22 February 1868 • Washington, D.C. (Mott 1957, 364, UCCL 00020)
(SUPERSEDED)
FriendⒶemendation Church—Confound it, when a man sends you an article &Ⓐemendation you don’t want it, why in the mischief don’t you return it at once & give him a chance to use it elsewhere? ... This isn’t right, you know.Ⓐemendation 1explanatory note
The article may have been the “short magazine article,” not further identified, which Clemens said he wrote at the end of January (31 Jan 68 to Beachclick to open link). William Conant Church (1836–1917) was one of the editors of the Galaxy magazine, which had just published Mark Twain’s “General Washington’s Negro Body-Servant” in its February issue (SLC 1868). Church had begun his editorial career assisting his father on the New York Chronicle. Later he published the New York Sun for a short time, and served as Washington correspondent for the New York Times during the war. He and his brother, Francis Pharcellus Church (1839–1906), founded the Galaxy in May 1866 and served as co-editors until its demise in 1878, according to Frank Luther Mott. Mott is the only source for the letter text, the original of which he saw in the “Willard Church Collection,” whose location is now unknown. Mott is therefore the chief authority for which of the two brothers Clemens here addressed. Some doubt may arise because Mott, in quoting several other letters written by Clemens to the Galaxy in 1870, identified their addressee as William, even though all the Galaxy’s known replies were written and signed by Francis (Mott 1957, 361–67; Francis P. Church to SLC, various dates, 1870–71, CU-MARK). But Mott might well have seen envelopes or dockets for one or more of Clemens’s letters; and even without such evidence, the possibility remains that Francis routinely replied on his brother’s behalf.
Mott 1957, 364 and 364 n. 13. The text is quoted on 364 and cited in the footnote as “Letter to W. C. Church, dated February 22, 1868 (Willard Church Collection).”
L2 , 200–201; none known except the copy-text.
The location of the MS is not known: it is not among the William Conant Church Papers at NN or DLC. At the time Frank Luther Mott saw it, the MS was part of “Mr. Church’s file of Galaxy correspondence,” then in possession of Church’s son, Willard Church (d. 1944) of Montclair, New Jersey (Mott 1957, 361 n. 4).
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.