To George L. Hutchings
1 January 1870 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: CLSU, UCCL 11877)

Elmira, De Jan. 1.

Friend Hutchings—

I am in a desperate hurry, but I must take time to ask you to pardon me for showing such unmannerly temper the other morning about that synopsis. Those things always make me angry, & the fact that I had sat up until 5 AM talking,—then got up at 7, did not improve my temper. Still, it was shameful in me to intrude such a spirit upon you who had never done me any but the kindest offices—& so I have now [siezed] upon the very first opportunity to apologize—I have had no earlier chance than this.1

Truly Yrs.

Samℓ. L. Clemens.

————

Happy N. Y.’s to you!

[in ink:] Personal. | G. L. Hutchings Esq | Bank—42 Wall st| New York. [return address:] return to j. langdon, [elmira], n. y., if not delivered within 10 days. [postmarked:] elmira n.y. jan 3 [docketed:] Mark Twain | apology

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 On the morning of 30 December 1869 Hutchings may have shown Clemens a copy of that day’s Trenton True American, which published a lengthy synopsis of his Sandwich Islands lecture in Trenton on 28 December (“Mark Twain,” 3, reprinted in Lane). (On the afternoon of 30 December the Newark Journal printed a long excerpt from his 29 December Clayonian Society lecture, but by then he had left for his next engagement, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania [“Mark Twain on the Sandwich Islanders,” 30 Dec 69, 2].) Clemens again lectured for the Clayonian Society on 29 November 1871 (L3, 485; L4, 515 n. 5).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, University Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles (CLSU). This letter is written on a leaf torn from the same notebook as ten other surviving letters that Clemens wrote in October, November, and December 1869 (L3, 381–82 n. 1).

Previous publication: L5, 685–686.

Provenance:Donated, as part of a collection of 150 letters from the George Long Hutchings Lecture Club, to CLSU in 1986 by Jeanne Hutchings, widow of George Long Hutchings’s grandson, Frank Miller Hutchings.

Emendations and textual notes:

siezed • [sic]

elmira • [em]ira [badly inked]