To James Redpath
15 September 1871 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: NN-B, UCCL 02457)

Dear Redpath:

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We don’t want it mentioned, but we take up our permanent residence in Hartford the last day of this month,1 & so I shall set start from there when I go lecturing. Now if I am engaged to lecture in Buffalo, & you can very quietly get me released from it, I wish you would do your level best to accomplish it. I mortally hate that G.A.R. there, & I don’t doubt they’ve heir hired me. I once gave them a packed house, free of charge, & they never even had the common politeness to thank me.2 They left me to shift for myself, too, a la [Bret Hart] at Harvard.3 Get me rid of Buffalo. Otherwise I shall have ‸no‸ resource left [ B ] but to get sick the ni day I am to lecture there, & remunerate them for my absence. I can get sick, easily enough, by the simple process of saying the word [ B ]——well, never mind what [word. I] am not going to lecture there. But possibly I am not booked for B.—am I?4

Say, Redpath, I wish you would notify all my list that I have no lecture on Boy’s Suffrage; & that wherever I find myself advertised for it I shall feel myself released from my engagement & at liberty to travel on. They can’t “play me for a Chinaman” again, they way they did on that California lecture. I will not lecture if advertised for any but my present lecture.5 When you make out my list of places, please send one to my publisher, E. Bliss, Jr. 149 Asylum st Hartford, for I have to read proof half the winter.

Ys

Mark

My Hartford address will be, “Nook Farm,” Hartford—it is John Hooker’s place. Have leased it while I build.6

Where am I on last lecture in January? Then I can tell you about Utica & Paterson.7

Ys

Mark.

Remember home will then be Hartford.

[boston lyceum bureau. redpath & fall. sep 20 1871] [and] Twain Mark. | Elmira N.Y. | Sept. 15th ”71.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens’s imminent move to Hartford had already been reported in several papers, beginning with the New York Tribune: “Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) has purchased a house, and gone to live permanently in Hartford, Conn. That pleasant capital has long been a favorite place of residence for persons who have retired from active business” (“Personal” 31 Aug 71, 5). The Hartford Courant, possibly at Clemens’s instigation, issued a denial: “An item is going the rounds of the newspapers that Mark Twain has purchased a house in this city for a permanent residence. He was here a month, leaving a few days ago, attending to matters connected with the publication of his new book, ‘The Innocents at Home,’ which is to be brought out by the American Publishing company of this city, but he has not bought a house here as the papers state” (“Brief Mention,” 2 Sept 71, 2). The actual move—to a rented house—did not take place until early October (see note 6 and 3 Oct 71 to OC, n. 1).

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2 In his only Buffalo performance to date, on 15 March 1870, Clemens had shared the platform with an English elocutionist, Henry Nichols, “under the auspices of Post Chapin No. 2” of the Grand Army of the Republic. The proceeds were intended for “disabled soldiers of the late war, and the widows and orphans of those ‘boys in blue’ who gave their lives for their country” (“G. A. R.—Reading Tomorrow Evening,” Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, 14 Mar 70, 3). Clemens’s reading—the Jumping Frog story and the discussion of European guides in chapter 27 of The Innocents Abroad—was well received by an “audience uncommonly large in size and fashionable in quality,” but the behavior of his hosts had evidently so offended him that he refused an encore, and “coolly informed the assemblage that his ‘contract’ had been fulfilled, etc., etc.” (“The Readings Last Evening,” Buffalo Express, 16 Mar 70, 4; “G. A. R.—Readings Last Evening,” Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, 16 Mar 70, 3).

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3 Harte had suffered neglect at Harvard University’s Phi Beta Kappa society literary exercises on 29 June 1871. Scheduled to deliver a poem composed for the occasion, he arrived late and had to arrange for his own seat before disappointing his audience with a singularly inappropriate reading followed by a hasty departure. He later explained that he had originally been informed that the exercises were to take place at the end of July and had only accidentally learned of the actual date. He had not, therefore, been able to complete the poem he was preparing for the event and was forced to make do with the best of the unpublished ones he had at hand (“Bret Harte a ‘Fizzle,’” Hartford Times, 17 July 71, 4; Munroe).

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4 Clemens did not lecture in Buffalo during his 1871–72 tour.

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5 At Clemens’s request, the Boston Lyceum Bureau had originally advertised “The Curiosities of California” as “‘Mark Twain’s’ only lecture for the season of 1869–70.” When he substituted “Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands” only a few weeks before the season began, the bureau advertised the change. Not all local lecture societies noted it, however, and on several occasions Clemens was forced to inform audiences at the last moment (L3, 422 n. 2).

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6 Clemens had stayed with the Hookers in January 1868 and thereafter visited the family when he was in Hartford. The Clemenses leased their large Victorian Gothic house, at the corner of Forest and Hawthorn streets, paying a quarterly rent of three hundred dollars (L2, 144, 146 n. 4, 166; L3, 147 n. 1, 404; John Hooker’s receipt dated 5 Jan 72 for “quarter ending Jan. 1, 72” CU-MARK).

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7 The lecture itinerary was not yet complete (9 Oct 71 to Redpath, n. 1). Redpath had written to the Paterson lecture sponsors on 26 August, promising “Feb 1, or a date within 2 or 3 days of it[.] He may insist on closing his list in January. If so, your date wd have to be moved back a little into January” (Redpath to SLC, 18 Jan 72, CU-MARK). By early December Clemens was at least tentatively engaged to speak in Paterson on 31 January and in Utica on 2 February 1872. He kept the Paterson engagement, but did not speak in Utica (29–30 Nov 71 to Redpath and Fall, n. 1; 7 Jan 72 to Redpath, Axelrod; Redpath and Fall 1871–72, 13–16; Lecture Schedule, 1871–1872).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN-B).

Previous publication: L4, 455–456; excerpts in MTL, 1:190–91; Homer, 169; Will M. Clemens 1900, 28; American Autograph Shop, Merion Station, Pa., undated catalog, item 70, with omissions; “Letters to James Redpath,” Mark Twain Quarterly 5 (Winter–Spring 1942): 20.

Provenance:Until his death in 1939 the MS was owned by W. T. H. Howe; in 1940, the Howe Collection was purchased by Dr. Albert A. Berg and donated to NN (Cannon, 185–86). •

Emendations and textual notes:

Bret Hart • [sic]

B • [partly formed]

B • [partly formed]

word. I • word.—|I