Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes (Ⓐ)

Source: Mark Twain House and Museum, Hartford, Conn ([CtHMTH])

Cue: "I beg your"

Source format: "MS"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: AB

Published on MTPO: 2022

Print Publication:

This edited text supersedes the previously published text
MTPDocEd
To Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
4 June 1877 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CtHMTH, UCCL 01438)
June 4, 1877.
Dear & Honored Sir:

I beg your pardon in advance, if I am offending, but it seems a pity that this Swiss mission should go to anybody but Mr. Howells, who is so well fitted for it, & whose candidacy has but one flaw, the high respectability of his relationships.1explanatory note

I cannot help thinking that if you & Mr. Lowell, Mr. Whittier, & Mr. Holmes would sign a joint note to the President suggesting the appointment of Mr. Howells, he would be much more than likely to consent.2explanatory note

I hope you will pardon me for intruding this, Mr. Longfellow, since I could not think of any of any other plan that promised so well. With great respect

I am Truly Yours
Samℓ. L. Clemens.
(“Mark Twain.”)
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):

MS, Cyril Clemens Collection, CtHMTH.

Previous Publication:

Bennett Book Studios catalog, sale of January 1941, lot 257, partial publication; Vanderbilt 1972, MS facsimile.

Provenance:

Donated in 1984 by Cyril Clemens.

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

Explanatory Notes
1 Clemens alluded not only to Howells’s professional relationships but to his wife’s kinship with President Hayes. In 1876 Howells had expressed some interest in an appointment as U.S. minister to Switzerland, and the possibility of it continued into the spring of 1877, but he did not actively seek the post, nor did he receive it. In 1861–65 he had served as the consul in Venice, a reward for his campaign biography of Lincoln (Howells 1979b, 131, 144–45, 159, 161–65; 22? July 1874 to Howells, L6, n. 3).
2 

Longfellow replied (CU-MARK):

Cambridge June 12.

1877.

Dear Mr Clemens,

I have seen Lowell, and talked with him on the subject of your letter. We are both of us willing to do anything and everything to advance the interests of Howells, but what is to be done is not so clear to us.

We do not believe that any written paper has the slightest influence. It is only filed away and forgotten.

We have tried this method of proceeding with a friend of ours, who asks for a much humbler place, and without perceptible result. This, I confess, disinclines me to try the experiment again.

Howells himself I have been unable to see, as he has gone to Newport for the Summer. I do not know that he wants the appointment to Switzerland; and without his consent it would hardly be worth while to ask for it.

But I hope something will be offered him, which he will like, if he cares to change his present position, which seems to me too good to be lightly thrown away.

At all events, count upon my cordial cooperation in anything to his advantage.

Yours very truly

Henry W. Longfellow

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