3 September 1868 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: WU, UCCL 02749)
Your favor of Aug. 28 is just to hand. In reply, I must can say that I am willing to lecture, but I cannot tell just yet what the subject would be—either “Venice” or “California,” I think. You may set me down for some day in January, if you will—& let me know the date. As to terms, I only want your usual price—what is it? My usual price is $100. 1explanatory note My address, for the next 3 weeks, will be “1312 Chesnut street, St Louis, Mo.”
C. M. Crane, Esq2explanatory note | Care Lincoln Literary Society | Rondout | New York. postmarked: elmira n.y. sep 5 postage stamp removed return address return to j. langdon, | elmira, n. y., | if not delivered within 10 days . docketed: Sept 1868 | Twain | Ansd 8th was marked for Jan 63explanatory note and
850 125 75 1050In November 1868 the New York Evening Post reported that the highest-paid speaker currently represented by the American Literary Bureau in New York was author and women’s-rights advocate Olive Logan, who earned up to $250 per lecture. Several other celebrities could command from $150 to $200 at this time, such as Henry Ward Beecher, Anna Dickinson, John Bartholomew Garth, and Horace Greeley. Clemens averaged $100 even during the 1869–70 season, and in 1871 still considered $150 a high fee (“The Price of Lectures,” New York Evening Post, 28 Nov 68, 2; Higginson, 54; Eubank, 134, 137; SLC to George L. Fall, 20 July 71click to open link, MTL , 1:189–90).
Clemens’s difficulty in reading Crane’s handwriting continued (see 20 May 67 to Craneclick to open link), causing him to mistake Crane’s first initial, at least in addressing the envelope.
Crane apparently first booked Clemens to lecture in Rondout on 6 January 1869. Clemens must have rescheduled his lecture in a later letter (now lost), since he actually performed in Rondout on 2 December 1868; in early January he was touring the Midwest.
MS, Rare Book Department, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison (WU).
L2 , 246–247.
see Bassett Collection, p. 511.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.