slc
The Jumping Frog
The Good Little Boy who didn’t prosper.
Click to add citation to My Citations.
Hartford, Jan. 27.
Dear Sir:1
I regret the delay, but I have been driven for time to even turn eat in, lately.
I have furnished the data to Chas. Dudley Warner & he [ wise will] hurry up my biographical sketch.2
I only know of 2 portraits of me—both wood. The one enclosed (which I have cut from a western newspaper) first appeared in the Aldine3 & they have probably sold an electrotype to the paper I speak of. But the picture is too large anyway, I suppose. The other portrait appeared in the London “Graphic” in September, & was excellent, but it is even larger than the Aldine cut.4 So I enclose a first-rate photograph, with an autograph on it, as you suggest.5
As for selections, I would suggest:—from “Roughing It”:
The Pony Rider (descriptive)—page 716
The South Pass (
ʺ)ʺ100
From The “Innocents Abroad”:
[“] European Guides” (humorous)—2907
B
Also Humorous:—viz:
{
These are both in the small volume entitled “The Jumping Frog & other Sketches,”8 & I think all my books are in your principal public library. If not, I c will send a set to you if you desire it.
There is another humorous sketch which I like—“Baker’s Cat,” page 439, “Roughing It.”
And there is ([ th ] also humorous—& if not pathetic—the author weeping over Adam’s Grave—page 567 Innocents Abroad.
Also “Buck Fanshaw’s Funeral,” page 328 “Roughing It.” 9
But I must wait and take another look, for these selections seem cumbersomely long.
P. S.—28.—
These are only suggestions, nothing more. They are cumbersomely long, & you may be able to select something that will not crowd your space so much. I have suggested both [ di descriptive] & humorous writing—that is to say the serious & the humorous, because c humor cannot do credit to itself without a good [background] of gravity & of [earnestness]. Humor unsupported rather hurts its author in the estimation of the [reader. Will] you please present me in the two lights?
Ys Truly
Samℓ. L. Clemens
Mark Twain.
M. L. Simons Esq
[enclosure 1:]
[enclosure 2:]
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Click to add citation to My Citations. 1
Michael Laird Simons (1843–80) began his journalism career with the Philadelphia Inquirer
and later worked for the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, contributing to various literary journals as
well. He was active in establishing the Reformed Episcopal church, and edited several historical and religious works (Wilson and Fiske, 5:535).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 2
Simons had written to ask assistance in preparing a “biographical sketch” of Clemens to be included in
a revision of the Cyclopaedia of American Literature, originally edited by Evert A. and George L.
Duyckinck and first published in 1856. The new edition, “edited to date by M. Laird Simons,” appeared in
fifty-two parts in 1873–74, and was published in two volumes in 1875. Warner prepared an article for it, based on
the eleven pages of autobiographical “data” that Clemens provided him (now at the Pierpont Morgan
Library in New York), but preferred “as a matter of taste ... not to appear as the writer of
the sketch” (Warner to Simons, 22 May 73, ODaU; SLC 1873; Charles Dudley
Warner 1875).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 3
The portrait of Clemens in the Aldine for April 1871 (4:52), reproduced on p. 285 as an enclosure, was
engraved on wood by John C. Bruen from an 1870 photograph taken by Mathew Brady (L4, 416 n. 2). The “western newspaper” has not been identified.
Click to add citation to My Citations. 4
The Graphic portrait appeared in the issue for 5 October 1872 (5 Oct 72 to Fitzgibbon). It is reproduced on p. 162.
Click to add citation to My Citations. 5
The “first-rate photograph” was taken by Edward H. Paige of Buffalo and first exhibited in his gallery
in the spring of 1870. The print that Clemens signed and enclosed is not known to survive, so the enclosure is reproduced
above from the engraving made for the Cyclopaedia (Duyckinck and Duyckinck, 2:951; several original prints of this photograph are extant, and are reproduced in L4, 132, 136, 163).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 6
The page numbers throughout the letter refer to the American Publishing Company’s first editions. Calling it
“the finest piece of writing I ever did,” Clemens suggested to Elisha Bliss in March 1871 that he print
the pony-rider passage (from chapter 8) in the American Publisher as an advertisement or foretaste of
Roughing It (L4, 368). Simons included the pony-rider extract in his Cyclopaedia article, but not the
description of South Pass (from chapter 12).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 7
From chapter 27 of The Innocents Abroad, also reprinted in the Cyclopaedia.
Click to add citation to My Citations. 8
Clemens referred to his first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, And other
Sketches (SLC 1867), whose title sketch had first appeared in the
New York Saturday Press for 18 November 1865 (SLC
1865). The collection does not include “The Story of the Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper,”
which was first published in the Galaxy for May 1870, and was reprinted by Hotten the following year in
Screamers. In March 1872 Clemens revised Hotten’s pirated text for inclusion in Mark Twain’s Sketches (SLC 1870, 1871, 1872; 31 Mar 72 to Osgood, n. 4; 20 Sept 72 to the editor of the London Spectator,
n. 7).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 9
The story of Jim Baker’s cat, Tom Quartz, first appeared in the Buffalo Express on 18
December 1869 (SLC 1869), and Clemens later revised it for inclusion in
chapter 61 of Roughing It. Both versions were preceded, however, by an unpublished draft entitled
“Remarkable Sagacity of a Cat,” probably written in June 1868 (RI 1993, 705; SLC 1868). Scotty Briggs’s interview with a
“fledgling” minister to arrange Buck Fanshaw’s funeral occurs in chapter 47. The
“author weeping over Adam’s grave” is from chapter 53 of Innocents; it was the third extract that Simons selected for his article.
Source text(s):MS, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN-B), is copy-text for the letter. The enclosures are not known to survive.
The source for the first is the Aldine 4 (Apr 71): 52; the second is from Duyckinck and Duyckinck, 2:951.
Previous publication:
L5, 283–287 AAA 1924, lot 552, paraphrase and brief
excerpts.
Provenance:The MS was offered for sale in 1924 as part of the collection of businessman William F. Gable (1856–1921). It was
later owned by businessman William T. H. Howe (1874–1939); in 1940 Dr. A. A. Berg bought and donated the Howe
Collection to NN.
Emendations and textual notes:
wise will • wisell
th • [‘h’ partly formed]
di descriptive • di escriptive
background • backgrowund
earnestness • earnestlness
reader. Will • reader.— |Will
