9 October 1874 • Hartford, Conn (New York Times, 12 Oct 74, UCCL 01137)
In this morning’s issue you print what purports to be a letter from me to the Greenwich Street Grammar School. As I have not written such a letter, I suspect that the deception was only intended as a harmless diversion, & Ⓐemendation the only mistake was in forgetting to post the reporters & thus keep it out of print. It has not grieved me in the least, & I only make this correction because the thing has put me in the rather uncomfortable attitude of seeming to palm off upon a company of confiding pupils a “cure for a cold” which I published in a San Francisco newspaper ten years ago. It would be bad enough to plagiarize somebody else—it is worse when I seem to plagiarize myself. I am much more complimented than distressed by the gentle deception, but I feel that it would not be just right to let the idea get abroad that I calmly & complacently play such deceptions myself; for that would soon undermine a moral character which I have built up with infinite pains & incredible expense.
Louis John Jennings (1836–93), the editor of the Times, was an Englishman. In the early 1860s he had been a London Times staff member and correspondent from India, and the editor of the Times of India. From 1866 he served as the London Times representative in the United States, and then corresponded from London for the New York Times, becoming editor in chief of that newspaper in 1869. His fearless campaign against the Tammany Ring was largely responsible for its downfall. Jennings remained editor of the New York Times until 1876, when he returned to England. There he wrote a novel, two books about country walks and a study of William Gladstone, edited the papers of John Wilson Croker and Lord Randolph Churchill, and served as a member of Parliament (Mott 1950, 383; Elmer Davis, 84–86). He had last communicated with Clemens on 1 September 1874, when, in response to an unrecovered late August letter from Clemens, he wrote explaining that “the article you were kind enough to offer to us was not worth to us $250,” although the price itself was “doubtless quite fair,” but hoping that “we shall yet have an opportunity of publishing something from your pen, for I need scarcely tell you that, like everybody else, I have read your works with great amusement and pleasure” (CU-MARK). The rejected article may have been the fable that Clemens sent to Howells, at a “lowered” price, on 2 September (see 2 Sept 74 to Howells, n. 4click to open link).
The spurious letter was addressed to the girls’ principal, and indirectly to the boys’ principal, of the Greenwich Street Grammar School. On 8 October “Miss Maria Bertine, one of the elder pupils,” read it at graduation exercises instead of a scheduled selection from Bret Harte’s works. The letter began:
Miss K. W. White:
Dear Madam: I regret exceedingly being unable to accept your kind invitation (also Mr. P. G. Duffy’s) to be present at your Commencement exercises, but the annoying and vexatious illness which still hangs about me, together with some business engagements, will prevent. The illness to which I refer is a severe cold which I took in New-York last Winter during the lecture season. Perhaps the recital of how I tried to cure this cold may be of interest, and may serve instead of the few remarks you so politely asked me to make to the friends and pupils.
Here followed a heavily edited and embellished version of “How to Cure a Cold,” based on the edited text Clemens had reprinted in the 1867 Jumping Frog book, which in turn derived from the original publication in the San Francisco Golden Era for 20 September 1863 (see ET&S1, 296–303). The ostensible letter concluded: “After all this experience you cannot wonder that I dread going to New-York, and feel obliged to decline your kind invitation. Wishing you a successful and pleasant time, I remain, very respectfully, S. L. CLEMENS, (Mark Twain.)” (“Mark Twain’s Cold,” New York Times, 9 Oct 74, 8).
“Mark Twain and His Cold,” New York Times, 12 Oct 74, 4. Copy-text is a microfilm edition of the newspaper in the Newspaper and Microcopy Division, University of California, Berkeley (CU-NEWS).
L6 , 249–250; “Mark Twain’s Cold,” Hartford Courant, 13 Oct 74, 2.