26 April 1876 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, in pencil: NN-BGC, UCCL 02501)
Thanks for the slips & thanks for giving me the place of honor.1explanatory note
Bliss made a failure in the matter of getting Tom Sawyer ready on time—the engravers assisting, as usual. I went down to see how much of a delay there was going to be, & found that the man had not even put a canvasser on or issued an advertisement yet—in fact that the electrotypes would not all be done for a month! But of course the main trouble was the fact that no canvassing had been done—because a subscription harvest is before iss publication, (not after, when people have discovered how bad one’s book is).
Well, yesterday I put in the Courant an editorial paragraph stating that Tom Sawyer was is “ready to issue, but “will publication is put off in order to secure English copyright by simultatneous publication there & here. The English edition isn unavoidably delayed.”2explanatory note
You see, part of that is true. Very well. When I observed that my Sketches had dropped from a sale of 6 or 7000 a month down to 1200 a month, I said “this ain’t no time to be publishing books; therefore, let Tom lay still till f autumn, Mr. Bliss, & make a holiday book of him to beguile the young people withal.”3explanatory note
Howells, you must forgive me, if I seem to have made the Atlantic any wrong. I——but I’ll talk to you about it & show th you that it was one of those cases where “the best laid schemes of mice & men, &c.”4explanatory note
I shall print items a occasionally still further delaying Tom, till I ease him w down to autumn without shock to the waiting world.
As to that “Literary Nightmare” proposition, I’m obliged to withhold consent, for what seems a good reason—to-wit: a single page of horse-car poetry is all that the average reader can stand, without nausea; now, to stack together all of it that has been written, & then add to it my article would be to enrage & disgust each & every reader & win the deathless enmity of the lot.
I Even if that reason were insufficient, there would still be a suffic[i]ent reason left, in the fact that Mr. Carleton seems to be the publisher of the magazine in which it is proposed to publish this horse-car matter. CarletonⒶemendation insulted me in Feb, 1867; & so when the day arrives that sees me doing him a civility, I shall feel that I am ready for Paradise, since my list of possible & impossible forgivenesses will then be complete.5explanatory note
Mrs. Clemens says my version of the blindfold novelette “A Murder & a Marriage” is “good.” Pretty strong language—for her. However, it is not original. God said the same of another Creation.
The Fieldses are coming down to the play tomorrow & they promise to try to get you & Mrs. Howells to come, too, but I hope you’ll do nothing of the kind if it will inconvenience you, for I ain’t going to play either striking bad enough or well enough to make the journey pay you.6explanatory note
My wife & I think of going to Boston May 7th to see Anna Dickinson’s debut on the 8th. If I find we can go, I’ll try to get a stage box, & then you & Mrs. Howells must come to Parker’s & go with us to the crucifixion. (Is that spelt right?—some how its doesn’t look right.)7explanatory note
With our very kindest regards to the whole family ,
Mrs. Clemens heard a visiting Vermont gentleman quote Johnny’s remark about the “slave” getting breakfast ready last night.9explanatory note
In a letter that is now lost, Howells had enclosed proofsheets of “The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut” (SLC 1876), which revealed that it was the first item in the issue.
From the Hartford Courant of 25 April (2):
Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer.”
Mark Twain’s new book, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” is ready to issue, but the publication has been put off for the present in order that copyright may be secured in England by simultaneous publication there and here. The English edition has suffered unavoidable delay.
On 27 April the Boston Globe printed the identical notice (“Table Gossip,” 3) and on 2 May the Chicago Tribune printed a close paraphrase (“Personal,” 4), both without citing the Courant. Doubtless versions appeared in other papers as well.
The American Publishing Company had recently reported sales of 3,724 copies of Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old during the first quarter of 1876. A total of 19,337 copies had been sold in the last quarter of 1875 (12 Apr 1876 to Blissclick to open link, n. 1; Scrapbook 10:24, 29, CU-MARK).
Robert Burns’s “To a Mouse” (1786).
Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK):
Howells’s enclosure was a letter of 21 April from Frank Moore to Henry O. Houghton, co-owner of the Atlantic Monthly (Scrapbook 10:71, CU-MARK):
My dear Houghton.
I am going to ask a “big favor” of you and I am not going to be hurt if you refuse to afford it—but I shall be disappointed. I have collected all the Horse Car Poetry & am to print it in the Record of the Year, and I want to print Mark Twains article from the Atlantic. If you will allow me to you will very much oblige
Your friend
Frank Moore
Moore was editor of the Record of the Year: A Reference Scrap Book: Being the Monthly Record of Important Events Worth Preserving, published by G. W. Carleton and Company in 1876. George Carleton had offended Clemens in 1867 by refusing to publish or even look at the manuscript for what became The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, And other Sketches (SLC 1867a; see 2?-7 Feb 1867 to McComb, L2 , 13–14 n. 1). In “Horse-Car Poetry,” in the Record of the Year’s “Diary of Events,” Moore included a long excerpt from the Atlantic Monthly’s publication of “A Literary Nightmare” (SLC 1876f), as well as a reprinting of Clemens’s 16 March 1876 letter to Richard McCloudclick to open link, under the title “Mark Twain on St. Patrick” (Moore 1876, 1:287–88, 324–29). Both items were presumably used without Clemens’s permission.
Clemens had sent two invitations (both unrecovered) to Annie and James T. Fields to attend either of the performances of The Loan of a Lover , on Wednesday, 26 April, or Thursday, 27 April. The first probably was a telegram on Monday, 24 April, which Fields answered with a postcard (CU-MARK):
Later on 24 April, however, Clemens sent a follow-up letter. To that Fields replied on 25 April (CU-MARK):
Clemens noted on Fields’s envelope: “Fields—coming down to see my debut as Peter Spyk in the ‘Loan of a Lover.’” Fields’s 25 April telegram of acceptance does not survive. No information has been found about his 26 April lecture, but on the morning of 27 April he lectured in Wesleyan Hall, “before a department of the Boston University,” on Sydney Smith (1771–1845), the English clergyman, author, and wit (“About Town,” Boston Advertiser, 28 Apr 1876, 4). The Howellses did not make the trip to Hartford.
Anna E. Dickinson, the prominent abolitionist, social reformer, lecturer, and friend of the Langdon family’s, was to make her debut as an actress in her own play, A Crown of Thorns, Or, Ann Boleyn, at Boston’s Globe Theater on 8 May. (Her appearance at New York’s Eagle Theatre, reported as 4 April 1876 in MTHL , 1:134 n. 7, in fact occurred on that day in 1877). The Parker House was Clemens’s preferred Boston hotel (Chester 1951, 168, 176; New York Times: “Amusements,” 4 Apr 1877, 5; “Eagle Theatre,” 5 Apr 1877, 5; 28 Feb 1874 to Redpath, L6 , 58 n. 1). See also 4 May 1876 to Howellsclick to open link.
Howells replied to the present letter and Clemens’s letter of 22 Aprilclick to open link (CU-MARK):
For the photographs that Howells comments on, see 29 Apr 1876 to Whiteclick to open link, 3 or 4 May 1876 to Kingsbury, and 5 May 1876 to Conwayclick to open link. Howells had first mentioned the “Blindfold Novelettes” project to Thomas Bailey Aldrich in a letter of 2 April, forwarding the draft announcement that Clemens had sent in his letter of 13 Marchclick to open link and describing it as “a scheme of Mark Twain’s, which we shall carry out if we can get any one to help. That is he and I will write a story on the proposed basis, if you and two or three others will do so. Tell me what you think of the plan” (Howells 1979b, 124). The Queen of Hearts. A Dramatic Fantasia. For Private Theatricals was a play by James B. Greenough (1833–1901), a Harvard Latin professor, which Howells had seen performed at the home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in January 1875. Although it was published that year, Howells had only just reviewed it appreciatively for the May 1876 Atlantic, following his notice of Tom Sawyer (Greenough 1875; Howells 1876b, 622; Howells 1979b, 88).
On 19 March 1876, a week after his visit to Hartford with his son, Howells had written to his father:
I took John with me, and as his mother had prepared his mind for the splendors of the Twain mansion, he came to everything with the most exalted fairy-palace expectations. He found some red soap in the bathroom. “Why, they’ve even got their soap painted!” says he; and the next morning when he found the black-serving-man getting ready for breakfast, he came and woke me. “Better get up, papa. The slave is setting the table.” (Howells 1979b, 123)
The “black-serving-man” was George Griffin, the Clemenses’ butler (see 22 June 1876 to JLC and PAM, n. 3). The visitor from Vermont has not been identified.
MS, in pencil, NN-BGC.
MTL , 1:277–78; MTHL , 1:131–33.
See Howells Letters in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.