15 August 1869 • Buffalo, N.Y. (Transcripts: WU; Chicago 1936, lot 124;
and CU-MARK, UCCL 00333)
ThereⒶemendation is a literary weekly of trifling circulation &Ⓐemendation influence in Elmira called the Saturday Review—IⒶemendation mention it so that you can send it a book if you think it worth while. Don’t send it through me,Ⓐemendation because I have reasons.1explanatory note The Review is handsome & right well edited, I am obliged to say that.2explanatory note
I enclose letters to Reed of the Tribune and Wm. Ⓐemendation H. Chase of the Herald, to be sent with the books. Maybe you had better envelop & mark them “Personal,” & deliver them through your agent.3explanatory note Ⓐemendation
I can’t write to the Boston men, for I am not well acquainted with any of them, & moreover I have forgotten their names. Redfield4explanatory note would be just the man to attend to it handsomely—but then a while ago I conceived that the book was going to issue too late to give me a large lecture list in New England, and so I canceled my engagements & withdrew from the field. Their courses are pretty much filled, now.
Since purchasingⒶemendation here I have shut off all my engagements outside of N. England &Ⓐemendation withdrawn from the talking ring wholly for this season. You know when I got to counting up the irons I had in the fireⒶemendation (marriage, editing a newspaperⒶemendation & lecturing)Ⓐemendation I said it was most too many for the subscriber. Ⓐemendation
IⒶemendation like the “puffs.”5explanatory note I will attend to the Buffalo books for the press—send them along as soon as you please—did I tell you that I took dinner with the whole press gang, yesterday?—Good fellows they are,Ⓐemendation too.
Clemens wanted the Elmira Saturday Evening Review to notice his book, but did not want to appear to be asking a favor of a fledgling journal (first issued on 13 March 1869) which had previously treated him unsympathetically, both directly and by implication. On 24 April, Review columnist Ausburn Towner (Ishmael) had denounced American vernacular humorists in general, comparing them to “ugly jack-lanterns” and concluding:
It is not the want of an international copy-right alone, that keeps down the standard and the worth of American books; it is because these night-prowlers, these whisky-drinkers, these self-styled “humorists” (alas! that humor should be fallen so low,) by their incessant howling so fill the papers, the lecture stands and the ears of our countrymen, that they are forced to be taken as the general representatives of our culture and our literature. (Towner 1869 [bib11568])
And on 22 May Towner had launched a broadly sarcastic attack on Mark Twain in particular, belittling his “Remarkable Murder Trial” (see 8 May 69 to OLL from Hartford, n. 2click to open link). Bliss evidently did send Innocents to the Review, which gave it two notices. On 21 August, remarking that the book had acquired “some local importance” because the author “has spent so much time in Elmira, and his face has become so familiar that he seems almost as one of us,” Towner first offered praise: “I don’t know of a book of travels, and I have read cartloads of them, that contain anything so full of wit, wisdom, satire and beautiful writing.” But then he raised issues which had earlier troubled the American Publishing Company’s directors:
To many minds, alas! for what human work can be perfect, this book has one blot that I fear will mar its sale—its apparent irreverence, its playful allusions to matters that a large portion of mankind have been taught to regard as sacred. It is dangerous in the extreme for one depending upon the people of Christian lands for his success in life, to rub up violently or pleasantly, and even with no evil intent, against religious prejudices.
I am sure the author means no harm, either in the additional title to his book, or in his mixing up the scenes of a land to which all Christian hearts turn with an awe, and a reverence, with stories of baulky horses, paraphrases of Bible incidents, and flippant suggestions that the present aspect of the country and its inhabitants give rise to. These are only matters that would naturally present themselves to the mind of a nimble-witted man, who was struck by the contrast of things as they are, to their appearance as shown in pictures. (Towner 1869 [bib11570])
The regular book reviewer had no such reservations, however, writing on 2 October 1869:
This is the latest venture of the prince of American humorists, Mark Twain. ... It is full of unexpectedly bright sayings, which take the reader by sudden surprise; the veriest old blue stocking cannot read it without laughing at its rare and strange combinations of facts and incidents.—It is probably one of the best specimens of quaint and characteristic American humor. . . . There is health about it, and it beams with a cheerful, hopeful, religious vein. (“Book Notices,” 5)
The Review, edited and published by local printers Orrin H. Wheeler and Robert M. Watts, “was an idea of Robert Watts, the junior member of the firm named, who infused into job printing a dainty delicacy and taste never surpassed in that line in Elmira. His newspaper . . . was like him, the best of book paper, the cleanest cut and clearest of type” (Towner 1892, 398–99; Rowell, 67; Boyd and Boyd, 214, 216).
The letter to Whitelaw Reid follows. The letter to William H. Chase, the New York Herald art critic who occasionally wrote book reviews and dramatic notices, has not been found. Clemens had known Chase at least since 1867 (see L2 , 107 n. 2, 298). For Clemens’s reaction to the unsigned Herald review, which appeared on 31 August 1869, see his 3 September letter to Bliss. Bliss’s New York City agent has not been identified.
Clemens meant James Redpath, his Boston lecture agent.
Another Innocents Abroad advertising circular. It probably came in a 14 August letter from Bliss that Clemens forwarded to Pamela Moffett (see the postscript to 20 and 21 Aug 69 to PAMclick to open link). This leaflet combined an American Publishing Company letter to newspaper editors with samples of early reviews. The strategy was successful, for some of the “puffs” were later reprinted in local newspapers (see the advertising circular for the Boston Lyceumclick to open link, the circular for The Innocents Abroad click to open link, and the mailer for The Innocents Abroad click to open link; and see Hirst, 265–66).
No copy-text. The text is based on three transcripts, each of which derives independently from the MS:
P1, University of Wisconsin, Madison (WU), was made by Dana Ayer during the late 1890s or after; P2, a partial transcript, was made in 1936 when the MS sold at auction (Chicago 1936); P3, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK), was made by Joseph Rosenberg of Chicago in 1943, when he owned the MS.
L3 , 301–302; see Copy-text; MTLP , 27.
The MS evidently remained among the American Publishing Company’s files until it was sold (and may have been copied at that time by Dana Ayer; see Brownell Collection, pp. 581–82). Acquired by an unidentified owner, it was sold again in 1936 and by 1943 had been acquired by Joseph Rosenberg. Its present location is not known. The Ayer transcription was in turn copied by a typist and both the handwritten and typed transcriptions are at WU.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.
P2 describes the MS as an “A. L. S. ‘Clemens.’ 3pp., 8vo. Buffalo, Aug. 15. To ‘Friend Bliss.’ In pencil.”