To William Dean Howells
11 December 1874 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: MH-H, UCCL 01164)

Hartford, Dec. 11.

My Dear Howells:

Mrs. Clemens is distressed to think you ‸could‸ believe she could receive that book & not have the grace to sit down & write you thanking you for [it. {She ]really believes that you think I wrote her note.} I tell her, never mind, she shall have the credit of writing some of my letters, but that don’t seem to cover the difficulty.1

Here I have been waiting to add two or three lines to article No. 1 when the proof should come, wholly forgetting that the proof has come & gone again, long ago! However, it is no matter; but I do wish I had thought about it sooner.2

Mrs. Clemens was not much ‸wholly‸ pleased with No. 1;—which I had not time to re-write. Now she disapproves of a considerable portion of No. 4, so I shall lick it into shape before I tackle No. 5.

I have the madam’s permission to treat myself to a holiday next Tuesday, the 15th, & so I fo mean to be at that Atlantic dinner. Mrs. Clemens would go with me to Boston, but her mother is to arrive here that night.3

With kindest remembrances to Mrs. Howells

Yrs Ever

Clemens

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 See 8 Dec 74 to Howells, n. 4.

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2 Clemens returned the proofs of the first installment of “Old Times” with his 25 November letter to Howells, then wrote on 9 December proposing the addition he here abandoned. When he expanded the Atlantic series into Life on the Mississippi, in 1882, he reused the first installment as chapters 4 and 5, without adding any new material.

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3 Mrs. Langdon and the Cranes spent Christmas in Hartford, but it is not known whether they arrived in mid-December or after their stay in New York on 22 and 23 December (see p. 328).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1784 [98]).

Previous publication: L6, 313–314; MTHL, 1:45–46.

Provenance:see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

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