To
William Dean Howells
26 November 1876 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS, in pencil: MH-H, UCCL 01389)
(SUPERSEDED)
Sunday Morning.1
My Dear Howells:
All gone to church.
Dean Sage is trying to persuade Twichell to travel in Europe 3 or 4 months with him.2
The sideboard is perfectly satisfactory to Mrs. Clemens, & it will be ordered at once.3
I was passing down Franklin street Friday morning, seeking Osgood’s, when I stumbled upon a place (D P Ives & Co) where I hopped in to buy a trifle which I saw in the window—& when I emerged, 50 minutes later, I had drawn 5 checks on my bank. I My, but they had a world of pretty things there. Time & again I got within 15 feet of the front door, & then saw something more which we couldn’t do without.4
Mrs. C. hopes Mr. Millett can come—so do I.5
We dined with the Warners yesterday eve., & the Twichells dropped in. Of course Warner hadn’t any grudge against you—I told you that. I read Winnie’s letter & poem—& they were received with great & honest applause. I return the letter herewith, according to promise.6
“Hess” (as the baby calls her) is at church7—hence I write by mine own hand. Mrs. Clemens sends a lot of cordial messages to you two which I am admiring to believe in but I & I my grateful remembrances of a jolly good time at your home.
Samℓ. L C
[cross-written over first four lines:]
It is no harm to put these words into [wise] old Omar-Khèyam’s [ mouth mouth], for he would have said them, if he had thought of it.8
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
On the envelope of Howells’s letter Fanny C. Hesse noted
“Millet’s letter enclosed | answered Dec 6th/76.” No 6
December letter from Clemens to either Howells or Millet has been found, however. Before Millet departed for Europe, where in 1877
he became the New York Herald correspondent assigned to the Russian forces in the Russo-Turkish War, he did
go to Hartford to paint Clemens. The portrait he completed in January 1877 is now owned by the Hannibal Free Public Library (for a
photograph of it, see Schmidt 2005). The “saints”
Millet alluded to evidently were in John La Farge’s murals decorating the
interior of Trinity Church in Boston. Millet was one of the artists who helped La Farge (1835–1910) paint them in 1876.
The “head” Millet did was for, and perhaps of, railroad expert and civic leader Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (1835–1915), whose secretary he had been in 1873 when Adams was
Massachusetts commissioner to the Vienna Exposition. The paintings by Eugene Benson
(1839–1908) that Howells alluded to have not been identified. One of them belonged to Howells’s acquaintance
Thomas Gold Appleton (see 29
Jan 76 to Twichell, n. 3). About “spot ivy” Howells planned to consult another acquaintance, Asa Gray (1810–88), the renowned botanist and former Harvard professor, who
maintained a large herbarium. The play Howells alluded to was Ah Sin (see 13 Dec 76 and 29 Dec 76, both to Conway; SLC
1876–85, 13; MTB, 2:583; “Frank D. Millet’s Career,” New York Times, 16 Apr 1912, 4;
Howells 1979, 88, 97–98).
Copy-text:Previous publication:
MTHL, 1:163–64.
Provenance:See Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
wise • w wise [corrected miswriting]
mouth mouth • [possibly corrected miswriting]
