My Dear Cousin:
Bless you, don’t worry about those ancient poems—because they will [“keep.” ]My mother is the only antiquary in the [tribe, ]so you may expect her to hurry you up, but I am always [serene ]
You mention some more [relatives, ] [& ]the very day your letter [came ]my ancient [friend ]Watterson of the Louisville [Courier-Journal ]wrote to say his mother was a Lampton & [cousin ]to [my mother who ]was a Kentucky Lampton.1 And to think that only six short months [ago ]I [hadn’t ]a relative in the world to borrow money from. Truly the goodness of God is [beyond ]understanding.
. . . .
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Source text(s):| P1 | Wall, 23 |
| P2 | TS (CU-MARK) |
Previous publication:
L6, 277.
Provenance:In 1941 the MS, already incomplete, belonged to Emma Parish’s
nephew, G. E. Heller (a senator in the Virginia legislature). By 1950 the MS
was on display in the Bedford County Museum, of which Mrs. Heller was
curator; its present location is not known.
Emendations, adopted readings, and textual notes:
No copy-text. The text is based on two transcripts, each of which derives independently from the MS:
Elizabeth Baskerville Wall transcribed the MS in 1941 and published it in the Roanoke (Virginia) Times (P1). (Her article included one other letter to Parish, written on 19 or 20 November 1874.) In 1950 the MS was transcribed by Kenneth E. Crouch, who provided a TS (P2) to the Mark Twain Papers. Crouch described the MS as “written on monogrammed stationery with letters or initials SLC and engraved Farmington Avenue, Hartford.”
Adopted readings followed by ‘(C)’ are editorial emendations of the source readings.
slc/mt
(C) •
[reported, not
quoted; monogram text adopted from 10 Nov 74 to
Finlay]
(P2);
[not in]
(P1)
farmington avenue, hartford. (P2) • Farmington Avenue, Hartford, Connecticut. (P1)
Nov. 10 (P2) • [not in] (P1)
“keep.” (P1) • “keep”. (P2)
tribe, (P2) • tribe‸
serene. (P2) • serene! (P1)
relatives, (P2) • relatives‸ (P2)
& (P2) • and [here and hereafter] (P1)
came (P2) • came, (P1)
friend (P2) • friend, (P1)
Courier-Journal (P2) • Courier Journal (P1)
cousin (P2) • a cousin (P1)
my mother who (P2) • his mother (P1)
ago (P2) • ago, (P1)
hadn’t (P2) • didn’t have (P1)
beyond (P1) • big and (P2)
