4 and 6 July 1877 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: NN-BGC and MH-H, UCCL 02511)
(SUPERSEDED)
It is splendid of you to say those pleasant things. But I am still plagued with doubts about Parts I & II. If you have any, don’t print. If otherwise, please make some cold villain like Lathrop read & pass sentence on them. Mind, I thought they were good at first—it was the second reading that accomplished its hellish purpose on me. Put them up for a new verdict. Part IV has lain in my pigeon-hole a good while, & when I put it there I had a Christian’s confidence in 4 aces in it; & you can bet be sure it will skip toward Conanticut tomorrow before fore any fresh reading Ⓐemendation any fatal fresh reading makes me draw my bet.
I’ve piled up 151 MS pages on my comedy. The first, second & fourth acts are done, & done to my satisfaction, too. To-morrowⒶemendation & next day will finish the 3d act & the play. I have not written less than 30 pages any day since I began. Never had so much fun over anything in my life—never such consuming interest & delight. (But Lord bless you the second reading will fetch it!) And just think!—I had Sol Smith Russell in my mind’s eye for the old detective’s part, & hang it he has gone off pattering with Oliver Optic, or else the papers lie.
I read everything about the President’s doings there with exultation. He looms up grand & fine, like the old-time benefac old-time national benefactors of history. Well, it’s a long time since we’ve had anybody to fell feel proud of & have confidence in. I mean to take my fill now while my Ⓐemendation the meal’s hot & the appetite ravenous.
I wish that old ass of a private secretary hadn’t taken me for George Francis Train. If ignorance were a means of grace I wouldn’t trade that gorilla’s chances for the Archbishop of Canterbury’s.
I shall call on the President again, by & by. I shall go in my war paint; & if I am obstructed, the nation will have the unusual spectacle of a private secretary with a pen over one ear & a tomahawk over the other.
I read the entire Atlantic this time. Wonderful number. Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke’s wr story was a ten-strike. I wish she would write 12 old-time New England tales a year.
Good-times to you all! Mind if you don’t run here for a few days you will go to ◇◇◇◇ hell hence without having had a fore-glimpse of heaven.
P.S—2 days later, being July 6—
My play is finished; 4-Act Comedy, with 14 characters; conceived, plotted out, written & completed in 6½ working days of 6½ hours each; just a fraction under 250 MS pages besides the pages that were torn up & the few pages of odds & ends of notes, such as one sets down in the midst of his work for future reference; it is an average of 5 Atlantic pages each day. I think it was a prodigious dash of work; I’m the tiredest man in America. My old fool detective pervades the piece from beginning to end—always on hand & busy.
I go to New York Monday (St James Hotel,) & take MS with me. Shall visit theatres for a week or ten days & see if I can find a man who can play the detective as well as Sol Smith Russell could doubtless have done it—though I never have seen him. If the play’s a success it is worth $50,000 or more—if it fails it is worth nothing—& yet even the worst of failures can’t rob one of the 6½ days of booming pleasure I have had in writing it.
I meant it for a comedy—but it is only a long farce. Wish you’d come to New York & go to theatres.
MTL , 1:297–98, partial publication; MTHL , 1:185–88, partial publication.
See Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.