7 September 1869 • (1st of 2) • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: TxEU, UCCL 08611)
Mrs. Wm Barstow, of Fredericksburg, Va., who applies to you for the Virginia agency of the book, is an old & valued friend of mine, and I want to you to manage to comply with her request, no matter if it can possibly be done. If you will make the appointment & send her all the books she wants & she fails to sell a book or pay a cent, I will be responsible & foot the bill out of my own pocket—for which promise this note may be retained as my guaranty. I have every confidence in her.1explanatory note
letter docketed: ✓ and Mark Twain | Sep 7/69
As SLC to Elisha Bliss, Jr., 7 Sept 1869 (2nd of 2)click to open link, makes clear, Bliss received this letter from Kate D. Barstow herself, to whom Clemens had sent it, presumably enclosed in a cover letter, now lost.
References
- University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, Tex.
- 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
- Parke-Bernet. Sporting & Color Plate Books . . . First Editions; Standard Authors; the Important Library Collected by the Late R. Jay Flick, Lenox, Mass. Sold by Order of His Daughter Mrs Robert I. Ingalls, Jr, Birmingham, Alabama, the Present Owner. Sale no. 722 (8 and 9 January). New York: Parke-Bernet Galleries. 1946
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 3: 1869. Edited by Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Dahlia Armon. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1992
MS, Special Collections Library, University of Texas at El Paso (TxEU).
Parke-Bernet 1946, lot 120, brief paraphrase; L3 , 339–340.
The MS, inherited by Mrs. Robert I. Ingalls, Jr., of Birmingham, Ala., from her father, R. Jay Flick of Lenox, Mass., was sold to an unidentified buyer in 1946 (Parke-Bernet 1946, lot 120) and was eventually acquired by TxEU.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.