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Source: Seventy-second Anniversary Celebration of the New England Society in the City of New York at Delmonico’s, Dec. 22, 1877. New York: n.p ([])

Cue: "Remembering Mr. Curtis's"

Source format: "Transcript"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: AB

Published on MTPO: 2022

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This edited text supersedes the previously published text
MTPDocEd
To D. F. Appleton
5 December 1877 • Hartford, Conn. ( New-England Society 1877, p. 84, UCCL 01508)
 slc                                farmington avenue, hartford.
Dec. 5, 1877Ⓐemendation
D. F. Appleton, Esq.Ⓐemendation

Dear SirⒶemendation: Remembering Mr. Curtis’s great speech, &Ⓐemendation other great & enjoyable features of the New-England Society’s last annual banquet,1explanatory note it is with very real regret that I am obliged to deny myself the privilege of being present at this year’s dinner; but I have an offensive business engagement for that day in Hartford.2explanatory note Most people would shirk this, under the temptation which your invitation offers, but I have young George Washington’s disease (which is much rarer now than Bright’s), & my word is the one unfracturable thing about me. ⟦I do not know what Bright’s disease is, but anyway, I do not feel bright enough this morning to be afraid I have got it.⟧3explanatory note

Still, I shall not be without my share in the pleasures of the occasion for my private telephone will be connected with your banqueting hall, if my plans & purposes succeed.4explanatory note It has an improvement of my own invention which I call the Olfactorium, & I shall sit by my own firesideⒶemendation, with a few friends whom I have taken the liberty to invite to your celebration, & we will smoke our pipes & sip our lemonade, applaud your speeches judiciously, & refresh ourselves with a fragrant sniff of each of your courses as it comes on your table. We shall also have one privilege which will be denied to your (otherwise) more fortunate guests: for if an orator ventures to spread himself out over the edges of the regulation ten minutes, he must be proportionately interesting, or we will shut down the lid on him & wait for the next speaker. Since we shall necessarily not be in the list of guests appointed to respond to toasts, we shall sorrow to be unable to contribute a sentiment or two to the general entertainment, but there is a new song here which you may not have heard, & if you care for music we shall be very glad indeed to sing it for you, by telephone. I am not right sure of the name of it, but I think it is called “In the Sweet By-& Bye.”5explanatory note

Again thanking the Committee for the compliment of their invitation, I am, with great respect,

Mark TwainⒶemendation.
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):

New-England Society 1877, 84.

Explanatory Notes
1 Daniel F. Appleton (1826–1904), co-owner of the American Waltham Watch Company in Waltham, Massachusetts, was president of the New England Society in the City of New York (for the society see 20 Dec 1876 to Perkins, n. 1). At the last annual banquet, on 22 December 1876 at Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York, author and orator George William Curtis (1824–92) had responded to the toast “Forefathers’ Day” with a stirring and patriotic political speech. For Clemens’s remarks on that occasion see the Appendix “Speech to the New England Societyclick to open link.”
2 The “offensive business engagement” that prevented Clemens from attending the society’s 1877 banquet, again on 22 December at Delmonico’s, has not been identified and may have been a convenient fiction. He clearly wrote this letter expecting it to be published; it appeared in the society’s report of the dinner (New England Society 1877, 3–4, 84).
3 Richard Bright (1789–1858) gave his name to the kidney disease that he first described in 1827. The term is no longer used because it is too generic.
4 Clemens was planning to install a telephone, an invention first patented by Alexander Graham Bell in March 1876. By the end of 1877 it was in use by some three thousand businesses. In late December 1877 or early January 1878, Clemens had an instrument installed in his Hartford house, connecting him with the Hartford Courant—possibly the first one in private use (AutoMT2, 491; Hubbard to SLC, 17 Dec 1877, CU-MARK).
5 The popular hymn “The Sweet By-and-By” was composed in 1868 by Joseph P. Webster to lyrics by Sanford F. Bennett. In a notebook entry of 3 November 1878, Clemens categorized it as one of the songs that “were sweet & pretty & were able to move one—at first; but when everybody & everything persecuted you with them you learned to loathe the originals as well as the copies” (N&J2, 240). And in 1889, in chapter 17 of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Hank Morgan describes a band performing “what seemed to be the crude first-draft or original agony of the wail known to later centuries as ‘In the Sweet By and By.’ It was new, and ought to have been rehearsed a little more. For some reason or other the queen had the composer hanged, after dinner” (CY, 196).
Emendations and Textual Notes
Ⓐ  slc  farmington avenue, hartford. | Dec. 5, 1877 ●  Farmington Avenue, Hartford, Dec 5, 1877
Ⓐ  D. F. Appleton, Esq. ●  D. F. Appleton, Esq.
Ⓐ  Dear Sir ●  Dear Sir
Ⓐ  & ●  and here and hereafter
Ⓐ  fireside ●  fire- | side
Ⓐ  Mark Twain ●  MARK TWAIN

References

  1. New England Society. Seventy-second Anniversary Celebration of the New England Society in the City of New York at Delmonico’s, Dec. 22, 1877. New York: n.p. 1877
  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. SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2. Edited by Benjamin Griffin, Harriet Elinor Smith, 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]. 2013
  4. University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
  5. N&J2. Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Volume II (1877–1883). Edited by Frederick Anderson, Lin Salamo, and Bernard L. Stein. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1975
  6. SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Edited by Bernard L. Stein, with an introduction by Henry Nash Smith. The Works of Mark Twain. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1979
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