Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes (Ⓐ)

Source: Madison Memorial Union Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison ([WU-MU])

Cue: "My Dear Boy"

Source format: "MS"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: Paradise, Kate

This edited text supersedes the previously published text
MTPDocEd
To William A. Seaver
16 September 1876 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: WU-MU, UCCL 01365)
slc/mtfarmington avenue, hartford.
Sept 16.

My Dear Boy, I can’t. You know me; you know I travel with none but the salt of the earth—Ⓐemendationnever with old salts of the sea, like you. Besides, these parties drink, whom you mention. Therefore there might not be enoughⒶemendation for me.1explanatory note

⟦However, I perceive that dashing off these popping, sparkling, graceful notes, like you, is not in my line; I have to roost so long in the middle of an airy remark that my handwriting changes with age, & betrays where the spontaneity ceased & the pumping-up began. Honestly, Seaver, I think you write the happiest letter of any human being I ever saw. Privately, between you & me, why don’t you do some of it in the Drawer?—it would send that old magazine right along, you mark my words.⟧

Give my love to the boys & yourself, & be perfectly sure I would be with you but for the fact that we’ve got some swell company coming Monday to stay several days.2explanatory note

Here is hoping you will all have a good time.

Yrs Ever
Mark.
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):

MS, Bassett Collection, WU-MU.

Previous Publication:

MicroPUL, reel 1.

Provenance:

Norman D. Bassett, a Madison alumnus, owned the MS by October 1942. He donated his Mark Twain collection to WU on 9 July 1955.

Explanatory Notes
1 

Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK):

UCLC32418
adriatic fire insurance co. 187 broadway, new york.
Sep. 15th 1876
My dear old man:—

Usually there is a great breeze amongst the snobs of N.Y. who do the briny in yachts, on the occasion of the Annual Yacht race of the N.Y.Y.C. on the third Tuesday of Sept. I am and have been since the 24th of July, a jolly tar, living on board the yacht Petrel avec my wife, and generally one or two gosling girls or tough old matrons as guests. Next Tuesday I shall take the hel-lum, and have invited Judge Brady, Bret Harte, Bromley and Brooks to come and see me do it. Should you have any business in N.Y. on that day, or could make any nefarious pretext to get away from the horrors of home, come down to me. I have bunks on board adapted to any beam, and can make you as jolly as an old sand-boy.

I think the idea has merit.

Yours,
Wm. A. Seaver.

Seaver (1813?–83) was president of the Adriatic Insurance Company. He also wrote the “Editor’s Drawer” for Harper’s Monthly, as well as the “Personal” columns for Harper’s Weekly and Harper’s Bazar (20 Aug 1872 to OLC, L5, 150–51 n. 3). In addition to Harte, his guests for the New York Yacht Club’s 19 September autumn regatta were to be New York Supreme Court Justice John R. Brady (1821–91), Isaac Bromley, of the New York Tribune, and Noah Brooks, formerly of the San Francisco Alta California and the New York Tribune, and now of the New York Times (7 Mar 1873 to Reid, L5 , 313 n. 2; L6 : 1 May 1874 to Seaver, 125 n. 1; 2 or 3 July 1874 to Seaver, 173 n. 2; 27 Oct 1875 to Howells, 577 n. 1). The regatta proved to be a disappointment to “many of those who were interested in it on account of the small number of yachts that were entered” (“A Fall Regatta,” New York Tribune, 20 Sept 76, 1). Seaver’s Petrel was not one of the entrants. Sand boys (or men) used to drive their donkey carts through the streets hawking bags of sand, usually taken from the beach. Their “jolly” condition was “due to their habit of indulging in liquor with their takings” (Brewer 1989, 523).

2 

Unidentified, but evidently not the Fairbanks family, whom Clemens had recently invited.

Emendations and Textual Notes
Ⓐ  earth— •  ~— | —
Ⓐ  be enough •  be- | enough
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