary alterations in the General’s text. Why didn’t you telegraph me to come down? I would rather do that any time, than have the General’s work marred. . . .
Have you seen Dana? It’s a clear $100,000. Don’t you wait till Dana is offended.
Strike— for that book, & also for the letters; for it is best that those be settled before I talk with the proprietors of the third book I spoke of—a book which we must have. With the priesthood to help, Dana’s book is immense. . . .
Yrs
S. L. C.

The book negotiated through Dana was the Life of Pope Leo XIII, written by Bernard O’Reilly, D.D., LL.D., “with the encouragement, approbation, and blessing of His Holiness the Pope.”

The first check paid to Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant, drawn by Charles L. Webster on February 27, 1886, was for $200,000. “It remains the largest single royalty check in history,” Mr. Paine wrote in the Biography. I don’t know whether that is still true. The original check is on the wall of The Players’ club in New York City.

On page 187 of Mark Twain in Eruption Uncle Sam says: “It is no great marvel to me that Mrs. Grant got a matter of half a million dollars out of that book. The miracle is that it didn’t run her into debt. It was fortunate for her that we had only one Webster. It was an unnatural oversight in me that I didn’t hunt for another one.”

There’s logic for you. My father performed a miracle, according to Uncle Sam, by not running her into debt. What did ho do by making half a million for her? If there had been two Websters, would they have not run her into debt, so that she would have made a million? When I remember that all Uncle Sam’s business ventures before this time had always drawn out his money and never drawn in any, that his publishing business was bringing him fifty thousand a year, even after deduction of checks that had been sent to Orion and other relatives including the voracious typesetter (which was an adopted child), that it had made Huckleberry Finn his best-paying novel, and that as long as my father was with the firm it was successful, I marvel at his nerve.

Once he said: “I am terribly tired of business. I think I am by nature and disposition unfit for it.” He was right but he was like the drunkard, always going to reform.

Feb. 8, ‘86
DEAR CHARLEY —
What do you hold the value of the concern to be?
I value it at $500,000 — dating from next July, when the Memoirs will be out of the count. What I mean is, that that is its selling value; we could not afford to sell for less, & yet neither of us would buy at that figure, perhaps.
Jesse Grant would not pay that for a one-tenth interest — ought not to do it, at any rate — but I will make him that offer if he will come up & see me toward the end of February (for Clara will not be out of bed before that). I will make him that offer, & then follow it up with another which will please him better & make him willing to stay out of our concern. But don’t tell him what my offer is going to be.
Love to you all.
Yrs
S. L. C.

[P.S.] Is the 2nd volume stereotyped?

Jesse Grant, a son of the General, was interested in buying into the Webster Company.

Notice that Uncle Sam values Charles L. Webster & Company at $500,000. He had already taken out his original capital of $15,000. In the first year he also took out $40,000 in profits. According to Mr.

Paine, the Grant book, ”even on the liberal terms allowed to the author,” yielded a net profit of $150,000 to its publishers, and Huckleberry Finn yielded $50,000 more.

From now on, I suppose, the business had no capital.

Feb. 13, ‘86
DEAR CHARLEY:
For the first time in a long while, I am so situated that I can’t well leave home. I have begun a book, whose scene is laid far back in the twilight of tradition: I have saturated myself with the atmosphere of the day & the subject, & got myself into the swing of the work. If I peg away for some weeks without a break, I am safe; if I stop now for a day, I am unsafe, & may never get started right again. Therefore I want to avoid going to New York or elsewhere. Mr. Prime will well understand this state of things. So I suggest that you have the MS type-writered (in upper & lower-case type) by an expert, & send it to me chapter by chapter as it is done, & Livy & I will read it together, nights. Mr. Prime will need the type-writer copy himself, in the editing, & the printer will need it too. Put this idea before him & see if it will do.
Claia’s case keeps us all shut up in the house these days. She is improving daily, but is very weak & inclined to Iow spirits. She does not have to lie in one position all the time, now; this is a great relief.
We are well satisfied with her progress.
Yr truly
S. L. C.

This must be the William C. Prime who is called a gushing pietist ” in Mark Twain in Eruption.

The book under discussion was, I think, McClellan’s Own Story. Prime was General McClellan’s literary executor.

The book Uncle Sam was writing was A Connecticut Yankee in King’s Arthur’s Court. When there was illness in the house, Mark Twain would stay home to be near the family and work on a book.

On page 189 of Mark Twain in Eruption Uncle Sam says: “Webster kept back a book of mine, ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,’ as long as he could and finally published it so surreptitiously that it took two or three years to find out there was any such book.”

On October 5, 1588, nearly a year after my father had completely broken down, severed all connection with the company, and retired to Fredonia, Uncle Sam said in a letter printed on page 874 of Paine’s Biography that he meant to finish A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court the day the Paige machine was finished, and “the closest calculations for that indicated October 22.” Mr. Paine adds: “Neither the ‘Yankee’ nor the machine was completed that Fall, though returns from both were beginning to be badly needed.”

In other words, Uncle Sam accuses my father of holding back, and finally publishing surreptitiously, a book that was not even completed until a year after my father had left the company.

June 11
DEAR CHARLEY —

See that you go for Wanamaker — otherwise I will go down there & rise up in his Sunday School & give him hell, in front of his whole 3000 pupils. I certainly will.
Yrs.
S. L. C.

Wanamaker was selling Mark Twain’s books at cut-rate prices and was sued for it. Wanamaker won the suit, but for nearly half a century the publishers continued the fight until net prices were established. Wanamaker’s Sunday School class was a famous Philadelphia institution.

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THE next letter has to do with Henry Ward Beecher, who was just starting his autobiography.

HARTFORD, Jan. 4, ‘87
DEAR CHARLEY —
Yes, ½ profits is the right offer to make his wide reputation entitles him to that — & if anybody wants to offer him more, we withdraw from the competition. The book will sell first rate — tip top — but ½ profits from us is as good as 75 per cent from any other house.

(Pond’s “colossal” check was $10,000 I guess. I am betting $25 to $5 that it wasn’t $25,000. If Pond wants to earn an honest penny just beguile him into taking me up. Pond never deals in small adjectives — “colossal” is a tame word for him.) If we can’t clear $40,000 for Beecher, at \ profits, it’ll be the author’s fault, not the publisher’s; that is, it will mean that he isn’t as good a card as we think he is.
Truly yours
S. L. CLEMENS

J. B. Pond managed Beecher’s lecture tours and wrote A Summer in England with Henry Ward Beecher in 1886. Probably the check had to do with this tour.

HARTFORD, Jan. 19, ‘87
DEAR CHARLEY:
$1,000 to Pond & an advance of $5,000 to Beecher is all right; but I feel as you do about going beyond that — would not do it. . . .
Yr truly
S. L. CLEMENS

Reminiscing twenly years later, Mark Twain said in a passage that unfortunately saw the light in Mark Twain in Eruption: —

“ By and by I found that Webster had agreed to resurrect Henry Ward Beecher’s ‘Life of Christ’.

I suggested that he ought to have tried for Lazarus, because that had been tried once and we knew it could be done. . . . He had also advanced to Mr. Beecher. . . . five thousand dollars on the future royalties. . . . I think he had just issued the first of the two volumes of which it was to consist when that ruinous scandal broke out and suffocated the enterprise.”

Here are some of the points he got wrong in one short paragraph. It wasn’t a resurrected book: it was a new venture. It wasn’t the Life of Christ, it was the Life of Beecher. The $5,000 advanced to Beecher was approved by Mark Twain as we have just seen. The “ruinous scandal” had broken over ten years before, and had nothing to do with the change of plans. It was Beecher s death that brought the project to an end.

HARTFORD, Feb. 15, ‘87
DEAR CHARLEY:
Mr. Howells wants to take the Library of Humor & publish it for me. If permitted to do this, the publisher into whose hands he will put it (Harper, of course) will allow his (Howells’s) name to be added to the title-page (according to the original project). I do not quite like the idea, unless I am otherwise running the risk of letting the book get too old before publication. I have a mind to tell him I can answer him better a year or two hence. How does that strike you?
Yrs.
S. L. C.

[P.S.] Yours just received. My valuation of Beecher’s book goes up as much as double what it was. If he writes the book in that way, & heaves in just enough piousness, it will sell (hoping it may be two volumes) 200,000 of vol. 1, & 125,000 of vol. 2: profit $350,000.

Yrs

S. L. C.

[P.P.S.] If but one volume, it will sell 275,000.

HARTFORD, Feb. 25, ‘87
DEAR CHARLEY —
We all want you to come up for a day or two, if you can get the time, & finish up Pamela & Annie’s visit with us. Annie doubts if you can spare the time from work; but if you can, the rest & recreation may make up for the lost time. A moment’s rest from work is good medicine for neuralgia.
Truly yours
S. L. CLEMENS

This was the first sign of my father’s breakdown. Uncle Sam always meant to do the kind thing, but I don’t believe my father would have had much rest coming to him on that visit, with all the problems they had in common.

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HARTFORD, Mar. 1, ‘87
DEAR CHARLEY;
I think well of the Stedman book, but I can’t somehow bring myself to think very well of it. My notions are too long to write; but you look in here, on your rounds, & we will swap ideas.
There are two books which ought to be written, & which would sell steadily, like cyclopedias. We can get them done. We will talk about that, too.
The Pope’s canvassing-book would sell a Choctaw Bible, it is so handsome. Brer Simeoni got in in admirable good form, too. That book is going to go, sure.
Truly yours
S. L. CLEMENS

To this Stedman book Mark Twain in Eruption lays the downfall of the firm. According to Mr. Paine, the trouble with the Stedman book was that it was too successful. It was a “Library of American Literature” in ten volumes — the kind of book that would sell steadily and indefinitely by subscription in homes all over America, It was compiled by Edmund Clarence Stedman and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson.

The next letter is to Jane Lampton Clemens, Mark Twain’s mother. It begins with an affectionate reference to his youngest daughter; —

ELMIRA, July 24, ‘87
DEAR MA —
Jean will be 7 years old day after tomorrow, & will celebrate the anniversary here at the farm — mainly on the Ellcrslie part of it; but I shall be in New York, & can’t take a hand, except by telegraph. Jean has got a good level head, but she is as dull at learning as I was — & am. She can spell — that is, as well as her mother or her aunt Sue — but children are born that far along. . . . Jean is an expert on animals, at any rate — she has Clara’s gift and interest in that line.
We have put in this whole Sunday forenoon teaching the new dog to let the cats alone, & it has been uncommonly lively for those 5 cats. They have spent the most of the time in the trees, swearing. He is the alertest dog that ever was; nothing escapes his observation; & as to movement, he makes a white st reak through the air 30 yards long when he is getting started; after that he is invisible.
All the whole family send you a world of love & would dearly like to see you; but it’s a long way, & even the dead can’t travel in such weather, without spoiling. Jean rages over that Keokuk weather to this day.
Your affectionate son
SAM

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STARTING a new publishing house on such an enormous scale, with worries and long hours, had broken my father’s health. He spent the summer of 1887 at Far Rockaway, going to t he office when he could. His neuralgia was terrific. His mother and father came down to visit him and were shocked at his condition. He was very irritable, and the slightest thing would bring an outburst. His mother was often hurt by his irascibility, but the rest of the household understood the situation. This is probably what Mark Twain means when he speaks of his supersensitiveness. I haven’t a doubt that at this period he gave Uncle Sam some good straight talks, and may have been as unjust to Uncle Sam as Uncle Sam was to him twenty years later.

Uncle Sam would write his grudges out of his system. About the only true part of Uncle Sam’s account of this period in Mark Twain in Eruption is what he says about my father’s breakdown. But he ignored the chief cause of the Webster Company’s failure: the burden of carrying a typesetter that was costing three thousand dollars a month. As Mr. Paine says, the typesetter and the publishing house were intermingled. Mark Twain also forgot to say that the company did not fail until six years after my father had retired.

I think both Uncle Sam and Aunt Livy must have felt that the business was to blame for my father’s breakdown and death. Uncle Sam couldn’t stand a guilty feeling, but he couldn’t do anything about it when Aunt Livy was alive, so he waited till after her death before he wrote his own version of the story.

My father returned to Fredonia, New York, and his letters show that for a while he thought his illness was only temporary. In the morning he was a sick man, but in the afternoons he was able to get up and go about. He was elected president of the village— a position that didn’t involve a great deal of work—and took an interest in developing a museum on the top floor of his house a feature of the town for years. The neighbors always used to bring their visiting friends to see it.

He also built a cupola on our house, with a revolving top, and installed a telescope. The most exciting thing I ever saw through it was a fire in Canada, across Lake Erie. He also made some wonderful ship models, perfect in every detail. One was a model of the Constitution. My father never recovered his health. A letter which he wrote early in his illness to Mr. Daniel Whitford, one of the Company lawyers, show’s his true feelings about the contracts with Uncle Sam, particularly that clause whereby — according to Mark Twain — he became Webster’s “ slave”: —

“Mr. Clemens now complains of a clause (placing all business in my hands) which has appeared in every contract he ever made with me, and reiterated in six contracts; a clause that was his original proposition. . . . But talk is idle, the matter is now settled, and a bad disagreeable muss is avoided. I will have a chance to get well at least and that’s all I care about at present. I only hope that when Fred [Hall] is engaged in some great or even fairly profitable enterprise, I do hope Mr. Clemens won’t want him to drop it or neglect it to revive that ‘patent baby clamp’ business to prevent lively infants from kicking off the bed clothes and catching cold.

“Now Dan you may treat this as a strictly private letter for in spite of my knowledge of affairs I wish Fred nothing but success. I hope he will succeed. I have sold out my interest for far less than I believe it to be worth but it is done and that is the end of it. You will hear nothing more from me on the subject. I shall try and regain my health and when that is done I shall go into something else.”

The final letter in this series was written by Mark Twain to his sister Pamela, who had been his spiritual guide in his youth. It sums up Uncle Sam’s character, at least as it seemed to him at that moment: —

HARTFORD, May 13, ‘90
DEAR SISTER:
Indeed my character never gives me any concern.

I never sit up with it when it seems to be sick, never bother about it in any way. I have always approved & admired it, I still approve and admire it, I strenuously desire & do steadfastly believe that my relatives & friends approve & admire it, I know God approves & admires it — & there’s the end: What the rest of the public think of it is not matter of life & death interest to me. This is why I have allowed House to have the whole newspaper field to himself unreplied to. Let that dog bark till his teeth drop out — it will do him no good, it will not make him famous (which is what he is after); a year hence nobody will be able to remember what cur it was that barked, nor who it was he barked at.
Therefore, give yourself no reproaches for firing Orion up & setting his activities a-whirling; no harm is done. I always keep still, & presently he quiets down, or begins to raise hell with some local religious or other political question.
The House matter has never cost me any sleep, & isn’t going to. (Privately, if Orion could have been spared from Ma, I would have put the case into his hands — but don’t tell him so. He knows more law than the Keokuckers suspect.)
We all send love to you and Sam & Mary; & we sail for the Pyrennees either June 7 or July 5, I reckon.
SAM

Well, Uncle Sam was right. I do not know who House was, or what he was “yapping” about. Apparently he didn’t draw blood.

Uncle Sam liked approval as well as anyone, but he didn’t let public opinion rule him. The good opinion he valued most was his own. Livy’s came next, and then that of the rest of the family, and of other biased people. He knew his faults as well as anyone, but he was used to them and didn’t want to lose them. He did have a strong conscience that worried him at times, but as a rule he let his character alone, and it was just as well for if he had worked too hard to improve it he might have lost his humor.