January 28 Thursday – In Washington, D.C., Sam spoke before the U.S. Senate Committee, His “Remarks on Copyright” can be found in Fatout’s Mark Twain Speaking, p.206-9. Fatout prefaces:
“When the Authors Copyright League and the Publishers Copyright League joined forces to exert pressure on Congress, Mark Twain, together with members of both Leagues, appeared before a senate committee in 1886. His remarks were rather inconclusive, perhaps because he was unsure of his role or because he did not entirely favor the bill under consideration, drafted by Senator Hawley. At any rate, the Hawley bill became the eleventh copyright measure in forty years that failed to reach the floor, all being killed in committee. An acceptable bill was finally passed, however, in the last hour of the last day of the Fifty-first Congress, March 1891.”
Sam had lunch with Joseph R. Hawley, who he always called “General.” Afterward he went to Mrs. Hawley’s reception, where he saw Mrs. Robert Allen.
Sam then wrote to Livy and sent the love of Mrs. Hawley and Mrs. Allen, and also told of General Logan’s reception, “where there was a prodigious crowd.”
I staid there an hour & a half; & got home at 6.30, & stumbled on Gen. Franklin & General Hancock; & Whitmore & I are occupying their parlor until they shall return from an engagement at 8 oclock, when we are to have some whist. Whitmore attended the Hawley reception with me, but remained in the hack at Gen. Logan’s, & thereby missed seeing a brilliant gang of people. I’d have given a great deal to have you at those two receptions….I do wish you would come here with me & spend a week. You would be charmed [MTP].
Note: General John A. Logan (1826-1886) of Illinois helped to establish Memorial Day as a holiday in 1868. He was a volunteer on the Union side in the Civil War, and elected to the Senate in 1871 and 1874; and was James G. Blaine’s running mate in 1884. He died on Dec. 26, 1886.
In the home of John M. Hay, Sam met Henry Adams (1838-1918), American novelist, journalist, and historian. Adams was the grandson of John Quincy Adams, and son of Charles Francis Adams, Sr.
In “The Mutual Awareness of Mark Twain and Henry Adams” by Charles Vandersee (1968), this meeting is seen as significant. Gribben writes, “Unfortunately Vandersee then tries to depict this single conversation as the basis for Twain’s using a fictional Henry Adams to represent an unhappy man in “What Is Man?” Gribben states that Sam simply “had a lifelong affinity for the name ‘Adam’….Not every literary character’s name is pregnant with hidden meanings” [8].
At 8:30 in the evening, Sam wrote Livy about the day’s events:
Livy darling, it was a very interesting séance this morning, but tomorrow’s will be still more so, because Mr. Lowell will be present. I can be useful; so I promised to remain & be present again to-morrow.
The New York Times, p.5, announced that Mrs. Grant would receive a huge check within the month.
A HANDSOME CHECK FOR MRS. GRANT
The sale of the “Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant” have reached 325,000 sets in this country, and Charles L. Webster & Co., the publishers, are making preparations for a demand of 400,000 sets. Nine thousand canvassers have been employed, 200 of whom have had New York City and Brooklyn for their field. The sets cost from $7 in cloth to $25 in tree calf, and there have been only 100 refusals out of 325,000 subscriptions. The sale in the South is very moderate, but in the West it is enormous. The publishers have imported a large number of copies of the work in German, and they find a ready sale. As to the sale of the work abroad, it is impossible to speak at present, for booksellers’ reports are only made semi-annually. It is now positively announced that the second volume will appear on the 10th of March. The publishers stated yesterday that a check for a sum between $225,000 and $250,000 would be given to Mrs. Grant within the next 30 days.
January 28 or 29 Friday – In Washington, D.C. Sam was interviewed briefly by George Alfred Townsend (1841-1914), a correspondent for the Cincinnati Enquirer who wrote under the byline of “Gath.” The interview ran in the paper shortly thereafter and was reprinted Feb. 26 in the Bismark (N.D.) Daily Tribune:
“GATH’S” CHAT WITH MARK TWAIN
Grant’s Book — Success in the Publishing Business — Autobiographical.
The day the copyright people came to Washington to talk before one of the committees I sat down for a few minutes at a table with Mark Twain, and I asked him if it was true that Mrs. Grant had received $250,000 from the memoirs of her husband. Said he, “It is not due her for about a month, but she will get more than that.”
“Good,” said Senator Hawley.
Said I: “Mr. Clemens, you are as great a publisher as you were an author. Sir Walter Scott failed as a publisher, but you make money.”
“Yes,” said Mark Twain, “I own nine-tenths of the capital in the publishing-house which has issued Grant’s book. It has a remarkable sale. But I received not long ago $52,000 for my profits on one of my own books, ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ the last book I produced.”
Said I: “I understood you to say that there was no money in books except the pleasure of writing them.”
“Oh, no,” said Clemens; “I did not say that. I said that the only way to make a successful book was to write it with no other avarice than the pleasure of doing it, and then it might be a great success; whereas, if written for money it generally fails.”
I looked at Mark Twain with a mild interest. Eighteen years ago I first met him in this city, before he was married, when he was writing a few letters to the newspapers for $25 apiece. He had just returned from his trip to Europe and foreign lands, and boarded in a plain house in Washington, and was embarrassed to get possession of the letters which he had published, which his newspaper employers had copyrighted and were indisposed to give him. He got the letters at last and issued his book, and he met about the same time his wife. He is now gray, but hale-looking, but can be quite entertaining when he desires.
While we were talking John P. Jones passed through the room, the Nevada senator. “I must see Jones,” said Clemens, “for he and I were old chums out in Nevada when he was superintendent of a mine there, and had not come to greatness.”
Something was said about the monument to Gen. Grant, and a statue of him. Mark Twain remarked: “There could have been no statue made of Gen. Grant except within the last five or six years of his life. His face had not assumed the lines and the fullness of expression until after 1880. Then you began to see a portrait there, signs of experience, tones of expression and the effects of the world and great events upon a man.”