To
James Redpath
10 May 1869 • Hartford, Conn.
(Transcripts, MS, and MS facsimile: various sources, UCCL 00298)
[
[148 ]
]Asylum Street
American Publishing [Co.]
[Hartford, ]
[May 10]
[Dear Sir:
I have been slow about answering but then I have been very busy & besides I wanted to consider a little.1
1. Very well. Please go on, as you propose, & use my [name “from ]the 1st of November.”
2. ]As to terms. Say we let the customary price be $100, [& ]increase or diminish it according to circumstances—[decreasing it, if you see fit, where several appointments, in one neighborhood can be clubbed together & [secured ]by so doing. As to making it more than $100 in any case, be the judge yourself, I shall not complain if you never do it. ]I talked all around through the West last winter, & always charged $100, but then the distances were [grand, ]gloomy & peculiar [and I [wouldn’t ]go over the same ground again for the same money, by any means. ]I hate long [journeys, ]& so does everybody.
[(There need be no [“condition” about ]California. I shall be back before Nov. 1, if I go.)
I seldom save anything I write, or any notices of lectures. But the young lady whom I think most of, does, & I have written her.2 Whatever stock of this kind she may have on hand I will mail to you. I remember she has an article on Vanderbilt from Packard’s [Monthly]—makes a column. Do you want it? [ [in margin: Until I hear from her the enclosed is all I can put my hands on & they don’t signify.] ] 3 I like the Du Chaillu dodge of circularizing the lyceums tolerably, & only tolerably. It is calculated to make one feel rather like a “celebrated” corn-doctor. But maybe it is for the best & therefore I will presently collect and send material for circular whereby to delude secretaries.
(Mem.—Mr. Bridgman (I think I have the name right) Secretary of the Something (“[Institute,” ]I think,) called this morning to talk business.4 I told him you would attend to his case whenever his mind is made up. Please don’t charge him less than $100—& I don’t think it would be just to charge more. However, that is your business, not mine.)]
[... I am here reading the proofs of my book, which will issue from the press of the [“American Publishing Co.” ]... It is a sort of stunning narrative of the renowned Pleasure Excursions of Capt. Duncan’s Quaker City steamer to Europe, Egypt, Palestine, [& ]pretty nearly everywhere else, two years ago. (The one Beecher & Gen. Sherman were to have gone in).5 It will contain about 700 pages octavo, ... over 200 artistic engravings built expressly for it. Some 26 ... are full page.... The pictures have cost $5,000 ... it is no slouch of a book.... ] [the New England journals.6 The book is published only by subscription.
If I go to California I shall write a dozen letters to the N. Y. Tribune, & if you can have them copied wholly or in part, it will be well—especially as the title of next [winters ]lecture will be “Curiosities of California.” Haven’t written it yet, but it is mapped out, & suits me very well. {Mem. Nearly all the societies wanted a Cal. lecture last year, & of course it will be all the better, now, when the completion of the Pacific RR has turned so much attention in that direction.7 There is scope to the subject, for the country is a curiosity; do. the fluctuations of fortune in the mines, where men grow rich in a day & poor in another; do. the people—for you have been in new countries & understand s that;8 do. the Lake Tahoe, whose wonders are little known & less appreciated here; ditto the never-mentioned strange Dead Sea of California;9 & ditto a passing mention, maybe, of the Big Trees & Yo Semite.
But I did not intend to write you to death.]
[But a word more. A New York agent writes: “Stick to New England if you are resolved to do it, but let me make, say [ten ]engagements for you in near places in New York & Penn. Select any month you please and any price (125.—$150 [&c]) but let me have your name for that number of engagements.”10
What shall I say? I almost promised to open the courses next season in Newark, N. J. Pittsburgh, Pa. & I think Cleveland, O. provided I lectured at all. Now ] [I would like to talk in Newark, Brooklyn & New York, but I don’t want to go further away, & I don’t know of ten places around there that I want to talk in. Make a suggestion, please.
I would like very much to talk in about five small places first, to get the hang of my lecture, & then talk for one of the two big lecture societies of Boston. You know one corrects & amends [portions ]of his lecture th all the time, the first five or six nights, & he [never ]is satisfied with it till about the sixth delivery. Will you make a note? Well, I believe I have answered it all of your letter
Yrs. Truly
Sam. L. Clemens.
I don’t try to use two lectures during the same season. And I don’t like an old one.]
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Redpath’s enclosures do not survive with his letter. One of them may have been a circular advertising
Paul Belloni Du Chaillu (1835–1903), the French-born African explorer and author.
Arrangements have been made with the Western Union Telegraph company, so that each stroke of the hammer on the
last spike driven shall be reported simultaneously at New York and San Francisco. The operator will accompany each blow of the
hammer with a tap of the finger upon the key. A conversation with the New York office last evening assured us that the blow can be
repeated at Hartford as well, and moreover, it could be struck upon the great fire bell. Why not? Who will attend to it? Let us hear
upon the bell the strokes of the hammer that puts down the connecting rail twenty-five hundred miles away. (“The Pacific
Railroad,” 2)
The chief ingredients of Redpath’s make-up were honesty, sincerity, kindliness, and pluck. He
wasn’t afraid. He was one of Ossawattomie Brown’s right-hand men in the bleeding Kansas days; he was all
through that struggle. He carried his life in his hands, and from one day to another it wasn’t worth the price of a
night’s lodging. He had a small body of daring men under him, and they were constantly being hunted by the
“jayhawkers,” who were pro-slavery Missourians, guerrillas, modern free lances— (CU-MARK, in SLC 1907,
330) Subsequently Redpath traveled to Haiti, which he regarded as a suitable haven for Southern blacks. At the request
of the Haitian government he established bureaus for black emigration in Boston and New York and in 1861 and 1862 he served as
“Commercial agent of Hayti for Philadelphia, Joint commissioner plenipotentiary of Hayti to the government of the U.S.,
& General agent of emigration to Hayti for the U.S. & Canada” (Redpath). He was influential in
securing United States recognition of Haitian independence, wrote A Guide to Hayti (1860), and published John
Relly Beard’s Toussaint L’Ouverture: A Biography and Autobiography (1863).
Source text(s):| P1 | AAA 1925, lot 107 |
| P2 | Typescript in CU-MARK |
| P3 | MS pages 7–8 in CtY-BR |
| P4 | PH of MS page 10 (AAA 1925, lot 107) |
Previous publication:
L3, 214–218; Previous publication: none known except P.1
Provenance:
Provenance: The MS was intact in 1925, when it was sold as part of the library of William F. Gable (AAA 1925, lot 107). By 1940, two leaves (MS pages 5–6 and 7–8)
had been removed from the letter (Parke-Bernet 1940, lot 69), and by 1942 they
had been tipped into first edition copies of The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It,
respectively, which were sold as part of the estate of William H. Woodin of New York (Parke-Bernet 1942, lot 129, which mistakenly identifies the recipient of Clemens’s letter as “Major
Pond, his lecture manager”). The remainder of the letter (MS pages 1–4 and 9–10) was transcribed by
Frank Glenn, a Kansas City, Mo., book dealer, with no indication that any text was missing, and the transcription was sent to Bernard
DeVoto in 1943. The copy of Roughing It containing MS pages 7–8 was donated to CtY in 1943 by George
Corey, but the present location of the rest of the MS is not known. Adopted readings followed by ‘(C)’ are
editorial emendations of the source readings.
Emendations, adopted readings, and textual notes:
This five-leaf, ten-page letter has been reconstructed from four separate sources:
P1 and P2 derive independently from the MS. Where the MS and an MS facsimile survive, P3 and P4 respectively serve as sole copy-text for the letter. The extracts in P1 were published in AAA 1925, lot 107, when the MS was intact. P2, a partial TS in CU-MARK made by Frank Glenn in 1943, was prepared from the MS after two leaves (pages 5–6 and 7–8) had been removed from it. P3, one of those leaves (pages 7–8), survives in the Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (CtY-BR). P4, a photofacsimile of MS page 10, was published with the P1 extracts in AAA 1925, lot 107.
148 . . . everybody. (P1) • 114 . . . everybody. (P2); [not in] (P3, P4)
148 [reported, not quoted] (P1) • 114 (P2)
Co. (P2) • Company [reported, not quoted] (P1)
Hartford, [reported, not quoted] (P1) • Hartfor. (P2)
May 10 (C) • May 10, 1869 [reported, not quoted] (P1); May 10 (1869) (P2)
Jas. (P1) • Jas‸ (P2)
Dear . . . 2. (P2) • [not in] (P1)
name “from (C) • name“from (P2)
& (P2) • and (P1); [also at 214.15, 215.1 (‘& peculiar’), 3]
decreasing . . . it. (P2) • [not in] (P1)
secured (C) • securred (P2)
grand, (P2) • grand‸ (P1)
and ... means. (P2) • [not in] (P1)
wouldn’t (C) • would’nt (P2)
journeys, (P1) • journeys‸ (P2)
(There ... mine.) (P2) • [not in] (P1, P3, P4)
“condition” about (C) • ‸condition‸ “about (P2)
Monthly (C) • Monthlym (P2)
[in margin: Until ... signify.] (C) • [The sentence appears without indention in P2, as the second paragraph of the postscript at the very end of the letter. But P4, the photofacsimile of the last manuscript page, shows that the sentence did not in fact appear there. It was probably written in the margin of the preceding paragraph ‘I seldom ... secretaries.’ (215.6–15) and has been moved to its present position because the stressed ‘her’ implies a context in which Olivia Langdon’s assistance would have been immediately understood.]
Institute,” (C) • Institute”, (P2)
... I ... book.... (C) • ... I ... book. (P1); [not in] (P2, P3, P4)
“American Publishing Co.” (C) • ‘American Publishing Co.’ (P1)
& (C) • and (P1)
the ... death. (P3) • [P3 is copy-text]
winters • [sic]
But ... Now (P2) • [not in] (P1, P2, P3)
ten (C) • then (P2)
&c (C) • & c (P2)
I would ... one. (P4) • [P4 is copy-text]
portions (C) • portio[ns] [P4 badly inked or MS torn]
never
(C) •
[
]
ever
[P4 badly inked or MS torn]
