To William Dean Howells
23? March 1877 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS, in pencil: MH-H, UCCL 01185)

‸ Let Mr. [about eight words canceled] with a paper signed by more than twenty authors. I don’t know (It was about the Switzerland matter.)‸

Friday, AM.

My Dear Howells:

Been reading Oaut of the ? aloud to the family & have just finished it. All hands bewitched with it. It is wonderful pic dialogue. It didn’t seem wonderful (for you) when you read it to me. I think you have a gift or faculty of disguising the merit of your productions when you read them aloud. I know it, in fact. The Parlor Car was as much as 25 times better, in print, than it was when you read it to me.1

My lawsuit is done. The villain got only $300 out of me instead of $10,000, & the his lawyer got that. My lawyer’s bill & some little items, added to the $300 only swelled my expense to $800—so I got off admirably well.2

I began Orion’s autobiography yesterday & am charmed with the work. I have started him at 18, printer’s apprentice, soft & sappy, full of fine intentions & shifting religions & not aware that he is a shining ass. Like Tom Sawyer he will stop where I start him, no doubt—20, 21 or along there; can’t tell; am driving along without plot, plan, or purpose—& enjoying it.3

I had such a good time at your house, but with a biting conscience all the time for stopping your wheels.

Yrs Ever

Mark

All we Clemenses send warmest regards to all you Howellses.

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

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1Howells’s play Out of the Question was published serially in the Atlantic Monthly from February through April 1877 (Howells 1877c). Howells had read the final installment of it to Clemens in Cambridge in the second week of March. Howells’s earlier play, The Parlor Car, had appeared in the Atlantic in September 1876 (Howells 1876e). He had given Clemens a similar early reading of it (see 23 Aug 1876 to Howells).

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2The lawsuit brought against Clemens by Henry C. Lockwood over the garment strap concluded on Tuesday, 20 March 1877, making Friday, 23 March, the likely date of this letter (24 Jan 1877 to Bliss, n. 3).

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3Clemens worked on this manuscript through May 1877. It was not published until 1967 as “Autobiography of a Damned Fool” (SLC 1877d).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, in pencil, MH-H, shelf mark bMS Am 1784 (98).

Previous publication:

MTHL, 1:173.

Provenance:

See Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.