7 March 1872 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MH-H, UCCL 00731)
Fall does the carbuncles, Redpath does the boils—hire me to do an abscess & Nasby a tumor, or a wen, or something picturesque, like a goitre, for instance, & let’s g open the Lyceum Course at Music Hall1explanatory note with an exhibition, with appropriate music & a cold lunch. It would be the sensation of the season., if Redpath’s boils are happily Ⓐemendation strikingly situated. We could get some surgeon to take the baton & lecture while the panorama moves.
But we must come down to the serious affairs of life. I dock your bill about $25 to feed fe fatⒶemendation an ancient grudge I bear2explanatory note the Bureau! To get from Columbus, Ohio, to the next awfully out-of-the-way place, I had to hire a locomotive & pay $75 for it.3explanatory note If the Fall had adhered to my written stipulations that next place wouldn’t have been in my list at all. So I divide up the expense & make you pay a third of it, though my conscience continually urges me to mulct you the full amount, every time I think of the vexation, the profanity & the unspeakable indignation of that long day & the talking to the dullest & stupidest of audiences that memorable night. A place so out of the way that my usual telegraphing cost me $18 that day!
Enclosed please find check for $260 instead of $284.31.
But Lord bless you, being now avenged & satisfied, I will harbor vindictuitude no longer, but upon rep receipt of notice that this course is considered unkind & wrongful treatment by you, will hasten to forward the additional $24.31 immediately at once without delay.4explanatory note
letter docketed: 3/8.72 and Clemens Saml. L. | Hartford Conn | Mch. 7 ’72
Boston’s largest auditorium. Clemens lectured there on 1 November 1871 ( L4 , 422 n. 7, 484–85).
Shylock’s words in The Merchant of Venice, act 1, scene 3.
On 8 March the lyceum bureau acknowledged Clemens’s check as payment “in full for commissions on engagements for season 1871 & ’72” (CU-MARK).
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 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
- Dickinson, Donald C. Dictionary of American Book Collectors. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. 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
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H).
L5 , 54–55.
bequeathed to MH by Evert Jansen Wendell (1860–1917), a Harvard alumnus and collector of theater memorabilia (Dickinson, 332–33).
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.