Vol 3 Section 0211

Sam also wrote to Bettina Wirth, Vienna correspondent for the London Daily News. He offered conditions for reporting his talk, likely by Wirth:

If it can be taken down in short-hand & published in full, I shant mind that. I mean, such part (or all) of it as you use shall not be synopsized, but delivered directly from the one language into the other.

You get my idea? I can’t bear synopses. Look at the parliamentary speeches in the London papers—I mean when an important member’s speech gets muddled and stupefied into the synopsis form. / Sincerely Yours / SL Clemens / P.S. I haven’t lost that Reichsrath admission ticket—it’s only mislaid & I can’t find it. But I’ll have another hunt presently & send it [MTP: Bloomsbury Auction, July 8, 2010, Lot 193]. Note: Sam did not date this letter more than “Tuesday.” The MTP puts it as June 20, however, which was a Monday.

June 21 Tuesday – In Kaltenleutgeben near Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Frank Bliss, who evidently had requested (not extant) original photos of Mark Twain for the Uniform Edition. Sam directed him to ask Franklin G. Whitmore to get any pictures in his Hartford house, or with Fred Hall or Annie Moffett Webster’s hands in Fredonia; if Bliss wrote to her she “would do the best she can for you”

[MTP].

June 22 Wednesday

June 23 Thursday

June 24 Friday – Sam also wrote to Dr. Henry Walker. Cue: “I thank you ever so much for the impulse

which” [MTP]. Note: letter UCCL 12961 is currently unavailable at MTP.

June 25 Saturday – John A. Steuart’s article, “American Fiction in England,” ran in Outlook, p. 658-9 [Tenney 29].

June 26 Sunday – In Kaltenleutgeben near Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Samuel S. McClure.

I’m finishing an article, “The Great Republic’s Peanut Stand,” & you can bid on that if you want to pay a super-scandalously high price for it. The subject is copyright (which is up again in the English parliament.) In all seriousness I regard this as the only intelligent article which has ever been written upon the subject on either side of the water; as indeed the only article upon the subject which has not been chiefly characterized by ignorance & stupidity; & finally, as the only one which has pointed the way to a just & rational copyright law. It has cost me a lot of thinking & planning, & I must charge for that. It is illustrated by two (very rude) drawings from my own pencil. Rude but to the point….I (after Socrates) have re-instituted the plan of

insuring interest in a grave subject by discussing it in the form of dialogue—brief questions, brief answers; a form which livens up the look of the page & also keeps the topic afire. I shall patent it, & kill imitators. Not many people can write effective dialogue; & when they can, they must charge [MTP: David J. Holmes Autographs catalogs, Item 56a].

Note: Sam’s notebook: “June 26. Wrote McClure about G. Rep’s Peanut Stand” [NB 42 TS 56]. “The Great

Republic’s Peanut Stand”: this article advocated copyright protection in perpetuity, prefiguring Sam’s Jan. 1905 article in the North American Review: “Concerning Copyright.” “Peanut Stand” was never published, and was another of those “infamous discoveries” at the MTP the press likes to trumpet. This time it wasn’t Fishkin who “discovered” a “lost” piece by Twain—a Feb. 16, 1998 NY Times article claimed it was “unearthed” by graduate student Mr. Siva Vaidhyanathan. To the MTP’s credit, I have made several trips to Berkeley and can attest to the fact that none of their assets are buried in earth, nor are they “lost”, though may sometimes be mis-filed. Further, if the Times had looked at MTHHR 354n1, published in 1969, they would have discovered “Peanut Stand” was not “lost” at all.

SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.