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Source: Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass ([MH-H])

Cue: "I am entirely"

Source format: "MS, correspondence card, in pencil"

Letter type: "correspondence card"

Notes:

Last modified: 2010-09-13T12:12:53

Revision History: AB | skg 2010-09-13

Published on MTPO: 2022

Print Publication:

This edited text supersedes the previously published text
MTPDocEd
To William Dean Howells
15 October 1877 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, correspondence card, in pencil: MH-H, UCCL 01496)

P. S. When you come, remind me to show you my “Undertaker’s Tale”—& tell me what is the trouble with it.1explanatory note

Oct. 15

slcMy Dear Howells—I am entirely glad, a hundred times over! I saw the item in the papers 2 days ago & was going to send jubilations, but I was afraid of the confounded after-claps that come later, sometimes & spoil everything. But a house full of money, & so soon as the second night, is one of those Scripture truths that lay all doubts on the shelf. I’m mighty glad—there’s no two ways about that.2explanatory note

I’ve got some good news too—(but keep it to yourself for the present)—◇◇ “Ah Sin” is a most abject & incurable failure! It will leave the stage permanently, within a week., & then I shall be a cheerful being again. I’m sorry for poor Parsloe, but for nobody else concerned.3explanatory note

Yrs Ever
Mark.
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):

MS, correspondence card, in pencil, MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1784 (98).

Previous Publication:

MTHL , 1:206–7.

Provenance:

See Howells Letters in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.

Explanatory Notes
1 “The Undertaker’s Tale,” probably written in September 1877, is the story of a kindly New England undertaker, Mr. Cadaver, whose failing business is revived by the timely deaths of some neighbors and an outbreak of cholera, which enable him to save his home from foreclosure. Also featured is a romance between Cadaver’s daughter and an upstanding young gravedigger. Albert Bigelow Paine noted on the manuscript that Clemens “read this one evening to an unresponsive audience at the Farm” in Elmira. The tale was first published in 2009 (SLC 1877g, 2009).
2 Clemens replied to a postcard from Howells of 14 October: “Barrett has given my play twice in Cincinnati with what he calls grand success: the first time to a fair house; the second to a house in which every seat was sold” (CU-MARK). Barrett performed in Howells’s A Counterfeit Presentment at the Grand Opera House in Cincinnati on 11 and 12 October, and in a “farewell matinee” on 13 October (“Amusements,” Cincinnati Gazette, 13 Oct 1877, 7). The “item in the papers” that Clemens read may have been a paragraph in the Hartford Courant of 13 October: “It will be gratifying to all lovers of good literature and of the drama to learn that Mr. Howells’s new comedy, ‘A Counterfeit Presentment,’ was produced in Cincinnati Thursday night by Lawrence Barrett, and achieved a genuine and complete success” (“Personals,” 2).
3 On 7 October Maze Edwards reported that the expenses of staging Ah Sin were exceeding its profits, and by 24 October the tour, which had been booked until at least 17 December, was canceled (Edwards to SLC, 7 Oct 1877, CU-MARK; Perkins to SLC, 24 Oct 1877, CU-MARK). Parsloe was no doubt disappointed, but fortunately he was “not obliged to repay” the money advanced him, according to the terms of his agreement with Clemens and Harte (see the Appendix “Book and Play Contractsclick to open link”).

References

  1. Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass.
  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. 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
  4. SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). “The Undertaker’s Tale.” MS of thirty-six leaves, written ca. September–October, CU-MARK. Published in SLC 2009 [bib33222], 111–30. 1877
  5. SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Who Is Mark Twain? Edited, with a note on the text, by Robert H. Hirst. New York: HarperStudio. 2009
  6. University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
  7. 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
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