23 August 1876 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: NN-BGC, UCCL 02504)
I am glad you think I could do Hayes any good, for I have been wanting to write a letter or make a speech to that end. I’ll be careful not to do either, however, until the opportunity comes in a natural, justifiable & unlugged way; & shall not then do anything unless I’ve got it all digested & worded just right. In which case I might do some good—in any other I should do harm. When a humorist ventures upon the grave concerns of life he must do his job better than another man or he works harm to his cause.
Very greatly did we enjoy the suggestion in Johnny’s remark that the Almighty had hardly dealt fairly by him—& the apparent conviction that a day void of profanity was necessarily void of sin justly punishable by nightmare.
We think that both of our children are developing night-Ⓐemendation whooping-cought—which is unfortunate, for it is getting pretty cold here, now, & we want to get away homeward Sept. 5.
The farce is wonderfully bright & delicious, & must make a hit. You read it to me, & it was mighty good; I read it last night & it was better; I read it aloud to the household this morning & it was better than ever.2explanatory note So it would be worth going a long way to see it well played; for without any question an actor of genius always adds a subptle something to any man’s workd that none but the writer knew was there before. Even if he knew it. I have heard of readers convulsing audiences with my “Aurelia’s Unfortunate Young Man.” If there is anything really funny in the piece, the author is not aware of it.3explanatory note
All right—advertise me for the new volume. I send you herewith a sketch which will make 3½ pages of the Atlantic. If you like it & accept it, you must get it into the December No., (Nov. 15) (Nov. 15, ain’t it?) because I shall read it in publice in Boston tw the 13th & 14th of Nov. If it went in a month earlier it would be too old for me to read except as old matter; & if it went in a month later it would be too old for the Atlantic—do you see? And if you wish to use it, will you set it up now, & send me 3 proofs?—one to correct for Atlantic, one to send to Temple Bar (shall I tell them to use it not earlier than their November No?) & one to use in practising for my Boston readings.4explanatory note
We must get up a less elaborate & a much better skeleton-plan for the Blindfold Novels & make a success of that idea.5explanatory note David Gray spent Sunday here & said we could but little comprehend what a rattling stir that thing would make in the country. He thought it would make a mighty strike. So do I. But with only 8 pages to tell the tale in, the plot must be less elaborate., doubtless. What do you think?
When we exchange visits I’ll show you an unfinished sketch of Elizabeth’s time which shook David Gray’s system up pretty exhaustively.6explanatory note
Clemens answered the following letter, written from Townsend Harbor, Massachusetts, in response to his of 9 Augustclick to open link (CU-MARK):
Howells’s “enormous quantity of copy” was for his campaign biography of Rutherford B. Hayes (Howells 1876a; 9 Aug 1876 to Howellsclick to open link, n. 1). On Howells’s envelope Clemens wrote, “Johnny Howells learns to swear.”
“The Parlor Car,” in the September Atlantic Monthly (Howells 1876e). Howells probably gave Clemens an early reading on 8 or 9 May when they were in Boston to attend Anna Dickinson’s acting debut (4 May 1876 to Howells, n. 1).
This comic sketch—about a young woman’s engagement to a disaster-prone young man who successively suffers smallpox, the amputation of a leg, the loss of both arms, partial blindness, the fracture of his remaining leg, and scalping by Indians—first appeared as “Whereas” in the Californian on 22 October 1864. A revised version then was included as “Aurelia’s Unfortunate Young Man” in 1867 in The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches. Clemens revised that version for subsequent collections, most recently in 1875 for Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old (for the full history of revision and publication, see ET&S2 , 86–87, 597–604; SLC 1864; SLC 1867a; SLC 1875c).
“The Canvasser’s Tale,” about a seller of echoes, did fill about three and a half pages in the December Atlantic Monthly (SLC 1876k). It was not published in London in Temple Bar magazine, however, nor did Clemens use it in his Boston readings in November (19 Oct 1876 to Saundersclick to open link, n. 2).
This unfinished sketch, which so affected poet and journalist David Gray on 20 August, was Date 1601. Conversation, As It Was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors, Clemens’s bawdy pastiche of Elizabethan speech and manners. It was privately printed in 1880, but its first authorized printing was the so-called West Point edition, in 1882 (AutoMT2, 535–36; SLC 1880a; SLC 1882a; SLC 1920).
MS, NN-BGC.
MTL , 1:283–85; MTHL , 1:146–48.
See Howells Letters in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.