17 January 1872 • Lock Haven or Milton, Pa. (MS: IaU, UCCL 00719)
No, I can’t lecture anywhere outside of New England in Feb., except it be in Troy, on the 1st. Wouldn’t talk in Utica or Newburgh either, for twice the money.2explanatory note
Was glad Bellefonte backed—wish some more would.3explanatory note The fewer engagements I have from this time forth, the better I shall be pleased.
letter docketed: Clemens Saml L. | Jan. 17 / 72
Clemens was probably writing from Milton, where he lectured on 17 January, but it is possible that he was still in Lock Haven, which was only about fifty miles by rail northwest of Milton (Redpath and Fall, 11; Appletons’ Hand-Book , 162).
Clemens wished to stay close to home as Olivia neared the end of her pregnancy. No lecture was scheduled in Newburgh, New York. A note in Clemens’s appointment book indicates that a tentative lecture engagement in Utica, New York, for 2 February, was canceled (Redpath and Fall, 15).
Clemens had been scheduled to lecture in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, on Monday, 15 January. When the committee “backed,” he remained in Pittsburgh for a long weekend instead (Redpath and Fall, 11).
References
- University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa.
- 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 5: 1872–1873. Edited by Lin Salamo and Harriet Elinor Smith. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1997
- Clemens, Will M. “Mark Twain on the Lecture Platform.” Ainslee’s Magazine 6 (August): 25–32. 1900
- Horner, Charles F. The Life of James Redpath and the Development of the Modern Lyceum. New York: Barse and Hopkins. 1926
- Clemens, Cyril. “Letters to James Redpath.” Mark Twain Quarterly 5 (Winter-Spring): 19–21. 1942
- 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
- Hall, Edward H. Appletons’ Hand-Book of American Travel. New York: D. Appleton and Co. 1867
MS, University of Iowa, Iowa City (IaU).
L5 , 28; Will M. Clemens, 29; Horner, 171; Cyril Clemens 1942, 21.
The MS may have been owned (or merely borrowed) by Will Clemens before he published it in 1900. Sometime before 1922, “Dr. Frank Wakeley Gunsaulus found this letter while on a lecture tour in the East and presented it to Harry P. Harrison, general manager of the Redpath Bureau, Chicago” (notation accompanying MS at IaU). The MS was donated to IaU in 1973 by Carl Backman, then manager of the Chicago bureau.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.