To William Dean Howells
27 June 1877 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: NN-BGC and ViU, UCCL 02510)

Elmira, June 27

My Dear Howells:

If you should not like the first 2 chapters, send them to me & begin with Chap. 3—or Part 3, I believe you call these things in the magazine. I have finished No. 4, which closes the series, & will mail it tomorrow if I think of it. I like this one, I liked the preceding one (already mailed to you some time ago) but I had my doubts about 1 & 2. Do not hesitate to squelch them, even with derision & insult.

To-day I am deep in a comedy which I began this morning—principal character, that old detective—I dr skeletoned the first act & wrote the second, to-day; & am dog-tired, now. Fifty-four [closed] pages of MS in 7 hours.1 Once I wrote 55 pages at a sitting—that was on the opening third ‸chapters‸ of the gi Gilded Age [novel. When] I cool down, an hour from now, I shall go to zero, I judge.

When does Barrett open in your piece in N. Y (or Boston).2 I calculate to be there.

Ys Ever

Mark.3

W.D. Howells, Esq | Box 160 | Newport | R.I. [return address:] Return to | S. L. Clemens | Elmira | N.Y. [postmarked:] elmira n.y. jun 29 10am4

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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11 The play that became “Cap’n Simon Wheeler, The Amateur Detective. A Light Tragedy” (SLC 1877f). Clemens evidently had been sharing his plans for the chief character with Howells for some time (see S&B, 216–89). This letter may not have been sent until 29 June: although an envelope postmarked on that date and addressed to Howells survives, it no longer contains a letter (ViU).

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2A Counterfeit Presentment (6 June 1877 to Howells, n. 3). Lawrence Barrett toured with the play with mixed success from the fall of 1877 to the spring of 1878 (for his debut in Cincinnati see 15 Oct 1877 to Howells). Clemens saw the play in Hartford in January 1878 and pronounced it “charming,” claiming he had “laughed & cried all the way through it” (4 Jan 1878 to Howells, Letters 1876–1880). Barrett appeared in the play at the Boston Museum in early April, but it never had a New York engagement (Howells 1979, 194 n. 3).

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3

Howells replied, on Atlantic Monthly letterhead, from Conanicut, Rhode Island (CU-MARK):

UCLC 32513

Howells’s younger sister Anne (1844–1938) married Antoine Achille Fréchette (1839–1908), translator in the Canadian House of Commons, on 20 June 1877. The Howellses were with Rutherford B. Hayes in Boston and Newport in the last week of the month (Howells 1979, 161 n. 3, 168). For Clemens’s failed attempt to visit Hayes at the White House, see 1 May 1877 to Howells. The joke “put into Twichell’s mouth” was in the third installment of “Some Rambling Notes,” scheduled for publication in the December 1877 issue of the Atlantic:

We went ashore and found a novelty of a pleasant nature: there were no hackmen, hacks, or omnibuses on the pier or about it anywhere, and nobody offered his services to us, or molested us in any way. I said it was like being in heaven. The Reverend rebukingly and rather pointedly advised me to make the most of it, then. (SLC 1877–78a, 719)

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4This envelope may not have contained the present letter. It is postmarked two days later, and is preserved in a different library (ViU).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, NN-BGC, is Source text for the letter; MS, ViU, is Source text for the envelope.

Previous publication:

MTL, 1:296–97, letter only; MTHL, 1:184, letter only.

Provenance:

See Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

closed • [‘d’ partly formed]

novel. When • ~. | ~