Mark Twain Project :: Letters :: : an electronic text

To James Redpath
7 January 1872 • Wooster, Ohio
(MS: Axelrod UCCL 00710)

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Wooster Jan [ 5 7].

Dear Redpath—

Paterson wails. Weeps for Feb. 1. I telegraphed them to fix a date with you—in January if possible; in Feb if it couldn’t be helped. But my understanding of things is that I am at Troy Feb. 1. I wish Paterson was the day before or the day after Jersey City—though a loafing [ in ] day in New York is no great hardship.1

Did you expunge that backward march to Scranton—?2

Mark

Can’t go on the new list of lecturers for next year yet.

[letter docketed:] Clemens Sam L. | Wooster O | Jan. 9 ’723

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 The date of the Paterson, New Jersey, lecture had been in dispute with the lecture committee since August 1871, but was finally set by Redpath for 31 January 1872, the day after Clemens’s lecture in Jersey City (L4, 456 n. 7, 502 n. 6, 503 n. 1). Redpath explained his management of the dispute in a long letter of 18 January, which reached Clemens in Baltimore on 23 January (CU-MARK):

UCLC31791

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2 Clemens had lobbied for eliminating the Scranton lecture as early as 23 November (L4, 502), but Redpath was unable to do so. Clemens lectured as scheduled on 29 January, following a few days at home in Hartford. The Scranton engagement might have been more logically scheduled in mid-January with other lectures in central Pennsylvania.

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3 In the hand of the Boston Lyceum Bureau’s clerk, George H. Hathaway, who in this case misread the date of the letter.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, collection of Todd M. Axelrod.

glyph Previous publication: L5, 12–14; Bangs 1902, lot 83, brief excerpt.

glyph Provenance:The MS was sold in 1902. By 1918, when it was offered by Anderson Galleries (lot 306), it belonged to E. B. Clare-Avery and was laid in a first edition copy of Punch, Brothers, Punch! And Other Sketches (Slote, Woodman and Co., 1878). It belonged to Alan N. Mendleson when it was again offered for sale in 1956 by Parke-Bernet Galleries (lot 108). Subsequently, it may have belonged to Jim Williams. By 1983 the MS—no longer laid in the book—belonged to Todd M. Axelrod, who gave the editors access to it.

glyph Emendations and textual notes:

5 7 • [‘5’ partly formed; possibly ‘8’ partly formed]

in • [‘n’ partly formed]