To Francis D. Finlay
23 April 1874 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: WU, UCCL 01078)

Elmira, ‸N. Y.,‸ Apl. 23.

My Dear Finlay:

Consound it! I never imagined that your [lawsuit ] was going to interfere with us—I thought it was your own private & personal grievance: but it turns out to have been designed by Providence to do us out of that Sèvres set—a good stroke of business to injure two people with the same dispensation. Now can’t you get that set yet? If you can only get it, & send to the Routledges for the money, they can always collect of me through their New York agent. Then [ y ] if you could entertain the Sèvres in your house till I could commission some friend of mine to bring it over, I would run down to New York & ask the Collector of the Port1 to command that the Customs officials pass it through unopened—for there is where all our troubles are—they always smash delicate things examining them in the Custom House. Is it too late to get that set?2

Bless me I had forgotten all about the page of MS., & the photo. But I will write my publisher now to send me a page right away, & I’ll transmit it.3

We have just come here for the [summer. The ] main part of our house in Hartford is built, & the servants have moved in. We shall follow, in September. It is going to be a delightful house, & of good size—111 × 87 feet on the ground & 3 stories high—so we can find room for you & yours when you come to see us. The house does not look large, but has a modest aspect. It is on high ground, & [ on ] in such a glorious breezy place, [overlooking ] a small sloping bank, with a small running brook at the base. Ah my boy, you must come.4

Miss Clara Spaulding lives here & we see her every day. She’s always talking of you. The “Modoc” is robust, but her mother is rather feeble—pulled down by the wearing 13-hour railway journey from Hartford.

Have just been writing to my old friend & literary father, Joe Goodman, of Virginia City Daily “Enterprise,” Nevada, to go & make your acquaintance in case he turns up in Belfast——he is just sailing.5 With our warm regard & very best wishes—

Ys Ever

Mark.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 The Custom House had two collectors of the port at this time, C. H. Rotunda and Chester A. Arthur (Wilson 1873, 49, “City Register,” 11).

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2 No letters from Finlay survive before December 1875. It is not known whether he acquired the Sèvres porcelain, nor have any details of his lawsuit been recovered.

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3 The letter to Elisha Bliss has not been found, but in it Clemens doubtless requested a page of The Gilded Age manuscript. The American Publishing Company long retained a portion of the approximately fifteen-hundred-page holograph. In 1899 the firm bound manuscript pages into at least some of the first volumes (The Innocents Abroad, volume 1) of its “Édition de Luxe” of The Writings of Mark Twain, issued in a maximum of one thousand numbered sets. In 1901 it repeated the procedure for the “Riverdale Edition” of the writings, issued in 625 numbered sets (Bryant Morey French, 266, 342 nn. 12, 13; SLC 1899–1907, 1901–7).

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4 The New-York Sketch-Book of Architecture for April 1874 printed a description and preliminary sketch of the Clemenses’ house by architect Edward T. Potter (Mark Twain House, 9; see p. 688).

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5 Goodman had sold the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise in February 1874. He and his wife, Ellen, a native of Ireland, immediately moved to San Francisco. According to the Enterprise of 19 February they planned to spend “about one week” there and then depart for Europe, to remain “all next summer and perhaps longer.” If they did depart San Francisco that soon, they presumably spent several weeks on the East Coast and now were “just sailing” for Europe. In a letter to a friend, published in the Enterprise on 9 September 1874, Goodman wrote: “We are here in London after having prowled through Ireland, Scotland, and England, and shall return to San Francisco in about a month, after a hasty trip to Paris” (both Enterprise items are reprinted in Berkove 1997, 44). None of Goodman’s correspondence with Clemens from this period is known to survive.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Rare Book Department, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison (WU).

Previous publication: L6, 114–116; AAA/Anderson 1935, lot 57, excerpt; Brownell 1944, 1–2.

Provenance:Norman D. Bassett, a Madison alumnus, purchased the MS at a Chicago auction sale in 1936. He donated his Mark Twain collection to WU on 9 July 1955.

Emendations and textual notes:

lawsuit • law-|suit

y • [partly formed; doubtful]

summer. The • summer.—|The

on • o in

overlooking • over-|looking