To
Andrew Chatto perFanny C. Hesse 7 November 1877 • Hartford, Conn.(MS: ViU, UCCL01502)
Nov 7th 1877
slcfarmington avenue, hartford.
Dear Mr Chatto
It is aⒶemendation right down generous offer you make & if the books didn’t
cost much I accept with pleasure. ButⒶemendation if they were expensive it would not be fair to let you payⒶemendation the whole cost of a
blunder which was not yours but a subordinate’s—in which case let us divide the expense,
& shake hands across the bloody chasm.1explanatory note
It was not about the Tom Sawyer act2explanatory note with me that I was inquiring, for that is all correct. I was simply
anxious to know if Conway had paid himself his royalty or if you had paid it to him.
The main thing was I wanted him to
get it. I did not care anything about the details, I only wanted to know that he got
it.
Have received your checks for 5.qs. and £7.10.0. Thanks, they are satisfactory, especially
the
latter. The larger a check is, the more I like it; & the more I honor & glorify the
sender,
& the more it stirs me up to high literary achievement in that man’s behoof.
Clemens answered the following letter, which Chatto had written in response to an
earlier one of his that is now lost (CU-MARK):
UCLC32591
office of “belgravia”
of “the gentleman's magazine” & of “academy notes”
london w. Oct 25 187 7
My dear Sir
I am indeed sorry that we should have mistaken your burst of economy for a burst of
bibliographical luxury and so sent you the “crack” edition of the “Arabian Nights”
instead of the working one; especially I am vexed that our people should have been
the means of the US. customs robbing you of 9$. If you will accept the work from me
burthened with this outlay it will give me great pleasure to be so relieved from the
consciousness of having blundered which now oppresses me.
We are very pleased to receive your “Idle Notes” the first two parts of which Mr Bentley
forwarded us and the third has just come to hand. I enclose Cheques for the two which
have been published in “Belgravia” for Sep. Nov & Oct. (the amount of which I trust toe be satisfactory) the third instalment
will come out in the November December no.
I saw Mr Conway only last week and gave him your remembrances he is very busy with
a book on the Archaeology of the Devil which we are going to publish for him. We made
up the a/c for the 1st ed. of Tom Sawyer last Decr. and paid him the royalty on 1858
copies sold @ 1/9 by our draft due April 28. (£,162.108.[ ) ] We have just made up the a/c to date and sent him another draft for 70, on a/c of
800 copies sold since. We are about to issue a new cheap edition for which we anticipate
a large sale.
Yours very faithfully
Andrew Chatto
Saml. L. Clemens Esq
Bentley had complied with Clemens’s request to forward the proofsheets of “Some Rambling
Notes of an Idle Excursion” to Chatto, who published all four installments in Belgravia at the same time they appeared in the Atlantic Monthly
(see 15 Sept 1877 to Bentley; SLC 1877–78).
MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, Alderman Library, ViU.
MicroPUL, reel 1.
Deposited at ViU by Clifton Waller Barrett on 17 December 1963.