27 October 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: DFo, UCCL 01276)
Oct. 27.
I am very glad indeed to see that the Memorial is prospering so well.1explanatory note UnderⒶemendation any other condition of things, I know America would contribute largely, but now it is nearly impossible to get the people to part with a penny they can cling to. Business is utterly prostrate, thousands of men are without employment, & money is distressingly scarce.2explanatory note I hope to be able to confer a Memorial Governorship upon myself some day, but haven’t dared to think of it these times.3explanatory note We started to buy land & build a house, all for six thousand pounds; but when we were with you we were aware that the ground had already cost £6,000 & the mere unroofed brick shell of the house £3,600 more. So we didn’t even venture to subscribe £5 to the American window in Shakspeare church! We did feel so poor! Up to to-day our house, grounds & furniture have cost twenty-three thousand pounds & the confounded place isn’t finished yet! There is only one comfort about it all; & that is the reflection that if the house were going to be built over again, we would build it exactly the same way. We are not conscious of a single regret—& that is something.
I have sent the Memorial documents to the press for publication.
I enclose my picture for your father & beg him to send me his.4explanatory note He is my English John Brown.
P. S. Kindly remember us to Mrs. Flower & your father & brothers’ families.5explanatory note We expect to go to England next spring—we gratefully remember that England & the sea were the best physicians Mrs. Clemens ever had.6explanatory note
The country was still experiencing the economic depression precipitated by the financial panic of September 1873 (see 28 Feb 74 to Brown, n. 3click to open link).
No evidence has been found that Clemens purchased a £100 “Governorship” in the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.
The photograph that Clemens enclosed for Edward F. Flower, Charles’s father, does not survive with the letter. It most likely was taken by George K. Warren in November 1874, but might have been taken by Elisha Van Aken in July or August of that year (see 2 Sept 74 to Howellsclick to open link and 2? Dec 74 to Millerclick to open link).
That is, respectively: Sarah Flower; Edward F. Flower and his wife, Celina; Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Flower, who had eight children; and William Henry Flower (1831–99) and his wife, Georgiana, who had six children. William was not in the family brewery business in Stratford-upon-Avon. A leading doctor and zoologist, he was a professor of anatomy and physiology, and curator of the museum, at the Royal College of Surgeons in London ( L5 , 195–96 n. 1, 416 nn. 2, 3).
Clemens may have thought he had to reside temporarily in England to secure an Imperial copyright on Tom Sawyer. The copyright on the English edition (published by Chatto and Windus in June 1876) was in fact assigned to Moncure Conway, who acted as Clemens’s agent (10 Jan 77 to Conway, NNC; TS , 18–21). The Clemenses did not go to England in the spring of 1876.
MS, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. (DFo).
L6 , 575–576.
purchased in 1924 by businessman and collector Henry Clay Folger (1857–1930) from Maggs Bros., London.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.