To
Elisha Bliss, Jr.
per Telegraph Operator
17 December 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS, copy received: NN-B, UCCL 00550)
per Telegraph Operator
17 December 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS, copy received: NN-B, UCCL 00550)
the western union telegraph company.Ⓐemendation
2059
dated
Buffalo N.Y.
187
0
received at
3 20 Dec 17
to
E. Bliss Jr.
149 Asylum St.
Got homesick. Will come shortly with sketches &
manuscript.1explanatory note Send me right away New York draft for fifteen hundred dollars
payable to James H. Riley.2explanatory note He starts in ten days.
Saml L. Clemens
29 pd N
telegram docketed: ✓ and Mark Twain | Dec 17/70
Explanatory Notes
1
The sketches were for a volume that Clemens and Bliss must have discussed in New York; their 29 December contract for it is transcribed in ET&S1 , 435. The manuscript was a sample of Roughing It.
2
Actually John Henry Riley. See 20 Dec 70 to Bliss, n. 3click to open link.
Emendations and Textual Notes
Ⓐ
the . . . company. ●
words on telegram
blank identical to those reported in the commentary for 7 Nov 70 to
Langdonclick to open link
References
- TS by anonymous compiler, CtHSD. 1974
- 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
- AAA/Anderson. First Editions and Manuscripts Collected by the Late Mr. and Mrs. William K. Bixby . . . and Other Literary Property. Sale no. 4098 (4 and 5 April). New York: American Art Association, Anderson Galleries. 1934
- AAA/Anderson. Books, Autographs and Drawings . . . Selections from the Collections of Nathan Comfort Starr, the Late Jahu Dewitt Miller . . . and Other Properties. Sale no. 4143 (9 and 10 January). New York: American Art Association, Anderson Galleries. 1935
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Early Tales & Sketches, Volume 1 (1851–1864). Edited by Edgar Marquess Branch and Robert H. Hirst, with the assistance of Harriet Elinor Smith. The Works of Mark Twain. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1979
MS, copy received, telegram blank filled out in the hand of a telegraph operator, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN-B).
L4 , 272–273; AAA/Anderson 1934, lot 125, excerpt; AAA/Anderson 1935, lot 101, excerpt.
The telegram, apparently part of the William K. Bixby Collection, was sold in 1934 and again in 1935. It is not known when the MS became part of the Berg Collection, given by Dr. Albert A. Berg to NN in 1940 but continuously enlarged since then.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.