To Jane Lampton Clemens and Family
26 August 1867 • Yalta, Russia
(MS: NPV, UCCL 00145)

Yalta, Russia, Aug. 25.1

Dear Folks—

We have been representing the United States all we knew how, to-day. We went to Sebastopol, after we got tired of Constantinople (got your letter there, & one at Naples,) & there the Commandant & the whole town came aboard & were as jolly & sociable as old friends. They said the Emperor of Russia was at Yalta, 30 miles or 40 away, & urged us to go there with the ship & visit him—promised us a cordial welcome. They insisted on sending a telegram to the Emperor, & also a courier overland to announce our coming. But we knew that a great English excursion party, & also the Viceroy of Egypt, in his splendid yacht, had been refused an audience within the last [fortnight], & so we thought it not safe to try it.2 They said, no difference—the Emperor would hardly visit our ship, because that be a most extraordinary favor & one which he uniformly refuses to accord under any circumstances, but he would certainly receive us at his palace. We still declined. But we had to go to Odessa, 250 miles away, & there the Governor General urged us, & sent a telegram to the Emperor, which we hardly expected to be answered, but it was, & promptly.3 So we sailed back to Yalta. They had told us We all put went to the palace at noon, to-day, (3 miles,) in carriages & on horses sent by the Emperor, & we had a jolly time. Instead of the usual formal audience of 15 minutes, we staid 4 hours & were made a good deal more at home than we could have been in a New York drawing-room. The whole tribe turned out to receive our party—Emperor, Empress, the eldest daughter (Grand-Duchess Marie, a pretty girl of 14,) a little g Grand Duke her brother, & a platoon of Admirals, Princes, Peers of the Empire, &c.,4 & in a little while an [aid-de camp ]arrived with a request from the Grand Duke Michael, the Emperor’s brother, that we would visit his palace & breakfast with him.5 The Emperor also invited us, on behalf of his absent eldest son & heir (aged 22,) to visit his palace & consider it a visit to him.6 They all talk English & they were all very neatly but very plainly dressed. You all dress a good deal finer than they were dressed. The Emperor & his family threw off all reserve & showed us all over the palace themselves. It is very rich & very elegant, but in no way gaudy.

I had been appointed chairman of a committee to draught an address to the Emperor on behalf of the passengers, & as I fully expected, & as they fully intended, I had to write the address myself. I didn’t mind it, because I have no modesty & would as soon write an Emperor as to anybody else—but considering that there were 5 on the committee I thought they might have contributed one paragraph among them, anyway.7 They wanted me to read it to him, too, but I declined that honor—not because I hadn’t cheek enough (& some to spare,) but because our Consul at Odessa was along, & also the Secretary of our Legation at St Petersburgh, & of course one of those ought to read it. The [Emperor [thanked us for] the address ](it was his business to do it,) & so many others have praised it warmly that I begin to imagine it must be a wonderful sort of document & herewith send you the original draught of it, to be put into alcohol & preserved forever like a curious reptile.8

They live right well at the Grand Duke Michael’s—[ ther their ]breakfasts are not gorgeous but very excellent—& if Mike were to say the word I would go there & breakfast with him tomorrow.

Ys aff

Sam.

They told us it would be polite to invite the Emperor to visit the ship, though he would not be likely to do it. But he [dint ]give us a chance—he has requested permission to come on board with his family & all his relations [to-morrow ]& take a sail, in case it is calm weather. I can entertain them. My hand is in, now, & if you want any more emperors feted in style, trot them out.

[enclosure:]

To His Imperial Majesty Alexander II, Emp of Russia.

We are only a handful of unofficial ‸private‸ citizens of America ‸the United Stats‸, going about the world with no end in view traveling simply for recreation, & unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial state, ‸ (& therefore we) ‸ have no excuse ‸to tender‸ for presenting ourselves before your , ‸Majesty‸ save that the desire of seeing offering our grateful acknowledgments to the lord of a land realm which, through good & through evil report, has been the steadfast friend of the land we love so well.

We could not presume to take a step like this, did we not know full well that the words we speak here & the sentiments wherewith they are freighted, are but the reflex of the thoughts & the feelings that dwell in all the hearts of all our [countrymen ], from the green hills of New England to the snow clad peaks that girt the ‸Sierras of the far‸ ‸snowy peaks of the [far‸ far ]Pacific. ‸We are few in number, but‸ Through our feeble lips speak ‸we utter [ th ] ‸ the voice of a nation!

One of the brightest pages that has graced the world’s history for many generations ‸since written history had its birth‸ was recorded by your ‸Majesty’s‸ hand when you ‸it‸ loosed the bonds of twenty million serfs, & Americans can but esteem it a priviledge to do honor to one a monarch ‸ruler‸ who has wrought so great a deed. For this, in the name of our countrymen, The lesson that was taught us then, we have profited by, & are free in truth to-day, even as we were before in name. America owes much to [Russia. ] — We sincerely trust that is indebted to her in many ways—& we sincere chief & more than all, ‸chiefly‸ for her unwavering friendship in seasons of deepes ‸our‸ greatest need. ; t That that friedship may still be hers in times to come, we all confidently pray; that she is & will be grateful to her ‸Russia‸ & to her sovereign for it, we know full well; that she can ‸will‸ ever fail will ever forfeit it by any wilful act of her own it by any ‸premeditated,‸ unjust act, [ & or ]unfair course, we it were treason to believe.

[on back of page 2 of enclosure:]

Pamela, you (not anybody else,) write to “Capt. Jno. McComb,” care Alta,” to send you the back numbers containing my letters, [& to] continue to send the paper.9 He is a splendid fellow & will attend to your request, but he’ll forget it if I write him. Tell him I told you. My love to Ma & Orion & Mollie, & to Annie, Sammy, Essie, Lou, all the family & all the friends, never by any means forgetting Margaret.10

Yrs

Sam.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens mistook the date: the visit to the tsar described in this letter actually occurred on 26 August (N&J1, 402 n. 41; Charles C. Duncan 1867, entry for 30 Aug).

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2 The “great English excursion party” has not been identified. Ismail Pasha (1830–95), viceroy of Egypt from 1863 to 1879, was in the area on a visit to the sultan of Turkey. Ten days earlier, when the Quaker City was in the Sea of Marmara approaching Constantinople, Clemens recorded in his notebook, “The Viceroy of Egypt passed us in his lightning yacht, like we were standing still—waved his hand to us” ( N&J1, 395–96). Denny likewise noted, “This evening there passed by us perhaps as fast a running steam ship as is in the world, that of the Viceroy of Egypt. It is a beauty and had the Viceroy and his suit on board on a visit to the Sultan” (Denny, entry for 16 Aug). It is not known whether the viceroy was refused an audience with the tsar.

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3 From 1862 to 1874, Pavel E. Kotsebu served as governor general of Novorossiia—a large region in southern Russia encompassing several provinces—and was stationed in Odessa, its principal city (Herlihy, 157).

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4 Aleksandr Nikolaevich Romanov (1818–81), Tsar Aleksandr II of Russia, seemed to Clemens “much nobler than the Emperor Napoleon.” Considered moderate, for an autocrat, because in 1861 he ended the system of serf labor and had also begun various judicial and military reforms, he was nevertheless not a popular ruler: at the time of Clemens’s visit to Livadia, his summer home, he had already survived two attempts on his life (the most recent in Paris, a month before Clemens’s stay there). In 1841 he married Maria Aleksandrovna (1824–80). Clemens described their only surviving daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Aleksandrovna (1853–1920), as “a pretty, blue-eyed, fair-haired girl.” In 1874 she married Queen Victoria’s second son—Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh. The “little Grand Duke her brother” was Sergei (1857–1905), the tsar’s fifth son. Tsar Aleksandr II was assassinated in 1881 by members of a revolutionary party called the People’s Will (Louisa M. Griswold, 185; SLC 1867 [MT00565]). The “platoon of Admirals, Princes, Peers of the Empire, &c.” evidently included Prince Nikolai Dolgoruky, aide-de-camp to the tsar and, according to Clemens, “the Grand Chamberlain”; Count Festetics, a Polish officer on the staff of the tsar’s youngest brother (see the next note); and Admiral Glasenapp, commander of the Russian Black Sea fleet ( N&J1, 409 n. 53, 410).

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5 According to accounts from other passengers, the palace, named Orianda, actually belonged to Konstantin Nikolaevich Romanov (1827–92), the tsar’s younger brother, who was absent in St. Petersburg. Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich Romanov (1832–1909)—the tsar’s youngest brother and, since 1865, commander of the Caucasus Military District—acted as host for the luncheon (called breakfast, since in Russian the same word is used for both meals). Clemens described “Grand Duke Michael” in his notebook as “a rare brick” (Moulton 1867; Severance, 143; James, 2; N&J1, 409).

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6 Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Romanov (1845–94), the tsar’s second son, had become the heir upon the death of his older brother, Nikolai (1843–65). (After the assassination of his father in 1881, he would become Tsar Aleksandr III.) In 1866 he married Nikolai’s fiancée, Maria Feodorovna, whose sister was the wife of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. His palace had originally belonged to Nikolai. At the time of the Quaker City visit, he was in Denmark, his wife’s native land (Severance, 143; Nesbit, entry for 26 Aug).

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7 In addition to Clemens, the committee included Solomon N. Sanford, Timothy D. Crocker, Colonel Kinney, and Dr. William Gibson. After drafting the speech, Clemens made a copy in his notebook, adding:

That job is over. Writing addresses to Emperors is not my strong suit. However, if it is not as good as it might be, it don’t signify—the other committeemen ought to have helped write it—they had nothing else to do, & I had my hands full. But for bothering with this matter, I would have caught up entirely with my N.Y. Tribune correspondence, & nearly up with the San Francisco corr. ( N&J1, 407–8)

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8 The address was read to the tsar by the United States consul at Odessa, Timothy C. Smith. The secretary of the legation at St. Petersburg was Jeremiah Curtin. Clemens included the text in his letters of 26 August to the Tribune, and 27 August to the Herald and to the Alta. Before the speech was printed as a broadside on the Quaker City’s printing press (see the illustration below), Clemens further revised and simplified it (Interior Department, 4; SLC 1867 [MT00564], 1867 [MT000565], 1867 [MT00582]; N&J1, 408 n. 48). The speech was also translated into Russian and published in the Odessa Vestnik on 24 August—i.e., 5 September on the modern Gregorian calendar (Startsev, 119).

Clemens’s address to Tsar Aleksandr II. Mark Twain Memorial, Hartford, Connecticut (CtHMTH).

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9 See 15 Apr 67 to JLC and family, n. 7.

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10 Annie and Sammy Moffett, Essie Pepper, Lou Conrad, and the Moffetts’ German maid, Margaret.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV). Clemens enclosed what is evidently his first draft of the address to Tsar Aleksandr II. The MS of the letter and its enclosure are independently paginated. Mark Twain made a fair copy of this draft in his notebook under the entry dated 25 August (Notebook 9, CU-MARK).

Previous publication: L2, 80–85; MTL, 1:131–33, without the enclosure. The notebook copy of the enclosure was published in MTN, 78–79, and in N&J1, 406–7.

Provenance:see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 512–14.

Emendations and textual notes:

fortnight • fort-|night

aid-de camp • aid-de camp [sic]

Emperor [thanked us for] the address • [Any interpolation here is to a degree uncertain, but since some verb is necessary in order to construe the sentence, we have supplied the same words Clemens used in reporting the event on 27 August in his dispatch to the Alta California (SLC 1867 [MT00582]). Toward the end of that same newspaper dispatch, he also said, ‘Inasmuch as the Emperor approved the document’. But in chapter 37 of The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain retained the first phrase from his Alta dispatch: ‘He thanked us for the address, and said he was very much pleased to see us’. A Russian newspaper columnist named ‘Ready Pen’ reported in an August 1867 issue of the Odessa Vestnik that ‘the Emperor was pleased to hear an address’ and that he ‘immediately reciprocated with kind words of his own’ (Startsev, 119).]

ther their • therir

dint • [sic]

to-morrow • to-|morrow

countrymen • country-|men

‸far‸ far • [Possibly dittography; Clemens wrote ‘far’ only once when he copied this draft into his notebook.]

th • [partly formed]

Russia. • [deletion implied]

& or • [‘or’ over ‘&’]

& to • [possibly ‘& ◇ to’; ‘◇’ partly formed]