27 January 1872 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MH-H, UCCL 00722) llc
✓ 2. Say no to Englewood.
☞ 2/9 3. Since Danbury is not a positive engagement, say no to Danbury. in margin: Ithaca has written me. Please say to Ithaca that I cannot come. 1explanatory note
✓ 4. Since Amherst is a positive engagement, we must say yes to it, but it looks like the infernalest misfortune that I have got to go there & talk after being out of practice three whole weeks.2explanatory note I shall make a botch of it, for I use no notes whatever, & my memory is execrable. Cannot you beg off from it?—putting it on the ground of a charity to us.
Thank God it is nearly over. I haven’t a cent to show for all this long campaign. Squandered it thoughtlessly paying debts.3explanatory note
letter docketed: Twain Mark Hartford Cn Jan. 27. ’72 and in pencil: Drawer
The Mercantile Library Association had evidently written Redpath to request a second lecture. Clemens did not repeat his lecture for the association in 1872, but within a year he had agreed to lecture for it twice—on 5 and 10 February 1873—and for what he then thought were significantly better terms (see 24 Jan 73 to Redpath, n. 2click to open link). He also did not lecture in Englewood, New Jersey, or in Ithaca, New York, but he did in Danbury, Connecticut. Clemens’s instructions were annotated—probably by two hands—at the Boston Lyceum Bureau. The marks are in pencil, except for “2/9” in ink, the latter note probably indicating that 9 February was the proposed date for the Danbury lecture. The lecture was soon firmly scheduled for 21 February: advertisements for it began appearing on 7 February (“Reading Notices,” Danbury News, 7 Feb 72, 2).
Until the Danbury lecture date was settled, Clemens’s only scheduled engagements were in Troy, New York, on 1 February and in Amherst, Massachusetts, on 27 February.
MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University. (MH-H).
L5 , 36–37.
bequeathed to MH by Evert Jansen Wendell (1860–1917), a Harvard alumnus and collector of theater memorabilia (Dickinson, 332–33).
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.