16 September 1876 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: WU-MU, UCCL 01365)
My Dear Boy, I can’t. You know me; you know I travel with none but the salt of the earth—Ⓐemendationnever with old salts of the sea, like you. Besides, these parties drink, whom you mention. Therefore there might not be enoughⒶemendation for me.1explanatory note
⟦However, I perceive that dashing off these popping, sparkling, graceful notes, like you, is not in my line; I have to roost so long in the middle of an airy remark that my handwriting changes with age, & betrays where the spontaneity ceased & the pumping-up began. Honestly, Seaver, I think you write the happiest letter of any human being I ever saw. Privately, between you & me, why don’t you do some of it in the Drawer?—it would send that old magazine right along, you mark my words.⟧
Give my love to the boys & yourself, & be perfectly sure I would be with you but for the fact that we’ve got some swell company coming Monday to stay several days.2explanatory note
Here is hoping you will all have a good time.
Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK):
Seaver (1813?–83) was president of the Adriatic Insurance Company. He also wrote the “Editor’s Drawer” for Harper’s Monthly, as well as the “Personal” columns for Harper’s Weekly and Harper’s Bazar (20 Aug 1872 to OLC, L5, 150–51 n. 3). In addition to Harte, his guests for the New York Yacht Club’s 19 September autumn regatta were to be New York Supreme Court Justice John R. Brady (1821–91), Isaac Bromley, of the New York Tribune, and Noah Brooks, formerly of the San Francisco Alta California and the New York Tribune, and now of the New York Times (7 Mar 1873 to Reid, L5 , 313 n. 2; L6 : 1 May 1874 to Seaver, 125 n. 1; 2 or 3 July 1874 to Seaver, 173 n. 2; 27 Oct 1875 to Howells, 577 n. 1). The regatta proved to be a disappointment to “many of those who were interested in it on account of the small number of yachts that were entered” (“A Fall Regatta,” New York Tribune, 20 Sept 76, 1). Seaver’s Petrel was not one of the entrants. Sand boys (or men) used to drive their donkey carts through the streets hawking bags of sand, usually taken from the beach. Their “jolly” condition was “due to their habit of indulging in liquor with their takings” (Brewer 1989, 523).
Unidentified, but evidently not the Fairbanks family, whom Clemens had recently invited.
MS, Bassett Collection, WU-MU.
MicroPUL, reel 1.
Norman D. Bassett, a Madison alumnus, owned the MS by October 1942. He donated his Mark Twain collection to WU on 9 July 1955.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.