To Tom Taylor
5 January 1874 • London, England
(Sturdevant, 8, UCCL 01034)

The Langham HotelJan. 5

My Dear Sir:

I called the other day at your home, for I very much wanted to apologize for my conduct, but you were out. I confessed to Mrs. Taylor, but I forgot to mention what was my best excuse; & that was that, after spending Christmas in Salisbury (my only opportunity to see the Cathedral) I was persuaded to go to Ventnor in the Isle of Wight, being assured that I could get a train that would bring me home early enough on Monday to meet my appointment. They called me at 6 in the morning to take an 8-o’clock train (there is something awful about getting up in the night that way)—but after all the train was so delayed that I arrived too late to venture upon meeting my appointment.

As I leave here on the 7th, the opportunity has gone by to speak to you upon the business I had in mind, of course, but I trust that it can never be too late for an erring man to offer an honest apology for his misdeeds—& this I am now moved to do, hoping that the author of the only play I ever appeared in on any stage will forgive a fault born of native heedlessness, not bad intent.1

Very truly yrs,

Samuel L. Clemens

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 Clemens spent Christmas in Salisbury with Stoddard, where they were entertained by William Blackmore, a wealthy capitalist and amateur anthropologist. Returning late on Monday, 29 December, he missed an appointment with Taylor, a successful author and adaptor of over seventy works for the stage. Clemens evidently wanted advice about dramatizing The Gilded Age (L5, 534–35, 538–39, 541). The dramatic performance he alluded to has not been identified. In 1876 he reported that his first such experience was in Hartford on 26 April of that year, when he played a comic role in an amateur production of James Robinson Planché’s Loan of a Lover. Albert Bigelow Paine called that “his first public appearance on the dramatic stage” (MTB, 2:570; 22 Apr 76 to Howells, NN-B, in MTHL, 1:129–30).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

Sturdevant, 8.

Previous publication: L6, 10; Sotheby 1962, lot 249, excerpt.

Provenance:The MS, offered for sale in July 1962, was owned by James R. Sturdevant of Ohio Wesleyan University in December 1962.