To William Dean Howells
19 September 1877 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS, in pencil: NN-BGC, UCCL 02517)

Hartford Sept. 19.

My Dear Howells:

All right—shan’t send anything to that San Friscos club.1

I don’t really see ‸how‸ the story of the runaway horse could read well with the little details of names & places & things left [out. They] are the true life of all narrative. It wouldn’t quite do to print them at this time.2

Obituary. Mrs. Mary Langdon passed from earth to heaven at 6:00 a.m. Sept. 12th, 1877. Her maiden name was Lee. She was born near Poughkeepsie, Dutchess county, N.Y., July 20, 1790. Her husband Mr. Amos Langdon, died in March, 1867. They had moved from Dutchess county to Newfield, Tompkins coun- ty in 1831, and in 1838 to a place now well known as Langdon hill, near Breesport, Chemung county, N.Y. For more than forty years she had been a most worthy and devoted member of the M. E. Church Her home for quite a num- ber of years has been with her daughter, Mrs. Ulysses Breese; and it was from their filial [] [] care and elegant residence at West Junction that she exchanged earth for Heaven. It was also there that the funeral services were held on the 13th, and from thence the pre- cious remains were borne to the “Scotch burial ground” in Erin, accompanied by nu- merous relatives and friends. Peace to her memory and blessings on her posterity. s. Erin, Sept. 13, 1877. [in margin to the right of the clipping, circled: I am not the author of this noble obituary—though deceased was a relative.3]

We’ll talk about it when you come. Delicacy—a sad, sad false delicacy—robs literature of the two best things among its belongings: Private [house] Family-circle narratives & obscene stories. But no matter; in that better world which I trust we are all going to I have the hope & belief that they will not be denied us. [¶].—Say—Twichell & I had an adventure at sea, 4½ months ago, which I did not put in my Bermuda articles, because there was not enough to it. But the press dispatches bring the sequel [to-day], & now there’s plenty to it. A sailless, mastless, chartless, compassless, grubless old condemned tub [that] has been drifting helpless about the ocean for 4 months & a half, begging bread & water like any other tramp, flying a signal of distress permanently, & with 13 innocent, marveling, chuckle-headed Bermuda niggers on board, taking a Pleasure Excursion! Our ship fed the poor devils on the 25th of last May, far out at sea & left them to bullyrag their way to New York—& now they ain’t as near New York as they were then by 250 miles! They have drifted south & west 750 miles & are still drifting south [in] the relentless Gulf Stream! What a delicious magazine chapter it would make—but I had to deny myself. I had to come right out in the papers at once, with my details, so as to try to raise the government’s sympathy sufficiently to have ◇◇ better succor sent them than the cutter Colfax, which went a little way in search of them the other day & then struck a fog & gave it up.

If the President were in Washington I would telegraph him.

When I hear that the “Jonas Smith” has been found again, I mean to send for one of those darkies to come to Hartford & give me his adventures for an Atlantic article.

Likely you will see my ‸to-day’s‸ article in the newspapers.4

Ys Ever

Mark.

The revenue cutter Colfax went after the Jonas Smith thinking there was mutiny or other crime on board. It occurs to me now that since there ‸is‸ only mere suffering & misery & nobody to punish, it ceases to be a matter which (a republican form of ) government will feel authorized to interfere in further. Dam a republican form of government.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1

Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK):

UCLC 32562

The letter in which Clemens proposed sending “that story about the captain” to a club in San Francisco does not survive; neither the club nor the story has been identified. It is likely, however, that it was one of Captain Wakeman’s “yarns” about his adventures (see 5 Oct 1877 to Wakeman-Curtis).

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2Howells wanted to publish Clemens’s account of John T. Lewis’s dramatic rescue in the “Contributors’ Club” in the Atlantic Monthly (see 25 and 27 Aug 1877 to the Howellses). Clemens himself later fictionalized the incident in his unfinished novel Simon Wheeler, Detective (12 Nov 1877 to Nast, n. 4); in chapter 52 of Life on the Mississippi (1883); in a passage drafted for but ultimately omitted from Pudd’nhead Wilson; and in another incomplete work begun in 1905, “The Refuge of the Derelicts” (S&B, 372–78; FM, 161, 234–38).

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3Neither the source of the newspaper clipping, nor the relationship of Mary and Amos Langdon to the Langdons of Elmira, has been discovered.

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4That is, Clemens’s letter of the same day to the Hartford Courant, which, as he expected, was reprinted or redacted by other newspapers, including the New York Herald (“An Ocean Tramp,” 20 Sept 1877, 7) and Times (“Mark Twain’s ‘Tramp’ of the Sea,” 20 Sept 1877, 5); the Boston Globe (“A Tramp at Sea,” 21 Sept 1877, 5); and the Chicago Tribune (“A Tramp of the Sea,” 23 Sept 1877, 2).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, in pencil, NN-BGC. Clemens pasted a clipping from an unidentified newspaper to the first page.

Previous publication:

MTL, 1:309, partial publication; MTHL, 1:202–4.

Provenance:

See Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

out. They • ~.— | ~

• [in blue pencil]

• [in blue pencil]

house • [doubtful]

¶ • [drawn incorrectly in reverse]

to-day • to- | day

that • that that [corrected miswriting]

in • in in [corrected miswriting]