by Mark Twain
The doubled subscription list established in that month was destined to continue for years. It was destined to increase the magazine’s advertisement income about eight or ten thousand dollars a month during six years. I have said that each of General Grant’s articles was worth ten thousand dollars instead of five hundred. I could say that each of the four articles was worth twenty-five thousand dollars and still be within bounds.
I began to tout for the American Publishing Company. I argued that that Company had been first in the field as applicants for a volume of Grant Memoirs, and that perhaps they ought to have a chance at a bid before the Century Company. This seemed to be news to General Grant. But I reminded him that once during the apparently wonderfully prosperous days of the firm of Grant and Ward I called upon him in his private office one day, helped him to consume his luncheon, and begged him to write his Memoirs and give them to the American Publishing Company. He had declined at the time, and most decidedly, saying he was not in need of money, and that he was not a literary person and could not write the Memoirs.
I think we left the contract matter to stew for that time, and took it up again the next morning. I did a good deal of thinking during the interval. I knew quite well that the American Publishing Company would be glad to get General Grant’s Memoirs on a basis of three-quarters profit for him, to one-quarter for themselves. Indeed I knew quite well that there was not a publisher in the country—I mean a publisher experienced in the subscription publishing business—who would not be glad to get the book on those terms. I was fully expecting to presently hand that book to Frank Bliss and the American Publishing Company and enrich that den of reptiles—but the sober second thought came then. I reflected that that Company had been robbing me for years and building theological factories out of the proceeds, and that now was my chance to feed fat the ancient grudge I bore them.
At the second conference with the General and Fred, the General exhibited some of the modesty which was so large a feature of his nature. General Sherman had published his Memoirs in two large volumes, with Scribners, and that publication had been a notable event. General Grant said:
“Sherman told me that his profits on that book were twenty-five thousand dollars. Do you believe I could get as much out of my book?”
I said I not only believed but I knew that he would achieve a vastly greater profit than that—that Sherman’s book was published in the trade; that it was a suitable book for subscription distribution, and ought to have been published in that way; that not many books were suitable to that method of publishing, but that the Memoirs of such illustrious persons as Sherman and Grant were peculiarly adapted to that method; that a book which contained the right material for that method would harvest from eight to ten times as much profit by subscription as it could be made to produce by trade sale.
The General had his doubts that he could gather twenty-five thousand dollars’ profit from his Memoirs. I inquired why. He said he had already applied the test, and had secured the evidence and the verdict. I wondered where he could have gotten such evidence and such a verdict, and he explained. He said he had offered to sell his Memoirs out and out to Roswell Smith for twenty-five thousand dollars, and that the proposition had so frightened Smith that he hardly had breath enough left in his clothes to decline with.
Then I had an idea. It suddenly occurred to me that I was a publisher myself. I had not thought of it before. I said,
“Sell me the Memoirs, General. I am a publisher. I will pay double price. I have a check-book in my pocket; take my check for fifty thousand dollars now, and let’s draw the contract.”
General Grant was as prompt in declining this as Roswell Smith had been in declining the other offer. He said he wouldn’t hear of such a thing. He said we were friends, and if I should fail to get the money back out of his book— He stopped there, and said there was no occasion to go into particulars, he simply would not consent to help a friend run any such risk.
Then I said,
“Give me the book on the terms which I have already suggested that you make with the Century people—20 per cent royalty, or, in lieu of that, 75 per cent of the profits on the publication to go to you, I to pay all running expenses such as salaries, etc., out of my fourth.”
He laughed at that, and asked me what my profit out of that remnant would be.
I said, a hundred thousand dollars in six months.
He was dealing with a literary person. He was aware, by authority of all the traditions, that literary persons are flighty, romantic, unpractical, and, in business matters, do not know enough to come in when it rains, or at any other time. He did not say that he attached no value to these flights of my imagination, for he was too kindly to say hurtful things, but he might better have said it, because he looked it with ten-fold emphasis, and the look covered the whole ground. To make conversation, I suppose, he asked me what I based this dream upon—if it had a basis.
I said,
“I base it upon the difference between your literary commercial value and mine. My first two books sold a hundred and fifty thousand copies each—three dollars and a half per volume in cloth, costlier volumes at a higher price according to binding—average price of the hundred and fifty thousand, four dollars apiece. I know that your commercial value is easily four times as great as mine; therefore I know it to be a perfectly safe guess that your book will sell six hundred thousand single volumes, and that the clear profit to you will be half a million dollars, and the clear profit to me a hundred thousand.”
We had a long discussion over the matter. Finally General Grant telegraphed for his particular friend, George W. Childs of the Philadelphia Ledger, to come up to New York and furnish an opinion. Childs came. I convinced him that Webster’s publishing machinery was ample and in good order. Then Childs delivered the verdict, “Give the book to Clemens.” Colonel Fred Grant endorsed and repeated the verdict, “Give the book to Clemens.” So the contract was drawn and signed, and Webster took hold of his new job at once.
By my existing contract with Webster he merely had a salary of twenty-five hundred dollars a year. He had declined to accept, gratis, of an interest in the business, for he was a cautious person and averse from running risks. I now offered him, gratis, a tenth share in the business—the contract as to other details to remain as before. Then, as a counter proposition, he modestly offered this: that his salary be increased to thirty-five hundred dollars a year; that he have 10 per cent of the profits accruing from the Grant book, and that I furnish all the capital required at 7 per cent.
I said I should be satisfied with this arrangement.
Then he called in his pal, Whitford, who drew the contract. I couldn’t understand the contract—I never could understand any contract—and I asked my brother-in-law, General Langdon, a trained business man, to understand it for me. He read it and said it was all right. So we signed it and sealed it. I was to find out later that the contract gave Webster 10 per cent of the profits on the Grant book and 10 per cent interest in the profits of the whole business—but not any interest in such losses as might occur.
The news went forth that General Grant was going to write his Memoirs, and that the firm of Charles L. Webster and Company would publish them. The announcement produced a vast sensation throughout the country. The nation was glad, and this feeling poured itself heartily out in all the newspapers. On the one day, young Webster was as unknown as the unborn babe. The next day he was a notoriety. His name was in every paper in the United States. He was young, he was human, he naturally mistook this transient notoriety for fame; and by consequence he had to get his hat enlarged. His juvenile joy in his new grandeur was a pretty and pleasant spectacle to see. The first thing he did was to move out of his modest quarters and secure quarters better suited to his new importance as the most distinguished publisher in the country.
Tuesday, May 29, 1906
Webster’s fine new quarters—Mr. Clemens calls on General Grant when he hears that his sore throat
has been pronounced cancer—General Grant tells him of the ways in which Ward deceived him.
His new quarters were on the second or third floor of a tall building which fronted on Union Square, a commercially aristocratic locality. His previous quarters had consisted of two good-sized rooms. His new ones occupied the whole floor. What Webster really needed was a cubby-hole up a back street somewhere, with room to swing a cat in—a long cat—this cubby-hole for office work. He needed no storage rooms, no cellars. The printers and binders of the great Memoir took care of the sheets and the bound volumes for us, and charged storage and insurance. Conspicuous quarters were not needed for that mighty book. You couldn’t have hidden General Grant’s publisher where the agent and the canvasser could not find him. The cubby-hole would have been sufficient for all our needs. Almost all the business would be transacted by correspondence. That correspondence would be with the sixteen general agents, none of it with their ten thousand canvassers.
However, it was a very nice spread that we made, as far as spaciousness and perspective went. These were impressive—that is, as impressive as nakedness long drawn out and plenty of it could be. It seemed to me that the look of the place was going to deceive country people and drive them away, and I suggested that we put up a protecting sign just inside the door: “Come in. It is not a rope walk.”
It was a mistake to deal in sarcasms with Webster. They cut deep into his vanity. He hadn’t a single intellectual weapon in his armory, and could not fight back. It was unchivalrous in me to attack with mental weapons this mentally weaponless man, and I tried to refrain from it, but couldn’t. I ought to have been large enough to endure his vanities, but I wasn’t. I am not always large enough to endure my own. He had one defect which particularly exasperated me, because I didn’t have it myself. When a matter was mentioned of which he was ignorant, he not only would not protect himself by remarking that he was not acquainted with the matter, but he had not even discretion enough to keep his tongue still. He would say something intended to deceive the hearers into the notion that he knew something about that subject himself—a most unlikely condition, since his ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. Once in a drawing-room company some talk sprang up about George Evans and her literature. I saw Webster getting ready to contribute. There was no way to hit him with a brick or a Bible, or something, and reduce him to unconsciousness and save him, because it would have attracted attention—and therefore I waited for his mountain to bring forth its mouse, which it did as soon as there was a vacancy between speeches. He filled that vacancy with this remark, uttered with tranquil complacency:
“I’ve never read any of his books, on account of prejudice.”
Before we had become fairly settled in the new quarters, Webster had suggested that we abolish the existing contract and make a new one. Very well, it was done. I probably never read it nor asked anybody else to read it. I probably merely signed it and saved myself further bother in that way. Under the preceding contracts Webster had been my paid servant; under the new one I was his slave, his absolute slave, and without salary. I owned nine-tenths of the business; I furnished all the capital; I shouldered all the losses; I was responsible for everything—but Webster was sole master. This new condition and my sarcasms changed the atmosphere. I could no longer give orders, as before. I could not even make a suggestion with any considerable likelihood of its acceptance.
General Grant was a sick man, but he wrought upon his Memoirs like a well one, and made steady and sure progress.
Webster throned himself in the rope walk and issued a summons to the sixteen general agents to come from the sixteen quarters of the United States and sign contracts. They came. They assembled. Webster delivered the law to them as from Mount Sinai. They kept their temper wonderfully, marvelously. They furnished the bonds required. They signed the contracts, and departed. Ordinarily they would have resented the young man’s arrogances, but this was not an ordinary case. The contracts were worth to each general agent a good many thousands of dollars. They knew this, and the knowledge helped them to keep down their animosities.
Whitford was on hand. He was always at Webster’s elbow. Webster was afraid to do anything without legal advice. He could have all the legal advice he wanted, because he had now hired Whitford by the year. He was paying him ten thousand dollars a year out of my pocket. And indeed Whitford was worth part of it—the two-hundredth part of it. It was the first time he had ever earned anything worth speaking of, and he was content. The phrase “worth speaking of” is surplusage. Whitford had never earned anything. Whitford was never destined to earn anything. He did not earn the ten thousand dollars nor any part of it. In two instances his services proved a pecuniary damage to the firm. His other services were inconsequential and unnecessary. The bookkeeper could have performed them.
During the winter of 1884 and ’85 General Grant fell on the ice and hurt himself, and rheumatism followed. Cable and I were out on the platform in the West during the winter. By and by our program brought us to New York for a day or two, and I saw in the paper that a sore throat from which General Grant had been suffering for a time had turned out to be cancer—malignant and incurable. I went to the house and found him muffled in a thick dressing-gown and sitting in an arm-chair. He looked miserably sick. One of his specialists was present, Shrady or Douglas; Douglas, I think—Douglas, I am sure. The newspapers had laid the cancer to excessive smoking. I said:
“General, this is a warning to the rest of us.”
He shook his head, and Douglas said,
“No, it isn’t a warning to anybody. This is not a result of smoking. Smoking has never hurt General Grant, and it will never hurt you. No one knows how long this cancer poison has been lurking in General Grant’s system—many and many a year, perhaps. All it needed at any time was a sufficient opportunity to develop itself, and the development would ensue. Without such sufficient opportunity he could live to a hundred, and die unaware that there was such a thing as cancer poison in him.”
The thing that furnished the opportunity was the shame and humiliation and mental misery inflicted upon General Grant by the robberies committed upon confiding clients by Fish and Ward of the firm of Grant and Ward. It was the unimpeachable credit and respectability of his name and character that enabled them to swindle the public. They could not have done it on their own reputations. It was General Grant’s mental miseries that gave the cancer poison its opportunity. It was not tobacco.
At that time, and for some time afterward, General Grant was able to use his voice, and he now began to tell me some of Ward’s performances. It was plain that he thought he ought to be ashamed of having been gulled and deceived by such a man as Ward, and wanted to find a justification or palliation for the confidence which he had misplaced in Ward. It was most pathetic to hear this old lion, who had been brought so low by a hyena, trying to explain why it was natural that he should trust a hyena, he being innocently ignorant of the ways of that kind of an animal. He said, in substance:
“You would have done as I did, Clemens. He would have deceived you as easily as he deceived me. He would have deceived anybody who was ignorant of the intricacies of finance and commercial ways and methods. Indeed he would have deceived men that were acquainted with those intricacies and those methods, and he did it. The proof is in the testimony given before the courts. It is in the testimony of at least one such man which was never given in court at all. That man was so ashamed of having been duped by such a poor creature as Ward that he suffered a loss of three hundred thousand dollars, out of which sum Ward had swindled him—suffered the loss and kept still, and avoided the witness box. Now then, when such a man as that could be deceived by Ward, is it to be wondered at that he was able to deceive me? Now consider Ward’s ways, and see how ingeniously deceptive they were. Let me go into particulars for a moment. He used to sit there in his private office and accept investments from people, waste that money, throw it awa
y, lose it—and when a statement was due the investor, furnish it promptly, and along with it a handsome profit on the investment, the investment and the profit and everything connected with it being drawn from some other investor who had just been in and left his money to be speculated with. I will give you an instance. When our firm was at the very top wave of prodigal prosperity, as I supposed, and as everybody supposed (whereas it was not making a cent, but was losing money) one of the very sharpest and most successful brokers in this town bustled into our office one day and said,
“‘Ward, I am just taking the steamer for Europe and back to get a breath of fresh air. Here’s ten thousand dollars. Do you think you can do anything with it in so short a time?’
“Ward said nonchalantly, ‘Oh, perhaps. If you want to leave it I’ll see what we can do.’
“The man left his check and bustled out again. Ward used that check to pay some customer a dividend on an investment that hadn’t earned a penny. Thirty days later that broker bustled in again and said,
“‘Well, anything happened?’
“Ward said, as nonchalantly as ever,
“‘Well, not much, but something’—carelessly drew a check and handed it to the man.
“The man said, ‘Good gracious! A hundred per cent profit in thirty days!’ He handed the check back to Ward and said ‘That’s a good enough hen for me. Set her again.’”
General Grant said that Ward’s depredations upon him and upon the Grant relationship were exhaustively complete. He said,
“I had laid up four hundred thousand dollars. Ward got it all. He questioned me about the outlying kin, and wherever he found a member of it that had saved up something in a stocking he sent for it and got it. In one case, a poor old female relative of mine had scrimped and saved until she had something like a thousand dollars laid up for the rainy day of old age. Ward took it without a pang.”
