Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), 20 March 1893

CLEMENS, Samuel Langhorne (1835-1910). Autograph letter signed ("S.L.C.") to "Mr. Hall," n.p., 20 March 1893.
 
One page, 151 x 98mm (light soiling, uneven left margin).
 
Mark Twain on the "Jubilee Singers." Clemens asks his correspondent to "remind me when I arrive that I want to get a copy of the Songs of the (colored) Jubilee Singers to send to Mrs. Clemens for a neighbor of ours here," and further advising that he would be departing for New York the next day. Established in 1871 at Fisk University, the Jubilee Signers were an African American a capella group that was highly regarded for signing spirituals. Clemens had been an avid fan of the singers since at least 1872. Writing to the group's musical director in advance of a performance in 1875, Clemens requested that the signers perform "John Brown's Body," recalling "an afternoon in London [in 1873], when their 'John Brown’s Body' took a decorous, aristocratic English audience by surprise & threw them into a volcanic eruption of applause before they knew what they were about. I never saw anything finer than their enthusiasm." (Clemens to Theodore F. Seward, 8 March 1875 (UCCL 01205) in Mark Twain’s Letters, 1874–1875. Edited by Michael B. Frank and Harriet Elinor Smith. Mark Twain Project Online).
 
[With:] Autograph letter signed ("SL Clemens") to "Mr. Martin," Riverdale, "Monday" n.d. One page bifolium, 200 x 123mm on mourning stationery (toned and dampstained, partial fold separations). Clemens thanks his correspondent for an invitation. [Also with:] Typescript of a poem entitled "Aspiration", dated in an unknown hand "Mart T. - S. S. Warrimoo Vancouver to Sydney 1896." One page, 164 x 203mm (mild dampstains). In part: "I would I were a paltry dog, A mangy dog, a lousie dog, A captain's dog to wit, And decks and carpets too, (Ki Ki) Most lavishly would s--t…" Apparently unpublished.