21? November 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: NPV, UCCL 00537)
I hope you will pack up & leave for Hartford instantly & finally.
Be hasty. Be quick. Sell out clean, in St. Louis. Leave nothing for other people to attend to.
Livy & child doing tolerably.
Don Ⓐemendation Shall you want the money?1explanatory note If so, say it.
Dr Clemens,
Have I been so stupid, as not to say to you I ◇ expect your brother so far as we are concerned. I thought I had said so or as much, & was waiting for report, daily as to his time of arrival &c—
He tells a good yarn in the slip sent. 3explanatory note We will give him scope for his talent here—
Wish he had been here for 10 days past. I have had a newspaper fight with Burr & Co. & all his backers over U. Races & have had to do it single handed, & think I came out in good standing— Another pen would have done better no doubt, had it had an experienced hand like your brother, at the end of it. 4explanatory note Wrote you yesterday— Frank says his baby is all right—so far as heard from possibly has gained “an ounce” 5explanatory note
For travel expenses (5 Nov 70click to open link, 11 Nov 70click to open link, both to OC).
The address, in Hartford, of the American Publishing Company.
Possibly a clipping from the St. Louis Missouri Democrat, where Orion was employed. Nothing by him has been identified in the paper, however.
The dispute was over American publication of John George Wood’s The Natural History of Man (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1868–1870). The American Publishing Company had issued it as The Uncivilized Races, or Natural History of Man (1870)—with authorization, and printing plates, from Routledge and Sons, who wished to counter the cheap, pirated edition previously issued by John B. Burr and Company, another Hartford firm, as The Uncivilized Races of Men in All Countries of the World (1870). The rivals argued their editions’ legitimacy, accuracy, and completeness in a series of letters to the Hartford Courant: “An Explanation Called For,” 10 Nov 70, 2; “The Exact Truth,” 11 Nov 70, 2; “A Bit of Bitter Truth,” 14 Nov 70, 2; “Truth Versus Humbuggery,” 15 Nov 70, 2; “‘The Uncivilized Races of Men,’” 16 Nov 70, 2; “Our Last Shot,” 17 Nov 70, 2; “The Uncivilized Races of Men,” 18 Nov 70, 2; “The War of the Races,” 19 Nov 70, 2; “The Uncivilized Races of Men,” 21 Nov 70, 2. The first of these, signed “Justice” and offering an ostensibly disinterested comparison, seems to have been Bliss’s stratagem for provoking the debate that followed. On 16 December 1870 the Courant printed Routledge and Sons’ summation of its position, accompanied by Burr and Company’s formal retraction of the charges of “misrepresentation, fraud and bribery” it had levied against the English publishers (“‘The Uncivilized Races’—A Card,” “A Card to the Trade and Public of the United States of America,” Hartford Courant, 16 Dec 70, 2; Geer 1870, 72, 435; “New Books,” Author’s Sketch Book 1 [Nov 70]: 3).
Newlyweds Frank and Frances Bliss had their first child, Elisha French Bliss, on 23 June 1871 (15 Sept 70 to Bliss and French, n. 2click to open link; “Hartford Residents,” Bliss Family, 1).
MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).
L4 , 245–46; see McKinney Family Papers in Description of Provenance.