20 March 1873 • Hartford, Conn (MS: TxU-Hu, UCCL 00888)
Am very much obliged to Mr. Bent for the copy of his lecture, & shall read it with interest.1explanatory note
Can’t come out there & lecture. Can’tⒶemendation lecture anywhere—detestⒶemendation the business with all my heart. Am not a free man, anyway. Been offered everything, from $500 up to $800 a night for 20 or 30 nights,2explanatory note & my wife said No Ⓐemendation—for which I was not sorry & did not weep.
We said sailⒶemendation for England May 17 & return in October—meantime we hope the most aggravating part of the house will be built & off our minds.3explanatory note
Clemens had evidently received—either from Bowen or from Silas Bent—a copy of Bent’s Gateways to the Pole: An Address Delivered before the St. Louis Mercantile Library Association, January 6th, 1872, upon the Thermal Paths to the Pole, the Currents of the Ocean, and the Influence of the Latter upon the Climates of the World (St. Louis: 1872). Bent (1820–87) was an oceanographer and former naval officer who, like Bowen, lived in St. Louis. His thesis—that currents maintained an open sea around the North Pole—was not accepted by other authorities on polar exploration.
See 13 and 17 Jan 73 to Reidclick to open link, nn. 6, 8.
MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin (TxU-Hu).
L5 , 319–320; Hornberger, 21–22.
purchased by TxU in 1940 from Eva Laura Bowen (Mrs. Louis Knox), daughter of William Bowen.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.