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The letter from Maurice Weidenthal proposing Clemens’s membership in the Davenport Club, an amateur dramatic society in Cleveland, has not been found. Weidenthal (1853–1917), secretary of the club, was the Cleveland correspondent of the New York Dramatic News. In 1882 he joined the Cleveland Herald as a reporter and shortly after was promoted to dramatic critic. He became a leading Cleveland journalist at the Herald, the Plain Dealer, and other papers, and in 1906 founded the weekly Jewish Independent, serving as its editor until his death (Van Tassel and Grabowski 1987, 245, 1035; Susan W. Saltzman, personal communications). After receipt of Clemens’s letter Weidenthal wrote again (CU-MARK):

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Weidenthal mentioned actors Edward L. Davenport, Lawrence Barrett, and Edwin Booth, and statesman Charles Sumner. Clemens responded to Weidenthal’s second letter on 13 May, sending two photographs of himself, one of which was apparently chosen for display at the club, while the other—from an 1869 sitting at the New York studio of Gurney and Son—was kept by Weidenthal and survives with the 24 March letter:

On 13 June, Ira C. Cartwright wrote Clemens on behalf of the club (CU-MARK), in part giving the gist of Clemens’s letter of 13 May:

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