To
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
17? November 1877 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, correspondence card: VtMIM, UCCL 01507)
17? November 1877 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, correspondence card: VtMIM, UCCL 01507)
Saturday, 4 P.M.
slcMy Dear Aldrich—
Your book came at 10 this morning, just as I was feeling rested enough to get up & plow along on my great romance.1explanatory note So I ordered breakfast & a pipe to be brought up to the bed—which would give me a chance to glance at the book. Result: I have read every line of the bewitching thing & have lost my day’s work & am not in the least sorry. I would spend another work-day in bed to read its mate. It is a delicious situation where that young fellow gets into the asylum—I should have been tempted to enlarge his experiences there.2explanatory note
Yrs Ever
Mark
Explanatory Notes
1 Aldrich’s story “The Queen of Sheba,” published in the Atlantic Monthly from July to November 1877 (Aldrich 1877), had just been issued in book form by James R. Osgood and Company (“Literary and
Trade Notes,” Publisher’s Weekly, 17 Nov 1877, 584). Clemens’s “great romance” was The Prince and the Pauper. He did research for it in the summers of 1876 and 1877, but only recently had begun
writing. He put it aside in February 1878 and did not return to it until after the
European trip of 1878–79 that produced A Tramp Abroad. He completed his initial draft of The Prince and the Pauper in September 1880 (P&P, 3–7).
2 In chapter 4 of Aldrich’s book, Edward Lynde, the protagonist, is mistakenly detained
for a brief time in the same insane asylum as a young woman who believes herself to
be the Queen of Sheba. He encounters her again years later, after she has recovered
her sanity, and falls in love with her.
MS, correspondence card, VtMIM.
MicroPUL, reel 1.
Acquired by VtMIM on 16 August 1938.