24 January 1871 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: ViU, UCCL 00563)
It isn’t any hardship to receive a letter like yours, nor to write & say thank you, & right cordially, too, for it.1explanatory note
I know that Tifft House—& I never could understand why they make such invidious distinctions & show such a mean partiality, these Buffalo people, in always callin referring to that place out yonder in the extreme edge of town as the poor-house, just as if the Tifft warn’t in existence.2explanatory note
In his letter Sterling had alluded to Mark Twain’s recent complaint about the burden of letter writing—“One of Mankind’s Bores,” in the February Galaxy (SLC 1871, 318–19):
(CU-MARK)
Clemens noted on Sterling’s letter:
Received on a low spirited day, & preserved for the comfort it brought.
The Tifft House, one of Buffalo’s most prominent hotels, opened in 1865. Clemens knew it well, having stayed there during his first visit to Buffalo in July 1869. In February 1870 some of the wedding guests who accompanied him and Olivia to Buffalo took rooms there. The “poor-house” probably was the Home for Aged and Destitute Females on Rhode Island Street, maintained by Buffalo’s Church Charity Foundation (Severance, 177–78; L3 , 281 n. 4; Buffalo Directory 1871, 53).
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 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
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). “Memoranda.” Galaxy 11 (February): 312–21. : “The Coming Man,” “A Book Review,” “The Tone-Imparting Committee,” “The Danger of Lying in Bed,” “One of Mankind’s Bores,” “A Falsehood,” “The Indignity Put Upon the Remains of George Holland by the Rev. Mr. Sabine. 1871
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
- Severance, Emily A. Journal Letters of Emily A. Severance: “Quaker City” 1867. Foreword and epilogue by Julia Severance Millikin. Cleveland: Gates Press. 1938
- 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
- Buffalo Directory. Buffalo City Directory for the Year 1871: Embracing a Brief Historical Sketch of Buffalo, a General Directory of Residents, a Street and Avenue Directory, Climatology of Buffalo, City and County Officers, Societies and Incorporated Companies, Banks, Tele Buffalo: Warren, Johnson and Co. 1871
MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (ViU).
L4 , 309–10.
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.