8 January 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, damage emended: DLC, UCCL 01176)
I have been reading your pleasant article about my pet detestation, Rabelais, & my delightful old random encycalopedia, Montaigne, & v my very distant acquaintance, Beranger. I think I must get the book you are writing about, for it se doubtless separates & points out some excellencies in Rabelais which even I might see. Do you know, I have often had more than half a mind to go over & dig up Rabelais & throw his bones away?1explanatory note
When I began this note I thought I was going to Boston for a week with my wife, & wanted to ask you to call at Parker’s; but just at this moment my mother has telegraphed that she is coming to visit us,2explanatory note & so I judge Parker’s Hotel has been offending Providence in some way & this is the initial step toward undermining its custom & compassing its ultimate destruction. I have often noticed that as a general thing when Providence sets out to deliver retribution upon a certain man, the plans of a lot of “instruments” are u knocked galley-west who haven’t been doing anything. I have lost just about half my time, since I was born, acting as an instrument. And in about nine cases out of ten it was to fetch retributions upon parties whose fate I was not even insterested in—often, in fact, parties whom I was not even acquainted with. Like this Parker, for instance. I do not know Parker. I am not personally concerned about Parker. I do not wish to seem to complain, but still I think there might have been other ways of getting ahead of Parker without going about it in this ornate & elaborate fashion.
However, mother is coming, & I would rather have that than go to Boston. {But try to keep this dark in your prayers, for I would not seem to be enjoying what may have been merculifully intended as an inconvenience to me. I try to be humble & accept with grace whatever is ordained for me, & so I would not seem to be hollering before I am out of the woods.}
Meantime, what did you & Bliss do? I never go down town, never see Bliss, & so I am wholly uninformed as to the matter.3explanatory note
I was at the t Atlantic dinner, but left in the morning, else I should have done myself the pleasure to Ⓐemendationcall upon you.4explanatory note
Mrs. L. C. Moulton | 25 Rutland Square | Boston. | Or Care James Redpath | 36 Bromfield st.5explanatory note return address: If not delivered Ⓐemendationwithin 5 days, return to S. L. Clemens, Hartford. rule postmarked: hartford ct. jan 9 12m
The “pleasant article” was Moulton’s “Boston. Literary Notes” in the New York Tribune for 22 October 1874 (Moulton 1874). (How Clemens happened to be reading it in early January is not known.) Moulton reviewed a new book by Walter Besant, The French Humorists, from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century (Boston: Roberts Brothers): “The critical account which Besant gives of the writings of Rabelais is long and full. It is perhaps one of the greatest merits of this volume that it affords you a complete and critical idea of the works of all the men of whom it treats.” The explanation of Clemens’s “detestation” of French humorist François Rabelais (1494?–1553), best known for his satiric novels, Pantagruel and Gargantua, is perhaps suggested by his 1906 characterization of “Rabelaisian” writing as “exaggerated, artificial, made up by the author for his passing needs” (AD, 31 July 1906, CU-MARK, in MTE , 206). Clemens owned an 1871 edition of The Works of François Rabelais, Translated from the French (London: J. C. Hotten), and in 1873 had acquired an 1866 edition of Works of Michael de Montaigne (4 vols., New York: Hurd and Houghton) (Gribben, 1:480, 2:566). So far as is known, he did not comment elsewhere about Montaigne (1533–92), whose influential essays expressed a skeptical philosophy, or on Pierre Jean de Béranger (1780–1857), whose witty satirical verses were immensely popular with the French public.
Mrs. Langdon arrived in late January (27 Jan 75 to Langdon, n. 1click to open link).
See 14 Oct 74 to Moultonclick to open link. Moulton’s negotiations with Bliss were evidently not successful: she remained with her current publisher, Roberts Brothers of Boston, until the dissolution of the firm in 1898 (Whiting 1910, 75). They issued her next collection, More Bed-Time Stories, in 1875.
See pp. 317–20.
Clemens probably included Redpath’s business address because he was now uncertain of Moulton’s address—which he previously had known was 28 Rutland Square—and counted on Redpath to redirect the letter if necessary (13 Feb 74 to Moultonclick to open link; Whiting 1910, 107).
MS, Papers of Ellen Louise Chandler Moulton, Library of Congress (DLC).
L6 , 343–345; After Moulton’s death in 1908, her daughter gave the “bulk of her correspondence,” comprising autograph letters from a great many distinguished persons, to DLC (Whiting, 292–93).