19 February 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: Barrett, UCCL 01051)
It is an admirable lot of letters. Headless mice, four-legged hens, human-handed sacred bulls, “professional” Gypsies, ditto “Sacasians,” deformed human beings anxious to trade on their horrors, school-teachers who can’t spell,—it is a perfect feast of queer literature! Again I beseech you, don’t burn a single specimen, but remember that all are wanted & possess value in the eyes of your friend
Clemens answered Barnum’s letter of 18 February (see 3 Feb 75 to Barnum, n. 2click to open link). Barnum continued to save and send batches of “queer” letters, monthly, according to Clemens (17 Sept 75 to Wrightclick to open link), at least through the late 1870s. But only two such letters are known to survive, enclosed in letters to Clemens on 20 March 1876 (CU-MARK) and 29 November 1876 (NPV). The first, dated 4 March 1876, was from Helon Buck, of Crown Point Center, New York, who proposed that Barnum publish a book she had “been 13 years preparing . . . which I clame to carry more points than any book except the bible . . . which I claim wonderful wonderful in extreme & I have not the least doubt so you will say.” The second, dated 26 November 1876, was from M. L. Badger, of Worcester, Massachusetts, a thirty-three-year-old housekeeper “in despare & discoraged” and “allwase an admirer of Drameticks,” who wanted Barnum to get her an opportunity “to act on the stage or to ride in a Circus” or to introduce her to “some travling Gentelman that wantes a companon for the winter I will be verry devoted to any one that will be kinde to me for I am of an afectionate dispotion.” In his cover letter Barnum told Clemens: “You are the only ‘travling Gentelman’ whom I know.” Clemens apparently intended using these letters to Barnum in an article, but never did so.
MS facsimile. The editors have not seen the MS, which was owned in 1976 by Roger Barrett, who provided a photocopy to the Mark Twain Papers.
L6 , 389–390; Maggs 1928, lot 1394, with omission.