March 6 Thursday – Something had changed Sam’s mind on the calendar work for L. Prang & Co.—perhaps Sam’s questioning of the agreement had made Prang reevaluate the deal and offer Sam a way out; or he added to the work needed for the same price. Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Webster.
March 5 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Howells, complaining of Webster “writing & telegraphing conundrums…which remain unguessed.” Webster had send a play proposal for a play with Marshall Mallory based on a gross percentage of the take. He also wrote of another sick child.
March 3 Monday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Andrew Chatto, enclosing the Feb. 14 from William L. Hughes, translator.
“Here’s another of those fellows. I’ve told him you have full authority and will answer him. Please do. I’m keeping Huck Finn back till next fall. I found I couldn’t publish it in the spring, there wasn’t time enough left for a long enough canvass” [MTP].
From Twichell’s journal:
March 2 Sunday – In Boston, Howells wrote after returning home from New York the day before. He recommended waiting for John T. Raymond, though how long he didn’t know. Should the Mallorys be able to secure Nat Goodwin at $350 or $400 a week, Howells felt they’d be “far better in the long run, even money wise, than if we let the play take its chances with an actor and a temporary combination” [MTHL 2: 477].
March 1 Saturday – Charles Webster wrote to Sam: bulk of letter is about play negotiations with Marshall Mallory, etc. “Your idea about the three books is certainly good. I will write in a day or two about that” [MTP].
March – Sam inscribed a copy of Edgar Watson Howe’s The Story of a Country Town (1883): “S.L. Clemens, Hartford, March 1884, Sent by the Author” [Gribben 326].
February 29 Friday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Webster with ideas to discount subscription sales if a buyer bought two or more different books [MTBus 239-40]. He’d been writing “original matter” for L. Prang & Co, a big calendar and Christmas card publisher that used color to spur sales. Sam’s arrangement was to receive ten cents for each dollar calendar sold. Simple, yet Sam saw a loophole that might yield him more:
February 28 Thursday – Sam wrote to Ainsworth R. Spofford, Librarian of Congress, enclosing $1 fee and asking that the synopsis of his play for “The Prince & Pauper, a romance in 4 Acts” be copyrighted [MTP].
February 27 Wednesday – Augustin Daly turned down Sam’s dramatization of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Daly wrote “I fear that Tom Sawyer would not make a success at my theatre.” He disagreed with Sam that grown ups could play the part of children [MTP]. Webster claims that Sam “seems to have dropped playwrighting at this point” [236-7].
February 26 Tuesday – Howells responded to Sam’s letter of Feb. 18 that he was “down in the dust at the notion” that he’d made Sam “take a journey to New York and back for nothing….” Sam answered:
“Ah, what the reader puts into a letter, that is what said reader finds in it! There couldn’t have been any irascibility in my letter, for the reason that there wasn’t any in me” [MTHL 2: 476].