13 January 1872 • Pittsburgh, Pa. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00716)
$ 150 .
Livy darling just been sending you along dispatch. All the papers speak highly, but I have duplicates of only 2 (enclosed.)1explanatory note
Livy Ⓐemendation dear, don’t send any patent rubbish to me—send it to Bliss—the whole thing is in his hands.2explanatory note
I send Redpath $70000 today3explanatory note & you $150. Please acknowledge.
Most lovingly & in a great hurry
I enclosed the autograph for Mrs. Hooker. 4explanatory note
enclosure: 5explanatory note
Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Cor Forest & Hawthorne | Hartford | Conn. Ⓐemendation return address: if not delivered within 10 days, to be returned to postmarked: pittsburgh pa. jan 1 Ⓐemendation◇
Clemens’s “long dispatch” (presumably a telegram) has not been found or further identified. Only the Pittsburgh Gazette review of Clemens’s 11 January lecture survives with the letter (see note 5). The other enclosed review may have been the one in the Pittsburgh Commercial, possibly written by his friend William C. Smythe (19 Apr 72 to Bliss, n. 2click to open link). It is transcribed here in its entirety:
MARK TWAIN .
The Lecture Last Evening .
Library Hall was crowded to repletion last evening to listen to Mark Twain’s lecture, “Roughing It.” The gentleman did not arrive in the city until a short time before the hour announced for his appearance, and the consequence was that the large audience was kept in waiting for some time before Mr. Twain made his appearance. He was preceded by Mr. Howard, of the Lecture Committee, who announced that the next lecture of the course would be delivered on Tuesday evening by Olive Logan, when she will discourse on “Nice Young Men.”
On making his appearance Mr. Twain introduced himself in a very humorous manner. He then gave some very interesting descriptions of life in Nevada, its mountains, lakes and rivers; the inhabitants, soil, birds, beasts, &c., which were most pleasantly interwoven with a series of telling jokes, humorous hits and, apparently, unconsciously delivered sallies of wit which convulsed the entire audience in the most uproarious laughter. To publish one of the lecturer’s humorous points would be but to debar a host of the readers of the Commercial in other cities in this vicinity, where Mr. Clements will appear, from enjoying them as they fall from the lecturer’s lips.
All present last evening appeared to thoroughly enjoy “Roughing it” and manifested their delight in the most effective manner. Mr. Clemens lectures in Kittanning to-night. (12 Jan 72, 4)
Clemens had been granted a patent for “Mark Twain’s Elastic Strap” in December 1871. In a postscript to her letter of 30 and 31 December, Olivia reported that his “patent right documents” had come ( L4 , 524); in a later letter she may have offered to send them to him ( L4 , 453, 462–64; see 20 July 72 to Bliss, n. 2click to open link).
Clemens was paying the first installment of the Boston Lyceum Bureau’s commission (see 2 Jan 72 to Redpath, n. 4click to open link). He actually sent $704.69—as he noted in his lecture appointment book—in at least two drafts (see the next letter; Redpath and Fall, 11).
The autograph for Isabella Beecher Hooker has not been found. Clemens wrote this sentence in the bottom margin with the paper reversed.
Clemens cut the enclosure from page 4 of the Pittsburgh Gazette of 12 January 1872. It is reproduced here in two parts, although the original clipping is one piece. The Gazette mentioned that as many as five reporters made stenographic records of the lecture, but they were suppressed at Clemens’s particular request (see also the Pittsburgh Commercial review quoted in note 1). According to a later report, one newspaper ignored the request:
Mark Twain’s lecture was stenographed by a Pittsburg reporter and published. Mark took his little shot-gun and called on the reporter. The reporter said that he had been instructed to take it. “Yes,” said Mark, “and if my pocket book had been on the table you would have been instructed to take that too, I suppose.” (“Personal,” Buffalo Express, 26 Jan 72, 2)
Even before this report appeared, the Pittsburgh Gazette of 15 January abandoned its friendly view of Clemens, taking umbrage at his threat not to lecture in Pittsburgh again:
Mark Twain will hardly ever again come to the city as a lecturer. We are duly sorry for the city. He thinks the newspaper reporters are little better than thieves, because they stole the good (?) points out of his recent lecture and published them. Mark is a much over-estimated clown. He has little originality and less genuine humor. He would hardly fill the bill for a police reporter on a first class journal, and yet he would aspire to the position of Horace Greeley, should that wise sage fall out of service. His lecture sounds well to those who never read the almanac literature of the day and we do not wonder that he is anxious that no word he speaks on the stage should be published, for “comparisons are odious.” We bid him a cordial good-bye, and hope some better stuff may be brought out during the season by our lecture giving committee to compensate for the gross fraud perpetrated on the intellectual community by introducing such a mountebank as Mark Twain, who now, so far as his literary reputation is concerned, like a swan is singing (at 75 dollars per song) before he dies. Let him rest. (“Brevities,” 15 Jan 72, 4)
Although Clemens must have seen this item before he left the city on 16 January, his next comment about Pittsburgh is unclouded by any trace of the dispute (see 19 Apr 72 to Blissclick to open link).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK). A clipping from the Pittsburgh Gazette (12 Jan 72, 4) survives with the letter and is photographically reproduced.
L5 , 22–26; LLMT , 362, brief paraphrase.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.