29 January 1876 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 12941)
the riverside press, cambridge, mass.
I shall not be able to come down to Hartford this Saturday, but I am getting the better of my literary misery,2explanatory note and you may depend upon seeing me very soon.
In the meantime I must tell you what an immense success the Literary Nightmare is, though you know already. It took here instantly. The day the number came out, I dined at Ernest Longfellow’s, and before I got into the parlor, I heard him and Tom Appleton urging each other to punch with care. They said the Longfellow ladies all had it by heart, and last night at the Fieldses they told me that Boston was simply devastated by it. And everybody appreciates and enjoys the way you have set the thing. In my own family it is simply a nuisance. John clacks it off at mealtimes till boxed into silence, and then Pilla starts up with, “Punch, brullers, punch with care!” I heard of its raging similarly in families all along this street, and of course Harvard is full of it.3explanatory note
When are you going to send me that paper you read before your Club? Let me see it even if you don’t want to publish it.4explanatory note
the atlantic monthly. the riverside press, cambridge, mass. | S. L. Clemens, | Hartford | Conn. postmarked: cambridge sta. mass. jan 28
Howells's letter was a reply to the unrecovered invitation Clemens had sent around 24 January (see 18 Jan 76 to Howells, n. 5). Clemens passed it on to Twichell, who was quite friendly with Howells and had been allowed to share a Howells letter at least once before (see L6 , passim, especially 2 Dec 1874 to Howells, 301 n. 1). Twichell responded in the course of a letter of 3 February 1876 (CU-MARK):
Mrs. Davis, wife of G. F. Davis, president of the City National Bank of Hartford, was corresponding secretary of the Hartford Orphan Asylum. David Hawley, head of Hartford's City Missionary Society, had died on 31 January 1876, just short of his sixty-seventh birthday. Clemens’s last known public assistance to Hawley had come on 5 March 1875, when he delivered his “Roughing It” lecture and raised over $1,200 for the society (Geer 1875, 58, 292, 299; 28 Jan 1873 to the Public, L5 , 289–90 n. 1; L6 : 21 Feb 1875 to Sprague and others, 392–94; 6 Mar 1875 to Seaver, 402–3; 8 Mar 1875 to Watt, 409; “A Good Man Gone,” Hartford Courant, 1 Feb 76, 2).
“Private Theatricals” (Howells 1875-76).
In addition to his children John (1868–1959) and Mildred (known as Pilla, 1872–1966), Howells mentioned or alluded to: “A Literary Nightmare” (SLC 1876f); Ernest Longfellow (1845–1921), the painter son of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Thomas Gold Appleton (1812–84), an essayist, poet, artist, and Boston wit, who was married to the sister of the eldest Longfellow; the latter's daughters, Alice Mary (1850–1928), Edith (1853–1915), and Annie Allegra (1855–1934) (Longfellow’s wife, Frances, had died in 1861); Harriet Longfellow, wife of Ernest; and James T. Fields (1817–81) and his wife, Annie (1834–1915).
”The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut.” See 11 Jan 76 to Howells, n. 5; SLC 1876.
MS, written on the envelope of William Dean Howells to SLC, 27 January 1876, UCLC 32275, CU-MARK.
MTHL , 1:124–25, partial publication.
See Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.