April 26 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to George Bentley, London publisher of the Temple Bar, who had asked for sketches when Sam met him with Joaquin Miller. Sam sent a sketch, “Carnival of Crime” that missed the deadline for the May issue of the Atlantic [MTLE 1: 48].
Sam also wrote to Howells, thanking him for “the place of honor” in the May’s Atlantic review of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Sam confessed that he’d learned the electrotypes would not be done for a month, and, worse, that no canvassing had been done:
“Because a subscription harvest is before publication, (not after, when people have discovered how bad one’s book is).”
Sam asked Howells’ forgiveness if he’d done the Atlantic wrong but it was “the best laid schemes of mice & men, &c.” Sam and Livy planned on traveling to Boston to see Anna Dickinson debut there May 8.
Also, Howells appeared to be the middleman for the use of Sam’s “Literary Nightmare” in one of Carleton’s magazines. Sam’s response showed he was consistent in his dislike for those who had abused him:
As to that “Literary Nightmare” proposition, I’m obliged to withhold consent, for what seems a good reason—to-wit: a single page of horse-car poetry is all that the average reader can stand, without nausea; now, to stake together all of it that has been written, & then add to it my article would be to enrage & disgust each & every reader & win the deathless enmity of the lot.
Even if that reason were insufficient, there would still be a sufficient reason left, in the fact that Mr. Carleton seems to be the publisher of the magazine in which it is proposed to publish this horse-car matter. Carleton insulted me in Feb, 1867; & so when the day arrives that sees me doing him a civility, I shall feel that I am ready for Paradise, since my list of possible & impossible forgivenesses will then be complete [MTHL 1: 131-3].
Sam played his first part in a play at Dramatic Hall, Hartford, in the role of Peter Spuyk (Spyk) in James Robinson Planche’s play, Loan of a Lover. Miss Helen Smith played the part of Gertrude. [MTL 6: 10n1; MTB 570].
Sam’s letters from this period claim he “rewrote” the part. William Webster Ellsworth (1855-1936), whose future wife was Miss Smith, was in the audience and wrote this about Sam’s extemporaneous lines:
…our star [Sam Clemens] developed, early in the performance, a propensity to go on with his talk after the other person’s cue came. He would put in lines, which, while very funny to those on the other side of the footlights, were decidedly embarrassing to his fellow actors. At one point I remember he began to tell the audience about the tin roof which he had just put on an ell of his new house and rambled on for a while, ending up that particular gag by asking Gertrude [the future wife], very much to her embarrassment, if she had ever put a tin roof on her house [Ellsworth 223].
The Hartford Courant for Apr. 27, page 2 under “Amateur Theatricals” reviewed the play favorably:
It may safely be said that there has never been given in Hartford a more thoroughly satisfactory amateur entertainment than that last evening at the Dramatic hall. It was in every way a success… The whole entertainment was heartily enjoyed throughout. The audience was as large as the hall could hold, and was select and enthusiastically appreciative.
A hack was used this day from E.C. Wheaton, livery. Bill of $3 dated Sept. 1, paid Sept. 12 [MTP].
Edmund Routledge wrote from London: “A Canadian Publisher is offering for sale in this country stereo. plates of a new book by you of 160 pages post 8vo size, wh. seems to be your papers on Pilot Life…that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. My firm has declined to republish them through the Canadian publisher, and will be glad to hear from you if such publication is authorized by you…if it is, whether or not you will treat with George Routledge and Sons for their republication” [MTP].
Samuel A. Bowen wrote from St. Louis: “Frend [sic] Sam / I wrote you one letter since I saw you in St. Louis. And asked you for twenty doll $20. which you sent to Wm. and I caught the Dickens from him for asking you for money. … Now I want and if you can send me $15 or $20 and can pay you in May about the 12th…Do Not Send to the Care of William” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “Keep this precious letter from a precious liar”