5 January 1871 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: MGlHi, UCCL 04138)
I wish you would make the theatre give my brotherⒶemendation & his wife season-passes—& you can puff & advertise in return. He’sⒶemendation an editor now & entitled to courtesies. It will keep them in good spiritsⒶemendation to go often to the theatre, & besides I want him to get drawn away from thought, & have a bracing & revivifying relaxation from his long siege of hard night work.1explanatory note
Will you do it?2explanatory note
I am glad you have made the place so pleasant to my brother—he & wife talk gratifiedly.3explanatory note
Hartford’s two theaters were Allyn Hall and Roberts’ Opera House. During the 1870–71 season, each booked a variety of events: Allyn Hall mainly concerts and lectures, Roberts’ Opera House theatrical and operatic performances (advertisements in Hartford Courant, 1870–71 passim). No evidence has been found that Bliss carried out Clemens’s suggestion.
Orion, accompanied or soon followed by Mollie, arrived in Hartford in mid-December 1870 to assume the editorship of the American Publisher, taking temporary lodgings. Bliss wrote Clemens on 20 December: “Your Brother is here & we are getting at work in earnest” (CU-MARK). No gratified letters from Orion or Mollie to Clemens are known to survive from December 1870, but by late January they had moved to “Pierson’s, next door to Bliss’s”—that is, to C. W. and David Pierson’s boarding house at 263 Asylum Street, where they remained until early July (OC to SLC, 25 Jan 71, 4 July 71 [CU-MARK]; MEC to SLC, 4 July 71 [CU-MARK]; Geer 1871, 193).
References
- Cape Ann Historical Association, Gloucester, Mass.
- 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
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 4: 1870–1871. Edited by Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Lin Salamo. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1995
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
- Geer, Elihu, comp. Geer’s Hartford City Directory, for 1871–72: Containing Every Kind of Desirable Information for Citizens and Strangers; Together with a Classified Business Directory. Hartford: Elihu Geer. 1871
MS, Cape Ann Historical Association, Gloucester (MGlHi).
L4 , 297.