To John Brown
27 April 1874 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: Sachs, UCCL 01080)

Elmira, N. Y., Apl. 27/74.

Dear Doctor:

This town is in the interior of the State of New York—& was my wife’s birth-place. We are here to spend the whole summer. Mrs. Clemens will be confined in about a month. Although it is so near summer, we had a great snow-storm yesterday, & one the day before. This is rather breaking in upon our plans, as it may keep us down here in the valley a trifle longer than we desired. It gets fearfully hot here in the summer, so we spend our summers on the top of a hill 6 or 700 feet high, about 2 or 3 miles from here—it never gets hot up there.

Mrs. Clemens is pretty strong, & so is the “little wifie”—barring a desperate cold in the head—the child grows in grace & beauty marvellously. I wish the nations of the earth would combine in a baby show & give us a chance to compete. I must try to find one of her latest photographs to enclose in this.1 And this reminds me that Mrs. Clemens keeps urging me to ask you for your photograph; & last night she said “and be sure to ask him for a photograph of his sister, & Jock2—but say Mister Jock—do not be heedless & forget that courtesy; he is Jock in our memories & our talk, but he has a right to his title when a body uses his name in a letter.” Now I have got it all in—I can’t have made any mistake this [time. Miss ]Clara Spaulding has looked in, a moment, yesterday morning, as bright & good as ever. She would like to lay her love at your feet if she knew I was writing—as would also fifty friends of ours whom you have never seen, & whose homage is as fervent as if the cold & clouds & darkness of a mighty sea did I not lie between their hearts & you. Poor old Rab had not many “friends” at first, but if all his friends of to-day could gather to his grave from the four corners of the earth what a procession there would be! And Rab’s friends are your friends.3

I am going to work when we get on the [hill. Till ]then I’ve got to lie fallow, albeit against my will. We join in love to you & yours.

Yr friend ever

Samℓ. L Clemens.

P. S. I enclose a specimen of villainy. A man pretends to be my brother & my lecture-agent—gathers a great audience together in a city more than a thousand miles from here, & then pockets the money & elopes, leaving the audience to wait for the imaginary lecturer! I am after him with the law.4

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 No photograph of Susy (“the ‘little wifie’”) survives with this letter. For a photograph that Clemens might have enclosed, see 13 Feb 74 to Moulton, n. 1.

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2 Brown lived with his unmarried sister, Isabella, and his son, John. No photographs of them which he might have sent are known to survive (L5, 427, 429 n. 3).

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3 “Rab and His Friends,” about a dog, was the title story in Brown’s book of sketches, published in 1859. Clemens’s opinion of the story remained high throughout his life. In his Autobiographical Dictation of 5 February 1906 he called it a “pathetic and beautiful masterpiece” (CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:45; see also Gribben, 1:87).

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4 Clemens enclosed a clipping, now lost, from the Dubuque Herald of 21 April. The article is transcribed in Enclosure with 27 April 1874 to John Brown. The “villainy” and its aftermath are described there and in 24 Apr 74 to the editor of the Dubuque Herald, nn. 2, 3. Clemens’s Elmira lawyers, the firm of Smith, Robertson and Fassett, initiated proceedings on 25 April in an exchange of telegrams with T. S. Wilson, a Dubuque judge and city attorney, and George Salot, a Dubuque County deputy sheriff (statement dated 17 June 74 from Smith, Robertson and Fassett, CU-MARK; Boyd and Boyd, 196). As a result, Salot and J. G. Shattuck, the detective who had previously helped apprehend impostor Jared S. Strong, started to pursue him anew, tracking him from town to town along the railroad line in Illinois. Strong, traveling without his wife, was twice ejected from trains for failing to pay his fare, spent a night on a farm and another at a hotel, and ultimately eluded his pursuers, probably by hiding in a freight train (“The Frog,” Dubuque Herald, 29 Apr 74, 4). In a letter dated 1 May (but postmarked 5 May) to Clemens’s attorneys, Wilson reported that Salot and Shattuck “did not succeed in capturing” Strong:

We now know where he is, and can get him, but money is needed to pay expenses. Mr Salot, having already paid about $70.00 out of his own pocket, and not having received the money he expected from you according to your telegram sent him to Dixon, Ills, is unwilling to go unless money is advanced; but if you will send him what he has already paid out, together with a reasonable amount to pay his expenses, he will go again in answer to the enclosed telegram.—Once here we will see to the expenses of his trial, &c. (CU-MARK)

The “enclosed telegram,” dated 30 April, was from J. T. Mathews, city marshal of Canton, Illinois, to Salot: “Your man is here Come on” (CU-MARK). Although Salot evidently took no further action, on 3 May, Sheriff M. Liddy, who claimed to be “an old friend and chum of Mark Twain,” armed himself “with a subpoena ducis tecum” and “mounted his horse and set sail for Illinois, reaching home again yesterday without his prisoner” (“Jumping Frog,” Dubuque Times, 3 May 74, 4; nothing is known of Liddy’s reputed acquaintance with Clemens). On 8 May, Smith, Robertson and Fassett wrote to Clemens, enclosing the letter they had received from Wilson about Salot’s expenses (quoted above), with a draft of their proposed reply:

We think one of two things should be done Either comply with his suggestion & send on money & follow the matter up—or answer as we have—But we submit the case to your judgment, & if you desire to change the letter, drop in & we will fix it—If it meets your approval mail it. (CU-MARK)

Although he was dissatisfied with his lawyers’ tactics (see 10 May 74 to OC), Clemens may have mailed their letter to Wilson, for it does not survive with the other documents. Strong was subsequently indicted in early June, but no evidence has been found that he was successfully prosecuted. On 7 June, the Dubuque Times reported that Strong was the son of Dr. Strong, of Canton, Illinois: “Jared was always a rogue, and has served a term in the penitentiary for thieving” (Dubuque Times: “Minor Items,” “District Court,” 4 June 74, 4). Clemens’s involvement evidently ended shortly after that, when he paid his attorneys $26.90—that is, $12.00 for their services, and the remainder for the cost of telegrams (statement dated 17 June 74, CU-MARK).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS facsimile. The editors have not seen the MS, which was owned in 1981 by Charles W. Sachs, who provided a photocopy to the Mark Twain Papers.

Previous publication: L6, 121–123; Brown, 351, with omissions; MTL, 1:218–19; Christie 1981, lot 69, excerpts; Kelleher, lot 20, excerpts.

Emendations and textual notes:

time. Miss • time.—|Miss

hill. Till • hill.—|Till