Lot 231
  • 231

CLEMENS, SAMUEL L. AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED, HARTFORD, 29 SEPTEMBER 1874, TO FRANK FULLER

Estimate
1,500 - 2,500 USD
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Description

  • Autograph letter signed ("Mark") to Frank Fuller
2 pages (8 x 5 in.; 203 x 127 mm) on a sheet of ruled paper folded into a bifolium, "Hdft" [presumably for Htfd: Hartford], 29 [September 1874], with an interlinear autograph postscript; very light soiling at fold creases.

Literature

Published, though not explicated, in Mark Twain Project Online, text from a transcript by Albert Bigelow Paine

Condition

2 pages (8 x 5 in.; 203 x 127 mm) on a sheet of ruled paper folded into a bifolium, "Hdft" [presumably for Htfd: Hartford], 29 [September 1874], with an interlinear autograph postscript; very light soiling at fold creases.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

In this letter to his longtime friend and sometimes business manger Frank Fuller, Clemens writes of trying to balance his attention between Gilbert Desnmore's unauthorized stage adaptation of The Gilded Age and his work on a "big book." "Many thanks for your letter & enclosures. If I had the time I would hurl myself in the drama, wholesale. But I must go on with my book. I do not know whether I could fit Mr. & Mrs. Barney Williams with characters or not, but I still think I could fit Bijou—though I must not be thinking about dramas, with this big book on my shoulders." The "big book" may have been Old Times on the Mississippi, serialized the following year in the Atlantic Monthly and not really that big until it was subsumed by Life on the Mississippi in 1883.

Clemens continues to advise Fuller about dealing with Densmore and his adaptation, the rights to which Clemens eventually bought. Clemens revised the work retitled it Colonel Sellers. The Raymond mentioned is likely John T. Raymond, the actor who originated the role of Colonel Sellers in Densmore's original production and continued it in Clemens's eponymous revision. "I have written & asked Raymond to cross my name off the Mark Smith Benefit list, because I shall find it so difficult to leave home. Look here. You go & see McCullough about that piece. That is what I was going to do, but was so driven I couldn’t. I mean go & see him & make a trade on the merits of the piece, for you see I think I wouldn’t want my name associated with it as being the redresser of a character thrown in to make by-play while the scenes are shifted. See? But there’s meat in that play." Clemens closes the letter "We swap affections with you," and in a postscript written vertically between the two pages of text, he adds, "I enclose the P. M. I see I have been trying to turn it into a magazine article again, which I had forgotten."