July 9 Thursday – In Elmira Clemens wrote to Henry M. Stanley.

My Dear Stanley— / I am publishing General Grant’s Personal Memoirs, & I venture to send to you my nephew & partner, Chas. L. Webster, to act on behalf of General Grant, & also myself, for a sort of information which you are better able to furnish than any other man I am acquainted with on the author’s side of the book business, for you have made many foreign book-contracts, & your books have been translated into many languages. Won’t you please give Webster some points upon royalties, share-publishing, &c; & also advise him as to what languages he had better have this book translated into; & whether he had better give all Europe to a London publisher, or go to Germany, Austria & France, & make special contracts there.

      Eighty-five per cent of the European result goes to the General’s pocket; we simply take the remaining 15 per cent to cover Webster’s time & expenses. I know that you will be prompt & willing to do the General a service as any other American, & so I intrude this matter upon you without remorse or hesitation.

With always increasing admiration I am / Sincerely Yours … [MTP].

Charles King, Hartford dealer in “Stoves, ranges, furnaces” billed Sam $8.85 for Jan. and Mar. work, grates, pieces, labor; paid; Linus T. Fenn, Hartford Mfg. & dealer in furniture, bedding was paid $34.90 for an undated bill for “use of 42 oak finished chairs; doing over mattresses; 1 library step ladder, carpeted top” [MTP].

Orion Clemens wrote more about Ma, Puss,and family matters [MTP].

Karl Gerhardt wrote to ask advise about denying “such scurrilous paragraphs as this, disgusting to the family of Grant’s.” He mentioned the Chicago Tribune and the Milwaukee papers, but no clippings in file [MTP]. Note: rumors were passed that Grant did not write the Memoirs.