12 June 1873 • London, England (Henkels 1930, lot 266, and two others, UCCL 00925)
Thanks—many thanks, for that exceedingly kind article & the telegram.Ⓐemendation 1explanatory note I’m coming to the House of Commons Ⓐemendationsoon (Monday evening Ⓐemendation, maybe) & shall hope to see you. Ⓐemendation
Oh Ⓐemendation, as to the article I wanted to write?—I wrote a good deal of it & then gave it up, partly because it was going to be too long, & partly because it was too essentially literary Ⓐemendationin its nature for such a grave, substantial, Ⓐemendationbusiness-looking paper as the Observer Ⓐemendation.2explanatory note Properly, it should be a magazine article. Ⓐemendation I wanted to seem deeply in earnest & greatly concerned, & one can’t pretend all that with a good grace in a magazine Ⓐemendation where it is plain a writer has a month in which to Ⓐemendation “chaw over” a screed Ⓐemendation.
The telegram has not been found. Fitzgibbon published an article in the Darlington Northern Echo on 11 June, in which he described Clemens’s growth as a humorist since his days on the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise:
Since the advent to New York, Mr. Clemens has ceased to be a mere Californian celebrity. He has lived to prove that the fun which won the hearts of the rough miners of the Nevada has something more than the spice of the virgin soil in it. The free scope of a district which was allowed to develop its own literature no doubt gave it raciness, just as in ruder natures it would give license to horse-play. But the lively fancy, the quaint humour, the quick wit, the humane breadth of the man, and his penetrating insight withal, are gifts divine. ... As a matter of taste, you may conclude his style to be at times too rollicking: you will never find it insincere. “When one has the disease that gives its possessor the title of humorist,” is one of his remarks, “one must make oath to his statements, else the public will not believe him.” Many a true word is spoken in jest. Many a true jest is truth hidden only to the blind. The essential quality of Twain’s fun—it should be of all fun—is that it is funny—that it provokes laughter. ... But if you often laugh you must sometimes perforce reflect. There is a soul in this man’s humor. He is no mere wearer of the cap and bells. His fun is iconoclastic. Its invariable moral is, that it is destructive of shams; or of what, to the humorist, are shams. ... Right glad will we be to welcome to the North of England a humorist so healthy, an American cousin so worthy of his great country, a gentleman of the press who has done much to provoke the ever-growing interchange of sentiment and sympathy among the readers of our common language. (Fitzgibbon 1873)
The unfinished “literary” article has not been identified, nor is Clemens known to have written anything especially for the London Observer. His remarks here indicate that Fitzgibbon may have suggested a contribution, but no connection between Fitzgibbon and the Observer has been established. A Sunday newspaper founded in 1791, the Observer was “almost entirely of a political complexion,” and dealt “chiefly with the more public topics of the day” (Newspaper Press Directory, 27). From 1870 until 1889 it was edited by Edward Dicey, formerly of the Spectator, Macmillan’s, the London Telegraph, and the London Daily News (Griffiths, 200).
No copy-text. The text is based on three transcriptions, each of which derives independently from the MS:
P1 and P3 each preserve portions of text not present in the other. Since P2 contains text not found in P1, it must also have derived directly from the MS, since it preceded P3 in date of publication. All three sources describe the letter as “2pp., 8vo.” The composite text that results from drawing on all sources appears to be complete, but the possibility remains that some portion of the original was neither quoted nor paraphrased in any of them. Two additional catalog listings contain no distinctly authorial variants and have contributed no readings to the present text.
L5 , 378–379; Parke-Bernet 1945, lot 137, brief paraphrase; Parke-Bernet 1954, lot 63, brief paraphrase.