No letters are known to survive between 3 and 11 December 1870. Although the illness and death of Emma Nye and the birth of Langdon Clemens had impeded Clemens’s progress on Roughing It, and although he had already distracted himself with his scheme for an African diamond mine book, he now found the time for yet another literary project. On 7 or 8 December he telegraphed Isaac E. Sheldon and Company, publishers of the Galaxy, proposing a holiday publication. He had previously wanted to publish a sketches volume through Sheldon and Company, but was frustrated when Elisha Bliss invoked a prohibitory clause in the 15 July 1870 Roughing It contract. Now he apparently planned to circumvent that contract by making the proposed work a pamphlet, a ploy that Bliss resented. Sheldon and Company was quick to respond. On 9 December the firm telegraphed Clemens twice, first to say “We will publish it & give you half of all profits,” and then to offer a royalty of “Fifteen pr ct on retail” as an alternative (CU-MARK). A letter followed that same day, confirming the offers and recommending the royalty, which Clemens ultimately chose, as “much better for you than any copyright we could name, if the book proves a success.” It also urged haste:
It is now of course late in the season to get out a book and there are always delays we can never calculate on, as each step in the process of manufacturing is made, but we can get it out as soon as anyone, and should not lose a moment. (CU-MARK)
Probably on the night of 9 December Clemens “shot off to New York,” arriving the following morning (17 Dec 70 to Fairbanksclick to open link). His presence was quickly noted: the New York Herald reported that “Mark Twain, the great humorist, has come to the city from Buffalo, and is now stopping at the Albemarle Hotel” (“Personal Intelligence,” 11 Dec 70, 6), and the New York Tribune listed him among its “Prominent Arrivals” (12 Dec 70, 8).
On 10 December Clemens must have begun conferring with Sheldon and Company about the pamphlet—published as Mark Twain’s (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance, but not until March 1871—and in the succeeding days tried to speed its production by locating Edward F. Mullen, an illustrator he wanted for it. Also on 10 December, or soon after, he met with Charles Henry Webb to resolve their differences over The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, And other Sketches. Clemens received an accounting of the costs of production and a report of the sales since 1867 and bought the copyright back from Webb.
But business did not occupy all of Clemens’s time in New York. At the Albemarle, a “very elegant hotel” at 1101 Broadway, at the junction of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-fourth Street, Clemens enjoyed a respite from domestic concerns and “smoked a week, day & night” (Miller, 70; 19 Dec 70 to Twichellclick to open link). He may have attended “Dan Bryant’s new minstrel hall on the north side of 23rd Street, west of Sixth Avenue,” where on 11 December a dramatization of his Jumping Frog story, starring “Little Mac,” a dwarf, in the title role, went on the bill (Odell, 9:76–77). Called an “attractive feature” by the New York Herald, the skit was performed throughout the remainder of December and was reprised in April 1871 (New York Herald: “Music and the Drama,” 12 Dec 70, 5; “Amusements,” 10–31 Dec 70; Wilson 1870, 30). It is unlikely that Clemens authorized this production, but its evident popularity conceivably influenced his determination to exploit the story anew.
Clemens also visited with New York friends, among them fellow journalists Whitelaw Reid, John Hay, and possibly John Rose Greene Hassard, all of the New York Tribune. In 1905 he recalled a conversation with Hay that must have occurred at this time, although he could place it only “in 1870 or ’71.” They discussed the charge of imitating Bret Harte that had been leveled against Hay, who on 19 November had published “Little-Breeches,” the first of his “Pike County Ballads,” in the Tribune (John M. Hay 1870). Clemens remembered that their meeting enabled him “incidentally” to get “acquainted with Horace Greeley”:
It was difficult to get an interview with him, for he was a busy man, he was irascible, & he had an aversion to strangers; but I not only had the good fortune to meet him, but also had the great privilege of hearing him talk. The Tribune was in its early home, at that time, & Hay was a leader-writer on its staff. I had an appointment with him, & went there to look him up. I did not know my way, & entered Mr. Greeley’s room by mistake. I recognized his back, & stood mute & rejoicing. After a little, he swung slowly around in his chair, with his head slightly tilted backward & the great moons of his spectacles glaring with intercepted light; after about a year—though it may have been less, perhaps—he arranged his firm mouth with care & said with virile interest—
“Well? What the hell do you want!” (SLC 1905, 5–6)
Both the conversation with Hay and the encounter with Greeley probably occurred on 11 or 12 December, when Clemens brought the Tribune the manuscript of the next letter (26 Oct 70click to open link, 22 Dec 70click to open link, and 3 Jan 71 to Blissclick to open link; 26 Dec 70click to open link and 31 Dec 70 to Reidclick to open link; 27 Jan 71 to Sheldon, n. 1click to open link; RI 1993 , 823–26).