On 29 June Clemens left Elmira to go to Hartford. The primary purpose of his trip may have been to inspect the new house under construction (which he had not seen since mid-April), and to confer with Edward Potter, the architect, but he attended to other business as well. His route took him through New York City, where he stayed at the St. Nicholas Hotel, probably for two nights but possibly for three, before continuing to Hartford. While at the St. Nicholas he may have met with William Ritenour Denny, an acquaintance from the 1867 Quaker City excursion, who was also there. A New York meeting could have been arranged after Mrs. Fairbanks informed Clemens, in a letter of 11 June (CU-MARK), that Denny was then visiting her in Cleveland. And either during this stay, or while en route back to Elmira, Clemens undoubtedly enjoyed an evening with his good friends William Seaver (fulfilling his promise of 20 May) and John Hay (2 Sept 74 to Howellsclick to open link; 25 Sept 74 to Seaverclick to open link; “Personal Intelligence,” New York Herald, 1 July 74, 6; “Morning Arrivals,” New York Evening Express, 1 July 74, 2 July 74, 3).
Clemens’s business in Hartford included a visit to the American Publishing Company (see the next letter, n. 1), and almost certainly to the Hartford Accident Insurance Company. Capital stock in that firm had begun selling on 15 June. The chief investor was Senator John P. Jones of Nevada, a wealthy silver-mine owner (29 Marclick to open link and 4 Apr 75 to Wright, n. 5click to open link). According to the Hartford Courant, Jones subscribed for $75,000 of the new firm’s $200,000 of capital stock, while Clemens subscribed for $50,000. Investors were required to pay immediately for 25 percent of their subscriptions. In 1906, Clemens recalled his investment, although he misremembered its date:
Early in 1872 Joe Goodman wrote me from California that his friend and mine, Senator John P. Jones, was going to start a rival in Hartford to the Traveler’s Accident Insurance Company, and that Jones wanted Joe to take twelve thousand of the stock and had said he would see that Joe did not lose the money. Joe now proposed to transfer this opportunity to me, and said that if I would make the venture Jones would protect me from loss. So I took the stock and became a director. Jones’s brother-in-law, Lester, had been for a long time actuary in the Traveler’s Company. He was now transferred to our Company and we began business. There were five directors. Three of us attended every Board meeting for a year and a half. At the end of eighteen months the Company went to pieces and I was out of pocket thirty-two twenty-three thousand dollars. (Autobiographical Dictation, 24 May 1906, CU-MARK, in MTE , 161)
George B. Lester, former actuary of the Travelers Insurance Company of Hartford, was secretary as well as actuary of the new company. Clemens recalled that it was Lester’s fault that Jones did not repay the lost $23,000 for “two or three years.” Meanwhile, on 20 June 1874, the company held an organizational meeting of stockholders, and although Clemens did not attend, he was elected, along with Lester, to the nine-man board of directors. (The election was confirmed at a meeting on 7 July, three days after Clemens left Hartford.) On 15 October 1874, in his capacity of director, Clemens represented the company at an elaborate dinner of the Hartford insurance community, giving a humorous speech on accident insurance, which in 1875 he included in Sketches, New and Old (Geer: 1873, 291; 1874, 292; MTE , 161–63; Hartford Courant: “The Hartford Accident Insurance Company,” 15 June 74, 2; “Hartford Accident Insurance Co.,” 16 June 74, 2; “The Hartford Accident Insurance Company,” 17 June 74, 2; “The New Accident Insurance Company,” 22 June 74, 2; “The New Insurance Company,” “The Hartford Accident Insurance Co.,” 23 June 74, 2, 3; “Hartford Accident Company,” 8 July 74, 2; “Grand Banquet to Mr. Cornelius Walford of England,” 16 Oct 74, 2; Wright 1876, 406–7; Fatout 1976, 89–91; SLC 1875, 229–30; see also Seaver 1875, in William Seaver’s Squibs about Clemensclick to open link).