To James Redpath
10 July 1871 • (1st of 3) • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: ViU, UCCL 00634)
Excuse my delay. Your long letter Ⓐemendation about routes, engagements, &c, received. I will reply at the earliest leisure hour.
You know I never interfere with my agents after once giving them my instructions in detail, & my notions about business. But I must put down my foot on that Boston business. I expected to speak in Music Hall (Fall promised I should), & I must speak there first if I am to speak in Boston at all. It might seriously hurt my season to be called to open elsewhere in the chief city of New England, & I fear to run such a risk.1explanatory note
Now you must arrange this in some way. I am cheerfully willing to speak for the South End course second, but not first. I am looking at the matter purely from a business point of view, & wholly without prejudice Ⓐemendation toward the South End. Mr. Dana’s acquaintance with the lecture w Ⓐemendation business wh will easily enable him to understand my position. If he will take the second delivery, I will lec knock $200 off my price & lecture for the South End for $50.2explanatory note
I am sorry to interfere, but this should be fixed at once. Don’t Ⓐemendation Nasby, Phillips,3explanatory note Dickinson, & others speak more than once.?
letter docketed: boston lyceum bureau. redpath & fall. jul 15 1871 and Twain Mark | Elmira July 10
Thomas Dana II—of Thomas Dana and Company, wholesale grocers—was the secretary of the South End Course. He may have agreed rather easily to the rescheduling proposed here, since Clemens received $150 for the “second delivery” on 13 November (Boston Directory 1871, 204; Redpath and Fall 1871–72, 3–4).
Wendell Phillips (1811–84), whom Clemens had met in Elmira at the Langdon house in March 1869, had first won fame in the late 1830s for his eloquent and impassioned antislavery oratory. After the Civil War he advocated a wide variety of reforms, including equal rights for women, temperance, Irish Home Rule, and the better treatment of Indians. By 1873, if not earlier, Redpath engaged some of his speakers, including Phillips, to lecture three times in Boston ( L3 , 175; Eubank, 148–50).
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
- Redpath, James, and George L. Fall. Notebook containing Clemens’s lecture itinerary for 1871–72 in the hand of George H. Hathaway of the Boston Lyceum Bureau. MS of sixteen pages entitled “Lecture-route, winter of 1871” and annotated by Clemens. Accompanied by its own black leather wallet, which is engraved in gold on an interior flap “Sam’l L. Clemens,” CU-MARK. 1871–72
- 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
- Eubank, Marjorie Harrell. The Redpath Lyceum Bureau from 1868 to 1901. Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 1969
MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (ViU).
L4 , 432–433.
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.