To Edward H. House
23 February 1882 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS, typewritten, from dictation: ViU, UCCL 02164)
hartford conn. feb’y 23d. 1882.
my dear house:
coto’s shawl will go by this afternoons mail. mrs clemens is getting it ready now. i glanced at the scribner criticism and interpreted it exactly as you did. it amused me a good deal, to observe the struggle going on in the writer’s mind, to find something to find fault with, and i thought that if i could have been at his elbow, i could have saved him the humiliation of discovering such infinitesimal defects, by pointing out colossal ones, almost without number, which he was too blind to see. i received a lot of english notices yesterday, and to my astonishment they are profoundly complimentary; even the “london times” stoops to flatter. the english sale is one third as great as the american, the same proportion achieved on “the tramp abroad”, which had an exceptionately great sale for a high priced book. i comfort myself that while the rest of our tribe are growling over international copy-right, i am the recipient of a most gaudy english in-come, from three books which cannot be [pirated.
i] am brim full of rheumatism and it gives me an excellent excuse for practicing type writing on you. we are all sick the whole gang, but none of us sick enough to hurt. clara is the only one in the doctor’s hands, and she is getting along very satisfactorily. we all send a prodigious [frieght] of love to you and coto.
ever yours
mark.
[letter docketed:] Clemens SL. | Feby 23 1882
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):Previous publication:
MicroPUL, reel 2.
Provenance:
Deposited at ViU by Clifton Waller Barrett on 24 October 1961.
Emendations and textual notes:
pirated. [¶] I • [space added to indicate new unindented paragraph; no extra space between paragraphs in MS, here and hereafter]
frieght • [sic]
