‸
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
slc
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
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
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)
The letter Clemens belatedly answered is now lost. The “detestable seaside Babel” was a popular summer resort run by Seth Bateman near Newport, Rhode Island. The Clemens family had vacationed there in August and early September 1875 (link note following 29: July 1875 to Redpath, L6, 521–23).
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): On the envelope of RoBards’s letter, Clemens wrote “All
right.” See also 10 June 1876 to RoBards.
Source text(s):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:
sieze • [sic]
graves. I • ~.— | ~
removed b • [‘b’ partly formed]
my at • [‘t’ partly formed]
