10 March 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CLjC, UCCL 11635)
Yes I remember the pleasant occasion well & also the gentleman & the lady. And I wish the three of us might have another opportunity to assemble around the festive lunch table after another Albany lecture—but it may can not be,Ⓐemendation for I have no present I Ⓐemendation idea or intention of ever standing on a lecture platform again.
With many thanks, for the compliment of the invitation I am
Clemens delivered “Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands” in Albany on 10 January 1870, and “Artemus Ward, Humorist” on 28 November 1871. He may not have known McElroy (one of several McElroys in Albany in the early 1870s), who seems to have hoped that Clemens’s recollection of a “pleasant occasion” and its participants would be sufficient entrée for a lecture invitation. The “gentleman” conceivably was one of the lecture committee members who served as Clemens’s contacts in 1870 and 1871: Robert W. C. Mitchell, a bookkeeper, or Charles H. Burton, a dealer in vinegar and groceries. The “lady” has not been even tentatively identified ( L4 , 16 n. 2, 19 n. 1, 481 n. 9, 558; Albany Directory: 1870, 124; 1871, 33, 131–32; 1872, 40, 139; 1873, 40, 143; Redpath and Fall, 5–6).
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
- Swann. Autographs and Manuscripts. Sale no. 24 (16 October). New York: Swann Auction Galleries. 1942
- 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
- Redpath, James, and George L. Fall. Notebook containing Clemens’s lecture itinerary for 1871–72 in the hand of George H. Hathaway of the Boston Lyceum Bureau. MS of sixteen pages entitled “Lecture-route, winter of 1871” and annotated by Clemens. Accompanied by its own black leather wallet, which is engraved in gold on an interior flap “Sam’l L. Clemens,” CU-MARK. 1871–72
MS, James S. Copley Library, La Jolla, California (CLjC).
L6 , 65; Swann, lot 206, MS facsimile.
John L. Feldman purchased the MS from Swann Galleries in early 1990; CLjC purchased it from Joseph Rubinfine in May 1990.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.