8–13? October 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00543)
cross-written on envelope of enclosure:
I have no comments to make—this deadbeat that coolly refused to honor my written request that he would give Bret Harte a book & look to you for restitution, suits me for an agent if he suits you; I have not a word to say for or against him. I simply won’t answer his letters or pay any attention to him. If he is the best g Ⓐemendation agent for the coast, it is “business” to employ him. But if otherwise, & you employ somebody else, I wish you would He did well with Ⓐemendationthe book—& would have done A GOOD DEAL better if he had any sense about handling newspaper people. Think of an agent refusing to give copies to the chief papers! He is an infernal fool.1explanatory note
If you keep him you better send books to the papers yourself.
Mr S. C. Clemens
Editor “Express”
Buffalo
N.Y.
return address: book & stationery house of h. h. bancroft & company, san francisco, cal. office in new york, 113 william st. office in london, 10 warwick square, e.c. office in paris, 5 rue neuve st. augustin. postmarked: san francisco cal. sep 29
Only the envelope of the letter from Hubert H. Bancroft (West Coast agent for The Innocents Abroad) to Clemens is known to survive. Clemens wrote this note on that envelope and presumably enclosed it (with Bancroft’s letter inside) in a letter to Bliss—possibly his letter of 13 October, or some earlier letter (now lost). Bancroft’s letter was postmarked in San Francisco on 29 September. Assuming a transit of nine days, Clemens probably received it in Buffalo by 8 October, about the time he returned from Fredonia. For his fuller account of Bancroft’s refusal, see 26 Nov 70 to Webbclick to open link.
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
- 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, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L4 , 204–205.
see Tufts Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.