3? November 1875 • To
Oliver Wendell Holmes
• Hartford, Conn. • UCCL12099
Source text(s):
Transcript in the Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley (CU-MARK), typed from the original MS, which in 1989 belonged to Dorothy Goldberg.
Previous Publication:
L6, 580.
Provenance:
The letter was inscribed in a first-edition copy of Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old (American
Publishing Company, 1875), which remained in Holmes’s house at 296 Beacon Street,
Boston, until at least the 1950s. In 1989
Dorothy Goldberg purchased it from Allen Ahearn of Quill and Brush, Bethesda, Maryland.
Clemens inscribed this letter in a cloth-bound copy of Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old. He
probably did so on 3 November, after returning home from his 2 November breakfast
in New York with Lord Houghton. The American
Publishing Company sent the book by express on the same day (APC 1876).
Holmes responded (CU-MARK):
UCLC32227
Boston Nov. 4th 1875.
Dear Mr. Clemens,
The very handsome volume reached me today and I sat down and rejoiced in my old friend
the Jumping Frog and one
or two other of the Sketches.
On weighing myself after reading I found I had gained several pounds, and all my acquaintances
who have seen me
since have exclaimed “Why! my friend, how fat you are getting!” I never before realised
the truth of
“laugh and grow fat” to this extent before.
When I get to weigh two hundred—which I expect to do before I get through the last
story—it will take some days, for I am afraid of too rapid increase of girth—I shall
write you again and send you
my photograph.
In the mean time I thank you most heartily for the pleasure your stories have so often
given me and especially
for this most welcome accession to my library with all its humour and its cheerful
good-nature and its pictures of life, dressed so
prettily that if the books of the season should have a ball it would be one of the
belles of the evening.
Believe me
Very truly yours,
O. W. Holmes.
Conceivably Clemens had met with Holmes while visiting Howells—particularly since
he wished Holmes to
sign his copyright petition (see 18 Sept 75 to
Howellsclick to open link)—and had promised him a copy of Sketches, New and Old. The two had previously
exchanged letters in 1869, about a gift copy of The Innocents Abroad (see L3, 364–66).
Transcript in the Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK), typed from the original MS, which in 1989 belonged to Dorothy Goldberg.
L6 , 580.
The letter was inscribed in a first-edition copy of Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old (American Publishing Company, 1875), which remained in Holmes’s house at 296 Beacon Street, Boston, until at least the 1950s. In 1989 Dorothy Goldberg purchased it from Allen Ahearn of Quill and Brush, Bethesda, Maryland.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.