1 February 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: WU, UCCL 01043)
Sunday.
Sitting in church to-day, thinking (as usual) of everything but the sermon, I got to feeling ashamed of always making agreements with you & breaking them, & so I said to Mrs. Clemens afterward that if she could go to Boston for a day or two, some time, I would like to deliver & repeat “Roughing It,” or h do that once & the Sandwich Islands once— on consecutive nights or with a night intervening—simply to have you keep faith with the public1explanatory note—& she a was entirely willing. So if you think it worthwhile we will do that; you to take Tremont Temple2explanatory note & choose dates to suit yourself, & you take 15 per cent of gross proceeds;3explanatory note or half gross on the Dolby plan; or half nett—just suit yourself. In fact I want you to suit yourself in all ways—for in this thing I am only trying to get back on good terms with my conscience for treating you so shabbily—a way in which I never would have treated you if my duty to my wife had not made it imperative.
letter docketed: boston lyceum bureau. james redpath. feb 6 1874 Ⓐemendation and Twain Mark | Hartford | Ct.
No evidence has been found that Redpath had advertised, or even scheduled, the lectures that Clemens had proposed from London, affirmed in Boston, and ultimately withdrew from in Hartford (27–31 Jan 74 to Redpath, n. 1click to open link).
Built on Tremont Street in Boston in 1853, this Tremont Temple was the second of three successive halls by that name at the same location. It housed the Union Temple Church (a Baptist free church) and was one of the sites Redpath regularly used for lectures, although not in this case (28 Feb 74 to Redpath, n. 2click to open link; Bacon, 473–75; Boston Directory 1874, 1195; L4 , 267 n. 2; L5 , 209 n. 1; “Amusements,” Boston Evening Transcript, 16 Feb 74, 5, 20 Feb 74, 1).
Redpath normally charged a 10 percent commission ( L5 , 2 n. 4). Although his agency was formally the “Boston Lyceum Bureau” through the 1873–74 season, in newspaper advertisements it had begun to call itself both “Redpath’s Boston Lyceum” and “Redpath’s Lyceum.” For the 1874–75 season it became “Redpath’s Lyceum Bureau,” and later still “The Redpath Lyceum Bureau,” even though Redpath sold the business in October 1875 (“Amusements,” Boston Evening Transcript, 16 Feb 74, 5; Lyceum 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1883; see 22 Sept 75 to Redpath, n. 6click to open link).
MS facsimile, Rare Book Department, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison (WU).
L6 , 24; Henkels 1903, lot 636, excerpt.
The present location of the MS, offered for sale in 1903 as part of the collection of Harold Pierce, is not known; the photocopy was donated to WU in March 1943 by E. E. Moore.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.