1

Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK):

UCLC 32295

In his letter Conway alluded to the “Centennial Continental Costume Party” held at Pike’s Opera House in Cincinnati on Washington’s birthday, 22 February, as a benefit for the Mount Vernon Association. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, the pageant and dance, at which the participants wore historical ball costumes and military uniforms, was “the most notable society event in Cincinnati=s history, and before its splendor the ball to the Prince of Wales pales in splendor” (Cincinnati Enquirer: “Amusements,” 22 Feb 1876, 5; “Our Meschienza,” 23 Feb 1876, 8). Conway also mentioned his father, Walker Peyton Conway (1805-84), a Virginia landowner, legislator, and judge; Horace Cornwall (1818-1904), former Connecticut state’s attorney and U.S. district attorney, and an officer of the Unitarian Society, sponsor of Conway’s Hartford lectures; and his wife, Lucy Deming Cornwall (d. 1883) (Conway 1904, 10, 14-15; Hayden 1891, 285-86; Hartford Courant: “Marriages,” 4 Jan 1847, 2; “The Unitarian Society,” 17 May 1875, 2; “Deaths,” 14 July 1883, 2; “Obituary. Horace Cornwall,” 18 Nov 1904, 6; Osborne and Gerencser 2003; Trumbull 1886, 1:117-18). Conway’s enclosure was from an unidentified Chatto and Windus staff member (CU-MARK):

UCLC 32277

Ellen Conway had approached Chatto and Windus after receiving the following letter from her husband, written while he was visiting the Clemenses (MoSMTB):

UCLC 32267

Andrew Chatto (1840–1913) had joined the publishing firm of Clemens’s old enemy, John Camden Hotten, at the age of fifteen. He purchased the firm in 1873 and took poet W. E. Windus (1827-1910) as his partner. Chatto and Windus had already published one book by Mark Twain: in 1874 they issued The Choice Humorous Works of Mark Twain, which he had revised from Hotten's unauthorized 1873 edition (see ET&S1, 602-7; SLC 1873, 1874a). Starting with Tom Sawyer the firm replaced George Routledge and Sons as Clemens’s English publishers. The Routledges had published the authorized English editions of The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, The Gilded Age, and three volumes of Mark Twain’s sketches (SLC 1872a, 1872c, 1872d). The American Literary Bureau was a New York lecture agency (Schneller 1991, 111; L5: 20 Sept 1872 to the editor of the London Spectator, 163-68; 22 Mar 1873 to Larned, 320-22).

2

The three lectures Conway had delivered in Hartford in January (see 5 Jan 1876 to Conway, n. 2). Isabella Beecher Hooker, a prominent Hartford spiritualist and feminist, and her husband, John, a lawyer, were close friends and neighbors of the Clemenses’. Conway was scheduled to return to Hartford for lectures on 8 and 9 March on “Impressions of London” and “Heroes and Dragons,” respectively. He spent the first night there with the Cornwalls before going on to the Clemenses’ home (“Mr. Conway’s Lectures,” Hartford Courant, 6 Mar 1876, 2; Conway 1876d, 1876e).

3

Evidently a billiards metaphor. Clemens and Conway played when Conway visited Hartford (see 9 Apr 1876 to Conway, n. 1, and 16 Dec 1875 to Conway, L6, 600 n. 2).

4

Here Clemens replied to the following letter from Conway (CU-MARK):

UCLC 32286

In his opening sentence Conway alluded playfully to Clemens’s “A Literary Nightmare” (SLC 1876f). Clemens is not known to have planned a spring 1876 lecture engagement in London. Conway had delivered his lecture on “Oriental Religions; Their Origin and Progress,” to a sparse audience, in the Young Men’s Christian Association course in Elmira on 20 December 1875. No correspondence with the Elmira Y.M.C.A. regarding the association’s “pleading the Baby Act” (that is, acting childishly) about Conway’s fee are known to survive. John F. Effinger, (1835–1902), a Unitarian, was minister of St. Paul’s Unity Church. The Reverend Robert Collyer (1823–1912) was a well-known Chicago Unitarian clergyman ((Elmira Advertiser: “City and Neighborhood,” 13 Dec 1875, 4; “Moncure D. Conway,” 21 Dec 1875, 5; 16 Dec 1875 to Conway, L6, 599-601; Mathews 1951, 1:55).