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Source: Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass ([MH-H])

Cue: "Mrs. Clemens is so afraid"

Source format: "MS"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: AB

Published on MTPO: 2007

Print Publication: v6

MTPDocEd
To William Dean Howells
2 December 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MH-H, UCCL 01159)
Dec. 1 2.
Dear Howells:

Mrs. Clemens is so afraid I will leitter up your house with photographs of myself, that at her earnest request I suggest that if I have sent you any others before this, you destroy them. But I consider this fresh picture quite a bully one—or rather, Mrs. Clemens does, the expression being hers.1explanatory note

With kindest regards to you all,

Ys Ever
S. L. C.
Textual Commentary
2 December 1874 • To William Dean Howells • Hartford, Conn. UCCL 01159
Source text(s):

MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1784 [98]).

Previous Publication:

L6 , 300–1; MTHL , 1:45–46.

Provenance:

see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.

More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.

Explanatory Notes
1 

The enclosed photograph has not been found, but it was doubtless a print, inscribed, of the same image Clemens sent to Jahu Dewitt Miller (see the next letter). Clemens gave Howells’s reply to this letter to Twichell, who preserved it in his journal (Twichell, 1:39):

UCLC32073

editorial office of the atlantic monthly. the riverside press, cambridge, mass.

Dec. 3, 1874.

My dear Clemens:

The fotograf is a wonderful success, and Mrs. Howells and I are exultantly grateful. We’ve got it framed to match Warner’s, and it turns its eagle-eye away from me towards Boston, on my study mantel-piece. Apparently it is looking for Twichell, and I hope it will soon see him coming. (Read this poetic passage to him—that he may not forget the picture he promised us.)—By even post with this, I expect to send my book to Mrs Clemens with the hope that she will accept it. Please tell her that her liking it as it went through the magazine was a great comfort and pleasure to me.

We had a curious sort of fish-symposium yesterday in a little wooden house that hangs amphibiously on to the side of the South Boston Bridge, and belongs to a Boat Club that hasn’t got any boat. The dinner was given by Underwood (“Lord of Himself,”) and Osgood. Aldrich was there, and we had a good time that asked nothing but to be crowned by the presence of you and Twichell. I hope you’re getting ready the second paper of reminiscences, for we’ve announced it for February. If I might put in my jaw at this point, I should say, stick to actual fact and character in the thing, and give things in detail. All that belongs to the old river life is novel and is now mostly historical. Don’t write at any supposed Atlantic audience, but yarn it off as if into my sympathetic ear. Don’t be afraid of rests or pieces of dead color. I fancied a sort of hurried and anxious air in the first.

Yours ever
W. D. Howells.

Twichell kept his promise of a picture for the Howellses (see 18 Dec 74 to Howells, n. 2click to open link). Howells sent Olivia a copy of his recently published novel, A Foregone Conclusion (see 21 June 74 to Howells, n. 1click to open link; 8 Dec 74 to Howells, n. 4click to open link). Francis H. Underwood (1825–94), a Boston lawyer, editor, and author, had conceived of the Atlantic Monthly, helped found it in 1857, contributed fiction and reviews, and until 1859 served as assistant to its first editor, James Russell Lowell. Howells gave Underwood’s novel of “life in Kentucky,” Lord of Himself, a tolerant review in the Atlantic for September 1874 (Howells 1874, 362–63; Atlantic Index , 226). The “fish-symposium” was probably held at the Nautilus Club, site of another dinner attended by Howells, Underwood, Osgood, and Aldrich (12 Feb 75 to Osgood, n. 6click to open link; 1 Mar 75 to Howells, n. 1click to open link).

References

  1. Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass.
  2. 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
  3. SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 6: 1874–1875. Edited by Michael B. Frank and Harriet Elinor Smith. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 2002
  4. MTHL. Mark Twain–Howells Letters. Edited by Henry Nash Smith and William M. Gibson, with the assistance of Frederick Anderson. 2 vols. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 1960
  5. Twichell, Joseph H. “Personal Journal.” MS of 12 volumes, Joseph H. Twichell Collection, CtY-BR[bib10615]. 1874–1916
  6. Howells, William Dean. “Recent Literature.” Atlantic Monthly 34 (September): 361–75. 1874
  7. Atlantic Index. The Atlantic Index: A List of Articles, with Names of Authors Appended, Published in “The Atlantic Monthly,” from Its Establishment in 1857 to the Close of the Sixty-Second Volume in 1888. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co. 1889
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