My Dear Sir—
The book has come & I promise myself much pleasure in reading it. So I offer you my thanks in advance.
I was going to see Mrs. Shoot & Miss Mollie when I was last in N Y, but the business I was on kept me clear up to train time. Can’t write to Daly; I don’t know him well enough; but I had talked with him once, & shall [sieze] the first opportunity to do it again; meantime Mollie has a foothold & her chance will come There are many aspirants who cant get even the poor grace of a foothold—& couldn’t keep it if they got it, poor fellows—but Miss Mollie will succeed, I think.1
Ys Truly
S. L. Clemens.
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
For the “foothold” Clemens had helped Mollie Shoot secure with
Augustin Daly, see 24? Apr 1876 to
Shoot, n. 1. He may not have known Daly well at this time, but they had corresponded twice in 1874 and once previously in
1876 (see 4 May 1876 to Daly and L6: 14 Aug 1874 to Daly, 206–7; 29 Oct 1874 to Daly, 263–65). He had missed seeing Shoot and her mother, Mary (b. 1822?), in New York in early September, when he and his family made their usual stop there en route from Elmira to Hartford (Inds, 347).
Source text(s):Previous publication:
Union Art Galleries catalog, sale of 27 February 1934, lot 50, partial publication; Sotheby’s catalog, sale of 10–11 December 1993, lot 219, paraphrase; MicroPUL, reel 1.
Provenance:
The letter, formerly in the Robert Daley Collection, was purchased by CU-MARK on 10 December 1993 through Sotheby’s.
Emendations and textual notes:
1876 • [possibly not written by SLC]
sieze • [sic]
