Hartford Jan. 12.
My Dear Howells:1
We mustn’t give up the New Orleans trip. Mrs. Clemens would gladly go if her strength would permit, but can’t Mrs. Howells go anyway? I think she would find it very pleasant. I know she would. We can put off New Orleans until March 1st, & then that would do in place of Bethlehem. You just persuade her.
We are expecting the furniture for one of the guest rooms in a few days. When it comes can’t you & Mrs. Howells run down here for 3 or 4 days & have a talk about this matter? [ Woul ] We would go to Boston but for the fact that we are not foot-free now; at least she ain’t, on account of having to see to little odds & ends of settling every day or so—nothing of much consequence, but just enough to make her presence in a manner necessary; so she begs & I beg that the Howellses will come to us in place of our attempting to get to Boston. Now do try to come.
Ys Ever
Mark.
I know how we can make our expenses going to N. O., but you’d just lose money going to Beth.
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Howells’s “colossal work of the imagination” was the book version of A Foregone Conclusion. The “Toronto letter” might have been an offer from an unidentified
Canadian publisher (see 27 Aug 75 to Bliss). It and “the
accompanying taunt” were part of an unrecovered letter, possibly dated 9 January, in which Clemens proposed simultaneous
English publication of “Old Times on the Mississippi” in Temple Bar magazine, and
reported on his earnings from the Gilded Age play (see 15 Jan 75 to Howells, n. 4). That letter also might have included his response to a compliment Howells had
passed along: in a 5 January business letter, novelist John W. De Forest had advised Howells: “By the way, tell Mark
Twain to try pathos now & then. His ‘True Story,’—the story of the old
negress,—was a really great thing, amazingly natural & humorous, & touching even to the drawing of
tears” (CU-MARK). Howells underlined the passage before sending De
Forest’s letter to Clemens on 8 January, evidently without a cover letter of his own. Howells’s suggestion of
a New Orleans trip had fallen on Clemens’s receptive ears when they were in Boston for the 15 December Atlantic Monthly dinner.
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L6, 348–49; MTHL, 1:58–59.
Provenance:see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
Woul • [‘l’ partly formed]
