Mark Twain on Fenimore Cooper

On April 29, 1898, Mark Twain wrote a letter to Richard Watson Gilder, editor of The Century Magazine and member of various New York City clubs. The letter was written on the ornamental notepaper of the Hotel Metropole in Vienna. The letter is on display at the Morgan Library as part of its exhibit Mark Twain: A Skeptic’s Progress.

An explanatory card in the glass case draws attention to what Twain had to say about the payment rates of the London Times, but for me this was the most interesting part of the letter.

Ah, if I had but known you would care for the Fenimore Cooper article! I wrote it for my own entertainment, and I was charmed with it, but I never dreamed that anybody would take it but a solemn Review. The North American didn’t want it. They were afraid of it. I had to make them take it, at the revolver’s muzzle. [The previous sentence was inserted with a caret.] They said the subject was so old; and that nobody cared to read about Cooper in our day or have his dry bones dug up and inspected.

The article, of course, was Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses, one of the most entertaining pieces Twain ever wrote.