January 30 Saturday – Sam was at the Hotel Normandie in New York [Prime’s Jan. 29].

The copyright issue and bills in the U.S. Congress also resonated overseas. The London Pall Mall Gazette carried an article, “THE AMERICANS AND INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT” on p.7:

Mr. Samuel Clemens (“Mark Twain”) said that he would do nothing to jeopardize Mr. Hawley’s bill, but he doubted his ability to pass it on its rigid simplicity. He said some persons were called “pirates.” But since they were pirates by collusion with the American Government, which made them pirates, they had a right to be pirates. They had been working under that right for a long time, publishing pirated books, and had invested their money in the confidence that they would be supported, and that no injustice would be done them. He feared Mr. Hawley’s bill would work great injustice to them. He would like a printing clause put in the bill. Authors were less concerned pecuniarily than were a lot of other people — publishers, printers, binders, &c. He saw no objection to the inserting of a clause requiring foreigners’ books when “copyrighted” in America to be printed there. Mr. Clemens described the method of obtaining English copyright. He had for years received a larger royalty in England than in America. The royalty paid in England on General Grant’s book was the largest paid on any book in any country in any age of the world. The royalties paid in France and Germany were also exceedingly large. These came as a result of the convention with England.

George H. Himes of Portland Oregon fame wrote a long, colorful letter to Sam upon his reply. Himes told of their mutual acquaintance, Urban E. Hicks from the first meeting with Himes in 1853, five miles east of Olympia, Wash. Himes then added some autobiographical information and a funny story about serving Joaquin Miller some bitters he thought was a cocktail, containing brandy, gill alcohol, cayenne pepper, gum myrrh, and lobelia, “the old recipe for which decoction was given me by an old Wabasher in 1864, as a dead shot for ague” [MTP]. See Jan. 17 entry.