Mark Twain Project :: Letters :: : an electronic text

To William Dean Howells
18 May 1883 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS, typewritten, from dictation: MH-H, UCCL 02388)

Click to add citation to My Citations.

hartford, may 18th. 1883.

my dear howells:—

i have just sent your note to the godly mallory, and said that we would leave the matter just as it stands, not only until your return but until the play shall be completed. said i did not wish to bind myself to write a play. next october you will come here and roost with me, and we will lock ourselves up from all the world and put the great american comedy through. if we ever come to deal with those people[,] we shall not do it in person, but through the ablest legal talent that new york can furnish; and if they get ahead of us they will have to rise early.

when i was in montreal three or four days ago, acquiring british copyright whilst my new book was being issued in london, that startling news came of the suicide of john hay’s father-in-law. and among the same telegrams was the news that hay and his wife sailed from liverpool just in time to escape hearing of the catastrophe. the suicide lies waiting alongside president garfield, and these children are still enjoying themselves on the atlantic, unaware of what is in store for them. how odd and strange and [wierd] all this is. apparently nothing pleases the almighty like the [picturesque.

i] owe much to you. for during all these months, wherein we have been quarantined during the third of a year with wearisome revisitings of scarlet fever, and [wherein] mrs. clemens has been assaulted by many and rather alarming distempers, and been obliged to keep her bed for weeks, my great and sufficient solace has been that it is you who are writhing in the european hell and not me. i have imagined your sufferings, and reflected that they were not mine, and have enjoyed them to ecstasy. those of us who are not in europe, and can so conduct ourselves as not to be obliged to go thither, ought never to forget for a single [day] to be duly and rightly thankful for the [partialities] thus shown us by a discriminating providence over our less fortunate friends. come home; and let this experience be a lesson to you.

if you should strike paris, you must look up the gerhardts, 11 rue [boissonnade]. meantime we join in love to you all, and i humbly try to be sorry for you.

yours as ever,

mark.