Clemens, Samuel L.

Autograph letter signed ("S. L. Clemens"), 4 pages on pale green paper (9 x 5 1/2 in.; 229 x 140 mm), the four leaves hinged together at the left margin, Hartford, 5 February 1890, to Dean Sage, describing an apparently unpleasant association with Edward House; light soiling and smudging.

Victor and Iren Murr Jacobs (sale, Sotheby's, 29 October 1996, lot 254)

Recalling an unpleasant relationship. Clemens describes his association beginning in 1867 with Edward House, a literary misfit to whom the author gave permission to attempt a dramatization of The Prince and the Pauper. Nothing came of the project except sore feelings. After years of neglecting the project, House re-appeared in 1889 with a lawsuit against anyone with a proprietary interest in the play, which finally reached the stage that December, having been dramatized by Mrs. Abby Sage Richardson. It was probably pursuant to the lawsuit that Clemens fumes, "In one of his lying affidavits, House swears I offered him $5,000 to 'compromise' a claim which never existed save in his own laudanum-soaked imagination. Great Scott, I would have paid him that, any time these past ten years just to see him break his neck ..."