To Bayard Taylor
24 January 1877 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS, correspondence cards: CtY-BR and NIC, UCCL 01403)

Hartford, Wednesday.

slcMy Dear Mr. Taylor:

Good—we shall look for you 31st. I think I told you I was a sort of father to our Young Girls’ Club here & asked you to give them an hour’s talk, or read one or tw of your poems to them in my house some time. They re are charming lasses of 16 to 20 yrs. old. They number something over a dozen. Boyesen, Harte, Fields, Warner, & I have talked to them, & Howells & Hawley have promised.1 Can you stay over & entertain them Saturday morning? Or Friday morning if you can’t spare so much time? Your N.Y. train doesn’t leave here till afternoon. I hope you can & will.

Ys Truly,

S L Clemens

Wednesday

P. S. I meant, could you talk to the girls the next morning after your lecture of the 31st, in case you wouldn’t have time to stay till Saturday. I could gather the girls together as well on Thursday as on Saturday. When I mentioned Friday I was thinking that that would be the day following your lecture.2

Ys Truly

S L Clemens

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

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1For the Saturday Morning Club lecture by Harte see 5 Dec 1876 to Bentley, n. 2; for Boyesen, Harte, Warner, and Hawley see 17 Jan 1877 to Boyesen, nn. 3–4. James T. Fields was the inaugural speaker, on 6 May 1876, with a talk on Thomas Hood, and Clemens delivered “The Life of Lord Macaulay” on 18 November. Howells's name does not appear on the list of speakers for 1876–77 (Saturday Morning Club 1976, 4, 8).

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2Bayard Taylor, the author and traveler, lectured on “Literature as a Fine Art” at Hartford's Seminary Hall on the evening of Wednesday, 24 January, and gave another talk there on “Ancient Egypt” on 31 January. He evidently was not able to speak to the Saturday Morning Club (Hartford Courant: “Brief Mention,” 24 Jan 1877, 2; “Lecture by Bayard Taylor,” 31 Jan 1877, 2; Saturday Morning Club 1976, 4).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, correspondence cards; the letter card is in the Willard S. Morse Collection, Collection of American Literature, CtY-BR; the postscript card is in the Bayard Taylor Papers, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, NIC.

Previous publication:

Joline 1913, 263–65, partial publication.

Provenance:

The Morse Collection was donated to CtY in 1942 by Walter F. Frear.