18? March 1876 • Hartford, Conn. (Paraphrase: James T. Fields to SLC,
20 March 1876, CU-MARK, UCCL 12953)
(SUPERSEDED)
On Wednesday, I hear, the subscriber is to speak a lecture in your city. Your welcome missive is just here telling me I am to stop at your mansion of Hospitalities on that occasion.1explanatory note
Fields’s full letter of acceptance read (CU-MARK):
On Fields’s envelope, at a later date, Clemens wrote in pencil: “James T. Fields (author of ‘Yesterdays with Authors’).” Fields’s book had been published in 1872 (Fields 1872). He lectured at Seminary Hall in Hartford on Wednesday, 22 March, on Wordsworth, the first in a series of six lectures (Hartford Courant: “Lectures by James T. Fields of Boston,” 18 Mar 76, 2; “Mr. Fields’s Lecture on Wordsworth,” 23 Mar 76, 2). For Clemens’s St. Patrick letter, see 16 Mar 76 to McCloudclick to open letter. Fields presumably saw the reprint of it in the Boston Advertiser for 20 March (“In General,” 1).
See Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.