22 March 1873 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: NBuHi, UCCL 00889)
dear sir:1explanatory note
i thank you very much for your invitation, but am compelled to decline it, as i am not lecturing at all this this or next season, other duties & inclinations & lazinesses rendering this course necessary.
Care of “American Literary Bureau,” Cooper Institute, N. Y.,” is Bret Harte’s business address.2explanatory note He ought to take with a Buffalo audience, I should think. He has an excellent lecture this season, & reads it execrably. The newspapers say he reads finely, & so I am willing to give you your choice between the criticisms.3explanatory note I wouldn’t be a bit afraid to put him in a regular course.4explanatory note
I wish you had told me when Selkirk’s next payment is due to me while you were writing—I think it is due this month.5explanatory note
I can’t call any good lecture-cards to mind just at this moment, & I have no lists by me; but if you will drop a line to the American Lit. Bureau, N. Y., & to James Redpath, 36 Bromfield street Boston, they’ll furnish you full lists, & David Gray6explanatory note & you together would have no trouble in making a selection.
According to an announcement in the Buffalo Courier for 23 December 1872, the American Literary Bureau was “arranging a western lecturing tour” for Harte, a reference to his upcoming appearances in Kansas and Missouri in the fall of 1873 (“Personal,” 1). This bureau, owned by James K. Medbery, had handled many of Clemens’s engagements during his 1868–69 lecture tour (Merwin, 241; L3 , 353 n. 2, 481).
Clemens had heard Harte deliver his lecture, “The Argonauts of ’49,” in Hartford on 3 January. According to the Hartford Times,
The lecture was full of brilliant points. Some of them were too neatly presented—too quietly exposed—to “rake down the crowd.” Only his stories and anecdotes secured a full and hearty appreciation. But, as these constituted a large part of his discourse, the performance, as a whole, cannot be said to have lacked an appreciative reception. Certainly nobody who witnessed the mirth of that audience could have any doubt on that point. Nevertheless it is a fact—as was casually remarked by Mark Harte—no, we mean Bret Twain, who, with two other choice spirits, flocked in and secured seats in one of the private boxes—that in order to bag the game, every time, when one shoots at an American audience, he must put in a good deal of powder behind his shot, and make his “p’ints” stick out so very plain, that you can almost hang your hat on ’em. (“The Argonauts of ’49,” 4 Jan 73, 1)
Although not all of Harte’s other winter engagements have been discovered, he is known to have appeared in Springfield (25 November 1872), Albany (3 December), Boston (13 December), New York (16 December), Elmira (23 December), Washington, D.C. (7 January 1873), Pittsburgh (9 January), and in Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa, as well as Ogdensburg, New York (February–March) (Merwin, 239–41; Harte 1926, 18–20; Hartford Courant: “Brief Mention,” 25 Nov 72, 2; “Personal,” 11 Mar 73, 2; “Bret Harte,” Elmira Advertiser, 24 Dec 72, 4). Harte’s performances were in general well received; for example, the New York Tribune praised his Steinway Hall appearance as
a most gratifying and genuine success. ... Such delicate humor, such fine, airy fancy, such close and conscientious painting of character, is rare to the lecture platforms. ... The lecture of last night was not only good writing, but good talking also. ... Mr. Harte’s manner is easy and colloquial, and his voice, while not very strong, is clear and well managed. (“California’s Golden Age,” 17 Dec 72, 8)
In the fall of 1873, while touring in the Midwest, Harte wrote his wife that the critics “may be right—I dare say they are—in asserting that I am no orator, have no special faculty for speaking—no fire, dramatic earnestness, or expression” (Harte to Anna Harte, 19 Oct 73, Harte 1926, 26).
Someone, possibly Larned, arranged for Harte to speak in Buffalo. On 27 March the Buffalo Courier announced that Harte would lecture on 31 March (with no sponsor mentioned), but the engagement was canceled. His “first appearance before a Buffalo audience” took place on 7 December 1874, sponsored by the Young Men’s Christian Association (Buffalo Courier: “Bret Harte Coming,” 27 Mar 73, 2; “The Argonauts of ’49,” 8 Dec 74, 2).
On 1 March 1871 George H. Selkirk had purchased Clemens’s one-third interest in the Buffalo Express for $15,000, to be paid over five years. Selkirk did not complete payment on schedule, however (see L4 , 338–39 n. 3).
Poet, coeditor of the Buffalo Courier, and close friend of Clemens’s ( L4 , 102 n. 9).
MS facsimile. The editors have not seen the MS, which is in the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society Archives (A64-1, Mark Twain Letters), Buffalo (NBuHi).
L5 , 320–322.