21 August 1869 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: ViU, UCCL 00338)
I did hope to lecture for you, but I can’t.1explanatory note I am sorry, but the thing can’t be helped. I have already taken a newspaper & am going to take a wife—& that s is enough to look after for the present. I am under contract to lecture in New England, but have written to-dayⒶemendation to ask to be exp excusedⒶemendation, & no doubt I shall be.2explanatory note
Have heard from Kingston,3explanatory note but cannot talk there either.
Crane (1838–1927), a bookkeeper, had been (and probably still was) secretary of the Lincoln Literary Association, of Rondout, New York, for which Clemens had delivered his “American Vandal Abroad” lecture on 2 December 1868 (Ulster County Directory, 239; Crane family monument, Montrepose Cemetery, Kingston, N. Y., information courtesy of Amanda C. Jones; L2 , 47–48, 247 n. 3, 262).
Clemens had already written James Redpath on 14 August to “beg off.” Redpath’s response, now lost, must have urged him to reconsider. Clemens’s letter of 21 August, doubtless more emphatic, is not known to survive.
References
- University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
- 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
- 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
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 2: 1867–1868. Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, Richard Bucci, and Lin Salamo. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1990
MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (ViU).
Collector (October 1948), lot M 1956, excerpt; L3 , 315–316.
sold by Walter R. Benjamin Autographs in 1948; deposited at ViU by Clifton Waller Barrett on 17 December 1963.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.