Mark Twain Project :: Letters :: : an electronic text

To Isabella A. Cotton
4 December 1866 • San Francisco, Calif.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00113)

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San f. Dec. 4.

Dear Miss Bella1

I have had your letter several days, & have been intending to call—but I am still unwell & take no pleasure in going out.

I leave for New York in the [ Opposition Opposition ]steamer of the [ 13th 15th ]inst., & I do hope I shall be well by that time.

I enclose the picture. Have you seen Henry McFarlane? He is clerk at Wm. B. Cooke & Co’s, Stationers, Montgomery Block, Montgomery street [above ]Washington.2

Remember me kindly to Mrs Blanchard,3 & believe, that although I may not see you more, I shall always hold you in happy remembrance & not soon [forgo et ]the pleasant voyage we made in Company [ for th in the ]good ship Smyrniote.

Yr friend

Sam L. Clemens4

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Little is known of Isabella A. Cotton, one of Clemens’s companions during the Smyrniote voyage from Honolulu to San Francisco. She was still in San Francisco more than a year after the ship’s arrival, but the listing for her in the 1867–68 city directory merely read “dwl [dwelling] with Lott Blanchard” (Langley 1867, 145), and her name did not appear in subsequent directories. Lott Blanchard was keeper of the lighthouse at Fort Point, in San Francisco, in 1865–66, and for several years afterward was a messenger in the collector’s office of the United States Custom House in that city (“Passengers,” Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser, 21 July 66, 2; Langley 1865–Langley 1873).

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2 The son of Henry MacFarlane, a Honolulu liquor dealer. He had been one of Clemens’s companions on his “equestrian excursion” on the island of Oahu in March 1866 (SLC 1866 [MT00452], 4, and SLC 1866 [MT00466], 3). His name appeared for the last time in the San Francisco city directory in 1867–68 (Langley 1867, 314). The picture, which Clemens actually enclosed in the next letter, has not been identified.

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3 Mrs. A. Blanchard, perhaps the wife or mother of Lott Blanchard, had arrived in Honolulu from San Francisco aboard the bark Cambridge on 24 April 1866. She returned to San Francisco aboard the Smyrniote with Clemens and Cotton (“Passengers,” Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser, 21 July 66, 2).

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4 This letter is annotated on the back, in an unknown hand: “F. H. B. 26.” The initials may stand for Frank H. Blanchard, who from the mid-1860s to the early 1870s lived at the same San Francisco and Oakland addresses as Lott Blanchard. It seems likely that the men were brothers, or even father and son. In 1865–66 Frank Blanchard was a messenger in the surveyor’s department of the United States Custom House in San Francisco. Afterward he was a ticket clerk for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and then a real estate agent, notary public, and commissioner of deeds (Langley 1865–Langley 1874).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, James and John M. Tufts Collection, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK). The MS (reproduced in Photographs and Manuscript Facsimiles) consists of one sheet of very thin blue-lined white wove paper, 7 15/16 by 10⅜ inches (20.1 by 26.4 cm), inscribed on one side only in black ink, now faded to brown. The leaf has been mounted on a stiff backing sheet for support.

glyph Previous publication: L1, 371–372.

glyph Provenance:see Tufts Collection, pp. 462–63.

glyph Emendations and textual notes:

Opposition Opposition • [‘Opposition’ over wiped out, possibly miswritten ‘Opposition’]

13th 15th • 15th 3th [‘3’ mended to ‘5’, canceling first ‘th’; ‘th’ added]

above • abo‸ve‸ w [‘e’ over last part of ‘w’ mending it to ‘v’]

forgo et • [‘e’ over ‘o’]

for th in the • [‘in the’ over doubtful ‘for th’]