20 April 1869 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00286)
I wish you would have my revises revised again & look over them yourself & see that my marks have been corrected. A proof-reader who persists in making two words (& sometimes even compound words) of “anywhere” and “everything;” & who spells villainy Ⓐemendation “villiany” & “liquifies Ⓐemendation” &c, &c, is not three removes from an idiot.— Ⓐemendation infernally unreliable— & so I don’t like to trust your man. He never yet has acceded to a request of mine made in the margin, in the matter of spelling & punctuation, as I know of. He shows spite—don’t trust him, but revise my revises yourself. I have long ago given up trying to get him to spell those first-mentioned words properly. He is an idiot—& like all idiots, is self-conceited. 1explanatory note
I begin to be afraid there is too much MSS. It don’t seem to me that I ought to be only just getting to Herculaneum Pompeii at the 326th page—ought to be a heap further along than that, I should think. Half of the book is finished, now, but I feel almost sure that we it is going to crowd things to get the rest of the MSS into 326 pages more. Please run over & measure the remaining MSS & see how much more it is going to make than what you want. I shall hate like everything to leave here, (even for forty minutes—tell Mrs. Bliss that) but still, if the MSS must be cut down, & it can’t be helped, telegraph me & I will dart for Hartford instantaneously. at once immediately.
“The Innocents Abroad;
or
The Mod New Pilgrim’s Progress”
seems to be the neatest & the easiest understood—by farmers & everybody—suppose we adopt it—& you suggest to the artist an idea for a frontispiece il title-page—you are good at it—remember your idea about it before?—What they expected to see—& what they did see?2explanatory note
I think my next proof will include the chapter on Pompeii==please send me two copies of that chapter. Instruct your foreman about it, now while you think of it.3explanatory note
Clemens was returning his proofs (“revises”) for chapters 28–30 (pages 298–326) of The Innocents Abroad, which he had probably received from Bliss the previous day, or at the earliest, on Saturday, 17 April. (He was not reading revised proof, but rather was asking Bliss to do so.) All of the words referred to here had appeared in those pages at least once, but “any where” and “every thing” survived into print uncorrected, there and throughout the book. Bliss’s proofreader has not been identified.
The cover and spine of The Innocents Abroad reproduced the title as Mark Twain wrote it here. “Pilgrim’s” became “Pilgrims’” on the title page, however, almost certainly at the instigation of the proofreader or publisher. This change created grammatical agreement with “Innocents,” but obscured the original contrast of Mark Twain with the hero of John Bunyan’s classic (Hirst, 229–30). Bliss followed up his own earlier suggestion, and “The Pilgrim’s Vision” appeared facing “The Quaker City in a Storm” as a double frontispiece.
Bliss’s foreman has not been identified, nor has Clemens’s purpose in requesting the duplicate set of proofs been explained.
References
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
- Machlis, Paul, ed. Union Catalog of Clemens Letters. Edited by Paul Machlis. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. [In some cases, UCCL catalog numbers cited in this volume supersede those assigned in 1986 and reflect corrections or additions to the catalog since publication. An updated version of the catalog can be consulted via the Letters Search page at MTPO.] 1986
- Paine, Albert Bigelow. Mark Twain: A Biography. By Albert Bigelow Paine. 3 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers. [Volume numbers in citations are to this edition; page numbers are the same in all editions.] 1912
- Parke-Bernet. William Blake . . . Samuel L. Clemens Manuscripts, Autographs, First Editions Including the Manuscript of “Tom Sawyer” from Which the London Edition Was Printed . . . Collected by the Late George C. Smith, Jr., New York, N.Y. Sale no. 59 (2 and 3 November). New York: Parke-Bernet Galleries. 1938
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain to Mrs. Fairbanks. Edited by Dixon Wecter. San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library. 1949
- Davis, Chester L., Sr. “Revising the Revisor.” Twainian 10 (January-February): 1. 1951
- Davis, Chester L., Sr. “Mark Twain’s Personal Marked Copy of History of European Morals by William Edward Hartpole Lecky (Continuation).” Twainian 14 (September-October): 1–4. 1955
- Hill, Hamlin, ed. Mark Twain’s Letters to His Publishers, 1867–1894. Edited by Hamlin Hill. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1967
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 3: 1869. Edited by Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Dahlia Armon. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1992
- Hirst, Robert H. “The Making of The Innocents Abroad: 1867–1872.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley 1975
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
MTB , 1:380, brief quotation; Parke-Bernet 1938, lot 126, brief quotation; MTMF , 93, brief excerpts; Davis 1951; Davis 1959, 1; MTLP , 19–20; L3 , 197–198.
see Mendoza Collection, p.587.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.