12 June 1871 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: MH-H, UCCL 00616)
Begin my tour in the West if you prefer it—it does not matter to me.1explanatory note
What is Olive & those other dead beats charging?—or what did they charge last year? I don’t want to be cheaper than them, I don’t.2explanatory note
letter docketed: 6/23.71
Clemens had evidently not yet received a reply to his letter of 10 June to Redpath and Fall—but he would within three days (15 June 71 to Redpathclick to open link). None of Redpath’s or Fall’s letters to him for this period has been found; the next surviving letter from the Boston Lyceum Bureau is dated 25 November 1871 (28 Nov 71 to Fallclick to open link).
Figures have not been found for the 1870–71 lecture season, but in 1869–70 Olive Logan’s lowest fee was $100, which she received even in small towns like Danvers, Massachusetts, where, on 17 November 1869, Clemens received $75 ( Lyceum 1869, 3; Eubank, 134–36).
References
- Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass.
- 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
- The Lyceum. Boston: [Redpath and Fall]. 1869
- Eubank, Marjorie Harrell. The Redpath Lyceum Bureau from 1868 to 1901. Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 1969
MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H).
L4 , 407.
bequeathed to MH in 1918 by Evert J. Wendell.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.