per Telegraph Operator
1 February 1873 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, copy received: DLC, UCCL 00871)
blank no. i.
596
the western union telegraph company.
no.
7Fa
i
the rules of this company require that all messages
12.40
received for transmission shall be written on the message blanks of the com-
pany, under and subject to the
conditions printed thereon, which conditions
have been agreed to by the sender of the following message.
g. h. mumford, sec. t. t. eckert, gen. supt., new york. william orton, prest.
dated, Hartford Ct i rec’d at 145 broadway,
to Whitelaw Reid Feb i 1873.
Editor Tribune
Andrews1explanatory note and I will go to the club without going first to the hotel2explanatory note
14pd Jx
William S. Andrews (3 Nov 72 to Redpath, n. 1click to open link).
Reid had written to Clemens on 26 January, on Lotos Club stationery (CU-MARK):
Reid was the current president of the Lotos Club, founded in 1870 “to promote social intercourse among journalists, literary men, artists and members of the musical and dramatic professions, and such merchants and professional gentlemen of artistic tastes and inclinations as would naturally be attracted by such a club,” on the model of the famous Savage Club of London (Elderkin, 9; 5 Dec 72 to the editor of the Hartford Evening Post, n. 3). On Saturday evening, 1 February, Clemens attended a dinner given in his honor and delivered a speech that “set the key for a good deal of the sarcastic drollery which prevailed on many occasions”:
He said that he did not like to make any personal allusions, but that the profane conversation he had been compelled to listen to from Whitelaw Reid, John Hay, Samuel Bowles and Henry Watterson had frightened away all the pious thoughts he had concocted for the solemn occasion. He spoke of Mr. Reid as a man who had grown so accustomed to editing a newspaper that he could not distinguish between truth and falsehood; and that John Hay had written so many ribald verses that he (Twain) was always compelled to disown his acquaintance when presiding at meetings of the Young Men’s Christian Association. ... He closed with an apology for discontinuing his harangue; saying that those anxious to hear the remainder of it might step down stairs, where he had stationed a number of agents, and purchase tickets for his Wednesday evening 5 February lecture, adding, “I make it a rule of life never to miss any chances, especially on occasions like these, where the opportunity for converting the heathen is luxuriously promising.” As may be surmised, Mr. Twain was not let off without a dreadful scoring in which he was denounced as an impostor. Much of his history was ventilated. (Elderkin, 15–16)
Clemens checked into the St. Nicholas Hotel that evening and stayed for much of the next two weeks in New York (see p. 295). On 13 February the Lotos Club elected him a member, and he evidently remained one until his death (Charles Inslee Pardee to SLC, 13 Feb 73, CU-MARK).
MS, copy received, telegram blank filled out by the receiving telegraph operator, Whitelaw Reid Papers, Library of Congress (DLC).
L5 , 291–92.
The Whitelaw Reid Papers (part of the Papers of the Reid Family) were donated to DLC between 1953 and 1957 by Helen Rogers Reid (Mrs. Ogden Mills Reid).
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.