MTPDocEd
76 Indiana avenue
united states senate chamber.
washington. Feb. 22.
186 8.
Ⓐ
Friend Church
Confound it, when a man sends you an article & you don’t want it, why in the mischief
don’t you return it o at once & give him a chance to use it elsewhere? W.’s ballad has emasculated that
squib, now. This isn’t right, you know.1
Yrs Truly
Sam. L. Clemens
Explanatory Notes
1 The article may have been the “short magazine article,” not further identified, which
Clemens said he wrote at the end of January (
31 Jan 1868 to Beach). William Conant Church (1836–1917) was one of the editors of the
Galaxy magazine, which had just published Mark Twain’s “General Washington’s Negro Body-Servant”
in its February issue (
SLC 1868). Church had begun his editorial career assisting his father on the New York
Chronicle. Later he published the New York Sun for a short time, and served as Washington correspondent
for the New York
Times during the war. He and his brother, Francis Pharcellus Church (1839–1906), founded
the
Galaxy in May 1866 and served as co-editors until its demise in 1878, according to Frank
Luther Mott. Mott, who saw the original in the “Willard Church Collection,” is the
chief authority for which of the two brothers Clemens here addressed. Some doubt may
arise because Mott, in quoting several other letters written by Clemens to the Galaxy
in 1870, identified their addressee as William, even though all the Galaxy’s known
replies were written and signed by Francis (
Mott 1957, 361–67; Francis P. Church to SLC, various dates, 1870–71,
CU-MARK). But Mott might well have seen envelopes or dockets for one or more of Clemens’s
letters; and even without such evidence, the possibility remains that Francis routinely
replied on his brother’s behalf.
Emendations and Textual Notes
Ⓐ 76 . . .
186 8. ●
a vertical brace spans the right margin of the place and datelines
MS facsimile, Ira & Larry Goldberg Coins & Collectibles catalog, http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/10256119, lot 181, accessed 7 November 2011.
The text was partly printed in Mott 1957, 364 and 364 n. 13, and reprinted from Mott in L2, 200; the MS facsimile was published in Pook & Pook catalog, 16 Jan 2010, lot 544, https:www.liveauctioneers.com/item/6950510, accessed 9 Feb 2010; and both the text and MS facsimile were published in Bruce Gimelson catalog, http://www.brucegimelson.com, accessed 20 May 2010.
Frank Luther Mott saw the original when it was part of “Mr. Church’s file of Galaxy correspondence,” then in possession of Church’s son, Willard Church (d. 1944) of Montclair, New Jersey (Mott 1957, 361 n. 4). The MS was sold in 2010 and 2011 in turn by Pook & Pook, Bruce Gimelson, and Ira & Larry Goldberg; its present location is not known.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.