April 16 Friday – At 23 Tedworth Square in London, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, curiously heading it PS but with it’s own dateline, salutation and signoff. Was it intended as part of the Apr. 14 letter to Rogers and mailed at the same time? The source puts this question, so envelopes are likely not extant to answer the question. Sam still had not heard back from Frank Bliss on the copyright renewal for IA, and was nervous that Webster & Co. creditors would “capture” the renewal. Sam pressed the issue with Rogers, whom he felt might know by this time if Bliss had performed. The issue of renewals had been somewhat complex:
Mrs. Clemens is charitable to me, and restricted herself to saying, “Mr. Rogers urged you to deal solely with the Harpers, and I urged you; and so you have no one to blame but yourself that you are in the hands of a sleepy and timorous publisher whom you call ‘the late Frank Bliss.’”
It’s true, every word. The only answer I can make is, “The Harpers went back on the contract which they first made with me because their lawyer made them believe Bliss owned the renewals (a thing which Bliss has naively confessed that he doesn’t believe himself), and then, in order to get my books together in a set, I had to get up an arrangement with Bliss—but if it was to do over again I wouldn’t do it.”
Yet, Sam was still convinced that “even Frank Bliss, asleep with one hand tied behind him, can sell twice as many copies of a travel-book by subscription as any house can sell by trade methods.”
Thus Sam continued to believe in the outdated subscription method, and since FE was a travel-book, he was all the more convinced it should sell by subscription. Sam also passed on Frank Doubleday’s thoughts that Bliss couldn’t make profits with the new terms he’d signed, but Sam reflected that Elisha Bliss had done all right on such half-profit terms, making $32,000 on TA in the first three months.
If Bliss fails on the $10,000, lucky for me. But he belongs to Twichell’s church & God won’t let him. God takes care of all of Jo Twichell’s riff-raff; it was a commercial mistake when I sold out my pew there. People of other affiliations have to work and pay to get into Heaven, but Twichell can glide his in on a pass. You ought to know Twichell. / SLC [MTHHR 272-3].
Sir Walter Besant replied to Sam from Frognal End, Hampstead N.W., London. Besant was down with a bad cold after returning from France and answered Sam’s letter without a date. He would meet Sam whenever and wherever Sam pleased and would write more tomorrow if he felt better [MTP].
April 16 or 18 Sunday – At 23 Tedworth Square in London, Sam wrote a postcard to Chatto & Windus asking for Prof. Henry Drummond’s books, Natural Law in the Spiritual World (1883), The Lowell Lectures on the Ascent of Man (1894), Pax Vobiscum. An Address (1890), and The Greatest Thing in the World. An Address (1890) [MTP]. Note: Drummond died on Mar. 11. Gribben surmises this death “aroused Clemens’ interest in the efforts of Drummond to reconcile science and theology” [204].