slc/mt
Oct. 29.
My Dear Mr. Daly:
Although I am not able to write a play now, there are better men that can.1 Would it not be well worth your while to provoke W. D. Howells of the Atlantic Monthly into writing a play? My reason for making the suggestion is that I think he is writing a play. I by no means know this, but I guess it from a remark dropped by an acquaintance of his.2 I know Howells well, but he has not confided anything of the kind to me. Still I think that if you & Bronson are done with your fight (I mean the newspaper one) it would be a right good thing to hurl another candidate into the jaws of the critics.3
I am not meaning to intrude, & hope I am not.4
Ys Truly
Saml. L. Clemens.
[letter docketed:] S. J. Clemens
Explanatory Notes
There was a prevalent idea that the author of “Moorcroft” intended that his play should be a
picture of American life and manners—should be, in fact, as national as Mark Twain’s sketch of Colonel Sellers in the “Gilded Age.” If Mr. Howard had any such intention we do not think
that he has succeeded in perfecting his design. (“Music and the Drama,” 19 Oct 74, 2) The New York Tribune’s critic, possibly William Winter, remarked: A sillier play than “Moorcroft” it has never been our misfortune to witness; and we are
fully persuaded that the public understood, and will continue to understand, its silliness. It is, possibly, a trifle better than
“Saratoga,” because that play was coarsely indelicate and this one is not indelicate at all; but the same
sickening puerility of style characterizes both the plays, and in “Moorcroft” it swells and bourgeons like an
inflated cauliflower. Any talk about American Comedy, in relation to this piece, would be an impertinence to intelligent readers.
Our literature is not destitute of good comedies, as all persons know, who know anything about the subject; and, as to the
compositions of Mr. Howard, he has never written one line of comedy, and, if the quality and traits of his pieces may be accepted as
indications, he never will—for they clearly denote that he is naturally ignorant of the whole matter. (“The
Drama,” 19 Oct 74, 4) And the New York Herald reported: There is not a sparkle in it all. The comedy is the dreariest rubbish that even the modern comedy has produced,
and were it not somewhat relieved by an occasional fratricide it would be unbearable. Indeed the comedy may be said to have no
existence in this piece, for whenever it is introduced it descends into the regions of low farce or burlesque.
(“Amusements,” 18 Oct 74, 5) In announcing Moorcroft, the Herald noted that the earlier play, Saratoga, had been an “adaptation from the French” (“Musical and Dramatic
Notes,” 17 Oct 74, 7). This, as well as the negative criticism, brought an indignant letter of 19 October, published by
the Herald two days later, in which Howard denied any plagiarism. After the newspaper responded editorially,
both Howard and Daly joined battle in lengthy letters of 24 October, published the next day. Howard again denied plagiarizing, while
Daly reproached the press for not nurturing the “native drama” it claimed to want and for not applauding Moor-croft as “an effort toward a worthy end” (Howard 1874 [bib13579], 1874
[bib13580]; Augustin Daly). On 24 October Howard also wrote a long letter to the New York Tribune, published on 28 October. Responding to the Tribune’s review, he
protested its discourtesy and “use of contemptuous and insulting terms,” which he found typical of American
criticism. As documentation he produced scores of examples of the “epigrammatic violence of expression” that
critics, in Boston as well as New York, had used in deriding his plays during the previous four years (Howard 1874). (Howard wrote his letters from the Lotos Club, in New York, to which he had belonged
since 1871.) Neither his and Daly’s letters nor their revisions of Moorcroft were enough to save
it: the play closed on 31 October (Odell, 9:14–15, 536–37; “Amusements,” New York Evening Express, 19 Oct 74, 2; New York Herald: “Mr. Howard and the
Drama,” 22 Oct 74, 6; “The Origin of Howard’s ‘Saratoga,’” 24 Oct
74, 7; “American Dramatists and Managers,” 25 Oct 74, 8; “Matinees,” 31 Oct 74, 10; New
York Times: “Dramatic,” 18 Oct 74, 7; “Fifth Avenue Theatre,” 24
Oct 74, 6; “Daly’s Fifth Avenue Theatre,” 25 Oct 74, 7; Elderkin, “List of
Members,” 35, 40).
In fact, Daly had already written Howells, on 3 November. Howells replied affirmatively on 14 November, having in
mind a dramatization of his current novel, A Foregone Conclusion, as well as “a farce or vaudeville
of strictly American circumstance” (Howells 1979,
74–75). It wasn’t until 1876, however, that he submitted the farce, The Parlor Car,
which Daly accepted, but did not produce. A dramatization of the novel, not by Howells, was produced in London in 1884.
Howells’s revised version of the London play was staged several times in the United States in the middle and late 1880s,
but never by Daly and with only indifferent success (Howells: 1876; 1960, 314–37).
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L6, 263–65; Joseph Francis Daly, 147.
Provenance:deposited at ViU by Clifton Waller Barrett on 15 May 1962.
