To
Charles Warren Stoddard 10 September 1877 • Hartford, Conn.(MS, correspondence card: CU-MARK, UCCL11958)
Hartford Sept 10.
slcDear Charley: The subscription houses are doing nothing—they say they can’t sell books
of travel or any
other kind, except old standard things like Commentaries on the Bible—& only enough
of them to keep alive. If you will run up here & see me I’ll fill you up with good advice
&
Scotch whisky, but I can’t promise you a publisher, in such times as these. We will go & see as many as you please, though.1explanatory note
I shall be exceedingly grateful for that Tichborne book, I assure you. It will be
better than a scrap-book.2explanatory note
If you see John McComb, send him up here,—or bring him.3explanatory note
I’ve just got home from vacation, & this is No. 1 of a ton of letters to be answered.
Yrs Ever
Mark.
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):
MS, correspondence card, CU-MARK.
Previous Publication:
Sotheby’s catalog, sale of 29 October 1996, lot 192,
excerpts; MicroPUL, reel 1.
Provenance:
Victor and Irene Murr Jacobs purchased the MS in 1987 from James Lowe and sold it
through Sotheby’s in 1996 to CU-MARK.
Explanatory Notes
1 Stoddard, in a letter that has not been found, evidently repeated his request for
help in getting a book published (see 20 Sept 1876 to Stoddard). He visited the Clemenses
in October, but it is not known whether Clemens took him to call on any publishers.
His letters from Egypt to the San Francisco Chronicle were not published until 1881, when they were issued by D. Appleton and Company under
the title Mashallah! A Flight into Egypt (see 22 Oct 1877 to Stoddard).
2 In 1873 Stoddard, acting as Clemens’s secretary in London, collected six scrapbooks
of clippings from the London Standard about the trial of Arthur Orton, an Australian butcher who claimed to be the rightful
heir to the Tichborne baronetcy and estates (19 Oct 1873 to Stoddard, L5, 456–58; 1 Feb 1875 to Stoddard, L6, 363–68). Some dozen books on the Tichborne trial were published between 1874 and
1877, many written by the principals in the case. The particular “Tichborne book”
that Clemens referred to has not been identified, but it could have been The Tichborne Trial, published in New York in 1875, which gives a full history of the family and the
trial, quoting many relevant letters and other documents, and includes a timeline,
“Leading Dates in the Tichborne Case” (Orton, Cockburn, and Greenleaf 1875).
3 John McComb was a good friend of Clemens’s from San Francisco, one of the owners and
a “supervising editor” of the Alta California. In 1867 he helped Clemens get the job of traveling correspondent, which led to his
sailing on the Quaker City excursion to Europe and the Holy Land (2?–7 Feb 1867 to McComb, L2, 12–14).
MS, correspondence card, CU-MARK.
Sotheby’s catalog, sale of 29 October 1996, lot 192, excerpts; MicroPUL, reel 1.
Victor and Irene Murr Jacobs purchased the MS in 1987 from James Lowe and sold it through Sotheby’s in 1996 to CU-MARK.