‸ I sent the pamphlets & overshoes to Ithaca. ‸
Hartford Jan. 17.
Dear Mr. Boyesen:1
You can’t imagine how much pleasure your visit gave us, & how sorry we were to let you go—nor how the whole household missed you when you were gone, nor how sincerely we all wished you back again. Whenever you get a holiday, mind you we are to have the biggest share of it that you can spare.
I wrote & asked Bayard Taylor to be our guest (he is to lecture here presently), & he has accepted.2 I was glad to hear what you said about him.
Harte
I have asked him to talk to our Young Girls, & I hope he will do it.3 Warner will talk to them next Saturday, & Gen. Hawley will entertain them soon. I shall make Howells talk to them when I get him here. Gen. Franklin is going to instruct them in military matters, or Gatling guns, or something.4
I don’t know that I can spare Miss Hess—I’ll see about it. I have used a pen so little since she has been here that my fingers have lost facility & my brain too. Still, if you can’t get Miss Keane there without this sacrifice, I am afraid I shall have to submit.5
Harte hasn’t come yet—so the play6 isn’t yet licked into shape—consequently I haven’t demanded Howells’s presence. (He is to come when the play is ready to be read & criticised.)
Mr. Millet the artist has b made a most excellent portrait of me, & besides haus given us a week of social enjoyment, for his company is a high pleasure. We have to lose him tomorrow.7
All the household join in expressions of high ‸warm‸ regard for you, & wishes for your speedy return to us. If we spend next summer in Elmira, you’ll certainly be raided upon in Ithaca, by
Your sincere friend
Samℓ. L. Clemens
Explanatory Notes
For the initial plans for Millet's portrait, see 26 Nov 1876 to Howells. Millet painted it in a single week, between 11 and 17 January. In 1908 Clemens instead recalled that it took him “a couple of diligent weeks”: When Millet came to Hartford to paint the first oil portrait that was ever made of me, he gave me a small picture—a Dutch interior, which was his earliest effort in oils, and I have it yet. At our first sitting he dashed off a charcoal outline of me on his canvas which was so good and strong and lifelike that Mrs. Clemens wouldn't allow him to add any paint, lest he damage it. She bought it. He had brought but the one canvas from Boston, so he had to go down town and get another. I remained outside on the sidewalk while he went into the art shop to stretch the canvas on the frame. It was dull out there, and I tried to think of some way to put in the time usefully. I was successful. There was a barber shop near-by, and I went in there to get the ends of my hair clipped off; I fell into a reverie, and when I woke up there was a bushel of brown hair on the floor and none on my head. When I joined Millet he took one glance, realized the disaster that had befallen, and said he wanted to go to some private place and cry. He devoted a couple of diligent weeks to the portrait and made a good one, if you don't count the hair; but as there was no hair, he had to manufacture it, and his effort was a failure. I have the portrait yet, but the hair it wears is not hair at all; it is tarred oakum, and doesn't harmonize with the rest of the structure. (AutoMT3, 46–47) The Hannibal Free Public Library now owns the portrait, which was donated by Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch in 1911; see also Schmidt 2005, which, however, misdates the portrait 1876).
Source text(s):Previous publication:
Sotheby’s catalog, 19 June 2003, lot 32, excerpts.
Provenance:
The Mark Twain House purchased the MS from Sotheby’s on 19 June 2003. It was formerly in the collection of Nick Karanovich.
