MARK TWAIN AND HIS ENGLISH EDITOR.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 206, 7 February 1873, Page 3

MARK TWAIN AND HIS ENGLISH EDITOR.

TJie following lias been addressed by Mart Twain to the ' Spectator :'— . Sir,—l only venture to intrude upon you because I come, in some sense, in the interest of public morality, and this makes my mis - sioh respectable. Mr. John Camden Hotten, of London, has, of bis own individual motion, republished several of my books in England. I do not protest against this, -for there is no law to give effect to the protest; and, besides, publishers are not accountable to the laws of heaven or earth in any country, as I understand it. But my little grievance is this: My books are bad enough just as they are written; then what must they be after Mr. John Camden Hotten has composed half-a-dozen chapters and added the same to them? I feel that all true hearts will bleed for an author whose volumes have fallen under such a dispensation as this. If a friend of yours, or if even you yourself, were to write a book and set it airitt among the people, with the gravest apprehensions that it was not what it ought to be intellectually, how would you like tohave Jobn Camden Hotten sit down and stimulate his powers, and drool-two or three original chapters on to the end of that book? Would not the world'seem cold and hollow to you ? Would you not feel that you wanted to die and be at rest? Little the world knows of true suffering. And suppose be should entitle these chanters "Holiday Literature," ''True .Story oE Chicago," "On Children," " Train up a Child, and Awavhe. Goes," and." Vengeance," and then, on"the strength of having evolved these marvels' from his own consciousness, go and "copyright " the entire book, and put in the titlepage a picture of a man with his hand in another man's pocket, and the legend " All ■ Rights Reserved." (1 only suppose the pictnr3; still it would be a rather "neat thing.) And, further, supoose that in the kindness of his heart and the exuberance of .his untaught fancy, this thoroughly well-meaning innocent should "-expunge the modest title which you had given your' book, and replace it with so foul an invention as this, "Screamers and Eye-Openers," and went and got that copyrighted, too. And suppose that on top of all this, he continually "and persistently forgot to offer you a single penny or send you a copyof your mutilated book Hp burn. Let one suppose all this. Let him suppose it with strength enough, and then he will know something about woe. Sometimes when I read one of those additional chapters constructed by John Camden Hotten, I feel as if I could go and take a broomstraw -and go and knock that- man's brains out. Not in anger, for I feel none. Oh! not in anger; but only to see, that is all. Mere idle curiosity. And Mr. Hotten says that one nom deplume of mine is V Carl Byng." I hold that there is no affliction in this world that makes a man feel so down-trodden and abused as giving him a name that does not belong to him. How.would this sinful aborigine feel if I were to call him John Camden Hottentot, and come out in the papers and say he was entitled to it by divine right? Ido honestly believe it would throw him into a brain fever, if there were not an insuperable obstacle in the way. ■

Yes—to come back to the original subject, which is the sorrow that is slowly but surely undermining my health—Mr. Hotten prints unrevised, uncorrected, and, in some respects, spurious books, with my name to them as author, and thiis embitters his customers against one of the most innocent of men. Messrs. G-eorge Routledge and Sons are the only English publishers who pay me any copyright, and therefore, if my books are to disseminate either,, suffering or crime among readers of our language, I would ever so much rather they did it through that house, and then I could contemplate the spectacle calmly as the dividends coins in.—l am, sir, &c, Samuel L. Clemens '('MaßkTw<UN'). London,. Sept. 20, 1572.