2 or 3 July 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: NN-B, UCCL 10803)
To friend Seaver
from
Mark.
Hartford, July ’74
I wrote 100 pages of
Some of my errors in this book would have been simply outrageous, but Warner criticised them faithfully & so I re-wrote 200 pages of my MS & cooled the absurdities down to a reasonable temperature.1explanatory note
Clemens had either just seen Seaver in New York, or intended to see him on his return trip. On 2 or 3 July he evidently obtained a copy of The Gilded Age from the American Publishing Company office and wrote this letter in it, adding commentary on every chapter opening and on many passages throughout the book. For example, on page 551 (chapter 50), where Laura Hawkins’s death is reported, he noted, “Warner wrote a chapter, first, disposing of Laura by sending her into Western retirement & obscurity—but I replaced it with this one” (NN-B; see also Leisy).
It is not clear why Clemens wrote Seaver’s address inside the book. He may have asked Elisha Bliss to mail it to New York, or perhaps he intended to deliver it himself on his return trip. In addition to his magazine duties, Seaver was president of the Adriatic Fire Insurance Company, with offices at 187 (not 185) Broadway (Wilson 1874, 24, “City Register,” 25).
MS, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN-B). The letter is written in a copy of The Gilded Age (American Publishing Company, 1874).
L6 , 172–173.
It is not known when the MS became part of the Berg Collection, given by Dr. Albert A. Berg to NN in 1940 but continuously enlarged since then.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.