7 October 1868 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: ODaU, UCCL 02740)
Dear Sir: If I have heretofore told you the title of my proposed lecture I beg to alter it. I had not then written the lecture. I have just finished writing it now, & it has taken a little different shape from what I had expected—so I now call it: “The American Vandal Abroad.”1explanatory note I am one of those myself.
Clemens composed his ninety-minute lecture by extracting short passages from the manuscript of The Innocents Abroad, assembling them to produce an abridged account of the Quaker City voyage (Hirst 1975, 174–75; see also 12 Oct 1868 to Mary Mason Fairbanksclick to open link). The surviving draft of the lecture, although incomplete, shows that Clemens was conscious that he would speak in Cleveland under Mrs. Fairbanks’s watchful eye, as well as in Elmira before the Langdon family: he therefore avoided castigating his fellow Quaker City passengers and made no mention of the Holy Land (SLC 1868). The lecture was first announced in advertisements of the American Literary Bureau as “Americans in the Old World,” but on 24 October the title became “American Vandals in the Old World” (Round Table 8 3 Oct 68 and 24 Oct 68: 234, 282).
MS, Collection of Victor and Irene Murr Jacobs, Roesch Library, University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio (ODaU).
L2 , 262; possibly extracted in a 1968 issue of The Collector: A Magazine for Autograph and Historical Collectors, published by Walter R. Benjamin, Autographs, New York (now Hunter), N. Y., although its appearance there has not been verified.
Victor Jacobs purchased the letter in December 1968 from Walter R. Benjamin, Autographs; Jacobs had begun transferring his collection to ODaU by 1984.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.