To Mary E. (Mollie) Clemens
21 February 1868 • Washington, D.C.
(Transcript made for Albert Bigelow Paine and MS envelope: CU-MARK and ViU, UCCL 00199)

76 Indiana ave.

Washington, Feb. 21.

A.D. 1868.0

[Dear Mollie—]

I was glad to hear from so many friends whose names are familiar to my memory—[Ick], & the Ellas, Al. Patterson’s folks, India, your parents, Belle,—why, it is a party in itself! And Miss Mason—will you borrow a mustache & kiss her once for me—or several times?1

I received a dainty little letter from Lou Conrad, yesterday. She is in Wisconsin. But what worries me is that I have received no letter from my sweetheart in New York for three days. This won’t do. I shall have to run up there & see what the mischief is the [matter.] I will break that girl’s back if she breaks my [heart,] I am getting too venerable now to put up with nonsense from children.2

I have made a [superb] contract for a book, & have prepared the first ten chapters of the sixty or eighty—but I will bet it never sees the light. Don’t you let the folks at home hear that. That thieving Alta copyrighted the letters, & now [show] no disposition to let me use them. I have done all I can by telegraph, & now await the final result by mail.3 I only charged them for 50 letters, what in green-backs, would amount to less than two thousand dollars, intending to write a good deal for [high-priced] eastern papers, & now they want to publish my letters in book form themselves, to get back that pitiful [sum.]4 I can write them over, but I don’t want [to. Even] with the subjects all fresh in my mind, it took me more than twenty days to write those 50 letters—& now it would take full forty, I think.

But the contract compels me to use those particular letters in the book. I rather expect to go with Mr. Burlingame on his Chinese Embassy5—you know he is a tip-top good friend of mine—but for goodness sake don’t hint of this to the home folks. I would [not] hear the last of [it. Cuss] this cussed place—I am precious tired of it. There is no fun but receptions, & nobody there but stupid old muffs of Generals & Senators, who talk their plagued war & politics to me when I had rather hear Greek. When they have what they call “reunions” they are pleasant enough & are full of [jollity].

The State of Illinois had one last night, & Oregon gives one at Senator Corbett’s Monday night. These suit me [well.] The invitations are special, & not more than a hundred to a hundred & fifty are invited. They are not crowded to death like the receptions. I like the banquets better than anything, but they do not occur often.

But I am not interesting you, & besides I must answer some letters of “Quaker City” ladies. They are [indefatigable] correspondents, & exceedingly pleasant withal. I give them a paragraph from the book, now & then, just to hear them howl.

They send back whole quires of remonstrance, & I forward other paragraphs—entirely imaginary ones—gotten up for the occasion that are infinitely worse than the first. It makes rare fun—for—me. [My] love to all of them,—& to you, my good & true, & well beloved sister.

Affectionately

Sam.

Mrs. Orion Clemens | Keokuk | Iowa [postmarked with handwritten year:] washington d.c. feb 22 ’68 free [franked by unidentified hand:] Wm M Stewart | USS

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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0The present text, notes, and apparatus supersede those previously published in L2, 198–99. L2’s version is available here.

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1Clemens refers to letters or messages (now lost) from: “Ick”: Margaret Elizabeth Starkweather, née Patterson (25 February 1837–January 1922); “the Ellas”: Ick’s unmarried younger sister Martha Eleanor (Ella) Patterson (b. 1839 or 1840), and their niece, Mary Eleanor (Ella) Montgomery (née Creel) (1 June 1841–26 February 1894); “Al. Patterson’s folks”: presumably William Albert Patterson (5 August 1827–2 November 1900) and family; “India”: one of Mollie’s sisters-in-law, Indiana (Indi) Stotts (8 October 1833–8 July 1871), married to her older brother William Thompson Stotts (23 November 1829–14 August 1911); Mollie’s parents: William L. Stotts (16 September 1799–13 June 1888) and Mary (Polly) Stotts, neé Patterson (25 March 1797–7 July 1869); and “Belle”: Mollie’s younger sister, Susannah Isabella (Belle) Bohon, neé Stotts (26 December 1839–24 May 1910). “Miss Mason” remains unidentified.

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2Clemens’s “sweetheart in New York” has not been identified, although it is likely she was “Pauline,” whom Clemens tried and failed to find in New York immediately upon return of the Quaker City in November 1867 (see SLC to Webb, 25 Nov 1867).

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3The typescript made for Albert Bigelow Paine from the original manuscript (now lost) and the surviving envelope make clear that this letter was addressed to Mollie—not Orion—Clemens, although Paine claimed or implied it was addressed to Orion in two published excerpts from it (Paine 1912, 938, MTB, 1:359–60). Clemens had told the St. Louis family (Jane, Pamela, and Orion) about his “superb contract” (24 Jan 1868 to JLC and family), and presumably did not want to worry his mother with the possibility that the book would not be published. He clearly felt he could trust Mollie— who was living with her parents in Keokuk and had recently sent him three clippings of his Alta dispatches—with the news (the clippings were mentioned as received in 21 Feb 1868 to JLC and family). In another letter written at this time but now lost, Clemens must have also informed Pamela of his problem, swearing her to strict confidence even with members of the family (just as he later did in respect to his pending engagement to Olivia Langdon). Pamela evidently confided the information to Orion, but not to Mollie, and probably not to Jane—for in April, Orion was obliged to explain to Mollie why he had known about the problem but had not told her: “Pamela thought Sam had enjoined strict privacy on her, and I said nothing [to you] because she thought Sam would be displeased if privacy to that extent was not kept” (OC to MEC, 10 Apr 1868, CU-MARK). Paine reported that when Clemens first heard about the Alta’s plans (ostensibly from Joseph Goodman), he “got confirmation of the report by telegraph” (MTB, 1:359). Clemens must have learned the bad news and “done all [he could] by telegraph” within a day of writing the previous letter to Orion (on 21 February), which does not mention the problem.

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4Noah Brooks recalled the Alta editors’ response to the news—which they had certainly heard by 14 January—that Clemens planned to reuse his Quaker City letters:

Although up to that moment there had been no thought of making in San Francisco a book of Mark Twain’s letters from abroad, the proprietors of the “Alta California” began at once their preparations to get out a cheap paper-covered edition of those contributions. An advance notice in the press despatches sent from California was regarded as a sort of answer to the alleged challenge of Mark Twain and his publishers. This sent the perplexed author hurrying back to San Francisco in quest of an ascertainment of his real rights in his own letters. (Brooks 1898, 99)

No copy of this “advance notice” has been found, but whether Clemens saw it or was otherwise apprised of the Alta’s plans, he was evidently persuaded on or about 22 February to telegraph for permission to reuse the letters, something he had declined to do earlier (24 Jan 1868 to JLC and PAM). The “final result by mail” which he then awaited came about two weeks later, on or about 8 March. A California newspaper, reprinting an item from a still-unidentified “Eastern exchange” (published sometime in mid-March), summarized the situation with some authority:

Mark Twain has got a scrape on his hands. He had written several hundred MS. pages for a book for one of the Hartford publishing houses, expecting to make his letters to the Alta California useful for the bulk of his book. These letters were fifty, for which $2,500 in gold coin had been paid. Mark telegraphed to California for permission to use the letters. His telegram was, of course, an admission that the Alta had the right to the letters. He got a letter last week, refusing the requested permission. This broke up the Hartford contract, and sent him spinning to the Pacific coast, to break somebody’s head. (“Mark Twain in Trouble,” Marysville [Calif.] Appeal, 9 May 1868, 3)

Clemens had, in fact, received his $1,250 fare in currency, or “greenbacks,” plus $500 in gold (equivalent to $700 in currency), for a total of about $1,950, or “less than two thousand dollars” (see 15 Apr 1867 to JLC and family, n. 1).

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5See the letters of 19 February 1868 to Anson Burlingame (1st and 2nd of 2).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

A typed transcription made for Albert Bigelow Paine is source text for the letter, CU-MARK; MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, Alderman Library, ViU, is source text for the envelope. A portion of the third paragraph was published in MTB and in Paine 1912, but both extracts derive from the Paine typescript, not independently from the original letter. Both did correct one manifest transcription error (“supberb” in the first line of the third paragraph) and treated another word as an error (“show”, also in the third paragraph), which has not been emended here.

Previous publication:

MTB, 1:359–60, partial publication; Paine 1912, 938, partial publication; L2, 198–99 (dated 22? February 1868), partial publication.

Provenance:

For the text of the letter, see Paine Transcripts in Description of Provenance. The envelope was deposited at ViU by Clifton Waller Barrett on 17 December 1963. It is not known how Paine got access to this particular letter, or how Barrett obtained the envelope.

Emendations and textual notes:

Dear Mollie— • ~- [the typist consistently transcribed as hyphens what are manifestly em-dashes in the original; corrected to em dashes, closed up, here and hereafter]

Ick • Ich [‘Ich’ is an easy error to make for a typist who, unlike Clemens, did not know how Margaret Patterson Starkweather spelled her nickname]

matter. • ~,

heart, • [sic; although possibly a copyist’s error, treated here as a characteristic comma splice]

superb • supberb

show • [sic; Clemens is thinking of the Alta in the plural, as his later reference to what ‘they want’ makes clear]

high-priced • ~-~

sum. • [the typist corrected a comma to a period]

to. Even • ~,~

it. Cuss • ~,~

jollity • jolity

well. • ~,

indefatigable • indifatigable

My • MY