To
William Dean Howells
11 January 1876 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS, in pencil: NN-BGC, UCCL 02497)
(SUPERSEDED)
Hartford Jan 11./761
My Dear Howells—
Indeed we haven’t forgotten the Howellses, nor scared up a grudge of any kind against them; but the fact is I a was under the doctor’s hands for four weeks on a stretch, & have been disabled from working for a week or so beside. I thought I was well, about ten days ago, so I sent for a short-hand writer & dictated answers to a bushel or so ‸of‸ letters that had been accumulating during my illness. Getting everything ship-shape & cleared up, I went to work next day upon an Atlantic article, which ought to be worth the $20 per page (which is the price they usually pay for my work, I believe) for although it is only 70 pages MS (less than 2 days work, counting by bulk,) I have spent 3 more days trimming, altering & working at it. I shall put in one more day’s polishing on it, & then read it before our Club, (here which is to meet at our house Monday evening the 24th inst. I think it will bring out considerable discussion among the gentlemen of the Club—though the tittle title of the article will not give them much notion of what is to follow—this title le being “The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut” 2——which reminds me that today’s Tribune says there will be a startling article in the current Atlantic, in which a being which is tangible but invisible will figure—exactly the case with [the] sketch of mine which I am talking about! However, mine can lie unpublished a year or two as well as not—though I wish that contributor of yours had not me interfered, with his coincidence of heroes.3
But what I am coming at, is this: won’t you & Mrs. Howells come down Saturday the 22d, meet a gang & remain to the Club on Monday night? We always have a [rat[t]ling] good time at the Club, & we do want you, to come, ever so much. Will you? Now say you will. Mrs. Clemens & I are persuading ourselves that you w twain will come. Mrs
I’m My volume is ‸of‸ Sketches is doing very well, considering the times; received my quarterly statement today from Bliss, by which I perceive that 20,000 copies have been [sold. ] ‸—or rather, 20,000 had been sold 3 weeks ago; a lot more, by this time, no doubt.4 ‸
I am on the sick list again—& was, day before yesterday—but on the whole I’m getting along.
Yrs Ever
Mark.5
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Jan. 24. Monday Evening Club met at M.T.’s.—M.T. Essayist. He read an article
about ¾ of an hour long, in which was described an interview between himself and his Conscience—very
finely written serious in its intent though vastly funny and splendidly, brilliantly read. I think when published, it will
be pronounced one of his best. (Twichell 1874–1916, 2
[1876]: 7) (1 Jan 76 to Howells, n. 1; Cheney 1954, 13–21; L2, 269 n. 3; L3, 97 n. 5, 230 n. 4; L5, 20 n. 4, 256 n. 1, 297–98, 522 n. 1; L6, 139 n. 2, 248 n. 3; 393–94 n. 3, 493 n. 5, 577 n. 1; Trumbull 1886, 1: 113, 115, 117–18, 132, 385, 406, 408, 620, 624; “Death of Colonel
Cheney,” Hartford Courant, 5 June 1909, 5).
Howells evidently did not read “The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in
Connecticut” until or shortly after he visited Hartford in March (see 13 Mar 76 to Howells). He eventually published it as the lead article in the Atlantic for June 1876 (SLC 1876). Howells’s
troublesome story was “Private Theatricals,” serialized in the Atlantic from
November 1875 through May 1876 (Howells 1875–76). Sculptor
John Quincy Adams Ward (1830–1910) was an old Ohio friend of
Howells’s (Howells 1979, 88 n. 4).
Copy-text:Previous publication:
MTL, 1:270–71; MTHL, 1:118–19.
Provenance:See Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
the • [‘t’ crossed two times]
rat[t]ling • rat- | ling
sold. • sold. [deletion implied]
