17 March 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: Jacobs, UCCL 01210)
Yrs rec’d last night. What a horrible time you have had of it! I cannot begin to appreciate it, though, because I never was bodily hurt in my life. But I had 8 cousins in one family every devil of whom had enjoyed from one to two broken arms before reaching puberty. Think of it!2explanatory note
Just been writing Finlay, who is in Rome, & goes presently to Venice.3explanatory note
I never hear of Webb’s book, & I don’t believe it sells at all. 4explanatory note
I feel persuaded that your book would sell, by subscription. When you’ve got it ready, call here on one of your journeys, & I think we’ll find a Hartford publisher. I think it we Ⓐemendation very well worth your while to act upon this suggestion.
About Mulford you surprise me. I wonder what has become of him.5explanatory note
Wishing you better luck than you’ve been having, & a good time generally—
Shall send this through
Sir Thos. Hardy.
Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK), which replied to his of 1 February:
In a 1906 account of his accident, Stoddard explained that his irresponsible Italian guide had provided a horse that later proved to be blind, with “eyes like a couple of hard-boiled eggs” (Charles Warren Stoddard 1906, 493). George Dolby was Clemens’s English lecture agent. The book on England had stopped “growing” in early 1874, when Clemens used portions of the unfinished manuscript in Mark Twain’s Sketches. Number One (see 25 Feb 74 to Fairbanks, n. 6click to open letter). For additional glosses of Stoddard’s allusions, see notes 4 and 5.
Clemens’s maternal aunt, Martha Ann Lampton (1807–50), married John Adams Quarles (1802–76), and they had eight children who survived infancy, born between 1826 and 1844. Clemens spent his boyhood summers on the Quarles farm in Florida, Missouri, with these cousins, who delighted in playing pranks (Lampton 1990, 57; MTB , 1:10–12, 30–34).
Francis Dalzell Finlay, proprietor of the Belfast Northern Whig, had met Stoddard while staying in London as Clemens’s guest in December 1873 ( L5 , 529).
John Paul’s Book. The sense of triumph in Clemens’s remark is attributable to an old conflict with Webb that still rankled (see 8 Apr 75 to Webb, n. 1click to open letter).
Prentice Mulford and Joaquin Miller both lived for a time in a lodging house at 11 Museum Street in London, where Stoddard also stayed while Miller was in Rome. On 3 November 1873 Miller wrote Stoddard about Josie Allen, another Museum Street lodger: “I am glad you like Miss Allen. . . . She is a little thing that I am trying to bring up to the light of the sun and I hope not altogether for selfish purposes. I need not tell you she has been unfortunate; hence, as a Christian knight you will treat her the more gently” (CSmH, in Walker 1969, 342). Olive Harper (1842–1915), a California journalist, novelist, and poet, described Allen in one of her 1873 European travel letters for the San Francisco Alta California:
My Josie is a treasure, a pretty little London girl, and one thoroughly well versed in everything about this great city. There is nothing she does not know, and as she is always at hand, I have only to ask her and she will tell me the entire history of everything of renown, and things that nobody else knows. She can tell you the date of every historical event, and in the next breath inform you where the best bargains in second-hand rag-shops are to be obtained. She is well educated, a perfect little lady, and as perfect a little Bohemian. (Harper)
Mulford and Allen married in the spring of 1874, and in July of that year returned to America, evidently settling in Sag Harbor, New York, his native town. The marriage did not last: reportedly they separated when Mulford refused “to let his pretty wife continue posing in the nude for commercial artists, a practice which he discovered when he received a picture of her naked figure in a package of cheap cigarettes” (Walker 1969, 341–42, 346–48, 355; Charles Warren Stoddard 1905, 97–99; Marberry, 120–22; Mulford 1874 [bib13758], 1874 [bib13759]). See also Stoddard’s amusing sketch about his stay at 11 Museum Street and his own relationship with Allen: Charles Warren Stoddard 1903, 277–320.
MS, collection of Victor and Irene Murr Jacobs, seen at Sotheby’s, New York City, while awaiting sale (Sotheby 1996).
L6 , 416–18; Sotheby 1996, lot 202, excerpts.
The Jacobses purchased the MS in 1964 from Paul C. Richards; it was offered for sale again on 29 October 1996 through Sotheby’s.