January 2 Monday – London Pall Mall Gazette, p.4 ran a paragraph about the recent exchange between Sam and Brander Matthews over copyright. Items from London writers often lend a different perspective on events in Sam’s life.

The copyright controversy, hitherto a dull affair, has at last been amply enlivened. Mark Twain has rushed into the fray, demolishing, or thinking to demolish, Mr. Brander Matthew’s article in the New Princeton Review on the sins of English publishers. “I read your article to the cat,” says Clemens — “well, I never saw a cat carry on so.” And again, “Don’t you know that as long as you’ve got a goiter that you have to trundle around on a wheelbarrow you can’t divert attention from it by throwing bricks at a man that’s got a wart on the back of his ear?” Mark Twain’s contention is that so long as England is generous enough to allow a cast-iron copyright to any one who takes a trip to Canada at the date of publication the American author has only himself to blame if he fails to profit by this generosity. Mr. Matthews retorts that Mr. Clemens who is rich, and lives at Hartford, may find no hardship in an arrangement which bears heavily on an author who is poor and lives in Florida. Besides, this generous law does not protect matter which appears in periodicals, and, as a matter of fact, leaves room in many other ways for gross injustices. Finally, Mr. Matthews asserts that his whole object was to show that all the right is not on the side of England and all the wrong on the side of America — an assumption which English writers are certainly too apt to make.

Augustin Daly for Daly’s Theatre sent the following invitation:

Mr. Augustin Daly will be very much pleased to have Mr. S. L. Clemens meet Mr. Booth, Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Palmer and a few friends at lunch on Friday next, January 6th (at one o’clock in Delmonico’s), to discuss the formation of a new club which it is thought will claim your interest. R.S.V.P. [MTB 866]. Note: this became the Players Club.

Joseph G. Lane, Wholesale Grocer & Commission Merchant, Hartford, billed $26.69 for Oct. 14, Nov. 9, 29 purchases for “Sherry, Claret, Sx Dry, Bask Chauip” [?]; Paid Jan. 10 [MTP].

Pamela Moffett wrote from Oakland, Calif. Thanking Sam for the Christmas money sent. She gave her son Samuel $10 and he bought a book of etchings with it, which his wife “Mamie” was delighted with. She’d sent some “trifles” to the children which she hoped they got [MTP].