31 January 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MoSW, UCCL 01041)
Bless us, Frank, of all the devils in the world, you are the particular devil that I most wish would pack up his trunk & his wife (from the other place) & waltz along up here & give us a week’s glorification & general jollity in our house. We would certainly come down & see you twain, but that I have been away from home, in effect, the best part of a year & really feel entitled to linger by mine own hearthstone for a little while, now.
Write me, or telegraph me what day you will come & what train you will come by, & I will be at the station to receive you. Both of you will like my wife & adore our neighbors.1explanatory note I am entirely idle, & shall remain so for two weeks & possibly three. I did intend to lecture in New York & Boston, but my wife prefers that I should remain at a home all the winter, & I honetstly Ⓐemendation think I have not even a faint desire to do anything that does not meet with her enthusiastic approval. Ⓐemendation so—so I shall not lecture at all this winter.
The best train leaves the Grand Central Depot, in New York, & gets here at 10 AM & comes here in about 3 hours. Then I think there are 4-hour trains that leave at 12 8 AM., 12:15, & 3 P.M. Take your choice & let me know.2explanatory note You MUST come. Nobody in the house but my wife & me,—& we’ll have a royal good time telling lies & smoking.3explanatory note
Since October 1871, the Clemenses had been renting John and Isabella Beecher Hooker’s house on the corner of Forest and Hawthorn streets in Hartford. The neighbors they saw regularly included Joseph and Harmony Twichell, Calvin and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles and Lucy Perkins, the Hookers (who stayed nearby when not traveling), Charles Dudley and Susan Lee Warner, and George and Elisabeth (Lilly) Warner. Charles and George Warner were brothers (20 Mar 74 to Howells, nn. 1, 2click to open link; see also L4 , 313 n. 7, 455, 456 n. 6, 462, 523–24 n. 2; L5 , 19–20 n. 4, 56–57).
Clemens repeatedly recommended the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad’s 10 a.m. express (see 13 Feb 74 to Kingsleyclick to open link and 16 Dec 75 to Conwayclick to open link). Fuller’s other choices were express trains at 8:05 a.m. and at 1 and 3 p.m., or much slower “accommodation” (i.e., local) trains at 7:05 and 9:05 a.m., noon, and 3:55 p.m. (“Steamboats and Railroads,” New York Tribune, 31 Jan 74, 10).
Fuller, Clemens’s close friend since the 1860s and sponsor of his first New York City lecture in 1867, established a successful Health Food Company in New York in 1874, probably at 137 East Eighth Street. His reply to Clemens’s invitation does not survive, but he visited Hartford at least once in 1874, most likely in March, and on that occasion apparently without his wife, Annie. She was Fuller’s second wife; they had married in December 1870 (7 Apr 74 to Annie W. Fullerclick to open link; L2 , 5–6, 293 n. 4; Fuller to SLC, 14 Aug 77, CU-MARK; New York Times: “Married,” 15 Dec 70, 5; “Frank Fuller Dead; Utah War Governor,” 20 Feb 1915, 5). [Mrs. Fuller’s name corrected and 1870 Times citation added 2011.]
MS, George N. Meissner Collection, Washington University, St. Louis (MoSW).
L6 , 22–23.
The MS, offered for sale in 1937 (AAA/Anderson 1937, lot 91), was donated in about 1960 by the family of businessman and collector George N. Meissner (1872–1960).
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.