19 August 1871 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: JIm, UCCL 00647)
Got your letter to-dayⒶemendation. When do you sail? Can’t you run up here for one day?1explanatory note I’m awful busy on my new book on Nevada & California. And by the way you might tell me something about the tunnel that would make an interesting page, perhaps.2explanatory note It was about another matter that I wanted to see you principally & very particularly,3explanatory note but one might as well kill various birds with one stone.
Riley is in England.—London.4explanatory note
Sutro’s letter has not been found. He arrived in New York on 22 August, and sailed for EnglandⒶemendation eight days later. He was intent on securing European investors in his proposed tunnel to the mines of the Comstock lode (2 Dec 70 to Riley, n. 3click to open link; Adolph Sutro, 33–34; “Morning Arrivals,” New York Evening Express, 22 Aug 71, 3; “Prominent Arrivals,” New York Tribune, 23 Aug 71, 8).
Clemens may have just completed a draft of chapter 52 of Roughing It, which described silver mines and mining techniques, and was considering adding a description of the Sutro tunnel ( RI 1993 , 354–60, 866–67; 29 Aug 71 to Sutroclick to open link).
Possibly Clemens wanted advice about John Henry Riley’s recommendation that a company be organized to bore wells in South Africa to facilitate diamond exploration and mining—an idea comparable in many ways to Sutro’s tunnel (“Personals,” Buffalo Express, 31 Aug 71, 2).
Riley had returned from South Africa to London en route home. He had never informed Sutro of the specifics of his mission for Clemens (3 Mar 71 to Riley, n. 7click to open link).
References
- Iwaki Meisei University, Iwaki, Fukushima, Japan.
- 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
- Davis, Chester L., Sr. “Adolph Sutro.” Twainian 8 (March-April): 8. 1949
- Sutro, Adolph. Closing Argument of Adolph Sutro on the Bill Before Congress to Aid the Sutro Tunnel, Delivered Before the Committee on Mines and Mining of the House of Representatives of the United States of America, Monday, April 22, 1872. Washington, D.C.: M’Gill and Witherow. 1872
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Roughing It. Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, Edgar Marquess Branch, Lin Salamo, and Robert Pack Browning. The Works of Mark Twain. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. This edition supersedes the one published in 1972. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1993
MS, Iwaki Meisei University, Iwaki City, Japan (JIm).
L4 , 447–448; Chester L. Davis 1949, 8.
The letter was sold by the Holmes Book Company, Oakland, probably in 1949; again in 1969 (and perhaps in 1972) by the Scriptorium, Los Angeles; and by 1976 it had been bought by Theodore H. Koundakjian, who sold it to JIm in 1987.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.