To
Charles Warren Stoddard
25 August 1869 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(Transcript and paraphrase: Freeman 1936, lot 68, UCCL 00340)
(SUPERSEDED)
. . . .
I have written Bret that we must have the “Overland,” see that he sends it, will you?1 You speak of Mr. Stebbins. He came within an ace of breaking off my marriage by saying to the gentleman instructed by “her” father to call on him [&] inquire into my character, that “Clemens is a humbug—shallow & superficial—a man who has talent, no doubt, but will make a trivial & possibly a worse use of it—a man whose life promised little & has accomplished less—a humbug, Sir, a humbug”2 ... The friends that I had referred to in California said with one accord that I got drunk oftener than was necessary & that I was wild & Godless, idle, lecherous & a discontented & unsettled rover & they could not recommend any girl of high character & social position to marry me—but as I had already said all that about myself beforehand there was nothing shocking or surprising about it to the family.3 [paraphrase: He continues regarding a lecture program and mentions his lecture on the Sandwich Island[s], etc.]4
. . . .
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
The Eastern press are unanimous in their
commendation of your new magazine. Every paper and every periodical
has something to say about it, and they lavish compliments upon it
with a heartiness that is proof that they mean what they say. Even
the Nation, that is seldom satisfied with
anything, takes frequent occasion to demonst[r]ate that
it is sati[s]fied with the Overland. And every now and then, it and the other critical
reviews of acknowledged authority, take occasion to say that Bret
Harte’s sketch of the “Luck of Roaring
Camp” is the best prose magazine article that has seen
the light for many months on either side of the ocean. They never
mention who wrote the sketch, of course (and I only guess at it),
for they do not know. The Overland keeps its
contributors’ names in the dark. Harte’s name
would be very familiar in the land but for this. However, the
magazine itself is well known in high literary circles. I have heard
it handsomely praised by some of the most ponderous of
America’s literary chiefs; and they displayed a
complimentary and appreciative familiarity with Harte’s
articles, and those of [Noah] Brooks, Sam. Williams,
[William Chauncey] Bartlett, etc. (SLC 1869 [MT00767]) Harte evidently did arrange for the magazine to be sent to the Buffalo
Express: on 13 September the paper reprinted
most of his incisive comments on Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s
The Gates Ajar (1868) from the current issue
(Harte 1869, 293–94).
It was likely Clemens himself who observed that the “book
notices of the Overland Monthly, of San
Francisco, have achieved a celebrity which is great in America and still
greater in England, as models of piquancy, critical analysis and
felicitous English” (SLC 1869 [MT00822]).
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L3, 320–321; see copy-text; and LLMT, 58, excerpt.
Provenance:The present location of the MS, part of the Charles T. Jeffery Collection
before its sale in 1936, is not known.
Emendations and textual notes:
Buffalo, August 25th • [reported, not quoted]
Charlie— • Charlie.
& • and [also at 320.8, 9, 10, 12 (twice), 13 (‘& a’ and ‘& unsettled’)]
