Xmas Eve, 1880.
My Dear Parker:
I thank you most sincerely for those pleasant words. They w come most opportunely, too—at a time when I am ‸was‸ wavering between launching a book of the sort you mention, with my name to it, & smuggling it into publicity with my name suppressed. Well, I’ll put my name to it, & let it help me or hurt me as the fates shall direct.
It is not a large book; so I have not scrupled to ask Howells & Joe Twichell to run over the MS & advise me what to modify & what to knock out. I wouldn’t have scrupled, anyway, if the book were a long one, because I must go warily, seeing that this is such a wide departure from my accustomed line. Howells has read it; & he winds up his four pages (mainly of vigorous approval) with the remark: “I think the book will be a great success unless some marauding ass who does not snuff his wonted pasturage there, should prevail on all the other asses to [turn] up their noses in pure ignorance. It is such a book as I would expect from you, knowing what a bottom of substance there is to your fun; but the public at large ought to be led to expect it—& must be.”
He found fault with two things: some descriptions of English court ceremonials, which he wants shortened; & a story of a boy, a bull & some bees, (which I detached & put into the journal of our Hartford Bazar last June,) which he won’t have in the book at all, because he says it lowers its dignity—so I guess I’ll have to snatch that out.
But what I’m coming to, is this: Will you, too, take the MS & read it, either to yourself—or, still better—aloud to your family? Joe has promised me a similar service. I ‸have‸ read it to Mrs. Lilly Warner. I hoped to get criticisms out of Howells’s children—but evidently he spared them; which was carrying charity too far, seems to me. Ole Brer Twichell promises to read the thing aloud, at home, & I wish you’d do the same for me, if you can. There’s only 7 hours’ reading—an hour per evening soon finishes the job, you see. I’m going to send up to Boston for the MS in a day or two,—if Howells doesn’t return it meantime.
Merry Christmas!
Ys Truly
S. L. Clemens
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):Previous publication:Hartford Courant, 21 June 1912, unknown page; MicroPUL, reel 1.
Provenance:Sometime before 1939 the MS was purchased by businessman William T. H. Howe
(1874–1939); in 1940 Dr. Albert A. Berg bought and donated the
Howe Collection to NN.
Emendations and textual notes:
turn • tu turn [corrected miswriting]
