17 January 1876 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MH-H, UCCL 01298)
Yes, hand the check to the lawyers.
What I desire, now, is, to go for Mr. Gill once more, at law—& this time, let us mean “business.” Can you go in with me, & divide the expense? ,& has he 1explanatory note
How would it do for us to go in together, but nobody appear in it but me; & if I win my case then we to join issue & try him on your case, I not appearing to be a party?
I want Gill tried—
1. Simply for violating my trademark—copyrightⒶemendation not to be mentioned. (I suppose the lawyers have got the decision of the N. Y. court in my former case from Simon Sterne, attorney.)2explanatory note
2.—Damages for said violation—say $5 $1,000 or $103,000. (or more,)
3.—No compromise but on these terms: Gill to pay me $500 cash & sign a paper confessing in soft language that he is a detected liar & thief.
I think our lawyers will know how to handle Mr. Gill this time, after the experience they have had with him.
Keep the book you mention & don’t mislay it.3explanatory note
If you don’t wish to go in with me, Osgood, I want you to put my case in our lawyers’ hands at once, anyhow, & I’ll play a “lone hand” (such as used to be too many for you at Warwick!)4explanatory note
P. S.—No—on second thoughts I don’t want to compromise with Gill for less than $1.000—& a written confession that he is a liar & thief—& a promise to take my article & name out of his book at once—with a penalty of $5 dollars per copy on every book issued afterward with name & article (or either) in it.
Sue for $1,000 to $10,000 damages, & permanent injunction.
The letter from Osgood that Clemens answered is not known to survive. Since the summer of 1875, he and Clemens had been contending with Boston publisher William F. Gill, who had included Clemens’s “Encounter with an Interviewer” in Burlesque , the first volume of a projected twelve-volume Treasure-Trove anthology (SLC 1875a), despite Clemens’s strenuous objections (see L6: 31 May 1875 to Gill, 489 n. 1; 5 July to Howells, 505 n. 6; and the following letters to Osgood: 13 July 1875, 511–12; 20 July 1875, 514–15; 23 July 1875, 516–19; 16 Aug 1875, 524–25).
That is, the decision in Clemens’s 1873 lawsuit against Benjamin J. Such. It was not the unqualified victory Clemens believed it to be, nor did it validate his claim of trademark on his nom de plume (see 17 May 1873 to Warner, L5 , 368, 370 n. 5; 8 June 1875 to Gill, L6 , 495 n. 5).
This book, if not a copy of Burlesque, has not been identified.
While in England in the fall of 1872, Clemens had spent a pleasant day with Osgood “driving about Warwickshire in an open barouche,” visiting historical sites (11 Sept 1872 to OLC, L5 , 155). Nothing is known of the “lone hand” episode.
MS, MH-H, Rogers Room.
MTLP , 93.
The Henry M. Rogers and Kathleen Rogers Collection was donated in 1930.