17 October 1871 • Allentown, Pa. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00663)
Livy darling, this lecture will never do. I hate it & won’t keep it. I can’t even handle these chuckle-headedⒶemendation Dutch with it.1explanatory note
Have blocked on outⒶemendation a lecture on Artemus Ward, & shall write it next Saturday & deliver it next Monday in Washington.
Poor child, I am so sorry you are so lonely & forlorn—but bear up—just think, you don’t have to lecture! T You ought to be in ecstasies. We’ll come together again, & then we’ll forget all our troubles.
With a world of love
in ink: Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Cor. Forrest & Hawthorne st | Hartford | Conn return address: american hotel, allentown, pa. j. f. newhard,—proprietor . postmarked: allentown pa. oct 18
Clemens delivered his “Reminiscences” lecture in Bethlehem on 16 October and in the neighboring town of Allentown on 17 October. The Bethlehem Times of 17 October reported that the “best and biggest part of Bethlehem’s intelligent population” came away from the lecture well satisfied at having seen a celebrated author. But the paper faulted Clemens for being inaudible and for rehashing Innocents Abroad anecdotes, and concluded: “As a lecturer, we feel bound to say that, though not an entire failure, he is far from being instructive in his remarks or entertaining in his manner” (reprinted in McIlhaney). The second performance received an even cooler reception: “Mark Twain has the reputation of being a funny man, and the greatest joke he ever perpetrated was his ‘lecture’ last evening. We do not propose to make an extended notice and merely remark that we prefer reading to hearing him” (“Local Intelligence,” Allentown Chronicle, 18 Oct 71, 4).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L4 , 474–475; LLMT , 161–62.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.