slc/mt
Mch. 20.
Dear Howells:
You or Aldrich or both of you must come to Hartford to live. Mr. Hall, who lives in the house next to Mrs. Stowe’s (just where we drive in to go to our new house,) will sell for $16,000 or $17,000.1 The lot— a is 85 feet front & 150 deep—long time & easy payments on the purchase. You can do your work just as well here as in Cambridge, can’t you? Come, will one of you boys [buy] that house? Now say yes.2
Mrs. Clemens is an invalid yet, but is getting along pretty fairly. We send best regards.
Ys
Mark.
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Did I speak in my last of the charming visit
I’d had with Warner and Mark Twain at Hartford. It seemed
to me quite an ideal life. They live very near each other, in a sort
of suburban grove, and their neighbors are the Stowes and Hookers,
and a great many delightful people. They go in and out of each
other’s houses without ringing, and nobody gets more than
the first syllable of his first name—they call their
minister Joe Twichell. I staid with Warner,
but of course I saw a great deal of Twain, and he’s a
thoroughly good fellow. His wife is a delicate little beauty, the
very flower and perfume of ladylikeness, who
simply adores him—but this leaves no word to describe his
love for her. (Howells 1979, 56) Warner’s home, apparently unnumbered, was on
Hawthorn Street, near the Hooker house. Twichell lived at 6 Atwood
Street, not in Nook Farm but only about three blocks away (Geer 1873, 135, 137, map; Van Why, 4–5).
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L6, 85–86; Paine 1912, 114, excerpt; MTB, 1:503, excerpt; Paine 1917, 783; MTL, 1:217; MTHL, 1:15–16.
Provenance:see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
buy • buy buy [corrected miswriting]
