16 April 1873 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CSmH, UCCL 00900)
Laziness, ham Ⓐemendation obstructed by work, is my excuse.—not want of desire to write you, or lack of affection.1explanatory note Every Ⓐemendation since I arrived from England, several months ago, Chas Dudley Warner & I have been belting away every day on a partnership novel. I have worked 6 days a week—good full days—& laid myself up, once. Have written many chapters twice, & some of them three times—have thrown away 300 clean pages of MS. & still there’s havoc to be made when I enter on the final polishing. Warner has been more fortunate—he won’t lose 50 pages.
S Ⓐemendation Three more chapters will end the book. We I laid out the plan of the boss chapter, the climax chapter, yesterday, & Warner will write it up to-day; I wrote it up yesterday, & shall work & trim & polish at it to-day—& to-night we shall read, & the man who has written it best is all right—the other man’s MS. will be torn up. If neither succeeds, we’ll both write the chapter over again.
Every night for many weeks, Livy & Susie Warner have collected in my study to hear Warner & me read our day’s work; & they have done a power of criticising, but have always been anxious to be on hand at the reading & find out what has been happening to the dramatis personae since the previous evening. They both pleaded so long & vigorously for Warner’s heroine, that yesterday Warner agreed to spare her life & let her marry—he meant to kill her. I killed my heroine as dead as a mackerel yesterday (but Livy don’t know it yet). Warner may or may not kill her to-day (this is in the “boss” chapter.) We shall see. I wish you had been here all this time to criticise. The book will issue e in the end of summer—here & in England spasmodically—I tote over a copy of the MS May 17.2explanatory note
I’m not half done with this letter, but I have an itching desire to get back to my chapter & shake up my heroine’s remains. We’re all well. Livy will write.
P. S.—(Night.) My climax chapter is the one accepted by Livy & Susie, & so my heroine, Laura, remains dead.
I have also written another chapter, in which I have brought Clay Hawkins home from California & the Chinchas, made Washington tear up the tax bill, & started him & Col. Sellers home, to appear no more in the book. Do you think that was best? Or would it have been better to let Sellers go over into Pennsylvania, first, & give Philip a lift with his mining troubles? He could have passed through Philadelphia, then, & had a chance to see Ruth (poor Ruth!) & the Boltons.3explanatory note
Sam
In an undated letter postmarked 14 April, Fairbanks had chided the Clemenses for their failure to write (CU-MARK):
In chapter 60 of The Gilded Age Laura is reported to have turned “to that final resort of the disappointed of her sex, the lecture platform,” only to suffer humiliation on her first appearance. She is found dead a few days later from “heart disease” (SLC 1873–74, 547, 551). Clemens expected the English edition to issue “simultaneously” rather than “spasmodically.”
Clay Hawkins, Washington Hawkins, and Colonel Sellers all resolve their affairs and go home in chapter 61. Ruth Bolton recovers from her serious illness and agrees to marry Philip Sterling, who has barely escaped financial ruin by discovering coal on her father’s land, in chapters 62 and 63.
References
- Henry E. Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, Calif.
- 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
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain to Mrs. Fairbanks. Edited by Dixon Wecter. San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library. 1949
- Davis, Chester L., Sr. “Family Letters of the 1870’s (Mark’s Inventions and ‘The Gilded Age.’).” Twainian 36 (September-October): 1–4. 1977
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-day. Charles Dudley Warner, coauthor. Hartford: American Publishing Company. [Early copies bound with 1873 title page, later ones with 1874 title page: see BAL,2:3357.] [bib00143] 1873–74
MS, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino (CSmH, call no. HM 14280).
L5 , 339–341; MTMF , 170–72; Davis 1977, 3, excerpt.
see Huntington Library in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.