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To
Elisha Bliss, Jr.
29 October 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: Daley, UCCL
00517)
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Buf. Oct. 29.
Friend Bliss—
I got the poster & Sketch-Book. They are
fine.1
Colonel Albert S. Evans’s
trip through Mexico! Who made him a Colonel?
A regular dead beat of the first water—or rather a literary
fraud—an excessively
A one-horse newspaper reporter, who has been trying all his life to
make a joke & never has & never will succe‸ed‸
ss. A Colonel! He
would run from a sheep. I know him like a book. You
publishers are pretty hard up for books, Bliss, I am dreadfully afraid, when our
friend the “Col.” must be called in to help. And
don’t he hate me? I should think so. I used to trot him out in the papers lang syne.2
SLC
Say, now, Bliss, if I were a
publisher, I would send you a book occasionally, but here
I am suffering for the “Col’s” book,
& for “Beyond the [Missippi]” & f for the “Indian
Races,” & especially for the
“Uncivilized Races,” & [you] never
say “boo” about sending [them]. You must give me the “Uncivilized
Races[”] & the
“Col’s,” anyhow.3
Yrs
Mark.
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(over)
My wife has been sick abed for a week, but is much better
now.4
Ys
Mark.
[letter docketed:]
[and] Mark Twain |
Oct 29/70
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1
The poster may have been along the lines Clemens suggested on 22
September or a version of the circular Bliss had prepared in June (
27 June
70,
22
Sept 70, both to Bliss). The November 1870
Author’s Sketch Book—the only number of
this American Publishing Company paper issued—included
extracts from chapters 19 and 39 of
The Innocents
Abroad (“New Books,” 1:3).
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2
See
28 Jan 70 to Bliss, n. 1. Evans’s
Our Sister Republic: A Gala Trip Through Tropical
Mexico in 1869–70 had been published by the
Columbian Book Company of Hartford, a subsidiary of the American
Publishing Company established on 2 March 1870 and managed by Richard
Woolworth Bliss (b. 1826), Elisha’s younger brother, who was
its secretary and treasurer. The
Author’s
Sketch Book prominently advertised Evans’s volume
(“Our Sister Republic,”
“Advertisements,” “A New and Timely
Book,” 1:2, 3, 4;
Geer 1870, 57, 91, 435, 508; “Hartford
Residents,” Bliss Family, 2).
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3
Albert Deane Richardson’s
Beyond the
Mississippi (1867; expanded edition 1869), Charles De Wolf
Brownell’s
The Indian Races of North and
South America (1865), and John George Wood’s
The Uncivilized Races, or Natural History of Man
(1870) were all published by the American Publishing Company. For
discussion of Clemens’s use of Wood’s and
Richardson’s books in the writing of
Roughing It, see
RI 1993, 575–76, 579, 597, 600, 605–6,
610–11, 635, 683–84, 695, 705–6,
820–21.
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4
Olivia Clemens had almost given birth prematurely, probably on the night
of 19 October (
5 Nov 70 to OC, n. 5).
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Source text(s):
MS, collection of Robert Daley until 1993.
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Previous publication:
L4, 218–219; Sotheby 1993, lot 214.
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Provenance:
The present location of the MS is not known; sold in 1993 to an unidentified
purchaser.
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Emendations and textual notes:
Missippi •
[sic]
them •
[‘em’ conflated]