Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes (Ⓐ)

Source: Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass ([MH-H])

Cue: "I'm not going"

Source format: "MS"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: AB

Published on MTPO: 2007

Print Publication: v6

MTPDocEd
To William Dean Howells
22 and 27 September 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MH-H, UCCL 01263)
Hartford, Sept. 22
My Dear Howells: 1explanatory note

I’m not going to lecture this year, after all. I’ve subterfuged myself out of it. I can not lecture. I loathe it. But we are coming to see you by &Ⓐemendation by, anyway.

{ 28th Ⓐemendation 27th } I told you Bliss to send you advance sheets of my Sketch volume—which I suppose he has done. The book will be published in a week or ten days. I saw the first copy yesterday—& about the first thing I ran across was an extract from “Hospital Days” (page 199) —an entirely gratuitous addition by Mr. Bliss to neatly fill out a page. I have ordered it out, instanter.2explanatory note

Lord, what colds my wife & I have got!


bottom one-fourth of page cut away 3explanatory note


Textual Commentary
22 and 27 September 1875 • To William Dean Howells • Hartford, Conn. • UCCL 01263
Source text(s):

MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1784 [98]).

Previous Publication:

L6 , 541–42; MTHL , 1:103.

Provenance:

see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.

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

Explanatory Notes
1 

Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK), which replied to his of 18 September:

UCLC32209

Prospect House,

Chesterfield, N.H.

Sept. 21, 1875.

Dear Clemens:

You will be beautifully welcome at my house in November, or any other month of the year. Of course let us know in time, and Mrs. Howells and I will come to the lecture and drive out to Cambridge with you. This is none of your Lexington Centennial swindles—I mean business.

As soon as I get finally home—in about a fortnight—I’ll see those venerable men about the petition for International Justice and Decency in copyright. I expect to go down to Cambridge perhaps to-morrow, and return Saturday night, preparatory to a short visit to my father at Quebec. Then, please the pigs, I shall stick to Cambridge, for one while. I can’t tell you how sick I am of enjoying myself—that’s what it is called.

Mrs. Howells joins me in affectionate remembrances to both of you.

Ever yours

W. D. Howells.

For the “Lexington Centennial,” see 18 Apr 75 to OLC, n. 1click to open link.

2 

The “extract” appeared on page 299 (not 199) of Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old. Entitled “From ‘Hospital Days,’” it was in fact taken from Jane Stuart Wolsey’s Hospital Days (Wolsey, 77). Clemens transcribed it from that book for some undiscovered purpose, noting the author’s name at the top of the page and then crossing it out (CtY-BR; ET&S1 , 633 n. 203, incorrectly states that Clemens copied Wolsey’s sketch for inclusion in a “Cyclopedia of Humor,” but he was not planning such a work at this time). He may have inadvertently included his transcription in the printer’s copy he submitted to Bliss for Sketches, New and Old. For an unconvincing suggestion that Wolsey’s sketch actually copied Clemens, see Brownell 1943 [bib01027], 1943 [bib13385]; and MTHL , 2:863–64 (which misidentifies a table of contents that Clemens marked up for a late edition of Sketches, New and Old as “proof sheets”). For the outcome of Clemens’s protest, see 5 Nov 75 to Bliss, n. 7click to open link.

3 

Probably only Clemens’s complimentary close and signature are missing from the letter, which is on the front and back pages of a folder whose inside pages are blank.

Emendations and Textual Notes
Ⓐ  by & ●  by by & corrected miswriting
Ⓐ  28th 27th  ●  28 7 th
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