April 4 Saturday – From Sam’s notebook:

“General Grant is still alive to-day, & the nation holds its breath & awaits the blow” [MTNJ 3:127].

The Hartford Courant ran Sam’s Mar. 28 letter to Nichols, prefaced by these remarks about the Concord Library and the Boston Advertiser:

The Boston Advertiser attacks Mark Twain as venomously and persistently as if his recent suit against a Boston publishing-house had been brought against itself; and it ventures into declaration which it would have hard work to prove. For example, it says that there is “something very suggestive in the eagerness and unanimity with which library committees and newspapers throughout the country have followed the precedent established by the Concord library in condemning Mark Twain’s last book,” but it omits to mention the libraries or to list the newspapers.

Indeed, some of the leading newspapers of the country have taken the liberty to laugh at the Concord folks for their conduct, and the libraries that have rejected the volume are, we venture to say, few and far between. They must all be of the class that the Concord library belongs to; for one of the trustees of that library, when interviewed on the matter, said that no fiction was permitted on the Concord shelves. Of course, “Huckleberry Finn” isn’t a true story. It is fiction, and so it’s barred by this Concord limitation. The discovery that they had bought a biography in good faith and had got something that was not true may be the cause of the discontent, although the life of Huck Finn is not the only biography that partakes of the nature of fiction, and the Concord library would be further depleted if all biographies that are not true were cast out from it [Railton].

In Hartford, Sam wrote to Charles Webster—he had a trick up his sleeve as well, for the Boston Advertiser and the Springfield (Mass.) Republican. He wrote a “prefatory insertion” for all future editions of the book, answering gossip as to whether Huck Finn was real or imagined:

Huckleberry Finn is not an imaginary person. He still lives; or rather they still live; for Huckleberry Finn is two persons in one — namely, the author’s two uncles, the present editors of the Boston Advertiser and the Springfield Republican. In character, language, clothing, education, instinct, and origin, he is the painstakingly and truthfully drawn photograph and counterpart of these two gentlemen as they were in the time of their boyhood, forty years ago. The work has been most carefully and conscientiously done, and is exactly true to the originals, in even the minutest particulars, with but one exception, and that is a trifling one: this boy’s language has been toned down and softened, here and there, in deference to the taste of a more modern and fastidious day [MTP]. (See Apr. 5 entry for the result of Livy’s censorship.)

Sam also wrote a second letter to Webster, which he added a PS to on Apr. 6. The letter is all about financial details for the Paige typesetter, which Sam always misspelled as “Page.” [MTP].

From Sam’s notebook:

“A telegram from Gerhardt tonight says Col. Grant has personally given him the desired permission. I am very glad indeed; for the mask must be made when the General dies, & it is so much better that Gerhardt who is honest & whom the family know, should do it than some tricky stranger” [MTNJ 3: 127n5].

Karl Gerhardt wrote and telegraphed. “Telegram rec’d will do as you say.” Telegram: I shall make mask permission given personally by Col Grant” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Gerhardt has received Col. Fred. Grant’s personal permission to make death-mask of Gen. Grant”

Wellington Evarts Parkhurst (1835-1924), editor of the Clinton (Mass.) Weekly Courant, wrote:

Dr Sir / Presuming on a brief acquaintance with you, formed on the occasion of your visit to our town some fifteen years ago, I made you a copy of my paper, by wh. you will see that our Library directors have decided to help your sale of “Huckleberry Finn” by refusing it a place in our library. I can assure you, that the anxiety to see and read “Huckleberry” is on the increase here; the adults are daily inquiring where “Finn” can be had, and even the children are crying for “Huckleberries”; the only way by wh. we can preserve some of our young lads in the facts of moral rectitude is a promise to give them a copy of Mark Twain’s rejected “H.F.”—Both as an incentive and as an opiate the promise of a copy of this work is a marked success… [MTP].