22 January 1871 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: NN-B, UCCL 00561)
I left the article with the Cleveland Herald people & told them not to print it for ten or twelve days. It Ⓐemendationis good, Redpath, & is se Ⓐemendationbut I believe you could have been a little severer without seeming ill-natured or damaging the g Ⓐemendationinfluence of the article.—don’t you think so?1explanatory note
Are you going to lecture Gough in California?2explanatory note If so, take the advice of a the only lecturer that ever did make 3 distinct Ⓐemendationlecturing tours in California,3explanatory note—& that advice is, lecture him 3 nights in succeession (& so advertise it,);—then talk him 2 successive nights in Sacramento. Ⓐemendation—1 night (or possibly 2,) in Virginia City n ⒶemendationNevada (provided you can get a church—for they won’t go to that nasty theatre,.)4explanatory note Then return & talk him 2 (or 3 successive nights again in San Francisco. There you are! If any body says “Go to San Jose, Petaluma, Grass Valley, Nevada City, Marysville, Carson City,” or any other camp on the coast, tell them Artemus Ward & Mark Twain both lost money in each & every one of those places.5explanatory note But six nights in Platt’s Hall, San Francisco are the only ones in the ten that I would give you my old boots for—but they are worth close onto $8,000 gold, clean profit—more than that, if you charge 50 cents extra for reserved seats (which ought to be done—& you’ll have from 500 to 1,000 $1.50 seats, that way.) I’ve had s had 1,400 reserved seats (all the seats there are in it,) in Platt’s Hall—sold them all in 5 hours,) & closed the box office at 3 P.M.)—but did not charge extra—being a fool—simply charged a dollar a ticket. But a man must have reserved seats there, whether he charges extra or not—it’s the only good way.6explanatory note
But maybe you ain’t going to take Gough there, after all—well, put this letter where you can find it again when you do talk somebody there. Nasby would have a big run there.
letter docketed: boston lyceum bureau. redpath & fall. jan 7 23 1871 and L | rule and Mark Twain | Buffalo | Jan 22 ’71
Redpath was planning a series of articles about lecturers, and had submitted the first—a thinly disguised exposé of Olive Logan and William Wirt Sikes—to David Ross Locke (Petroleum V. Nasby), editor and part owner of the Toledo Blade. Locke sent it to Clemens on 7 January, remarking: “I think it is good, but whether it had better go in the Galaxy or not is the question. Do with it as you like. If you dont use it for the Galaxy send it back to me & I will shove it into some daily in the west. The thing must be ventilated” (CU-MARK). Clemens instead brought it to Cleveland on or shortly after 9 January and gave it to Mary Mason Fairbanks for the Cleveland Herald (8 Jan 70 to OLL 1st, n. 3click to open link; 26 Jan 71 to Fairbanksclick to open link; 30 Jan 71 to Redpathclick to open link).
John Bartholomew Gough (1817–86), a very successful temperance lecturer, took the total abstinence pledge in 1842, began lecturing in 1843, and published an autobiography before he was thirty. By 1853 he was so well known as a lecturer that he was summoned to England by the London Temperance League. Redpath’s article mentioned Gough, but he did not join the Boston Lyceum Bureau roster until the season of 1872–73. In the spring and summer of 1871, however, under the aegis of the American Literary Bureau (of New York), Gough did tour California successfully ( Lyceum 1872, 3, 15–17; Boston Evening Transcript: “Personal,” 31 May 71, 2; “John B. Gough . . .,” 19 June 71, 2; “Lectures and Lecturers,” 19 July 71, 2).
Clemens first toured California and Nevada towns in October and early November 1866, made a second brief tour within California in November and early December of that year, and in April 1868 returned for a third tour that in part retraced his original route ( L1 , 361–70; L2 , 205–14; RI 1993 , 744, 745).
On both his first and third tours Clemens lectured once at the Metropolitan Theatre in Sacramento—in October 1866 to “one of the finest audiences” and in April 1868 to a “crowded” house (“Mark—His Mission,” Sacramento Bee, 12 Oct 66, 3; “Mark Twain’s Lecture,” Sacramento Union, 18 Apr 66, 3). As a reporter in 1863 he had described the new Maguire’s Opera House in Virginia City (with seating for sixteen hundred) as a “spacious and beautiful theatre . . . exactly after the pattern of the Opera House in San Francisco” (SLC 1863). But Maguire’s (later Piper’s) soon became known as drafty and cold. In 1863 a patron of Artemus Ward’s lecture said that “Every joke got off by the lecturer was not only heard but seen in a jet of vapor” (Watson, 131–32, 228; Rodecape, 142). Even so, Clemens’s October 1866 lecture there was well attended: “all the available space for extra seats and standing room was occupied” (Doten 1866). For his April 1868 lectures, on two successive nights, the house was not at capacity, but was full enough for the Virginia City newspapers to report a “crowded” house and a “very large and fashionable audience” (“Mark Twain,” Virginia City Trespass, 28 Apr 68, 3; “Mark Twain’s Lecture,” Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, 29 Apr 68, 3; L3 , 106 n. 2).
During his 1863 tour of the West, Artemus Ward lectured in many of the towns Clemens later toured, among them San Jose, Grass Valley, Nevada City, Marysville, and Carson City. According to Edward P. Hingston, Ward’s manager, travel and other expenses left little or no profit, and sometimes caused a net loss. Although Clemens’s similar experiences in 1866 made him doubt that he could make an 1868 tour of the West even pay expenses, he did end his 1868 campaign with a profit ( L2 , 128; L3 , 261 n. 2; Hingston, 316–28, 337–40, 374–77, 391–96, 408–9, 416).
Platt’s Music Hall seated eighteen (not fourteen) hundred and was, at the time of its opening in 1860, San Francisco’s largest concert hall. Artemus Ward filled it for his 1863 lecture, and Clemens delivered one of his Sandwich Islands lectures there to a “large audience” during his second 1866 tour (“Mark Twain’s Lecture,” San Francisco Evening Bulletin, 17 Nov 66, 5; Estavan, 15:224–26; Hingston, 299). In April 1868, for the first of two lectures at Platt’s Hall, reserved seats were priced at one dollar, bringing in, Clemens reported, “a little over sixteen hundred dollars in the house—gold & silver” ( L2 , 212). The following night’s lecture, added at the last minute, drew a “fair but not crowded house” (“Platt’s Hall,” San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle, 16 Apr 68, 3). Clemens’s final San Francisco lecture, at the Mercantile Library Hall on 2 July 1868, sold out (“‘Mark Twain’s’ Lecture To-night,” San Francisco Alta California, 2 July 68, 1; “Mark Twain Last Night,” San Francisco Examiner, 3 July 68, 3; L2 , 8–9 n. 1).
MS, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN-B).
L4 , 306–308; Will M. Clemens 1900, 27, with omissions; MTMF , 145 n. 2, brief excerpt.
Until his death in 1939 the MS was owned by W. T. H. House; in 1940, the Howe Collection was purchased by Dr. Albert A. Berg and donated to NN (Cannon, 185–86).
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.