Your very kind letter came duly to hand. I thank you for it and for your thoughtfulness
in speaking a good word
for me to the Bureau people in Boston, as I have heard you did.
I think you are right in your ideas of moderate prices, to start with, and I so stated
the matter to Messrs Hathaway & Pond. After all, I shall not leave the stage just yet for I have accepted an engagement
at Booth=s Theatre beginning in December. I may fill a few reading engagements before
that but I dont think it best to carry on two branches of business at once. I am afraid
one or the other would come to grief.2explanatory note
Thanking you most sincerely and with all good wishes,
I am Yours Truly,
Gertrude Kellogg.
Sept. 24/76
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):
Paraphrase, Gertrude Kellogg to SLC, 24 September 1876, CU-MARK,
UCLC 32422.
1 This letter replied to one that Clemens must have written on or about 22 September.
2 Kellogg (1843–1903) was trying to get speaking engagements through the Redpath Lyceum
Bureau, owned since late 1875 by George H. Hathaway and James B. Pond. She had won
critical praise in 1874 as Laura Hawkins in the original New York production of Clemens’s
Gilded Age play, Colonel Sellers. Presumably Clemens met her at that time. In December 1876, at Booth’s Theatre, in
New York, she was in the company that supported Lawrence Barrett in King Lear and Richard III. In 1878 and 1879, through the Redpath Bureau, she gave well-received recitations
from Shakespeare, Robert Browning, and others. She subsequently returned to the stage
(L6: 19 and 25 Jan 1875 to Stillson, 355 n. 2; 22 Sept 1875 to Redpath, 541 n. 6; Appendix
D, “Reviews of the Gilded Age Playclick to open link,” 650; Odell 1927–49, 10:177; “Amusements,” New York Tribune, 1–18 Dec 1876, various pages; Lyceum 1878–79, 4, 35–36; “Death List of a Day,” New York Times, 21 Apr 1903, 9).
Paraphrase, Gertrude Kellogg to SLC, 24 September 1876, CU-MARK, UCLC 32422.
See Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.