MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I reckon it would ruin the book that is, make it necessary to pigeon-hole it and leave it unpublished.I couldn't publish it without a very responsible name to support my own on the title page, because it has so much of my own matter in it.I bought Osgood's rights for $3,000 cash, I have paid Clark $800 and owe him $700 more, which must of course be paid whether I publish or not.Yet I fully recognize that Ihave no sort of moral right to let that ancient and procrastinated contract hamper you in any way, and I most certainly won't.So, it is my decision,--after thinking over and rejecting the idea of trying to buy permission of the Harpers for $2,500 to use your name, (a proposition which they would hate to refuse to a man in a perplexed position, and yet would naturally have to refuse it,) to pigeon-hole the "Library": not destroy it, but merely pigeon-hole it and wait a few years and see what new notion Providence will take concerning it.He will not desert us now, after putting in four licks to our one on this book all this time.
It really seems in a sense discourteous not to call it "Providence's Library of Humor."Now that deal is all settled, the next question is, do you need and must you require that $2,000 now? Since last March, you know, I am carrying a mighty load, solitary and alone--General Grant's book--and must carry it till the first volume is 30 days old (Jan.1st) before the relief money will begin to flow in.From now till the first of January every dollar is as valuable to me as it could be to a famishing tramp.If you can wait till then--I mean without discomfort, without inconvenience--it will be a large accommodation to me; but I will not allow you to do this favor if it will discommode you.So, speak right out, frankly, and if you need the money I will go out on the highway and get it, using violence, if necessary.
Mind, I am not in financial difficulties, and am not going to be.I am merely a starving beggar standing outside the door of plenty--obstructed by a Yale time-lock which is set for Jan.1st.I can stand it, and stand it perfectly well; but the days do seem to fool along considerable slower than they used to.
I am mighty glad you are with the Harpers.I have noticed that good men in their employ go there to stay.
Yours ever, MARK.
In the next letter we begin to get some idea of the size of Mark Twain's first publishing venture, and a brief summary of results may not be out of place here.
The Grant Life was issued in two volumes.In the early months of the year when the agents' canvass was just beginning, Mark Twain, with what seems now almost clairvoyant vision, prophesied a sale of three hundred thousand sets.The actual sales ran somewhat more than this number.On February 27, 1886, Charles L.Webster & Co.
paid to Mrs.Grant the largest single royalty check in the history of book-publishing.The amount of it was two hundred thousand dollars.Subsequent checks increased the aggregate return to considerably more than double this figure.In a memorandum made by Clemens in the midst of the canvass he wrote.""During 100 consecutive days the sales (i.e., subscriptions) of General Grant's book averaged 3,000 sets (6,000 single volumes) per day: Roughly stated, Mrs.Grant's income during all that time was $5,000 a day."To W.D.Howells, in Boston:
HOTEL NORMANDIE
NEW YORK, Dec.2, '85.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,-- I told Webster, this afternoon, to send you that $2,000; but he is in such a rush, these first days of publication, that he may possibly forget it; so I write lest I forget it too.Remind me, if he should forget.When I postponed you lately, I did it because Ithought I should be cramped for money until January, but that has turned out to be an error, so I hasten to cut short the postponement.
