2 August 1873 • (1st of 2) • Edinburgh, Scotland (MS, draft telegram: CU-MARK, UCCL 08826)
American Telegram.1explanatory note
E. Bliss,
Hartford, Conn.
Stop that pamphlet.
This manuscript is a draft of the message that Clemens actually cabled to Bliss. The document Bliss received has not been found. For the date of this telegram, see the next letter.
Appearing upside down and on the back of this sheet are notes Clemens made for his most recent version of the long-germinating “Noah’s Ark” book, which he described in 1909:
I began it in Edinburgh in 1873; I don’t know where the manuscript is, now. It was a Diary, which professed to be the work of Shem, but wasn’t. I began it again several months ago, but only for recreation; I hadn’t any intention of carrying it to a finish—or even to the end of the first chapter, in fact. (SLC 1909)
(For Clemens’s earlier and later work on the project, see L3 312, 313–14 n. 7; L4 , 296 n. 3; and Baetzhold and McCullough, 91–110.) This draft telegram is among a group of sketchy notes, all on the same paper, which Clemens wrote in Edinburgh. Many of them refer explicitly to Exodus, chapters 19–22 and 34–35 (SLC 1873). On this particular sheet Clemens wrote “Edinburgh” four times, and several calculations to determine in what year various biblical characters died, based on figures from chapters 5–9 of Genesis, which recount the history of every generation from Adam’s creation until the death of Noah—a total of 2006 years. Clemens also wrote “Meth died 1656,” a conclusion he derived from Methuselah’s birth 687 years after the creation, to which he added the 969 years of his life.
MS, draft telegram on a page of untitled notes (SLC 1873), Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L5 , 424.
see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.