to Mary E. (Mollie) Clemens
5? January 1871 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: NPV, UCCL 02795)
first two MS pages (about 200 words) missing
don’t know but I will. I would like to do drop in on Bliss, too, since he has got into his new house.1explanatory note
Tell Orion I’ll bet he is right & Bliss wrong—brief introductories are best. Make them short & me fill them full of meat, is the trick.2explanatory note
T Ⓐemendation Rev. Mr. Twichell may be justly described without flattery to be a bully boy with a glass eye (as the lamented Josephus phrases it in his Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire) —so is his wife—&Ⓐemendation I wrote him to call on Orion & get acquainted—which he said says he will just as soon as a press of botherations gives him a chance.3explanatory note Both of you go slow—don’t hurry in the matter of making friends, & don’t get impatient. Making friends in Yankee land is a slow, slow businessⒶemendation, but they are friends worth having when they are made. There is no section in America fit half so good to live in as splendid old New England—& there is no city on this continent so lovely & lovable as Boston, almost in sight of which it is now your high privilege to live.
The baby’s weight has increased to 7½ pounds & his personal comelinessⒶemendation in proportion.Ⓐemendation I fed feelⒶemendation that I can say without exaggeration that he is humping Ⓐemendation (our little boy never humps. Livy) humping himself.4explanatory note
Bless my soul
Good bye
in ink: P. S. Have written Bliss & asked him to get Orion 2 Ⓐemendation season passes to theatre.
Bliss had moved from 273 to 265½ Asylum Street by July 1870. Clemens’s last known visit to Hartford was in December 1869. A desire to avoid Bliss’s hospitality had been one of his reasons for staying away (19 Dec 70 to Twichellclick to open link; L3 , 439; Geer: 1869, 55; 1870, 57).
Orion and Bliss were planning the editorial content of the American Publisher. The general “introductories” ultimately published were brief and itemized the sort of “useful information” that readers could expect to find. A contemplated “elaborate apology for ‘Number One’ ” was abandoned (OC 1871 [bib12050], 1871 [bib12051]).
Orion reported to Clemens on 25 January: “Twitchell and his wife called on us before we moved. He had previously called on me at the office. Mollie and I like them both very much” (CU-MARK). According to an 1872 article on contemporary expressions, “ ‘Bully’ is a term of commendation applied in a patronizing way among the vulgar, and means very fine. A more extensive phrase is ‘A bully boy with a glass eye’ ” (“Popular Phrases,” Chicago Tribune, 1 Jan 72, 1). Clemens again attributed the term to the historian Flavius Josephus in chapter 22 of Roughing It ( RI 1993 , 147).
Clemens retraced “humping” in ink (Olivia had canceled it) when he added his postscript.
MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).
L4 , 298–299; MTBus , 118, excerpt.
see McKinney Family Papers in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.