To James Redpath
27 June 1871 • (2nd of 2) • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: Axelrod, UCCL 00623)

c

Elmira 27th

Dear Redpath:

Wrote another lecture—a third one—to-day. It is the one I am going to deliver. I think I shall call it “Reminiscences of Several Interesting People whom I have Met Some In Pleasant Characters whom I have Met.”

‸Or should the “whom” be out?‸

It covers my whole acquaintance—kings, lunatics, idiots & all.

Suppose you give the item a start in the Boston papers. —& say I have written 3 lec 1

If I write 50 lectures I shall only choose one & talk that one only.

No sir! Don’t you put that scarecrow from the Galaxy in. I won’t stand that nightmare. There isn’t a cut of me in existence that I would. Never mind a picture—they ain’t any use., much. However, now that I think of it, “The Aldine,” 23 Liberty street New York, had one in, 2 or 3 months ago that was right good. Mr. E. C. The editor of the Boston Gazette knows the firm well—maybe he can get a copy of that.2

Ys

Mark.

[letter docketed:] boston lyceum bureau. redpath & fall. jun 30 1871 [and] Twain Mark | Elmira June 27 ’71

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 Clemens sent a similar request to Whitelaw Reid, who published a notice in the New York Tribune (see the next letter, n. 2). The Tribune item was picked up by newspapers in Boston and elsewhere, making intervention by Redpath unnecessary (“Personal,” Boston Evening Transcript, 30 June 71, 2; “In General,” Boston Advertiser, 3 July 71, 1; “Personal,” Buffalo Courier, 1 July 71, 1).

Clemens’s “nightmare” portrait in the August 1870 Galaxy, engraved by Gaston Fay, with advertisement on facing page. See 27 June 1871 to Redpath (2nd of 2).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2 The offending portrait, which Redpath must have proposed using for publicity, appeared as the frontispiece in the August 1870 Galaxy. Based on an 1870 photograph by an unidentified photographer (see Photographs and Manuscript Facsimiles), it elicited the following comment in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin:

The number is faced by a portrait of Mark Twain, coarsely drawn by Gaston Fay. The face shows a hawking eye, and a peccant pecking beak, and looks about as “genial” as a Coshin rooster ambitioning a measuring worm. The latter feature is directed, however, not to “American folly,” this time, but to somebody’s Leicestershire table sauce, which it serves to advertise, with all Beaumarchais’s “high sniffing air.” (“New Periodicals,” 22 July 70, 2)

The Aldine’s portrait, engraved by John C. Bruen from Mathew Brady’s 1870 photograph of Clemens (see 8 July 70 to OLC, n. 3), was printed in April 1871 (4:52). Clemens apparently began to refer Redpath to Aldine editor Edson C. Chick. In referring him instead to the editor of the Boston Saturday Evening Gazette, Clemens probably meant Warren Luther Brigham. The Gazette’s current editor and publisher, however, was Henry G. Parker (Wilson 1871, 149; 26 or 27 Feb 71 to Chick; 1 Dec 70 to Brigham; Boston Directory 1871, 16, 544).

A “right good” portrait in the April 1871 Aldine, engraved by John C. Bruen from the 1870 Mathew Brady photograph. See 27 June 1871 to Redpath (2nd of 2).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, collection of Todd M. Axelrod.

Previous publication: L4, 415–417; excerpts in MTL, 1:189; Will M. Clemens 1900, 28; Horner, 166; AAA 1928, lot 77; “Letters to James Redpath,” Mark Twain Quarterly 5 (Winter–Spring 1942): 19–20 MTMF, 154; Chester L. Davis 1978, 3; The Rendells, undated notice of sale.

Provenance:The MS was sold in 1928 by AAA to an unknown purchaser, and before 1983 by The Rendells to Todd M. Axelrod. Its present location is not known.