Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes (Ⓐ)

Source: Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass ([MH-H])

Cue: "We mustn't give"

Source format: "MS"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: AB

MTPDocEd
To William Dean Howells
12 January 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MH-H, UCCL 01178)
Hartford Jan. 12.
My Dear Howells:1explanatory note

We mustn’t give up the New Orleans trip. Mrs. Clemens would gladly go if her strength would permit, but can’t Mrs. Howells go anyway? I think she would find it very pleasant. I know she would. We can put off New Orleans until March 1st, & then that would do in place of Bethlehem. You just persuade her.

We are expecting the furniture for one of the guest rooms in a few days. When it comes can’t you & Mrs. Howells run down here for 3 or 4 days & have a talk about this matter? Woul Ⓐemendation We would go to Boston but for the fact that we are not foot-free now; at least she ain’t, on account of having to see to little odds & ends of settling every day or so—nothing of much consequence, but just enough to make her presence in a manner necessary; so she begs & I beg that the Howellses will come to us in place of our attempting to get to Boston. Now do try to come.

Ys Ever
Mark.

I know how we can make our expenses going to N. O., but you’d just lose money going to Beth.

Textual Commentary
12 January 1875 • To William Dean Howells • Hartford, Conn. • UCCL 01178
Source text(s):

MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1784 [98]).

Previous Publication:

L6 , 348–49; MTHL , 1:58–59.

Provenance:

see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.

Explanatory Notes
1 

Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK):

UCLC32095

editorial office of the atlantic monthly. the riverside press, cambridge, mass.

Jan. 10, 1875.

My dear Clemens:

Here’s your No. II, and I’ll undertake to say for the publishers that you shall make any arrangement for simultaneity in England that you like; only you wont be able to simultane with the January and February numbers. I’ll send you two proofs of the III.

—I declare, it’s too bad of you to send me that Toronto letter, and the accompanying taunt. Here I am, painfully lawfully clawing a few tattered dollars together from a colossal work of the imagination, and you from a few paltry compilations of facts, are able to roll in wealth. It is too bad, and enough to drive one to serious literature at once. I daren’t show that letter to Mrs. Howells, who already thinks meanly of my talent since she’s heard what you’ve made by your play.

And speaking of Mrs. Howells brings me to New Orleans,—or rather it doesn’t. Far back in the dark ages of last summer, Mrs. Howells and I talked of going off some-where to a milder climate next March, and we said Bethlehem, Pa., by way of settling something. But when I thought of meeting you at the Atlantic dinner, I said, “I’ll propose to Clemens to take Mrs. Clemens, and I’ll take you, and we’ll all go to New Orleans together.” She frantically approved; and then you couldn’t take Mrs. Clemens, you said, and I said, never mind, you and I will go, and you with yr accustomed amiability said, yes. Well, now: Mrs. Howells would let me go, and if I went, I know I should solemnly promise to take her to Bethlehem some time in March. But you see, I wouldn’t take her, when it came to the pinch: I would sneak out of it, saying that I hadn’t the time or the money—which would be perfectly true. I can’t do both these things, so, without referring the matter to her, I must be a man for once in my life, and say No, when I’d inexpressibly rather say Yes. Forgive my having led you on to fix a time; I never thought it would come to that, I supposed you would die, or something. I’m really more sorry and ashamed than I can make it appear.

Yours ever,
W. D. Howells

Howells’s “colossal work of the imagination” was the book version of A Foregone Conclusion. The “Toronto letter” might have been an offer from an unidentified Canadian publisher (see 27 Aug 75 to Blissclick to open letter). It and “the accompanying taunt” were part of an unrecovered letter, possibly dated 9 January, in which Clemens proposed simultaneous English publication of “Old Times on the Mississippi” in Temple Bar magazine, and reported on his earnings from the Gilded Age play (see 15 Jan 75 to Howells, n. 4click to open letter). That letter also might have included his response to a compliment Howells had passed along: in a 5 January business letter, novelist John W. De Forest had advised Howells: “By the way, tell Mark Twain to try pathos now & then. His ‘True Story,’—the story of the old negress,—was a really great thing, amazingly natural & humorous, & touching even to the drawing of tears” (CU-MARK). Howells underlined the passage before sending De Forest’s letter to Clemens on 8 January, evidently without a cover letter of his own. Howells’s suggestion of a New Orleans trip had fallen on Clemens’s receptive ears when they were in Boston for the 15 December Atlantic Monthly dinner.

Emendations and Textual Notes
Ⓐ  Woul  •  ‘l’ partly formed
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