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Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes (Ⓐ)

Source: University of Virginia, Charlottesville ([ViU])

Cue: "If nothing happens"

Source format: "MS"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: AB

Published on MTPO: 2007

Print Publication: v6

MTPDocEd
To P. T. Barnum
7 June 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: ViU, UCCL 01240)
slc
Hartford June 7.
My Dear Barnum:1explanatory note

If nothing happens, I suppose we shall be so far away from here in July that we ◇ can’t attend that jolly gathering; but we are magnanimous enough to hope you & Mrs. Barnum will have a royal good time, even though we lose our share.2explanatory note We hope to enjoy your hospitality another time. With ourⒶemendation kindest wishes for you both

Yrs Truly
S. L. Clemens

letter docketed by Barnum Mark Twain

Textual Commentary
7 June 1875 • To P. T. Barnum • Hartford, Conn. • UCCL 01240
Source text(s):

MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (ViU)

Previous Publication:

L6 , 491–92.

Provenance:

deposited at ViU by Clifton Waller Barrett on 15 May 1962.

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

Explanatory Notes
1 

Barnum first urged the Clemenses on 23 March to pay a visit to his summer home, Waldemere, in Bridgeport, Connecticut: “You must not creep and crawl and sweat out of giving us at least a week’s visit with your wife when the weather is warmer.” He made the invitation more specific on 4 June (both letters in CU-MARK):

UCLC32183
seal of the city of bridgeport incorporated 1836 mayor’s office.
bridgeport, ct June 4 1875
My dear Clemens

I want you surely to come and spend 5th of July with us. We have nobody except ourselves & my married daughters who live in cottages close by, except your townsman David Clark, who always comes on that occasion, it being my birth day. This year instead of being my 45th I am very sorry to say it is my 65th! We have dinner & a clam bake in the grove on my place and a quiet social time. My wife joins me in hoping the health of your wife will enable her to accompany you.

P. T. Barnum

P. S. The “queer letters” are accumulating.

Barnum had been elected to a one-year term as mayor on 5 April 1875. Waldemere, the second opulent mansion he built in Bridgeport, was completed in 1869, more than ten years after his first one was destroyed in a fire. Two of his daughters by his first wife, the former Charity Hallett, who had died in 1873 lived in cottages on the extensive grounds. Caroline Cordelia (b. 1833) was married to David W. Thompson, a bookkeeper; Pauline (1846–77) was married to Nathan Seeley. Barnum married his much younger second wife, the former Nancy Fish (1850–1927), in September 1874. David Clark, a owner of the Hartford Morning Post, was one of Clemens’s fellow directors the Hartford Accident Insurance Company (see pp. 171–72; Saxon, 35-36, 46, 150, 191, 201, 212, 214, 253, 263, 266, 330, 394 n. 31; Trumbull Geer: 1874, 292; 1875, 294).

2 

The Clemenses planned to spend the summer in Newport, Rhode Island, to escape the heat. They did not depart, however, until 31 July.

Emendations and Textual Notes
Ⓐ  our ●  ‘ur’ conflated

References

  1. University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
  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. University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
  5. Saxon, A. H. P. T. Barnum: The Legend and the Man. New York: Columbia University Press. 1989
  6. Geer, Elihu, comp. Geer’s Hartford City Directory, for 1874–75: and Hartford Illustrated: Containing a Classified Business Directory. Hartford: Elihu Geer. 1874
  7. Geer, Elihu, comp. Geer’s Hartford City Directory, for the Year Commencing July, 1875: and Hartford Illustrated: Containing a Classified Business Directory. Hartford: Elihu Geer 1875
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