To William Dean Howells
15 October 1877 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS, correspondence card, in pencil: MH-H, UCCL 01496)

‸P. S. When you come, remind me to show you my “Undertaker’s Tale”—& tell me what is the trouble with it.‸1

Oct. 15

slcMy Dear Howells—I am entirely glad, a hundred times over! I saw the item in the papers 2 days ago & was going to send jubilations, but I was afraid of the confounded after-claps that come later, sometimes & spoil everything. But a house full of money, & so soon as the second night, is one of those Scripture truths that lay all doubts on the shelf. I’m mighty glad—there’s no two ways about that.2

I’ve got some good news too—(but keep it to yourself for the present)—◇◇ “Ah Sin” is a most abject & incurable failure! It will leave the stage permanently, within a week., & then I shall be a cheerful being again. I’m sorry for poor Parsloe, but for nobody else concerned.3

Yrs Ever

Mark.

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

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1“The Undertaker’s Tale,” probably written in September 1877, is the story of a kindly New England undertaker, Mr. Cadaver, whose failing business is revived by the timely deaths of some neighbors and an outbreak of cholera, which enable him to save his home from foreclosure. Also featured is a romance between Cadaver’s daughter and an upstanding young gravedigger. Albert Bigelow Paine noted on the manuscript that Clemens “read this one evening to an unresponsive audience at the Farm” in Elmira. The tale was first published in 2009 (SLC 1877g, 2009).

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2Clemens replied to a postcard from Howells of 14 October: “Barrett has given my play twice in Cincinnati with what he calls grand success: the first time to a fair house; the second to a house in which every seat was sold” (CU-MARK). Barrett performed in Howells’s A Counterfeit Presentment at the Grand Opera House in Cincinnati on 11 and 12 October, and in a “farewell matinee” on 13 October (“Amusements,” Cincinnati Gazette, 13 Oct 1877, 7). The “item in the papers” that Clemens read may have been a paragraph in the Hartford Courant of 13 October: “It will be gratifying to all lovers of good literature and of the drama to learn that Mr. Howells’s new comedy, ‘A Counterfeit Presentment,’ was produced in Cincinnati Thursday night by Lawrence Barrett, and achieved a genuine and complete success” (“Personals,” 2).

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3On 7 October Maze Edwards reported that the expenses of staging Ah Sin were exceeding its profits, and by 24 October the tour, which had been booked until at least 17 December, was canceled (Edwards to SLC, 7 Oct 1877, CU-MARK; Perkins to SLC, 24 Oct 1877, CU-MARK). Parsloe was no doubt disappointed, but fortunately he was “not obliged to repay” the money advanced him, according to the terms of his agreement with Clemens and Harte (see the Appendix “Book and Play Contracts”).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, correspondence card, in pencil, MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1784 (98).

Previous publication:

MTHL, 1:206–7.

Provenance:

See Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.