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A Speech by W. D. Howells
by
George Monteiro
A Bibliography of William Dean Howells contains the following item. 74-17. "Atlantic dinner," Boston Transcript, Dec. 17, 1874, xlvii, 1. Speech (quoted and paraphrased).[1]
The determination that Howells made such a speech is based apparently on the following paragraph in the Transcript account of the Atlantic's dinner for contributors held at Boston's Parker House on December 15, 1874.
There is, however, another contemporary newspaper article that provides considerably more information on the dinner in general and on Howells' performance in particular. In fact, "A Dinner on Parnassus," which appeared in the New York Tribune (18 Dec. 1874), p. 3, actually prints in full the text of Howells' "characteristic little speech" of approximately seven hundred words. This account, unsigned, was filed by Arthur Gilman,[2] then
To the information that this speech was printed in a contemporary account of the dinner can be added the further information that a manuscript of the speech in Howells' hand has recently come to light.[3] Made available by Houghton Mifflin Company, it is at present on deposit in Harvard's Houghton Library. Written in ink, with additional cancellations and inter-linear corrections in pencil, and spread over nine consecutively numbered half-sheets, the manuscript carries no explicit indication of the occasion for which the text was prepared. An enclosing sheet to which the pages are loosely sewn bears the penciled inscription in an unidentified hand: "Mr. H. O. Houghton — 6 Phillips Pl." This fact suggests the possibility that Gilman, after having been allowed to use the manuscript, returned it, not to Howells, but to Houghton. This may also explain its presence in the Houghton Mifflin files. The manuscript version differs slightly from that printed in the Tribune, but neither contains the reference to Lowell and to Fields which is quoted indirectly in the Transcript account. It is less likely that these were ad libitum extensions of his speech than that they were remarks offered by Howells, as master of ceremonies, at some later moment.
Notes
The evidence identifying Gilman as the author of this account appears in three unpublished letters: Louise C. Moulton to Arthur Gilman, 11 Dec. 1874, Houghton Mifflin Papers, Houghton Library; Whitelaw Reid to Arthur Gilman, 10 Dec. 1874, "Letter-book 24" (p. 143), Whitelaw Reid Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress; and D. N. Nicholson to Arthur Gilman, 22 Feb. 1875, "Letter-book 24" (p. 735), Whitelaw Reid Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress.
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