21? September 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: CCC2, UCCL 00508)
I turn this over to you.
Am going to write you soon. Yes, will furnish article for paper. 1explanatory note Have written Frank. Finished 7th or 8th chap. of book to-day, forget which—am up to page 180.—only about 1,500 1500 more to write.2explanatory note in margin: maybe
Our patient the young lady will hardly recover.3explanatory note
Write me supper invitation—cannot leave home before spring.4explanatory note
oldest paper in the county. two dollars a year. established 1855.
circulation 1,000.
|
job work promptly and artistically done at reasonable rates. the city of lansing is beautifully situated on the mississippi river, in alla‐ makee county, one of the best por‐ tions of the state. |
advertising rates, strictly payable every quarter: 1 square, 1 week, – $ 1 50 each subsequent insertion, 75 1 column, 1 year, – 80 (less space 25 per cent. additional.) |
the lansing weekly mirror, metcalf & co., john t. metcalf,
james t. metcalf, publishers and proprietors.
My Dear Sir:
I want to read your admirable book (“The Innocents Abroad”) but us poor d——s of country newspaper men can’t afford to buy one. We don’t know your publishers. Can’t we notice or advertise, and thus come into possession of something good for the mind, of a standard heaps of newspaper men want to reach, but you hold so successfully at your service?
J. T. Metcalf
6explanatory note
Ed.
S. F Clemens
Esqr.
letter docketed: Please send this back to me on a/c of back of it. Please attend to this it was sent to Clements & from him to me. Think you had better send copy & let him adv.7explanatory note Bliss
and, in another hand: ✓ and Mark Twain | Sept 19/708explanatory note
Bliss’s paper, which advertised American Publishing Company books, issued once, in late October 1870, as the Author’s Sketch Book. Retitled the American Publisher, it reappeared in early March 1871 (29 Oct 70 to Bliss, n. 1click to open link; 4 Mar 71 to OC, n. 3click to open link).
The draft of chapters 7 and 8 differed significantly from the final version of those chapters in Roughing It. For an account of the differences, and an explanation of Clemens’s estimate of remaining work—which was affected by his use of clippings of a number of his Buffalo Express articles (with each page of clippings counted as the equivalent of four manuscript pages)—see RI 1993 , 812–18.
Emma Nye died on the morning of 29 September. That night her body was taken to the Elmira home of Clara and Alice Spaulding. She was buried the following day. With Olivia now seven months pregnant, and worn down by four months of deathbed attendance on her father and Nye, the Clemenses did not make the trip to Elmira for her funeral (“Sad News to Friends,” Elmira Advertiser, 30 Sept 70, 4).
If mailed on 19 September, this letter probably reached Clemens by 21 September, and he could have sent it on to Bliss that same day or shortly thereafter.
It is not known whether John T. or James T. Metcalf wrote this letter.
Bliss lined through Clemens’s letter to indicate that it had been answered and that a copy of Innocents had been sent. No review has been found in the available file of the weekly Lansing Mirror, which, however, lacked several issues between September and December 1870.
Since Clemens did not date his note, the American Publishing Company’s clerk adopted Metcalf’s date to file it.
MS, on the back of J. T. Metcalf to SLC, 19 Sept 70 (UCLC 31687), Ella Strong Denison Library of the Claremont Colleges, Claremont (CCC2).
L4 , 196–98; brief excerpts in MTMF , 138 n. 3; Hill, 44; MTLP , 41 n.
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 in Description of Provenance). 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.