12 and 14 May 1876 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, in pencil, then ink: MH-H, UCCL 01333)
We have just finished the Shaker article & Mrs C has gone to bed. The sketch is so full of pathos; I mean all through—in every sentence, I should say; for even the humorous sentences are filmed about with the haze of pathos. I so envy those people, & am so unaccountably sorry for them, too, somehow. The parted lovers; the visit of the little child—these stand out strongly; & I looked for the hoarded bit of embrooidery that one of the sisters kept for secret worship (you told me about it once) but you left it outⒶemendation. You had to do it, of course, but it was a pity.
It was pleasant to know that one of the brethren had heard me & not damned me—I was pleased with that.
Well, my enjoyment of the article was rounded & complete, when I caught you in a bit of bad English construction! “They had also some of them read Mr. Bret &c.” You’d have made me say, “Some of them had also read &c.”1explanatory note
Aha!
P. S. Dean Sage has been visiting Twichell, & left this sketch for him & me to read & forward to you.2explanatory note I read it aloud to Mrs. Clemens & both of us were charmed with it; not because we care 2 cents about hunting & fishing, but because this man’s admirable gift in narrative-writing seems able to make any narrative of his irresistible. He has an artlessness, an absence of self-consciousness, a ditto of striving after effect, & a pauseless canter, that
My Dear Burton 3explanatory note
cause make the reader forget the writer & become himself the actor in the adventures. And here is a curious thing: Dean Sage’s happiest “surprises” are his simply-stated failures, after having worked up his theme up one’s expectancy to a point where you are holding your breath for the climax, & you suppose you of course know what that climax is going to be. But instead of said climax, Sage gives you the quiet, simple truth, & goes on about his business, cheerful, content, unafflicted by his defeat—even almost unconscious of it. The idea of making so fine a picture as that of that buck, & so breathless a situation; & then missing him, & then going right on to tell what the hunting-dogs did & what how hunting dogs do under this, that, & other circumstances!—& never a hint that the writer was aware of having missed a climax as well as the buck. The simplicity, the frozen truth, the homely phraseology—no use talking, this is the best & the happiest narrative-talent that has tackled pen since Thoreau.
Read it. I think you’ll use it; but still you may not.4explanatory note In the latter case return it to Sage, whose address is at the bottom of his note accompanying this.5explanatory note
Say—if Daly produces your little play within the next 30 days, let’s go down (without letting Daly or any one know) & slip quietly into the theatre with the general herd & see it. After 30 days I go to Elmira, 1,000,000 miles from New York.6explanatory note
In “A Shaker Village,” in the Atlantic Monthly for June, Howells observed:
Certain things they would think indecorous rather than wicked, and I do not suppose a Shaker would go twice to the opera bouffe; but such an entertainment as a lecture by our right-hearted humorist, Mark Twain, had been attended by one of the brethren not only without self-reproach, but with great enjoyment. They had also some of them read Mr. Bret Harte’s books without apparent fear of consequences. (Howells 1876c, 709)
Sage, a New York lumber dealer, outdoorsman, book collector, and writer on fishing, was an old friend of Twichell’s who had become Clemens’s friend as well (L6: 28 Mar 1875 to Sage, 431; 2 Apr 1875 to Sage, 452-54). He and his wife, Sarah, had arrived for a visit with the Twichells on 9 May, preventing Twichell from joining Clemens in Boston for Anna Dickinson’s theatrical debut (see 4 May 1876 to Howellsclick to open link, nn. 1, 2). Sage had sent his sketch in advance of his visit. On 9 May, while Clemens was still in Boston, Twichell had left it for Clemens to read, apologizing for the imposition in an accompanying letter (CU-MARK):
Heaven knows I don’t want to bore you, and that I am truly grieved to add a feather to the burden of manuscript reading that must be one of the trials of your life. But what else can I do? Here Dean Sage sends me this MS (he said nothing about it when I was down there) with the enclosed notes explaining why he sends it. Now I’m no judge of such a matter. The piece is to me very interesting, in its facts especially, and the style seems suited to those facts. But what the performance is in a literary point of view, I cant say, and I feel rather embarrassed. I don’t want to inflict upon Howells the discomfort of saying “no” if it is a cock sure thing that he must say it.
Will you, Mark, like a good fellow, just run the thing through and as when you have a chance—to-day or tomorrow—so that you can tell me when I call what I’d better do.
The 11 May letter that Clemens began to write on this sheet, which he reused for page two of his postscript, was probably intended for Nathaniel J. Burton. No 1876 correspondence between Clemens and Burton has been found.
In 1875 Howells had accepted Sage’s “Ten Days’ Sport on Salmon Rivers” for the Atlantic Monthly (22 Apr 1875 to Sage, L6 , 452–53; Sage 1875). For his decision this time, see n. 6.
Neither Sage’s manuscript nor his accompanying note has been found. Sage lived at 770 St. Mark’s Avenue in Brooklyn.
Howells replied (CU-MARK):
In 1874 Clemens had suggested that Augustin Daly commission a play by Howells for the Fifth Avenue Theatre. Howells had sent Daly a one-act play, The Parlor Car, on 24 April 1876, but although Daly announced it for 1876–77, he never produced it. Howells published it as “The Parlor Car. Farce” in the Atlantic Monthly for September 1876. His contribution to the Atlantic for July 1876 was “A Sennight of the Centennial,” about the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, which opened on 10 May (Howells 1876d, Howells 1876e). His comedy was Out of the Question, which he finished in early August 1876 (Howells 1877b, Howells 1877c; see 9 Aug 1876 to Howellsclick to open link, n. 1). The Howellses arrived on 18 June at the Brick Farm in Shirley Village, Massachusetts, where they were to spend part of the summer. Howells had sent Sage’s article back to him on 6 June (see MTHL , 1:139 n. 2 top). Clemens’s novel in progress was his “double-barreled novel,” not further identified (9 Aug 1876 to Howellsclick to open link, n. 5; 29 Oct 1874 to Daly, L6 , 263–65; Annual Cyclopaedia 1876 , 16:261; Howells 1979b, 129, 130–31, 132–33, 159 n. 3).
MS, in pencil, then ink, MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1784 (98).
MTHL , 1:138–39, as two separate letters, “8? or 15? May” and “? May.”
See Howells Letters in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.