Hartford Jan. 28
Dear Dan:
I have been through that mill (of “When is your book going to be out?”) so often that it long ago ceased to have any power to annoy me—though when the “Innocents” was in press I confess I wished a million times that I had never written a [book. It] is the same mill that every man who projects an enterprise of any kind has got to suffer anguish in once. It isn’t confined to book scribblers, by a long shot. How many hundred times a week do you suppose Mackey is asked when the new machinery will be up, & when the new mills will be finished, & all that sort of thing? Keep your shirt on, man, & remember what I long ago told you—viz., that Bliss never yet came within 4 months of getting a book out at the time he said he would. On the Innocents he fell short overstepped his word & his contract 13 13 months—& I suffered questioning all that time.1
Williams has finished the pictures for my book & tells me ‸he‸ is [on] at work on yours, now.
You needn’t speak to Mackey any more about those letters.2 I can It doesn’t matter. But you may send me a peck of your best pine nuts per express, at your earliest convenience, with bill for the same. I want to spread them before company for a novelty. Your book is going to interfere a good deal with my Sketches, but I don’t mind that., if it don’t interfere too much.3
Yrs.
Mark.4
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Clemens persistently overstated the delay in publication of The
Innocents Abroad . He had submitted the manuscript to Elisha Bliss in August
1868, expecting publication that fall. The book was published at the end of July 1869 (L3, xxvi-xxvii; 22 July 1869 to Bliss, 284–88; 12 Aug 1869 to Bliss, 291–94). Wright’s letter to Clemens, complaining of delay
in publication of The Big Bonanza , does not survive. On 27 January
Wright had written Bliss that he was “beseiged” about the book (CtY-BR, UCLC 35603): People here
are becoming very impatient, as I told them some time ago that it would be out about the 1st of January;
Mark Twain having written me to that effect. . . . I wish you to get out the book as soon as possible, without cutting
down the illustrations. Please let me know about how soon you can get it out, as I am asked dozens of times every day and no longer
know what answer to make. I am also getting many subscribers of which I make mental note; if I knew when the book would be out I might
be taking down the names of these, but as it is now I can give the would-be subscribers no satisfaction in regard to the time when the
book will make its appearance. Please let me know this and send me the proper authority for receiving subscriptions. In a letter of 5 November 1875, Clemens had urged
Bliss to “rush Dan’s book into print, by New Year’s, if possible” (L6, 585). The letter to Wright in which Clemens projected a January 1876 publication
date for The Big Bonanza is not known to survive, however.
Pine nuts were a dietary staple of the Paiute tribe. The Big Bonanza was not published until July 1876 and thus did not interfere with sales of Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old , published in late September
1875 (APC 1866–79, 134).
Wright replied (CtY-BR): Wright
alluded to: Henry R. Linderman (1825–79), physician and first director of the Bureau
of the Mint, who had recently conducted an official examination that confirmed the richness of Nevada’s big bonanza silver
discovery of 1874, but whose map of “the lower levels” was not reproduced in De Quille’s book; A. L. Bancroft and Company, the San Francisco publishers who acted as West Coast agent for
the American Publishing Company; Clemens’s “A Literary Nightmare” (SLC 1876f); Frank, as well as Elisha, Bliss; and Joseph T. and Ellen Goodman (Angel 1881, 150, 169,
619; 24 Mar 1875 to Bliss, L6, 425 n. 2). On 8 February, the day after Wright wrote his reply, he printed the following squib in the Enterprise: Mark Twain has at last “soured on” such grub as New England civilization is able to spread before him. He writes to us: “For the love of Heaven get me a peck of pine-nuts at your earliest convenience and send them on here by express! I hanker after them as of old the Israelites longed for the flesh-pots of Egypt!” A man can stand it down east for a time on the kind of grub they have there—may linger along for years—but ultimately his stomach revolts and his soul cries out for that sound and satisfying fare on which he fed when he stalked the mountains a prince of nature and a man able to outstare the sun. He shall have the pine-nuts. (Quoted in Driscoll 2018, 114) The source of this more dramatic plea for pine nuts is unclear. It is unlikely that Wright would add his own embellishments to a quotation from Clemens's 28 January letter. So it is possible that Clemens became impatient and sent a second request, with the additional text, in early February, in a telegram that has not been found.
Source text(s):Previous publication:
Berkove 1988, 9.
Provenance:
See the Morris Collection in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
book. It • ~.— | ~
on • [‘n’ partly formed]
