Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes (Ⓐ)

Source: Mark Twain House and Museum, Hartford, Conn ([CtHMTH])

Cue: "You can't imagine how much pleasure"

Source format: "MS"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified: 2003-07-22T00:00:00

Revision History: HES 2003-07-22 was InFw2; Sotheby's sale

Published on MTPO: 2022

Print Publication:

This edited text supersedes the previously published text
MTPDocEd
To Hjalmar H. Boyesen
17 January 1877 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CtHMTH, UCCL 12673)

I sent the pamphlets & overshoes to Ithaca.

Hartford Jan. 17.
Dear Mr. Boyesen:1explanatory note

You can’t imagine how much pleasure your visit gave us, & how sorry we were to let you go—nor how the whole household missed you when you were gone, nor how sincerely we all wished you back again. Whenever you get a holiday, mind you we are to have the biggest share of it that you can spare.

I wrote & asked Bayard Taylor to be our guest (he is to lecture here presently), & he has accepted.2explanatory note I was glad to hear what you said about him.

Harte

I have asked him to talk to our Young Girls, & I hope he will do it.3explanatory note Warner will talk to them next Saturday, & Gen. Hawley will entertain them soon. I shall make Howells talk to them when I get him here. Gen. Franklin is going to instruct them in military matters, or Gatling guns, or something.4explanatory note

I don’t know that I can spare Miss Hess—I’ll see about it. I have used a pen so little since she has been here that my fingers have lost facility & my brain too. Still, if you can’t get Miss Keane there without this sacrifice, I am afraid I shall have to submit.5explanatory note

Harte hasn’t come yet—so the play6explanatory note isn’t yet licked into shape—consequently I haven’t demanded Howells’s presence. (He is to come when the play is ready to be read & criticised.)

Mr. Millet the artist has b made a most excellent portrait of me, & besides haus given us a week of social enjoyment, for his company is a high pleasure. We have to lose him tomorrow.7explanatory note

All the household join in expressions of high warm regard for you, & wishes for your speedy return to us. If we spend next summer in Elmira, you’ll certainly be raided upon in Ithaca, by

Your sincere friend
Samℓ. L. Clemens
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):

MS, CtHMTH.

Previous Publication:

Sotheby’s catalog, 19 June 2003, lot 32, excerpts.

Provenance:

The Mark Twain House purchased the MS from Sotheby’s on 19 June 2003. It was formerly in the collection of Nick Karanovich.

More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.

Explanatory Notes
1 Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen (1848–95), Norwegian novelist and man of letters, immigrated to the United States in 1869. William Dean Howells met Boyesen in Boston in 1871, and published thereafter a steady stream of his poetry, essays, and fiction in the Atlantic Monthly. Boyesen, now a professor of German at Cornell University, arrived in Hartford on 29 December 1876 to spend a few days with the Twichells. After that visit, he accepted the Clemenses' hospitality, staying with them from 3 to 6 January, leaving behind his overshoes and, evidently, the unidentified pamphlets (Twichell 1874–1916, 2:132–35; “Death of Professor Boyesen,” Harvard Crimson, 7 Oct 1895, unknown page).
2 See 24 Jan 1877 to Taylor, n. 2.
3 The Saturday Morning Club of Hartford was organized in the spring of 1876. Its members were young women of the city who met to engage in discussions and debates and listen to invited speakers. The club was chiefly organized by Lucy Adams Perkins (wife of Charles E. Perkins) in emulation of the Saturday Morning Club of Boston, organized in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe. Boyesen had appeared before the Hartford club at Clemens's house on 6 January, reading his story “How Mr. Storm Met His Destiny” (Saturday Morning Club 1976, 4, 7, 39–40; Boyesen 1877; Twichell 1874–1916, 2:134–35).
4 Charles Dudley Warner lectured on Egypt on 20 January. Joseph R. Hawley was scheduled to be the last speaker of the 1876–77 season, with his talk “The War of the Rebellion.” William B. Franklin was not listed on the roster of speakers for that season; he did not address the club until 1879 (Saturday Morning Club 1912, 34; Saturday Morning Club 1976, 4; 5 Apr 1876 to the editor of the Hartford Courant, n. 1; 28 Apr 1876 to Franklin, n. 2).
5 During his stay at the Clemenses' house, Boyesen was charmed by a visiting friend of Fanny Hesse's, the young New York socialite Elizabeth (Lily) Keen (1859–1910). From New York he wrote to Twichell: “Miss Hess's friend, whom I called on yesterday is a miracle—wondrously beautiful” (Boyesen to Twichell, 12 Jan 1877, in Twichell 1874–1916, following 2:136). Clemens here responds to some plan of Boyesen's to use Hesse's presence to bring about a visit from Keen. Boyesen's enthusiasm was genuine. He and Keen were married in June 1878, Twichell performing the ceremony (“The Boyesen-Keen Wedding,” New York Times, 28 June 1878, 8).
6 Ah Sin (11 Oct 1876 to Howells, n. 9).
7 

For the initial plans for Millet's portrait, see 26 Nov 1876 to Howells. Millet painted it in a single week, between 11 and 17 January. In 1908 Clemens instead recalled that it took him “a couple of diligent weeks”:

When Millet came to Hartford to paint the first oil portrait that was ever made of me, he gave me a small picture—a Dutch interior, which was his earliest effort in oils, and I have it yet. At our first sitting he dashed off a charcoal outline of me on his canvas which was so good and strong and lifelike that Mrs. Clemens wouldn't allow him to add any paint, lest he damage it. She bought it. He had brought but the one canvas from Boston, so he had to go down town and get another. I remained outside on the sidewalk while he went into the art shop to stretch the canvas on the frame. It was dull out there, and I tried to think of some way to put in the time usefully. I was successful. There was a barber shop near-by, and I went in there to get the ends of my hair clipped off; I fell into a reverie, and when I woke up there was a bushel of brown hair on the floor and none on my head. When I joined Millet he took one glance, realized the disaster that had befallen, and said he wanted to go to some private place and cry. He devoted a couple of diligent weeks to the portrait and made a good one, if you don't count the hair; but as there was no hair, he had to manufacture it, and his effort was a failure. I have the portrait yet, but the hair it wears is not hair at all; it is tarred oakum, and doesn't harmonize with the rest of the structure. (AutoMT3, 46–47)

The Hannibal Free Public Library now owns the portrait, which was donated by Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch in 1911; see also Schmidt 2005, which, however, misdates the portrait 1876).

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