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Add to My Citations To James Redpath
27 January 1872 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: MH-H, UCCL 00722) figure llc
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Hartford, 27th

Dear Redpath—

em spaceem spaceem space check mark em space1.Say no to New York.
em spaceem spaceem space check mark em space2.Say no to Englewood.
right manicule 2/9 em space3.Since Danbury is not a positive engagement, say no to Danbury. [in margin: Ithaca has written me. Please say to Ithaca that I cannot come.] 1
em spaceem spaceem space check mark em space4.Since Amherst is a positive engagement, we must say yes to it, but it looks like the infernalest misfortune that I have got to go there & talk after being out of practice three whole weeks.2 I shall make a botch of it, for I use no notes whatever, & my memory is execrable. Cannot you beg off from it?—putting it on the ground of a charity to us.

Thank God it is nearly over. I haven’t a cent to show for all this long campaign. Squandered it thoughtlessly paying debts.3

Ys

Mark

altalt

[letter docketed:] Twain Mark Hartford Cn Jan. 27. ’72 [and in pencil:] Drawer

Explanatory Notes

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1 The Mercantile Library Association had evidently written Redpath to request a second lecture. Clemens did not repeat his lecture for the association in 1872, but within a year he had agreed to lecture for it twice—on 5 and 10 February 1873—and for what he then thought were significantly better terms (see 24 Jan 73 to Redpath, n. 2). He also did not lecture in Englewood, New Jersey, or in Ithaca, New York, but he did in Danbury, Connecticut. Clemens’s instructions were annotated—probably by two hands—at the Boston Lyceum Bureau. The marks are in pencil, except for “2/9” in ink, the latter note probably indicating that 9 February was the proposed date for the Danbury lecture. The lecture was soon firmly scheduled for 21 February: advertisements for it began appearing on 7 February (“Reading Notices,” Danbury News, 7 Feb 72, 2).

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2 Until the Danbury lecture date was settled, Clemens’s only scheduled engagements were in Troy, New York, on 1 February and in Amherst, Massachusetts, on 27 February.

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3 See 2 Jan 72 to Redpath, n. 3.



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MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University. (MH-H).

glyphglyphPrevious publication:glyph L5, 36–37.

glyphglyphProvenance:glyphbequeathed to MH by Evert Jansen Wendell (1860–1917), a Harvard alumnus and collector of theater memorabilia (Dickinson, 332–33).