To Robert Watt
15 July 1874 and 16 July 1874 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: Boolsen, UCCL 01111)

July 15, 1874.

Robt. Watt, Esq1
Dr Sir:

The book has come to hand—for which I thank you very heartily—& as heartily also for the pleasant letter which came with it. Both gratify me, but somehow I can’t read the former; the sketches have a familiar look, but their meaning is hidden from me in their foreign garb. You must have a marvelous familiarity with our language (& its inner spirit) to be able to transport ‸(slang & all,)‸ Buck Fanshaw’s Funeral into another tongue in the form of a body with a soul in it & not a lifeless carcass. It seems incredible. I shall put the Danish edition away among my keepsakes. My remote posterity will find it & think I was a very learned man & wrote books in foreign tongues.2

My study is a hundred yards from the house (babies & cats there,) but I will look for a photograph when I go to dinner. I do not think there is one on the place—& I shall be very sorry if that is the case. But if I find one it will go in this letter—otherwise you will know I failed in my quest.3

I have just finished ‸writing‸ a 5-act drama for an American comedian, & I may have one or two copies printed to place among my “archives”—& if I do I will send you one. I think there is one very good comedy character in it——there, that is not a modest thing to say.4

With many thanks,

Yrs Truly

Samℓ L. Clemens

[on a separate page accompanying the enclosed photograph:] 5

My Dear Mr. Watt:

There is a trifle too much “style” in the attitude for a plain man like me, but the photographer did it.

Ys Truly

Samℓ. L. Clemens

July 16/74.

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK):

UCLC31991

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Watt (1837–94) was a world traveler, journalist, and author. In 1866, after four years’ residence in Australia and a stint as a travel correspondent, he founded the Copenhagen Figaro, which in 1868 became the Dagens nyheder [The Day’s News], and which he continued to edit, while also producing travel books and literary translations, until 1871. In that year he made a tour of the United States, which included a trip up the Mississippi. Returning to Denmark, he added to his list of travel writings and translations, and in 1876 became director of the Copenhagen Folketeatret.

Watt seems to have been well equipped for the business of interpreting the New World to the Old. He had traveled a great deal and knew the ways of the world. He could speak the English language. His writing had descriptive qualities; he had imagination and a sense of humor; and his statements of fact were usually accurate, though he may have been too credulous and have painted the West in too rosy a hue. His own observations are given with sympathy and understanding and with unfailing good humor. (Hodnefield, 156)

Watt’s translation of Poe, Phantastiske fortællinger [Fantastic Short Stories], appeared in 1868. The translation of Harte he alluded to has not been identified, but he ultimately published several volumes of Harte’s work (see 26 Jan 75 to Watt, n. 2). His two volumes of Thackeray, Udvalgte arbeider [Selected Works], appeared in 1874–75. The book Watt sent to Clemens through the Danish consulate was Udvalgte skitser [Selected Sketches], published in 1874. Despite his claim that it was a translation of works brought from America, it comprised selections from Mark Twain’s Sketches, published in London by Routledge in 1872, as well as extracts from the 1872 Routledge edition of Roughing It, among them “Buck Fanshaw’s funeral” (volume 2, chapter 2; chapter 47 in the American edition). Both books were technically protected by British copyright, which was recognized under Danish law. The entire pamphlet (réclame) of translated reviews that Watt enclosed is transcribed in Scandinavian Press Reviews (Hodnefield, 155; “Notes,” Nation 16 [10 Apr 73]: 258, and 19 [10 Dec 74]: 382; SLC 1872 [MT01064], 1872 [MT01060]; Copinger, 108, 226–27, 242).

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2 The book Clemens received does not survive in the Mark Twain Papers.

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3 Evidently no photographs of the study were yet available, but Clemens soon had some taken, prints of which he sent to Watt, probably in the fall or winter of 1874 (see 29 July 74 to OC, n. 2, 4 Sept 74 to Brown, and 26 Jan 75 to Watt, n. 2).

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4 Clemens had recently, or was just about to, come to terms with the actor, John T. Raymond, who was to play the “one very good comedy character” in his dramatization of The Gilded Age. He never had the play printed (see 22? July 74 to Howells and 26 Jan 75 to Watt). Amanuensis acting copies of two versions of it, in different hands but both titled Colonel Sellers. A Drama in Five Acts, survive in the Mark Twain Papers. The notes and revisions in them, which pertain chiefly to staging, were not by Clemens. (Thomason, 72–73, 86–87, 101–2, 253, 566–77, attributes these mistakenly to Clemens.) A third amanuensis copy survives in the Library of Congress, which granted Clemens Copyright No. 9490E on 20 July 1874 (Dramatic Compositions, 1:375; SLC 1874). For a text providing “basic access to the play,” derived from these documents, see Thomason, 100–235, and Thomason and Quirk, 113–51.

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5 A print of the same photograph Clemens had sent to Lilian Aldrich on 9 March 1874 (see the textual commentary).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS facsimile. The editors have not seen the MS, which was owned by Robert Watt Boolsen (of Copenhagen, Denmark), who provided a photocopy to the Mark Twain Papers. The enclosed photograph survives with the letter, but cannot be reproduced here, since the original is no longer available.

Previous publication: L6, 188–90.

Provenance:The MS evidently remained in Robert Watt’s family.