22 and 27 September 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MH-H, UCCL 01263)
I’m not going to lecture this year, after all. I’ve subterfuged myself out of it. I can not lecture. I loathe it. But we are coming to see you by &Ⓐemendation by, anyway.
{ 28th Ⓐemendation 27th } I told you Bliss to send you advance sheets of my Sketch volume—which I suppose he has done. The book will be published in a week or ten days. I saw the first copy yesterday—& about the first thing I ran across was an extract from “Hospital Days” (page 199) —an entirely gratuitous addition by Mr. Bliss to neatly fill out a page. I have ordered it out, instanter.2explanatory note
Lord, what colds my wife & I have got!
bottom one-fourth of page cut away 3explanatory note
Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK), which replied to his of 18 September:
For the “Lexington Centennial,” see 18 Apr 75 to OLC, n. 1click to open link.
The “extract” appeared on page 299 (not 199) of Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old. Entitled “From ‘Hospital Days,’” it was in fact taken from Jane Stuart Wolsey’s Hospital Days (Wolsey, 77). Clemens transcribed it from that book for some undiscovered purpose, noting the author’s name at the top of the page and then crossing it out (CtY-BR; ET&S1 , 633 n. 203, incorrectly states that Clemens copied Wolsey’s sketch for inclusion in a “Cyclopedia of Humor,” but he was not planning such a work at this time). He may have inadvertently included his transcription in the printer’s copy he submitted to Bliss for Sketches, New and Old. For an unconvincing suggestion that Wolsey’s sketch actually copied Clemens, see Brownell 1943 [bib01027], 1943 [bib13385]; and MTHL , 2:863–64 (which misidentifies a table of contents that Clemens marked up for a late edition of Sketches, New and Old as “proof sheets”). For the outcome of Clemens’s protest, see 5 Nov 75 to Bliss, n. 7click to open link.
Probably only Clemens’s complimentary close and signature are missing from the letter, which is on the front and back pages of a folder whose inside pages are blank.
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
- Wolsey, Jane Stuart. Hospital Days. New York: D. Van Nostrand. 1868
- Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, Conn.
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Early Tales & Sketches, Volume 1 (1851–1864). Edited by Edgar Marquess Branch and Robert H. Hirst, with the assistance of Harriet Elinor Smith. The Works of Mark Twain. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1979
- Brownell, George H. “From ‘Hospital Days.’ ” Twainian 2 (March): 1–5. 1943
- Brownell, George H. “From ‘Hospital Days.’ ” Twainian 2 (April): 4–6. 1943
MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1784 [98]).
L6 , 541–42; MTHL , 1:103.
see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.