6 August 1872 • New Saybrook, Conn. (MS: NN-B, UCCL 08840)
My next payment to T. A. Kennett falls due on the 9th inst. Will you please attend to it for me, & pay the money to Kennett’s brother, in the clothing store.2explanatory note
The payment is $2,500—& with interest is $2,81500—so Theodore writes me—(he has all the papers in Elmira.)
I believe ing Ⓐemendation that upon receiving this money Kennett is to transfer some more of the Express stock, but hanged if I know.
I enclose draft for $2,000, & will get Theodore to forward a draft for $815 from Elmira.3explanatory note
on back of second sheet
Wrote on 2 sheets of paper without knowing it.4explanatory note
C. M. Underhill Esq | 221 Main street | Buffalo | N. Y. | Coal office. on flap: slc postmarked: new saybrook conn. aug 8 1872
Charles Munson Underhill (b. 1839) was a graduate of Genesee College in Lima, New York. He had been a teacher (with his brother-in-law, John D. F. Slee) in Fulton, New York, before entering the coal trade. In 1870, when Slee became a partner in the Langdon firm in Elmira, Underhill succeeded him as general salesman of the Buffalo Anthracite Coal Association, an affiliate of J. Langdon and Company. In the 1880s, when Underhill was western manager of J. Langdon and Company, he was more than once the Clemenses’ host for overnight stays in Buffalo (Reigstad, 1, 5–6; L3 , 119 n. 4; Charles S. Underhill to Thomas Tenney, 23 July 1981, CU-MARK).
Clemens still owed Thomas A. Kennett $5,000 of the original $25,000 he had paid for the one-third interest in the Buffalo Express purchased in August 1869. Kennett, now in a New York City banking and brokerage firm, had reminded Clemens in a note of 13 July that the annual payment was due. His brother was, presumably, merchant tailor Henry Kennett, employed in the family business at 273 Main Street in Buffalo ( L3 , 294 n. 2; L4 , 338–39 n. 3; Kennett to SLC, 13 July 72, CU-MARK; Buffalo Directory 1872, 392).
Theodore Crane, a partner in J. Langdon and Company, informed Clemens on 16 August, “The money $2815 has been paid over to Kennett and he has transferred to you 25 shares of stock—we have the receipt” (CU-MARK). Clemens had, in fact, resold his Buffalo Express interest to George H. Selkirk in March 1871 for $15,000, so the stock shares, as they were signed over by Kennett, were to be transferred to Selkirk. Selkirk was then permitted to retransfer the shares to Clemens as security for his own indebtedness. No record has been found of Clemens’s payment of the final $2,500 owed to Kennett, which was due in August 1873. Selkirk had still not managed to pay Clemens in full by January 1878, when Clemens learned that the Express shares he was holding as security were worthless ( L4 , 338–39, n. 3; Charles J. Langdon to SLC, 7 Jan 78, CU-MARK; Selkirk to SLC, 17 Jan 78, CU-MARK). Many years later Clemens would recall his dealings with Kennett—whom he misnames “Kinney”—in an autobiographical dictation:
I have some little business sense now, acquired through hard experience and at great expense; but I had none in those days. I had bought Mr. Kinney’s share of that newspaper (I think the name was Kinney) at his price—which was twenty-five thousand dollars. Later I found that all that I had bought of real value was the Associated Press privilege. I think we did not make a very large use of that privilege. It runs in my mind that about every night the Associated Press would offer us five thousand words at the usual rate, and that we compromised on five hundred. Still that privilege was worth fifteen thousand dollars, and was easily salable at that price. I sold my whole share in the paper—including that solitary asset—for fifteen thousand dollars. Kinney (if that was his name) was so delighted at his smartness in selling a property to me for twenty-five thousand that was not worth three-fourths of the money, that he was not able to keep his joy to himself, but talked it around pretty freely and made himself very happy over it. ... He was a brisk and ambitious and self-appreciative young fellow, and he left straightway for New York and Wall Street, with his head full of sordid and splendid dreams—dreams of the “get rich quick” order; dreams to be realized through the dreamer’s smartness and the other party’s stupidity. ...
Kinney went to Wall Street to become a Jay Gould and slaughter the innocents. Then he sank out of sight. I never heard of him again, nor saw him during thirty-five years. Then I encountered a very seedy and shabby tramp on Broadway—it was some months ago—and the tramp borrowed twenty-five cents of me. To buy a couple of drinks with, I suppose. He had a pretty tired look and seemed to need them. It was Kinney. His dapperness was all gone; he showed age, neglect, care, and that something which in dicates that a long fight is over and that defeat has been accepted. (AD, 16 Feb 1906, CU-MARKȁ, published in part in MTA , 2:118–19)
Clemens began his letter on the outside of one folder of stationery and inadvertently continued it on the inside of a second folder.
MS, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN-B).
L5 , 138–140.
The MS was owned by businessman William T. H. Howe (1874–1939); in 1940 Dr. A. A. Berg bought and donated the Howe Collection to NN.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.