May 20 Wednesday – In Hartford Sam responded to William Dean Howells’ May 19.
DEAR HOWELLS, — For her health’s sake Mrs. Clemens must try baths somewhere, & this it is that has determined us to go to Europe. The water required seems to be provided at a little obscure & little-visited nook up in the hills back of the Rhine somewhere & you get to it by Rhine traffic-boat & country stage-coach. Come, get “sick or sorry enough” & join us. We shall be a little while at that bath, & the rest of the summer at Annecy (this confidential to you) in Haute Savoie, 22 miles from Geneva. Spend the winters in Berlin. I don’t know how long we shall be in Europe — I have a vote, but I don’t cast it. I’m going to do whatever the others desire, with leave to change their mind, without prejudice, whenever they want to. Travel has no longer, any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to see except heaven & hell, & I have only a vague curiosity as concerns one of those.
I found I couldn’t use the play — I had departed too far from its lines when I came to look at it. I thought I might get a great deal of dialogue out of it, but I got only 15 loosely written pages — they saved me half a day’s work. It was the cursing phonograph. There was abundance of good dialogue, but it couldn’t befitted into the new conditions of the story.
Oh, look here — I did to-day what I have several times in past years thought of doing: answered an interviewing proposition from a rich newspaper with the reminder that they had not stated the terms; that my time was all occupied with writing, at good pay, & that as talking was harder work I should not care to venture it unless I knew the pay was going to be proportionately higher. I wish I had thought of this the other day when Charley Stoddard turned a pleasant Englishman loose on me & I couldn’t think of any rational excuse. Ys Ever MARK [MTHL 2: 645-6].
Sam also responded to Julius Chambers’ May 19 proposition for Sam to speak for pay. Since he felt giving a talk was harder work than writing, and he was making “good pay” writing, he wanted him “to know that the pay was proportionately higher before venturing it.” Chambers was the editor of the N.Y. World [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Frederick J. Hall about The American Claimant rights. He was hesitant to sign away his rights in England. Cyrus Curtis, publisher of the Ladies Home Journal, thought the American copyright would be compromised by a prior weekly serialization in England, which Sam felt was “hardly valid.” Sam related his visit “a day or two before” with Samuel S. McClure, who’d offered him $300 “per Century page” for a few European letters to syndicate. Sam wrote this was “three times as much as Curtis is offering for this story [The American Claimant].”
Mc[Clure] wanted to call on you (he is acquainted with you), & get the Sellers story for his European syndicate, & I told him to go & do it & arrange terms with you. This is better than bothering Chatto — and fully as profitable….In case I’ve got to come down after you’ve talked with Mc or Laffan, telegraph me. I am ever so much obliged to you for the trouble & travel you have put in for me on this matter [MTLTP 275-6]. Note: MTHL 2: 644n3 points out that the proposed letters, of 5,000 to 6,000 words each, would be worth $1,000 each.