19 October 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: NN-B, UCCL 02495)
That is a perfectly superb notice.2explanatory note You can easily believe that nothing ever gratified me so much before. The newspaper praises bestowed upon the Innocents ce Abroad were large & generous, but I hadn’t confidence in the critical judgment of the parties who furnished them.3explanatory note You know how that is, yourself, from reading the newspaper notices of your own books. They gratify a body, but they always leave a small pang behind in the shape of a fear that the critic’s good words could not safely be depended upon as authority. Yours is the recognized autho critical Court of Last Resort in this country; from its decision there is no appeal; & so, to have gained this decree of yours before I am forty years old, I regard as a thing to be right down proud of. Mrs. Clemens says, “Tell him I am just as grateful to him as I can be.” {It sounds as if she were grateful to you for heroically trampling the truth under foot in order to praise me—but in reality it means that she is grateful to you for being bold to utter a truth which she fully believes all competent people know, but which none has heretofore been brave enough to utter.} You see, the thing that gravels her is that I am so persistently glorified as a mere buffoon, as if that entirely covered my case.——which she denies with venom.
The other day Mrs Clemens was planning a visit to you, & so I am waiting, with a pleasurable hope, for the result of her deliberations. We are expecting visitors every day, now, from New York; & afterward some are to come from Elmira.4explanatory note I judge that we shall then be free to go BostonwardⒶemendation. I should be just delighted; because we could visit in comfort, because since we shouldn’t have to do any shopping—did it all in New York last week, & a tremendous pull it was, too.
Mrs. C. said the other day, “We will go to Cambridge if we have to walk; for I don’t believe we can ever get the Howellses to come here again until we have been there.” I was gratified to see that there was one string, anyway, that could snake her to CambridgeⒶemendation. But I will do the her the justice to say that she is always wanting to go to Cambridge, independent of the selfish desire to get a visit out of you by it. I want her to get started, now, before children’s diseases get fashionable again, because they always play such hob with visiting arrangements.
With our love to you all
P. S. I shall change this pen, by & by, for one that will write regular & not emphasize so indiscriminately.5explanatory note
Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK):
For the typewriter and the copyright petition see 25 June 75click to open link and 18 Sept 75 to Howellsclick to open link.
See Howells’s review of Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old, click to open link which appeared in the December Atlantic.
The most comprehensive collection of reviews of The Innocents Abroad is in Mark Twain: The Contemporary Reviews (Budd 1999, 35–89).
The New York visitors have not been identified. The Elmirans were members of Olivia’s family.
The flexible steel nib of Clemens’s pen was damaged, so that some passages were only lightly inked, while others were inked too heavily, creating the effect of boldface—an unintended emphasis.
MS, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN-B).
L6 , 559–60; MTL , 1:263–64, with omission; MTHL , 1:106–8.
see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.