5 November 1873 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: ViU, UCCL 00979)
Please send very early copies of the Gilded
Age (Library style) to1explanatory note
✓ Tom Hood, 80 Fleet st. London2explanatory note
✓ Henry Lee, 43 Holland st. Blackfriars Road, London.
✓ G. W. Smalley, (N. Y. Tribune Bureau,) 13 Pall Mall, London.3explanatory note
✓ George Sauer, (N. Y. Herald Bureau,)Ⓐemendation 46 Fleet street.4explanatory note
✓ Publisher Figaro, Fleet street.5explanatory note
✓ Mr. Johnstone, Publisher Daily Standard, Shoe Lane,Ⓐemendation London.6explanatory note
✓ Shirley Brooks, Editor Punch, London.7explanatory note
✓ Mr. Russel, Editor Scotsman, Edinburgh.8explanatory note
✓ G. Fitz Gibbon, 1 Wellesley Terrace, Upper Street, Islington, London.9explanatory note
R
✓ Joseph T. Goodman, Virginia, Nevada.10explanatory note
✓ Joseph Medill, (“Tribune,”) Chicago.11explanatory note
✓
Frank Soulé &
✓
John McComb Care “Alta” San Francisco.Ⓐemendation13explanatory note
✓ Col. John Hay, Lotos Club, 2 Irving Place, N. Y.
✓ J. G. Croly, Daily Graphic, N. Y.14explanatory note
✓ G. W. Hosmer, “Herald,” N. York.15explanatory note
the following name is vertical in relation to the rest of the letterMiddleton12explanatory note
✓
Mr. Abel, Proprietor “Sun,” Baltimore. Also, send
extracts & advanced
sheets to him—great
friend of mine16explanatory note
✓ The same to Donn Piatt, “Capital” Washington.17explanatory note
✓ James Redpath, 36 Bromfield st. Boston.
✓ Clara Louise Moulton (Tribune Correspondent,) Boston.18explanatory note
✓
D. W. Howells &
✓
T. B. Aldrich Atlantic Monthly.Ⓐemendation19explanatory note
✓ Mrs. Jane Clemens, Fredonia New York.
✓ George A. Hawes, Hannibal, Mo.20explanatory note
✓ Thos. P. McMurry, Colony, Knox Co., Mo.21explanatory note
✓ Fred. Quarles, Waco, Texas.22explanatory note
✓ Mrs. A. W. Fairbanks, (care “Herald”) Cleveland, Ohio.23explanatory note
✓ Sam. Williams, on, “Bulletin,” San Francisco.24explanatory note
the following name is vertical in relation to the rest of the letterMiddleton
bottom one-third of page left blank
See page 4.25explanatory note
Also, send half Turkey copies of Innocents,
Roughing It & Gilded Age, to
✓ Dr. Brown, 23 Rutland street, Edinburgh, Scotland.26explanatory note
✓ Frank D. Finlay, 4 Royal Terrace, Belfast, Ireland.27explanatory note
Charge them to me.
Send the earliest copies, & don’t forget. They are promised.
Also, send a half Turkey Gilded Age to
✓ Judge Thomas Sunderland, 1 Rue Scribe, Paris, France.28explanatory note
Don’t fail.
letter docketed: ✓
Clemens furnished Bliss with this list several weeks before The Gilded Age was published, since this would occur after he had returned to England. The records of the American Publishing Company indicate that the first copies of the book bound in “Library style” arrived from the bindery on 12 December. Bliss must have sent out some of these before official publication on 23 December: one review appeared on 22 December, followed by at least two more the next day (APC, 97; American Publishing Company to George Routledge, 12 Dec 73, Agreement Book A–K:183, Routledge; see notes 14–15). Although many of the people Clemens listed were personal friends, he clearly hoped that the journalists among them would review the book. Bliss annotated Clemens’s letter by checking off each name, presumably as he sent that person’s book.
The address of Fun, the humor magazine that Hood edited (Newspaper Press Directory, 134). Fun made no mention of The Gilded Age.
Because Clemens had quarreled with Reid over House’s offer to review The Gilded Age, he instructed Warner “not to send a copy there under any circumstances” (17 May 73 to Bliss). The copy for Smalley was presumably a personal gift, not intended to elicit a review. The Tribune did not review the book, but Smalley, in his 20 December letter from London to the Tribune, devoted a brief final paragraph, not to the American edition (which he could not yet have received), but to the appearance of the English edition in London:
“The Gilded Age” by Mark Twain and Charles Warner appears to-day with Routledge’s imprint on the title-page, and the copyright secured to the authors. It is more to establish this copyright than for his lectures that Mark Twain is here; he preferring, he declares, to make the voyage to England for that purpose rather than visit Canada. What the matter is with Canada I can’t say. (Smalley 1874)
Smalley made no further mention of The Gilded Age in the Tribune letters he wrote from London in January or early February.
George Sauer (1823–84), a former American consul in Brussels and an expert on telegraphy and European commerce, was an internationally known journalist. He had corresponded during the Franco-Prussian War for the New York Times and the New York Herald. When Clemens was writing about the shah, Sauer was also working in London for the Herald, in charge of telegraphing stories to New York. Since George Hosmer had by now returned to the United States (see note 15), Sauer may have already become head of the Herald’s London bureau, a position he certainly did assume in about 1874 (“George Sauer,” New York Times, 18 July 84, 2; “Obituary Notes,” New York Herald, 18 July 84, 10; 4 Aug 73 to Yates, n. 3click to open link; Yates 1885, 407).
The London Figaro, whose correct address was 199 Strand, was a semi-weekly illustrated “independent family journal,” devoted to “politics, literature, art, criticism, and satire” (Newspaper Press Directory, 147). No copy of the Figaro was available to the editors, but Ambrose Bierce, who wrote for the magazine, inquired about Clemens of Charles Warren Stoddard on 15 January 1874 and reported, “I see that infallible sheet the ‘Figaro’ (of to-day) condemns his and Mr. ‘Werner’s’ novel” (CSmH). The proprietor and editor of the Figaro was James Mortimer (1832–1911), who had founded the journal in 1868 with financing from Napoleon III. Mortimer was born in Virginia. He served in the navy and was later attached to the American embassy at St. Petersburg. Before starting the Figaro, he lived for many years in Paris, corresponding for American newspapers and writing about American affairs for Paris journals. Clemens dined with Mortimer on 12 September 1872, when he visited Brighton with Edmund Routledge, Henry Lee, and Tom Hood, as he recorded in his journal: “Mortimer of ‘Figaro’ dined with us & tried to crowd me into writing for his paper, but did not succeed” (Mark Twain's 1872 English Journalsclick to open link; Griffiths, 424).
James Johnstone (1815–78) held an official appointment for many years in the Bankruptcy Court. In 1857 he purchased the London Evening Standard (together with the London Morning Herald) when its owner declared bankruptcy. By increasing its size and lowering the price, he succeeded in converting it into a highly successful morning newspaper. The paper’s coverage of the Civil War (in which it supported the South) further increased its circulation, which reached a daily average of one hundred eighty-five thousand by early 1874 (Griffiths, 233–34, 341–42). The Standard published a favorable review of The Gilded Age on 29 December 1873, calling it “a satire of the bitterest kind, . . . a hardly overdrawn picture of the condition of society,” which “every one should read” (clipping in CU-MARK). The unidentified reviewer, however, had not seen the American edition, but rather the simultaneously issued English edition.
No mention of the book was found in Punch, which did not publish book reviews.
An unidentified critic for the Edinburgh Scotsman, reviewing the Routledge edition of The Gilded Age, commented:
The American writer calling himself Mark Twain, is in a high degree peculiar—his method or plan, his style, his humour, belong entirely, or very much, to himself; and it was not to be hoped that he could find some one else qualified in all respects to run with him in double harness. . . . Mark Twain by himself would have been more enjoyable, and probably so would Mr Warner. We should infer that they went into partnership in this matter because the one was supposed to have what the other had not—Mark Twain is not a good hand at a plot, and perhaps Mr Warner is, whilst, on the other hand, he may not have those qualities which have given Mark Twain celebrity and success. Those qualities are a quick, quaint, dry humour, very considerable powers of grave and even poetic description, a penetrating good sense, and an abhorrence of all shams and hypocrisy, especially of those most prevalent amongst his own countrymen. Possessing these qualities, Mark Twain has given to the world many books yielding much amusement, though no story interesting by its mere plot. It was to supply this supposed defect, we suppose, that Mr Warner was called in; but we were quite content to take Mark Twain by himself, and to read him for his fun and his good sense. (“Literature,” 9 Jan 74, 2)
No review of The Gilded Age appeared in Fitzgibbon’s newspaper, the Darlington Northern Echo.
Goodman’s Territorial Enterprise did not usually print book reviews, and it made no exception for The Gilded Age.
Joseph Medill (1823–99) was born in Canada but grew up in Ohio, where he was trained as a lawyer. He turned to journalism in 1849, when—with three younger brothers—he purchased the Coshocton Whig, renaming it the Republican. In 1852 he established the Cleveland Leader, and then sold it in early 1855 to purchase an interest in the Chicago Tribune, with which he remained associated for the rest of his life. Under his editorial direction the newspaper was strongly antislavery, and during Reconstruction supported the Radical Republicans. Medill had been elected mayor of Chicago soon after the great fire of October 1871, but in August 1873, physically and emotionally exhausted, he resigned his position and departed for a year of European travel. Although Medill was in London in the fall of 1873, Clemens is not known to have seen him there (Protess, 2–3, 6–7, 12–14; “Foreign News,” Cincinnati Commercial, 23 Oct 73, 1). An unidentified critic for the Chicago Tribune found little to praise in The Gilded Age, describing it “in terms of the severest censure”:
Every one . . . had a right to expect the book, when given to the world, though it should lack the unity and coherence of a work conceived and brought out by a single mind, should at least be redeemed with passages of the refined and delicate beauty which distinguishes the one writer, and with the quaint and fertile humor that has created for the other even a trans-Atlantic popularity. When, therefore, a book so utterly bald, so puerile, so vicious even, as “The Gilded Age,” appears with the signatures of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner to give it a passport among respectable readers, wrath and disgust may rightfully inspire the critic to chastise them without mercy. . . . Their names had become a sort of certificate of high character. It is a fraud to the reading public to append them to a trashy book like the mongrel before us. Stupidity can be forgiven, but deliberate deceit—never. . . . Thousands will be deluded into its purchase, only to find themselves cheated and robbed. Mr. Clemens and Mr. Warner . . . have willfully degraded their craft, abused the people’s trust, and provoked a stern condemnation. (“The Twain-Warner Novel,” 1 Feb 74, 9)
See also note 14.
Franklin Soulé (1810–82), a friend of Clemens’s from his days in San Francisco, was born in Maine. After several years as a schoolteacher and journalist in Mississippi and Louisiana, he went to California in 1849. Soon thereafter he began a long career in California journalism, throughout which he also wrote (and occasionally published) poetry. In 1851 he joined the editorial staff of the San Francisco Alta California, but in 1853 began publishing his own short-lived newspaper, the Chronicle. When that failed he returned to the Alta, and later worked as an editor for the San Francisco Times. In 1861 he took a position in the U.S. customs house, and in 1864 became an editor on the Morning Call, where he met and worked with Clemens during Clemens’s four-month stint as a Call reporter. Soulé resigned from the Call that same year to accept an appointment as collector for the Department of Internal Revenue. In 1869 and 1870 he was again employed on the Call, after which he once again returned to the Alta, where he remained until his death in 1882 (“The Late Frank Soulé,” San Francisco Alta California, 5 July 82, 1; Guinn, 2:659–60; L2 , 158 n. 3; Langley: 1869, 575; 1873, 571; Branch 1969, 18, 19, 304 n. 61). Soulé wrote to Clemens early in 1873 for advice about publishing his poetry, and received an encouraging response (not known to survive). In his reply to Clemens, written on 31 March from the “dull and dirty editorial room” of the Alta, Soulé recalled
the time when we were scribbling in the same room for a little compensation—you with grand aspirations which I rejoice most sincerely you have found exchanged for, or transformed into grand realities. If my poor hopes and feebler anticipations have only brought the reverse, why, “sich is life,” and let it go as a part of the game. (CU-MARK)
In a September 1880 letter to Howells, Clemens was still trying to help his friend publish his poetry:
Frank Soulé was one of the sweetest and whitest & loveliest spirits that ever wandered into this world by mistake; I seem somehow to have got the impression that he has of late years become sour & querulous; cannot tell—it has been 13 years since I worked at his side in the Morning Call office, in San Francisco; but no matter, he has believed for 36 years, that he would next year, & then next year, & still next year, be recognized as a poet—& all these slow years have come & gone, & each in its turn has lied to him. Soured?—why anybody would be, that had been served so. . . . Frank Soulé had that sort of a face which is so rare—I mean a face that is always welcome, that makes you happy all through, just to see it. And Lordy, to think that this fine & sensitive & beautiful & proud spirit had to grind, & grind, like a pitiful slave, on that degraded “Morning Call,” whose mission from hell & politics was to lick the boots of the Irish & throw bold brave mud at the Chinamen. And he is a slave yet! (3 Sept 80, MH-H, in MTHL , 1:325–26)
Clemens had last seen his friend John McComb, supervising editor of the Alta, in early February (see pp. 296–97). The Alta published an unsigned review of The Gilded Age on 11 March 1874, which characterized the book as “excellent” in its conception, but “inferior” in its execution, with “much of the grotesque humor of Twain, and little of the elegant style of Warner.” Although some chapters were deemed “almost trashy,” the book was nevertheless recommended for its “many amusing passages” (“New Publications,” 1).
David G. Croly (17 Apr 73 to Croly, n. 1click to open link). Clemens soon regretted furnishing Croly with an early copy of The Gilded Age, as he recalled in 1906:
When Charles Dudley Warner and I were about to bring out “The Gilded Age,” the editor of the Daily Graphic persuaded me to let him have an advance copy, he giving me his word of honor that no notice of it should appear in his paper until after the Atlantic Monthly notice should have appeared. This reptile published a review of the book within three days afterward. I could not really complain, because he had only given me his word of honor, as security. I ought to have required of him something substantial. I believe his notice did not deal mainly with the merit of the book, or the lack of it, but with my moral attitude toward the public. It was charged that I had used my reputation to play a swindle upon the public—that Mr. Warner had written as much as half of the book, and that I had used my name to float it and give it currency—a currency which it could not have acquired without my name—and that this conduct of mine was a grave fraud upon the people. The Graphic was not an authority upon any subject whatever. It had a sort of distinction in that it was the first and only illustrated daily newspaper that the world had seen; but it was without character; it was poorly and cheaply edited; its opinion of a book or of any other work of art was of no consequence. Everybody knew this, yet all the critics in America, one after the other, copied the Graphic’s criticism, merely changing the phraseology, and left me under that charge of dishonest conduct. Even the great Chicago Tribune, the most important journal in the Middle-West, was not able to invent anything fresh, but adopted the view of the humble daily Graphic, dishonesty-charge and all. (AD, 7 Feb 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA , 2:69–70)
Clemens misremembered the source of the “dishonesty-charge,” which was apparently the Chicago Tribune (note 11). The Graphic’s review, published on 23 December, was far from complimentary, however, describing the book as a “rather dreary failure,” despite “isolated passages” that were “clever and amusing”:
It is simply a rather incoherent series of sketches, from which the characteristic fun of Mr. Clemens and the subtle humor of Mr. Warner have been, for the most part, eliminated. . . . And so it has come to pass that the two most brilliant humorists in America—with the exception of “John Paul” [Charles Henry Webb]—have written a book in which we look almost in vain for the traces of either’s pen. (“Literary Notes,” 351)
Nor was the Graphic notice the first to appear: relatively favorable reviews were published in the New York Herald on 22 December and in the Boston Evening Transcript on 23 December (French, 16, 20).
Hosmer had only recently returned to New York (reportedly “for financial reasons”), having served for some time as a London correspondent for the Herald (Joseph J. Mathews, 80). The New York Herald printed an unsigned notice of The Gilded Age one day before its official publication:
No reviewer would be in the right who handled this production in the same spirit in which he would handle a story pure and simple. . . . But as a clever though rude satire upon certain customs and institutions, many of which deserve contempt and reprobation, it will scarcely be too highly praised. (“American Satire,” 22 Dec 73, clipping in CU-MARK)
Unidentified.
Arunah S. Abell (1806–88) was born in Rhode Island. He was trained as a printer, and in 1836 founded the Philadelphia Public Ledger with two associates. A year later he began the Baltimore Sun with the same partners, and served as its managing editor for the rest of his life, becoming its sole proprietor in 1868. He was known for his editorial independence, his thorough coverage of local news, and his innovative use of pony express riders, carrier pigeons, and the telegraph for speedy news delivery. No correspondence between Clemens and Abell has been found, nor is it known how Clemens came to regard him as a “great friend.” The Sun”s review of The Gilded Age was complimentary, calling it “sparkling entertainment” and giving the entire credit to Clemens, with Warner mentioned only in passing:
There is scarcely a phase of the diversified social state of America which he does not touch. He passes with graceful transition from the twilight of civilization in the far West to its full orbed splendors in the eastern cities, reminding us, however, as he lifts the veil from the surface of society in the Atlantic capitals that all is not gold that glitters, and that there is a good deal of barbarism even in the centers of civilization so-called. His sketches of society in Washington, including the antiques, the parvenues, and the middle aristocracy are admirable. The visit to the Wall street headquarters of improvement companies, and the restrictions that are put on members of Congress, male lobbyist, female lobbyist, high moral Senator, and country member, with the capital illustrations, are full of suggestiveness and merriment. The description of the steamboat race on the Mississippi, and of the explosion, is graphic and powerful. The whole story in its conception, exposition of characters and composition, will add new reputation to the author. (“Mark Twain’s New Book,” 6 Feb 74, 2)
Clemens’s contract with the American Publishing Company, dated 8 May 1873, stipulated that a “sheet of extracts” from the text be “sent with copy of the book to editors, said extracts to be selected by the said Warner” (see Contract for the American Publishing Company Gilded Age click to open link). The stock ledger of the American Publishing Company contains the notation “60 sheets” next to the date of 13 December, indicating that sixty sets of unbound signatures may have been set aside then for reviewers (APC, 97).
Donn Piatt had been the Washington correspondent for the Cincinnati Commercial since 1868, and was known for writing articles highly critical of corrupt politicians of both parties. He and Clemens had met—and liked each other immediately—at a dinner given in Clemens’s honor in Washington in February 1871. Early that year Piatt helped establish The Capital, a weekly paper ( L4 , 328, 347). No file of The Capital has been searched for a Gilded Age review.
Clemens meant Louise Chandler Moulton, whose notice of Roughing It had pleased him (18 June 72 to Moultonclick to open link). He seems to have confused her name with the name of Clara Louise Kellogg, a renowned operatic soprano. Moulton made no mention of The Gilded Age in her correspondence from Boston for the New York Tribune.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich had been the editor of Every Saturday since 1866; he replaced William Dean Howells on the Atlantic Monthly, but not until 1881. Both journals were published by James R. Osgood and Company of Boston ( L4 , 304 n. 1, 489 n. 1). Aldrich did not comment on The Gilded Age in Every Saturday, nor did Howells review it for the Atlantic, which merely listed the book under “Other Publications” in March 1874 (33:374). Howells expressed reservations about reviewing the book in a letter to Warner dated 28 December 1873:
Up to the time old Hawkins dies your novel is of the greatest promise—I read it with joy—but after that it fails to assimilate the crude material with which it is fed, and becomes a confirmed dyspeptic at last. Still it is always entertaining; and it kept me up till twelve last night, though I needed sleep. I was particularly sorry to have Sellers degenerate as he did, and none of the characters quite fulfill their early promise. I will withold my public opinion altogether if you like, and if on revision of the book, it does not strike me more favorably, I should prefer to do so; though I should be able to praise parts of it with heartiness and sincerity. (Howells 1979, 46)
George A. Hawes was a leading Hannibal merchant and a nephew of John Quarles, Clemens’s uncle ( L2 , 132 n. 7).
Thomas P. (“Pet”) McMurry (d. 1886) was a printer in the office of the Hannibal Missouri Courier in the late 1840s, when Clemens was apprenticed there. He had renewed his acquaintance with Clemens by letter in July 1872 (CU-MARK):
It is not known whether Clemens replied to this letter, but in April 1873 he had ordered a copy of The Innocents Abroad sent to McMurry (bill from American Publishing Company dated 6 May 73, CU-MARK).
William Frederick S. Quarles (1833–98) was a first cousin of Clemens’s—the son of Jane Clemens’s sister (Selby, 23, 134).
The Cleveland Herald, the newspaper owned in part by Mary Mason Fairbanks’s husband, Abel, reviewed The Gilded Age on 21 February 1874, describing it as “a biting satire on the men and principle—or absence of principles—of the age”; although it “contains some highly dramatic incidents and bits of good descriptive writing,”
it is not what we had reason to expect from two authors of such unquestionable talent as Mr. Clemens and Mr. Warner. . . . It fearlessly lashes the frauds and humbugs who occupy prominent places in all ranks of society and in all positions of honor and profit. There is no mercy for such offenders. The mask of pretended piety and robe of assumed honesty are stripped off and the rascals exposed to the lash of the satirist and the scorn of the world. But, admitting this, it is not the work in which Messrs. Clemens and Warner feel most at home and in which their friends enjoy their company best. (“New Books,” 2)
Samuel Williams had been an editor on the San Francisco Evening Bulletin since 1865, and was responsible for book reviews and dramatic criticism ( L2 , 209 n. 1). The Bulletin published an unsigned review on 7 March, which read in part:
The Gilded Age is a little more coherent than the Innocents Abroad, but lacks the novelty of that veracious chronicle, while we search in vain for the charming pleasantry of My Summer in a Garden. The story is dreadfully attenuated, and the padding is so evident that one cannot help the suspicion that the dominant motive in writing the book was to make a “companion volume—price three dollars and a half.” . . . Of course, there is much that is funny, and now and then a bit of pathos, with occasional sharp “cuts” at social and political life in Washington. . . . And yet one feels that the abundant material at hand has not been used in the most artistic manner, and the book fails of its purpose as a satire. (“The Gilded Age—A Tale of To-Day,” 1)
After listing Williams, Clemens left the last third of the page (page 3 of the letter) blank, perhaps intending to add further names. He then wrote this direction at the bottom, to ensure that Bliss would not disregard the final leaf.
John Brown wrote Clemens on 12 February 1874: “I have been all too long in thanking you for the 3 goodly volumes, so full of good sense & good feeling & good fun & good knowledge of men & things. I am quite surprised at the fulness of meaning in them” (CU-MARK). In an earlier letter to another friend, however, he was more candid: “Mark Twain is home—a queer fellow, but with excellent stuff in him—& his wife is simply delicious—beautiful & good. What do you think of his last novel? It is powerful but unequal—& lacks the true storytelling knack” (Brown to John Forsyth, 18 Jan 74, PHi).
Clemens and his family had been entertained in Belfast by Francis Dalzell Finlay (1832?–1917), proprietor of the Belfast Northern Whig since 1857, when he inherited it from his father, its founder. Finlay began his career in the office of the Edinburgh Scotsman and was married to the daughter of its editor, Alexander Russel (see p. 432; London Times: “Mr. F. D. Finlay,” 14 July 1917, 3; “Wills and Bequests,” 6 Oct 1917, 9).
Thomas Sunderland was an attorney and former chief justice of the California Supreme Court; Clemens had known him in Virginia City, where he maintained a lucrative law practice for many years. Presumably Clemens had seen Sunderland in early October in Paris, where he had been staying with his family since at least June. Sunderland had returned from abroad by early November ( L4 , 255–56 n. 1; “Californians Registered at the Office of Charles Le Gay,” California Mail Bag 3 [July–Aug 73]: 59; New York Times: “Personal,” 3 Nov 73, 5; “Obituary Notes,” 11 Oct 86, 5).
MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (ViU).
L5 , 461–470.
deposited at ViU by Clifton Waller Barrett on 17 December 1963.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.