17 September 1872 • London, England (MS: NElmC, UCCL 00808)
I believe the sketch in “Men of the Time” is accurate—indeed, I furnished the facts myself. Nothing in the way of addition or correction occurs to me now, & so I have only to thank you very kindly for the courtesy of offering me the opportunity—2explanatory note
Yrs faithfully
Arthur Locker Esq.
Arthur Locker (1828–93) was educated at Oxford. From 1852 to 1861 he lived in Australia and India, became a journalist, and wrote several tales and plays. After his return to England he wrote for various newspapers and magazines, and from 1865 to 1870 “contributed reviews” to the London Times (“Mr. Arthur Locker,” London Times, 26 June 93, 10). In mid-1870 he became the chief editor of the London Graphic, an illustrated weekly founded in December 1869, and held that position until 1891. He also wrote several novels (Boase, 2:468; Griffiths, 378).
Locker was writing a brief sketch of Clemens’s life for the Graphic, basing it on the entry in Men of the Time: A Dictionary of Contemporaries, issued by the Routledges in 1872. The entry did contain one error, which Clemens probably would have corrected had he seen the printed text: it listed “Flush Times in the Silver-mines, and other Matters” among his works (Men of the Time, 227). He had proposed this title to Bliss on 10 July 1871, but within four months had renamed his book Roughing It ( L4 , 431). Locker’s article, “Two American Humorists—Hans Breitmann and Mark Twain,” appeared in the Graphic on 5 October, illustrated with engravings of both authors (Clemens’s portrait is reproduced on the next page; for Breitmann’s, see Photographs and Manuscript Facsimilesclick to open link). The first paragraph contained a brief biography of Breitmann (Charles Godfrey Leland: see 6 July 73 to Fairbanks, n. 5click to open link), and the second gave an outline of Clemens’s life, correctly listing his major published works to date, and concluding:
Mr. E. P. Hingston, in his preface to “The Innocents Abroad,” gives a lively description of the then editor of the Enterprise. “In Mark Twain,” he says, “I found a flower of the wilderness, tinged with the colour of the soil; the man of thought and the man of action rolled into one, humorist and hard-worker, Momus in a felt hat and jack-boots.” As a humorist, Mr. Clemens shows the same quaint exaggerative spirit as the late Artemus Ward, though less dependent on bad spelling for his fun. Judging by the wide circulation of his works, he is highly popular both here and in his native country. (Locker 1872)
MS, Mark Twain Archives and Center for Mark Twain Studies at Quarry Farm, Elmira College (NElmC).
L5 , 161–162.
The MS was donated to NelmC in 1974 by William T. Love, Jr., who purchased it from B. Altman, a New York City department store.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.