To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
29 April 1869 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: CU-MARK, NN-B, and CtY-BR, UCCL 00290)

Elmira, Apℓ. 29.

Friend Bliss—

All right. I hope there won’t be a necessity to cut much, but when you say you are only to the 800 or 900th page you don’t comfort me so entirely, because so much of the 400 or 500 pages still left are reprint, & so will string out like a heap.1

Certainly—snatch out Sampson—it r isn’t even necessary to mention him. Yes, snatch out the Jaffa Colony, too. Also, snatch out my Temperance Society experience. Also, if you choose, you can snatch-— {I will re-inclose your letter, so that you can see in detail what you have suggested—then just follow your own written suggestions—they suit me.}2

I suppose I [ pub put ]Ab (Ab del Kader) in by mistake among the pictures. I don’t mention him anywhere. I simply bought his photograph in Constantinople because his father & mine were about of an age & might even have been twins if they had had the same mother. Of course this ref thought touched me, & made Ab seem near & dear to me—made him seem a sort of jack-legged uncle to me, as I may say—& so I bought his picture, with many tears. I wish to have it buried with me. Preserve it. But if you have got a picture of the old Agitator made, don’t waste it—put it in, & call it “Specimen of how the Innocents usually appeared, in the Orient”—or something, no matter what. ‸You can add the above as explanatory foot-note.‸ 3

As to the rest of your letter, Good, good, good.

Tell me just about when our proofs will reach the Jaffa (end of Palestine). the beginning of Egypt.4 It is time I was thinking about packing my trunk.

Yrs Truly

[Mark Twain ]

[enclosures:]

‸Abd-el-Kader.‸ abdullah fréres photographes de sa majesté impériale le sultan pera constantinople. Who the d—l is this & where do you mention him. I dont get him somehow

‸This is the Sultan of Turkey’s of- ficial signature‸ abdullah fréres photographes de sa majesté impériale le sultan pera constantinople. Is this Viceroy of Egypt? Yes.

‸Sultan of Turkey—belongs with Napoleon III in early chap- ters about Paris. But [jam ] him in anywhere you please‸ abdullah fréres photographes de sa majesté impériale le sultan pera constantinople. Is this sultan of Turkey? who you saw with Napolean? Yes.

[letter docketed:] [and] Mark Twain | April 29/69

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 With his most recent letter (now lost), Bliss had probably sent proofs for chapters 35–39 (pages 381–417, equivalent to printer’s copy pages 800–880). He also confirmed what Clemens had suspected as early as 15 April: the printer’s copy was too long, and would need to be cut in the portion that was not yet set in type. Clemens was concerned at least in part because, compared with the first eight or nine hundred pages, which were largely in manuscript, the last four or five hundred pages made heavy use of clippings (“reprint”) from his letters to the San Francisco Alta California, New York Tribune, and New York Herald. Although the printer’s copy is now lost, it is clear that Clemens pasted these clippings to blank sheets, revising them in the margins. It is also clear that he thought a page of copy made from clippings contained two or three times the number of words in a page of his own handwriting. As he neared the end of composition, on 17 June 1868, he told Mary Mason Fairbanks that he was then writing “page No. 1,843. ‸2,343.‸”—even though the actual number of pages never exceeded 1,400 and was probably closer to 1,300 (well within the total estimated in the present letter). Clemens’s 1,843 and 2,343, not previously understood (L2, 222 and 230 n. 4), each included his adjustment for 500 pages made from clippings: the first figure counted them twice—843 + (500×2)—the second counted them three times—843 + (500×3)—giving, in effect, the number of pages there would have been had the entire printer’s copy been in his handwriting.

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2 Bliss’s letter must have made a number of suggestions for shortening the part of the printer’s copy that had not yet been typeset. The three mentioned by Clemens all applied to chapters 56–58 (pages 604–34, equivalent to printer’s copy pages 1,200–1,300). The passage about Samson that Bliss removed doubtless followed a remark that he let stand in chapter 56 (page 605): “we rode through a piece of country which we were told once knew Samson as a citizen.” The deleted matter may have been a version of the “Biography of Samson” that Clemens had planned to send to the New York Tribune in the fall of 1867 (N&J1, 414). Bliss did not remove Clemens’s account of the Jaffa Colony in chapter 57 (pages 613–14), nor did he shorten it in any way now detectable. He did remove the “Temperance Society experience,” probably from chapter 58, following the reminiscence of “Holliday’s Hill” (page 628). This may have been a version of another Hannibal story, which Clemens had told in April 1867 in an Alta California letter written from New York:

And they started militia companies, and Sons of Temperance and Cadets of Temperance. Hannibal always had a weakness for the Temperance cause. I joined the Cadets myself, although they didn’t allow a boy to smoke, or drink or swear, but I thought I never could be truly happy till I wore one of those stunning red scarfs and walked in procession when a distinguished citizen died. I stood it four months, but never an infernal distinguished citizen died during the whole time; and when they finally pronounced old Dr. Norton convalescent (a man I had been depending on for seven or eight weeks,) I just drew out. I drew out in disgust, and pretty much all the distinguished citizens in the camp died within the next three weeks. (SLC 1867)

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3 Bliss had written three questions about illustrations on the backs of cartes de visite that Clemens here re-enclosed with his answers, amplifying the first response in this paragraph. Clemens originally submitted these photographs with his printer’s copy, identifying the subject and the relevant page number on the front (in pencil). In the first case, even though Bliss could tell generally where the illustration was to go, he could not connect the penciled identification (“Abd-el-Kader
Page 1228”) with any reference in the text. Clemens wrote “over” on the front and repeated the identification on the back, both in the same purple ink he used for this letter. Although the Algerian hero Abd-el-Kader (1807?–83) is never mentioned, Bliss placed him just after the Viceroy of Egypt in chapter 57 (page 614) above the caption “Eastern Monarch.” In the second and third cases, Clemens had originally written “Viceroy of Egypt & son
Page 1228” and “Sultan of Turkey
&
Napoleons Photograph
page 296” in pencil on the front. He added “over” in purple ink on the front of each, before responding, also in purple, to Bliss’s questions on the back. Bliss’s problem here was that the two men looked so much alike, as Clemens himself acknowledged independently (see N&J1, 396). Their similarity was especially true of the engravings based on these photographs, which were published in chapter 57 (page 612) and chapter 13 (page 126).

Ismail Pasha, viceroy of Egypt, and Abdul Aziz, sultan of Turkey, reproduced from the first edition of The Innocents Abroad, pages 612 and 126.

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4 That is, the beginning of chapter 57 (page 609).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK); enclosed photographic carte de visite of Abd-el-Kader, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, New York City (NN-B); enclosed cartes of the Viceroy of Egypt and Sultan of Turkey, Willard S. Morse Collection, Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (CtY-BR). The rectos of each enclosure are reproduced in facsimile; the versos are transcribed, incorporating a facsimile of the Sultan of Turkey’s signature from the originals. Although Clemens does not specifically refer to the second and third enclosures in this letter, it is unlikely that he returned them to Bliss much earlier than this date, and certainly he would not have had them early enough to enclose in his letter of 15 April, with which they were later sold (see Provenance). Bliss, who was working consecutively through the book, had probably discovered his question about the second enclosure when he questioned the placement of the first; Clemens had marked them both with the same manuscript page number. Engravings made from these two photographs were published in chapter 57 of The Innocents Abroad, on pages 614 and 612.

Previous publication: L3, 199–203; letter and inscriptions on Abd-el-Kader enclosure: AAA/Anderson 1936, lot 72, brief excerpt; letter only: Davis 1951, excerpt; MTLP, 21–22.

Provenance:Sometime before 1938, the letter was owned by E. E. Moore of Pittsburgh, who lent it to George H. Brownell to transcribe (although Brownell evidently already had an Ayer transcription). In 1938, after having been acquired by George C. Smith, Jr., the MS was sold to C. W. Force. It was acquired in 1957 by CU-MARK (see Mendoza Collection, p. 587). The Abd-el-Kader photograph (NN-B) was sold, along with a transcription of the letter, in the 1936 sale of the collection of Irving S. Underhill. Its provenance from 1936 until its acquisition by NN-B is unknown. The photographs of the Viceroy of Egypt and Sultan of Turkey (CtY-BR), which had been inserted into a first edition of Innocents along with Clemens’s letter of 15 April 1869 to Bliss and other items, were in 1942 sold as part of the Morse Collection and donated to CtY by Walter F. Frear.

Emendations and textual notes:

pub put • pubt

Mark Twain • [Clemens extended his signature with several extra minims and an ornate, looped paraph]

jam • jam jam [corrected miswriting]