To Emeline B. Beach
31 January 1868 • Washington, D.C.
(MS, damage emended: Feldman, UCCL 00187)

224 F street,
Washington, Jan. 31.

Shipmate, Ahoy!

It is all very well to counterfee it cheerfulness & say Shipmate, Ahoy! in that fraudulently brusque way, but it is only a swindle, at best,. One cannot go up & skirmish about New York for a week without paying for it in sorrow & tribulation when he returns. I have not been out of the house since I returned, ‸came home,‸ & have not left the writing table, except to [ t◇ ]sleep, & take my meals,. I have written seven long newspaper letters & a short magazine article in less than two days.1 It is the most extravagant instance of industry that ever came under your notice, I have no sort of doubt. In two more days I shall have made up for all my lost time. Then I shall feel j less tired, & much jollier than I do now.

You ought to see the letter from Mrs. Fairbanks I found awaiting me here. It was a scorcher—if I may use so unseemly a term to convey what no other will express. It seems I have been using slang again. I am so unfortunate. I know I never, never, never shall become get reformed up to the regulation standard. Every time I reform in one direction I go overboard in another. Now, once & for all, I will not use any more slang. But I suppose I shall make some other blunder that is just as bad, & get into trouble again.

I should have thought you might have dropped me a line by this time, Miss Emma. I don’t see that you have anything to do wherein to employ your time. ‸leisure.‸ It is immense fun to write, when one hasn’t anything to do. Try it. It will eventually perfect your style. Write your compositions to me, instead of to your prejudiced teacher. I will send your teacher Congressional speeches in place of them.—& Patent Office Reports, & beautiful romantic dissertations on yams, from the Agricultural Department.

I wasted a good deal of strategy trying to make Mrs. Beach invite me to call again, but I didn’t succeed. She had concluded she wouldn’t—s and as she had concluded she wouldn’t, why she just wouldn’t, that was all.; I was handsomely conquered that time, but she needn’t think I am going to stay conquered. No—I shall come without any invitation. I shall come & stay a month! She shall mourn over that victory of hers in allegorical ‸metaphorical‸ sackcloth & ashes. I know I shall be doing wrong—but then I do wrong every day, anyhow.

Now if you will be so kind as to drop me about a hundred & fifty lines, or more, or less, & tell me the names of the Consuls at Gibraltar & Marseilles, Miss Emma, you will confer a favor for which I shall be very greatly obliged to you. Mr. Beach or Capt. Duncan doubtless remember their names. And please tell me the names of the Murillo pictures that delighted you most—& say all you can about them, too. Remember, I am in a great straight, now, & it is hard to have to write about pictures when I don’t know anything about them. Hang the whole gang of old masters, I say! The idea that I have to go to driveling about those dilapidated, antediluvian humbugs at this late day, is exasperating. Why I don’t ever even remember their names—except Titian, & Tintoretto, & some ‸of‸ those other infamous Italian Vandals. If you will help me, now, I will go to church every Sunday for a month—& behave steadily continue reforming.2

Yrs Truly

Sam Clemens

Miss Emma Beach | 66 Columbia street | Brooklyn, N. Y.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Only two of Clemens’s known newspaper letters were completed—that is, datelined—on 30–31 January: one to the Chicago Republican and one to the Enterprise (SLC 1868 [MT00624], 1868 [MT00637]). Three others include portions that may have been written on those two days: another to the Enterprise, one to the Alta, and one to the New York Herald (SLC 1868 [MT00641], 1868 [MT00642], 1868 [MT00622]). An untitled manuscript sketch, left unpublished by Clemens (and now known as “Colloquy between a Slum Child and a Moral Mentor”), was also written at about this time, as was “My Late Senatorial Secretaryship,” published in the May 1868 Galaxy (SLC 1868 [MT00614], 1868 [MT00656]).

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2 Horatio J. Sprague of Massachusetts had served as United States consul at Gibraltar since 1848; Emma’s father mentioned his “kindness” and his “pleasant home and family” in a letter dated 9 July 1867 to the New York Sun. Martin F. Conway of Virginia was appointed United States consul at Marseilles in 1866. Neither consul was ultimately mentioned in The Innocents Abroad. Traveling with her father and four other passengers in July 1867, Emma had seen in the museums of Seville and Cádiz several paintings of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617?–82), which Clemens could also have seen, albeit with less leisure, in October (Beach 1867; Interior Department, 3, 4; State Department, 16; Senate 1887, 14 [2]: 857, 883; 24 Oct 67 to JLC and family, n. 1; Newell 1867).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, damage emended, collection of John L. Feldman.

Previous publication: L2, 171–173; MTB, 1:359, brief excerpt described as a letter “home”; Booth, 223–25; Christie, lot 1186, excerpts.

Provenance:see Doheny Collection, pp. 511–12.

Emendations and textual notes:

t◇ • [‘t’ partly formed; ‘’ malformed]