Clemens later recalled: “Mrs. Clemens and I went down to Elmira about the 1st of June to help in the nursing of Mr. Langdon” (AD, 15 Feb 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:113). In fact, however, they did not go until 7 June (OLC to Alice Hooker Day, 6 June 70 from Buffalo, CtHSD; 12 June 70 to PAM, n. 1click to open link).

See 26 Nov 70 to Webbclick to open link.

House (1836–1901) met Clemens in New York in January 1867 and published an important flattering review, in the New York Tribune of 11 May 1867, of his first New York lecture ( L2 , 6–7, 43–44, 291, 417–19). A would-be composer, House had become the Tribune’s music and drama critic in 1858 after four years with the Boston Courier at the same posts. He was also a Tribune editorial writer and special correspondent, reporting from Harpers Ferry and Charleston, Virginia, on John Brown’s activities and afterward accompanying Union forces during the first year of the Civil War. It was while he was in London in 1865–67, working as a theatrical manager, that he met Dion Boucicault (1820–90), the prolific Irish-born dramatist, whose Arrah-na-Pogue [Arrah of the Kiss], or, The Wicklow Wedding, opened in Dublin in 1864 and in London the following year. In 1890 Clemens recalled that House

Still later Clemens claimed that Boucicault declared House’s claim “a straight lie, with not a vestige of truth in it” (AD, 28 Aug 1907, CU-MARK). The exact extent of House’s contribution to Arrah-na-Pogue is not known, although he is credited with having made some revisions and with co-writing the version of “The Wearing of the Green,” condemning British tyranny, that was sung in the play. Boucicault ultimately assigned him all United States rights in the play and in 1891 House secured American copyright on it. In going to Japan in 1870, to gather material for a book, he relinquished his position as music and drama critic of the New York Times, which he had held since 1869. He remained in Japan for a decade, teaching English language and literature, writing, sending dispatches to the New York Herald, and editing the Tokyo Times, an English-language weekly. He also published historical and fictional works about the country (House 1875 [bib11887], 1875 [bib11888], 1875 [bib11889], 1881, 1888). Probably around the mid-1890s he returned to Japan, remaining until his death. The suggestion here that he had recently visited Buffalo (“Mr. House has just left us”) is confirmed by one of Clemens’s marginal prompts in his 1890 account of their acquaintance: “Buffalo in ’70?” (SLC 1890, 10; Fawkes, 157–58; Krause, 33–34; NUC , 69:114, 124; N&J3, 545–46 n. 188; “Journalistic Jottings,” New York Evening Telegram, 12 May 69, 2; Boston Advertiser: “In General,” 7 Mar, 10 Mar 70, 1).

The letter Clemens answered does not survive, and nothing is known of Bliss’s idea. Albert Bigelow Paine asserted that he had “proposed a book which should relate the author’s travels and experiences in the Far West” ( MTB , 1:420). Although such a suggestion might have reinforced Clemens’s recent interest in a western book, he of course had long been planning it (see RI 1993 , 801–4).