To Emma Parish
20 September 1874 • Hartford, Conn.
(Memphis Commercial Appeal, date unknown, UCCL 01126)

[Sept. 20. ]

My dear cousin:

I got your letter in New York [& ] I hoped to reply before you got away to school;1 but I was bringing out a play at the Park Theater & for a week I had to go every morning & stand on the stage & help the actors at the rehearsals, two or three hours, & then put in the rest of the day at various kinds of business—among others helping my wife select carpets & furniture coverings for our new house.

We got home yesterday afternoon after a five months’ absence & find the house still full of carpenters & plumbers’ noises. However, the workmen themselves are all on the first floor; so we have taken up quarters on the second story, sleeping in a guest room, eating in a nursery & using my study for a [parlor —making the suite habitable & comfortable by ] using odds & ends of furniture that belong everywhere else in the house. And we are comfortable—when the banging of the hammers stops for a [while. ]

One of these days we hope to see everything finished & done & then if you will run up & give us the pleasure of your company for a spell we will do the best we know how to make you happy—& increase your [flesh. ] Nobody can promise fairer than that.

Our luggage is still in such confusion that I cannot find a picture of Mrs. Clemens but pictures of Susie are lavishly abundant.2 We have no picture of our new [baby. ]

[I ] enclose some newspaper extracts. I have not read them yet—so if they are not complimentary you will see that I am bold to send them: & if they are complimentary you will see that I am modest, since I don’t know what they contain. I haven’t had time to read them yet but will by & by.3

And now I will say good-bye, my dear cousin, until I hear from you again which I hope will be soon.

. . . .

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 Parish’s letter has not been found.

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2 Clemens presumably enclosed the unidentified photograph of Susy by Van Aken (4 Sept 74 to Brown, n. 6).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

3 Clemens had read at least some of the reviews of the Gilded Age play, but it is not known which he sent to Parish (18 Sept 74 to Stillson; 20 Sept 74 to Howells).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

Transcript in “Intimate Letters of Mark Twain 60 Years Ago to Arkansan Revealed,” Memphis Commercial Appeal of unknown date. This article, written by Jeannette Blount and headed “Marianna Ark., July 9,” was published sometime in the early 1930s (see below). Copy-text is a photocopy of the newspaper in the Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK). This photocopy was provided by Cyril Clemens, who preserved a clipping of the article in a scrapbook. Although visible at the top of the photocopy are the printed words “Monday morning” and the handwritten date “7–10–33,” the only available microfilm of the Memphis Commercial Appeal for Monday, 10 July 1933, did not contain this article, nor did any other issue in July 1933. The actual date of the clipping has not been discovered. Two lines in the transcription are damaged and illegible; the text has been emended from a TS in CU-MARK, which was probably made by Dixon Wecter in the 1940s from an undamaged copy of the newspaper.

Previous publication: L6, 236–237.

Provenance:When the Commercial Appeal published the letter, it belonged to Mrs. J. O. Thompson of Aubrey, Lee County, Arkansas (Emma Parish’s niece). It was reportedly destroyed in 1986 when Mrs. Thompson died (Thomason, 326).

Emendations and textual notes:

Sept. 20. • [reported, not quoted]

& • and [here and hereafter]

parlor . . . by • par-| [ ] habitable and []ortable [] [damaged; text adopted from TS in CU-MARK]

while. • while. | [rule] | An Invitation.

flesh. • flesh. (Mrs. Cole was more interested in reducing.)

baby. • baby. (The new baby was Clara, now Madame Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch.)

I • In