January 18 Saturday – The Hartford Courant printed “Mark Twain’s Lawsuit” on the front page.
Mr. Edward H. House, the author and journalist, has brought suit against Mr. Samuel L. Clemens, alleging breach of contract in relation to the dramatization of The Prince and the Pauper. An acting version of the play in question by Mrs. Abby Sage Richardson is announced for next Monday evening at the Broadway Theater, New York, with Elsie Leslie in the parts of Edward VI and Tom Canty.
Mr. House’s side of the story appeared in the New York Tribune of yesterday. It sets forth that in 1881 Mr. House at Mr. Clemens’s request edited the manuscript of the story and suggested dramatizing the work. Nothing came of the suggestion, and he went to Japan and remained four years. Soon after his return Mr. Clemens wrote him proposing that he dramatize the book and offering one-half or two-thirds of the profits, that he accepted and suggested having the two parts played by one actress, that Mr. Clemens approved the idea, and that in June 1887 he (House) read to Mr. Clemens the first act, that he finished the piece in August of the same year, and in the following February wrote to Mr. Clemens as to newspaper paragraphs that Mrs. Richardson was to dramatize the book. He received no reply, but in answer to a second letter Mr. Clemens wrote, repudiating the whole transaction, but later offered him $5,000 as compensation, which he declined to receive.
A Courant reporter called on Mr. Clemens yesterday afternoon. He was found in his cozy billiard room and seemed quite willing to talk about the matter. He said: “Mr. House was never invited to edit the book for me. He asked if he might read the manuscript while lying bedridden for several weeks simply to satisfy his own curiosity. He made one suggestion — which turned out to be a fallacy. I had used in my book some such expression as this: ‘This person was kindly entreated,’ &c. Mr. House judged it was too late a date to use that form, ‘entreated,’ and advised leaving off the first syllable. I do not remember whether I corrected it or not, but afterward found that it was in use in the time of Henry VIII.”
“How about suggesting the advisability of dramatizing the work?” was asked.
“As if that was original!” exclaimed Mr. Clemens. “It needed no suggestion from Mr. House. The story was originally planned for a drama and not as a book. I doubted my ability to write a drama, but wrote it purposely for somebody capable of doing so to turn it into a drama.”
“He says you offered him one-half or two-thirds of the profits.”
“Mr. House did not accept the proposition. In his letter he only entertained it in a noncommittal way. He did not discard the proposition, but there was nothing is his letter that can be construed into an acceptance. The proposition and his non-acceptance are of the date 1886.”
“He next speaks of suggesting the idea of having the two parts played by one actress. How as to that?”
“A suggestion made three years before by Mr. Will Gillette,” promptly returned Mr. Clemens. “I tried to get Mr. Gillette to dramatize the book for me, giving him full permission to do so. Mr. Gillette entertained this proposition in 1883, and went so far as to draft the plot for the play, making liberal alterations of the text of the book. Mr. Gillette has never retired from the undertaking, and if an undertaking of that kind can remain in force forever, then it is Mr. Gillette that has a claim upon me, and not Mr. House. If I had no right to give Mrs. Richardson permission in 1888 to dramatize, I of course had no right to give Mr. House permission in 1886. Somewhere between 1883 and 1888 I dramatized the book myself, but was assured by competent authorities that neither the living nor the dead could act the play as I had planned it.”
“Mr. House affirms,” pursued the reporter, “that he read you the first act of the play in June, 1887.”
“In that part of 1887,” continued Mr. Clemens, “Mr. House was a guest for a while at my home. I aroused his sleeping interest in the matter, and thought he was going to dramatize the piece, but it was a mistake. He merely showed me a skeleton plan for the first act, with some trifles of conversation put in to indicate the drift of the act. That he wrote a complete act is absolutely untrue.”
“Mr. House says in his affidavit that he wrote you that the piece was finished in August, 1887.”
“A year ago he wrote me the same statement, changing the date of finishing the piece to September, 1887. With anybody else this slight discrepancy of dates would count for nothing. With Mr. House the case is different. If he ever wrote me a letter in which he said he had finished the piece, he has a copy of that letter by him and did not need to make that error. Mr. House is a methodical man, an excellent business man, and never destroys or mislays any scrap of writing that comes to him from any one, or fails to keep a copy of every scrap which he writes himself. I never received any letter from Mr. House saying the play was finished. I was at home again from the vacation as early as October of that year, (1887,) and he did not mention the play in any way during the many months that followed during his stay in Hartford. Evidently he had dropped the play entirely our of his mind. He was busy with other matters, and never made any reference to it. I was thoroughly well pleased with his skeleton of the first act, and said so without reservation. But when I recognized that the most I could hope to get from him was a skeleton for me to fill out, my interest in the matter at once disappeared. He was a near neighbor for many months after that. Our intercourse was constant and familiar, he coming to my house and I going to his to talk and gossip after the manner of friends. Yet throughout this cordial intercourse he remained silent as to that dramatization. I believed then and I believe now that with the skeletonizing of the first act Mr. House’s interest in the project came to an end. Late in 1888 Mrs. Richardson wrote and asked permission to dramatize the book. I had always been on the lookout for some person willing to do this work, and was not particular as to what the terms might be. So I wrote her promptly and accorded the permission. I also gave her Mr. Houses’ New York address and said that he had once taken an interest in this thing. I suggested that she call on him and see if she could secure his cooperation, as he had had practice in dramatic work. She declined, however, preferring to do all the work herself.”
“Another matter, Mr. Clemens. Mr. House asserts that he saw it stated in the papers that you had allowed Mrs. Richardson to dramatize the work, wrote you, and received no reply. Is that so?”
“Mr. House knew why he received no reply,” was the answer. “I was not in Hartford. I told him so when I answered his second letter. Now, as regards my repudiation of the transaction: If asking him to send me a copy of any contract or agreement existing between him and me so that I might, as I said, ‘undo any wrong suffered at my hands,’ is ‘repudiating the whole transaction,’ then I certainly repudiated it for that is what I wrote. As to the alleged proposition to pay him $5,000 as compensation, a proposition that he says he declined, I would only say that it is another effort of Mr. House’s imagination. I never offered him a penny nor consented to join anybody else in offering him one. Again, he says that ‘arbitration was tried without success.’ If that was done, I had nothing whatever to do with it. I would not have consented to arbitrate with a man who had no shadow of a claim against me. After about eighteen months of petrified absence of interest in this dramatization, Mr. House’s condition instantly unpetrified itself when he found that somebody else was willing to undertake the work. He not only imagines that he has an agreement with me for a dramatization, but that the term of it is eternal. It is only fair, then, that the settling of our dispute should be accorded the same liberal lack of hurry. Mr. House is never so entertaining as when he has a grievance. We shall be able to pass the hereafter very pleasantly. Some of the statements in Mr. House’s affidavit are true, but the court will probably give information to amend them.”
The New York Times of yesterday said: “Mark Twain has given to Howard P. Taylor, the playwright, the exclusive right to dramatize his latest work, A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. Mr. Taylor will make a spectacular comedy of it, and when completed it will have its first production at one of the Broadway theaters [Scharnhorst, Interviews 113-116; Also reprinted in the N.Y. Times, Jan. 31, 1890].
Note: the newspapers were full of the case for much of the year. Edward H. House would join other past friends and associates on the dark side of Sam’s regard.
William Algie of Alton Ontario wrote to compliment Sam on CY, especially Chapter XIII, which opined on the French Revolution. Algie also wondered about an old article of Sam’s in “Memoranda,” about criticism of Rev. William Sabine for his action at the funeral of George Holland [MTP]. Note: See Jan. 30, 1871 (Vol. I) for Sam’s criticism, which he failed to recall in his ca. Jan. 20 answer to Algie.
Andrew H.H. Dawson wrote on N.Y. District Atty. letterhead to Sam, that “La Grippe” had “elminated the feminine feaure from our festival and changed the venue to Morelli’s. Sam wrote “answer not needed” on the envelope [MTP]. “La Grippe” was influenza.
R.W. Nelson for Thorne Typesetting Machine Co. wrote to Sam: “Please accept thanks for Mr. Hudson’s letter, which I herewith return to you. We will do the best we can with his order but have nearly fifty orders now on hand.” The letter referred to was Jan. 16, 1890 from Edmund Hudson to SLC [MTP]. See Jan. 17 entry.
A.C. Liebert for Conn. Life Ins., Hartford solicited Sam for policies with forms entirely in German! [MTP].
January 18 Saturday ca. – Sam wrote a letter of regret to the Single Tax Club of New York for being unable to attend the Jan. 20 farewell dinner to Henry George, who was leaving on a speaking tour to Australia. Daniel Carter Beard was president of the Flushing, Long Island chapter of the Single Tax Club [Brooklyn Eagle, Jan. 21, 1890, p.1, “Farewell Dinner to Henry George”]. Note: this letter unlisted in the MTP files.
An anonymous reviewer of CY in the Scots Observer wrote,
As for Mark Twain, he has turned didactic, and being ignorant is also misleading and offensive [Tenney 18].