23 March 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: NN-B, UCCL 02469)
I have written a rather lengthy review of that unfortunate & sadly ridiculous book of Miss Cleveland’s about Chappaqua.2explanatory note I wrote it simply to amuse myself, & now I ought to burn it—but if you wouldn’t mind printing it in the Sunday World & strictly & religiously concealing the fact that I wrote it, you may have it for 10 cents.3explanatory note Shall I send it for your inspection? As Whitelaw Reid & I are not friends;4explanatory note & I as I write books myself, I would not like to be known as a critic—it would look ungracious in this instance. I aim my moral, not at the poor girl herself, but at her injudicious friends (for permitting the publication.)5explanatory note
Stillson (1841–80), a native of Buffalo, was a former Civil War and Washington correspondent for the New York World and had been the newspaper’s managing editor for about a year. Later in 1874 he became the World’s Albany correspondent. In 1875 he moved to Denver, where he worked in real estate until 1877, when he joined the staff of the New York Herald, the post he held until his death of kidney disease (“Death of Jerome B. Stillson,” New York Times, 27 Dec 80, 5; “Jerome B. Stillson,” New York World, 27 Dec 80, 5; “Personal,” Elmira Advertiser, 25 Mar 73, 4; “Personal,” Hartford Courant, 1 May 73, 2).
The Story of a Summer; Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua (1874), by Cecilia Cleveland, niece of the late Horace Greeley, whose country house and experimental farm in Chappaqua, New York, provided the book’s setting.
The Sunday World offered a variety of “entertaining but solid and profitable” features intended to appeal to the “large class of New Yorkers whose occupations deny them the luxury of more than a casual glance at the morning papers during the week.” Included were theatrical gossip, health advice, art news, scientific notes, sports reporting, fiction and poetry, and “Feminine Personals” (“The Sunday World,” New York World, 15 Mar 74, 5).
For details of Clemens’s falling-out with Reid, see L5 , 367–69.
In a prefatory note to her book, Cleveland explained:
This little volume is in no sense a work of the imagination, but a simple record of a pleasant summer’s residence at Chappaqua, embracing many facts and incidents heretofore unpublished, relating to one who once occupied a large portion of the public mind. Believing that it may interest many who care to know more of that portion of his busy life which was not seen by the public, but which pertained to his home circle, the author has been persuaded to print what was written merely for the amusement of herself and friends. (Cleveland, 7)
In 1949 Dixon Wecter speculated that Cleveland had asked Clemens to “puff” her book ( MTMF , 185–86, n. 2 to letter of 24 March 1876, misdated 1874). No evidence has been found to confirm that. Part of Clemens’s pleasure in ridiculing her work may be traced to its publisher, George W. Carleton, who had offended him in rejecting The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, And other Sketches in 1867. The slight long rankled (see L2 , 13–14 n. 1). No version of Clemens’s review, either published or unpublished, has been found, but The Story of a Summer did not escape unscathed. On 10 March 1874, for example, the Boston Evening Transcript published a long and sarcastic review by its New York correspondent, who regretted that “Miss Cleveland has been led into publishing such a book” (Fuller-Walker). And on 17 March the Hartford Courant’s reviewer, possibly Charles Dudley Warner, found the book “entertaining and amusing” while deploring its gossipy absurdities, lamenting that it made him “a party to a revelation of private life that the public has no business to look into,” and wondering how it “ever got into print” (“Literary Notices,” 2).
MS, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN-B).
L6 , 86–87; Chicago 1933, lot 44, paraphrase and brief excerpt.
When offered for sale in 1933 the MS was part of the collection of Edmund W. Evans (of Oil City, Pennsylvania). It was later owned by businessman William T. H. Howe (1874–1939); in 1940 Dr. Albert A. Berg bought and donated the Howe Collection to NN.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.