21 September 1876 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MH-H, UCCL 01367)
Look here, Howells, it is going to be time, now, pretty soon, for some of Grant’s blacklegs to retire from the consulships & render them into the handsⒶemendation of stainless literary incapables—of whom Stoddard is one of which.
Now I’ll be fair with you. I’ll tell you what I will do. If you will sit down & be the first office-seeker in the field, & write a letter & ask Gov. Hayes to replace, with Stoddard, the first blackguard he catches in a consulship after the firs fourth of next March, I will agree to support my brother myself, all through the administration; otherwise I will throw him upon the government—as he did with himself in Mr. Lincoln’s time.1explanatory note My brother has the strongest possible claims upon Gov. Hayes, too; because it was my brother’s sagacious desertion of the republican party three months ago (he is simply hell on political sagacity, as St Chrysostom2explanatory note would say) that made Mr. Tilden’s coming defeat so inflexibly & implacably & absolutely certain. I can always tell which party’s funeral is appointed if I can find out how my brother has made up his mind to vote. For some inscrutable reason God never allows him to vote right. ⟦I believe I told you once about my brother’s religious gymnastics? Well, I have some late news under that head: he is getting stuck after the Mohammedan plan of salvation, now.)⟧
Poor, Sto sweet, pure-hearted, good-intentioned, impotent Stoddard, I have known him 12 years, now, & in all that time he has never been fit for anything but a consul. When I was at the Langham Hotel in London I hired him for 3 months, at $15 a week & board & lodging, to sit up nights with me & dissipate.3explanatory note At the end of the time he wouldn’t take a cent. I had to finally smuggle it to him through Dolby after leaving England.4explanatory note Stoddard’s got no worldly sense. He is just the stuff for a consul. Don’t you think so? Now you ought to know, you know.5explanatory note You ought to know about these things. Now you pitch in & leg for him. Get a quiet consulship created, at Terre del Fuego, if there shouldn’t be a vacancy.
You are to answer my interminable letters only with postal cards, you understand. I write long, because I’m idle.6explanatory note
Edward Bates, Lincoln’s first attorney general, was a St. Louis acquaintance of Orion Clemens’s. In 1861 he arranged for Lincoln to appoint Orion secretary of Nevada Territory (RI 1993, 574; AutoMT1, 452, 461).
In 1873 and 1874 ( L5 : 19 Oct 1873 to Stoddard, 456–57; link note following 14 Nov 1873 to OLC, 476–78; link note following 28 Nov 1873 to Fitzgibbon, 493; 3 Jan 1874 to OLC, L6 , 4).
George Dolby was Clemens’s English lecture agent in 1873 and 1874 (link note following 29 Sept 1873 to MacDonald [2nd of 2], L5, 446–48; 1 Jan 1874 to Ftizgibbon, L6 , 2).
Howells had served as U.S. consul in Venice from early 1862 until mid-1865 (Howells 1979a, 83 n. 3, 93–94).
Howells replied, on a postcard sent on 22 September from Pepperell, Massachusetts, near Townsend Harbor, where he and his family were concluding their summer (CU-MARK):
Stoddard had fractured his left arm “just below the elbow and the joint suffered a double dislocation,” in May of 1874, while “riding a blind horse across the Campagna at midnight” (17 Mar 1875 to Stoddard, L6 , 416–18; Howells 1979b, 133, 139–40). He never received a consular appointment.
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
- 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
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Roughing It. Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, Edgar Marquess Branch, Lin Salamo, and Robert Pack Browning. The Works of Mark Twain. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. This edition supersedes the one published in 1972. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1993
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1. Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, Benjamin Griffin, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Sharon K. Goetz, and Leslie Diane Myrick. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 2010
- 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’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
- Howells, William Dean. W. D. Howells, Selected Letters, Volume 1: 1852–1872. Edited and annotated by George Arms, Richard H. Ballinger, Christoph K. Lohmann, and John K. Reeves. Textual editors Don L. Cook, Christoph K. Lohmann, and David Nordloh. Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1979
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
- Howells, William Dean. W. D. Howells, Selected Letters, Volume 2: 1873–1881. Edited and annotated by George Arms and Christoph K. Lohmann. Textual editors Christoph K. Lohmann and Jerry Herron. Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1979
MS, MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1784 (98).
MTHL , 1:153–54.
See Howells Letters in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.