August 2 Saturday – In York Harbor, Maine Sam wrote to Charles Bancroft Dillingham.
There is one change which will be best made before the serious work of revising the play & trimming & compressing it is begun—a change which I thought of when you were here, but which did not then seem really important—but the more I think of it more I perceive that it is important.
You see, the public will expect to see these two boys as they familiarly know them: Tom Sawyer, ostentatiously smart & inventive & always boss; Huck Finn, humble, timid, ignorant, uninventive, Tom’s willing slave and enthusiastic admirer. These two stand related to each other as General Grant & Adam Badeau (member of his staff) stand related to each other in Badeau’s admiring biography of Grant. Now, let us suppose the public to be familiar with that biography. Then, let us invite that public to come & see the biography played on the stage. And let us try to imagine the bewilderment & astonishment of the audience when they see Badeau dressed up as Grant & doing Grant’s deeds & saying his familiar “Unconditional Surrender,” “We’ll fight it out on this line if it takes all summer,” etc.; & Grant dressed up as Badeau & following him around like a happy spaniel, adoring, admiring, worshiping him. The audience & the newspapers would object.
Therefore, let us transpose the names.
When you come to study it over I think you will concede the wisdom of this, & also the necessity. With my name on the bills as joint-dramatist, people could well wonder why I had put these boys into each others’ clothes and swapped names when there was no occasion to do it & no way of explaining why it was done / P. S. There is no need to change the title of the play. In the books Huck is quite as important as Tom. They are foils to show each other off [MTP]. Note: See July 13. See July 1, 1897 for more on Dillingham. Sam also made a NB entry about this letter [NB 45 TS 23].
Sam also wrote to H.H Rogers, enclosing Whitmore’s Aug. 1 about Witherbee’s latest offer for the Hartford house.
“Dear Mr. Rogers: I can’t tell, for the life of me, whether this is first-rate or second-rate or what. It is too deep for me. Won’t you arrive at a decision for me & tell Whitmore or me whether to take it [or] decline it? By Jackson, I’ll be everlastingly obliged if you will” [MTP; Not in MTHHR].
Sam also wrote a postcard “Saturday night. Late” to Franklin G. Whitmore. “ I have just mailed your letter & W.’s to Mr. R. & asked him to decide & tell you or me whether to accept or decline. I’ll do either he prefers” [MTP]. Note: Sidney A. Witherbee was trying to buy the Hartford House without cash. See Aug. 3 to Rogers.
Sam dined with John Cadwalader in York Harbor [Paine’s Mark Twain’s Notebook 375].
Athenaeum anonymously reviewed “A Double-Barrelled Detective Story,” p.152: “The hand of the master is easy to recognize” [Tenney 36].
Saturday Review (London) anonymously reviewed “A Double -Barrelled Detective Story,” p.147. Tenney: “The book is ‘hopeless…an odd jumble: there is very nearly a serious plot, arising out of a very disgusting incident, and then the story tails off into a feeble burlesque of detective fiction” [Tenney 36].