16 or 17 July 1872 • New Saybrook, Conn. (MS: ViU, UCCL 11894)
enclosure: 1explanatory note
To the English Reader.
A long introductory speech would not become me, a stranger. So I will only say, in offering this revised edition of my book to the English reader, that it is nothing more than a simple record of a pleasure excursion among foreign peoples with whom he is doubtless much better acquainted than I am. I could not have made it learned or profound, if I had tried my best. I have only written of men & things as they seemed to me: & so it is very likely that the reader will discover that my vision was often inaccurate. I did not seriously expect anybody to buy the book when it was originally written—& that will account for a good deal of its chirping complacency & freedom from restraint: the idea that nobody is listening, is apt to seduce a body into airing his small thoughts & opinions with a rather juvenile frankness. But no matter, now. I have said enough to make the reader understand that I am not offering this work to him as either law or gospel, upon any point, principle, or subject; but only as a trifle to occupy himself with when he has nothing to do & does not wish to whistle.
The naive ecstasies of an innocent on his first o voyage, become, in print, a matter of serious concern to a part of the great general world—to-wit, the part which consists of that Innocent himself. Therefore, as nearly unnecessary as this book is, I feel a solicitude about it. Any American likes to see the work of his hands achieve a friendly reception in the mother country, & it is but natural—natural, too, that he should prize its kindly reception there above the same compliment extended by any people other than his own. Our kindred blood & our common language, our kindred religion & political liberty, make us feel nearer to England than to other nations, & render us more desirous of standing well there than with foreign nationalities that are foreign to us in all particulars. So, without any false modesty, or any consciousness of impropriety, I confess to a desire that Englishmen should read my book. That a great many Englishmen have already read it, is a compliment which I mention in this place with what seems to me to be legitimate & justifiable gratification.
Hartford, U. S., July, 1872. }
Clemens’s cover letter for this enclosure has not been found. The enclosure itself is the promised second preface for the English edition of The Innocents Abroad (10 July 72 to Blamireclick to open link). It was a fair copy, as comparison with a partial draft still in the Mark Twain Papers shows (SLC 1872). Blamire must have sent the manuscript immediately to England, on 17 or 18 July, on any of several ships that arrived at Queenstown between 26 and 29 July. The document reached England in time to be set into type and printed with the first 4,000 copies of the second volume of the English edition, The New Pilgrims’ Progress, completed on 1 August. The first volume, The Innocents Abroad, was not completed until 24 August (“Shipping Intelligence,” New York Tribune, 27 July 72 and 30 July 72, 3; Routledge Ledger Book 4:632, Routledge; see 21 July 72 to Blamireclick to open link). Blamire also wrote to Clemens almost immediately, probably sending him a secretarial copy of his first preface and suggesting that he might want to reconsider it in light of what the second preface now contained. Since Clemens received that letter on 20 July and replied on 21 July, it seems unlikely that Blamire received the second preface much earlier than 17 or 18 July, or that Clemens sent it before 16 or 17 July.
MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (ViU).
L5 , 119–120; University of Virginia, 70–71; Welland, 35–36.
The MS, the property of Frances H. S. Stallybrass, was offered for sale in 1950 by Sotheby’s in London (Sotheby 1950, lot 186; see the commentary for 21 June 72 to Blamireclick to open link). The catalog misidentified it as a “Holograph Preface to the English edition of ‘Roughing It,’ dated Hartford, July, 1872, 4 pp., 8vo.” Information from an unidentified catalog, now with the MS at ViU, suggests that Clifton Waller Barrett purchased the MS at a later sale, at which time it was pinned, probably by the owner or a dealer, to Clemens’s letter of 21 July 72 to Blamireclick to open link. Barrett deposited the MS at ViU on 16 April 1960.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.