thos. t. eckert, gen’l sup’t,
new york.
To
William Dean Howells
per Telegraph Operator
4 March 1874 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS, copy received: MH-H, UCCL 01061)
Click to add citation to My Citations.
|
blank no. 1. the western union telegraph company. the rules of this company require that all messages received for transmission, shall be written on the message blanks of the company, under and subject to the conditions printed thereon, which conditions have been agreed to by the sender of the following message. william orton, pres’t, new york. dated received at to
Editor Atlantic Monthly We ought to leave Boston ten oclock Friday morning 1 therefore wont it be better to get Aldrich to defer his lunch not let him shirk out of the lunch altogether but simply defer it, 2 I arrive at Parker House tomorrow evening answer paid 3 S. L. Clemens 43 pd |
Explanatory Notes
“Well, I reckon I am prodigiously glad to see you all. I got up this morning and put on a clean shirt,
and feel powerful fine. Old Warner there did n’t do it, and is darned sorry—said it was a lot of fuss to get
himself constructed properly just to show off, and that that bit of a red silk handkerchief on the starboard side of the pocket of
his gray coat would make up for it; and I allow it has done it.” (Lilian W. Aldrich, 143–44) The visit lasted until Tuesday, 10 March. Howells and Osgood stayed, as planned, with the Warners, while the
Aldriches stayed with the Clemenses (see also 24 Mar 74 to
Aldrich, n. 13, and Lilian W. Aldrich, 143–48,
157–60).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 1
For the trip to Hartford that had been under discussion since mid-February (27 Feb 74 to Howells, n. 2). In the event, Clemens returned to Hartford alone on Friday, 6 March, and the
visitors deferred their arrival until the following day. The party consisted of Howells, Osgood, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich and his
wife, Lilian. Previously it was believed that Elinor Howells went along (see MTHL, 1:15 n. 1 bottom, and Howells 1979, 57 n. 3).
It is clear, however, that her initial meeting with Olivia occurred during her visit to Hartford the following year, in late March
(see 17 Nov 74 and 1 Mar 75, both to Howells, and 14 Mar 75 to
Langdon). Lilian Aldrich’s 1920 account of the 1874 visit, which further confirms Elinor Howells’s
absence then, provides details of the travel arrangements. The visiting party took the train from Boston to Springfield, where
Clemens and Warner were waiting on the platform to “join their guests, and go with them the rest of the short
journey.” Clemens, “with his waving, undulating motion,” approached and said:
On 6 March, Edward Askew Sothern (1826–81), an English comedian, was one day short of completing a
three-week engagement at the Boston Theatre, most of the time in his famous role of Lord Dundreary (a witless peer) in Tom
Taylor’s Our American Cousin, which he had been playing and elaborating since 1858. By 5 March,
when he was one of Clemens’s competitors for the attention of the Boston public, he had switched to another of his regular
roles, Sam Slingsly in John Oxenford’s Brother Sam. (That morning Sothern gave a breakfast at the
Parker House for Aldrich and Howells, among others.) It is not known whether Clemens attended Aldrich’s lunch before
returning to Hartford on Friday (Greenslet, 102–3, 109;
“Amusements,” Boston Evening Transcript, 13 Feb–7 Mar 74; “A
Breakfast by Mr. Sothern,” Boston Globe, 6 Mar 74, 4).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 2
On 2 March Aldrich wrote from Elmwood, James Russell Lowell’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, home, which the Aldriches leased
from July 1872 until July 1874, while Lowell was in Europe (CU-MARK):
Click to add citation to My Citations.
Source text(s):MS, the copy received, a telegram blank filled out by the receiving telegraph operator, Houghton Library, Harvard
University (MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1784 [98]).
Previous publication:
L6, 61–62; MTHL, 1:15.
Provenance:see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.
