To Thomas Bailey Aldrich
17? November 1877 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS, correspondence card: VtMIM, UCCL 01507)

Saturday, 4 P.M.

slcMy Dear Aldrich—

Your book came at 10 this morning, just as I was feeling rested enough to get up & plow along on my great romance.1 So I ordered breakfast & a pipe to be brought up to the bed—which would give me a chance to glance at the book. Result: I have read every line of the bewitching thing & have lost my day’s work & am not in the least sorry. I would spend another work-day in bed to read its mate. It is a delicious situation where that young fellow gets into the asylum—I should have been tempted to enlarge his experiences there.2

Yrs Ever

Mark

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

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1Aldrich’s story “The Queen of Sheba,” published in the Atlantic Monthly from July to November 1877 (Aldrich 1877), had just been issued in book form by James R. Osgood and Company (“Literary and Trade Notes,” Publisher’s Weekly, 17 Nov 1877, 584). Clemens’s “great romance” was The Prince and the Pauper. He did research for it in the summers of 1876 and 1877, but only recently had begun writing. He put it aside in February 1878 and did not return to it until after the European trip of 1878–79 that produced A Tramp Abroad. He completed his initial draft of The Prince and the Pauper in September 1880 (P&P, 3–7).

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2In chapter 4 of Aldrich’s book, Edward Lynde, the protagonist, is mistakenly detained for a brief time in the same insane asylum as a young woman who believes herself to be the Queen of Sheba. He encounters her again years later, after she has recovered her sanity, and falls in love with her.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, correspondence card, VtMIM.

Previous publication:

MicroPUL, reel 1.

Provenance:

Acquired by VtMIM on 16 August 1938.