June 23 Saturday – About this day Sam gave Lyon a memo to write Witter Bynner: “Write Bynner that Mr. Clemens feels that McClure is a publisher & not an editor. Can’t you look over that Ms.” [MTP]. Note: Bynner was an editor at this time for McClure’s. See ca. June 10 entry.
Another memo was given to Lyon, this for Samuel S. McClure likely having to do with the same above reply to Bynner. Both memos carry a “?” for this date: “Telegraph Mr. McClure that Mr. Clemens can see him at noon on Wednesday June 27” [MTP].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: Mr. Clemens has been harassed ever since we arrived here by what he calls “the Harper treacheries.” They issued the Library of Humor last winter. I wondered why Mr. Clemens did not make a fuss about that publication, but he was interested in other things then & he didn’t notice what a damaging book it is. But he knows it now & we are negotiating with Mr. Rogers by long distance telephone to make a plan for Mr. Clemens to go to N.Y. next week & begin operations against the Harpers by making them withdraw the Library of Humor from the trade, & destroy the plates—at the same time publishing Mr. Clemens’s repudiation of the book. He grows so angry, so indignant—and every day he makes a fresh plan, every day he outlines a fresh attack on those publishers. He said they are all of them scamps but Mr. Duneka is more fool than knave, the King says, yet he loves all of these men [MTP TS 88-89; also MTHHR 612n3 in part].
Note: once he felt wronged, as he surely was in the reissue of Library of Humor, Sam could be obsessed and unrelenting in his attempts at retribution. Lyon further pointed out that he felt all publishers were “scamps,” a sore point that went back to the double-books of Elisha Bliss.
George B. Harvey, upon his return from Europe, quickly smoothed things over.
Clemens’ A.D. this day included: Concerning the character of the real God [MTP: Autodict2].
Another memo was given to Lyon, this for Samuel S. McClure likely having to do with the same above reply to Bynner. Both memos carry a “?” for this date: “Telegraph Mr. McClure that Mr. Clemens can see him at noon on Wednesday June 27” [MTP].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: Mr. Clemens has been harassed ever since we arrived here by what he calls “the Harper treacheries.” They issued the Library of Humor last winter. I wondered why Mr. Clemens did not make a fuss about that publication, but he was interested in other things then & he didn’t notice what a damaging book it is. But he knows it now & we are negotiating with Mr. Rogers by long distance telephone to make a plan for Mr. Clemens to go to N.Y. next week & begin operations against the Harpers by making them withdraw the Library of Humor from the trade, & destroy the plates—at the same time publishing Mr. Clemens’s repudiation of the book. He grows so angry, so indignant—and every day he makes a fresh plan, every day he outlines a fresh attack on those publishers. He said they are all of them scamps but Mr. Duneka is more fool than knave, the King says, yet he loves all of these men [MTP TS 88-89; also MTHHR 612n3 in part].
Note: once he felt wronged, as he surely was in the reissue of Library of Humor, Sam could be obsessed and unrelenting in his attempts at retribution. Lyon further pointed out that he felt all publishers were “scamps,” a sore point that went back to the double-books of Elisha Bliss.
George B. Harvey, upon his return from Europe, quickly smoothed things over.
Clemens’ A.D. this day included: Concerning the character of the real God [MTP: Autodict2].
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