|
If she miscarries, please return to “Mark Twain,” Buffalo. |
‸{Extra [stamps on the other side may ] be sent to the Conscience Fund, [to pay ] for all these outside [remarks.}].‸ Personal, Private & |
|
| [cross-written:] Send me a copy of that thief’s advertisement, Frank, so that I shall have documentary evidence against him. |
Gov. Frank Fuller Girard House Philadelphia. |
|
Click to add citation to My Citations.
Buf. May 21.
Dear Frank:
You are the infernallest pleaseantest scribbler that lives. I want to say that & clinch it, before I proceed to business.
No sir—I won’t lecture for a level year from this day & date.1 The very best lecture manager in America without any exception will pay me five thousand dollars a month, one half in advance, to talk for him. & the other payments daily or weekly, as I chose, ‸(just note the grammatical flourishes, as you go along)‸—& I had the nerve to [refuse!2 Therefore, ]seal thy lips upon the good old lectureing business, for there is hardly enough money in America to coax the subscriber on to the platform. Avaunt & quit me sight!
Now look here—why did n’t you know enough to send me name & address of the hound who announces “Mark Twain’s New Papers”3—or did you want to go there & eat him yourself? Go straight & get his name & number—& show him this letter [ n ] & notify the son of a prostitute to take in that sign.
Watch “John Quill, .” & just haze him once He will probably know enough to not let on that he is the party I am refer to.4
No—I don’t write for anything but Express & Galaxy—& publish books nowhere outside of Hartford. Oh, I’ll make him ‸that “New Papers” man‸ famous! Hurry & send me his name & address so that I can publish him.
Have ordered our Weekly sent regularly to—
“Gov. Frank Fuller,
Girard House, Phila.”
You can stand it, I know, for I shan’t write for it very often.
Well I would like to see you, you stately old fool!
Yrs always
Mark
{
[postmarked:] buffalo n.y. may 21
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Click to add citation to My Citations. 1
Clemens’s resolve wavered in October, but he did not return to the lecture circuit until October 1871 (9 Oct 70 to Redpath; 10 June 71 to Redpath and Fall; 16 Oct 71
to OLC).
given up lecturing for the present, although overrun with offers. I suppose you [have] known
that $50 per night are the usual terms of ordinary lecturers. Those of the “upper crust”
get $100 a night. But Philadelphia recently offered our California humorist $225 a night for any
reasonable number of nights! (“Letter from Washington,” Sacramento Union, 19
July 70, 1) In 1871 Pugh paid Clemens $250 for a single lecture in Philadelphia (11 Mar 70 to Church, n. 2; 14 Nov 70 to Pugh, n. 1; 10 June 71 to Redpath and Fall, n. 4).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 2
These terms greatly exceed Clemens’s usual fee of $75 or $100 per lecture. The offer may
have come from Thomas B. Pugh, manager of the Star Course of Lectures and Concerts in Philadelphia, for on 5 July the
Washington correspondent of the Sacramento Union interviewed Clemens and reported that he had
Click to add citation to My Citations. 4
See 26 Apr 70 to Fuller, n. 4.
Source text(s):MS of letter, collection of Todd M. Axelrod; MS of envelope, collection of Victor and Irene Murr Jacobs, Roesch
Library, University of Dayton (ODaU). The envelope is torn, obliterating a
few words, characters, and punctuation marks. See the illustration below, editorially reconstructed.
Previous publication:
L4, 133–135; letter only, AAA 1924, lot 66, excerpt;
Anderson Galleries 1928, lot 55, brief paraphrase.
Provenance:The letter MS was sold in 1924 by an unidentified owner, possibly a “Prominent Pennsylvania
Collector”; in 1928 it was sold again in the liquidation sale of the George D. Smith Book Company. Probably
between 1936 and 1942 George Brownell saw either the MS or a lost transcription of it and made the typescript now at WU (see
Brownell Collection in Description of Provenance). The MS was acquired by Axelrod in 1983. There is no known record of the
envelope before it became part of the Jacobs Collection, where it has remained at least since 1981.
Letter of 21 May 1870 to Frank Fuller. The torn envelope, with missing words editorially reconstructed (ODaU).
Emendations and textual notes:
refuse! Therefore • refus!—|Therefore
n • [partly formed]
stamps on the other side may •
sta[m
] other side []
[torn]
to pay •
[] pay [torn]
remarks.} • remarks.[}] [torn]
Confidential • Confidentia[l] [torn]
