20 February 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: NPV, UCCL 00428)
No, I write European Letters occasionally for the Express Ⓐemendation, & they are all we need.1explanatory note
I will do my best to remember to put the “Times” on the X list,2explanatory note but as I don’t go to the office once a week it will simply be a marvel if I don’t forget it. But if you had dropped a line to the “Publishers” it would have been all right—savez? I’ll tie a string round my finger, though, & I’ll determine to recollect—& so I think I can safely say that I will remember to fix that thing, sure.
We are about as happy in our Aladdin’s Palace (I think it is a little more tasteful & exquisite in all its appointments than most palaces are,) as if we were roosting in the closing chapter of a popular novel.3explanatory note
Pray remember me kindly to our delightful friends the Payne’sⒶemendation,4explanatory note & we shall be glad at any time to see you & them at 472 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo.
If Clemens did in fact write “European Letters” for the Express, they have not been identified. His series of “Around the World” letters did not describe European travel (22 Jan 70 to Bliss, n. 2click to open link). Benton seems to have offered to sell the Express some European travel letters, possibly his own, not further identified.
That is, the exchange list of the Buffalo Express. The Amenia Times was Benton’s former newspaper (8 Jan 70 to OLL [1st], n. 2click to open link).
Clemens’s comments about his absence from the Express offices and about his domestic happiness show that he wrote shortly after the wedding, hence 20 February.
See 8 Jan 70 to OLLclick to open link (1st).
References
- Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
- 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 4: 1870–1871. Edited by Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Lin Salamo. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1995
MS, Autograph Collection, Vassar College Library (NPV).
L4 , 73–74.
purchased in 1922 from Caroline B. Peters of Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.