Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes (Ⓐ)

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

Cue: "After all, I"

Source format: "MS"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: AB

MTPDocEd
To William Dean Howells
20 February 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MH-H, UCCL 01195)
Feb. 20.
My Dear Howells:1explanatory note

After all, I find I cannot go to Boston.2explanatory note And what grieves me as much, is, that I have to give up the river trip, too.

So I’ll trim up & finish 2 or 3 more river sketches for the magazine (if you still think you want them), & then buckle in on another book for Bliss, finish it then end of May, & then either make the river trip or drop it indefinitely.3explanatory note I give up the river trip, now, because I find our mother cannot remain here with my wife, but must return to her own home & finish her building enterprises—namely, her house.4explanatory note

We are looking forward with the pleasantest anticipations to your visit, & we want you to give us just as many days as you can. We shall be utterly out of company, & you can choose your own rooms, & change them & take ours if they don’t suit.5explanatory note

Yrs Ever
Mark.
Textual Commentary
20 February 1875 • To William Dean Howells • Hartford, Conn. • UCCL 01195
Source text(s):

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

Previous Publication:

L6 , 390–391; MTHL , 1:67.

Provenance:

see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.

Explanatory Notes
1 

Clemens replied to the following letter (CU-MARK), which answered his of 14? February:

UCLC32109
Cambridge, Feb’y 16, 1875.

My dear Clemens:

I can’t manage the trip, this winter. It’s too bad, after talking it up, and getting you into the notion but it’s quite beyond my range. I’ve been under the weather and on half-work the whole winter, so that I don’t feel as if I had earned my salary, and I oughtn’t to take three weeks or a month out for a pleasure-trip on the chance of making it up somehow. I’m all the more bound because I shouldn’t be questioned about it. At Bethlehem, I can keep writing something. Now, be as merciful as possible in your thoughts of me; I’ll explain more fully when I see you at Hartford early in March.

I’m delighted that you entered so thoroughly into the spirit of our family group. It shows Mrs. Howells and me in our true relations of domination and subjection. But don’t you think I’ve made a very successful stagger at looking knowing, and as if I just gave way to humor her? And doesn’t Winny look as the oldest daughter always does? And isn’t it in character for Pilla not to have any eyes, and for Bua to run to lower lip?

—The heliotypes are $5 a hundred. You send your negative to Osgood, and he heliotypes you, and takes the sum out of your copyright.

—Wiley’s letter is delightful. But my Uncle Sam can beat him in spelling. “I could of done it”—that’s his style. No. 5 is first-rate.

Yours ever
W. D. H.

We’re both sorry about Mrs. Clemens. Isn’t our visit going to be an affliction?

Samuel Dean (“Uncle Sam”) was one of Howells’s four maternal uncles—the others were Alexander, Jesse, and William—all of whom had pursued careers as pilots, captains, and owners of steamboats on the Ohio River, based in Pittsburgh. “No. 5” was the May installment of “Old Times on the Mississippi” (Howells 1975, 10, 12–13, 26–31; Howells 1979, 465; Emerson Gould, 636–37; Thurston, 121).

2 

See the next letter.

3 

Clemens wrote two more articles for his “Old Times” series, published in the June and August issues of the Atlantic. The “book for Bliss” probably was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, completed in July, rather than Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old, which was ready by the end of March.

4 

Mrs. Langdon left for Elmira on 23 February, after a visit of nearly four weeks. The work on her house had been ongoing for several months. On 12 May 1874, the Elmira Advertiser had reported: “The Langdon House is to undergo numerous improvements, changes and enlargements during the coming summer” (untitled item, 4; George H. Warner to Elisabeth G. Warner, 23 Feb 75, CU-MARK).

5 

The Howellses planned to visit Hartford in March (1 Mar 75 to Howells, n. 1click to open letter).

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