To Thomas Bailey Aldrich
8 July 1874 • Elmira, N. Y
(MS: DLC and MH-H, UCCL 01108)

Elmira, June 8.

My Dear Aldrich:

Many thanks for the kind the kind letter.1 I have been to Hartford a week on business & returned yesterday to find that the little new baby had run down in health so seriously as to scare everybody. But she is pretty safe again, already. These little creatures go to rack & ruin in three days & then fetch up all sound again in a couple more. Mrs. Clemens is coming along most satisfactorily—which is a marvel to me, seeing that in these lately stormy weeks days she spends so much of her time under the bed, where of course the lightning cannot get at her. It must be a maj sort of majestic satisfaction to baffle & annoy a thunderbolt.2

I hoped you would send the revises, because I was afraid my marks were confusing & would inspire blunders. You say “Did the book reach you all right?” I will ask Mrs. Clemens if anything has come since [I’ve ] been gone—but I know there hasn’t, or she would have spoken of it.3

By the way: I have gathered the impression somewhere, that Howells’ son has been appointed consul at Quebec—which I’m glad of, if it’s so.4 That is, I’m glad it isn’t me.—No, ‸not that—‸I don’t seem to get it right, somehow——but I’m glad anyway.

I didn’t recognize our new house in Hartford, the other day, two months had made such charming changes in it. We take possession in September; & before very long afterward, if we furnish it this fall, the Aldriches & the Howellses have got to come down & honor us & it—this programme you will find it useless to struggle [in bottom margin: (over)] against. With the warmest regards for, & the happiest remembrances of, you & Mrs. [Adldrich. ]

Yr friend

Samℓ. L. Clemens.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens’s allusions to Aldrich’s letter, to the recent trip to Hartford, and to Clara, born on 8 June, clearly indicate that the month was July, not June. Aldrich had written (CU-MARK):

UCLC32008

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The Aldriches were moving back to their home on Charles Street, in Boston, from Elmwood, the house they had leased from James Russell Lowell. They had visited Hartford from 7 until 10 March. Aldrich seemed to allude to the Clemenses’ new baby girl as “the boy,” but he may have written or intended to write “the bay,” which was a family nickname for Clara, supplied by two-year-old Susy, as Clemens explained in 1876:

When she was an hour & 4 minutes old, she was shown to Susie. She looked like a velvet-headed grub worm squirming in a blanket—but no matter, Susie admired. She said, in her imperfect way, “Lat bay ‸(baby)‸ got boofu’ hair”—so Clara has been commonly called “Bay” to this day, but will take up her right name in time. (SLC 1876–85, 4)

The book Aldrich sent was Prudence Palfrey (see note 3).

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2 In Mark Twain’s “Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning,” published in the Atlantic Monthly for September 1880, the garrulous narrator remarks on women’s fear of lightning and describes an occasion when his wife hid in a “boot-closet” to avoid what turned out to be flashes from celebratory cannon fire. Although the McWilliamses took their surname from Clemens’s Buffalo friends John and Esther McWilliams, they were clearly based on Clemens and his wife (SLC 1880, 380, 384; L3, 316, 318 n. 3).

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3 Aldrich inscribed this copy of the recently published Prudence Palfrey: “Mark
from his friend
T. B. A.” (Gribben, 1:16). Clemens had helped him revise chapter 7, “the Montana chapter” (see 15 and 16 Mar 74, 24 Mar 74, 25 Mar 74, all to Aldrich).

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4 It was William Dean Howells’s father, not his son, who had been appointed to the Quebec consulship (21 June 74 to Howells, n. 2).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS facsimile, pages 1–2 and 4–5, is copy-text for ‘Elmira . . . thunderbolt.’ (178.1–12) and ‘has’ (178.18) to the end; the editors have not seen the MS, which is in the Roy J. Friedman Mark Twain Collection at the Library of Congress (DLC). MS, page 3, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1429 [1151–1191]), is copy-text for ‘I hoped . . . son’ (178.13–18). MS page 3 of the present letter was exchanged with page 3 from another letter as early as 1937: see the commentary for 24 Mar 74 to Aldrich.

Previous publication: L6, 178–79.

Provenance:The MS at DLC was donated by Frances R. Friedman on 15 June 1992. The MS at MH-H was deposited by Talbot Aldrich in June 1942, and donated in 1949.

Emendations and textual notes:

I’ve • I’ve | I’ve [rewritten for clarity]

Adldrich. • [possibly ‘Adldrich—’]