Samuel L. Clemens to Charles E. Perkins, 4 October 1877 · Hartford, Conn

Source: Mark Twain House and Museum, Hartford, Conn ([CtHMTH])

Cue: "Please re-mail that"

Source format: "MS, postal card"

Letter type: "postal card"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: Paradise, Kate

Published on MTPO: 2022

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This edited text supersedes the previously published text

MTPDocEd

To Charles E. Perkins
4 October 1877 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, postal card: CtHMTH, UCCL 01491)

Please re-mail that letter to me. I believe I will not concede the “dramatic” year yet.1explanatory note

S L Clemens

us postal card. | write the address on this side—the message on the other | Chas. E. Perkins, Esq 14 State st City postmarked: hartford conn. oct 4 6pm

Textual Commentary

Source text(s):

MS, postal card, CtHMTH.

Previous Publication:

MicroPUL, reel 1.

Provenance:

See Perkins Collection in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.

Explanatory Notes

This note, about Ah Sin, apparently referred to a letter that Clemens had written and asked Perkins to forward, but now wanted returned to him. The letter, addressed either to Edwards or to Parsloe, was probably a response to the following letter from Edwards, written on 2 October from Utica, New York, where he and Parsloe were on tour with the play; Clemens’s “card” has not been found (CU-MARK):

UCLC32575

Dear Mr. Clemens

I rec’d your card in New York, and delayed making answer for the reason I had written to Bartley Campbell, and was waiting on him before giving you my views on the matter you wrote. I am still without word from him on a/c of domestic affliction, so I will now say in few words, that I think your opinion is correct regarding “Ah Sin” and it needs rewritting, tho’ an abler man than yourself I do not know, who can do the job.

Parsloe thinks the piece is good in every respect, but the business we have been doing is the proof for me,—something is lacking [and] that something must be supplied and the vulgarities of the 2 Plunkett women expunged.

Pardon my frankness—you ask for my ideas, and I give them.

I think if you will not undertake the task I can get the play re-written, and I will do, all I have been doing—all in my power to make it a success.

Bartley Campbell (1843–88) was a playwright, actor, and producer whose works were popular in the 1870s and 1880s. In October 1877 he was touring in the Midwest with How Women Love and The Virginian (“The Detroit Stage,” Detroit Free Press, 30 Sept 1877, 1).

References

Mark Twain House and Museum, Hartford, 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
SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Ah Sin. Bret Harte, coauthor. Play written between October 1876 and February 1877. The only complete text is a prompt copy of 217 pages, in an unknown hand, at ViU[bib10492]. Published in SLC 1961[bib10456]. Twenty-seven MS pages of discarded dialogue, written by both Clemens and Harte, are also at ViU[bib10492]. 1876–77
University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley

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