per Telegraph Operator
3 March 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, copy received: Jacobs, UCCL 01060)
new york. 10 william orton, pres’t,
geo. h. mumford, sec’y, new york. dated Hartford Ct 3 187 4 received at 125 Mch 3d to James Redpath 36 Bromfield st 2explanatory note Why dont you congratulate me Honestly I never expect to Stand on a lecture Platform again after thursday night 3explanatory note Mark 19PdJD 4explanatory note
telegram docketed: boston lyceum bureau. james redpath. mar 3 1874 and Twain Mark | March 3. 1874
A record number, indicating the number of telegrams received ( L5 , 8, 9 n. 1).
The address of the Boston Lyceum Bureau.
The 5 March “Roughing It” lecture in Boston’s Horticultural Hall was a success. The Boston Herald of 6 March remarked:
The speaker was in excellent humor last evening, as also were his hearers, who came to laugh and be merry, and so they were from the opening to the closing syllable of the discourse. The lecture itself was an extravaganza, or an exceedingly humorous narration of what the speaker did or did not experience in a three years’ sojourn in Nevada, coupled with a very funny description of the topography of the country and characteristics of the people of that section. What he said was amusing, as those who have read his writings upon this same topic know full well, but, after all, it was the style of the delivery which produced the climax. (“Mark Twain ‘Roughing It,’” 4)
The Boston Globe of 6 March reported the lecture’s special opening:
Said Mr. Clemens, in his usual confidential style: “It is customary on these occasions to have a prominent citizen to introduce the speaker. I like this custom, and so I got Thomas Bailey Aldrich to promise to do this. But, at the last minute, he tells me that he thinks that he would better not attempt it, and I know you’ll excuse him; I will. He might not be complimentary; he’s known me a good while.” (“Roughing It,” 6 Mar 74, 5)
(Clemens had known Aldrich, a poet and novelist, since late 1871: see L4 , 304 n. 1.) The Globe also reported that Clemens concluded with an apology “for keeping his hearers so long, on the ground that as it was his last appearance he wanted to have as good a time as possible out of it.” He had made similarly definitive retirement announcements as early as 1870 (see, for example, L4 , 94, 437 n. 1 top; L5 , 209, 686), but this time he followed through. Although he occasionally did “Stand on a lecture Platform again” (see, for example, 21 Feb 75 to Sprague and othersclick to open letter), and frequently gave after-dinner speeches, a decade passed before he undertook a formal lecture campaign: his 1884–85 tour with George Washington Cable (N&J3, 63; Cardwell; Fatout: 1960, 204–31; 1976, 651–56; Lorch 1968, 161–82).
The word count and the telegraph operator’s initials.
MS facsimile. The editors have not seen the MS (the copy received, a telegram blank filled out by the receiving telegraph operator), which was owned in 1984 by Victor and Irene Murr Jacobs, who provided a photocopy to the Mark Twain Papers.
L6 , 60–61; John Anderson, Jr., lot 49, with omission; AAA 1925, lot 108, brief excerpt.
When offered for sale in 1925 the MS was part of the collection of William F. Gable.