12 January 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MH-H, UCCL 01178)
We mustn’t give up the New Orleans trip. Mrs. Clemens would gladly go if her strength would permit, but can’t Mrs. Howells go anyway? I think she would find it very pleasant. I know she would. We can put off New Orleans until March 1st, & then that would do in place of Bethlehem. You just persuade her.
We are expecting the furniture for one of the guest rooms in a few days. When it comes can’t you & Mrs. Howells run down here for 3 or 4 days & have a talk about this matter? Woul Ⓐemendation We would go to Boston but for the fact that we are not foot-free now; at least she ain’t, on account of having to see to little odds & ends of settling every day or so—nothing of much consequence, but just enough to make her presence in a manner necessary; so she begs & I beg that the Howellses will come to us in place of our attempting to get to Boston. Now do try to come.
I know how we can make our expenses going to N. O., but you’d just lose money going to Beth.
Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK):
Howells’s “colossal work of the imagination” was the book version of A Foregone Conclusion. The “Toronto letter” might have been an offer from an unidentified Canadian publisher (see 27 Aug 75 to Blissclick to open link). It and “the accompanying taunt” were part of an unrecovered letter, possibly dated 9 January, in which Clemens proposed simultaneous English publication of “Old Times on the Mississippi” in Temple Bar magazine, and reported on his earnings from the Gilded Age play (see 15 Jan 75 to Howells, n. 4click to open link). That letter also might have included his response to a compliment Howells had passed along: in a 5 January business letter, novelist John W. De Forest had advised Howells: “By the way, tell Mark Twain to try pathos now & then. His ‘True Story,’—the story of the old negress,—was a really great thing, amazingly natural & humorous, & touching even to the drawing of tears” (CU-MARK). Howells underlined the passage before sending De Forest’s letter to Clemens on 8 January, evidently without a cover letter of his own. Howells’s suggestion of a New Orleans trip had fallen on Clemens’s receptive ears when they were in Boston for the 15 December Atlantic Monthly dinner.
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 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
- 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
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1784 [98]).
L6 , 348–49; MTHL , 1:58–59.
see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.