21 September 1869 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: CLSU, UCCL 11876)
evening express $8 per annum. no. 14 east swan street,
weekly express $1.50 per annum. buffalo, Sept. 21 18 69.
Dear Sir—
I’ll not be able to tell for two or three weeks, yet, what the subject will be—shan’t go to work at it before then. I’ll not have two subjects, though—only one. I have written Medbery not to lecture me for Y. M. C. A. before I talk for the Clayonians. (I have two agents, & by this means I am enabled not to know anything whatever about my own business, with unfailing promptness. I m suppose it is all right.)1explanatory note
Personal. | G. L. Hutchings Esq | Merc. Nat. Bank | 42 Wall stⒶemendation | New YorkⒶemendation postmark cut away
After attempting to withdraw from his partially scheduled lecture tour of 1869–70, Clemens advertised in a public letter dated 9 September 1869 that he would fulfill his engagements after all, “it being too late, now, to find lecturers to fill them” ( L3 , 351). Hutchings had apparently written for the subject of his new lecture, which Clemens began preparing in Elmira in early October. He delivered “Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands,” his only title of the season, before the Clayonians on 29 December 1869, to mixed reviews. He made no other appearance in Newark. During this season he was represented by James K. Medbery, of the American Literary Bureau, as well as by James Redpath ( L3 , 216, 297–98, 367, 483–86; “Mark Twain on the Sandwich Islanders,” Newark Journal, 30 Dec 69, 2; “Mark Twain Last Night,” Newark Advertiser, 30 Dec 69, 2; 22 Mar 73 to Larned, n. 2click to open link).
MS, University Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles (CLSU).
L5 , 684–685.
Donated, as part of a collection of 150 letters from the George Long Hutchings Lecture Club, to CLSU in 1986 by Jeanne Hutchings, widow of George Long Hutchings’s grandson, Frank Miller Hutchings.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.