17 September 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CLjC, UCCL 11612)
I wish you would write Messrs. Fair, Mackey & O’Brien,1explanatory note & ask them if they won’t save all the begging letters that come to them & send them to me from time to time. You know how rich my collection of this sort of literature is becoming, from reading some of those that Barnum sends me every month.
P. S. I destroy the names & addresses of such letters.
Wm. Wright, Esq | Union Hall Hotel | City return address: if not delivered within 10 days, to be returned to | “Mark Twain” Esq | City. postmarked: hartford conn. sep 17 6pm
William Shoney O’Brien (1826–78) was born in Ireland and went to California in 1849, where he mined for a time, opened a saloon in San Francisco, and later became a stockbroker. Like Fair and Mackay, he made a fortune from the Comstock lode (Hart 1987, 358–59; 29 Mar and 4 Apr 75 to Wright, nn. 5, 9click to open link).
References
- The James S. Copley Library, La Jolla, California. The collection of the Copley Library was sold in a series of auctions at Sotheby’s, New York, in 2010 and 2011.
- 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 6: 1874–1875. Edited by Michael B. Frank and Harriet Elinor Smith. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 2002
- Berkove, Lawrence I. “Jim Gillis: ‘The Thoreau of the Sierras.’ ” Mark Twain Circular 2 (March–April): 1–2. 1988
- Hart, James D. A Companion to California. Rev. ed. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. 1987
MS, James S. Copley Library, La Jolla, California (CLjC).
L6 , 535–536; Berkove 1988, 8.
see the commentary for 29 Mar and 4 Apr 75 to Wrightclick to open link.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.