To the Editor of the New York Evening Post
25 June 1874 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: CLjC, UCCL 00934)

To the Editor of the Evening Post:1

Sir: In your issue of the 23d, occurs a paragraph to the effect that “[Mark Twain ] is reported to be at present engaged in writing a work on English manners & customs.”2 It is a mistake. Some day, but not just at present, I hope to write a book about England, but it will hardly bear so broad a title as the one suggested above. In such a book as that, I could not leave out the manners & customs which obtain in an English gentleman’s household without leaving out the most interesting feature of the subject;. They are the next thing to perfection; ‸admirable;‸ yet I would shrink from ‸deliberately‸ describing them in a book, for I w fear that such a course would be, after all, a violation of the liberal ‸courteous‸ hospitality which furnished me the means of doing it. There may be no serious indelicacy about eating a gentleman’s bread & then printing an appreciative & complimentary account of the [ways ] of his family, but still it is a thing which one naturally dislikes to do.

Very Respectfully,

Mark Twain.

June 25th.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Poet William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) was still active as the editor and co-owner of the Evening Post, positions he had assumed in 1829 and 1836, respectively. It is not known if Clemens was personally acquainted with him (L5, 423 n. 3).

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2 Clemens quoted the Evening Post verbatim (“Literary,” 23 June 74, 2). On 22 June the Elmira Advertiser had printed a similar item: “Mark Twain is writing an account of English manners and customs” (“Topics Uppermost,” 2). The origin of the misinformation has not been determined. Clemens may have corrected the Advertiser as well as the Evening Post, but neither paper printed a letter from him or a retraction.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, James S. Copley Library, La Jolla, California (CLjC).

Previous publication: L6, 167; AAA/Anderson 1931, lot 90, brief excerpt; Sotheby 1993, lot 253, excerpts and paraphrase.

Provenance:When offered for sale in 1968 the MS was part of the collection of Irving S. Underhill. By 1976 it belonged to Robert Daley, who sold it through Sotheby’s to CLjC in December 1993.

Emendations and textual notes:

“Mark Twain • [cut away; text adopted from New York Evening Post of 23 June 74]

ways • w ways [corrected miswriting]