Partial self-contained ALS, signed "Mark Twain," three pages, 5.5 x 9, no date, but according to the Mark Twain Papers at the University of California, Berkeley, this letter was written by Mark Twain in Hartford, Connecticut, on January 15, 1891. The final three pages of a four-page letter to Gardiner G. Hubbard, president of the Bell Telephone Company and father-in-law of Alexander Graham Bell. In full: "This marvelous experience convinces me that the time is coming, & very soon, when the telephone will be a perfect instrument; when proximity will no longer be a hinderance [sic] to its performance; when, in fact, one will hear a man who is in the next block just as easily & comfortably as he would if that man were in San Francisco. I am quite sure that this great day is approaching–& on lightning wing, if I may be permitted to use a phrase which seems to be going out first at a time when the market for it is daily improving. Indeed, this great day is already arriving. You will admit this yourself. Your Hartford service shows it. The expression 'darn' is already in common use. This was not the case aforetime. ["darn" replaced "damn" because when one cursed, service was shut down.] This modification will be followed by other ameliorations of the telephone code; These by others still; until at last all questionable ornaments of speech will disappear, & you will stand up & talk to a telephone just as you would to a girl. Then the clergy will put the telephone into their houses again; they did not discard it aforetime out of hostility to it, but only on account of the difficulty of acquiring familiarity with the code. But enthusiasm is carrying me away. I must calm myself. A word more: in the circumstances, it seems a fair & indeed imperative return-courtesy that arrangements lately made by me in a moment of irritation, regarding the future of the inventor of the telephone, should now be modified; therefore please say to him he can have my place, I can get another." The first page shows scattered soiling, toning, and surface damage and residue to top left (touching six words of text); the other two pages are in fine condition.
This Clemens letter was a contrite follow-up to an earlier correspondence in which he sent a letter of complaint to Hubbard, who helped established Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts. In that earlier letter, the annoyed writer criticized the Hartford telephone system-and by association, Bell-writing that 'if you try to curse through the telephone, they shut you off...the inventor is responsible for all this.' In the letter here offered, extolling the telephone, Clemens refers to his last letter to Hubbard, and while not backing down from his earlier recommendation that Bell 'come up & work the Hartford telephone till he pines for the solace & refuge of his long hot home,' modifies it, telling Hubbard to "please say to him [Bell] he can have my place, I can get another." An apologetic yet still feisty example of the wit of Mark Twain. Pre-certified John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and RRAuction COA.
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