31 August 1875 • Newport, R.I. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 01258)
We return home about 7th or 8th. If sooner, will write you.1explanatory note
postmarked: newport r.i.Ⓐemendation aug 31
In a letter dated 27 August to the Virginia City Enterprise, Wright reported that Clemens “gave a reading the other night in Newport at a meeting of a dramatic society, and won much applause. He gave selections from his sketches and the like. He will return to Hartford in a few days” (Wright 1875 [bib14119]). Clemens’s performance occurred on Monday, 23 August. Wright was not actually in attendance: on noon that day he returned to Hartford from a three-day steamboat excursion to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket (Wright 1875 [bib00179]). Probably he wrote his report from the following in the Hartford Courant of 26 August: “Mr. Clemens, Mark Twain, gave a reading Monday evening of extracts from his own works at Newport at the meeting of the Bellevue Dramatic club. The Providence Journal says:—‘Mr. Twain delighted his hearers’” (“Brief Mention,” 2).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L6 , 530–531.
see Tufts Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.