To William Bowen
26? June 1874 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: Clemens, UCCL 01083)

Elmira, Friday.

Dear Will:

Glad to hear you are coming. We have accepted invitations to visit in Buffalo & Fredonia, & possibly Cleveland, soon,1 & so when you arrive at the Rathbun House here, step across the street to the coal office of J. Langdon & Co. & [inquire. ] 2—for we live 3 miles from town in a little farm house on top of a tall hill & you might be profane if you climbed all the way up here & then found we were away. However I hope we shall still be here clear to the end of July. But if you should fail us this time you can’t fail us in Hartford in the winter, for only an earthquake will be able to dislodge us when we get home again. Don’t pass through Elmira without inquiring.

In a desperate hurry—for I’m trying to do a trifle of work to-day.

Yr friend

Sam

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 The dating of this letter is highly conjectural. Its reference to planned visits to Buffalo and Fredonia places it earlier than 4 July, but late enough in June for Clemens to be sufficiently confident of Olivia’s recovery (from Clara’s birth on 8 June) to accept travel invitations “soon.” The Clemenses did visit these cities in mid-August, but did not go to Cleveland, despite Mrs. Fairbanks’s expectation, expressed in a letter of 29 June, that she would see them in August (11 July 74 to JLC, n. 1; Fairbanks to SLC, 29 June 74, CU-MARK).

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2 J. Langdon and Company was at 6 Baldwin Street; the Rathbun House was on Water Street at the corner of Baldwin. According to the Elmira Advertiser, the Rathbun was

well and favorably known wherever hotels are known in this country. . . . Few public houses in this part of the country have as fine appointments, those of the Rathbun fully equalling those of the famous Delavan House in Albany or the Osborn House in Rochester. And the outside appearance is fully sustained by the interior management. The meals are all of the first-class and served in fine style. A dinner at the Rathbun means something, these days, in the way of every delicacy that the season provides and in a cookery that is admirable.

Among the hotel’s special touches were “the baskets of flowers placed here and there about the premises, and the singing birds” (“The Rathbun House,” 14 July 74, 4; Boyd and Boyd, 142, 179). It is not known if Bowen stayed there, or in fact visited Elmira at all.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS facsimile. The editors have not seen the MS, which was owned by Cyril Clemens, who provided a photocopy to the Mark Twain Papers.

Previous publication: L6, 168.

Provenance:This letter was evidently not in the collection of letters that Cyril Clemens donated to the Mark Twain House (CtHMTH) in 1984.

Emendations and textual notes:

inquire. • [deletion implied]