Source: Madison Memorial Union Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison | The James S. Copley Library, La Jolla, California. The collection of the Copley Library was sold in a series of auctions at Sotheby’s, New York, in 2010 and 2011
([WU-MU CLjC])
His claim is a distinction without a difference. If the English idea had been already
known to our Patent
officers, he never would have been granted a patent. The English plan is worth two
of it anyway.
Ordinarily I would be willing to chance something maybe, on this thing but I can’t,
this year, for
our house is costing three times as much as we had intended it should, & Ⓐemendation so I naturally don’t feel able to speculate in anything. Your idea is the only sound
one—to get it adopted
by the government. If he would give the refusal for a year at a stipulated price,
it would be worth while to tackle the
government—but to buy it & then do the tackling would be bad wisdom.
I could suggest an improvement on this invention that would make Mr Fletcher feel
mighty bad. But
we’ll be in New York from the 10th to the 15th (at the St Nicholas
doubtless) & then we’ll talk.
Warm regards to you & yours
Ys Ever
Mark
Frank Fuller Esq | 55 Liberty st. | New York postmarked:elmira n. y.sep 7 ◇◇◇Ⓐemendationdocketed by Fuller: Mark Twain
Textual Commentary
6 September 1874 • To Frank
Fuller
• Elmira, N.Y. • UCCL01124
Source text(s):
Transcript, handwritten by Dana S. Ayer during the late 1890s or later, in the Rare
Book Department, Memorial Library, University of
Wisconsin, Madison (WU). MS, James S. Copley Library, La Jolla, California
(CLjC), is copy-text for the envelope.
Previous Publication:
L6, 228–230.
Provenance:
see Brownell Collection in Description of Provenance. The Ayer transcription was copied
by a typist, and this typed transcription is
also at WU. CLjC purchased the envelope in July 1966 as part of a Fuller collection; at that time
it was paired with the MS for 24
Sept 68 to Fuller (UCCL02753).
Fuller had written twice—on 21 August and on 3 September—since receiving Clemens’s
letter of
8–10 July. In the first letter, he offered an investment opportunity (CU-MARK):
UCLC32038
55 Liberty St.
N.Y. Aug. 21, ’74
My Dear Mark:—
I have not forgotten our talks last winter about picking up some little patented thing
which you & I can
make some money out of. I write now to ask if the enclosed letter envelope thing-em-bob,
isn’t the identical thing.
This is how I reason: your friend Gov. Jewell will naturally wish to signalize his
entrance into the office of
P.M. General by some big idea. Why not make it a reccommendation for a modified form
of “Penny Postage”? Here you
have it in the sheet which I send. I don’t see how it can be beat. It costs no more—the
inventor
says—than the Postal card. Its contents cannot be read without difficulty. It wd be used where
the Postal card would not. The Govt. can afford to sell them for 1 cent, with the
postage stamp embossed on it. It would take like
wild-fire. I have, after much pow-wowing, managed to get Dr. Fletcher—who is one of
the most impracticable of the genus inventor—to name a price for his patent. His only price now is
$6000. I believe this price can be lessened, or that a portion of it down & balance
in the future will secure it.
Now can we not get Gov. J. to go in for its introduction & reccommend its adoption
to Congress in his first an’l
report? If he could heave in a diagram of it, open and folded, it would be exactly
meeting your views when you were “a
member of the Govment” & wanted jokes & conundrums worked into the Report of the Sec.
of Treasury.
Suppose we buy it & let the Govt. use it for a royalty of 10¢ per 1.000! I believe
they use 150 000 000 Postal
cards a year now. Would not a larger number of these be sold? $150,000 a year wouldn’t
be a bad
“divy,” even if a P.M. General had to be taken in for a share. The thing would take.
I have not shown it to a man
who doesn’t want a lot even if he has to put on a 3-cent stamp, they are so convenient
& save so much stationery
& so many envelopes.
Think of these hasty words! I was in Hartford 3 weeks ago & went over your beautiful
house. It is
lovely. The Architect wishes to see Mrs. Clemens. You may say as much from me. I passed
somewhere from 3 to 12 hours one evening with
Rev. Mr & Mrs. Twichell, & enjoyed it greatly. There I learned that a beautiful little
girl had been added to
your circle. Accept my warmest congratulations for both you & Mrs Clemens as well
as for “Modoc” and
the new-comer. I hope Mrs Clemens is now quite restored. Mrs. Fuller was delighted
at the good news. We are staying by the
sea—at Glen Cove & I come to the hot city often. On Saturdays I am never here. On
other days, generally. Do not
dare to come to N.Y. without letting me know. If you can, by any possibility, accompany
me to G.C. in the 4 P.M. boat, from Dock Slip
near Fulton St. you must, & spend the night. Then we can do heaps of talking & you shall
have a lovely time.
I believe I have sold my R. R. bonds, at last, to some bloody-Britishers. I could
not get them to “see
it” in H. Remember me kindly to Mrs Clemens and the little ones.
Write me as you approach N.Y. & I will be on hand to meet you. If I get hold of you
you shall not
easily escape me.
Sincerely Yours,
Frank Fuller.
P.O. Box 5,678
Clemens was “a member of the Govment” briefly in late 1867, when he acted as secretary
for
Senator Stewart of Nevada. In “The Facts Concerning the Recent Resignation,” published
in the New York Tribune on 27 December 1867, he claimed that the secretary of the treasury had called him
an ass for suggesting
that “a few conundrums distributed around through his Treasury report would help the
sale of it” (SLC 1867; L2, 109–10 n. 2, 112, 139 n. 4). The creator of Fuller’s “letter envelope,” Addison
C. Fletcher of New York City, had received United States patent number 127,330 on
28 May 1872 for his invention, a
“letter-sheet blank, having its inner fold cut away or punctured at its end so that
mucilage or other adhesive material
applied to the corners of the outer fold or flap will seal both folds and the back
together at one operation” (Official Gazette, 1:539). Fuller wanted Clemens to persuade his Hartford friend Marshall Jewell, former
three-term governor of Connecticut, minister to Russia, and since 3 July the United
States postmaster general appointee, to
officially adopt it (L4, 396 n. 1; “The Postmaster Generalship,” New York Times, 4 July 74, 4). Clemens declined the offer, in a letter not known to survive, before
3 September, when
Fuller wrote again. This time Fuller used one of Fletcher’s blanks and enclosed a
letter, now lost, in which Fletcher,
who was not coming easily to terms, apparently claimed his invention’s distinction
from its English counterpart (CU-MARK):
UCLC32045
55 Liberty St.
N.Y. Sept. 3, ’74.
My Dear Mark:—
It is evident now for what you were made. It was to take the inflation out of conceited
inventors. You see,
though, what this smart Aleck says.
Now, though I have not seen the unpracticable creature since yours came, I believe
with a little money
and a large quantity of that sweet talk which you could use so well were you here,
and which I believe I can hire a certain Brooklyn
party to employ, we can control this thing, and I am still inclined to the opinion
that it is the best little device I have met. I
imagine you and I are smart enough to make it pay, if there is anything in it. But
I will write you in a day or two, of another matter
which has money in it, sure, and I want you to help me make it & then help me spend it.
Yrs ever,
Frank Fuller.
The “certain Brooklyn party” has not been identified.
Transcript, handwritten by Dana S. Ayer during the late 1890s or later, in the Rare Book Department, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison (WU). MS, James S. Copley Library, La Jolla, California (CLjC), is copy-text for the envelope.
L6 , 228–230.
see Brownell Collection in Description of Provenance. The Ayer transcription was copied by a typist, and this typed transcription is also at WU. CLjC purchased the envelope in July 1966 as part of a Fuller collection; at that time it was paired with the MS for 24 Sept 68 to Fuller (UCCL 02753).