5 May 1873 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00913)
Your letters received today—am very glad indeed for the news they brought. We finished revamping & refining the book tonight—ten days’ labor. F It is near midnight & we are just through.
I like Orion’s editorials. I like their gentlemanly dignity & refinement as much as their other virtues.1explanatory note The English papers2explanatory note will soon stop I fear—I subscribed till May Ⓐemendation1st. Will subscribe for one for Orion when I get to London if I don’t forget it.
Am very sorry to hear Ma is sick. Livy is down. In Elmira. QuinzyⒶemendation. Very bad attack of it. Just heard it to-day.3explanatory note The baby is well.
Lovingly
Orion Clemens Esq | Bardwell House | Rutland | Vermont Ⓐemendation return address: if not delivered within 10 days, to be returned to postmarked: hartford ct. may 6 1 pm Ⓐemendation
The letters from Orion and Mollie have not been found, but Orion’s presumably reported on his position with the newly established Rutland (Vt.) Globe, which he had agreed to edit from its first issue, published on 1 May. On 18 April the Hartford Courant had announced, “Mr. Clemens, brother of ‘Mark Twain,’ who has been editorially connected with the Evening Post of this city for some time past, is about to take the editorial direction of a new daily to be established in Rutland, Vt.” (“Brief Mention,” 2). Orion may have written any of the editorials printed in the Globe in early May—for example: “The Globe’s Politics” and “The Indian Policy” on 1 May (2); “The Smitten Gould” on 2 May (2); and “Cruelty to Animals” and “Editorial Notes” on 5 May (2)—but none can be attributed to him with certainty. (He might also have sent Clemens drafts of proposed editorials that were never published.) During Orion’s editorship (from May possibly through mid-July) the Globe made no mention of him, and published no other work identifiable as his. Orion had been interested in Rutland newspapers since his visit there in July 1872, when he learned that the owner of the weekly Rutland Independent wanted to start a daily newspaper (see (11 Aug 72 to OC, n. 3click to open link). As of 1 May this unidentified owner gave up the Independent and began to publish both the daily and the weekly Globe. In 1906 Clemens recalled Orion’s experience in Rutland:
A new Republican daily was to be started in Rutland, Vermont, by a stock company of well-to-do politicians, and they offered Orion the chief editorship at three thousand a year. He was eager to accept. His wife was equally eager—no, twice as eager, three times as eager. My beseechings and reasonings went for nothing. I said:
“You are as weak as water. Those people will find it out right away. They will easily see that you have no backbone; that they can deal with you as they would deal with a slave. You may last six months, but not longer. Then they will not dismiss you as they would dismiss a gentleman: they will fling you out as they would fling out an intruding tramp.”
It happened just so. (AD, 5 Apr 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA , 2:323)
By late July Orion was already negotiating for a different position, this time on the Oil City (Pa.) Derrick (“Personal,” Buffalo Courier, 18 Apr 73, 1; Gregory, 692; OC to MEC, 21 July 73 and 22 July 73, CU-MARK).
Unidentified.
Mollie may have been in Rutland with Orion, but it seems more likely that she was staying temporarily with Clemens’s family in Fredonia. Clemens’s comment on his mother’s health evidently replied to news from Mollie, to whom Orion was expected to forward this letter. Olivia’s quinsy (a severe throat inflammation) was treated by Dr. Henry Sayles. Her infection may have begun in Hartford, but if so, it was misdiagnosed as diphtheria, which is also characterized at first by a sore throat (OLC to Olivia Lewis Langdon, 23 and 26 May 73, CtHMTH; 22 Apr 73 to Reidclick to open link [3rd]).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L5 , 362–364.
see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.