Oh, come, now, I won’t stand this! The only reason why I didn’t write & ask
Aldrich to abide with me was because Ponkapog had slipped my memory & I supposed he
was living in town & Mrs.
Aldrich would scalp me if I tried to beguile him. I was half afraid to approach you, comprehending the desperate
nature of Mrs. Howells when roused.
Oh, no, this will never, never, never do. It was
IⒶemendation that sent down to the clerk’s office for those rooms—not you. Let me have my way
just this once,
& next time I will let you have yours. I entirely looked upon the Aldrich as my guest.2explanatory note
No, indeed, we’ll leave for N. O., Feb. 15. That is the idea.
Yrs Ever
Mark.
Textual Commentary
21 December 1874 • To
William Dean Howells
• Hartford, Conn. • UCCL01098
Source text(s):
MS facsimile. The editors have not seen the MS, which is in the Dan Ferguson Collection,
Bridwell Library, Perkins School of
Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas (TxDaM-P).
Previous Publication:
L6, 326–27; Anderson, Gibson, and Smith, 39–40.
Provenance:
Ferguson (1891–1963), a Dallas attorney who worked for the Magnolia Petroleum Company,
donated his collection in
1956.
Clemens replied to the following letter, which answered his of 18 December (CU-MARK):
UCLC32081
editorial office of the atlantic monthly. the riverside press, cambridge, mass.
Dec. 19, 1874.
Dear Clemens:
Your No. 3 is safe among the dead-heads in my drawer, so you can dismiss all fears
but those of publication.
It’s very interesting, and quite a revelation in its way; for the brute public, it
would have been better if it had ended
with some sort of incident. Perhaps you could still contrive one.—I rejoice as much
as you do in Hay’s
letter—or should, if I didn’t like your papers so much as to be jealous of every other
admirer. What business has
Hay, I should like to know, to be praising a favorite of mine? It’s interfering.
Now that Mrs. Clemens has bowed her neck to the yoke, Mrs. Howells has sprung back
from it with astonishing
vigor and is saying that I ought not to go to New Orleans without her. I suppose it
will end by our looking at N.O. on the map; but I
don’t give it up yet, and don’t you. We will keep this project alive if it
takes all winter.
—Here are $3 to pay for Aldrich’s board and lodging at the Parker House. He was
my guest for bed and breakfast, and I didn’t mean to palm him off on you, who had calculated
merely
to pay my expenses. If you paid for his dinner, you did it at your own risk.
Honesty is the best policy, but it is not the cheapest.
MS facsimile. The editors have not seen the MS, which is in the Dan Ferguson Collection, Bridwell Library, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas (TxDaM-P).
L6 , 326–27; Anderson, Gibson, and Smith, 39–40.
Ferguson (1891–1963), a Dallas attorney who worked for the Magnolia Petroleum Company, donated his collection in 1956.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.