To William Dean Howells
10 May 1874 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: MH-H, UCCL 01088)

‸P. S. Do not fail to note the hopeful, glad-hearted, school-boy cheeriness which bubbles out of every pore of this man who has been ALWAYS a failure.‸

May, [ 11 10 ].

My Dear Howells:

I am so strongly tempted to afford you & Mrs. Howells a glimpse of my brother’s last, (just received), that I can’t resist.1

You observe that he is afraid the interest might fall in arrears, so he pays it some weeks ahead of time.

You perceive that he is still in some way connected with that infamous Tennessee land which has been our bete destruction for 40 years (see opening chapters of Gilded Age—my brother is “Lafayette Hawkins.”)2

The “Mr. Stotts” whom Orion refers to is his old father-in-law, aged 75; “Mollie” is Orion’s wife; “Ann” is her old sister—middle-aged. ‸, & pretty [ratty ] ‸ [in margin: “Marshall” is a sentimental Keokuk lawyer.] 3

I will remark that no member of the Clemens tribe ever writes a letter without enclosing in it a newspaper scrafp or two—& these scraps, never by any accident contain anything inteerresting.

Ys Ever

Mark.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 See the previous letter, n. 1.

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2 The undeveloped and unprofitable land in Tennessee which Clemens’s father had acquired around 1830 had long been a source of frustration for his family (see 11 July 74 to JLC, n. 8). On 25 October 1874 Orion wrote to his mother and sister about ongoing attempts to capitalize on the property, reporting that he had summarized his brother’s attitude toward it for an interested party:

I explained to him in connection with my having no money, why Sam stood aloof; that he had become disgusted with my management of our Tennessee lands, would not allow them to be talked or written about in the family, had put me (as “Washington”) and the Tennessee lands in the “Gilded Age,” and now had the Tennessee lands on the stage. (CU-MARK)

Orion correctly identified his Gilded Age counterpart as Washington Hawkins. Clemens changed the character’s first name to “Lafayette” in his dramatic version of the novel, which he was now writing.

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3 S. T. Marshall had been a Keokuk attorney at least since the late 1850s. Also mentioned were Mollie Clemens’s sister, Ann E. Stotts Riffley (b. 1826), and father, William Stotts (1799–1888), an early settler of Keokuk (OC 1856, 84; 1857, 47; MEC, 19; N&J3, 254 n. 88).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1784 [98]).

Previous publication: L6, 145–146; MTHL, 1:16–17.

Provenance:see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

11 10 • 110

ratty • r ratty [corrected miswriting].