To John L. RoBards
17 April 1876 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: MoHM, UCCL 01324)
(SUPERSEDED)

‸ Private. ‸ ‸Please don’t show this to indiscreet people
John—my private letters too often find their way
into print, & nothing is so hard to bear.
S. L. C.‸ 1

Hartford Apl. 17.

My Dear John:

Long, long ago I received your kind letter, but was summering at a detestable seaside Babel, at the time, where letter-answering was impossible.2 When I returned home I did not reply because I constantly expected to run out there in person. I never have given up that hope until now. I suppose I must wait until next year. I therefore sieze upon your kind offer to attend to Henry & my father’s [graves. I] have forgotten what sum you said would be required to purchase a lot & [removed b ] the bodies, but I think it was under $100. I enclose check for $100. If Henry & [my at ] father feel as I would feel under their circumstances, they want no prominent or expensive lot, or luxurious entertainment in the new cemetery. As for a monument—well, if you remember my father, you are aware that he would rise up & demolish it the first night. He was a modest man & would not be able to sleep under a monument.3

(I have been to my files & found your letter—which makes the whole matter fresh in my mind again.)

It was my purpose to deliver the lecture you suggest, in Hannibal, for the benefit of the Cemetery, but the opportunity of going West has failed me all these months. I shall try hard to never deliver another lecture in the east upon any account whatever; but if I get west next year & can spare a day to run up to ha Hannibal & talk for the Cemetery, I shall be more than glad to do it. Thanking you a thousand times, John, for your good courtesy, I am

Yr friend

S. L. Clemens

[letter docketed:] S L Clemens | 3 | 1

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 RoBards (1838–1925), Clemens’s old schoolmate, was now a Hannibal attorney (Inds, 345–46). He did not follow this injunction. In 1882 he shared this letter with a correspondent for the Cincinnati Penny Paper,) who included a loose partial paraphrase of it in an article he wrote about Clemens’s boyhood days (Rathgar 1882). On 5 June 1882, RoBards wrote Clemens, enclosing a copy of the article as reprinted in the Hannibal Courier, denying that he had been the source of the spurious information about Clemens attributed to him, and apologizing for showing the letter. He explained that, anxious to rebut a statement that

like many others having acquired fortune and fame you doubtless were indifferent to family feeling involving the more tender affections of our better nature &c, I acquainted the author Reavis, of the Article, with the circumstances touching the erection of the slab &c over your brother s grave in Mt Olivet Cemetery and showed him your letter which latter I should have not done, but I wished to relieve you of a seeming general imputation. (CU-MARK)

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2 The letter Clemens belatedly answered does not survive. The “detestable seaside Babel” was Bateman’s Point, a popular Newport, Rhode Island, summer resort, where the Clemens family had spent August and part of September 1875 (see L6, 521–24, 530–32).

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3 John Marshall Clemens and Henry Clemens were buried in Hannibal’s old Baptist cemetery. They were now to be moved to the Mount Olivet Cemetery, which RoBards had founded (Inds, 346). RoBards replied to the present letter (CU-MARK):

UCLC32330

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On the envelope of RoBards’s letter, Clemens wrote “All right.” See also 10 June 76 to RoBards.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Copy-text:

MS, MoHM.

Previous publication:“John RoBards, Lifetime Friend of Mark Twain,” Hannibal Evening Courier-Post, 6 March 1935, 4C, partial publication (letter misdated 1908); Armstrong 1931, 495, partial publication.

Emendations and textual notes:

graves. I • graves.—|I

removed b • [‘b’ partly formed]

my at • [‘t’ partly formed]