21 September 1869 • Buffalo, N.Y. (Parke-Bernet 1938, lot 72, UCCL 00355)
The ⒶemendationEditor of the Overland Monthly writes as enclosed. Isn’t Bancroft doing rather meanly in this matter? Will you answer the enclosed postmaster & the Pittsburgh man & oblige yrs.1explanatory note
None of Clemens’s three enclosures survives. The letter from Bret Harte, editor of the Overland Monthly, protested the refusal of Hubert H. Bancroft, the San Francisco book dealer who was West Coast agent for The Innocents Abroad, to provide a review copy. Harte’s reaction to the manuscript of Innocents, which he read and helped revise in June 1868 (see L2 , 232–33 n. 1), had made Clemens particularly anxious for him to write a review:
He praised the book so highly that I wanted him to review it early for the Overland, so that I could & help the sale out there. I told the my publisher. He ordered Bancroft to send Harte a couple of books before anybody else. Bancroft declined! I wrote a not Harte & enclosed an order on Bancroft for 2 books & directing that the bill be sent deducted from my publishers returns or sent to me. Mr. Bancroft “preferred the money.” Good, wasn’t it? {He wrote me the other day, asking me to help get him agency for my new book for Pacific & the Orient—which I didn’t.} Well, sir, Harte wrote me the most daintily contemptuous & insulting letter you ever read—& what I want to know, is, where I was to blame? (26 Nov 70 to Charles Henry Webbclick to open link, ViU)
Harte’s long and complimentary review appeared in the Overland Monthly in January 1870. He characterized Innocents as “six hundred and fifty pages of open and declared fun” and said that it confirmed his belief “that Mr. Clemens deserves to rank foremost among Western humorists” (Harte 1870, 100, 101).
Parke-Bernet 1938, lot 72.
L3 , 355–356; none known other than the copy-text.
The MS, presumably kept in the American Publishing Company files after receipt, was in 1899 tipped into volume 1 of The Innocents Abroad, the first volume of a special issue of one thousand sets of the “Edition de Luxe” of The Writings of Mark Twain. The present location of the MS, possibly part of either the Ormond G. Smith or George E. Chisolm collection before its sale in 1938, is not known.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.
The Parke-Bernet catalog describes the MS as an “A. L. s. “Clemens”. 1 p., small 4to, Buffalo, September 21, 1869.”