11 July 1877 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: NN-BGC, UCCL 02512)
It’s finished. I was misled by hurried mis-paging. There were ten pages of notes, & over 300 pages of MS when the play was done. Did it in 42 hours, by the clock; 40 pages of the Atlantic—but then of course it’s very “fat.” Those are the figures, but I don’t believe them myself, because the thing’s impossible.
But let that pass. All day long, & every day, since I finished (in the rough), I have been diligently, altering, amending, re-writing, cutting down. I finished finally to-day. Can’t think of anything else in the way of an improvement. I thought I would stick to it while the interest was hot—& I am mighty glad I did. A week from now it will be frozen—then, revising would be drudgery. (You see I learned something from the fatal blunder of putting Ah Sin aside before it was finished.)1explanatory note
She’s all right, now. She reads in 2 hours & 20 minutes & will play not longer than 2¾. Ⓐemendation hours. Nineteen characters; 3 acts; (I doubled one.) (I redu (I bunched 2 into 1.)
To-morrow I will draw up an exhaustive synopsis to insert in the printed title-page for coypyrighting, & then on Friday I go or Saturday I go to New York to remain a week or ten days & lay for an actor. Wish you could run down there & have a holiday. ’Twould be fun.2explanatory note
My wife won’t have bBalaam Ass; therefore I call the piece “Cap’n Simon Wheeler, The Amateur Detective.”3explanatory note
References
- New York Public Library, Albert A. and Henry W. Berg Collection, New York
- 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
- Paine, Albert Bigelow, ed. Mark Twain’s Letters. Edited by Albert Bigelow Paine. 2 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1917
- 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
- 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
- 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
MS, NN-BGC.
MTL , 1:301–2; MTHL , 1:188–89.
See Howells Letters in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.