Guest Blogger Jim Campbell on Mark Twain’s “cousin”

Hi, I am “Angry Jim” Campbell. I have a link over there on the right and I may be posting some random observations and stupid photos from time to time.

So the other day I stopped by my favorite New York City book shop,  The Housing Works Book Store. I found a nice old copy of a Mark Twain book I hadn’t read yet called Extracts from Adam’s Diary.

It looked like maybe a first edition, and was only 20 bucks! I’m a Mark Twain enthusiast. (if you have only read Huck Finn, I highly recommend you check out his travelogue The Innocents Abroad. It’s surpassingly modern in its style. Well maybe that’s no surprise. He’s obviously influenced a lot of modern writing.)  Well, this book was only 20 bucks because it isn’t in great shape. the binding was falling apart. But it’s still a nice old book. So I bought it.

I was pleasantly suprised. It’s a fun book with illustrations on every other page depicting hyroglyphics supposedly made by Adam (of old testament fame) followed by Mark Twain’s humorous translations. This alone made the purchase worth it.

But after I hastily bought the book I noticed an extra suprise. A bookplate. A clever bookplate with an image of the gallows. The bookplate says “Will M. Clemens” and the book is inscribed in pencil “Cousin of Samuel L Clemens (Mark Twain)”

Well, well, well. This was quite the find. Was this a first edition sent by Mark Twain himself to a relative? When I got to the internet I had to do some research.

The first promising lead I found was this San Fransisco Call Newspaper clip from the library of congress dated 1895 which says in part “There is no brighter light in New York newspaper circles than Will M. Clemens – a cousin of MArk Twain.”

Here it was. In a couple minutes with google I had found the original owner of this 100+ year old book. Isn’t modern technology rad! But for some reason I was skeptical. So I did a bit more research. It appeared that this fellow had done some biographical sketches of Twain and his contemporaries. So I searched google books to see what else he had written and if Mark Twain himself had ever mentioned him.

THEN, I found this excerpt from the book  The Mythologizing of Mark Twain. It was not what I had hoped but it reveals an entertaining bit of history. Will M. Clemens apparently had tried to cash in on Mark Twain’s fame by writing books about him. Surely he was a fan, and intended to flatter, but Twain was not flattered. Copyright rules were not as defined back then and this was one of Twain’s pet peeves. His books were being reprinted without permission and he wasn’t getting paid. So when Will Clemens wrote to Mark Twain to ask permission to write this book about Twain, he received the following reply.

He said, ”I am sorry to object, but I really must. Such books as you propose are not proper to publish during my lifetime. A man’s history is his own property until the grave extinguishes his ownership in it.” Then Twain wrote to a patron seeking legal assistance, “Here is this troublesome cuss, Will M. Clemens, turning up again. I won’t have it.” I’m risking copyright violation myself now, so I’ll just say you can read a bit more about the situation in the above link.

So was the previous owner of my book really Twain’s cousin? Well, it looks like Will Clemens may  have lied to someone about the situation. Or someone at that paper came to that conclusion on their own. Or maybe he was a distant relative. But if he was, Samuel Clemens surely held no love for this hanger-on long lost cousin.

Speaking of copyright wars, you can read Extracts from Adam’s Diary online (it looks just like mine) and see the illustrations at google book search. Of course, this book has long since been in public domain.