To
Moncure D. Conway
5 January 1876 • Hartford, Conn.
(Postal card: Parke-Bernet, 2-3 November 1938, lot 121; and type transcript, CU-MARK, UCCL 01295)
All right. I’ve started them.1
I want you to come here again before you sail. I want you to take my new book to England, & have it published there by some one (according to your plan) before it is issued here, if you will be so good.
Yrs
S. L. C.2
[us postal card.
write the address on this side—the message on the
other]
Moncure D. Conway,
Care of J. T. Fields, Esq
148 Charles St
Boston.
[postmarked:] hartford conn. jan 5 11am
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Clemens answered the following postcard, sent on 4 January (CU-MARK): Please express my overshoes to care of James T. Fields 148 Charles St Boston. I will get them if sent at once M D Conway Conway had left his overshoes after his three-day stay
at the Clemens home at the end of December 1875 (see L6, 599–601). Fields was the author and retired Boston
publisher.
Conway replied (CU-MARK): 148 Charles St Boston Jan. 5 My dear Clemens, I am in luck. Just as I have got your kind postcard asking me to come again, I receive also an invitation to lecture three times—in—in Now your dear wife, just because she is Amiability slightly disguised in flesh & blood, shall not be imposed upon by another long visit. It is probable that between 18th & 22d I shall be lecturing somewhere else (I hope in New Haven). But I think you & she must prepare yourselves for some further invasion of your household. I hope you are diligently mastering that Dissenters' trouble of yours (which reminds me of the man who entered a bookshop & asked for Pepys' Diarhee. We will talk over the book when we meet in the intervals of b-ll-r-ds. By the way, we think b—ds a good Sunday pastime in London—especially holy (perhaps because our tables have holes)—but I suppose that at Farmington we should make the old Puritan gods turn over in their graves by the click of anything that did not give pain. Ever yours M D Conway Overshoes received Sponsored by Hartford’s Unitarian Society,
Conway lectured at Allyn Hall on “Demonology, or the Natural History of the
Devil,” “Science and Religion in England,” and
“Oriental
Religions; Their Origin and Progress” on 18, 22, and
23 January, respectively, staying with the Clemenses while he was in
Hartford. The book Clemens wanted Conway to offer to an English publisher
was
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
, the American edition of
which was in production at the American Publishing Company in Hartford.
For Conway’s own gloss of “Dissenters’
trouble,” see L6, 600–1. The famous diary that Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) began keeping
in shorthand in 1659 was first deciphered and published in part in 1825
(Hartford Courant:
“Amusements,” 17 Jan 1876, 2; “The Devil:
Mr. Conway’s Lecture on Demonology,” 19 Jan 1876, 1,
4; “Mr. Conway’s Lectures,” 24 Jan 1876,
1; L6, 585–86; Pepys 1825).
In Hartford!! (I couldn't utter that in a calm voice) The time set for my first lecture is the 18th of this month, and the other two are Jan. 22 & 23.
Source text(s):Previous publication:
MicroPUL, reel 1.
Provenance:
The typed transcript in CU-MARK indicates that the MS was at one time in the Justin Turner Collection.
Emendations and textual notes:
us postal card. write the address on this side—the message on the other • [fourteen words not in; adopted from 1 Jan 1876 to Howells (UCCL 00849)]
