18 December 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: NN-B, UCCL 02482)
D◇ I left No. 31explanatory note in my eldest’s reach, & it may have gone to the postman & it likewise may have gone into the fire. I confess to a dread that the latter is the case & that that stack of MS. will have to be written over again. If so, O for the return of the L lamented Herod!
You & Aldrich have made one woman deeply & sincerely grateful —Mrs. Clemens. For months—I may even say years—she has shown an unaccountable animosity toward my neck-tie, even getting up in the night to take it with the tongs & blackguard it—sometimes also going so far as to threaten it.
When I said you & Aldrich had given me two new neck-ties, & that they were in a paper in my overcoat pocket, she was in a fever of unhappiness until she found I was going to frame them; then all the venom in her nature gathered itself together,—insomuch that I, being near to a door, went without, perceiving danger.
Now I wear one of the new neck-ties, nothing being sacred in my Mrs. Clemens’s eyes that can be perverted to ◇◇◇ a gaud that shall make the person of her husband more alluring than it was aforetime.
Jo Twichell was the delightedest old boy I ever saw, when th he read the words you had written in that book. He & I went to the Concert of the Yale students last night & had a good time.2explanatory note
Mrs. Clemens dreads our going to New Orleans, but I tell her she’ll have to give her consent this time.3explanatory note
With kindest regards unto ye both—
P. S.—John Hay of his own free will & accord, volunteers me a letter which is so gratifying in its nature that I am obliged to copy it for you to read. I was born & reared at Hannibal, & John Hay at Warsaw, 40 miles higher up, on the river (one of the Keokuk packet ports):4explanatory note
“Dear Clemens—I have just read with delight your article in the Atlantic. It is perfect—no more nor less. I don’t see how you do it. I knew all that, every word of it—passed as much time on the levee as you ever did, knew the same crowd & saw the same scenes,—but I could not have remembered one word of it all. You have the two greatest gifts of the writer, memory & imagination. I congratulate you.”
Now isn’t that outspokenⒶemendation & hearty, & just like that splendid John Hay?5explanatory note
The third installment of “Old Times,” scheduled for publication in the March Atlantic.
On 15 December Clemens carried to Boston the photograph that Twichell had promised to Howells (see 2 Dec 74 to Howells, n. 1click to open link). Howells thanked Twichell in a letter of 18 December (preserved in Twichell’s journal), and explained that the picture was displayed in his dining room with Clemens’s and Warner’s. Clemens brought back from Howells a gift copy of A Foregone Conclusion, which he presented to Twichell on 17 December (the inscription has not been recovered). That evening the Yale Glee Club gave a benefit concert at Roberts Opera House for the Hartford Young Men’s Institute. Twichell had graduated from Yale in 1859 (Twichell, 1:38, 40, 41; Hartford Courant: “Amusements” and “The Yale Boys To-night,” 17 Dec 74, 1, 2; “The Yale Glee Club Concert,” 18 Dec 74, 2; L2 , 269 n. 3).
It was Howells who proposed this trip, at the Atlantic dinner, although Clemens already had conceived of making a similar one with Redpath (see 29 Nov 74 to Redpathclick to open link).
Hay was born in Salem, Indiana, but in 1841, when he was three, his family moved to Warsaw, Illinois, on the Mississippi. Clemens, of course, was born in Florida, Missouri, and was four when his family moved to Hannibal (Gale, 16; Wecter 1952, 43, 51–53).
Hay commented on the first installment of “Old Times,” which appeared on 15 December in the Atlantic for January 1875 (“New Publications,” New York Tribune, 15 Dec 74, 6):
On the envelope of Hay’s letter, Clemens wrote: “John Hay—complimentary of first river article in ‘Atlantic Monthly’” (CU-MARK).
MS, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN-B).
L6 , 324–26; Paine 1912, 251, and MTB , 1:537, excerpt; Paine 1917, 784, and MTL , 1:241, with omission; Harnsberger, 39, excerpt; MTHL , 1:54–56.
see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.