To Elisha Bliss, Jr.
17 March 1871 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: NN-B, UCCL 02455)

Buf. Mch. 17.

Friend Bliss:

Out of this chaos of my household I snatch a moment to reply.1 We are packing up, to-night, & tomorrow I shall take my wife to Elmira on a mattrass, with—for she can neither sit up nor stand.—& will not for a week or two. It is a great risk, but the doctor2 agrees that the risk is just as great to have her stay here & worry herself to death with two [ jun ] child-nurses whom she cannot look after, & who neglect her sick child. In three whole months I have hardly written a page of MS. You do not know what it is to be in a state of absolute frenzy—desperation. I had rather die twice over than repeat the last six months of my life.

Now do you see?—I want rest. I want to get clear away from all hamperings, all harassments. I am going to shut myself up in a farm-house alone, on top an Elmira hill, & write—on my book.3 I will see no company, & worry about nothing. I never will make another promise again of any kind, that can be avoided, so help me [God.

Take] my name clear out of the list of contributors, & never mention me again—& then I shall feel that the fetters are off & I am free. I am to furnish an article for your next No. & I will furnish it—that is just the way I make ruin myself—making promises. Do you know that for seven weeks I have not had my natural rest but have been a night-&-day sick-nurse to my wife?—& am still—& shall continue to be for two [ we ] or three weeks longer———yet must turn in now & write a damned humorous article for the Publisher, because I have promised it—promised it when I thought that the vials of hellfire [bottled] up for my benefit must be about [emptied. By] the living God I don’t believe they ever will be emptied.

The MS I sent to be copied is back but I find nothing in it that can be transferred to the Publisher—for the chapter I intended to use I shall tear up, for it is simply an attempt to be full funny, & a failure.4

I When I get to Elmira I will look over the next chapters & send something—or, failing that, will write something—my own obituary I hope it will be.

As to where I got the idea, &c &c &c—got it from Larned & Gray & other friends who got [ if it] from papers—never saw it myself—but you say truly that a newspaper rumor is binding on nobody.5 I see easily enough that your advertisements haven’t anything in them that I can find any fault with—nothing at all. So I was wronging you—not you me.

I like this editorial notice on your page 10 very well—if you think well of it still, & if you think put it in & leave out the notice I sent you.6

If I dared fly in the face of Providence & make one ‸more‸ promise, I would say that if I ever get out of this infernal damnable chaos I am whirling in at home, I will go to work & amply & fully & freely fulfill some of the promises I have been making to you—but I don’t dare! Bliss—I don’t dare!

I believe if that baby goes on crying 3 more hours this way I will butt my frantic brains out & try to get some peace.

Yours, in perfect distraction—

Samℓ L. Clemens.

PS. When

[letter docketed:] [and] Mark Twain | March 17/71

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 To Bliss’s letter of 15 March (11 and 13 Mar 71 to OC, n. 13).

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2 Andrew Wright.

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3 Beginning in 1871, the Elmira residence of Susan and Theodore Crane, named Quarry Farm by Thomas K. Beecher after an abandoned slate quarry near the house, provided an annual writer’s retreat for Clemens. Jervis Langdon had bought the land and “plain little wooden house” on East Hill overlooking the Chemung River in May 1869, as a family retreat. The house, enlarged and by 1871 the year-round residence of the Cranes, had been bequeathed to Susan by Langdon. The Cranes continued to make improvements and buy surrounding land, eventually holding 250 acres. The Clemenses usually spent their summers there, and sometimes began their stay in the spring, although in 1871 the family first stayed at Mrs. Jervis Langdon’s house in central Elmira, with Clemens going up to the farm to write. The famous octagonal study that Susan Crane built for him was not in place until 1874, however (Ida Langdon, 53–54; “City and Neighborhood,” Elmira Advertiser, 21 May 69, 4; Park; Jerome and Wisbey 1977, 6–7; Wisbey 1985, 4; Jervis Langdon).

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4 The chapter Clemens intended to tear up was possibly a detailed description of Overland City, mentioned at the end of the published chapter 6 of Roughing It as “the strangest, quaintest, funniest frontier town that our untraveled eyes had ever stared at and been astonished with.” He probably did not remove it at this time, however (RI 1993, 40, 837–38). As the next letter indicates, he soon changed his mind about an excerpt for the American Publisher.

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5 No newspaper notices implying Clemens’s sponsorship of or exclusive publication in the American Publisher have been found.

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6 Clemens enclosed manuscript page 10 of Bliss’s 15 March letter, on which Bliss had drafted the “editorial notice”: see 11 and 13 Mar 71 to OC, n. 13. It was never used, however, and Mark Twain continued to head the American Publisher’s regular roll of “contributors engaged for this paper” until the May 1872 issue. He then disappeared from the list and Orion Clemens, who had been fired (or resigned) in March, ceased to be designated editor on the masthead (see RI 1993, 877–79).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN-B).

Previous publication: L4, 365–367; Hill, 47, brief excerpt; MTLP, 60–61, excerpt.

Provenance:Until his death in 1939 the MS was owned by W. T. H. Howe; in 1940, the Howe Collection was purchased by Dr. Albert A. Berg and donated to NN (Cannon, 185–86).

Emendations and textual notes:

jun • [possibly ‘jan’]

God. [¶] Take • God.—| [¶] Take

we • [‘e’ partly formed]

bottled • bot- teletled

emptied. By • emptied.—|By

if it • ift