Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes (Ⓐ)

Source: CU-MARK ([CU-MARK])

Cue: "Three or four"

Source format: "MS"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified: 2003-12-03T00:00:00

Revision History: Paradise, Kate | kate 2003-12-03 was ODaU

Published on MTPO: 2022

Print Publication:

This edited text supersedes the previously published text
MTPDocEd
To William Dean Howells
21 June 1877 • 1st of 2 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 01066)

slc/mtfarmington avenue, hartford.

Elmira, June 21.
My Dear Howells:

Three or four times lately I have read items to the effect that Bret Harte is trying to get a Consulship. To-day’s item says he is to have one.1explanatory note

Now if I knew the President, I would I would venture to write him, for he has said that in the matter of information about applicants for office he values the testimony of private citizens as well as that of Members of Congress.

You do know him; & I think your citizenship lays the duty upon you of doing what you can to prevent the appoint disgrace of literature & the country which would be the infallible result of the appointment of Bret Harte to any responsible post. Wherever he goes his wake is tumultuous with swindled grocers, & with defrauded innocents who have loaned him money. He never pays a debt but by the squeezing of the law. He borrows from all new acquaintances, & repays none. His oath is worth little, his promise nothing at all. He can lie faster than he can drivel false pathos. No He is always steeped in whisky & brandy; he gets up in the night to drink it cold. No man who has ever known him, respects him.2explanatory note Harte is a viler character than Geo. Butler, for he lacks Butler’s pluck & spirit.3explanatory note

You know that I have befriended this creature for seven years. I am even capable of doing it still—while he stays at home. But I don’t want to see him made sent to foreign parts to carry on his depredations. He told me many months ago that he was to have a consulship under Mr. Tilden, but I gave myself no concern about the matter, taking it as a mere after-breakfast lie to whet up his talent for the day’s villainies; & besides, I judged that his character was so well known that he would not be able to succeed in his nefarious design.4explanatory note But these newspaper items have an alarming look. Come, now, Howells, do a stroke for the honor of the guild. Put me under oath if you will. I will cheerfully make affidavit to what I have said.

Ys Ever
Samℓ. L. Clemens
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):

MS, CU-MARK.

Previous Publication:

Christie’s catalog, sale of 14 December 1984, lot 135, partial publication; Francis Murphy 1985, 89–90; Sotheby’s catalog, sale of 29 October 1996, no. 6904, lot 209, partial publication; MicroPUL, reel 1.

Provenance:

Victor and Irene Murr Jacobs (apparently) purchased the MS in 1984 from Christie’s and sold it through Sotheby’s in October 1996 to CU-MARK.

More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.

Explanatory Notes
1 1Although Clemens’s actual sources have not been identified, newspapers across the country had been printing items about Harte’s interest in a diplomatic appointment since at least 8 June. On that day, for example, the Deer Lodge (Mont.) New North-West noted, “One of ‘Gath’s’ screeds in Philadelphia Times: Bret Harte wants a small foreign mission” (3). (“Gath” was the nom de plume of journalist George Alfred Townsend.) On 14 June the Cleveland Leader mentioned Harte as one of “three gentlemen of the pen in Washington” who were waiting for appointments (“Literary Consuls,” 7). And on the same day the Springfield Illinois State Journal commented that “if Bret Harte wants a German Consulate he should receive it” (“Current News,” 3). By 18 June a rumor was circulating that Harte “would like the Chinese mission” (“Washington, June 18,” Carson City [Nev.] Appeal, 20 June 1877, 2; “Washington,” Chicago Inter-Ocean, 19 June 1877, 5). On the day Clemens wrote this letter the Cincinnati Gazette announced, “The Washington Star says Bret Harte is likely to get a good consulship” (“Varieties,” 4). On 8 July, however, Harte wrote his wife, “As regards Appointments, I know nothing. Whatever is done now, must come to me without solicitation” (Harte 1997, 153).
2 For Clemens’s antipathy toward Harte see 24 Jan 1877 to Bliss, n. 1; 27 Feb 1877 to PAM, n. 3; and 23 Apr 1877 to OLC).
3 George Harris Butler (1838–86) was the nephew of Benjamin Franklin Butler (1818–93), the controversial Union general and congressman. George Butler had a history of scandalous behavior. In March of 1870, with his uncle’s influence, he was appointed consul general for Alexandria, Egypt. According to a modern historian, his tenure there was marred by “his drinking habits, accusations of corruption, and a taste for watching native dancing girls in puris naturalibus” (Block and Dunn 2015, 232–33). Following a restaurant gunfight in which he wounded an officer in the Egyptian army, he had fled Alexandria in July 1872 and was soon removed from office. In 1877 his uncle secured his appointment as a special agent of the Post Office Department, assigned to Dakota Territory. But in late April, his drunken behavior aboard a train en route to his post outraged a prominent Methodist bishop and resulted in his dismissal (“George Butler,” Chicago Tribune, 14 May 1877, 2). In 1906 Clemens remembered Butler as one of his boyhood acquaintances, describing him as “a child of seven wearing a blue leather belt with a brass buckle, and hated and envied by all the boys on account of it. He was a nephew of General Ben Butler and fought gallantly at Ball=s Bluff and in several other actions of the Civil War” (AutoMT1, 420, 626–27).
4 

In 1907 Clemens recalled that Harte, while staying in Hartford to collaborate on Ah Sin, had described his strategy for securing an appointment from either candidate in the presidential election of 1876:

On the 7th of November 1876—I think it was the 7th—he suddenly appeared at my house in Hartford and remained there during the following day—election day. As usual, he was tranquil; he was serene; doubtless the only serene and tranquil voter in the United States; the rest—as usual in our country—were excited away up to the election limit, for that vast political conflagration was blazing at white heat which was presently to end in one of the Republican party’s most cold-blooded swindles of the American people—the stealing of the Presidential chair from Mr. Tilden, who had been elected, and the conferring of it upon Mr. Hayes, who had been defeated. . . . I was as excited and inflamed as was the rest of the voting world, and I was surprised when Harte said he was going to remain with us until the day after the election; but not much surprised, for he was such a careless creature that I thought it just possible that he had gotten his dates mixed. There was plenty of time for him to correct his mistake, and I suggested that he go back to New York and not lose his vote. But he said he was not caring about his vote; that he had come away purposely, in order that he might avoid voting and yet have a good excuse to answer the critics with. Then he told me why he did not wish to vote. He said that through influential friends he had secured the promise of a consulate from Mr. Tilden, and the same promise from Mr. Hayes; that he was going to be taken care of no matter how the contest might go, and that his interest in the election began and ended there. He said he could not afford to vote for either of the candidates, because the other candidate might find it out and consider himself privileged to cancel his pledge. (AutoMT2, 424–25)

Harte actually arrived in Hartford on 3 November, and the election was held on 7 November. In 1878, under the Hayes administration, he was appointed consul at Crefeld, Germany, where he served until 1880. He was then transferred to Glasgow, and held that post until 1885 (AutoMT2, 519–20).

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