Samuel L. Clemens to Frank Fuller, 5–30 October 1868 · Hartford, Conn

Source: The James S. Copley Library, La Jolla, California. The collection of the Copley Library was sold in a series of auctions at Sotheby’s, New York, in 2010 and 2011 ([CLjC])

Cue: "If a man"

Source format: "MS"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: AB

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MTPDocEd

To Frank Fuller
5–30 October 1868 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CLjC, UCCL 09079)

If a man were to signify however which he was not & could not if he had the power, which being denied him he will endeavor anyhow, merely because he don’t, would you? I should think not.

Good-bye,
Yrs always,

Mark. 1

Textual Commentary

5–30 October 1868 • To Frank Fuller • Hartford, Conn. • UCCL 09079

Source text(s):

MS, The James S. Copley Library, La Jolla, Calif. (CLjC, call no. 2422). The surviving fragment is the bottom half of a single leaf, inscribed on one side only, the top half of which has been cut away. Part of one (unidentified) character survives from the now-missing line just above the cut edge. The cut leaf has been glued to a heavy backing, which Fuller inscribed (see p. 260 n. 1).

Previous Publication:

L2 , 260; see p. 260 n. 1.

Provenance:

CLjC acquired the letter in July 1966 as part of a Fuller collection.

Explanatory Notes

This manuscript fragment survives among Fuller’s personal papers and was presumably addressed to him. The top half of the single sheet (written on one side only), which contained between thirty and sixty words, has been cut away. Fuller wrote an undated note on the verso of the backed manuscript: “This puzzling paragraph was evidently cut from something which Mark decided not to send me. F.F.” The letter was written sometime before the last two months of 1868, for the text of the first surviving sentence (lacking only “& could not”) appeared in a 28 November San Francisco newspaper item, which read in its entirety:

Mark Twain on Moral Science.—Some one sent the following “question in moral science” to Mark Twain for solution, and, after working on it for three weeks, Mark submits it to Judge Charles F. Cady, of Illinois:

“If a man were to signify, however, which he was not if he had the power, which being denied him he will endeavor anyhow, merely because he don’t, would you?” (San Francisco Examiner, 28 Nov 68, 1).

The stationery, ink, and handwriting of the manuscript are virtually identical to those of the previous two letters, both written from Hartford—an indication it too might have been written on 5 October. It was probably written no later than 30 October, the last day Clemens spent in Hartford before returning to New York, where he had no need to write to Fuller. It is likely, but not certain, that the San Francisco Examiner reprinted the item from a still-unidentified eastern newspaper. Fuller was a likely source for such an item: it was he who earlier gave the New York Evening Telegram information gleaned from one of Clemens’s 1867 letters (see 24 Nov 67 to Fuller, n. 6).

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