To
William Dean Howells 27 June 1877 • Elmira, N.Y.(MS: NN-BGC and ViU,
UCCL02510)
Elmira, June 27
My Dear Howells:
If you should not like the first 2 chapters, send them to me & begin with Chap.
3—or Part 3, I believe you call these things in the magazine. I have finished No. 4,
which closes the series, & will mail it tomorrow if I think of it. I like this one,
I liked the preceding one
(already mailed to you some time ago) but I had my doubts about 1 & 2. Do not hesitate
to squelch them, even
with derision & insult.
To-day I am deep in a comedy which I began this morning—principal character, that
old
detective—I dr skeletoned the first act & wrote the second, to-day;
& am dog-tired, now. Fifty-four closedⒶemendation pages of MS in 7 hours.1explanatory note Once I wrote 55 pages at a sitting—that was on the opening thirdchapters of the gi Gilded Age novel. WhenⒶemendation I cool down, an hour from now, I shall go to zero, I judge.
When does Barrett open in your piece in N. Y (or Boston).2explanatory note I calculate to be there.
1 1
The play that became “Cap’n Simon Wheeler, The Amateur Detective. A Light Tragedy”
(SLC 1877f). Clemens evidently had been sharing his plans for the chief character
with Howells for some time (see S&B, 216–89). This letter may not have been sent
until 29 June: although an envelope postmarked on that date and addressed to
Howells survives, it no longer contains a letter (ViU).
2A Counterfeit Presentment (6 June 1877 to Howells, n. 3). Lawrence Barrett toured
with the play with mixed success from the fall of 1877 to the spring of 1878 (for
his
debut in Cincinnati see 15 Oct 1877 to Howells). Clemens saw the play in Hartford
in January 1878 and pronounced it “charming,” claiming he had “laughed & cried all
the way through it” (4 Jan 1878 to Howells, Letters 1876–1880). Barrett appeared in
the play at the Boston Museum in early April, but it never had a New York
engagement (Howells 1979, 194 n. 3).
Howells replied, on Atlantic Monthly letterhead, from Conanicut, Rhode Island
(CU-MARK):
UCLC32513
editorial office of the atlantic monthly. the riverside press, cambridge, mass.
Dear Clemens:
I have just simmered down to-day after nearly two weeks of arduous
journeying and junketing. First I went to Quebec to my sister’s wedding, which
was a very pleasant affair, and then I got back to Cambridge in time for the
President’s visit to Boston, and then in Newport. Nothing can give you an
adequate notion of the cordiality of his welcome, and you would have liked to see
how perfectly he did his part. I was with his suite a great deal, breakfasted with him
and met him at the Mayor’s dinner.
My feeling was that on every occasion he was far the simplest and greatest
man (except Longfellow and Emerson) present.— His son Webb and the young
ladies of the party expressed their great regret at the failure of your attempt to
see
him in Washington. W. said his father would have been so glad to meet you, and
the family would have been pleased to have you call at the White House.— Mrs.
Howells kept your two letters about B. H. for me. I think now there is no danger
of the national calamity you feared, and I don=t believe there ever was much. So I
understood from W. H.
I’ve been reading aloud to my wife your Bermuda papers. That they’re
delightfully entertaining goes without saying; but we also found that you gave us
the only realizing sense of Bermuda that we’ve ever had. I know that they will be
a
great success.—The fog has cleared off, and we’re in raptures with Conanicut.
Would that we could bring thisyour hill-top both to our shore!—That joke you
put into Twichell’s mouth advising you to make the most of a place that was like
heaven, about killed us.
Yours ever
W.D. Howells
Howells’s younger sister Anne (1844–1938) married Antoine Achille Fréchette
(1839–1908), translator in the Canadian House of Commons, on 20 June 1877. The
Howellses were with Rutherford B. Hayes in Boston and Newport in the last week
of the month (Howells 1979, 161 n. 3, 168). For Clemens’s failed attempt to visit
Hayes at the White House, see 1 May 1877 to Howells. The joke “put into Twichell’s
mouth” was in the third installment of “Some Rambling Notes,” scheduled for
publication in the December 1877 issue of the Atlantic:
We went ashore and found a novelty of a pleasant nature: there were no
hackmen, hacks, or omnibuses on the pier or about it anywhere, and nobody
offered his services to us, or molested us in any way. I said it was like being in
heaven. The Reverend rebukingly and rather pointedly advised me to make the
most of it, then. (SLC 1877–78a, 719)
4 This envelope may not have contained the present letter. It is postmarked two
days later, and is preserved in a different library (ViU).
MS, NN-BGC, is Source text for the letter; MS, ViU, is Source text for the envelope.
MTL , 1:296–97, letter only; MTHL , 1:184, letter only.
See Howells Letters in Description of Provenanceclick to open letter.