To
Charles Warren Stoddard
25 August 1869 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(Sales catalog: Samuel T. Freeman and Co., 23 March 1936,
lot 68; and transcript by Albert Bigelow Paine:
CU-MARK, UCCL 00340)
Thank you heartily for all your good wishes—& you must accept of mine in return.1 I have written Bret that we must have the [“Overland”—]see that he sends it, will you?2
[You] speak of Mr. Stebbins. He came within an ace of breaking off my marriage by saying to the gentleman instructed by “her” father to call on him and inquire into my character, that “Clemens is a humbug—shallow [&] superficial—a man who has talent, no doubt, but will make a trivial [&] possibly a worse use of it—a man whose life promised little [&] has accomplished less—a humbug, Sir, a humbug.” [That was the spirit of the remarks—I have forgotten the precise language.3 It was not calculated to [help] my case in an old, proud & honored family who are rigidly upright & without reproach themselves, & would necessarily be chary of strangers who were deliberately pronounced “humbugs” by high ecclesiastical authority]. The friends [I] had referred to in California said with one accord that I got drunk oftener than was [necessary, &] that I was [wild, &] [godless], idle, lecherous [&] a discontented [&] [unsettled] rover & they could not recommend any girl of high character & social position to marry me—but as I had already said all that about myself beforehand there was nothing shocking or surprising about it to the family4 —but I had never said I was a humbug, & I had never expected anybody who knew me to say it—& consequently there was a dark & portentous time for a while—till at [last] the young lady said she had thought it all over deliberately & did not believe it, & would not believe it if an archangel had spoken it—& since then there has not been flaw or ripple upon my course of true love & it does run smoothly & always will—no fear about that.
About lecturing. The only way to do it is to get into “the field”—the regular lyceum field. Individual enterprise cannot but fail—even [Nasby] cannot lecture on his own hook, as I do in California.5 James Redpath, 20 Bromfield Street, Boston, commands the New England lyceums & makes appointments for lecturers & lays out their routes for them for 10 percent on the fees. His lecturers get from $50 to $200 a night, according to their popularity. A man must be known & well known—though a decided hit made in Boston will topple all the other New England bricks to the earth. Such a hit the subscriber would have made there on the 10th of next November, but I have written to cancel all my engagements for this year. And I have done the same with the West—all the West is in the hands of the “Secretary of the A.W.L.S., Ann Arbor, Mich.”6 I do not talk for less than $100 a night, the N.Y. Evening Post to the contrary [notwithstanding]. The lecture “season” proper, begins Nov. 1 & closes Feb. 28—21 months, & is worth to me $10,000—never less, & can easily be made more—I have the run of all the fields.
You are too late for this year. What you need to do is to tackle Redpath & that other fellow (the latter charges no percentage, but is paid by the massed societies & is their servant) as early as next May & get on their lists. Popular lecturers are hard to get, in the west—& I love to lecture there. If you make a hit there you’ve a good livelihood before you always afterward. Next year I shall enter the field again east & west, & for the last time. I shall use my old first lecture on the Sandwich Islands, but that will not in the least interfere with you, for it is a topic that has seldom or never been used—in fact it will be all the better for you if I should kick up an interest in the subject (& I will.)7 Write the two men I have spoken of—they are the ones to make you or break you, the first time. If you make a hit, they will go for you, afterward. I am not yet formally released from my New England crusade, but they must release me—I must rush this newspaper for a while & make it whiz.
I told publishers to send books to you & Bret.
In a thundering hurry,
Du Chaillu, with all his puffing, is not required to lecture a second time in western towns—he [fails] with his first broadside—ditto Billings.
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
The Eastern press are unanimous in their commendation of your new magazine. Every paper and every periodical has something
to say about it, and they lavish compliments upon it with a heartiness that is proof that they mean what they say. Even the
Nation, that is seldom satisfied with anything, takes frequent occasion to demonst[r]ate
that it is sati[s]fied with the Overland. And every now and then, it and the other
critical reviews of acknowledged authority, take occasion to say that Bret Harte’s sketch of the “Luck of Roaring Camp” is the best prose magazine article
that has seen the light for many months on either side of the ocean. They never mention who wrote the sketch, of course (and
I only guess at it), for they do not know. The Overland keeps its contributors’ names in the
dark. Harte’s name would be very familiar in the land but for this. However, the magazine itself is well known in
high literary circles. I have heard it handsomely praised by some of the most ponderous of America’s literary chiefs;
and they displayed a complimentary and appreciative familiarity with Harte’s articles, and those of Brooks, Sam. Williams, Bartlett, etc. (SLC 1869) It was in its issue of 13 May 1869 that the Nation had called “The Luck of Roaring Camp” possibly “the best prose magazine article
that has appeared in this country for many years” (Nation 8:376, in Barnett 1980, 4). Harte evidently did arrange for the Overland
Monthly to be sent to the Buffalo Express: on 13 September the paper reprinted most of his
incisive comments on Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s The Gates Ajar (1868) from the current issue (Harte 1869, 293–94). It
was likely Clemens himself who observed that the “book notices of the Overland Monthly, of San
Francisco, have achieved a celebrity which is great in America and still greater in England, as models of piquancy, critical
analysis and felicitous English” (SLC 1869). For Noah Brooks,
Samuel Williams, and William Chauncey Bartlett, see 2? Mar 67 to the
Proprietors of the Alta California, n. 1; 24 Jan 68 to JLC and PAM, n. 12; 14
Apr 68 to Samuel Williams, n. 1; 29 Dec 68 to Jervis
Langdon, n. 7.
tried to exploit his extensive literary acquaintance by asking correspondents throughout the country to
advise him about lecturing in their areas—in the company of “a couple of little Native
boys who should at the close of the evening, sing, dance and entertain the people with some of their picturesque and
grotesque mannerisms.” The replies were not encouraging. (Austen 1991,
45) Although Stoddard abandoned his plans for a Sandwich Islands lecture, he drew on his travels in Hawaii for
the Overland Monthly and for his South-Sea Idyls, published in 1873, and returned to live there for a few years in the early 1880s (Austen 1991, 26–30, 39–45, 58–61, 93–108; 7 May 66 to William Bowen, n. 2; Stoddard
1873).
Source text(s):| Tr | Transcript by Albert Bigelow Paine, CU-MARK. |
| P | Samuel T. Freeman and Co., 23 March 1936, Part 1, lot 68: ‘I have . . . family’ |
Previous publication:L3, 320–21, partial publication. Newly published on MTPO, 2010.
Provenance:See Paine Transcripts in Description of
Provenance. By 1936, the
manuscript had become part of the collection of Charles T. Jeffery, of Merion, Pennsylvania. After Jeffery’s death,
it was offered for sale by Samuel T. Freeman and Co.
Emendations, adopted readings, and textual notes:
All variants between the source texts are reported below. Adopted readings followed by ‘(MTP)’ are editorial emendations of the source readings.
• [witStart] Buffalo, (Tr) Buffalo, Aug. 25 (Tr) • Buffalo, August 25th (P)
Dear Charlie— (Tr) • Dear Charlie (P)
“Overland”— (Tr) • ‘Overland,’ (P)
[¶] You (Tr) • [no ¶] You (P)
& (Tr) • and (P)
& (Tr) • and (P)
& (Tr) • and (P)
That . . . authority. (Tr) • . . . [passage replaced by three leaders] (P)
help (Tr) • keep ‸help‸ [corrected by unidentified hand]
I (Tr) • that I (P)
necessary, & (Tr) • necessary and (P)
wild, & (Tr) • wild and (P)
godless (Tr) • Godless (P)
& (Tr) • and (P)
& (Tr) • and (P)
unsettled (P) • misettled (Tr)
last (Tr) • last [corrected by unidentified hand]
Nasby (MTP) • Nasey [corrected by unidentified hand] (Tr)
notwithstanding (MTP) • not with standing (Tr)
Yr (MTP) • To (Tr)
Sam Clemens. (MTP) • SAM CLEMENS. (Tr)
fails (MTP) • falls (Tr)
