24 May 1884 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, in pencil: NPV, UCCL 02984)
Some of the pictures are good, but none of them are very very good. The faces are generally ugly, & wrenched into inhuman distortions, over-expression amounting sometimes to distortion. As a rule (though not always) the people in these pictures are forbidding & repulsive. Reduction will modify them, no doubt, but it can hardly make them pleasant folk to look at.Ⓐemendation An artist shouldn’t follow a book too literally, perhaps—if this is the necessary result. And mind you, much of the drawing in these pictures is careless & bad.
The pictures will do—they will just barely do—& that is the best I can say for them. Suppose you submit them to t
The frontispiece has the usual blemish—an ugly, ill-drawn face. Huck Finn is an exceedingly good-hearted boy, & should carry a good & good-looking face.
Don’t dishearten the artist—show him where he has improved, rather than where he has failed, & punch him up to improve more.
Suppose you have one of the pictures reduced & printed—then we can get a satisfyingⒶemendation idea of the thing.
Please send a cloth Prince & Pauper to Mrs. H. G. Brooks, care of Remsen Brooks, 80 Broadway.
References
- Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
- 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
- Webster, Samuel Charles. Mark Twain, Business Man. Edited by Samuel Charles Webster. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. 1946
MS, in pencil, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Special Collections, NPV.
MTBus, 255–56.
see McKinney Family Papers in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.