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Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes (Ⓐ)

Source: New York Public Library, Albert A. and Henry W. Berg Collection, New York ([NN-BGC])

Digitized images: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/8ed50630-f9f0-012f-eb1d-58d385a7bbd0

Cue: "If you should"

Source format: "MS"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: AB

Published on MTPO: 2022

Print Publication:

This edited text supersedes the previously published text
MTPDocEd
To William Dean Howells
27 June 1877 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: NN-BGC and ViU, UCCL 02510)
Elmira, June 27
My Dear Howells:

If you should not like the first 2 chapters, send them to me & begin with Chap. 3—or Part 3, I believe you call these things in the magazine. I have finished No. 4, which closes the series, & will mail it tomorrow if I think of it. I like this one, I liked the preceding one (already mailed to you some time ago) but I had my doubts about 1 & 2. Do not hesitate to squelch them, even with derision & insult.

To-day I am deep in a comedy which I began this morning—principal character, that old detective—I dr skeletoned the first act & wrote the second, to-day; & am dog-tired, now. Fifty-four closedⒶemendation pages of MS in 7 hours.1explanatory note Once I wrote 55 pages at a sitting—that was on the opening third chapters of the gi Gilded Age novel. WhenⒶemendation I cool down, an hour from now, I shall go to zero, I judge.

When does Barrett open in your piece in N. Y (or Boston).2explanatory note I calculate to be there.

Ys Ever
Mark.3explanatory note

W.D. Howells, Esq | Box 160 | Newport | R.I. return address: Return to | S. L. Clemens | Elmira | N.Y. postmarked: elmira n.y. jun 29 10am 4explanatory note

Textual Commentary
Source text(s):

MS, NN-BGC, is Source text for the letter; MS, ViU, is Source text for the envelope.

Previous Publication:

MTL , 1:296–97, letter only; MTHL , 1:184, letter only.

Provenance:

See Howells Letters in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.

Explanatory Notes
1 1 The play that became “Cap’n Simon Wheeler, The Amateur Detective. A Light Tragedy” (SLC 1877f). Clemens evidently had been sharing his plans for the chief character with Howells for some time (see S&B, 216–89). This letter may not have been sent until 29 June: although an envelope postmarked on that date and addressed to Howells survives, it no longer contains a letter (ViU).
2 A Counterfeit Presentment (6 June 1877 to Howells, n. 3). Lawrence Barrett toured with the play with mixed success from the fall of 1877 to the spring of 1878 (for his debut in Cincinnati see 15 Oct 1877 to Howells). Clemens saw the play in Hartford in January 1878 and pronounced it “charming,” claiming he had “laughed & cried all the way through it” (4 Jan 1878 to Howells, Letters 1876–1880). Barrett appeared in the play at the Boston Museum in early April, but it never had a New York engagement (Howells 1979, 194 n. 3).
3 

Howells replied, on Atlantic Monthly letterhead, from Conanicut, Rhode Island (CU-MARK):

UCLC32513
editorial office of the atlantic monthly. the riverside press, cambridge, mass.
Dear Clemens:

I have just simmered down to-day after nearly two weeks of arduous journeying and junketing. First I went to Quebec to my sister’s wedding, which was a very pleasant affair, and then I got back to Cambridge in time for the President’s visit to Boston, and then in Newport. Nothing can give you an adequate notion of the cordiality of his welcome, and you would have liked to see how perfectly he did his part. I was with his suite a great deal, breakfasted with him and met him at the Mayor’s dinner.

My feeling was that on every occasion he was far the simplest and greatest man (except Longfellow and Emerson) present.— His son Webb and the young ladies of the party expressed their great regret at the failure of your attempt to see him in Washington. W. said his father would have been so glad to meet you, and the family would have been pleased to have you call at the White House.— Mrs. Howells kept your two letters about B. H. for me. I think now there is no danger of the national calamity you feared, and I don=t believe there ever was much. So I understood from W. H.

I’ve been reading aloud to my wife your Bermuda papers. That they’re delightfully entertaining goes without saying; but we also found that you gave us the only realizing sense of Bermuda that we’ve ever had. I know that they will be a great success.—The fog has cleared off, and we’re in raptures with Conanicut. Would that we could bring this your hill-top both to our shore!—That joke you put into Twichell’s mouth advising you to make the most of a place that was like heaven, about killed us.

Yours ever
W.D. Howells

Howells’s younger sister Anne (1844–1938) married Antoine Achille Fréchette (1839–1908), translator in the Canadian House of Commons, on 20 June 1877. The Howellses were with Rutherford B. Hayes in Boston and Newport in the last week of the month (Howells 1979, 161 n. 3, 168). For Clemens’s failed attempt to visit Hayes at the White House, see 1 May 1877 to Howells. The joke “put into Twichell’s mouth” was in the third installment of “Some Rambling Notes,” scheduled for publication in the December 1877 issue of the Atlantic:

We went ashore and found a novelty of a pleasant nature: there were no hackmen, hacks, or omnibuses on the pier or about it anywhere, and nobody offered his services to us, or molested us in any way. I said it was like being in heaven. The Reverend rebukingly and rather pointedly advised me to make the most of it, then. (SLC 1877–78a, 719)

4 This envelope may not have contained the present letter. It is postmarked two days later, and is preserved in a different library (ViU).
Emendations and Textual Notes
Ⓐ  closed  ●  ‘d’ partly formed
Ⓐ  novel. When ●  ~. | ~

References

  1. New York Public Library, Albert A. and Henry W. Berg Collection, New York
  2. University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
  3. 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
  4. Paine, Albert Bigelow, ed. Mark Twain’s Letters. Edited by Albert Bigelow Paine. 2 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1917
  5. 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
  6. SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Cap’n Simon Wheeler, The Amateur Detective. A Light Tragedy. Play written between 27 June and 11 July. MS of 315 pages, including notes; amanuensis copy by Fanny C. Hesse of 162 pages, both in CU-MARK. Published in S&B[bib00153], 216–89. 1877
  7. Rogers, Franklin R. Mark Twain’s Satires & Burlesques. Edited by Franklin R. Rogers. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1967
  8. Howells, William Dean. “A Counterfeit Presentment. Comedy.” Atlantic Monthly 40 (August): 148–61; (September): 296–305; (October): 448–60. Reprinted in Howells 1960[bib01013], 69–109. 1877
  9. 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
  10. University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
  11. SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). “Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion.” Atlantic Monthly 40 (October–December 1877): 443–47, 586–92, 718–24; Atlantic Monthly 41 (January 1878): 12–19 1877–78
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