27 June 1877 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: CtY-BR, UCCL 01444)
Your letter came today—thanks for it, & thanks for the generous thanks you filled it with, & which I do not deserve in the least, but accept & enjoy just as happily & gratefully as if I did. ItⒶemendation was much the joyousest trip I ever had, Joe—not a heartache in it, not a twinge of conscience. I often come to myself out of a reverie & detect an undertone of thought that had been thinking itself without volition of mine: viz: If we had only had ten days of those walks & talks instead of four!1explanatory note
I sent those 2 articles to Howells & have completed our trip in 2 more since I came here. I like the last two ever so much; but I have written to Howells & suggested the destruction of the 2 I read to you. In my closing chapter I have got in your story of the 2 dying soldiers & the coffin; if that doesn’t travel the rounds, then this is an unappreciative world. I got in the cabbage palms in due & solemn state; & the white houses; & Alfred; & the soup & chicken of St George’s & that young girl there; & Moore’s chair which we didn’t see; & the absent tramps; & a blast at our health officer, & upwards of several other things. I like those 2 chapters.
You grieve us to death with your news about Dean Sage. I am conscious of a stubborn inward refusal to accept of this impending dispensation—a sort of resentment about it that is afraid to formulate itself. There are so many we could spare!—& that he should be singled out! ThisⒶemendation is wicked, no doubt, but it is at least honest. And justifiable.
We all of this household send love & God bless you’s to yourⒶemendation & yours.
Exitu-Israel has just come—many thanks, Joe—I’ll give you an opinion. Been reading a lot of French rot here & am glad to get this.2explanatory note
On 25 June Twichell had written (CU-MARK):
The gift book was Sabine Baring-Gould’s In Exitu Israel: An Historical Novel. Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch donated it to the Mark Twain Library, in Redding, Connecticut, after Clemens’s death (Baring-Gould 1870; Gribben 1980, 1:46). Dean Sage lived until 23 June 1902, when he died suddenly of a stroke at age sixty-one. His younger brother William (1844–1924) was, like him, a member of the family lumber firm, H. W. Sage and Company.
References
- Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, Conn.
- 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
- Microfilm Edition of Mark Twain’s Previously Unpublished Letters. Prepared by Anh Quynh Bui, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Robert H. Hirst, Lin Salamo, and Harriet Elinor Smith. 8 vols. Berkeley: The Bancroft Library. 2001
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
- Gribben, Alan. Mark Twain’s Library: A Reconstruction. 2 vols. Boston: G. K. Hall and Co. 1980
MS, Joseph H. Twichell Collection, CtY-BR.
MicroPUL, reel 1.
Twichell’s papers were passed on to his children. Although CtY received some items in 1951 from Joseph H. Twichell and Mrs. Charles Ives, his son and daughter, the main collection was donated in 1967 by Charles P. Twichell, his grandson.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.