8 September 1869 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: ViU, UCCL 00352)
I have already written Abbey that as I was so mixed about it I would keep on the safe side & not lecture in either town.1explanatory note Of course I can’t go deliberately & talk in Rondout after that. If you have me on your memorandum book, it is a mistake—for I can easily swear I didn’t promise you—the only trouble is I can’t swear I didn’t promise Abbey, though I can’t see why what I could have been thinking of to promise him when I was asked twenty times in different cities last winter to put my name down for this year & positively refused in every instance. So you see how I am situated. Abbey’s Ⓐemendationword is as good as mine, & he says I promised him—I don’t deny it—I simply don’t remember it. And not denying it, of course I can’t talk for you in the face of that fact.
I would like might to be fixed so that I could talk for one or the other of you, & if I were there I would pitch pennies with both of you—but I ain’t, you see, & we’ll have to let those two communities pass unpersecuted with my lecture for this winter. Submit this to Mrs. Crane,2explanatory note & she will say again that I am right.
No, your “persistence” don’t annoy me a bit—it is complimentary to me.3explanatory note I am only going to lecture till the middle of January, anyhow. My marriage was booked for Jan. 10, but had to be postponed till the first week in February on account of m some lecture engagements which I could not get canceled. But it won’t be postponed again. , unless for the I accept your congratulations upon that forthcoming event, & thank you right cordially.
over
It won’t do for me to book myself for 1870–71, because I hope to get out of the lecture-field forever before that time, & so I must make no promises. But you’ll receive early notice of who my from my advertisements if I do enter the field that year, for I never intend to begin late again. I’ll start early—only, I am almost willing to promise that I’ll not be in the field at all that year. Make a note of this, & see if I don’t come pretty near being a prophet. I mean to make this newspaper support me hereafter. 4explanatory note
Personal. | Henry M. Crane Esq | Rondout | N. Y. postmarked buffalo n.y. sep 9 docketed by Crane: Twain | ansd sep 11 and 95.13 | 142 | 142 |
| 200
60
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Clemens did not explicitly convey this message in his 21 August letter to Henry Abbey, which suggests that he was alluding here to a letter written since then, no longer extant. Possibly he wrote such a letter on 3 September, the same day he last corresponded with Crane.
Martha Powley Crane (1840–1934) (Crane family monument, Montrepose Cemetery, Kingston, N.Y., information courtesy of Amanda C. Jones).
The persistence was effective: see 21 Sept 69 to Crane, n. 1.click to open letter
After avoiding the lecture platform in 1870–71, Clemens returned to the circuit the following season.
MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (ViU).
L3 , 346–347; Collector (May 1949), lot I 948, excerpts.
sold by Walter R. Benjamin Autographs in 1949; deposited at ViU by Clifton Waller Barrett on 17 December 1963.