Mark Twain's letters, 1876-1880. Volume 3, 1878 [An electronic ed] 0520901002, 9780520901001

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MARK TWAIN’S LETTERS 1876–1880 An Electronic Edition É

Volume 3: 1878 Edited by the Mark Twain Project

Published for the University of California Press by the Mark Twain Project of The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California 2003

The texts of letters written or dictated by Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain), Olivia L. Clemens, Olivia Susan (Susy) Clemens, Clara L. Clemens, and Jane L. (Jean) Clemens—excluding only those letters published before 1923—are © 2001 by Richard A. Watson and The Chase Global Private Bank as Trustees of the Mark Twain Foundation, which reserves all reproduction or dramatization rights in every medium. All editorial transcription, reconstruction, decipherment, explanatory comment, identification of correspondents, places, and dates are © 2001 and 2003 by The Regents of the University of California. ISBN: 0-520-90100-2

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Introduction This electronic edition includes the texts of more than seven hundred letters written by Samuel L. Clemens—every letter that is known to survive from January 1876 through December 1880. The edition comprises five volumes, one for each year. Every letter has been meticulously transcribed from the best available source: the original manuscript (or photocopy of it) whenever possible; a printed source (such as a book, newspaper, or dealer’s catalog) when the manuscript is unavailable. In a few cases, the source is a handwritten or printed text that contains a paraphrase of Clemens’s words. This electronic edition continues the six volumes published to date in the Mark Twain Project’s print series, Mark Twain’s Letters, which include the letters written between 1853 and 1875 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1988–2002). Unlike those volumes, however, it does not contain detailed annotation, textual commentaries, or other documentation, but it employs the same system of transcription, which represents the text of Clemens’s holograph as fully as possible, including his cancellations (e.g., deletions) and =insertions=. An editorial heading for each letter confirms, corrects, or supplies the name of the addressee and the date and place of composition, and the name of Clemens’s co-writer or amanuensis, as needed. A source line identifies the document from which the transcription was prepared. For more information about the transcription system, see Editorial Signs, Authorial Signs, and Emendation Policy, the sections that immediately follow this introduction. É By 1876, drawing on his varied experiences as a Mississippi River steamboat pilot, a gold and silver miner in Nevada Territory, a western journalist known as the “Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” and a foreign travel correspondent, Clemens had established himself as one of the preeminent literary figures of the English-speaking world. He had followed his first book of short pieces, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, And other Sketches (New York: C. H. Webb, 1867), with three full-length works sold by subscription, by the American Publishing Company of Hartford, Connecticut, in nearly unprecedented numbers: The Innocents Abroad (1869), an account of his excursion to Europe and the Holy Land aboard the steamer Quaker City; Roughing It (1872), based on his experiences in Nevada Territory, California, and the Sandwich Islands; and The Gilded Age (1873–74), a political satire written in collaboration with his Hartford friend, neighbor, and fellow humorist, Charles Dudley Warner. In a fourth major book, Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old (1875), likewise issued by the American Publishing Company, he had compiled his own selection of his best short work. He had also written, but not yet published, what came to be known as the definitive “boy’s book,” The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Meanwhile, he had built a following among magazine iii

readers, first in 1870–71 with a monthly “Memoranda” column in the popular Galaxy, and then, beginning in 1874, with regular contributions, especially his “Old Times on the Mississippi” series (January–June, August 1875), in the much more high-toned Atlantic Monthly. He was also a familiar presence in the daily press, as co-owner and co-editor of the Buffalo Express (1869–70), and through prominently published letters to the editors of the New York Tribune, the Hartford Courant, and other papers. And in 1874–75 he had made a spectacular debut as a playwright with a comedy cobbled from his portion of The Gilded Age. Eventually known simply as Colonel Sellers, for the flamboyant lead character played by John T. Raymond, the play became a staple of the nineteenth-century American stage. Raymond toured it and revived it for more than a decade, earning Clemens a considerable fortune. During these years Clemens had also established himself as one of the most popular lecturers on the lyceum circuit. He made three grueling lecture tours of the eastern and midwestern United States (1868–69, 1869–70, 1871–72), and had two briefer but tremendously successful engagements in England (1872–73), while there for pleasure and to arrange for English editions of his books. These lectures, domestic and foreign, provided useful publicity for the books and were instrumental in making “Mark Twain” a familiar household name. Clemens’s personal life was as crowded as his professional one. In February 1870 he married Olivia Langdon, daughter of a prominent and socially progressive Elmira, New York, coal magnate. The newlyweds lived for a little more than a year in Buffalo, New York, where their son, Langdon, was born in November 1870. Unhappy in Buffalo, they moved to Hartford, Connecticut, in the fall of 1871. There they settled in the fashionable and literary Nook Farm neighborhood, home to Warner and Harriet Beecher Stowe, among congenial others. They rented a house while acquiring property and building a house of their own. By the time it was ready for occupancy in September 1874, the Clemenses had lost their frail son to illness, but had seen the birth of two healthy daughters, Olivia Susan (Susy), in March of 1872, and Clara, in June of 1874. The years 1876–80 were no less busy and productive, although not without their frustrations. In 1876 Clemens saw the publication of the English and American editions of Tom Sawyer (by Chatto and Windus, of London, and the American Publishing Company), but was irritated by delays in the American version and infuriated when sales were damaged by competition from an unauthorized Canadian edition. In July of that year he began Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, his sequel to Tom Sawyer, and drafted about a third of the story by September, when he set it aside. He was soon receiving so many inquiries from readers anxious for this sequel that he resorted to a printed form letter of reply, which he began sending out, while the work was on hold, in 1877 (included here at the beginning of that year). In 1876 he also wrote 1601, his bawdy burlesque of the court of Elizabeth I, which he circulated privately among friends. And still in 1876, hoping to iv

repeat the popular and financial success of the Gilded Age play, he collaborated on a new comedy with his old San Francisco friend, Bret Harte. The collaboration proved a disaster, artistically and also personally. The play, Ah Sin, the Heathen Chinee, debuted in Washington in the spring of 1877, had a short run in New York that summer, and a brief road tour that fall, before Clemens pronounced it a failure and withdrew it from the stage. He blamed Harte for the play’s manifold defects, and his bitterness over that and over Harte’s borrowing of money put an end to their long friendship. His attempt to succeed on his own with yet another play, “Cap’n Simon Wheeler, The Amateur Detective,” which he drafted and revised in about two weeks in June and July 1877, was also doomed to failure when he was unable to interest any New York actor or producer in staging it. Abandoning drama then, he turned to historical fiction. In the fall of 1877 he began writing The Prince and the Pauper, completing about a third of the story before setting it aside in February 1878. While engaged on these major projects, Clemens found time to monitor sales of “Mark Twain’s Patent Self-Pasting Scrap Book,” which he had invented in 1872, patented in 1873, and evidently began marketing in 1877, through his Quaker City friend Dan Slote’s New York blank book manufactory, Slote, Woodman and Company. In the spring of 1878 he published Punch, Brothers, Punch! and Other Sketches, a small selection of old work, through Slote’s firm, chiefly as a means of advertising the scrapbook. He also produced a steady stream of articles for the Atlantic Monthly, both unsigned pieces for the anonymous “Contributors’ Club,” and signed articles such as “A Literary Nightmare” (February 1876), “The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut” (June 1876), and the four-part “Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion” (October 1877–January 1878). The “Rambling Notes” series was an account of Clemens’s May 1877 trip to Bermuda “to get the world & the devil out of my head” (23 Apr 77 to Crane), in the company of his close friend Joseph H. Twichell, pastor of Hartford’s Asylum Hill Congregational Church. Their happy experience together turned out to be a rehearsal for the lengthier jaunt the two men made together in 1878, part of the Clemens family’s extended tour of Europe that year and the next. The Clemenses had originally planned a European trip for April 1877, but early in the year Olivia decided to postpone it and in the spring Clemens made his Bermuda trip instead. Clemens’s performance in December 1877 at the Atlantic Monthly birthday dinner for John Greenleaf Whittier may have given him, at least for a short time, a special impetus to revive the plan for a foreign retreat. His humorous speech containing irreverent allusions to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was not well received, and Clemens was persuaded that he had given offense and embarrassed his presenter, William Dean Howells, as well as himself:

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I feel that my misfortune has injured me all over the country; therefore it will be best that I retire from before the public at present. . . . It seems as if I must have been insane when I wrote that speech & saw no harm in it, no disrespect toward those men whom I reverenced so much. And what shame I brought upon you, after what you said in introducing me! It burns me like fire to think of it. (23 Dec 77 to Howells) His 27 December 1877 letter of apology to the three men provides ample testimony of the depth of his remorse. They assured Clemens that they had not taken offense, however, and by 5 February 1878 he had rebounded, writing his Quaker City mentor, Mary Mason Fairbanks: I am pretty dull in some things, & very likely the Atlantic speech was in ill taste; but that is the worst that can be said of it. I am sincerely sorry if it in any wise hurt those great poets’ feelings—I never wanted to do that. But nobody has ever convinced me that that speech was not a good one——for me; above my average, considerably. The true rationale for the European hegira, as Clemens explained, was literary and financial. On 17 February 1878 he wrote to his mother: Life has come to be a very serious matter with me. I have a badgered, harassed feeling, a good part of my time. It comes mainly of business responsibilities & annoyances, & the persecution of kindly letters from well-meaning strangers—to whom I must be rudely silent or else put in the biggest half of my time bothering over answers. There are other things, also, that help to consume my time & defeat my projects. Well, the consequence is, I cannot write a book at home. This cuts my income down. Therefore, I have about made up my mind to take my tribe & fly to some little corner of Europe & budge no more until I shall have completed one of the half dozen books that lie begun, up stairs. The complaint about correspondence was a frequent one, and beginning in 1876 Clemens employed a secretary, Fanny C. Hesse, in an attempt to relieve the burden. A number of letters included here are in her hand. But, of course, since he had to dictate those and approve them before they were sent, the distraction persisted. On 9 March 1878 he wrote Mrs. Fairbanks that the only chance I get here to work is the 3 months we spend at the farm in the summer. A nine months’ annual vacation is too burdensome. I want to find a German village where nobody knows my name or speaks any English, & shut myself up in a closet 2 miles from the hotel, & work every day without interruption until I shall have satisfied my consuming desire in that direction. Clemens hoped to economize on living expenses by shutting down the Hartford house for two years and putting on furlough most of the staff that kept it running, leaving only “the coachman & family” to “stand guard at the stable, with the horses, & keep the conservatory blooming & the hanging flower-baskets flourishing in the balconies” (20 Mar 78 to Stoddard). And so, on 11 April 1878 the Clemens family, accompanied by vi

Rosina Hay, the children’s German nursemaid, and Clara Spaulding, Olivia’s friend since childhood, sailed for Hamburg aboard the SS Holsatia. They arrived on 25 April to begin a sojourn that lasted until 2 September 1879 and took them not just to Germany but also to Switzerland, Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and England. The unfinished manuscripts that Clemens took with him probably included, in addition to Huckleberry Finn and The Prince and the Pauper, “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven,” which he had worked on intermittently since 1868; a burlesque diary of Methuselah, begun in 1876 or 1877; a fictionalized biography of his hapless brother, Orion, which he had started and was “charmed” with in March 1877 (23? Mar 77 to Howells) and which Albert Bigelow Paine, his first biographer and literary executor, later entitled “The Autobiography of a Damned Fool”; and a novelization of his unsuccessful Simon Wheeler play, which he worked on in late 1877 and early 1878. Clemens soon gave up the notion of continuing any of these. He decided instead to write a book along the lines of The Innocents Abroad. But the demands of travel and bouts of rheumatism were to prevent steady and coherent composition. After Twichell arrived to join the family party, at Clemens’s expense, on 1 August 1878, he and Clemens began the five and a half weeks of companionable “tramping” through Germany and Switzerland that produced much of the matter of the book and suggested its title: A Tramp Abroad. Clemens filled his notebooks with observations, hoping to turn them into chapters of the book as they went, but difficulty in composition persisted. On 20 August 1878, he wrote to Francis E. Bliss, of the American Publishing Company: I find it is no sort of use to try to write while one is traveling. I am interrupted constantly—& most of the time I am too tired to write, anyway. Since Twichell has been with me I have invented a new & better plan for the book. Therefore I shall tear up a great deal of my present batch of MS. & start fresh. I shan’t be able to go to work in earnest until we settle down in Munich in November. Up to this time all of my prophecies have failed—so I won’t venture any more. In Munich, though, he was stalled by the loss of his Swiss notebook, an occurrence that made him consider abandoning the travel book entirely. By late January 1879 he had recovered it, but the writing continued to come hard and acceptable manuscript did not accumulate rapidly. In the spring of the year he was only half finished, and by early July, with much remaining to do, he suspended work on the book pending his return home. For the family, the travel experience was a mixed blessing. Although there was much to see and much to enjoy, some adjustments were difficult to make. Olivia Clemens complained, in letters to her Elmira family (not included here), of unpalatable food and uncomfortable accommodations. She was overwhelmed by the flattering and exhausting attention she and Clemens sometimes received, particularly in Paris, and grew increasingly homesick. In Germany, she studied the language, but with only indifferent success. Clemens also worked at it as time allowed, railing comically at its stubborn intricacy, but vii

finally gave up any serious attempt to master it. Only the children, six-year-old Susy and four-year-old Clara, took to it easily and were soon fluent. Wherever the Clemenses went, Olivia and Clara Spaulding visited parks and galleries and other tourist sites. Olivia also shopped. While aspiring to frugality and pleading poverty, she relentlessly hunted out furniture, glassware, and decorative items for the Hartford house and gifts for her Elmira family. Clemens joined in the costly process, endorsing Olivia’s purchases and adding some of his own, in particular a custom-made Swiss music box that alone cost $400. In just three months in Paris, he and Olivia spent $4,000. Their purchases eventually filled “12 trunks, and 22 freight packages” and, when the steamer SS Gallia reached New York on 2 September, cost Clemens “6 hours working them through the Custom-house formalities. . . . I was the last passenger to get away (8 o’clock P.M.,) but it was because one of my trunks didn’t turn up for several hours. But I was lucky to get through at all, because the ship was loaded mainly with my freight” (“Mark Twain Home Again,” New York Times, 3 Sept 79, 8; 4 Sept 79 to Slote). Clearly the trip abroad had proved to be no economy. In Elmira and Hartford throughout the fall and winter of 1879, Clemens struggled to complete the manuscript of A Tramp Abroad. Finally, on 7 January 1880, he put an end to the “life-&-death battle with this infernal book . . . which required 2600 pages, of MS, & I have written nearer four thousand, first & last” (8 Jan 80 to Howells). He had still to endure the tribulations of the book’s production and the futile attempt to schedule publication of the English edition so as to secure British copyright and forestall an unauthorized Canadian edition. But well before Tramp was published in mid-March 1880, Clemens was deep into work on one of his deferred manuscripts, informing his brother Orion on 26 February, “I am grinding away, now, with all my might, & with an interest which amounts to intemperance, at the ‘Prince & the Pauper.’” In July there was a brief and happy distraction: the Clemenses’ third daughter was born on the twenty-sixth of the month. Named Jane Lampton, for Clemens’s mother, but always known as Jean, she weighed in, Clemens wrote William Dean Howells that day, at “about 7 pounds. That is a pretty big one—for us.” On 17 August, in a lightly canceled passage he intended to be read in a letter to Howells’s wife, Elinor, Clemens facetiously compared Jean to “an orange that is a little mildewed in spots.” Baby notwithstanding, he finished drafting The Prince and the Pauper on 14 September 1880. By mid-November 1880 he was planning to resume work on Huckleberry Finn, which, he predicted inaccurately, could be finished with only “two or three months’ work” (14? Nov 80 to Moffett). In fact, he did not complete that manuscript until 1883.

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Even while grinding out literature, Clemens continued to be one of the most visible and talked about American celebrities. “I cannot abide those newspaper references to me & my matters,” he complained to his brother, Orion, in a letter of 9 February 1879. “I think that one reason why I have ceased to write to friends & relatives is that I can’t trust them.” He did have grounds for complaint: in January 1878 the New York Sun printed two bogus interviews alleging that he had become editor of the Hartford Courant and that he planned to run for governor of Connecticut (“Mark Twain’s Enterprise,” 7 Jan 78, 2; “Not Quite An Editor,” 26 Jan 78, 2), and in February 1880, it was rumored that he would be a candidate for Congress. But of course he never ceased his correspondence, writing regularly to family members and to fellow writers such as Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Howells, Moncure Conway, William Wright (Dan De Quille), and Bayard Taylor, and to other prominent figures such as Boston publisher James R. Osgood, Harper’s Weekly and Monthly editor William A. Seaver, and actor Edwin Booth. He also did not hesitate to put himself directly in the public eye with letters to editors, which included his 22 July 1876 complaint about the postal service to the New York Evening Post; his 14 and 16 February and 22 February 1877 letters to the New York World about the malfeasance of New York Shipping Commissioner Charles C. Duncan, an old adversary from the Quaker City excursion; his 19 September 1877 letter to the Hartford Courant in aid of a stranded vessel; his 2 February 1879 letter to the Courant about the threat to public safety posed by tramps; his 22 November and 8 December 1879 letters to the same paper with further postal service complaints; and his 30 November 1880 letter to Childhood’s Appeal magazine, agitating for a “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Fathers” afflicted with crying babies. Moreover, although he had formally retired as a paid lecturer in 1874 and, as evidenced by two letters included here, was still retired in 1880 (printed card, January 1880; 20 Apr 80 to the Press Club of Chicago), he did not shrink from public performance, but appeared regularly as an after-dinner speaker and for charitable causes. Moreover, he was willing to end, or at least interrupt, his self-imposed retirement under the proper circumstances. So in a letter of 12 November 1877 to noted political cartoonist Thomas Nast he proposed a joint lecture tour that he confidently predicted would pack houses and gross a hundred thousand dollars without subjecting him to the “heart-breakingly dreary” grind of solitary travel. Although the tour with Nast was not arranged, Clemens otherwise stepped forward politically more overtly during this period than ever before. He declared himself for Rutherford B. Hayes in the presidential election of 1876, making a speech on civil service reform at a Hayes rally in Hartford on 30 September 1876, and then, four years later, endorsed James A. Garfield. But he achieved a special prominence in the political sphere in Chicago in the early hours of 14 November 1879. At the thirteenth reunion of the Civil War veterans of the Army of the Tennessee, before a tumultuous crowd, his humorous celebration of Ulysses S. Grant, in response to the toast “The Babies,” brought down the ix

house, Grant himself included. His accounts of the event, in his letters of 14 November 1879 to Olivia and 17 November 1879 to Howells, still convey all the drama and exhilaration of the moment. Clemens himself was quick to realize how that success had enhanced his already larger-than-life image. “I can’t afford to attend any but the very biggest kind of blow-outs,” he wrote his friend Frank Fuller on 18 November 1879, “neither can I afford to miss the biggest kind of blow-outs.” One such event came on 3 December 1879, when he attended the Atlantic Monthly breakfast in Boston for Oliver Wendell Holmes, making any amends left to make for his 1877 Whittier dinner blunder with a gracious tribute to Holmes in a speech on “Unconscious Plagiarism.” Another occurred on 16 October 1880 when he spoke welcoming Grant to Hartford during the campaign for Garfield. Through it all—the “infernal” books, the family matters, the travel, the business affairs, the public appearances, and the public attention good and bad—Clemens’s vocation and avocation was his writing. As he told Norwegian novelist Hjalmar H. Boyesen in a letter of 23 April 1880: I can’t see how a man who can write can ever reconcile himself to busying himself with anything else. There is a fascination about writing even for my waste-basket, which is bread & meat & almost whisky to me—& I know it is the same with all our craft. We shall find more joy in writing—be the pay what it may—than in serving the world in ways of its choosing for uncountable coupons. Some of the best of that compelled, and always compelling, writing is preserved in the letters published here.

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Editorial Signs The editorial conventions used to transcribe Mark Twain’s letters were designed, in part, to enable anyone to read them without having to memorize a list. The following is therefore offered less as a necessary preliminary than as a convenient way to look up the meaning of any convention which, despite this design, fails to be self-explanatory. Those seeking a more discursive explanation of editorial principles are urged to consult the Guide to Editorial Practice included in the print volume Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 6, pp. 697–724. While the editorial practice of the print edition of Mark Twain’s Letters has been adapted slightly for this electronic edition, the guiding principles are largely the same. Editorial Heading From . . .

Clemens is named in the heading only when he wrote jointly with someone else.

. . . with a note to ...

Used when two persons are addressed in the same letter, but Clemens intended the second to read only the briefer part, or the “note.”

per . . .

Precedes the name or identity of the amanuensis or agent who inscribed the document sent or received.

2? May

Written on this day—give or take a day.

1–3 May

Written on any day (or days) within this span.

1 and 2 May

Written on both days.

(MS)

The source document is the original letter (or a photocopy of it), almost invariably Clemens’s holograph manuscript.

(damage emended)

The source document has sustained significant damage, and the transcription therefore includes, without brackets, emendation to restore the affected text.

(MS, copy)

The source document is a copy made by the author in his own hand.

(MS, draft)

The source document is a draft that the author wrote but retained for himself, sending (or not) a fair copy of the original. xi

(MS facsimile)

The source document is a photographic facsimile of an MS whose present location is unknown, and which therefore may no longer be extant.

(MS of inscription The source document is Clemens’s inscription in a book or on in . . .) a carte-de-visite. (Paraphrase)

The source document is a description of the letter, but contains no actual words from the letter itself.

(TS)

The source document is a transcription that has been typed, or typeset and printed (such as a book, newspaper clipping, or auction catalog), not necessarily made at first hand.

(Transcript)

The source document is a handwritten transcription, not necessarily made at first hand.

(Paraphrase and TS)

The source document is a description of the letter and preserves some of the words of the original letter, but is manifestly not a deliberate transcription of it.

CU-MARK

The source code gives the location of the source document. Institutions are identified by an alphanumeric code (such as CU-MARK), private collectors are identified by a last name, auction catalogs are described by dealer and date of sale, and published sources are given with pertinent bibliographic information. A key to the institutional source codes may be found at the end of this volume.

Letter Text NEW YORK

Extra-small small capitals with no initial capitals signify typeset, printed text, such as letterhead or the postmark.

SLC

Italicized extra-small small capitals transcribe monograms or initials printed or embossed on personal stationery. xii

blue text

....

Blue text signifies a change from one writer to another. It is most often used in letters written by Clemens to identify text originated by someone else. But in letters written by an amanuensis (designated in the letter heading), it is used to indicate Clemens’s own inscription, usually a signature, and sometimes a postscript as well. Blue is not used for printed text, which is already distinguished by extra-small small capitals. Editorial ellipsis points (always centered in an otherwise blank line) signify that an unknown amount of the original letter is judged to be missing.

' a two cance deletions,'

Cancellation is signified by slashes for single characters (and underscores), rules for two or more characters.

mark=ng i it =up=

Insertion is signified by a single caret for single characters, two carets for two or more characters.

a=ny=' m

Cancellations and insertions are almost always given in the order in which they most likely occurred—that is, cancellation followed by insertion. In rare cases, as in the example shown here, they are given in reverse order to increase legibility.

[editorial remarks]

Editorial remarks are always represented as italic text within brackets. Text modified by editorial description may also be enclosed in brackets: [in margin: All’s well].

ƒ„

Author’s brackets (as opposed to editorial brackets) are used in letter texts from all sources.

[ ]

“ When [I] go[.]

Superscript and subscript brackets enclose essential words or characters inadvertently omitted by the writer and now interpolated by the editors.

"iamond

The diamond stands for a character, numeral, or punctuation mark the editors cannot read because it is physically obscured or obliterated. It never stands for the space between words. xiii

SamR. Ï

Superscript ell is a special character to prevent confusion between one ( 1 ) and ell ( l ). The sign Ï transcribes a paraph or flourish.

J__________

The envelope and full-measure rule signal that everything transcribed below them was written, stamped, or printed on the envelope or on the letter itself at the time of transmission or receipt. Blue is never used to indicate changes of handwriting in text transcribed below this sign. It is assumed that all writing added to the envelope or letter after transmission— such as a docket—is not in Clemens’s hand. Other changes in handwriting are noted with an editorial comment.

Hartford | Conn.

The vertical rule signifies the end of a line in the source document.

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Authorial Signs Authorial signs have been translated into their typographical equivalents in nearly all texts. (Only when a manuscript was manifestly intended for a printer or typesetter have the author’s markings been retained just as they appear.) Authorial signs present two related but distinct problems for successful transcription: (a) how to explicate those signs whose authorial meaning differed from the modern meaning, but can still be recovered, at least in part; and (b) how to represent authorial signs whose earlier typographical equivalent, if any, remains unknown—at least to the editors. The glossary of Special Sorts and table of Emphasis Equivalents which follow here are intended to solve these problems—to alert the reader to those changes in meaning which we can identify, and to describe the handwritten forms for which the typographical forms are taken to be equivalent—or, in a few cases, for which they have been made equivalent because we lack a better alternative. Special Sorts asterisks * * * Always called “stars” by Clemens and by printers generally, asterisks appear in his manuscript as simple “Xs” or crosses (¡), or in a somewhat more elaborate variant of the cross (‰), often when used singly. In letters (and elsewhere) Clemens used the asterisk as a standard reference mark, either to signal his occasional footnotes, or to refer the reader from one part of a text to another part. (The conventional order of the standard reference marks was as follows: *, †, ‡, §, **, ¶, and, by the end of the century, L.) He also used asterisks for a kind of ellipsis that was then standard and is still recognizable, but now virtually obsolete—the “line of stars”—in which evenly spaced asterisks occupy a line by themselves to indicate a major omission of text, or—for Clemens, at any rate—the passage of time not otherwise represented in a narrative. For the standard ellipsis, we duplicate the number of asterisks in the source, thus: * * * * (see also ellipsis, below). In transcribing the line of stars, however, the exact number of asterisks in the original becomes irrelevant, since the device is intended to fill the line, which is rarely the same length in the manuscript as it is in the transcription. The line of stars in the original is thus always transcribed by seven asterisks, evenly separated, thus: *

*

*

*

xv

*

*

*

braces

}

Clemens drew the brace as a wavy vertical line that did not much resemble the brace in type, except that it clearly grouped two or three lines of text together. He drew braces intended for three or more lines as straight (nonwavy) lines with squared corners, like a large bracket, usually in the margin. He occasionally used the two- and three-line braces in pairs, vertically and horizontally, to box or partly enclose one or more words, often on a single line. The one-line brace ({}) was evidently not known to him, and would probably have seemed a contradiction in terms. It appears to be a modern invention, but has sometimes proved useful in the transcription when the original lineation could not be reproduced or readily simulated. Otherwise, the transcription always prints a brace and preserves, or at least simulates, the original lineation. dashes – — —— ——— = == Clemens used the dash in all four of its most common typographical forms (en, em, twoem, and three-em), as well as a parallel dash, usually but not invariably shorter than an em dash. The parallel dash appears to be used interchangeably with the much more frequently used em dash, but almost always at the end of a line (often a short line, such as the greeting). Its special meaning, if any, remains unknown. Clemens occasionally used dashes visibly longer than his em dash, presumably to indicate a longer pause: these are transcribed as two-, three-, or (more)-em dashes, by relying on the length of em dashes in the manuscript as the basic unit. That Clemens thought in terms of ems at all is suggested by his occasional sign for a dash that he has interlined as a correction or revision (|—|), which was then the standard proofreader’s mark for an em dash. Clemens used the dash as terminal punctuation only to indicate abrupt cessation or suspension, almost never combining it with a terminal period. Exceptions do occur, but most departures from this rule are only apparent or inadvertent. For instance, Clemens frequently used period and dash together in the standard typographical method for connecting sideheads with their proper text (‘P.S.—They have’), a recognized decorative use of period-dash that does not indicate a pause. The em, two-em and, more rarely, the en and the parallel dash were also used for various kinds of ellipsis: contraction (‘d—n’); suspension (‘Wash=’); and ellipsis of a full word or more (‘until—.’). Despite some appearance to the contrary, terminal punctuation here again consists solely in the period. On the other hand, Clemens often did use the period and dash combined when the sentence period fell at the end of a slightly short line in his manuscript (“period.— * New line”), a practice derived from the typographical practice of justifying short lines with an xvi

em dash. These dashes likewise do not indicate a pause and, because their function at line ends cannot be reproduced in the transcription, are always emended, never transcribed. Clemens used en dashes in their familiar role with numerals to signify “through” (‘Matt. xxv, 44–45’). And he used the em dash—as well as dashes of varying lengths and thicknesses— in lists, to signify “ditto” or “the same” for the name or word above, and in tables to express a blank. See also ellipsis and rules, below. ellipsis - - - - ...... **** –––––––– — — — — Nineteenth-century typography recognized a large variety of ellipses (or leaders, depending on the use to which the device was being put). Clemens himself demonstrably used hyphens, periods, asterisks, en dashes, and em dashes to form ellipses or leaders, in his letters and literary manuscripts. The ellipsis using a dash of an em or more is also called a “blank” and may stand for characters (‘Mr. C—’s bones’) or a full word left unexpressed. In the second case, the dash is always separated by normal word space from the next word on both sides (‘by — Reilly’), thereby distinguishing it from the dash used as punctuation (‘now— Next’), which is closed up with the word on at least one side, and usually on both (‘evening—or’). When any of these marks are used as leaders, the transcription does not necessarily duplicate the number in the manuscript, using instead only what is needed to connect the two elements linked by the leaders. But for any kind of ellipsis except the "line of stars" (see asterisks), the transcription duplicates exactly the number of characters used in the original. fist

L 7

Clemens used the “fist,” as it was called by printers (also “hand,” “index,” “index-mark,” “mutton-fist,” and doubtless other names), not as the seventh of the standard reference marks, but for its much commoner purpose of calling special attention to some point in a text. As late as 1871 the American Encyclopaedia of Printing characterized the device as used “chiefly in handbills, posters, direction placards, and in newspaper work,”1 but Clemens used it often his letters. We transcribe it by a standard typographical device, either rightor left-pointing, as appropriate, except in special circumstances. 1

American Encyclopaedia of Printing, edited by J. Luther Ringwalt (Philadelphia: Menamim and Ringwalt, J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1871), 217. xvii

paragraph ¶ The paragraph sign is both a mark of emphasis and the sixth of the reference marks. It is actually “P” reversed (left for right, and white for black) to distinguish it from that character. Clemens, however, commonly miswrote it as a “P,” drawing the hollow stem with large, flat feet, but not the left/right or white/black reversal in the loop. Whenever the sign is used in a letter, we transcribe it by the standard typographical device. Clemens used the paragraph sign as a reference mark and as shorthand for the word “paragraph,” but most commonly in letters to indicate a change of subject within a passage, one of its original meanings. When he inserted the paragraph sign in text intended for a typesetter, he was doubtless specifying paragraph indention. But when he used it in a letter, he was usually invoking that original meaning. The transcription always prints the sign itself, even when it was inserted (¶=) or was manifestly an instruction to a typesetter. rules (a) (b) (c) Double rules (a), parallel rules (b), and plain rules (c), or rule dashes, in manuscript are usually, but not invariably, centered on a line by themselves, serving to separate sections of the text. When used within a line of text, they are positioned like an ordinary em dash and may serve as a common form of ellipsis, or to mean “ditto,” or simply to fill blank space in a line. This last function may be compared with the original purpose of the eighteenthcentury flourish, namely to prevent forged additions in otherwise blank space. But as with the flourish, this function had in Clemens’s day long since dissolved into a mainly decorative one. Rules appear in Clemens’s manuscript in three distinguishable species, each with two variant forms. We construe wavy lines in manuscript as “thick” rules, and straight lines as “thin” rules, regularizing length as necessary. (a) Double rules appear in manuscript as two parallel lines, one wavy and the other straight, in either order. (b) Parallel rules appear in manuscript as two parallel lines, either both wavy or both straight (thick or thin). (c) Plain rules appear as single lines, either wavy or straight (thick or thin). Emphasis Equivalents Clemens used the standard nineteenth-century system of underscoring to indicate emphasis, both within and between words. He indubitably understood the equivalents in type for the various kinds of underscore, but even if he had not, they could probably be relied on for the transcription of his underscored words, simply because the xviii

handwritten and the typographical systems were mutually translatable. Although we may not understand this system as well as Clemens apparently did, it is still clear that he used it habitually and consistently, and that anomalies are much more likely to result from our, rather than his, ignorance or error. Occasionally Clemens used what appear to be two variations of a single underscore—a broken underscore (not prompted by descenders from the underscored word) and a wavy underscore (more distinctly wavy than normally occurs with any hand-drawn line). If these are in fact variations of a single underscore, they evidently indicate a more deliberate, or a slightly greater, emphasis than single underscore would imply. They have been transcribed in letterspaced i talic and boldface type, respectively, even though we do not know what, if any, typographical equivalent existed for them (both are marked * in the table that follows). Clemens occasionally used letterspacing, with or without hyphens, as an a-l-t-e-r-n-a-t-i-v-e to italic, but he seems not to have combined it with italic; the editorial combination of letterspaced italic therefore always signifies broken underscore. Wavy underscore in manuscript prepared for a printer did mean boldface, or some other fullface type, at least by 1900, but it is not clear for how long this convention had been in place. And in any case, boldface would now ordinarily be used for a level of emphasis higher than CAPITALS or ITALIC CAPITALS. The use of boldface type to represent wavy underscore is therefore an editorial convention that may not reflect the emphasis equivalent that the author intended. Clemens also sometimes emphasized capital letters and numerals in ways that appear to exceed the normal limits of the typographical system as we know it. For instance, when in manuscript the pronoun ‘I’ has been underscored twice, and is not part of an underscored phrase, we do not know what typographical equivalent, if any, existed for it. Since the intention is clearly to give greater emphasis than single underscore, rendering the word in small capitals (I) would probably be a mistake, for that would indicate less emphasis than the absence of any underscore at all (I). In such cases (also marked * in the table), we extend the fundamental logic of the underscoring system and simulate one underscore for each manuscript underscore that exceeds the highest known typographical convention. ‘I’ in manuscript is therefore transcribed as an italic capital with one underscore (I). Otherwise, underscores in the original documents are simulated only (a) when Clemens included in his letter something he intended to have set in type, in which case his instructions to the typesetter must be reproduced, not construed, if they are to be intelligibly transcribed; and (b) when he deleted his underscore, in which case the transcription simulates it by using the standard manuscript convention for deleting an underscore. One virtue of the system of equivalents is that it allows the transcription to encode exactly how the manuscript was marked without resorting to simulation—that is, using a visual representation of the original. There are, however, some ambiguities in thus xix

reversing the code: for example, a word inscribed initially as ‘Knight’ or ‘knight’ and then underscored three times would in either case appear in type as ‘KNIGHT’. Clemens also sometimes used block or noncursive capitals or small capitals, simulating ‘KNIGHT’ or ‘KNIGHT’, rather than signaling them with underscores. Ambiguities of this kind do not affect the final form of the text. MANUSCRIPT

TYPE

lowercase

roman lowercase

Capitals and Lowercase

Roman Capitals and Lowercase

lowercase

italic lowercase

Capitals and Lowercase

Capitals and Lowercase

*Capitals – – – – –and – –Lowercase –––––

*Italic Letterspaced

*Capitals and Lowercase ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ

*Boldface Capitals and Lowercase

lowercase

ROMAN SMALL CAPITALS

Capitals and Lowercase

ROMAN CAPITALS AND SMALL CAPITALS

CAPITALS or lowercase

ROMAN CAPITALS

CAPITALS or lowercase

ITALIC CAPITALS

*CAPITALS

*ITALIC CAPITALS

*1, 2, 3, 4, 5

*1, 2, 3, 4, 5

xx

Emendation Policy We emend original documents as little as possible, and nonoriginal documents as much as necessary, but we emend both kinds of copy-text for two fundamental reasons: to avoid including an error, ambiguity, or puzzle that (a) is not in the original, or (b) is in the original, but cannot be intelligibly transcribed without altering, correcting, resolving, or simplifying it. Although all emendations were recorded in the course of preparing this edition, this record of emendation is not presently available to readers. Therefore any emendation that would normally be listed in a textual commentary (as in our printed volumes) is of necessity “silent” here—in effect, unreported. Nevertheless, nearly all of the emendations that have been applied can be categorized according to the general guidelines described below. Any emendation that is not covered by these categories, or is otherwise exceptional, is noted in a bracketed editorial comment in the text itself. Readers seeking more detailed discussion of our emendation policy should consult Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 6, pp. 715–22. Manuscript Sources The most common category of emendation of the author’s manuscript comprises standardization of certain typographical and formatting features. These alterations are usually carried out silently even in our printed volumes. First, special typographical treatment has been applied to identify all preprinted text (such as letterhead and return addresses) and envelopes. A key to these can be found above. Second, normal paragraph indention is represented as two ems, with variations of one em and three ems often occurring in the same letter; we silently eliminate minor, presumably unintended variation in the size of all indentions. Third, we place datelines, complimentary closings, and signatures in a default position, unless this position is contradicted by the manuscript—for example, when the closing and signature appear on the same line despite the existence of sufficient space to allow placement on separate lines. Finally, line endings, page endings, and page numbers are all silently omitted from the transcription. Some few authorial errors of omission may be corrected by emendation in the form of interpolation—that is, by supplying an omitted character, word, or words within subscript or superscript editorial square brackets, ‘thu[s]’ or ‘ “thus[”] ’—but only when the editor is confident that the writer has inadvertently omitted what is thus supplied. Other errors made by the writer—such as ‘anvalid’ written mistakenly for ‘invalid’ or ‘with’ for ‘will’—are not emended. Certain additional emendations, of the type traditionally reported in the textual commentaries of our printed volumes, have been applied to manuscript sources:

xxi

• Clemens’s characteristic period-dash combination at the end of a manuscript line has been removed, as a classic example of something that would become an error if literally transcribed. There are several possible reasons why Clemens may have used this end-line dash, but we are certain he never intended it to be construed as punctuation, the unavoidable result if the typesetter or the reader does not recognize the convention and reads it as a pause. • The author’s self-corrections (e.g., corrected miswritings) are removed to avoid the false implication of revision. • Emendation is used to resolve compound words that are hyphenated at the ends of lines (‘water-*wheel’). Since such division cannot be literally duplicated, the transcription must include an unambiguous (emended) form (‘waterwheel’ or ‘water-wheel’). • Damaged texts are emended to restore words that were present in the original letter, but which are now missing or illegible. If a damaged text has been emended, the words “damage emended” appear in the source line of the editorial header. Nonoriginal Sources When the source of a text is nonoriginal, such as a newspaper printing or other transcription, it is often not possible to determine with certainty the contents or style of the original manuscript. All possible evidence is considered to determine the most likely form of the manuscript; when such evidence is deemed insufficient, the source has been followed without emendation. • Errors introduced by a typesetter, and other errors clearly attributable to the nonoriginal source and not to the author, have been emended “silently,” without the use of editorial brackets. • Clemens as a rule did not use typographical styling in private letters. Special typographical treatment is therefore removed from nonoriginal sources of private letters, to restore the likely form of the original. Clemens did, however, occasionally add such typographical styling to letters intended for publication (primarily letters addressed to newspapers). In these cases, styling such as capitals and small capitals or italic type applied to datelines and salutations, as well as to elements within the body of the text—such as a smaller font for extracts—have been retained without alteration, since they may reflect the markings on Clemens’s lost manuscript. At the same time, Clemens’s styled signature has always been emended to capitals and lowercase, the form he invariably used, even in letters intended for publication. xxii

• By 1867 Clemens consistently wrote ‘&’ for ‘and’ in his letters—except where the word needed to be capitalized, or the occasion was somewhat more formal than usual. It follows that in printed versions of Clemens’s text, ‘and’ is a form imposed by the typesetter, and we therefore emend the word to ‘&’ to reflect Clemens’s habits. In some instances, a letter may include material not written by Clemens himself, but which he incorporated into it. (This occurs most often in letters written for publication for which a newspaper remains the only source.) In the absence of the original manuscript, we cannot tell whether Clemens actually copied out the incorporated text (using his typical ‘&’), or whether he simply pasted a clipped version of it into his own manuscript. In these passages we have therefore chosen to follow the typeset source, and not emend ‘and’ to ‘&.’ We have also not emended ‘and’ in cases where the source document is a paraphrase and/or partial transcript of a catalog listing, in which case we transcribe the catalog entry exactly as it appears. • Special treatment has been given to ‘radiating texts’—i.e., texts for which multiple transcriptions descend independently from a common source—not necessarily the lost original itself, but a single document nearer to the original than any other document in the line of descent from it. Since each transcription might preserve readings from the original which are not preserved in the other, these cannot be properly excluded from any text that attempts the fullest possible fidelity to the original. In such cases, all texts judged to have derived independently from the lost original are identified in the source line, and the text incorporates the most persuasively authorial readings from among all variants, substantive and accidental. Before this alternative method is followed, however, we require that the independence of the variant texts be demonstrated by at least one persuasively authorial variant occurring uniquely in each, thereby excluding the possibility that either text actually derives from the other.

xxiii

About This Edition This edition of letters is the first electronic edition produced by the Mark Twain Project in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, which has heretofore been devoted to producing printed editions of Mark Twain’s writings. This edition was produced under the editorial management of Anh Q. Bui of the Mark Twain Project. Transcriptions of the letters were created by numerous undergraduate and graduate students. The editors who reviewed and corrected the transcriptions, verified the letter dates and correspondents, and wrote the introduction were Anh Q. Bui, Harriet Elinor Smith, Michael B. Frank, and Robert H. Hirst. (Hirst is also General Editor of the Project.) The transcriptions were produced in Corel WordPerfect 8, using the Garamond font family. Adobe Acrobat Distiller 5.0 was used to create the PDF files. Acknowledgments This electronic edition could not have been produced without the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency, which has continuously funded editorial work on Mark Twain’s writings since 1966. Support for the project has also come from the generous donations of many individuals and foundations. Additional thanks go to our colleagues and associates at ebrary, the University of California Press, The Bancroft Library, and the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program at UC Berkeley. To the small army of students who have tirelessly worked on this project over the years, we owe a special debt of gratitude.

xxiv

1878

To William Dean Howells 4 January 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MH-H, #01522)

Dec Jan. 4.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

My Dear Howells: The play is enchanting. I laughed & cried all the way through it. The dialogue is intolerably brilliant; one ha=dn’t=nd time to see where one  ' lightning-burst struck before another followed. I cannot remember when I have spent so delightful an evening in a theatre. Ah, if I only had my old fool of a detective mooning & meddling along through a play like that, once, his fame & fortune would be made. My wife, & Lily & Charley Warner enjoyed the piece as heartily & unreservedly as I did. Love to you all. Ys Ever S. L. C. Dear me, Winine Winnie didn’t put her name in our Visitor’s Register! That Ask her to send it to me on a slip of paper, so that I can paste it in.

1878—page 1

To Kate V. Austin 12 January 1878 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS, correspondence card: CtHMTH, #01523)

Elmira, Jan. 12.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

My Dear Miss Austin— Your letter has overtaken me at this point on my travels, & I hoped the paper might come, also, but doubtless it will be held in Hartford till I return. I, too, have heard, in roundabout ways, that I was going to connect myself with a newspaper & help edit it.', but I do not believe a word of it. Experience has taught me to put no confidence in a report when I know it to be untrue. Very well—knowing this one to be not only untrue but absolutely & permanently impossible, I have not hesitated to disbelieve it. With many thanks for the pleasant & cordial things you have said, I am Truly Yours S. L. Clemens. Ï J Miss Kate V. Austin | Richmond | Indiana [postmarked:] N.Y. &. HORN. R.P.O. JAN 12  [and] RICHMOND  JAN   [docketed:] Mark Twain SLC

1878—page 2

To Charles H. Clark 19? January 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: Charles Hamilton Galleries, New York, June 1970, #01524)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Private My Dear Clark—The only true millionaire in the Clemens family is just dead—which brings forth the following from 's Sherrard Clemens, who was a conspicuous Member of Congress from Virginia in the opening of the war, because he was a Unionist—his duel with Wise also made a good deal of talk. He was a Tilden man in the last campaign & said that I, in going for the “tyrant” Hayes, disgraced the blood of my ancester the regicide. But I “had” him there—I told him for I was principally descended from my mother’s side, which was naturally anti-regicide, she being descended from a gang of Kings & such. Yrs Clemens

1878—page 3

To Chatto and Windus 21 January 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (Paraphrase and TS: American Art Association catalog, 1 April 1926, item 70, #02324)

1 2 3 4 5 6

70. CLEMENS (SAMUEL L.) Punch, Brothers, Punch! and Other Sketches. . . . Slote, Woodman & Co. [1878] Inserted is Autograph Letter Signed by the Author—“Mark,” (in pencil), one page 16mo, no date. To Chatto & Windus, his English Publishers, reading: “Please have these corrections made. This article will issue in Atlantic, Feb. 15—(March No.). Mark.”

1878—page 4

To Moncure D. Conway 21 January 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: NNC, #01525) Jan. 22. =21.=

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

My Dear Conway: All right. I have written the Atlantic people to send to Chatto the magazines containing the Mississippi articles,= ; to-day & also an article entitled “A Literary Nightmare.” To-day I will send him two other Atlantics, containing my “Tale of a Tramp” [inserted in pencil:] =a Canvasser”= and “Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut.” I will also ship to him the to-day the proofs of a story which is to appear in the March No of Atlantic, & which Chatto can also put into one of his magazines & also into the new book (or books.) I am also writing the Routledges that you have sole power over there to make book contracts for me, & that when I last heard from you you were contemplating the issue of the Bermuda & Mis[sis]sippi articles.=That is all I said to them.= Yrs Ever Mark. Ï P. S. No, I added, “Whatever arrangement C. makes will be satisfactory to me.”

1878—page 5

To Francis E. Bliss 24 January 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (Paraphrase and TS: Charles Hamilton Galleries catalog, 3 February 1972, no. 55, item 112, #10340)

1 2 3 4 5

112 CLEMENS, SAMUEL L. (“MARK TWAIN”). A.L.S. “Saml. L. Clemens,” 1 full page, small 8vo, Hartford, Jan. 24, (18)78. To “Dear Frank,” agreeing to have something sent to him, “. . . You’ve done exceedingly well. Looks like a decided improvement in business, if it may be taken as an indication of business over the country . . .”

1878—page 6

To Rollin M. Daggett 24 January 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (TS: Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, 3 February 1878, p. 2, #01526)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Hartford, January 24. My Dear Daggett: I am very much obliged to the New York Sun for getting up that foundationless report about my being called to the editorial command of the Courant, since a result of it is the cordial & gratifying editorial in the ENTERPRISE of the 15th, headed “In the Harness Again.” I hope the compliments you pay me are deserved. Of course, other people must judge of that; but when you say that the disposition of the average humorist is to write too much, & that I was not afflicted with that disposition when I was a member of the ENTERPRISE staff, you say a thing which I myself can indorse without overstepping the bounds of modesty. I am not as indolent as I was in those days; still, my habit of “avoiding the indiscretion” of too much labor is pretty firm & trustworthy yet. I suppose it surprised you to hear that I was going to enlist for active service again, considering this infirmity of mine. It surprised me, too. But it didn’t convince me. I always liked newspaper work; I would like it yet; but not as a steady diet. The Courant people are personal friends of mine, but they have not carried their partiality so far as to ask me to help edit their paper. I believe they think they can edit it as well as I could. I think so, too. They have denied the Sun’s report, but it doesn’t help matters much; every day people write to me wanting to subscribe. This would be ever so pleasant & flattering, only I am so afraid that they get letters every day from old patrons wanting to discontinue! No doubt the Sun’s report grew out of the fact that my house is connected with the Courant office by telephone. I live about a mile & a half from the center of the city; & as the Courant is in the center of the business district this telephone is a great convenience to me when I want to send for something in a hurry; but the advantage is all on one side. I get all the benefit & they get all the bother. No editorials pass through the telephone either way. I am glad you think I would make an “impressive Governor” of this State. I even think I would, myself. But as long as we can have our present

1878—page 7

SLC to Rollin M. Daggett, 24 January 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6

Governor, notwithstanding he is a Democrat, I do not wish to intrude. In these days it is a lucky State, indeed, that is so fortunate as to have the right man in the right place. Connecticut is so situated, in the matter of the governorship. Yours, truly, Samuel L. Clemens.

1878—page 8

To John W. Sanborn 24 January 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (TS: John W. Sanborn, Distinguished Authors Whom I Have Met, 1920, p. 8, #10421)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Hartford, Jan. 24. ’Sh! Dont say a word—let the others get “stuck.” I’ll tell you privately, to use a wet rag or brush—but let us leave the others to get into trouble with their fingers. Then they will abuse the Scrap Book everywhere, & straightway everybody will buy one to give to his enemy, & that will make a great sale for the inventor, who will go to Europe & have a good time. Yours truly, Mark Twain.

1878—page 9

To Orion Clemens 28 January 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, correspondence card: NPV, #01527)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Monday. SLC My Dear Bro—Am just back from New York tired to death, but must write a line to unconfuse you. I don’t know who started that joke about my being connected with the Courant. I am connected with it only by telephone & in no other way. They send me a doctor when I ask for one; they send telegrams dictated by me; they receive telegrams for me & telephone the contents to me; in many ways they save me time, & are very kind & accommodating; but I have no more to do with owning or editing the Courant than you have. If you should see an in . . . .

1878—page 10

To Mary Mason Fairbanks 5 February 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CSmH, #01528)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Hartford Feb. 5'78. My Dear Mother—It was real good of you to write me these delightful things from your sick bed; but then you always are good to me, sick or well, & you never have written me a letter that failed to give me pleasure '( & a deal of it, too, nor has the sight of your handwriting on an envelop ever been other than a delight to me. The handwriting of a friend generally gives me a pang, because I’ve got to answer the letter—but never yours nor my Mollie dear’s—for I say within myself, “These will I enjoy without alloy, & the answering them will I shirk till a convenient season, or wait till they write again.” By this unprincipled process I have robbed yours & Mollie’s letters of all terrors—therefore, please use a little exertion & see if you can’t make them more frequent. I don’t imagine that either of you have anything to do. I will confess that I seldom answer other friends’ letters at all. Usually, if they are from abroad, I don’t even think of answering them. Now I have a reason for all this conduct, & it is this: If I don’t feel like writing, it is up-hill work; if I do feel like it I write too much & kill a day’s work. (You perceive I grow in W ' wisdom every day.) No newspaper has interviewed me for a year. The Sun’s article was manufactured out of whole cloth. I am pretty dull in some things, & very likely the Atlantic speech was in ill taste; but that is the worst that can be said of it. I am sincerely sorry if it in any wise hurt those great potes poets’ feelings—I never wanted to do that. But nobody has ever convinced me that that speech was not a good one——for me; above my average, considerably. I could as easily have substituted the names of Shakspeare, Beaumont & Ben Jonson, (since the absurd situation was where the humor lay,) & all those looking for it would have s lay,) & all these critics would have discovered the merit of it, then. But my purpose was clean, my conscience clear, & I saw no need of it. Why anybody should think three poets insulted because three fantastic tramps choose to personate them & use their language, passes my comprehension. Nast says it is very much the best speech & the most humorous situation I have contrived.

1878—page 11

SLC to Mary Mason Fairbanks, 5 February 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

But nothing which I have said or written as to what I think or feel about that performance has appeared in print. Any “remarks” you may have seen were manufactured—I didn’t utter them. I have been trying my level best to persuade Nast to make a big lecture tour with me—he to draw pictures & I ' d to do all the talking; he to portray & I to explain. I didn’t see why we shouldn’t divide $100,000 in 100 nights in these hard times.', & then retire from public life. But he hates the platform—says there is not money enough in the world to hire him to show his face to an audience again. What am I writing? A historical tale, of 300 years ago, simply for the love of it—for it will appear without my name—such grave & stately work being considered by the world to be above my proper level. I have been studying for it, off & on, for a year & a half. I swear the Young Girls’ Club to secresy & read the MS to them, half a dozen chapters at a time, at their meetings. They profess to be very much fascinated with it; so do Livy,' & Susie Warner. If you & Mollie will come, I try I will try to wring some compliments from you, too. Of course I am doing some bread-&-butter work, too. To-wit, a novel of the present day—about half finished. A talented young fellow here is dramatising it from my MS (I have just finished polishing up & hurling a few sentences into his 1st Act here & there, this afternoon.) I expect to put the play & the chief character, into the hands of Sol Smith Russell. I have two other books (pretty quaint ones) begun, but am not going to continue them until summer. A day or two ago I sent Dan a little bundle of stuff (including the Bermuda Sketches,) to make into a 10-cent advertising-primer for my ScrapBook. That Scrap-Book is booming, now, & promises to kill all the other Scrap-books in the world. Dan can’t fill keep up with the orders; he is adding new machinery. The firm are as charmed as if they had found the philosopher’s stone. One member They have declined a liberal English offer for Exclusive right on a royalty. So one of the firm will go to London & take a room & up permanent residence, within a month.', & proceed to ScrapBook the eastern hemisphere. They have secured 14 eligible feet in the Paris Exposition & another member of the firm will remain there & Scrap-book the French. It seems funny tha=t'y an invention which cost me five-minutes’ thought, in a railway car one day, should in this little while be paying me an

1878—page 12

SLC to Mary Mason Fairbanks, 5 February 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

income as large as any salary I ever received on a newspaper. My royalty on each book is very trifling—so the sales are already very great. Livy & the children are in good health, & as we can’t get to you we send you our love & beg you & Mollie & Mr. Fairbanks to hurry here & see us, before we take wing for——(but that would be telling.) My love to John Hay & his wife, if they’ll take it. Lovingly SamR. Ï ' I knew I should “scribble till dark—there, now! [in margin:] I’m mighty glad you are getting well—did I need to say that?

1878—page 13

To Andrew Chatto per Unknown amanuensis 6 February 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (Paraphrase and TS, correspondence card: Charles Hamilton Galleries catalog, 31 May 1966, no. 13, item 53, #10856)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

CLEMENS, A.L.S. (secretarial) on his engraved, monogrammed correspondence card, 2 full pages, 32mo, Hartford, February 6, 1878, to his English publisher, Mr. Chatto, “A member of our scrap-book firm (Mr. Wilde) is about to establish himself permanently in London . . . to attend personally to the proper scrap booking of the eastern hemisphere. We propose to drive out all inferior scrap books from that hemisphere just as we are doing with this one . . . our firm wants to get a telling advertisement into my new volume of sketches which you are just bringing out . . .”

1878—page 14

To Slote, Woodman and Co. 10 February 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, draft: Sotheby’s, New York, December 1993, #11147)

1

Certificate.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Messrs. Slote, Woodman & Co: I hereby certify: 1— That during many years I was afflicted with cramps in my limbs, indigestion, salt rheum, & ' enlargement of the liver=, &= with –su– inflamm periodical attacks of inflammatory rheumatism complicated with St. Vitus’s dance, my sufferings being so great that for months at a time I was unable to stand upon my feet, or without assistance, or speak the truth with it. But as soon as I had invented my Self-Pasting Scrap Book & begun to use it in my own family all these infirmities disappeared. In disseminating this universal healer among the world’s afflicted ones you are doing a noble work; & I sincerely hope you will get your reward—partly in the sweet consciousness of doing good, but the bulk of it in cash. Very Truly Yours Mark Twain. Ï th Given under my hand this 10 day of February, A. D. 1878.

1878—page 15

To Jane Lampton Clemens 17 February 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: NPV, #01530)

Hartford, Feb. 17.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

My Dear Mother: I suppose I am the worst correspondent in the whole word 'ld; & yet I grow worse & worse all the time. My conscience blisters me for not writing you, but it has ceased to abuse me for not writing other folks. Life has come to be a very serious matter with me. I have a badgered, harassed feeling, a good part of my time. It comes mainly of business responsibilities & annoyances, & the persecution's of kindly letters from well-meaning strangers—to whom I must be rudely silent or else put in the biggest half of my time bothering over answers. There are other things, also, that help to consume my time & defeat my projects. Well, the consequence is, I cannot write a book at home. This cuts my income down. Therefore, I have about made up my mind to take my tribe & fly to some little corner of Europe & budge no more until I shall have completed one of the half dozen books that lie begun, up stairs. We Please say nothing about this at present. We propose to sail the 10th April. I shall go to Fredonia to see you, but it will not be well for Livy to make that trip, I am afraid. However, we shall see. I will hope she can go. Mr. Twichell has just come in, so I must go to him. We are all well, & send love to you all. Affly, Sam. Ï

1878—page 16

To Orion Clemens 21 February 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CU-MARK, #01531) Htf=rd=' d Feb. 21.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

My Dear Bro: You make it appear that you are re-writing a portion of Jules Verne’s book. You will have to leave out your gorilla, your disordered compass & your trip to the interior world. Everybody would say you the ideas were Verne’s & nothing but the expansion & elaboration of them yours. You are poaching upon Verne’s peculiar preserve, anyway, in writing this sort of story. That is plenty far enough to go—it cannot be wise to meddle with any idea or situation of his. Why don’t you find Verne himself down there? Why don’t you handle your gorilla for all he is worth & when you have good the =got the= good of him, let the reader discover that it is Verne in disguise. I think the world has suffered so much from that French idiot that they could enjoy seeing him burlesqued——but I doubt if they want to see him imitated. You give me a most unsatisfactory idea of the story, sending it in random snatches. Don’t do that. Send it all at once. If you burlesque Verne, of course the more ideas of you can use his ideas as much as you choose—but not otherwise. Yr Bro Sam J O. Clemens, Esq | Keokuk | Iowa [return address:] RETURN TO...................... | HARTFORD, HARTFORD CO., CONN., | IF NOT DELIVERED WITHIN..............DAYS. [postmarked:] HARTFORD CONN. FEB 22 1PM

1878—page 17

To Jane Lampton Clemens 23 February 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CU-MARK, #01535)

Hartford, 23d.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

My Dear Mother: Orion wrote me that he was writing a story——& sent me 3 or 4 disconnected paragraphs bitten out of it here & there, as specimens. I wrote him that this story seemed to promise quite fairly. So it did—but from a lot of extracts which I have since received I begin to fear (indeed, I almost am sure) fear it is going to be only a wandering, objectless, motiveless imitation of the rampaging French lunatic, Jules Verne. I saw, in the first place, that he was walking gaily along, exactly in the Frenchman’s footsteps, & with the air of a man who wasn’t aware that there was anything to be ashamed of about it,—but I didn’t make any objection, since the thing was but a sketch. But behold, it is to be a book, as I understand you! Well, even now I won’t object, provided he either does one of two things: publish it anonymously, or make it a satire upon Verne & his frenzies. To imitate an author, even in a sketch, is not an elevated thing to do; to imitate him to the extent of an entire book is such an offense against good morals, good taste & good manners,—I might say even decency—that I should very much hate to see the family name to such a production. Orion sends his hero down Symmes’s Hole into the interior of the earth; their =his= compass is wonderfully reversed; they he meets & talks with a very gentlemanly gorilla; he sees & elaborately describes a pterodactyl, &c &c. Orion writes me that one of Verne’s heroes visits the interior of the earth=, (=through a volcano;)= his compass is wonderfully reversed; he meets a gorilla; he sees a pterodactyl, &cc ' &c. Can you imagine a sane man deliberately proposing to retain these things & print them, while they already exist in another man’s book?—his justification being that he treats them differently & more elaborately than the other man did! Well, Orion is absolutely destitute of originality, wherefore he must imitate; there is no help for it; so, let him go ahead & imitate Verne'e. But mind you, he has an opportunity to do a very delicious & bran-new thing—an

1878—page 18

SLC to Jane Lampton Clemens, 23 February 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

original thing, a thing credentialed with a raison d’etre, & =a very welcome thing to a Verne-cursed world w'aithal—i.e., burlesque Verne & his writings. I have so written him. If he does this (& does it well), his book will deserve life & respect; but if it remains as it now is, a mere servile imitation of Verne, it will deserve only to be burned by the hangman. Orion can’t do either book well; but it would be better to fail in the burlesque than succeed in the imitation. But mind you, a rather poor travesty of Verne ought to be kindly received; & goodness kno' uw = s that there are few easier tasks in the world than to travesty M. Verne. Our going to Europe is decidedly uncertain; but we expect to sail 11th April; in which case I shall expect to see you in Fredonia a week or so befo before that—I don’t know just what date. With love to you all— Affly Sam Ï All well here. Ï

1878—page 19

To Frank W. Cheney 24 February 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CtHMTH, #01534)

Sunday.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

My Dear Mr. Cheney: He sent the ship here at night, by two men, who delivered it to the servant, said it was a present for me from the maker, & then drove off. A letter in 3 volumes or thereabouts accompanied the thing. I was in a pretty uncomfortable place. I couldn’t hurl the man’s present at his head, neither could I accept it from a prisoner. I ended wrote & said I would sell the ship for him if he would set a price; or buy it myself at $50. He said send the $50 to his aged father at Middletown, which I did, drawing the check in said old father’s name; sent it by mail, & got the old man’s acknowledgment per next mail. I never have seen Wesley Hart; but from what I have heard he must be a criminal whose crimes are modified, softened, almost neutralized, by his native chuckle-headedness. He entered Mrs. Henry Perkins’s house, once, to rob it, collected the silver together, then lay down on a sofa to take a nap, & didn’t wake up any more till Mrs. Perkins called him to breakfast. A year ago he walked out of jail & came hanging around my neighbor Holbrook’s barn, telling Holbrook that as soon as night came he would call on me & I would furnish him money to go west with. Then Holbrook went down town & told an officer, & poor Hart was back in Wi'=ethersfield before he had been missed, for he hadn’t been away from there more than 2 days. I am very glad you wrote me, & I wish I had something more substantial to tell. Suppose you write the warden of Wethersfield—I did that once, with a good result——part of which was that I proved to my own (probably prejudiced) satisfaction that the Prisoner’s Friend Association ought to be hanged, drawn, & quartered'.=: (not for sin but for sentiment— Truly Yours S. L. Clemens Ï and stupidity.)=

1878—page 20

To William Dean Howells and Elinor M. Howells 26 February 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: NN-B and MH-H, #02522)

Tuesday.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

My Dear Howells— Imagined my silence meant something wicked?—Lord bless me, I never thought of such a thing! Yes, & I must see you before I go; we must all see each other. Now if you folks can by any possibility snatch a few days & run down here before March 25,—any time—one date as good as another for us—we shall be ever so grateful. It seems mean to ask this concession of you when we stand so largely in your debt on visiting account, but you know this is a pretty big concern to tear up, disband & put in order for a year or two’s absence, so I doubt if the month before us is any more time than necessary for the madam to accomplish it in. I could go to  My own affairs require a little attention from day to day, too, since I must leave them as straight as I ca=nm '. Here you will find no atmosphere of work whatever, because I’ve laid aside the pen till I reach Europe, so if you can come here we shall have an utter respite from the “shop” & all its belongings, & you may even be able to forget, for the time, that you are an editor & fettered with obligations. Send me a card to say how the chances are. Our plan is to leave here for Elmira March 25. We have taken 2 staterooms in the Holsatia, which sails for Hamburg April 11. Miss Clara Spaulding (who is here) goes with us—also Rosa & the children. We shall leave nobody here but Patrick & the horses. Ys Ever Mark. Ï over. P. S. Have written Frank Pixley that I would speak to you when I see you, & if you were willing to simultane with the Argonaut, all right I would write him so; if you were unwilling I would indicate it by not writing. I didn’t tell him you wouldn’t, because I’m not authorized to speak for you—but told him to write you himself if he preferred. He is a good fellow, but Dam the Argonaut. Mark.

1878—page 21

SLC to William Dean and Elinor M. Howells, 26 February 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

=P. S.= 5 minutes later. ———— Dear Mrs. Howells: Mrs. Clemens wrote you a letter, & handed it to me half an hour ago, while I was folding mine to Mr. Howells. I laid that letter on this table before me while I added the paragraph about Pixley’s application. Since then I have been hunting & swearing, & swearing [&] hunting, but I can’t find a sign of that letter. It is the most astonishing disappearance I ever heard of. Mrs. Clemens has gone off driving—so I will have to try & give you an idea of her communication from memory. Mainly it consisted of an urgent desire that you come & see us next week if you can possibly manage it, for that will be a reposeful time, the turmoil of breaking up beginning the week after. She wants you to tell her about Italy, & advise her in that connection, if you will. Then she spoke of her plans—hers, mind you, for I never have anything quite so definite as a plan. She proposes to stop a fortnight in (confound the place, I’ve forgotten what it was,)—then go on & live in Dresden till some time in the summer; then retire to Switzerland for the hottest season, then stay a while in Venice & put in the winter in Munich—this program subject to modification according to circumstances. She said something about some little by-trips here & there, but they didn’t stick in my memory because the idea doesn’t charm me. ƒThey have just telephoned me from the Courant office that Bayard Taylor & family have taken rooms in our ship, the Holsatia, for the 11th April.„ Do come, if you possibly can!—& remember & don’t forget to avoid letting Mrs. Clemens find out I lost her letter. Just answer th her the same as if you had got it. Sincerely Yours S. L. Clemens Ï

1878—page 22

Samuel L. Clemens for Olivia L. Clemens to Annie Franklin 26 February–2 March 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: IaDaPM, #01697)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Dear Mrs. Franklin: Mrs. Clemens is very much afraid you will not be able to come to the Club at our house next Monday Evening, but she hopes you will come if you possibly can. (Mrs. Clemens '  is so oversloughed with work of various sorts that I begged her to let me write these notes for her. What they lack in grace of expression I calculate to make up in the cordiality of my invitations & the superiority of my spelling, Mrs. Franklin.) Truly Yours S. L. Clemens Ï

1878—page 23

Samuel L. Clemens for Olivia L. Clemens to Mary C. Shipman 26 February–2 March 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: ViU, #01539)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Dear Mrs. Shipman: I have got Mrs. Clemens to let me invite her friends to next Monday night’s Club here, because she is dreadfully busy these days of preparation for departure. So I write in her place to beg you to be present on that occasion; & we shall hold it high good fortune if nothing occurs to debar us from this pleasure. Truly Yours S. L. Clemens Ï

1878—page 24

To Bayard Taylor 28 February 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, correspondence card: NIC, #01538)

Hartford Feb. 28.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

My Dear Mr. Taylor— Your appointment was as welcome news =to us= as it was to the whole country—& now comes a report that you are to sail with your family in the Holsatia, April 11, a ship in which we engaged a couple of rooms a week or ten days ago. If that report is true, please don’t change your mind & leave us poor German-ignorant people to cross the ocean with nobody to talk to. Truly Yours S. L. Clemens Ï SLC

1878—page 25

To Mary Mason Fairbanks 9 March 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CSmH, #01542)

Mch. 9, ’78.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

Dear Mother: What a pity we can’t fix it! But Livy & I had the idea long ago & had to give it up. Do you remember a letter of mine, months ago, from the farm, that had ever so many lines marked out of it, this fashion: '? [three lines of SLC’s typical looping cancellation mark] Well, that whole erasure was a proposition that Mollie, or you & Mollie together, make this German journey with Clara Spaulding & our tribe. Livy & I thought of it & talked of it & canvassed it all over, & arrived at the saddening & unwelcome conclusion that it wasn’t worth while to ask you to go, for you probably couldn’t get away: & if you could you would want to take Mollie around to see something, instead of shutting herself up in a remote German village for months at a time.' —or even in a city. We had to give up the idea of asking Mollie to come without you, because that would lay upon us a too heavy responsibility. We thought of everything—even to the fact that 4 adults & a driver overstock a carriage, on the proposed morning & evening drives for recreation. We mightily wanted her along, but it was a plain case of dasn’t. Thus tumble to earth most of the pretty plans I get up. And I perceive I am to be balked in all ways. Here we have been longing for a visit from Mollie all these months, & now that our chance is come, we cant take advantage of it for the reason that we are now to retire for a fortnight into the study & adjoining bedroom while workmen box up the furniture & carpe'ets of the rest of the house & put the place into the state of emptiness desolation meet for our two-years’ absence from it. Hang it all, I wish we could have had our little maid before this chaos came. It would have been a perfect delight to have her & that fortunate young fellow with us. And to lose Mollie’s pretty romance, told by her own lips, is the very hardest part of it. The planets are plainly not propitious. It makes me superstitiously afraid to go to sea. Why do we go to Germany, do I hear you ask? Because the only chance I get here to work is the 3 months we spend at the farm in the summer. A nine months’ annual vacation is too burdensome. I want to find a German village where nobody knows my name or speaks any English, & shut myself 1878—page 26

SLC to Mary Mason Fairbanks, 9 March 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

up in a closet 2 miles from the hotel, & work every day without interruption until I shall have satisfied my consuming desire in that direction. Livy & the children & Miss Clara may learn the language, for occupation, with our nurse Rosa & some tutors for teachers. O dear! don’t let Mollie marry till we come back. It wouldn’t be fair. With a power of love, SamR. Ï

1878—page 27

To William Dean Howells 15 March 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MH-H, #01543)

Mch 15.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

My Dear Howells: If you print this will you see that simultane-sheets go to the Canadian Monthly & to Chatto & Windus 74 Piccadilly, London: That is, if I’m out of the country by that time. I’m going to be away out in Elmira, 300 miles from N. Y when the Taylor banquet comes off, so I shall have to decline, I suppose. I was determined to have one more look at you=, in Boston,= before we go, but I’ve just been 2 days in New York & Livy had no sleep while I was gone. I dasn’t rob her of another nights rest, for she has to be on her feet & hard at work from now till we leave, 26th. The drawing- & pink rooms have a melancholy look, to-day—uncarpeted & wholly stripped & empty. This work of desolation is to go right on, day after day. I am called—Good-bye, for today! Yrs Ever Mark. Ï

1878—page 28

To George Haven Putnam 16 March 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, correspondence card: CtY-BR, #01544) Hartford, Feb. =Mch.= 16.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Geo. Haven Putnam, Esq Dr. Sir: I have received the committee’s circular, & in reply would say I shall be very glad to co-operate in the proposed testimonial to my esteemed friend & (to-be) fellow-passenger in the steamer “Holsatia,” Hon. Bayard Taylor. Truly Yours SamR. L. Clemens Ï SLC

1878—page 29

To John T. Raymond per Charles E. Perkins 16 March 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, record copy: CtHMTH, #01545)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

CHARLES E. PERKINS, ATTORNEY AND COUNSELLOR AT LAW, 14 STATE STREET, HARTFORD, CONN., ............................................. 187

Hartford Conn March 16–1878

John T. Raymond Esq Dr Sir I hereby nominate and appoint Mr Charles E Perkins of Hartford Conn. my agent to receive and receipt for the (20) twenty per cent to be paid me by you under our contract of the 11th inst. with power to him to designate any other person to receive the same from time to time as he sees fit. SamR. L. Clemens Ï J [letter annotated by Perkins:] Authority for Raymonds receipts | [flourish] | Mch 16. 1878 | Duplicate

1878—page 30

To Charles Warren Stoddard 20 March 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MB, #01546)

Hartford, Mch 20

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

My Dear Charley: Bong voig Bong voig to you, as the French say—th a remark which comes rather late, inasmuch as your journey is done. I wish you had given us another visit before you went away. We should have enjoyed it heartily. You wouldn’t recognize our house to-day. The pictures are gone from the walls, the carpets from the floors, the curtains, the furniture, the books—everything has vanished away to the storage warehouse, & the place,' is empty, desolate, & filled with echoes. For two or three years the coachman & family will stand guard at the stable, with the horses, & a private estate man at the house & the horses & keep the conservatory blooming & the hanging flower-baskets flourishing in the balconies. We are packing the trunks to-day. We expect to sail Apl 11 in the Holsatia for Hamburg. In view of that sea-voyage—pray for us! With Remember me the kindest you know how, to the Club boys. With a power of love, old Charley, from me, & kind regards from the madam, Yr Friend Mark Ï

1878—page 31

To Orion Clemens 23 March 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, in pencil: CU-MARK, #01547)

Hartford, Mch 23.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

My Dear Bro— The story Every man must learn his trade—not pick it up. God requires that he learn it by slow & painful processes. The apprentice-hand, in blacksmithing, in medicine, in literature, in everything is a thing that can’t be hidden. It always shows. But happily there is a market for apprentice-work, else the Innocents Abroad would have had no sale. Happily, too, there’s a wider market for some sorts of apprentice-literature than there is for the very best of journey-work. This work of yours is exceedingly crude, but its very over-enthusiasms should commend it to the uncritical common herd. =I am free= It is too crude to offer to any prominent periodical to say it is less crude than I expected it to be, & considerably better work than I believed you could do. It is too crude to offer to any prominent periodical, so I shall speak to the N. Y. Weekly people. To publish it in that will be to bury it. Why could not some good genius have sent me to the N. Y. Weekly with my apprenticesketches? You should not publish it in book form at all—for this reason: it is only an imitation of Verne, at last—it is not a burlesque. But I think it may be regarded as proof that Verne cannot be burlesqued. In accompanying notes I have suggested that you vastly modify the first visit to hell, & leave out the second visit altogether. No' dbody would or ought to print those those things. You are not av 'dvanced enough in literature to venture upon a matter requiring so much practice. Let me show you what a man has got to go through: Eight Nine years ago I mapped out my “Journey in ' h Heaven.” = I discussed it with literary friends whom I could trust to keep it to themselves. I gave it a deal of thought, from time to time. After a year or more, I wrote it up. It was not a success. Five years ago I wrote it again, altering the plan. That

1878—page 32

SLC to Orion Clemens, 23 March 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

MS is at my elbow now. It was a considerable improvement on the first attempt, but still it wouldn’t do. Last year & year before I talked frequently with Howells about the subject, & he kept urging me to do it again. So I thought & thought, at odd moments, & at last I struck what I considered to be the right plan! Mind, I never have altered the ideas, from the first—the plan was the difficulty. When Howells was here last, I laid before him the whole story without referring to my MS., & he said: “Drop the “You have got it, sure, this time. But drop the idea of making mere magazine stuff of it. Don’t waste it. Print it by itself—publish it first in England—ask Dean Stanley to endorse it, which will draw some of the teeth of the religious press, & then reprint in America.” I doubt my ability to get Dean Stanley to do anything of the sort, but I shall do the rest—& this is all a secret, which you must not divulge. Now look here—I have tried, all these years, to think of some way of “doing” hell, too—& have always had to give it up. Hell, in my book, will not occupy five pages of MS, I judge—it will be only covert hints, I suppose, & quickly dropped. I may end by not even referring to it. And mind you, in my opinion you will find that you can’t write up hell so it will stand printing. Neither Howells nor I believe in hell or the divinity of the Savior—but no matter, the Savior is none the less a sacred Personage & a man should have no desire or disposition to refer to him lightly, profanely, or otherwise than with the profoundest reverence. The ol'nly safe thing is not to introduce him or refer to him at all, I suspect. I have re entirely re-written one book 3 (perhaps 4) times, changing the plan every time—1200 pages of MS wasted & burned—& shall tackle it again, one of these years & may be succeed at last. Therefore you need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work & re-vamp or re-write it. God only exhibits his thunder&-lightning at intervals, & so they always command attention. These are God’s adjectives. You thunder-&-lighten too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by & by. Mr. Perkins will send you & Ma your checks when we are gone. But don’t write him, ever, except a single line in case he forgets the checks—for the man is driven to death with work. I see you are already ha=lf=ve promising yourself a money-return for your book. In my experience, previously counted chickens never do hatch. How many of mine I have counted!—& never a one of them but failed! It is much 1878—page 33

SLC to Orion Clemens, 23 March 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

better to hedge disappointment by not counting. Unexpected money is a delight. The same sum is a bitterness when you expected more. My time in America is growing mighty short. Perhaps we can manage in this way: Imprimis, if the N. Y. Weekly people know that you are my brother, they will turn that fact into an advertisement—a thing of value'e to them, but not to you & me. This must be prevented. I will write them a note to say you have near a friend near Keokuk, Charles S. Miller, who has a MS for sale which you think is a pretty clever travesty on Verne; & if they want it they might write to him und in your care. Then if any correspondence ensues between you & them, tell let Mollie write for you & sign your name—your own handwriting representing Miller’s. Keep yourself out of sight till you make a strike on your own merits—there is no other way to get a fair verdict upon your merits. Ï Later—I’ve written the note to Smith, & with nothing in it which he can use as an advertisement. I’m called—Good-bye—love to you both. We leave here next Wednesday for Elmira; we leave there Apl 9 or 10—& sail 11th. Yr Bro Sam. Ï [enclosure, first 6 pages (about 60 percent) missing:] . . . . billion billion is replaced once every 30 years, & that therefore about 100,000 people die daily—& here is the same guess on page 267. ________ 279 The story is sufficient in itself—there should be no comments, humorous or otherwise. ________ 281 The descriptive language is generally too strong, & too much of it. 289–90

33 34 35

Too vivid.

________ 1878—page 34

SLC to Orion Clemens, 23 March 1878, contd.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Curious again—all this about hell, when I was led to write an exhaustive account of heaven some weeks ago—an account which I gave to Howells by word of mouth some months =time= ago & which =he= repeatedly urged me to put upon paper.'=—which I did, & he thinks well of it.= ________ 300 This is simply offensive. ________ 310 Chaffy talk does not seem to come properly from old Biblical people. 311 “Next came 100 people who looked like they had just been, &c” That wretched Missourianism occurs in every chapter. You mean, “AS IF.” ________ ________ ________ Finally. I think the Nomad marriage, religion, & the events in the church are not good enough or interesting enough to retain. I think all of =the second visit to= hell should come out, except & that the first visit should be modified into delicate & convincing satire. Moreover, one should not call Verne harsh names. His crime should be sarcastically suggested, rather than told. Ï Once more—Franklin did not need to fast 4 years, or at all. I still don’t quite understand the cigar sha how the Eskimo came to be imprisoned in that hammock in the cigar boat—I thought he traveled on the backs of those ichthiosauri. Ï

1878—page 35

To William Dean Howells 23 March 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, correspondence cards, in pencil: MH-H, #01548)

23d

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

My Dear Howells— No, we won’t simultane with Canada unless Houghton can get the Canadian copyright transferred immediately to himself or some personal friend of his in Canada. =Won’t he try?= O dear! Orion’s MS book has come & I’ve read it all through. There are good places in it, but oh, the manifest apprentice hand! And that reminds me—ungrateful dog that I am—that I owe as much to your training as the count rude country job printer owes to the city boss who takes him in hand & teaches him the right =right= way to handle his art. I was talking to Mrs. Clemens about this the other day & grieving because I had never mentioned it to you, thereby seeming to ignore it or be unaware of it. Nothing that has passed under your eye needs any revision before going into a volume, while all my other stuff does require so much. I’m glad you like this last sketch—I begin to like it myself, now. The trunks are being packed—the furniture is boxed—we depart out of this home next Wednesday. But for the madam’s sleepless nights when I am away, I should certainly ring your door bell this evening at 7. Mrs. C. is full of pleasure over Mrs. Howells’s letter. Yrs Ever Mark. Ï SLC

1878—page 36

Samuel L. Clemens and Olivia L. Clemens to the Saturday Morning Club 25 March 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CtHSD, #01549)

1

SLC

Hartford, March 25'78.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

My Dear Young Ladies: For Mrs. Clemens & myself I hasten to thank you cordially for this exquisite remembrancer, these lovely flowers. If you will let me say it, it is like coming to us yourselves, in a body, these gracious creatures do so worthily & so truly represent your own fresh bloom & grace & beauty. It is a very touching attention you have paid us, & we cannot tell in words how much we value it & are gladdened by it. Although I am doubtless to be absent a long time, I am too proud of my patriarchal position in the Club to be willing to either resign it or allow another to occupy it in the interregnum. I beg, instead, the privilege of appointing a vacant chair, of ordinary pattern, to represent me & my wisdom on occasions when I ought to be present in my official capacity—& mark you, there are malignants who will tell you that a vacant chair is able to represent me & my wisdom very well—but no matter, you will see in it only a reminder that the spirit of one is there whose body is absent: & trust me that will be entirely true. Begging that you will keep the Club compact & strong, & neither suffer it to languish nor die—for it is worthy to outlive us all—we offer our affectionate good-byes, & our sincere wishes for the lasting peace & happiness & prosperity of each & every one of you. SamR. L. Clemens Ï Olivia L. Clemens

1878—page 37

To George Haven Putnam 26 March 1878 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, correspondence card: Sotheby’s, New York, October 1996, #01550)

Hartford, Mch. 26'78

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Dear Sir: Yes, I shall be very glad to talk four or five minutes, or rise in my place & excuse myself, =( according to the earliness or the lateness of the hour.) One gets more gratitude for an excuse, sometimes, than for a speech; & I prefer gratitude even to applause. Ys Truly S. L. Clemens Ï SLC

1878—page 38

To Denis E. McCarthy 29 March and 7 April 1878 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: Scott, #11637)

1

Private.

Elmira, N. Y. Mch ' 3 29.

2

20

Dear Dennis: I’m ever so much obliged to you for the trouble you have taken. A week hence, we sail for Europe to be gone several years—therefore I don’t want any more mud in mine. From the beginning up to the present time I have continued to warn the Nevada Bank to sell that stock in time to save themselves. They allowed it to go to $119 without selling. They allowed it to drop to $3 without seg suggesting that I buy more & hedge. They allowed it since to go to $29 without selling. I have always insisted that they sell in time to save themselves loss. I say again, If they lose, now, on their own heads be it. I won’t put up the $190, neither will I make good any loss they may sustain. Good bye & God be with you my boy! Not any =more= speculations for this financial mud-turtle! I have I have been into seven in the past six years—didn’t make a cent out of one of them, ' d Denis. I haven’t any regrets about it, but because I haven’t lost $12,000 in the whole of them put together—but it’s foolishness & I’m done with it. Yrs ever Mark P. S. Denis, please tell the Nevada Bank what I say.

21

[on smaller paper:]

22

Apl. 7. Yesterday in New York I was told it was common talk in Virginia that I had persuaded Dan to adopt a pla=nm ' in the writing of his book which I knew would kill it! It was said John Mackay had been heard to say this. I said there were men small enough to say it, but I didn’t think John Mackay was one of them. Once a report like this would have distressed me prodigiously. It doesn’t now. I never gave Dan but one important suggestion—at least only one which he followed. I got him to cut down the history of Nevada =with= which he opened—I wanted him to cut it down to a couple of pages, but he w

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

1878—page 39

SLC to Denis E. McCarthy, 29 March and 7 April 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

a great deal more than he did, but he thought differently. I am very sure Dan will not say I put a straw in his way or gave him any malicious advice. Ys Ever Mark. Ï J D. E. McCarthy, Esq | Virginia | Nevada. [postmarked:] ELMIRA N.Y. APR 7 6PM [docketed:] Mark Twain

1878—page 40

To Frank Fuller 5 April 1878 • New York, N.Y. (MS: MoSW, #01552)

Noon, Friday.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

My Dear Fuller— Give him any interest that will fetch him. That is all I require, my boy. I’ve been to the Sturtevant to call on Mrs. Fuller, & just at the elevator found I had lost a package—so I rushed off but had to give up my search in order to meet an appointment here. An appointment with Howells hinges onto this one—then I’m coming to your hotel if I can, before the evening train. Our tribe will reach Gilsey House at midnight 10th, & leave for the ship anywhere from 8 to 11 next morning—can’t tell, yet. Can’t you & Mrs. Fuller come to the ship if we fail otherwise to connect? Yrs =friend= S. L. Clemens Ï J [return address:] ST. JAMES HOTEL, | BROADWAY & 26 ST. N. Y. | F. THEODORE WALTON. [not postmarked] TH

18 19 20 21 22

Ï From Clemens Ï

Gov. Frank Fuller Sturtevant House

1878—page 41

To Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett 7 April 1878 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS and TS: NPV and Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain’s Letters, 1917, 1:325–27, #01553)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Apl. 7.'78 My Dear Mother—I have told Livy all about Annie’s beautiful house, & about Sam & Charl=ey='y, & about Charley’s ingenious manufactures & his strong manhood & good promise, & how glad I am that he & Annie married. And I have told her about Alice & her blue eyes, & about Annie’s excellent housekeeping, & also about the great Bacon conflict; (I told you it was a hundred to one that neither Livy nor the European powers had heard of that desolating struggle.) And I have told you her how beautiful you are in your age & how bright your mind is with its old-time brightness, & how she & the children would enjoy you. And I have told her how singularly young ' p Pamela is looking, & what a fine large fellow Sam is, & how ill the lingering syllable “my” to his name fits his port & figure. Well, Pamela, after thinking it over for a day or so, I came near inquiring about a state-room in our ship for Sam, to please you, but my wiser former resolution came back to me. It is not for his good that he have friends in the ship. His conduct in the Bacon business shows that he will develop rapidly into a manly man as soon as he is cast loose from your apron strings. You don’t teach him to push ahead & do & dare things for himself, but you do just the reverse. You are assisted in your damaging work by the tyrannous ways of a village—villagers watch each other & so make cowards of each other. After Sam shall have voyaged to Europe by himself, & rubbed against the world & taken & returned its cuffs, do you think he will hesitate to escort a guest into any whisky-mill in Fredonia when he himself has no sinful business to transact there? No, he will smile at the idea. If he avoids this courtesy now from principle, of course I find no fault with it at all—only if he thinks it is principle he may be mistaken; a close examination may show it is only a bowing to the tyranny of public opinion. I only say it may—I cannot venture to say it will. Hartford is not a large place, but it is broader than to have ways of that sort. Three or four weeks ago, at a Moody and Sankey meeting, the preacher read a letter from somebody “exposing” the fact that a prominent clergyman had gone from one of

1878—page 42

SLC to Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett, 7 April 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

those meetings, bought a bottle of lager beer & drank it on the premises (a drug store.) A tempest of indignation swept the town. Our clergymen & everybody else said the “culprit” had not only done an innocent thing, but had done it in an open, manly way, & it was nobody’s right or business to find fault with it. Perhaps this dangerous latitude comes of the fact that we never have any temperance “rot” going on in Hartford. I find here a letter from Orion, submitting some new matter in his story for criticism. When You write him, please tell him to do the best he can & bang away. I can do nothing further in this matter, for I have but 3 days left in which to settle a deal of important business & answer a bushel & a half of letters. I am very nearly tired to death. I was so jaded & worn, at the Taylor dinner, that I found I could not remember 3 sentences of the speech I had memorized, & therefore got up & said so & excused myself from speaking. I arrived here at 3 o’clock this morning. I think the next 3 days will finish me. The idea of sitting down to a job of literary criticism is simply ludicrous. A young lady passenger in our ship has been placed under Livy’s charge. Livy couldn’t easily get out of it, & did not want to, on her own account, but fully expected I would make trouble when I heard of it. But I didn’t. A girl can’t well travel alone, so I offered no objection. She leaves us at Hamburg. So I’ve got 6 people in my care, now—which is just 6 too many for a man of my unexecutive capacity. I expect nothing else but to lose some of them overboard. We send our loving good-byes to all the household & hope to see you again after a spell. Affly Yrs. Sam.

1878—page 43

To David Gray 10 April 1878 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: NHyF, #11402)

Wednesday.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Dear David— I had a delightful visit in Fredonia (got my baggage full as soon as I had any need of it), & a dr horrid night-trip to New York. I was so worn out that I didn’t try to make my speech at the Taylor dinner; couldn’t trust my memory. I ordered the Synonyms, & I think ' w you will like it. I expressed “The Loyal League” to you yesterday—a lovely story, but in I think that in some respects the simpler version in the Mitford’s “Tales of Old Japan” is preferable. The present version leaves some of the dignity & most of the pathos out. I had a perfectly enchanting time at your house—God send I see another such! Mrs. Clemens & I send our love to you & Mrs. Gray. And also our good-bye—for we presently leave here, & tomorrow at 2 PM we sail. God be with you! S L Clemens Ï I came near letting Mrs. Clemens keep that Japanese book, she was so fascinated with the cover & the pictures, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember whether you particularly valued it or not; so I judged it safest to return it to you.

1878—page 44

To Joseph H. Twichell 10 April 1878 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS, correspondence card: CtY-BR, #01554)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Elmira, Wedy Noon Good bye, Joe dear, we are about to take the train. We sail tomorrow, 2 PM in the Holsatia. Will write you from Germany & tell you what will be the best time for you to come, then you can come at the time you can come, you see, without regard to the best time. Good bye, & love to Harmony & you & all the friends & the babies. Mark

1878—page 45

To Moncure D. Conway 11 April 1878 • New York, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, #01555)

1 2 3 4

GILSEY HOUSE, NEW YORK COR. BROADWAY AND 29TH STREET. JAMES H. BRESLIN. PROPRIETOR.

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

NEW YORK,

Apl. 11 187 8

My Dear Conway Hamlet House Hammersmith London: I have a delicacy about writing letters of introduction; but in this case you must pardon me if I present my nephew Mr. Samuel Moffett, to your kind consideration. If he shall particularly need your assistance or a word of advice, he will call & say so—at other times he will be careful not to come. A busy man in busy London has little time to give to people, I am well aware of that. Now please be plain & fra=nk=' m with my nephew, who has sense enough to appreciate it. You & Eustace are hereby informed that he is a manly youth, of irreproachable character, & perfectly reliable. Good-bye. With kindest regards to Mrs. Conway & yourself, from Mrs. Clemens & myself (who sail today for some unde=sp=ecified place in Germany,) Yrs Ever S. L. Clemens Ï

1878—page 46

To Olivia Lewis Langdon 20 April 1878 • SS Holsatia en route from New York, N.Y., to Hamburg, Germany (MS, in pencil: CtHMTH, #01556)

1

[underscores inscribed by SLC:]

2 3 4 5

HAMBURG-AMERIKANISCHE PACKETFAHRT-ACTIEN-GESELLSCHAFT. SPEISE-KARTE DAMPFSCHIFF

9

Holsatia —————————————————— Sonnabend, DEN 20. April 187 8. Diner.

10

Oxtail-Suppe mit Punsch-Romaine

11

Omelettes au Sulpikon

6 7 8

TEN

Roastbeef. Türkische-Erbsen & Carotten Lamm-Cotelettes mit Champigons-Sauce Kückenbraten, Compot & Salat

12 13 14 15

Nuss-Torte. Dessert & Caffee.

16 17

18

[on verso:]

19

At Sea, Apr. 20, 8 PM Mother dear, having no other paper convenient, I use the bill of fare. You can see by the articles underlined, (Roman punch, roast chicken, jelly and salad,) what portion of it Livy & Clara partook of this evening. And even this little is a bigger meal than they have ventured upon before for several days. But I have had an inexhaustible appetite & have tried to make up for them. It has been all kinds of a voyage—calm, smoothe seas, then rough seas, then middling—& so on. On the 17th we had heavy seas, then easy ones, then rough again; then brilliant sunshine, then black skies, with thick driving storms

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

1878—page 47

SLC to Olivia Lewis Langdon, 20 April 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

of rain, hail, sleet & snow—sunshine again, followed by more snow, hail, rain & sleet—& so on, all day long; we sighted an ice-berg in the morning & a water-spout in the afternoon. To-day a lurch of the ship threw a passenger against an iron railing & they think he has a rib broken. The girls are worn out with the rolling & tumbling of the ship, & starved out too, since they eat nothing. But they’ll be all right, 2 days hence, when we reach Plymouth. ' C The children get along splendidly, though the Bay swears at the weather sometimes. [continued on the front, upside-down:] We like the vessel very much. She is a good ' v sea-boat, & has a delightful old Captain, who thinks Miss Clarence (as he calls Clara Spaulding) is my daughter. We have an unusually pleasant lot of passengers—mostly Germans. We send lots of love to you all. Lovingly SamR. Ï

1878—page 48

To William Dean Howells 4 May 1878 • Frankfort on the Main, Germany (MS, in pencil: NN-B, #02523)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

=May 4.= ENGLISCHER HOF. FRANKFURT A/M. Frankfort on the Main My Dear Howells—I only propose to write a single line to say we are still alive. =around.= Ah, I have such a deep, grateful, unutterable sense of being “out of it all.” I think I foretaste some of the tranquil advantage of being dead. Some of the joy of it. I don’t read any newspapers or care for them. When people tell me England has declared war, I drop the subject, feeling that it is none of my business; when they tell me Mrs. Tilton has confessed & Mr. B. denied, I say both of them have done that before, therefore let the worn stub of the Plymouth white-wash brush be brought out once more, & let the faithful spit on their hands & get to work again regardless of me—for I am out of it all. We had 2 almost devilish weeks at sea (& I tell you Bayard Taylor is a really lovable man—which you already knew); then we staid a week in the beautiful, the very beautiful city of Hamburg; & since then we have been fooling along, 4 hours per day by rail, with a courier, spending the other 20 in hotels whose ' b enormous bedchambers & private parlors are an overpowering marvel to me. Day before yesterday, in Cassel, we had a love of a bedroom 31 feet long, & a parlor with 2 sofas, 12 chairs, a writing desk & 4 tables scattered around here & there in it. 'I Made of red silk, too, by George. The times & times I wish you were along! You could throw some fun into the journey; whereas I go on, day by day, in a solemn smileless state of solemn admiration. What a paradise this land is! What clean clothes, what good faces, what tranquil contentment, what prosperity, what genuine freedom, what superb government! And I am so happy, be for I am responsible for none of it. I am only here to enjoy. How charmed I am when I overhear a German word which I understand! With Love from us to 2 to you 2. Mark. P. S.—We are not taking six days to go from Hamburg to Heidelb' uerg because we prefer it. Quite the contrary. Mrs. Clemens picked up a dreadful cold & sore throat on board ship & still keeps them in stock—so she could 1878—page 49

SLC to William Dean Howells, 4 May 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

only travel 4 hours a day. She wanted to dive straight through, but I had different notions about the wisdom of it. I found that 4 hours a day was the best she could do. Before I forget it, our permanent address is Care of Messrs. Koester & Co., Bankers, Heidelberg. We go there tomorrow. Poor Susie! From the day we reached German soil, we have required Rosa to speak German to the children—which they hate with all their souls. The other morning, Susie in Hanover, Susie came to me (from Rosa, in the nursery,) & said, “I in halting syllables, “Papa, wie viel Uhr ist”' =es?”=—then turned, with pathos in her big eyes, & said, “Mamma, I wish Rosa was made in English.”

1878—page 50

To Bayard Taylor 7 May 1878 • Heidelberg, Germany (MS: NIC, #01560)

1 23 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

SCHLOSS-HOTEL HEIDELBERG REICHS-TELEGRAPHEN-&

May 7, 1878.

Lieber Herr Taylor! Wir bin=werden=hier blieben viellicht f/ o=ür drei Monate, zum Schloss-Hotel. Dies hotel steht about fünf und sieben=zig=sz Fuss höher als das Schloss, und commandirt ein Aussicht welcher ohne Ahnlichkeit in der Welt ist. hat. (Sie müssen excuse auskratchens, interliinneations, u. s. w.) Ich habe heute gecalled on der Herr Professor Ihne, qui est die Professor von Englishen Zunge im University, to get him to recommend ein Deutchen Lehrer für mich, wh welcher ' d he did. Er sprach um mehrerer Americanischer authors, und meist günstiger & vernügungsvoll von Ihrer; dass er knew you und Ihrer Rufen Lebe so wohl, durch Irer=hrer= geschreibungen; und wann Ich habe gesagt Ich sollen Ihr scrie schreiben heute Nacht gewesen if nothing happened, er bitte mich Opfer sein compliments, und hoffe Ihnen will ihm besuchen ween wenn du kommst an Heidelberg. Er war ein vortrefflicher und liebwürdiger & every way delightful alte gentleman. Man sagt I=ch= muss ein Pass (in der English, Passport,) haben to decken accidents. Dafür gefellig' h t Ihnen furnish me one. Meine Beschreibung ist vollenden: Geborn 1835; 5 Fuss 8½ inches hoch; weight doch aber about 145, =Pfund,= sometimes ein wenig unter, sometimes ein wenig oben; dunkel braun Haar und rhotes moustache, full face Gesicht, mit =sehr= hohe Oren und l'ieicht grau practvolle' n s sl strahlenden Augen und ein Verdammt=es= gut moral character. Handlungkeit, Author von Bücher. Ich habe das Deutche Sprache gelernt und bin ein glücklicher Kind, you bet. With warmest regards & kindest remembrances from all our party to you & yours, =wife & daughter,= Sincerely, S. L. Clemens Ï POST-STATION. H. ALBERT.

1878—page 51

To Joseph H. Twichell 23 May 1878 • Heidelberg, Germany (MS: CtHMTH, #10474)

. . . .

1 2 3

[enclosure:] =$300.00=

Schloss-Hotel, Heidelberg, May 23'78

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Messrs. Geo P Bissell & Co Hartford. Gentlemen: Please pay to the order of Rev. Joseph H. Twichell Three Hundred Dollars, & charge to ac' of Ys Truly SamR. Clemens Ï J [enclosure endorsed:] J. H. Twichell [and stamped:] PAID GEO P. BISSELL & CO., HARTFORD, CT.

1878—page 52

To William Dean Howells 26 May 1878 • Heidelberg, Germany (MS, damage emended: NN-B, #02524)

Schloss-Hotel Heidelberg, May 26. Sunday A.M.

1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

My Dear Howells: We are divinely located. From this airy perch among the shining groves we look down upon Heidelberg Castle, & upon the swift Neckar, =& the town,= & out over the wide green level of the Rhine valley—a marvelous prospect. We are in a cul de sac formed of hill & hill-ranges & river: we are on the side of a steep steep mountain; the river at our feet is walled, on its other side, =(yes, on both sides,)= by a steep & wooded mountain-range which rises abruptly aloft from the water’s edge; portions of these mountains are densely wooded; the plain of the Rhine, seen through that mouth of the opening of the mouth of this pocket, has many & peculiar charms for the eye. Our b bed-room has two great glass bird-cages (enclosed balconies) one looking toward the Rhine Valley & sunset, the other looking up the Neckar-cul de sac, & naturally we spend nearly all our time in these—when one is sunny the other is shady. We have tables & chairs in them; we do our reading, writing, studying, smoking & suppering in them. The view from these bird-cages is my despair. The picture changes from one enchanting aspect to another in ceaseless procession, never keeping one form half an hour, & never taking on an unlovely one. To look out upon the Rhine Valley when a thunderstorm is sweeping across it is a thing sublime. Every day there is a new spectacle in the way of a sunset, a new vision that the sun=- rise brings, & when the moonlight drapes the Castle, town, bridges & valley, it is truly soothing & satisfying to the outlooker. And then Heidelberg by =on a dark= night! It is massed, away down there, almost right under us, you know, and stretches off toward the valley. Its =curved & interlacing= streets are a cobweb, beaded thick with lights—a wonderful thing to see; then the rows of lights on the arched bridges, & their glinting reflections in the water; & away at the other far end, the Eisenbahnhof, with its twenty solid acres of glittering gas-jets, a huge garden, as one may say, whose every plant is a flame. 1878—page 53

SLC to William Dean Howells, 26 May 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

These balconies are the darlingest things. I have spent all this morning in this north one. Counting big & little, it has 256 panes of glass in it; so one is in effect right out in the free sunshine, & yet sheltered from wind & rain—& likewise doored & curtained from whatever may be going on in the bed-room. It must have been a noble genius who devised this hotel. Lord, how blessed is the repose, the tranquillity of this place! Only two sounds: the happy clamor of the birds in the groves, & the muffled music of the Neckar, tumbling over the opposing dikes. It is no hardship to like let lie awake awhile, nights, for this subdued roar has exactly the sound of a steady rain beating upon a roof. It is so healing to the spirit.'; & it bears up the thread of one’s imaginings as the accompaniment bears up a song. While Livy & Miss Spaulding have been writing at this table, I have sat tilted back, near by, with a pipe & the last Atlantic, & read Charley Warner’s article with prodigious enjoyment. I think it is exquisite. I think it must be the roundest & broadest & completest short essay he has ever written. It is clear, & compact, & charmingly done. The hotel grounds join & communicate with the Castle grounds; so we & the children loaf in the W ' winding paths of those leafy vastnesses a great deal, & drink beer & listen to excellent music. When we first came to this hotel, a couple of weeks ago, I pointed to a house across the river, by the water’s edge, & said I meant to rent the centre room on the 3d floor for a work-room. Jokingly we got to speaking of it as my office; & amused ourselves with watching “my people” daily in their small grounds & trying to make out what we could of their dress, &c., without a glass. Well, I loafed along there one day & found on that house the only sign of the kind on that side of the river: “Moblirte Wohnung zu Vermei=ie=then!” I went in & rented that very room which I had long ago selected. There was only one other room in the who=le= double-house unrented. (It occurs to me that I made a great mistake in not thinking to deliver a very bad German spe' ech (every other sentence pieced out with English,) at the Bayard Taylor banquet in New York; I think I could have made it one of the features of the occasion.) We left Hartford before the end of April, =March,= & I have been idle ever since. I have waited for a “call” to go to work—I knew it would come. Well, it began to come a week ago; my note-book comes out more & more frequently every day since; 3 days ago I concluded to move my manuscripts over to my den. Now the call is loud & decided, at last. So, tomorrow I shall 1878—page 54

SLC to William Dean Howells, 26 May 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

begin regular, steady work, & stick to it till middle of July or 1st August, when I look for Twichell; we will then walk about Germany 2 or 3 weeks & then I’ll go to work again—=(perhaps in Munich.)= We both send a power of love to the Howellses, & we do wish you were here. Are you in the new house? Tell us about it. Yrs Ever Mark. Ï

1878—page 55

To Moncure D. Conway 2 June 1878 • Heidelberg, Germany (MS: NNC, #01566)

Schloss-Hotel Heidelberg, June 2.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

My Dear Conway: In a thoughtless moment I gave a young nephew of mine, aged 17 or 18, a letter of 17 or 18 (Samuel Moffett) a letter of introduction to you just before I left home. I afterwards wrote my sister & wrote home & said I preferred that the letter should not be presented, except in an urgent & justifiable case, since you, like other busy men, have your hands full enough without outside help. Young Moffett is a very excellent boy, of considerable education, quite unusual natural capacity, & irreproachable character—but these are no reasons why he should in the least bore or burden you or Eustace. I hope he wouldn’t be any trouble to you, but he mustn’t '’ be. He is old enough to hunt out his own courses, make his own inquiries & paddle his own canoe—& it is time he were learning the trick of it. But if he should happen along during the summer & you & Eustace are not in need of interruption, just give him a card of admission to the British Museum—he will bury himself in the books there & never be heard of again. We shall be here till middle of July or 1st August. It would be jolly to see you & Mrs Conway here. Mrs. Clemens & I send our kindest regards to you both. Yrs Sincerely S. L. Clemens Ï

1878—page 56

To David Gray 2 June 1878 • Heidelberg, Germany (MS: NHyF, #11403)

Schloss-Hotel Heidelberg, June 2.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Dear David— You know Heidelberg, & therefore you will perceive that we are delightfully located for the summer. One of our balconies looks up the ne Neckar & the other looks out over Castle, town, & the Rhine Valley. These balconies are just the thing to take supper in—or read or smoke or write. They are glass-enclosed, with movable sashes. I have hired a den, for the not exorbitant sum of $5 a month, on the opposite side of the Neckar, in an upper story of a dwelling-house, for a study—so as to be away from home attractions & distractions. The walk thither every morning, & the walk back, through the town & the Castle grounds, at 4 P.M., give me very pleasing exercise, & just enough of it. I do wish you were here on a 3 months’ vacation, with orders to walk 15 or 20 miles a day. What times we should have! I meant to study German & learn to speak, but I must give that up. I can’t afford the time. I have begun writing a book about Germany, in the sort of narrative form which I used in Innocents, Roughing It & Bermuda stuff. I think I shall enjoy the work when I get fairly into the swing of it. On off-days I shall translate a volume of pretty & ingenious tales which I have run across, here. They were written ostensibly for the young, but like all really good books for youth, they are entertaining matter for the elderly also. There are some touches in them of a delicacy w'rhich requires mature perception. =I have translated one of the tales to my satisfaction. There is humor in it.= Our children are wrestling with the language under a governess, & Mrs. Clemens & Miss Spaulding are doing likewise under a teacher. But O, the intractable grammar! how it gravels them! A German paper of yesterday says, “Bret Harte is to have a German Consulate, with $3,000 a year.” I suppose the government’s idea is to get up a contrast with Bayard Taylor, who is a gentleman. It was a delightful & memorable time I had with you in your beautiful home—God send it may be repeated.

1878—page 57

SLC to David Gray, 2 June 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5

Mrs Clemens & I join in loving regards to you & Mrs. Gray, & wishes for the long life & happiness of all the family, big & little. Yours Ever Mark. Ï

1878—page 58

To Andrew Chatto 3 June 1878 • Heidelberg, Germany (MS: CLjC, #01567)

Schloss-Hotel Heidelberg, June 3.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

My Dear Mr. Chatto: Won’t you please send me a paper=-covered= copy of “Innocents Abroad” & “Roughing It”—& oblige Yours Faithfully SamR. L. Clemens Ï Love to Conway.

1878—page 59

To Bayard Taylor 10 June 1878 • Heidelberg, Germany (MS: NIC, #01570)

The Königsstuhl, June 10.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

Lieber Herr=n Taylor! (Don’t know whether it ought to be Herr or Herrn). Am much obliged for that letter—it was from a friend whom I have been trying to ferret out. Yes, we still live at the Schloss-Hotel, & shall doubtless continue to do so until the neighborhood of August—but I only eat & sleep there; my work-den is in the second story of a little Wirthschaft which stands at the base of the Tower on the summit of the Königsstuhl. I walk up there every morning, at 10, write until 3, talk the most hopeless & unimprovable German with the family till 5, then tramp down to the Hotel for the night. It is a sehr schönes Aussicht up there, as you may remember. The exercise of climbing up there is invigorating, but devilish. I have just written to regrets to the Paris Literary Convention=.— ' I did hate to have to miss that entertainment, but I knew that if I went there & spent a fortnight it would take me another fortnight to get settled down into the harness again—couldn’t afford that. The Emperor is a splendid old hero! That he could survive such wounds never once entered my head—yet by the news I judge he is actually recovering. It is worth something to be a Lincoln or a Kaiser Wilhelm—& it gives a man a better opinion of the world to see it show appreciation of such men—& what is better, love of them.— I have not seen anything like this outburst of affectionate indignation since Mr. Lincoln’s assi'=assination afflicted gave the common globe a sense of personal injury. I=ch= habe der Consul Smith gesehen ein Paar Wochen ago, & told him about that Pass, und er hat mir gesagt das er wurde be absent from this region Gegen-(something) zwei oder drei Wochen, aber wann er sollte hier wieder nachkommen, wollte er der Pass geschlagen worden & snake it off to Berlin. Vei=ie=lleicht hat er =noch= nicht zu Mannheim zurüch’kehrt. [about 5 lines (20 words) torn away] Now as to the grammar of this language: I haven’t conquered the Accusative Case yet (I began with that) & there are 3 more. It begins to seem to me that I have got to try to get along with the Accusative alone & leave the rest of this grammar to be tackled at leisure in the future life. 1878—page 60

SLC to Bayard Taylor, 10 June 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4

With our kindest reme' nmbrances = to you & yours, Yrs sincerely, S. L. Clemens Ï

1878—page 61

To Francis E. Bliss 16 June 1878 • Heidelberg, Germany (MS: John Howell–Books, June 1974, #01571)

The Schloss Hotel Heidelberg, Germany, June 16.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Friend Frank: I have been delayed so long that I only got to work three weeks ago. Shall remain here at work till middle of July or two or three weeks later, & shall then have about half a book finished—say 250 or 300 octavo pages. Shall then begin steady writing once more a month or two after that. By the look of things in America I judge you would not have any market for a book this summer or fall. However, I shall finish & send the MS to you as soon as our touring around will permit, & let you issue it in the winter or hold it till Spring, as shall seem best. With kindest regards to you & your father, Yrs Ever S. L. Clemens Ï

1878—page 62

Samuel L. Clemens and Olivia L. Clemens to Charles Dudley Warner 16 June 1878 • Heidelberg, Germany (MS: CU-MARK, #01572)

The Schloss Hotel Heidelberg, June 16.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

My Dear Warner: We are mightily enjoying it here, of course; but Livy & Clra=ar=a Spaulding do slave so, night & day, over their German study, that they look pale, jaded, & fagged out. They sleep poorly & are permanently tired. The thing that distresses Livy is that the more she learns of the language the less she understands of it when spoken; but the other morning as we sat at table, waiting for our breakfast & admiring the fine display of fruits & flowers on another table, an old /gGerman = gentleman & lady stepped in & the former hauled down the window curtain at the same moment that his wife threw up her hands in presence of the fruits & flowers & ejaculated “Won “Wunder'cschön!” Livy said, gratefully, “There—Gott sei dank, I understood THAT, anyway—window-shade! ” It has not been safe to refer to this incident since, but Clara Spaulding & I are not going to forget it, nevertheless. =P. S. This incident is several weeks old; it is only fair to say that Livy is making the most excellent progress now. She is far beyond me in the grammar.= [in margin: Dear Mr Warner—I am glad to know that you will make allowance for the medium through which this joke passes— affectionately Livy.] Miss Clara speaks German very well & with good confidence, already; she will talk 'f it fluently, 3 months hence. I shan’t ever be able to talk it; there are devilishnesses about the grammar of it which will always remain inaccessibles to me & tie my tongue through diffidence. I know plenty words, but only God knows how they terminate. I mean I know them in their root form; but their adjectivorous & jungular form, after they get above form ground & begin to stick on =sprout= inflections & participles & things is a matter outside of my present or possible attainment. I talked fast enough until I found out that a German is really particular about the sex of a noun=m '=, & lets on that he does not undest=rs=tand you when you misapply your tenses & cases. Since then

1878—page 63

SLC and Olivia L. Clemens to Charles Dudley Warner, 16 June 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

I bother no more with speech, except to say to the little boys who infest my way that I do not wish to buy any flowers today. That is all the use I have for the language, since all the rest of the German nation speak English. Twelve days ago I moved again. I had had my writing-den down yonder opposite here on the other side of the Neckar; but it was no exercise to trot down there, & the exercise of climbing up here again was valueless because I got it at the wrong end of the day. It was lonesome, too, & far removed from beer. So I have moved my den clear up on the very pinnacle of the Kaiserstuhl 1400 or 1500 feet up in the air above the Schloss Hotel, & 1700 above the Rhine valley—which it overlooks. I have the only room in the little Wirthshaft there not lived in by the family. I start to climb the mountain every morning about 10 or a little after; I loaf along its steep sides, cogitating & smoking; rest occasionally & peer out through ragged windows in the dense foliage upon the fair world far below; then trudge further, to another resting-place, shared w ––ti–h– by the always with an attentive ear to the pleasant woodland sounds, the manifold music of the birds—& finally I reach my den about noon, feeling pretty gorgeous & at peace with the world. I treat myself to a fiv blast of the summit-breeze & a five minutes’ contemplation of the great Rhine-plain’s slumbering sea of mottled tints & shades, & then shut myself up tight & fast in my noiseless den & go to work. About 4 p.m. I take beer & listen to the family’s domestic news, or get one of the young girls to pilot me through some conjugations & declensions, or hold the book while I curse the Dative Case—then, about 5 or 5.15 I go loafing down the mountain again, find Livy & Clara in the Castle park, & listen to the band in the shadow of the ruin. I haven’t ever'y had a workshop before that was situated just to my liking; & I never shall have again, I suppose. My landlord’s name is Müller. My room opens into what may be called the parlor,—with a sewing machine in it. Day before yesterday I wrote a long chapter on curious accidents, coin correspondences & coincidences—then stepped in there & happened to notice the manufacturer’s name, stamped in gilt letters on that machine: “Clemens Müller.” The odd thing was By I must add that =to= my chapter—never thought of it before. I dreadfully wanted to go to the Paris Literary Congress & see Victor Hugo, but I declined because it would break into my work—which would be bad, now that I am just getting into the swing of my book on Germany. We have heard from Millet, who is in Paris & well. 1878—page 64

SLC and Olivia L. Clemens to Charles Dudley Warner, 16 June 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6

We have enjoyed, without stint or alloy, your Atlantic A '=articles. How true that night-scene in camp is! I have experienced it. With Livy’s love & mine to you both, Yrs Ever Mark. Ï

1878—page 65

To William Dean Howells 27 June 1878 • Heidelberg, Germany (MS: MH-H, #01573)

Schloss Hotel, June 27.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

My Dear Howells: What do the newspapers say about Harte’s appointment? Billiardlyspeaking, the President (through persuasion of Evarts, I judge,) scored 400 points on each, when he appointed Lowell & Taylor—but when he appointed Harte he simply pocketed his own ball. Now just take a realizing sense of what this fellow is, when one names things by their sim plain dictionary names—to wit: Harte is a liar, a thief, a swindler, a snob, =a sot,= a sponge, a coward, a Jeremy Diddler, he is brim full of treachery, & he conceals his Jewish birth as carefully as if he considered it a disgrace. How do I know? By the best of all evidence, personal observation. With one exception: I don’t know him, myself, to be a thief, but John Carmany, publisher of the Overland Monthly, charges him with stealing money delivered to him to be paid to contributors, & the defrauded contributors back Mr. Carmany. I think Charley Stoddard said Harte had never ventured to deny this in print, though W. A. Kendall, who published the charge in the San Francisco Chronicle, not only invited him to deny it, but dared him to do it. O, the loveliness of putting Harte into the public service, after removing Geo. H. Butler from it for lack of character! If he had only been made a home official, I think I could stand it; but to send this nasty creature to puke upon the American name in a foreign land is too much. I don’t deny that I feel personally snubbed; for it seems only fair that after the letter I wrote last summer the President should not have silently ignored my testimony, but should have given me a chance to prove what I had said against Harte. I think I could have piled up facts enough to show that Harte was fitted for the highest office in the gift of the city of New York. Now there’s one thing that shan’t happen. Harte shan’t swindle the Germans if I can help'. it. Tell me what German town he is to filthify with his presence; then I will write the authorities there that he is a persistent borrower who never pays. They need not believe it unless they choose—that is their affair, not mine. Have you heard any literary men express an opinion about the appointment? Who were they—& what said they?

1878—page 66

SLC to William Dean Howells, 27 June 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Ah, don’t I wish I could venture to write for the Atlantic! The only thing in the way is Canada. If Mr. Houghton can copyright my stuff in Canada & hold it himself, & will prosecute & stop any infringement, I shall be glad enough to write; but I can’t trust any more Canadians after my late experience. I suppose they are all born pirates. I do not know that I have any printable stuff just now—separatable stuff, that is,—but I shall have, by & by. It is very gratifying to hear that it is wanted by anybody. I stand always prepared to hear the reverse, & am constantly surprised that it is delayed so long. Consequently it is not going to astonish me when it comes. Mrs. Clemens, who even reads note-books in her hunger for culture, was rather startled to run across this paragraph in mine.', last night: “Have all sorts of heavens—have a gate for each sort. Wakeman visits these various heavens. One gate where they receive a bar-keeper with artillery salutes, swarms of angels in the sky, & a noble torch-light procession. He thinks he is the lion of Heaven. Procession over, he drops at once into solid obscurity. But the roughest part of it is, that he has to do 30 weeks’ penance—day & night he must carry a torch & shout himself hoarse to do honor to some poor scrub whom he wishes had gone to hell.” I wish I was writing that Wakeman book, but I suppose I shan’t get at it again before next year. =Privately,= Private I have some good news to tell you. That is, I believe it will gratify you—in fact I am sure it will—though I am not acquainted with a great many people wou whom it would please. It is this: we’ve quit feeling poor! Isn’t that splendid? You know that for two years we hav=eing been coming to want, every little while, & have straightway gone to economising. Well, the annual report from the coal firm came y Y = esterday, & with that as a basis, we fell to figuring & discovered that ne we have more than income enough, to from investments, to live in Hartford on a generous scale. Well, now that we are fixed at last, of course the communists & the asinine government will go to work & smash it all. No matter, we have resolved to quit feeling poor for a little while, any way. This thing was so gratifying to me that my first impulse was to run to you with it. Drat this German tongue, I never shall be able to learn it. I think I could learn a little conversational stuff, maybe, if I could attend to it, but I found I couldn’t spare the time. I took lessons two weeks & got so I could understand the talk going on around me, & even answer back, after a fashion. But I neither talk nor listen, now, so I can’t even understand the language any more. 1878—page 67

SLC to William Dean Howells, 27 June 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Mrs. Clemens is getting along fast, & Miss Spaulding & our little Susie talk the devilish tongue without difficulty. But the Bay scorns the language. The nurse & the governess blandish around her in vain. She maintains the calm & peris=si=stent attitude of not caring a damn for German. There is a good deal of character in the Bay—such as it is. Look here, Howells, when I choose to gratify my passions by writing great long letters to you, you are not to consider anything but the briefest answers necessary—& not even those when you have got things to do. Don’t forget that. A lengthy letter from me you is a great prize & a welcome, but it gives me a reproach, because I seem to have robbed a busy man of time which he ought not to have spared. Well, good bye & good luck attend you. We both send love to you & yours. As Ever Mark. Ï [remainder in pencil:] OVER. All day to-day I have been having an experience—& it results in this maxim: A man To man all things are possible but one—he cannot have a hole in the seat of his breeches & keep his fingers out of it. A man does seem to feel more distress & more persistent & distracting solicitude about such a thing than he could about a sick child that was threatening to grow worse every time he took his attention away from it. ƒMrs. Clemens said you wouldn’t understand the maxim unless I explained it!„

1878—page 68

To William A. Seaver 28 June 1878 • Heidelberg, Germany (MS, in pencil: CLjC, #01574)

Heidelberg, June 28.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Dear Old Seaver: There be humorists in Germany. With infinite difficulty I have translated the following from a Mannheim paper: A thirsty man called for beer. Just as the foaming mug was placed before him, some one sent in for him. The place was crowded. Could he trust his beer there? A bright idea flashes through his brain. He writes on a card, “I have spit =expectorated= in this beer”—fastens the card to the mug & retires with triumph in his eyes' to see what is wanted. He returns presently & finds his card reversed & this written on it: “Ich auch.',” (I also!”) Be good to yourself, old Seaver. Yrs Ever Mark. Ï

12 13 14 15 16

J [letter docketed by Seaver:] “Mark Twain”

1878—page 69

To Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett 1 July 1878 • Heidelberg, Germany (Transcript by Pamela A. Moffett: CU-MARK, #01575)

Schloss Hotel Heidelberg July 1.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

My dear Mother & Sister: The letter came yesterday & we hope Sam will have a pleasant & profitable voyage. He can’t well fail to have a pleasant one, and if he cuts loose & paddles his own canoe boldly he cant fail to have a profitable one. I hope that in France, Germany & Italy he will go & board with people who know no English & make himself perfectly familiar with those languages. It will be cheap enough. Here on top a mountain called the Konigstuhl I hired quite a nice room to write in for five dollars a month, the family to teach me German, & presently found that they imagined they were to lodge me & furnish me my meals also! And not only that but there were signs that they considered $5 a month for boarding, lodging & teaching a man a month a pretty liberal remuneration. A tailor here made me a suit of clothes for $18 which would have cost me $75 in N. Y. Seven years ago I wanted Orion to take up his permanent residence in Germany & I think I was wise. He might now be teaching German pupils the English language (75 cents an hour) & that added to $42 a month would make him independent. I think he could have learned this bloody language in a couple of years, but I should need a couple of centuries. At last I am content to read it, & shan’t try to learn any great facility in speaking it. I do not think I could learn to speak even so simple a language as the French, now, notwithstanding I have read it, for amusement, for 20 years. Sometimes I think I couldn’t learn even so inconceivably simple & easy a language as English, if I hadn’t acquired it already. But you must turn Sam loose on those 3 languages—he will speak them all like a native inside of 9 months—& I would rather possess that sort of intellectual property than any other that human science can furnish. Here Susie has been pelted with German only 2 months & yet chatters away in it now as if she were born to it. Yesterday Livy had to go after Susie to give the chambermaid an order in German. Bay has a high fever to-day, but the rest are well & send love to all the home folks. Affly Sam.

1878—page 70

To Francis E. Bliss 13 July 1878 • Heidelberg, Germany (MS: CLjC, #01576)

Heidelberg, July 1=32/.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Dear Frank— Yours of June 28th arrived last night, making the trip in the usual time, 14 days. If I were to send you the power of attorney now, you would receive it July 27—ten days too late. I am very sorry you didn’t start it a couple of weeks earlier. I hope things went satisfactorily & that your father remains in his place. I should have voted for him, of course. As I wrote you, a week or so ago, I am making fair progress, but of course it isn’t great progress, because it costs me more days to GET material than to write it up. I have written 400 pages of MS—that is to say, 4,000 about =45 or= 50,000 words, or one-fourth of a book, but it is in disconnected form & cannot be used until joined together by the writing of at least a dozen intermediate chapters. These intermediate chapters cannot be rightly written until we are settled down for the fall & winter in Munich. I have been gathering a lot of excellent matter here during the past ten days (stuff which has never been in a book) & shall finish gathering it in a week more. Then we shall leave, & be on the wing for 2 months, during which time I shall not be able to write more than 200 or possibly 300 pages, perhaps. Can’t tell, yet. I shall be mostly on foot, with Twichell, the first 5 or 6 weeks, & shall write up in full every night if not too tired. If you should need to write me in the meantime, direct to Heidelberg, care Koester & Co, Bankers, & I will ask them to forward it. Ys Truly S L C. Ï

1878—page 71

To Chatto and Windus 23 July 1878 • Heidelberg, Germany (Paraphrase and TS: Unidentified dealer catalog, #12330)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

THE DEFINITIVE EDITION. The fly-leaf was signed by Mark Twain in 1906 in anticipation of the present definitive edition of his works. S. L. Clemens, Mark Twain. In Volume I of this particular set is pasted A ONE PAGE HANDWRITTEN LETTER TO “MY DEAR C. & W.”, DATED JULY 23, FROM GERMANY. The letter has to do with money matters, written undoubtedly to his publisher. He also asks for a copy of Ouida’s Friendship. Bound in full dark blue morocco, highly decorated in gilt on the sides as well as the back. t.e.g.

1878—page 72

To Mr. Tyler 30 July 1878 • Baden Baden, Germany (MS: VtMiM, #01580)

Hotel de France Baden Baden July 30.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Dear Mr. Tyler: The rheumatism stay staid with me (still stays with me), so I failed in the matter of the table; but I have not given that relic up: I expect to be at Lang’s Hotel on the 6th, to see the illumination with a jolly preacher (my pastor,) who will arrive here from Hartford day after tomorrow. At that time I hope to have a chance to see you & collar that piece of furniture. If you should run across Ayres, I wish you would ask him to challenge somebody right away, so that my reverend friend can see the duel. Tell him I will do as much for him when I am a widower (which God postpone!) Pray greet Avery for me—for us, I mean. With kindest regards,— Ys Truly S. L. Clemens Ï

1878—page 73

To Charles Dudley Warner 1? August 1878 • Baden Baden?, Germany (MS: CtY-BR, #01581)

1

[pages 9 and 10 only]

2

. . . . in Heidelberg on the 6 , & the entire castle will be illuminated with those colored fires which we use on Fourth of July nights. This is said to be a very wonderful spectacle. We shall carry umbrellas; then it will not rain. It certainly is no harm for me to take a journey at a friend’s expense if he invites me; & it isn’t any harm for Joe to take a trip at my expense if I invite him—but how do such things get into the newspapers?—or why should they be worth printing, anyway? I bullyrag Joe into coming over here,—perfectly aware that nineteen-twentieths of the pecuniary profit & advantage are on my side,— ' to say nothing of the social advantage,—& by jings, one would imagine, from the newspapers that Joe is the party receiving a favor. I could live a whole year in Europe out of the clean cash I have made out of Joe Twichell; & behold when I try to hand over to him a trivial share of the money which he has lavished upon me, people imagine I am spending my money on him instead of his own. There is something most decidedly unjust about this thing. . . . .

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

th

1878—page 74

To Olivia L. Clemens 5 August 1878 • Allerheiligen, Germany (MS, in pencil: Christie’s, New York, December 1991, #01583)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Allerheiligen 8.30 PM. Livy darling, we had a rattling good time today, but we came very near being left at Baden-Baden, for instead of waiting in the waiting-room, we sat down on the plla platform to wait where the trains come in from the other direction. We sat there full ten minutes—& then all of a sudden it occurred to me that that was not the right place. On the train the principal of the big English school at Neu7 nheim (of which Mr. Scheiding was a teacher,) introduced himself to me, & then he mapped out our day for us (for today & tomorrow) & also drew a map & gave us directions how to proceed through Switzerland. He has his entire sh 'chool with him, taking them on a prodigious trip through Switzerland—tickets for the round trip ten dollars apiece. He has done this annually for 10 years. We took a post carriage from Achern to Otterhöfen for 7 marks—stopped at the “Pflug” to drink beer, & saw that pretty girl again at a distance. Her father, mother, & two brothers received me like an ancient customer & sat down & talked as long as I had any German left. The big room was full of red-vested farmers (the Gemeindrath of the district, with the Burgermeister at the head,) drinking beer & talking public business. They had held an election & chosen a new member & been drinking beer at his expense for several hours. It was intensely Black-foresty. There was an Australian there (a student from '= sStuttgart or somewhere,) & Joe told him who I was & he laid himself out to make our course plain for us—so I am certain we can’t get lost between here & Heidelberg. We walked the carriage road till we came to that place where one sees the footpath on the other side of a ravine, then we crossed over & took that. For a good while we were in a dense forest & judged we were lost, but met 2 native women who said we were all right. We fooled along & got here at 6 P.M—ate supper, then followed down the ravine to the foot of the falls, then struck into a blind path to see where it would go to, & th just about dark we fetched up at the Devil’s Pulpit (where you & I were,) on top of the hills. Then home. And now to bed, pretty sleepy & requ[i]ring no whisky. Joe sends love & I send a thousand times as much, my darling. SLC 1878—page 75

To Olivia L. Clemens 7 August 1878 • Heidelberg, Germany (MS, in pencil: Bentley, #11926)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Heidelberg, 7th. Livy darling, thank you ever so much for your note; it was sehr velcom, I assure you. We have had a long & most enjoyable day in a carriage up to Hirschhorn & back with Smith—& the moment we got back I have rushed to bed, but they are taking supper. Very tired, but I love you—good night, SamR. Ï J [in ink:] Mrs. S L Clemens | Care Messrs. Rubel & Abegg | Zurich | Switzerland [return address:] LANG’S PRIVAT-HÔTEL, HEIDELBERG [postmarked:] HEIDELBERG 9-10V

1878—page 76

To Francis E. Bliss 20 August 1878 • Lucerne, Switzerland (MS: NN-B, #02525)

Lucerne, Aug. 20'78.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

My Dear Frank— I find it is no sort of use to try to write while one is traveling. I am interrupted constantly—& most of the time I am too tired to write, anyway. Since Twichell has been with me I have invented a new & better plan for the book. Therefore I shall tear up =a great deal of= my present batch of MS. & start fresh. I shan’t be able to go to work in earnest until we settle down in Munich in November. Up to this time all of my prophecies have failed—so I won’t venture any more. I will only say that when I do get to work, I will mail my chapters to you as fast as I write (& approve) = them.') I have instructed Twichell to keep the title & plan of the book a secret. I will disclose them to you as by letter, presently, or through Twichell—but I do not want them to get into print until the book is nearly ready to issue from the press. They are in themselves a joke—& a joke which the public are already prepared for is no joke at all. I have been fighting the rheumatism for two months, & have about got the best of it, now, I suppose. With kindest regards to your father & yourself, Ys Truly S. L. Clemens Ï My address for a =few= month=s or will be “Care of Edward M. Smith, Esq., Lang’s Hotel, Heidelberg, Germany.”

1878—page 77

To Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett 20 August 1878 • Lucerne, Switzerland (MS: CU-MARK, #01587)

Lucerne, Aug. 20

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

My Dear Mother & Sister: We came into Switzerland a week or ten days ago, & all are enjoying it immensely—the others because the scenery is so fine, & I because they let me lie abed & smoke all day while they do the excursioning. I loathe all travel except on foot—& rheumatism has barred that to a considerable extent. Twichell & I took a stroll of a couple of days in the Black Forest, & another up the Neckar to Heilbron, & another to the summit of the Rigi, where the rheumatism captured me once more & we had to come down with the others by rail. It was a good deal like coming down a ladder by rail. I did not like it. The tribe are well, just now, though we have had a doctor most of the time since we left home. We have all been in the doctor’s hands, even Rosa. Livy & Miss Spaulding have gone excursioning around the lake in a steamboat, to-day, with the Courier, & Twichell is away on a 3-days trip in the neighboring Alps by himself. I begged off from these dissipations; I had a good many letters to write. With love to you all, Sam. Ï Our address for several months will be, “Care E. M. Smith, Esq., Lang’s Hotel, Heidelberg, Germany.”

1878—page 78

To Frank Fuller 20 August 1878 • Lucerne, Switzerland (MS: NN-B, #02526)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

=My address for 3 months is “Care E. M. Smith, Esq., Lang’s Hotel, Heidelberg, Germany= Lucerne, Aug. 20. My Dear Fuller: How are you, Generator! Other things fail beside Generators, my boy. For instance, my old friends Slote, Woodman & Co., 121 William street. I lent them $5,000 (just the Generator figure, you see,) some months ago. ' Y Would you mind representing me at the creditors’ meetings for me, in case Mr. Perkins shall desire it?—for he lives too far away to attend them himself conveniently. And will you charge what is right for the service, & present the bill to Perkins? Dan Slote wants to take the scrapbook & run it by himself. I should prefer that. We have been enjoying a pretty comfortable time since I wrote you in May. Spent several quiet months in Heidelberg, & I sort of wish we were there yet. Latterly we have been fooling around Baden-Baden & the Black Forest, & Joe Twichell & I have had two or three pretty sweaty tramps among the aborigines. We have been here a couple of weeks; but tomorrow we take wing for a wide flight. We expect to winter in Munich. I have sent Mrs. Clemens, Miss Spaulding, Twichell, & a Courier, to explore St Gothard pass for me, because I hate travel. I am here with the children. With love to the Fullers, Yrs Ever, Mark. Ï

1878—page 79

To Olivia L. Clemens 23 August 1878 • Kandersteg, Switzerland (MS, in pencil: CU-MARK, #01588)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Hotel Gemmi. Livy darling, we had a lovely day—jogged right along, with a good horse & sensible driver—the last 2 hours right behind an open carriage filled with a pleasant German family—old gentleman & 3 pretty daughters. At table d’hote to-night, 3 dishes were enough for me & then I bored along tediously through the bill of fare with a back ache, hopin not daring to get up & bow to the German family & leave. I meant to sit it through & make them get up first & do the bowing; but at last Joe took pity on me & said he would get up & drop them a curtsy & put me out of my misery. I was grateful. He got up & delivered a succession of frank & hearty bows, accompanying them with an atmosphere of good-fellowship which would have made even an English family surrender. Of course the Germans responded—so I got right up & they had to respond to my salaams, too. So “that was done.” We walked up a gorge & saw a tumbling water fall which was nothing to Giesback, but it made me resolve to drop you a line & urge you to go & see Gis'esbach illuminated. Don’t fail—but take a long day’s rest, first. I love you, sweetheart. Saml. Ï J Mrs. S. L. Clemens | Hotel de France | Baden-Baden [on the flap:] SLC [first postmark torn away, second only partly legible:] G. 8 I-IV

1878—page 80

To Olivia L. Clemens 24 August 1878 • Leukerbad, Switzerland (MS, in pencil: Koslosky, #01589)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Over the Gemmi Pass Saturday. =4. 30 PM= Livy darling, Joe & I have had a most noble day. Started to climb (on foot) at 8. 30 this morning among the grandest peaks! Every half hour carried us back a month in the season. We left them harvesting 2d crop of hay. At 9 we were in July & found ripe strawberries; at 9. 30 we were in June & gathered flowers belonging to that month; at 10 we were in May & gathered a flower which appeared in Heidelberg the 17th of that month; also forget-me-nots, (which disappeared from Heidelberg about mid-May[)]; at 11. 30 we were in April (by the flowers); at noon we had rain & hail mixed, & wind & enveloping fogs, & considered it March; at 12.30 we had snow-banks above us & snow-banks below us, & considered it February. Not good 'f February, though, because in the midst of the wild desolation the forget-me-not still bloomed, lovely as ever. What a flower-garden the Gemmi Pass is! After I had got my hands full, Joe made me a paper bag, which I pinned to my lappel & filled with choice specimens. I gathered no flowers which I had ever gathered before except 4 or 5 kinds. We took it leisurely, & I picked all I wanted to. I mailed my harvest to you a while ago. Don’t send it to Mrs. Brooks until you have looked it over flower by flower. It will pay. Among the clouds & ever lasting snows I found a brave & bright little forget-me-not growing in the very midst of a vast expanse of smashed & tumbled stone-debris, just as cheerful as if the barren & awful domes & ramparts that towered around were the blessed walls of heaven. I thought how Lilly Warner would be touched by such a gracious surprise,' if she instead of I had seen it, so I plucked it & have mailed it to her, with a note. Our walk was 7 hours—the last 2 down a path as steep as a ladder, almost, cut in the face of a mighty precipice. People are not allowed to ride down it. This part of the day’s walk taxed our knees, I tell you. We have been loafing about this village for an hour, now—we stay here over Sunday. Not tired at all. (Joe’s hat fell over the precipice—so he came here bareheaded.[)] I love you, my darling. SamR. 1878—page 81

To Olivia L. Clemens 26 August 1878 • St. Niklaus, Switzerland (MS, in pencil: CLjC, #01590)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

St Nicholas, 26th. Livy darling, we came through a-whooping, to-day, 6 hours tramp up steep hills & down steep hills, in mud & water shoe-deep, & in a steady pouring rain which never moderated a moment. I - was as chipper & fresh as a lark all the way & arrived without the slightest sense of fatigue. But we were soaked, & my shoes full of water, so we at once stripped & went to bed for 2½ hours while our traps were thoroughly dried, & our boots greased in addition. Then we put our clothes on hot & went to table d’hote. Made some nice English friends, and shall see them at Zermat tomorrow. Gathered a small bouquet of new flowers, but they got spoiled. I sent you a safety-match box full of flowers last night from Leu7 cherbad.

12 13

The

14 15 16

great mountain profile.

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

I have just tle telegraphed you to wire the family news to me at Riffle tomorrow. I do hope you are all well & having as jolly a time as we are'.—for I love you, sweetheart, & also, in a measure, the Bays. Give my love to Clara & also to the cubs. Lovingly always, Saml. J [in ink:] Mrs S. L. Clemens | Hotel Jungfrau | Room 60 Interlaken [in another hand:] Beaurivage | Ouchy [postmarked:] ST NICOLAUS 27 VIII 78 [and] INTERLAKEN 29 VIII 78–3 [and] OUCHY 30 VIII 78K1– [and] VIEGE [remainder illegible]

1878—page 82

To Robert Eden 1–4 September 1878 • Ouchy, Switzerland (MS facsimile: American Art Association–Anderson Galleries catalog, 29–30 January 1936, item 115, #09278)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

[inscribed on the front flyleaf of a blank notebook:] To. Rev. Robert Eden with the kindest remembrances of the author (i.e., th inventor) of this book: SamR. L. Clemens Mark Twain Ï This is my latest & most innocent work. S. L. C.

1878—page 83

Olivia L. Clemens and Samuel L. Clemens to Jane Lampton Clemens 4? and 8 September 1878 • Geneva, Switzerland (MS: CU-MARK, #01592)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Dear Ma Your letter enclosing Orion’s and Mollie’s ha=sve just come, Mr Clemens is off on a walking trip and will not be back for nearly a week, I am going to send you a line telling you what I think of Orions coming to Germany— It is utterly vain for Orion to think that he could ever teach English, it would take him five years =of= very hard study to fit himself so that he would know enough German to explain English to a German pupil & it is very doubtful whether he would ever know the language well enough to have any use of it— Mr Clemens feels that he shall never be able to speak it, and as Orion knows no language but his own it would be very hard at his time of life for him to try to learn an other one— Except at the most expensive hotels the food would be so bad & unlike our American food that they would find it impossible to get on with it— After the first novelity they would both be homesick for they would have no money to travel about from place to place with =& no friends here= & they would simply be writing that they wanted to go home, it is not the life for them at all. There would be simply the expense of getting them over and getting them home again. It is certainly much better for Orion to try to get the office that he wants & if he does not succeed in getting it be contented with what Mr Clemens is able to give them—that unless we should have unforseen losses Mr Clemens will be able & glad to continue to [help] them—I wish that I could see you Ma for an hours talk—but I must stop now— With loves to Pamela and Annie & regards to Mr Webster— lovingly your daughter Livy L. Clemens— [remainder in pencil:] Sept. 8.—Dear Ma, I am just back from a long walking-tramp to Mont Blanc, & am very glad Livy has written this letter in my absence. =It says just what I think, exactly.= I did imagine that at 40 Orion might have learned German well enough to teach it—but I do not imagine so now. That he can learn German at 53 well enough to ta teach it is simply an impossibility.

1878—page 84

Olivia L. Clemens and SLC to Jane Lampton Clemens, 4? and 8 September 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

I seem to have walked the rheumatism out of myself at last, but it was a slow remedy. Twichell & I wal started from Martigny at 8 AM & reached Chamouny at 6 P. M—a frightfully hot day. There was abundance of snow within pistol shot sometimes, but it did not cool the air any. Next day we walked again about 10 hours. We never got tired, but the heat roasted us. Twichell left us today for home. We remain here a few days longer, then go to Venice. All the family are well & send love. Affly Yr Son Sam. Ï

1878—page 85

To Robert Eden 5 September 1878 • Chamonix, Switzerland (MS of inscription in Punch Brothers Punch [Edinburgh: Livingstone, 1878]: Slotta, #11740)

1

To

2

Rev. R. Eden, With the author’s kindest regards. Mark Twain Ï Sept. 5'78.

3 4 5 6

1878—page 86

To Chatto and Windus 8 September 1878 • Geneva, Switzerland (MS: Keniston, #03446)

Geneva, Sept. ' 6 8.'78.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Mesr. Chatto & Windus, 74 Piccadilly. Gentlemen: Please do me the favor to pay the bearer, Rev. J. H. Twichell ten pounds & charge to the ac' of Yours Truly S. L. Clemens. Ï P. S. P. S. I am compelled to trouble you because the hotel has no English money & the banks are not open here on Sunday.

1878—page 87

To Bayard Taylor 8 September 1878 • Geneva, Switzerland (MS: NIC, #01594)

Hotel de l’Ecu de Genève Sept. 8'78.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

My Dear Mr. Taylor: I have learned the German language & forgotten it again; so I resume English once more. I have just returned from a walking-trip to Mont Blanc—which I was intending to ascend, but was obliged to give it up the idea, as I had gone too early & there was still snow on it. I find your letter here; if you will be so kind as to forward Slote’s letter to the above address I think it will be in time to catch me—& in any case I will make it arrangements to have it follow me. (I am going to try to enclose the necessary stamps in this, but if I forget it—however, I won’t.) We have been poking around slowly through Switzerland for a month; a week hence we go to Venice—to Rome & other places later; & we are booked for Munich Nov. 10 (for the winter.) One of these days I am going to whet up my German again & take a run to Berlin, & have a talk with you in that fine old tongu= e. Yrs Ever S. L. Clemens Ï

1878—page 88

Samuel L. Clemens and Olivia L. Clemens to Joseph H. Twichell 9 September 1878 • Geneva, Switzerland (MS: CtY-BR, #02800)

Geneva, Sept. 9.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Dear Old Joe— It is actually all over! I was so low-spirited at the station yesterday—& this morning when I woke, I couldn’t seem to accept the dismal truth that you were really gone, & the pleasant tramping & talking at an end. Ah, my boy, it has been such a rich holiday to me; & I feel under such deep & honest obligations to you for coming. I am putting out of my mind all memory of the times when I misbehaved toward you & hurt you; I am resolved to consider it forgiven, & to store up & remember only the charming hours of the journeys, & the times when I was not unworthy to be with you & share a companionship which to me stands first after Livy’s. It is justifiable to do this—for why should I let my small infirmities of disposition live & grovel among my mental pictures of the eternal sublimities of the Alps? Livy can’t accept or endure the fact that you are gone. But you are—& we cannot get around it. So take our love with you—& bear it also over sea to Harmony—& God bless you both. Mark Ï (Inside) Dear Joe I wont mar Mr Clemens note except to say that we do miss you desperately, that we want some one to knock on the door & waken us in the morning, that we want many things that you would used to do when you were here, but at any rate there is one thing left to us and that is a stronger affection for you than when you =came= to us— With deepest love to Harmony, affectionately Livy L. C.

1878—page 89

To Olivia Lewis Langdon 13 September 1878 • Geneva, Switzerland (MS: CtHMTH, #01595)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

Geneva, Sept. 13'78. Mother dear, Livy & Clara & the children are out shopping, & Rosa is packing trunks for Venice—so I will use this opportunity to drop you a line. Twichell & I did a good deal of tramping together among the mountains & had a good time. I seem to have walked the rhea 'umatism out of myself. Twichell sails from Liverpool tomorrow. He & I walked from Martigny to Chamounix & Mont Blanc; & a day or two ago Livy & I drove there in a two-horse carriage & remained a day—9 hours’ drive thither & 9 hours back. It tired Livy out & she went to bed early last night—but she is out shopping again today. At Chamouny she ascended part of a mountain in a chair borne by men, & then walked to an ice-cavern in the great glacier below the Grandes Mulets, & back again—which =foot-journey= is about equivalent to descending from the farm to Deuce’s and climbing back again. We had perfect weather & some marvelous Alpine spectacles, both by daylight & full-moonlight. Clara had charge of the children while we were gone. They entertained her—sometimes with philosophical remarks & sometimes with questions which only the Almighty could answer. Susie said, “Aunt Clara, if the horses should run away & mamma be killed, would you be my mamma?” “Yes, for a little while, Susie, till we got to Elmira—but you wouldn’t want your mamma to be killed by the horses, of course?”—— “Well,----I wouldn’t want her to go in that WAY, but I would like to have you for my mamma.” There’s discrimination for you! Another time, Susie asked =Aunt= Clara if she wouldn’t like to be God. Clara could not make her understand why that there were reasons why she would prefer to reserve her decision in that matter. Susie persecuted Clara with questions as to how God could build all these people out of dust “and make them stick together.” You must understand that Susie’s thinkings run nearly altogether on the heavenly & the supernatural; but Bay’s mind is essentially worldly. Bay says she does not want to go to heaven—prefers Hartford. The other day she had a private conference with Clara, & said, impressively: “Aunt Clara, I am going to tell you something. Papa gives me a good deal of trouble lately.” “Why, Bay! ” 1878—page 90

SLC to Olivia Lewis Langdon, 13 September 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

“Yes, he does, Aunt Clara; papa is a good deal of trouble to me. He interrupts me when I am busy; & he wants me to come get in bed with him—and I can’t do that with jelmuls” (gentlemen;) I don’t like jelmuls.” “Why Bay, you like uncle Theodore, don’t you?” “O yes, but he ain’t a jelmul, he’s a friend.” The other day I gave Bay a small gold ring. Afterward she said to Clara: “It was very delicate in papa to give me that ring.” We can’t quite make out what she meant by that stately word, unless she meant it was a “delicate attention” on my part. We all love you dearly, mother dear, & likewise all that be of the farm & the homestead. Affectionately, SamR. Ï

1878—page 91

To William Dean Howells 27 September 1878 • Venice, Italy (MS: MH-H, #01597)

Venice, Sept. 27.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

My Dear Howells: Have I offended you in some way? The Lord knows it is my disposition, my infirmity, to do such things; but if I have done it in your case, I can truthfully say that if I had known it at the time, I would not have done it, & if it were to do again I would not do it—& in any case I am sorry. I started to write a thing today which has been in my mind, but these thoughts came into my head instead. I wish you were Consul here, for we want to stay a year, & would do so in that case—but as it is, I suppose we shall stay only 3 or 4 weeks. Yrs sincerely, S. L. Clemens Ï Our address (for want of a better) is still Heidelberg, Care of Consul E. M. Smith, Lang’s Hotel. Drop us a postal-card when you get this.

1878—page 92

To J. Langdon and Co. 9 October 1878 • Venice, Italy (MS, envelope only, in pencil: CtHMTH, #10063)

1 3

J Mesrs. J. Langdon & Co | Elmira | New York | U. S. of America. [in upper left corner:] Via England | [flourish] [postmarked:] VENEZIA 9 10-78 8M [and] NEW YORK OCT

4

24 PAID ALL B 78

2

1878—page 93

To Chatto and Windus 14 October 1878 • Venice, Italy (MS: AuMS, #01601)

Venice, Oct. 14'78.

1 2 3 4 5

Messrs. Chatto & Windus: Gentlemen: Please mail a paper copy of “Innocents Abroad” & a cloth copy of “Tom Sawyer” to

6 7 8 9 10

Wm Mayer, Care of G. K. Mayer, Vienna, Austria

11 12

& charge to ac' of Ys Truly Mark Twain Ï

13 14 15

1878—page 94

To Joseph H. Twichell 3 November 1878 • Rome, Italy (MS: CtY-BR, #01603)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Rome, Nov. 3'78. Dear Joe—I am disgusted with myself for having put all that work & vexation upon you & Will Sage, but you know we couldn’t foresee it. If the cursed boxes had reached Liverpool in time, no doubt the matter would have been simpler. But after all, the thing that mainly hurts me is, that after I had forf'tified =you and= those boxes with a written oath sworn in the presence of the Holy Trinity, my country should deem that group not august enough without the addition of a U. S. Consul. I am sensitive about these things. However, it is all right, now. I have sent to Geneva for the clock-maker’s certificate, & as soon as I get to Munich, (Nov. 18 or 20,) I shall swear once more by the Trinity, adding the Fourth Personage, & immediately transmit the document, thus sublimely freighted, to Will Sage. And at the same time I will thank Sage for taking the trouble this matter has cost him. I have received your several letters, & we have prodigiously enjoyed them. How I do admire a man who can sit down & whale away with a pen just the same as if it was fishing—or something else as full of pleasure & as void of labor. I can’t do it; else, in common decency, I would, when I write to you. Joe, if I can make a book out of the matter gathered in your company over here, the book is safe; but I don’t think I have gathered any matter before or since your visit worth writing up. I do wish you were in Rome to do my sight-seeing for me. Rome interests me as much as East Hartford could, & no more. That is, the Rome which the average tourist feels an interest in; but there are other things here which stir me enough to make life worth the living. Livy & Clara are having a royal time worshiping the old Masters, & I as good a time gritting my ineffectual teeth over them. A friend waits for me. A power of love to you all. Amen. Mark Ï

1878—page 95

To Unidentified 3 November 1878 • Rome, Italy (MS: CtHMTH, #01604)

Rome, Nov. 3'78.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Dear Sir: Will you do me the great favor to cite Mr. Charnaux before you, to the end that he may re-write the enclosed in invoice (if that is the proper name for it,) & certify its correctness? I was ignorant that a certificate was required, & I suppose Mr. Charnaux knew no more than I did. I enclose my friend Sage’s letter (to Rev. ' T Joseph H. Twichell)—which you will understand, though its business technicalities are a good deal of a difficulty to me. I shall arrive in Munich, Bavaria, (for the winter,) about Nov. 20; therefore, I will beg you to forward to me there, the document & a memorandum of the costs. Truly Yours S. L. Clemens (“Mark Twain.”) Ï o. A [in margin: N 1 ,] Please address: S. L. Clemens, Care Fraülein Dahlweiner, No. 1A, Carlstrasse, Munich.

1878—page 96

To William Dean Howells 17 November 1878 • Munich, Germany (MS: NN-B, #02527)

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=No. 1a, Karlstrasse, 2e Stock,= Munich, Nov. 17. =Care Fraülein Dahlweiner.=

My Dear Howells— We arrived here night before last, pretty well fagged: an 'e 8-hour pull from Rome to Florence; a rest there of a day & = two nights; then 5½ hours to Bologna; one night’s rest; then from noon to 10. 30 pm carried us to Trent, in the Austrian Tyrol, where the confounded hotel had not received our message, & so at that miserable hour, in that snowy region, the tribe had to shiver together in fireless rooms while beds were prepared & warmed; then up at 6 in the morning & a noble view of snow-peaks glittering in the rich light of a full moon while the hotel-devils lazily deranged a breakfast for us in the dreary gloom of blinking candles; then a solid 12-hour pull through the loveliest snow-ranges & snow-draped forests—& at 7 pm we hauled up, in drizzle & fog at the domicil which had been engaged for us ten months before. Munich did seem the horriblest place, the most desolate place, the most unendurable place!—& the rooms were so small, the conveniences so meagre, & the porcelain stoves so grim, ghastly, dismal, intolerable! So Livy & Clara sat down forlorn, & cried, & I retired to a private place to pray. By & by we all retired to our narrow German beds; & when Livy & I finished talking across the room, it was all decided that we would rest 24 hours, then pay whatever damages were required, & straightway fly to the south of France. But you see, that was simply fatigue. Next morning the tribe fell in love with the rooms, with the weather, with Munich, & head over heels in love with Fraülein Dahlweiner. We got a lager larger parlor—an ample one—threw two communicating bedrooms into one, for the children, & now we are entirely comfortable. The only apprehension, now, is that the climate may not be just right for the children—in which case we shall have to go to France, but it will be with the sincerest regret. Now I brought the tribe through ' F from Rome, myself. We never had so little trouble before. The next time anybody has a courier to put out to nurse, I shall not be in the market.

1878—page 97

SLC to William Dean Howells, 17 November 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Last night the forlornities had all disappeared; so we gathered ou around the lamp, after supper, with our beer & my pipe, & in a condition of gratefuln ' snugness tackled the new magazines. I read your new story aloud, amid thunders of applause, & we all agreed that the old Captain Jenness & the old man with the accordion hat are lovely people and most skilfully drawn—& that cabin-boy, too, we like. Of course we are all glad the girl is gone to Venice—for there is no place like Venice. Now I easily understand that the old man couldn’t go, because you have a purpose in sending Lyddy by herself; but you you could send the old man over in another ship, & we particularly want him along. Suppose you don’t need him there? What of that? Can’t you let him feed the doves=? in the piazza Can’t you let him fall in the Canal occasionally? Can’t you let his goodnatured purse be a daily prey to guides and beggar-boys? Can’t you let the cheerful gondoliers canvas his hat? Can’t you let him find peace & rest & fellowship under père Jacopo’s kindly wing? (However, you are writing the book, not I.',=—still, I am one of the people you are writing it for, you understand.=) I only want to insist, in a friendly way, that the old man shall shed his sweet influence frequently upon the page—that is all. The first time we called at the convent, père Jacopo was absent; the next (just at this moment Miss Spaulding spoke up & said something about père Jacopo—there is more in this acting of one mind upon another than people think) time, he was there, & gave us preserved rose-leaves to eat, & talked about you, & Mrs. Howells, & Winnie, & brought out his photographs, & showed us a picture of =“the library of your new house,” but not so—it was the study in your Cambridge house. He was very sweet & good. He called on us next day; & the day after that we left Venice, after a pleasant sojourn of 3 or 4 weeks. He expects to spend this winter in Munich & will see us often, he said. Pretty soon I’m going to write something, & when I send I finish it I shall know whether to put it to itself or in the =“Contributor’s Club.” That “Contributor’s Club” was a most happy idea. The idiot does not more unfailingly turn first to the dismal “Drawer” than does the wise man to the “C. C.” By the way, I think that the man who wrote the paragraph beginning at the bottom of page 643 has said a mighty sound and sensible thing. I wish his suggestion could be adopted. It is lovely of you to keep that old pipe in such a place of honor. 1878—page 98

SLC to William Dean Howells, 17 November 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

While it occurs to me, I must tell you Susie’s last. She is sorely badgered with dreams; & her stock dream is that she is ea being eaten up by bears. She is a grave & thoughtful child, as you will remember. Last night she had the usual dream. This morning she stood apart (after telling it,) for some time, looking vacantly at the floor, & absorbed in meditation. At last she looked up, & with the pathos of one who feels he has not been dealt by with even-handed fairness, said, “But mamma, the trouble is, that I am never the bear, but always the PERSON.” It would not have occurred to me that there might be an advantage, even in a dream, of in occasionally being the eater, instead of always y =the= party eaten, but I easily perceived that her point was well taken. I’m sending to Heidelberg for your letter & Winnie’s, & I do hope they haven’t been lost. My wife & I send love to you all. Yrs Ever Mark. Ï

1878—page 99

To Joseph H. Twichell and Susan L. Warner 20 November 1878 • Munich, Germany (MS: CtY-BR, #01608)

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No. 1a Karlstrasse (2e Stock,) Care Fraülein Dahlweiner, Munich, Nov. 20. Dear Joe: By George but the clocks have been an elephant, haven’t they! I am supremely grateful that the taking care of him fell to you & Will Sage instead of to me. I am greatly obliged to you both for allowing me to inflict the animal upon you. I think I will ship all my purchases through you. Well, I have lost my Switzerland note-book! I have written to Rome and Florence, but I don’t expect to find it. If it remains lost, I can’t write any volume of travels, & shan’t attempt it.', but shall tackle some other subject. I’ve got a work-room, a mile from here, & am all ready to go to work, but shall lie on my oars till I hear from Rome & Florence. Tell the Warners we are delightfully situated here & have fallen in love with the Fraülein. She gives us the very best cookery, (=& the widest variety)= we have had in Europe. I have the sort of appetite which you had at the Hotel du Soliel in Visp. It is a charming novelty. The food is all as good as it can be; & the maid who serves it carries such a depth of soil on her hands that at short range you can’t tell her from real-estate. The Boyesens have been in Munich ten days. I saw their names on the banker’s books, & that they were to leave today for Italy; so Livy & I drove to their lodgings yesterday afternoon; by my translation, the landlady said they had left town. But after we had returned home the German sediment gradually settled to the bottom & the correct translation was revealed—to-wit: the Boyesens were simply nicht zu7 hau7 se. However, it was too late to try again—so we didn’t get to see the Boyesens. ƒDear Mrs. Susie (Warner.): I ordered a perfect love of a music box in Geneva, & for 2 months have been trying to select the 10 tunes for it. Won’t you help me? Its best hol=d't hold is not loud, or staccato or rapid music, but just the reverse—a soft, flowing strain—its strong suit is the plaintive. I have selected 4: The Lorelei, the Miserère from Trovatore, the Wedding March from Lohengrin, & the Russian National Anthem—& at that point I stuck. 1878—page 100

SLC to Joseph H. Twichell & Susan L. Warner, 20 November 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

You are just the person who can suggest some tunes to get the wanting 6 out of. This box is great on rich chords—pours them out like the great god Pan—or any other man. She’s not one of the thumping or banging or tinkling sort, with castanets & birds & drums & such-like foolishness—no, her melody is low-voiced, & flows in blended waves of sound. Her forte is to express pathos, not hilarity or hurrah. Come, will you help me? I shall wait to hear from you.„ Dear Joe (again.)—There is nothing like saying a thing when it occurs to you—hence the above parenthesis to Susie Warner. We staid a day or two in Chambery & Turin, a week in Milan, several days at Bellagio on the lake of Como, three weeks in Venice, a week in Florence, a fortnight in Rome—then flew northwards, only stopping to rest & sleep at Florence, Bologna & Trent (in the Austrian Tyrol.) I discharged George at Venice—the worthless idiot—& have developed into a pretty fair sort of courier myself since then. The children are well—so well that there is hardly any possibility of enduring their awful racket. The stove-heat here keep=sin Livy’s head splitting with headache, but otherwise she is well—Miss Clara likewise. also. With a power of love to you & the family & the friends, Yrs Ever Mark. Ï

1878—page 101

To Unidentified 20 November 1878 • Munich, Germany (MS: Christie’s East, New York, May 2000, #12218)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

=No. 1a, Karlstrasse, (2e Stock.[)] A= Munich, Nov. 20'78. SLC My Dear Sir: FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD. My mind is gradually breaking down under the strain of trying to get those clocks into the United States without loss of life. I took that oath here before our consul & shipped it home—& your letter along with it to help explain it. But of course I forgot to keep a memorandum of the Geneva clock-merchant’s name; so I am obliged to send the 13 francs to you instead of to him.' (which I shall do by postal order this evening.) Now if you will just pigeon-hole it till he calls for it, all will be.' =well.= If he never calls, let him suffer, & thereby grow in grace. It is not impossible that I shall be in Geneva again, by & by, in which case I shall do myself the pleasure to look you up & thank you for letting me trouble you so much. Ys Truly S. L. Clemens. Ï J [letter docketed:] Mark Twain | Mr Clemens

1878—page 102

To Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett 1 December 1878 • Munich, Germany (MS: CU-MARK, #01610)

No. 1a Karlstrasse=, ', (=2e stock) Munich, Nov 30. =Dec. 1.=

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My Dear Mother & Sister: FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD. I broke the back of life yesterday & started down-hill toward old age. This fact has not produced any effect upon me that I can detect. I suppose we are located here for the winter. I have a pleasant work-room a mile from here where I do my writing. The walk to & from that place gives me what exercise I need, & all I take. We staid three weeks in Venice, a week in Florence, a fortnight in Rome, & arrived here a couple of weeks ago. Livy & Miss Spaulding are studying drawing & German, & the children have a German day-governess. I cannot see that but that the children speak German as well as they do English. Susie often translates Livy’s orders to the servants. I cannot work & study German at the same time; so I have dropped the latter, & do not even read the language, except in the morning paper to get the news. We have all had pretty good health, latterly, & have seldom had to call the doctor. The children have been in the open air pretty constantly for months, now. In ' B Venice they were on the water in the gondola most of the time, and were great friends with our gondolier; & in Rome & Florence they had long daily tramps, for Rosa is a famous hand to smell out the sights of a strange place. Here they wander less extensively, for Munich is a damp, dark, muddy place. The family all join in love to you all & to Orion & Mollie. Affl’y Your '  Son Sam. Ï SLC

1878—page 103

Olivia L. Clemens and Samuel L. Clemens to Susan L. Crane 1 December 1878 • Munich, Germany (MS: CU-MARK, #01609)

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. . . . six Germans in the room & none could speak one word of English when I had said =about= three sentences I was at the end of my German and could simply smile and tell Clara what I wanted to say—it was a very embarassing place for both Clara and me—yet the Baroness is so sweet that I enjoyed it. I, also, have activities, Sue. One of them consists in lying abed, mornings, until I am shoveled out. After breakfast I lie slippered & comfortable on the sofa, with a pipe, & read the meagre telegrams in the German paper & the general news in Galignani’s Messenger; & about 11 o’clock bundle up in furs & tramp a mile to my den, which is =in= the 3d story of a dwelling. The pleasant old German Frau7 , comes in & builds a fire & talks admirat admiringly about the weather,—no matter how villainous it may be,—because the Creator made it. I find my rubbish of the yesterday all cleaned away, & everything in apple-pie order. The Frau7 gives me a good roasting occassionally, & occasionally she freezes me,—but in all cases she means well. In the main hall of her house is a great placard, nailed to the wall by the government. I read it yesterday, & learned the following: The government requires that the halls & stairways of all houses must =shall= be well cleaned every day; the “wash” must not be hung outside the house to dry, (or inside, I’ve forgotten which—it was a badly mixed German sentence, anyway;) it is forbidden to discharge ashes or and other clogging & uncl substances into the sewer-ducts; no box, barrel, or other obstruction may be permitted to clutter the sidewalk; the stoves & fire-places must be kept in safe condition, & the monthly (or more frequent) visits of the fire-inspectors must be assisted by the householder; The house door must be locked by at 10 P.M., & not opened again until 5 in A.M. in summer & 6 in winter; the windows must have shutters, & these shutters must be fastened at night; it is forbidden to throw handbills & circulars in at the door; music-practising, noisy amusements & noisy companies are forbidden, after 10 P.M; =& barking dogs at all times;= the name, age, nationality, occupation, & religion, of new lodgers must be reported at police headquarters, together with such lodgers’ intentions as to

1878—page 104

Olivia L. Clemens and SLC to Susan L. Crane, 1 December 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6

length of stay, & what they came to Munich for; & finally, in the biggest kind of letters, “Beggars, Tramps & Peddlers are ABSOLUTELY forbidden.” When Munich passes a law, she =“means business;” she carries it into practice—hence this is a mighty quiet & comfortable kind of a town. Lovingly, S. L. C.

1878—page 105

To Olivia Lewis Langdon 2 December 1878 • Munich, Germany (MS: CtHMTH, #01611)

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Munich, Dec. 2'78.

FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD.

SLC

Mother dear, I thank you ever so much for your sumptuous birth-day present. A covered Krug of beaten brass (& gilded at in addition,) is not a common spectacle in any country; & we all enjoy the grace & splendor of this thing as much as we do its utility & its rarity. I will whisper in your ear, privately & confidentially, that our quarters here are not paradise—or rather they were not, when we came. The street entrance was like that of a barn; when one got up stairs the halls were so dark he could not see six feet before him,—& phew! how they did smell of the closets!—& how raw & chill they were! The table cloth was never clean. One day I found a servant tipping up a tall what-not (which had some of Livy’s precious glassware on it,) to shove the corner of a carpet under it. Our bedroom =window= looked upon a court; all sorts of occupations were carried on under it. At 5 a. m., they sawed wood & split it there; at 6 a professional carpet beater began to add his whackings; at 7 some boiler-makers reinforced the carpet beater—now think of all those noises going at once! The very first night, as I was dropping to sleep I discovered that my pet des'testation was in the house—a cuckoo clock. (There is also one in the house where I write.) Clara Spaulding’s bed has tumbled down twice. Her window shade has to be put up with a step ladder, & gotten down in the same way. To our morning noises was soon added, (in the hall,) the barking of a '= sSpitz dog at 7. 30 a. m. The fact is, there was but one thing we took solid & healing comfort in, & that was our gentle young colored girl who wait=sed on our table. But alas, day before yesterday she fell in the cistern & the color all came off. We require her to fall in every day, now. We have clean table linen, now. Clara’s bed & window shade are to be fixed today. I shall invite the Spitz to supper this evening, & tomorrow he will know more about the Sweet By & By than he does now. So we are all right, now, Mother my dear. We are contented, & pretty happy. We think the world of the Fraülein, & would not be willing to live elsewhere in Munich than under her motherly wing. But by George it =it= would do my very soul good to have Charley & Theodore here a month & keep a record of their comments! 1878—page 106

SLC to Olivia Lewis Langdon, 2 December 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4

With the love of us all to you & all in the homestead, Your now middle-aged son, Saml.

6

J Mrs. J. Langdon | Elmira | New York | U.S. of America. [in upper left corner:] Via England. | [flourish] [on the flap:] SLC [postmarked:] MÜNCHEN   7-8 AM [and] NEW

7

YORK DEC 15 PAID ALL E

5

1878—page 107

Olivia L. Clemens and Olivia Susan (Susy) Clemens per Olivia L. Clemens and Samuel L. Clemens to Olivia Lewis Langdon 8 December 1878 • Munich, Germany (MS: CtHMTH, #01612)

Munich Dec. 7th 1878

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Mother darling We have a bright beautiful Sunday morning— I had hoped while in Munich to go regularly to church, but I have now about given up going—it is difficult to get seats & I think I should not understand any thing of the service scarcely— Clara has been brought in to me now for the second time from the nursery she is so full of mischief that Rosa often gets to her wits ends with her—and yet she is a good child with no bad spirit in her—she has the meekest way when she is brought to me, (her Aunt Clara calls her the pious fox) and as she stands before me smiling =a deprecatory smile= and with her eyes cast down, occassionally looking at me out of the corners of them, I think she is the prettiest most bewitching culprit in the world—after a little spatting I have sent here over to sit perfectly quiet by her Father and think over her sins—she has picked up the big German dictionary and is playing baby with it—trouble, or her sins can not effect her for long—and yet she has a lovely, gentle nature, but she does delight in teasing Susie & Rosa— Little Bay has had a terrible cold & bad cough, so that for three nights I was very anxious about her—now Susie has one of her very bad throats—but it does not make her sick she runs about & feels bright & happy—but it is a very bad looking throat— We are well cared for here and have a good doctor— Mother you have all done a great deal too much for us for Christmas—I thought you would not think of doing anything we are so far away— Sue’s Christmas came this week—it was all too much—too much— I shall write her about it next Sunday— Of course I have all the time wanted to do with you all just as I generally do—but I decided some time ago to send just some little photographs and things that would go by mail— When your letter came saying what you were going to send, and then when Sue’s letter came with her gifts I was quite overpowered and felt as if I must send more than I had at first planned, but soon decided that it was wiser to hold to my original

1878—page 108

Olivia L. Clemens and Olivia Susan (Susy) Clemens per Olivia L. Clemens and SLC to Olivia Lewis Langdon, 8 December 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

plan—so you will simply recieve some little remembrances from us—that can go by mail— I think that I shall get for Aunt Clara from you a large picture that she has admired very much it is a photograph of one of [the] Kaulbach cartoons of the Goethe Gallery it looks almost exactly like a pencil sketch—it makes a picture as large as your Sistine Madonna. She said the other day that she could not think of anything that she should like so much to have I thought at once that that was just the thing for your gift to her—so unless she admires something else more I shall get that for your gift to her— Evening— I started this morning full of a long letter to you—but the dear little children bothered around until lunch time and I had nothing written, then as it was so bright & beautiful we decided to take a drive— We had a wonderful drive through the English gardens—there was a wide stream there tumbling over stones, and an other one that had a thin crusting of ice over it—then the effects of snow on the ground, on the great old trees & on the light bushes was marvelous it seemed like Faery land—was that hazy look in the air that is so marvelously beautiful— I came home & sat down to write my letter the childrens letter to you—but Mr Clemens took my place & sent me to my room— When I came I found that Susie had written you and Bay her aunt Sue—last Sunday when I was writing Sue Clara wanted to write you—but I said it was Aunt's Sue’s day, now today she wanted to write her Aunt Sue— This evening I had planned to finish my visit with you, but from six o’clock until a few minutes ago when I resumed my letter we have been working over little Clara who has had a terrible ear ache— I am afraid it is going to gather for it is very sore & she can not lie on that side—but it is such a comfort to have it some trouble that does not frighten one—no throat or lung trouble— Aunt Clara came out to dinner tonight wonderfully dressed up—she wore her'e fine black silk—lace cuffs on the out side—a dainty blue turquoise necklace & a light blue bow on her hair to match her necklace— It is the first time that she has worn it—it is very dainty and pretty—she sends much love to you— I must say good night Mother dear perhaps I will add a line tomorrow but I some what doubt it—for tomorrow comes a German lesson & I want to get the little packages off by mail if I ca=nm '— 1878—page 109

Olivia L. Clemens and Olivia Susan (Susy) Clemens per Olivia L. Clemens and SLC to Olivia Lewis Langdon, 8 December 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

I feel as if perhaps there was a letter of yours lost on the German steamer as I have had only the one from you since we came here—it is now more than two weeks since I heard from you— Good night with deepest love yours Livy L. Clemens— P. S. Will you please give this little note to Mrs Beecher from me— I got the other day a little calender for you & never thought until after I had bought it that it was in German but still I will send it— Livy L. C. [enclosure:] Dear Grandmamma I really don’t know which I shall tell first— One night Rosa said, & everybody said, ’at Santa Claus was coming before Christmas & let everybody see; Rosa said she was afraid Santa Claus wouldn’t come to us, because we wasn’t German; Mamma & everybody said ’at they thought Santa Claus wouldn’t come; when Mamma sat down to the table, when she was eating her dessert, we heard a knock on the door, & Fraülein Dahlweiner came in; after her, Santa Claus. He came in with a cloth bag, & he said, “Noch ein Sack!” (i. e. “Another sac bag!”) He took a bundle out, & that bundle had candies in it; after, came out two dollies; & then it came out some gold nuts & some apples. And some switches came out. =Er hat gesagt,= (He said,) “Wenn du nicht brav bist, denn gibt es ’was!” (“When=(or if )= you ain’t gu good, you’ll get catch it!”) He had a big muffle over his head; he kept covering it up, he didn’t like anybody to see his face. I looked into his face, hard,—& he laughed. ' T When ' he went away he said, “Ich hab’ viele u7 nnadige Knabe’n dass ich in Wasser hinein werfen m7uss, u7 nd wieder ’na7us nehmen” (I’ve lots of bad boys whom I’ve got to throw in the water and pull out again,)—and then he said goodbye, and went. That is all,—of Santa Claus. O, I’ve got something real funny to tell about our teacher! One day when the Doctor came in, when the teacher was there, she said that his face was too thick; & said, when he was gone she didn’t like him because his face was so thick. =(The above joke seems pretty dim to me.—S. L. C.)= He gives me, in gargle, a half-a tumbler-full, & I have to drink the half-a tumblerful in one hour. (Gargle it, she means.—S. L. C.) When we came to Munich, Fraülein Bühler, =( before we came,) gave us each a pretty little bag. I had a little pug-dog, & I locked it up in paper & let it 1878—page 110

Olivia L. Clemens and Olivia Susan (Susy) Clemens per Olivia L. Clemens and SLC to Olivia Lewis Langdon, 8 December 1878, contd. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

go to Munich in that bag. I had forgotten all about it: so when I got there, when it came out of the trunk, I opened a little piece of paper; & wondering what was in it, I opened it & found my little pug dog in it. I was so delighted, because I had been wanting & wondering where it was. And in that bag was a little dolly’s bottle of milk; & I found one of aunt Sue’s letters in it. That’s all, of that. That’s all. I close my letter. Susie. P. S. I want you to tell Julie about Santa Claus. I am glad about Santa Claus, that he came, because Julie was always saying there wasn’t any Santa Clause ' or anybody that came, that way, & brings children things. Susie. [in margin: ƒThis paragraph gives me a little pang.„ S L C] O papa, I want to tell you something, if you will put the pen down a minute. Clara’s all the time writing i, i, i, =(pronounced like our E,)= it don’t make any matter what letter the teacher tells her to make, she all the time makes i,—you see she goes right along, —7und viele mal’ hat die Lehrerin gesag=t,=ht ‘O, dass ist nicht was ich dich vorgescrieben habe!’—but, papa it don’t make any matter, she goes right along, just the same!—just making i, i, i, right along! Why papa, == making i is her whole living!——=ƒin a whisper„= now just peep through that crack there!” ƒSure enough, there was Bay, on a big chair in the next room, with her slate, (one leg across the other knee,) absorbed in building painfully elaborated i’s. Yes, “making i ’s is her whole living.”„ [new page, in pencil:] P. P. S. Translation which I forgot to make, this afternoon when Susie was telling me about Bay & her i ’s: “ * * * u7 nd viele mal’ hat die Lehrerin gesagt, ‘O dass ist nicht was ich dich vorgeschrieben habe’ ”— “and heaps of time=s the teacher has said, ‘O that isn’t the copy I set you”—— Susie thinks her teacher is so pretty because “her face is so becoming to her.” J [addressed by Olivia L. Clemens in ink:] Mrs J. Langdon | Elmira | New York | United States of America [in upper left corner:] Via England > [postmarked:] MÜNCHEN  7- 8 AM [and] NEW YORK DEC 12 DUE 15 CENTS 78

1878—page 111

To Bayard Taylor 14 December 1878 • Munich, Germany (MS: NIC, #01614)

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No. 1a Karlsstrasse, (2e stock) Munich, Dec 14. My Dear Mr. Taylor: When we were poking about Italy 3 or 4 weeks ago, I was told that you were ill, but straightway saw it contradicted in a newspaper. Now comes this paragraph in Galignani, which not only shows that the contradiction was erroneous, but shows how ignorant one may be in this country about what is happening only a few hundred miles away; especially when one is buried in work & neither talks with people or often looks into a paper. We three folks are most heartily sorry to hear know that you have been ill at all, but as heartily glad to hear that you are coming happily out of it; & we are venturing to hope that by this time you are wholly restored. We are located for the winter,—I suppose. But the children are having such a run of coughs & colds & dipththeria, that I can’t tell at what moment Mrs. Clemens may take fright & flee to some kindlier climate. However, I stick hard at work & make what literary hay I can while we tarry. Our little children talk German as glibly as they do English, now, but the rest of us are mighty poor German scholars, I can tell you. Rev. Twichell (who was over here with me a while,) conceived a pretty correct average of my German. When I was talking =(in my native tongue,)= about some rather private matters in the hearing of some Germans one day, Twichell said, “Speak in German, Mark,—some of these people may understand English.” Many a time, when teachers & dictionaries fail to unravel knotty paragraphs, we wish we could fly to you for succor; we even go so far as to believe you can read a German newspaper & understand it=; & in moments of deep irritation I have been provoked into expressing the opinion that you are the only foreigner except God who can do that thing. I would not rob you of your food or your clothes or your umbrella, but if I caught your German out I would take it. But I don’t study any more,—I have given it up. I & mine join in the kindest remembrances & best wishes to you & your family. Sincerely Yours SamR. L. Clemens Ï We are going to try to run over to Berlin in the spring. 1878—page 112

To Olivia Lewis Langdon 26? December 1878 • Munich, Germany (MS: CtHMTH, #01617)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Mother dear, I want to thank you very sincerely for the magnificent “Faust” which you sent me Xmas. It is of an edition which has made the most of a stir of any that has ever appeared except the one with Kaulbach’s illustrations. The man who drew the fine pictures for this vol book (photographs of which Livy has sent to Sue or some of you,) is an Austrian with an American wife, & lives in Munich. Kaulbach’s women are beautiful, but there are two or three pictures of Margaret which in this new Faust which beat Kaulbach to pieces. Some time, when my busy time is over, I will go & call on this Austrian genius. Take it by & large, it was a very happy & abundant sort of Christmas which we had here. Livy gave me a noble great copy of the “Reinicke Fuchs,” nearly as big as the Faust, & containing the original ' R Kaulbach illustrations. I wish to thank Sue heartily for her gift to me,—which Livy is going to buy; she has not made up her mind, yet, what she will select; but no matter, it will be well & wisely & tastefully selected, Sue knows that. O ' Two or three times, lately, I have heard Bay make a mild protest under a certain head, but I paid no attention & straightway forgot the matter. Perhaps I ought to speak of it, now, however, for the guidance of her home-correspondents. When Jervis’s letter was read to her, to-day, I heard her say, with the former gentle protest in her tone, “Cousin Jervis only calls me Clara Clemens—it isn’t half of my names.” You see, you will have to ring in all those wet nurses to satisfy Bay. With the lovingest thanks & Christmas remembrances to you & all. S. L. C.

1878—page 113

Source Codes The following list defines the source codes used in editorial headings throughout this edition. SOURCE

NAME

ArU AuMS Bentley Boas C CCamarSJ

University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Ark. State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Vic., Australia Private collection Private collection California State Library, Sacramento, Calif. Saint John’s Seminary, Camarillo, Calif.; formerly Doheny collection, now dispersed Copley Newspapers Incorporated, James S. Copley Library, La Jolla, Calif. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Calif. University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Special Collections, Los Angeles, Calif. Private collection Calaveras County Museum & Archives Library, San Andreas, Calif. Society of California Pioneers, Alice Phelan Sullivan Library, San Francisco, Calif. Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. Connecticut State Library, Hartford, Conn. Hartford Seminary Foundation, Hartford, Conn. Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, Conn. The Mark Twain Memorial (Mark Twain House), Hartford, Conn. Stowe-Day Memorial Library and Historical Foundation, Hartford, Conn. Litchfield Historical Society, Litchfield, Conn. Yale University, New Haven, Conn. Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, Conn. University of California, Berkeley, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, Calif.

CLjC CLSU CLU-S/C Craven CSadM CSfCP CSmH Ct CtHC CtHi CtHMTH CtHSD CtLHi CtY CtY-BR CU-BANC

1878—page 114

CU-MARK

University of California, Berkeley, Mark Twain Collection, Berkeley, Calif. CU-SB University of California, University Library, Department of Special Collections, Santa Barbara, Calif. Daley Private collection Davis Private collection DFo Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. DGU Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. DLC United States Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. DNA United States National Archives and Records Service, National Archives Library, Washington, D.C. Heritage Book Shop Heritage Book Shop, Los Angeles, Calif. Howard Private collection Hyman Private collection IaDaPM Putnam Museum of History and Natural Science, Davenport, Iowa ICN Newberry Library, Chicago, Ill. IGa Galena Public Library District, Galena, Ill. InFwLW Louis A. Warren Lincoln Library and Museum, Fort Wayne, Ind. InU-Li Indiana University, Lilly Library, Bloomington, Ind. IU-R University of Illinois, Rare Book and Special Collections Library, Urbana, Ill. Jacobs Private collection, now dispersed Karanovich Private collection Keniston Private collection Koslosky Private collection KyHi Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, Ky. MB Boston Public Library and Eastern Massachusetts Regional Public Library System, Boston, Mass. MH-H Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass. MiU University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. MNS Smith College, Northampton, Mass. MoCgS Southeast Missouri State College, Cape Girardeau, Mo. MoHH Mark Twain Home Foundation, Hannibal, Mo. MoHM Mark Twain Museum, Hannibal, Mo. MoPeS Saint Mary’s Seminary, Perryville, Mo. MoSW Washington University, St. Louis, Mo. MWA American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass. 1878—page 115

N NBuU-PO NElmC NFred NHyF NIC NjP NN NN-B NNC NPV NvL2 OFH PBL PHi PPiHi PSt Sachs Scott Slotta T Thomson TxU-Hu Uk4 UkENL ViU ViW VtMiM WHi WU

New York State Library, Albany, N.Y. State University of New York at Buffalo, Poetry Library, Buffalo, N.Y. Elmira College, Elmira, N.Y. Historical Museum of the D.R. Barker Library, Fredonia, N.Y. General Services Administration, National Archives and Record Service, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y. Cornell University Library, Ithaca, N.Y. Princeton University Library, Princeton, N.J. New York Public Library, New York, N.Y. New York Public Library, Albert A. and Henry W. Berg Collection, New York, N.Y. Columbia University, New York, N.Y. Vassar College Libraries, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. American Museum of Historical Documents, Las Vegas, Nev. Rutherford B. Hayes Library, Fremont, Ohio Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa. Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pa. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pa. Private collection Private collection Private collection Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Tenn. Private collection Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, Tex. University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, United Kingdom University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va. College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va. Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vt. State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis.

1878—page 116