“Give the Book to Clemens”: December 2000 American History Feature

THE MORNING AFTER HIS Chickering Hall lecture, Clemens paid a visit to the Grant home on 66th Street, where he found the general discussing Century’s proposal with his son Fred. Century President Roswell Smith had offered Grant a standard contract that would pay him 10 percent in royalties. Content with the offer, Grant was prepared to sign.

Clemens considered the contract totally inadequate, and advised Grant to hold out for better terms. According to Clemens, he suggested that Grant "Strike out the ten percent and put twenty percent in its place. Better still, put seventy-five percent of the net returns in its place." Grant balked, thinking that Century would never agree. Clemens then made his own pitch. "Sell me the memoirs, general," he said. He offered Grant 75 percent of the profits and said he would pay any necessary expenses out of his own quarter share. Grant, Clemens recalled, "laughed at that and asked me what my profit out of that remnant would be." Clemens responded, "a hundred thousand dollars in six months." The ex-president was skeptical but decided to wait before signing Century’s contract.

As he weighed Clemens’ offer, Grant commenced work on his memoirs and entertained other proposals "with larger offers than have ever been made for a book before." After a couple of months, his friend George Childs, who was also a publisher, examined the various proposals and advised, "Give the book to Clemens."

BY EARLY 1885, GRANT knew he was terminally ill. After trying to ignore severe pain in his throat for several months, he finally visited a throat specialist, who confirmed the general’s suspicions of cancer. Grant dedicated all of his remaining energy to completing his memoirs. Throughout the spring and much of that summer he wrote steadfastly in pencil in the quiet solitude of his home. At times he was so ill and weak that he was forced to dictate his manuscript in a rasping whisper to a stenographer. During these long months, Grant suffered from severe throat pain, neuralgia, coughing, vomiting and extreme weakness. His doctors treated his cancer primarily with cocaine and administered morphine at night to induce much needed rest. In March the general came close to death but miraculously survived and continued to write.

As Grant moved slowly but steadily toward the conclusion of his memoirs, he and Clemens developed mutual respect, trust, and admiration. Clemens was increasingly impressed by Grant’s intellect and writing ability, and Grant trusted Clemens’ literary judgment. Meanwhile, Clemens made plans to sell the finished work. He hoped to make a tidy sum of money for himself and realized the great marketing potential created by the public’s interest in Grant’s heroic battle against death, but he was also genuinely concerned about his friend’s health and the financial well-being of Grant’s family.

Clemens employed the subscription method to sell the book. Webster and Company had 16 general agents and 10,000 canvassers to market the memoirs, a virtual army of subscription agents that traveled through cities and across the countryside to visit homes personally. Each salesman was armed with a manual, largely written by Clemens, entitled How to Introduce the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. Each agent also carried a prospectus showing the size of the two green and gold volumes, the title page, illustrations, table of contents and selection of bindings. To encourage sales, a few of the better salesmen were given some of the original manuscript pages bound in hard covers.

The company agents–many of whom were former soldiers dressed in faded uniforms–were trained to appeal to the hearts of potential customers, especially war veterans, by stressing Grant’s physical condition, talking up Grant’s war heroism, and stressing the high quality of the work. Clemens and Webster advised the salesmen to assume people wanted the book and that the only decision they had to make concerned the type of binding. The price of each set began at about $3.50, which could be paid with one dollar up front and the balance on delivery. More elaborately bound sets ranged in price from $4.50 to $12.50. Although by that time more practical marketing schemes were replacing the old-fashioned subscription system, it proved quite successful with Grant’s memoirs. Grant had hoped the book would sell 25,000 copies. In fact, sales of the two-volume sets eventually reached about 350,000.