Mark Twain Project :: Letters :: : an electronic text

To Thomas Bailey Aldrich
18 December 1874 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: VtMiM, UCCL 01166)

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slc farmington avenue, hartford.

Dec. 18.

My Dear Aldrich:

I read the Cloth of Gold through, coming down in the cars, & it is just lightning poetry—a thing which it gravels me to say because my own efforts in that line have remained so persistently unrecognized, in consequence of the envy & jealousy of this generation.1 Baby Bell always seemed perfection, before, but now that I have children it has got even beyond that. About the hour that I was reading it in the cars, Twichell was reading it at home & forthwith fell upon me with a burst of enthusiasm about it when I saw him. This was pleasant, because he has long been a lover of it.2

“Thos. Bailey Aldrich responded” etc., “in one of the brightest speeches of the evening.”

That is what the Tribune correspondent says. And that is what everybody that heard it said. Therefore, you keep still. Don’t ever be so wise unwise as to go on trying to unconvince these people.3

I’ve been skating around the place all day with some girls, with Mrs. Clemens in the window to do the applause. There would be a power of fun in [ na ]skating if you could do it with somebody else’s [muscles. There ]are about twenty boys booming by the house, now, & it is mighty good to look at.4

I’m keeping you in mind you see, in the matter of photographs. I have a couple to enclose in this letter & I want you to say you got them & then I shall know I have been a good, truthful child.5

I am going to send more, as I ferret them out, about the [place. And ]I won’t forget that you are a “subscriber.”6

The wife & I unite in warm regards to you & Mrs. Aldrich.

Ys Ever

S. L. Clemens

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens read Aldrich’s recently published Cloth of Gold and Other Poems while returning to Hartford on the morning of 16 December. Aldrich inscribed his gift copy, “Unalterably, T. B. A. | Boston | Dec. 1874” (Gribben, 1:15). Clemens’s “own efforts in that line” were few: see 24 Oct 74 to Howells (2nd), n. 2.

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2 In one of his first letters to Aldrich, in 1871, Clemens recalled a boisterous Virginia City recitation of the sentimental “Ballad of Babie Bell,” originally published in 1855 (see L4, 317). The poem was included as “Baby Bell” in Cloth of Gold (Thomas Bailey Aldrich 1874, 91–96). In an Autobiographical Dictation of 3 July 1908, Clemens remarked:

Aldrich was never widely known; his books never attained to a wide circulation; his prose was diffuse, self-conscious, and barren of distinction in the matter of style; his fame as a writer of prose is not considerable; his fame as a writer of verse is also very limited, but such as it is it is a matter to be proud of. It is based not upon his output of poetry as a whole but upon half-a-dozen small poems which are not surpassed in our language for exquisite grace and beauty and finish. These gems are known and admired and loved by the one person in ten thousand who is capable of appreciating them at their just value. (CU-MARK, in MTE, 293)

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3 The unidentified “occasional correspondent” of the New York Tribune, in a lengthy report of the Atlantic dinner, remarked, “Thomas Bailey Aldrich responded to the toast, ‘The Theory of Short Stories,’ in one of the brightest speeches of the evening” (“A Dinner on Parnassus,” 18 Dec 74, 3). In an Autobiographical Dictation of April 1904, Clemens recalled telling Robert Louis Stevenson that no man, “ancient or modern,” was in Aldrich’s class as a talker, and

that Aldrich was always witty, always brilliant, if there was anybody present capable of striking his flint at the right angle; that Aldrich was as sure and prompt and unfailing as the red hot iron on the blacksmith’s anvil—you had only to hit it competently to make it deliver an explosion of sparks. I added—

“Aldrich has never had his peer for prompt and pithy and witty and humorous sayings. None has equalled him, certainly none has surpassed him, in the felicity of phrasing with which he clothed these children of his fancy. Aldrich was always brilliant, he couldn’t help it, he is a fire-opal set round with rose diamonds; when he is not speaking, you know that his dainty fancies are twinkling and glimmering around in him; when he speaks the diamonds flash. Yes, he was always brilliant, he will always be brilliant; he will be brilliant in hell—you will see.” (CU-MARK, in MTA, 1:247–48)

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4 The Clemenses’ house overlooked the north branch of the Park River (Van Why, 5).

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5 Neither of Clemens’s photographic enclosures is known to survive. The image of himself may have been the same one he had sent to Miller on 2? December. For the probable image of the Hartford house, see 26? Jan 75 to Brush.

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6 Aldrich replied (the ellipses in the first paragraph are his; CU-MARK):

UCLC32082

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Aldrich may have alluded to Life in New York! (New York: Collin and Small, 1872), a booklet containing two humorous sketches, “Searching for the White Elephant” and “Kicked into Good Luck.” Fifty-one-year-old Henry Houghton was “that cheerful old death’s head,” who, at the Atlantic dinner, presided from the head of the table while Howells, Aldrich, and Clemens were seated at the foot. Also mentioned were dinner guests Sanborn and Perry, and Clemens’s letter of 20 Nov 74 to Howells (1st), which Howells had shared (see 20 Nov 74 to Howells [2nd], n. 1; Lathrop). Sometime later, Clemens made the following note, which he kept with Aldrich’s letter (CU-MARK):

From Thos. Bailey Aldrich the poet.

————

In Boston he had abused me for never sending him any photographs of myself. I came home & put up 52 different specimens in 52 envelops & began to mail one daily to him. In this letter he has not yet discovered the joke.

S. L. C.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont (VtMiM).

glyph Previous publication: L6, 321–24; MTL, 1:239–40.

glyph Provenance:The MS has been at VtMiM since at least 1941.

glyph Emendations and textual notes:

na • [possibly ‘no’]

muscles. There • muscles.—|There

place. And • place.—|And