The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Mark Twain [good summer reads .TXT] 📗

Century’s safe; the fourth-article agreement was therefore most amply fulfilled already, without an additional article; yet the Century people considered that the contract would not be fulfilled without the fourth article, and so insisted upon having it. At the ordinary price paid me for Century articles, this Vicksbury article, if I had written it, would have been worth about $700. Therefore, the Century people had paid General Grant no more than they would have paid me; and this including the $1,000 gratuity which they had given him.

If the Century people knew anything at all, they knew that a single page of General Grant’s manuscript was worth more than a hundred of mine. They were honest, honorable, and good-hearted people according to their lights, and if anybody could have made them see differently they would have rectified the wrong. But all the eloquence that I was able to pour out upon them, went for nothing, utterly nothing. They still thought that they had been quite generous to the general and were not able to see the matter in any other light.

Afterward, at Mount McGregor, they consented to give up half of the Vicksburg article; and they did; they gave up more than half of it⁠—cut it from twenty-two galleys down to nine, and only the nine will appear in the magazine, and they added $2,500 to the $2,500 already paid. Those people could learn to be as fair and liberal as anybody if they had the right schooling.

Some time after the contract for General Grant’s book was completed, I found that nothing but a verbal understanding existed between General Grant and the Century Company giving General Grant permission to use his Century articles in his book. There is a law of custom which gives an author the privilege of using his magazine articles in any way he pleases, after it shall have appeared in the magazine; and this law of custom is so well established that an author never expects to have any difficulty about getting a magazine copyright transferred to him, whenever he shall ask for it, with the purpose in view of putting the article in a book. But in the present case I was afraid that the Century Company might fall back upon their legal rights and ignore the law of custom, in which case we should be debarred from using General Grant’s Century articles in his book⁠—an awkward state of things, because he was now too sick a man to rewrite them. It was necessary that something should be done in this matter, and done at once.

Mr. Seward, General Grant’s lawyer, was a good deal disturbed when he found that there was no writing. But I was not. I believed that the Century people could be relied upon to carry out any verbal agreement which they had made. The only thing I feared was that their idea of the verbal agreement, and General Grant’s idea of it, might not coincide. So I went back to the general’s house and got Col. Fred Grant to write down what he understood the verbal agreement to be, and this piece of writing he read to General Grant, who said it was correct, and then signed it with his own hand, a feeble and trembling signature, but recognizable as his.

Then I sent for Webster and our lawyer, and we three went to the Century office, where we found Roswell Smith (the head man of the company) and several of the editors. I stated my case plainly and simply and found that their understanding and General Grant’s were identical; so the difficulty was at an end at once and we proceeded to draw a writing to cover the thing.

When the business was finished, or perhaps in the course of it, I made another interesting discovery.

I was already aware that the Century people were going to bring out all their war articles in book form, eventually, General Grant’s among the number; but, as I knew what a small price had been paid to the general for his articles, I had a vague notion that he would receive a further payment for the use of them in their book⁠—a remuneration which an author customarily receives, in our day, by another unwritten law of custom. But when I spoke of this, to my astonishment they told me that they had bought and paid for every one of these war articles with the distinct understanding that that first payment was the last. In confirmation of this amazing circumstance, they brought out a receipt which General Grant had signed, and therein it distinctly appeared that each $500 not only paid for the use of the article printed in the magazine, but also in the subsequent book!

One thing was quite clear to me: if we consider the value of those articles to that book, we must grant that the general was paid very much less than nothing at all for their issue in the magazine.

The Century people didn’t blush, and, therefore, it is plain that they considered the transaction fair and legitimate; and I believe myself that they had no idea that they were doing an unfair thing. It was easily demonstrable that they were buying ten-dollar gold pieces from General Grant at twenty-five cents apiece, and I think it was as easily demonstrable that they did not know that there was anything unfair about it.

Roswell Smith said to me, with the glad air of a man who has stuck a nail in his foot, “I’m glad you’ve got the general’s book, Mr. Clemens, and glad there was somebody with courage enough to take it, under the circumstances. What do you think the general wanted to require of me?”

“What?”

“He wanted me to insure a sale of twenty-five thousand sets of his book! I wouldn’t risk such a guaranty on any book that ever was published.”7

I did not say anything, but I thought a good deal. This