MARK TWAIN AND HIS ENGLISH EDITOR. [TO THE EDITOR OF
THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—I only venture to intrude upon you because I come, in some sense, in the interest of public morality, and this makes my mission respectable. Mr. John Camden Hotten, of London, has, of his own individual motion, republished several of my books in England. I do not protest against this, for there is no law that could 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 dis-
pensation as this. If a friend of yours, or if even you yourself, were to write a book and set it adrift among the people, with the gravest apprehensions that it was not up to what it ought to be
intellectually, how would you like to have John 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 he should entitle these chapters " Holiday Litera- ture," "True Story of Chicago," " On Children," " Train up a Child, and Away he 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 title-page a picture of a man with his hand in another man's pocket, and the legend "All Rights Reserved." (I only suppose the picture ; still it would be a rather neat thing.) And, further, suppose 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 even send you a copy of your mutilated book to 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 wanted to take a broom-straw 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 de plume of mine is " Carl Byng." I hold that there is no affliction in this world that makes a man feel so down-trodden and abused as the 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 ? I do 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 thus embitters his customers against one of the most innocent of men. Messrs. George Rout- ledge 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 came in.—I am,
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