Mark Twain Project :: Letters :: : an electronic text

To Pamela A. Moffett
3? September 1853 • New York, N.Y.
(Transcripts and MS facsimile: MTL, 1: 21–22, 31;
MTB, 1: 94–95; Paine, 48–49, UCCL 02713)
(SUPERSEDED)

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[. . . From ]the gallery (second floor) you have a glorious sight—the flags of the different countries represented, the lofty dome, glittering jewelry, gaudy tapestry, [&c., ]with the busy crowd passing to and fro—[tis ]a perfect fairy palace—beautiful beyond description.1

The [Machinery ]department is on the main floor, but I cannot enumerate any of it on account of the lateness of the hour (past [1 ] [o’clock.)] It would take more than a week to examine everything on exhibition; and [as ]I was only in a little over two hours [to-night, ]I only glanced at about one-third of the articles; [and ]having a poor memory, I have enumerated scarcely any of even the principal objects. The visitors to the [Palace ]average 6,000 daily—double the population of Hannibal. The price of admission being [50 ]cents, they take in about $3,000.2

The Latting Observatory (height about 280 feet) is near the Palace—from it you can obtain a grand view of the city and the country [round].3 The Croton Aqueduct, to supply the city with water, is the greatest wonder yet. Immense sewers are laid across the bed of the Hudson River, and pass through the country to Westchester [county], where a whole river is turned from its [course, ]and brought to New York. From the reservoir in the city to the Westchester [county ] [reservoir, ]the distance is [ thirty-eight ] [ miles!] [and] if necessary, they could [easily ]supply every family in New York with [ one hundred barrels of water per day! ] 4

I am very sorry to learn that Henry has been sick. [in margin: [Write, and let me know how Henry is.]] He ought to go to the country and take [exercise; ]for he is not half so healthy as Ma thinks he is. If he had my walking to [do, ]he would be another boy entirely. Four times every day I walk a little over [one ]mile; and working hard all [day, ]and walking four [miles, ] is exercise—I am used to [it now], though, and it is no trouble. Where is it Orion’s going to?5 Tell Ma my promises are faithfully [kept; ]and if I have my health I will take her to Ky. in the spring—I shall save money for this.6 Tell [Jim] and all the rest of them to [write,] and give me all the [news.7 I am sorry to hear such bad news from Will and Captain Bowen. I shall write to Will soon.8 The Chatham-square Post Office and the Broadway office too, are out of my way, and I always go to the General Post Office; so you must write the direction of my letters plain, “New York City, N. Y.,” without giving the street or anything of the kind, or they may go to some of the other offices. (It] has just struck 2 [A.M. ]and I always get up at [6, ]and am at work at [7].) You [ask] where I spend my evenings. Where would you suppose, with a free [printers’ ]library containing more than 4,000 volumes within a quarter of a mile of [me, ]and nobody at home to talk to? [I shall write to Ella soon. ] 9 ‸Write soon.‸

Truly your [Brother]

[ Sam ]

[P.S] I have written this by a light so dim that you nor Ma could not read by it.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 The first page (or pages) of the manuscript were evidently missing when Paine published it in 1912; except for the fragment he reproduced in facsimile, the remainder has since been lost. Clemens, however, is clearly describing the main floor of the Crystal Palace, which was divided into four sections housing exhibits from (1) the United States; (2) Great Britain and Ireland; (3) Belgium, France, and Germany; and (4) “various countries,” including Canada, Italy, Austria, Holland, and several others. The second-floor gallery gave an excellent view of sculpture displayed in the naves separating these divisions as well as in the central open space beneath the translucent dome. At night, the interior was illuminated by hundreds of gas lamps. The Machine Arcade, which Clemens mentions next, was along the east wall of the main floor and was filled with machines of every description, including the latest in printing equipment (Exhibition Catalogue, 7–23).

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2 Clemens probably wrote this letter in the early hours of 3 September, having visited the Crystal Palace the previous evening. September 2 was, in any case, the first day on which closing hour was extended until 10:00 P.M. Attendance for that day was reported at 6,125, close to the average of 6,300 in the week prior. Between 3 and 10 September, however, the average dropped well below 6,000, and between 12 and 16 September it jumped above 8,000. Given the “average 6,000 daily” Clemens reports here, it seems likely that he was writing before seeing any report of the temporary decline that began on 3 September (various notices, New York Tribune and New York Times, 23 Aug–16 Sept 53).

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3 The observatory built by Waring Latting, and opened to the public in July 1853, was actually 350 feet high. It stood between Forty-second and Forty-third streets, adjacent to the Crystal Palace (see illustration, p. 7). Telescopes on the upper levels, which one reached by steam-powered elevator, afforded a panoramic view of the city. In 1856 the tower was destroyed by fire, and two years later, the “indestructible” Crystal Palace likewise succumbed in a matter of minutes (Kouwenhoven, 243; Stokes, 44; “Amusements,” New York Times, 8 July 53, 5).

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4 A distributing reservoir for the Croton Aqueduct was adjacent to the Crystal Palace on Forty-second Street. Completed in 1842, the Croton aqueduct system was an engineering feat that attracted tourists and that delivered abundant water to a growing city for the rest of the century (Stokes, 44).

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5 Pamela seems to have written to Clemens as soon as she learned his whereabouts, presumably from seeing his 24 August letter to their mother on about 28 August. In reporting Orion’s plans to leave Hannibal, she evidently failed to mention his destination, possibly because Orion had not yet fully formed his plans. Not until 7 September did he notify subscribers to the Hannibal Journal that, because of “a large amount of business demanding undivided attention . . . for three or four weeks to come,” he was placing “the editorial department” in the hands of the Reverend Daniel Emerson (OC 1853, 2). It is likely that this “business” was Orion’s plan to sell the Hannibal paper and move the family to Muscatine, Iowa, provided he could form a partnership with John Mahin to edit the Muscatine Journal. By 22 September he had reached an agreement with Mahin, for on that day he sold the Hannibal Journal, and on 30 September published his first issue in Muscatine.

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6 Jane Lampton Clemens hoped to visit her ancestral home in Kentucky where, thirty years before, she had met and married John Marshall Clemens, originally from Virginia. Plans for such a trip come up again in 26–?28 Oct 53 to OC and HC, and 28 Nov 53 to OC.

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7 Clemens probably refers to his uncle James Andrew Hays Lampton (1824–79), his mother’s younger (by twenty-one years) half-brother, who had lived briefly next to the Clemenses in Hannibal in about 1845 or 1846. In 1897, Clemens remembered him as “a popular beau. . . . Good fellow, very handsome, full of life. Young doctor without practice, poor, but good family and considered a good catch. Captured by the arts of Ella Hunter, a loud vulgar beauty from a neighboring town—one of the earliest chipper and self-satisfied and idiotic correspondents of the back-country newspapers—an early Kate Field” (“Villagers of 1840–3,” Inds, 98). Lampton took his medical training in St. Louis, married Ella Evelina Hunter (1834?–1904) in November 1849, and lived in New London, ten miles south of Hannibal, until returning to St. Louis, probably in 1853. According to one obituary, Lampton “early abandoned the practice of [medicine] . . . for other vocations more congenial to his inclinations and habits” (Garrett, 7). By 1854 he was an accountant in the St. Louis office of the surveyor general of Missouri and Illinois, a position he held until the mid-1860s (Inds, biographical directory; Selby, 107; Knox, 110, 188; Robert V. Kennedy: 1857, 130; 1859, 284; 1860, 303).

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8 In 1870 Clemens addressed William Bowen (1836–93) as “My First, & Oldest & Dearest Friend” (MTLBowen, 18). Originally from Hannibal, Bowen became a pilot before Clemens did, but the two men were briefly associated on the steamers Alfred T. Lacey, A. B. Chambers, and Alonzo Child between 1859 and 1861. Bowen piloted for the North during the Civil War and then left the river to enter the insurance business in 1868, first in St. Louis and later in Texas. If Clemens in fact wrote to him “soon,” his letter is not known to survive, but the two men did correspond until within a few years of Bowen’s death. Clemens based Joe Harper in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn on Bowen. Bowen’s father, Samuel Adams Bowen, Sr. (1790–1853), had been a steamboatman early in life, and later a prosperous Hannibal merchant and insurance agent. The “bad news” from Will was doubtless of the Captain’s “protracted and painful illness,” which proved fatal on 2 November (“Died,” Canton [Mo.] Northeast Reporter, 10 Nov 53, 2; Ferris, 19; see Inds, biographical directory).

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9 Although Paine identified “Ella” as Clemens’s “cousin and one-time sweet-heart, Ella Creel” (MTL, 1:23), Creel lived in Keokuk, Iowa, which Clemens first visited in June 1855. It therefore seems more likely that the reference here is to Ella Hunter Lampton.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

Except for a partial facsimile of the MS in MTL, 1:31, containing ‘Where . . . by it.’ (14.7–13), the text is based on three printed transcriptions, none of them complete, that appear to derive independently from the lost MS:

P1	Paine, 48–49
P2	MTB, 1:94–95
P3	MTL, 1:21–22

For a general description of these printed texts, see pp. 456–59. Collation shows that they are in approximately the following relation to the MS:

Variants recorded at 13.20, 13.22–23, 13.31–14.5, 14.6, and 14.8 attest to this or a similar path of derivation. Although all three texts were edited by Paine, each was copy-edited independently. P1 was a condensation of P2 appearing in advance of book publication. Consequently readings in P1 and P2 frequently agree against the reading of P3, but since P1 and P2 derive independently of one another only from the same transcription of the MS, their agreement gives them no greater authority than resides in a reading in P3, which likewise derives from the MS through an intervening transcription. In fact, since P1 and P2 appear to have been edited more freely than P3, for example in variants recorded at 13.3, 13.6, 13.30, 14.9, and 14.10, the readings of P3 are adopted more often. When P1 and P2 disagree, on the other hand, agreement of P3 with either of them is persuasive evidence of the MS reading.

glyph Previous publication: L1, 13–16; see Copy-text.

glyph Provenance:Paine must have had the MS, or a photograph of at least part of it, in his possession when he published the partial facsimile in MTL in 1917. The first part of the MS was lost before 1912, when Paine introduced the surviving text with the comment, “A portion of a letter to his sister Pamela has been preserved,” referred to it as a “fragment,” and identified it as “the earliest existing specimen of his composition” (MTB, 1:94).

glyph Emendations, adopted readings, and textual notes:

For a general description of these printed texts, see pp. 456–59. Collation shows that they are in approximately the following relation to the MS:

[¶] . . . From (P3) • [¶] From (P1,P2)

&c., (P3) • etc., (P1,P2)

tis (P3) • ’tis (P1,P2)

Machinery (P3) • machinery (P1,P2)

1 (P2) • one (P1); 8 [Clemens’s subsequent comment that ‘It has just struck 2 A.M.’ (14.5) rules out the reading of P3. The entries at 13.12 and 14.6 suggest that P1 styled many of Clemens’s numerals as words.] (P3)

o’clock.) (P3) • o’clock). (P1,P2)

as (P3) • [not in] (P1,P2)

to-night, • to-night. (P1,P2); tonight, (P3)

and (P1,P3) • and, (P2)

Palace (P2,P3) • palace (P1)

50 (P2,P3) • fifty (P1)

round (P3) • around (P1,P2)

county (P3) • County (P1,P2)

course, (P3) • course‸ (P1,P2)

county (P3) • County (P1,P2)

reservoir, (P3) • reservoir‸ (P1,P2)

thirty-eight (P3) • thirty-eight (P1,P2)

miles! (P3) • miles, (P1); miles‸ (P2)

and (P3) • and, (P1,P2)

easily (P1,P2) • [not in] (P3)

one. . .day! (P3) • one hundred barrels of water per day. (P1); one hundred barrels of water per day! (P2)

Write. . .is. • [follows ‘by it.’ (14.13)] (P1,P2); [not in] (P3)

exercise; (P3) • exercise, (P1,P2)

do, (P2,P3) • do‸ (P1)

one (P3) • a (P1,P2)

day, (P3) • day‸ (P1,P2)

miles, is exercise— (P3) • miles is exercise. (P1,P2)

it now (P1,P2) • it, now (P3)

kept; (P1,P2) • kept, (P3)

Jim (P3) • Jim (Wolfe) (P1,P2)

write, (P2,P3) • write‸ (P1)

news. I . . . offices. (It (P3) • news. [three ellipsis points] [¶] (It (P1,P2)

A.M. (P3) • a.m., (P1,P2)

6, (P2,P3) • six (P1)

7 (P2,P3) • seven (P1)

ask (P1,P2) • ask me (P3)

printers’ (MS facsimile,P3) • printer’s (P1,P2)

me, (MS facsimile,P2,P3) • me‸ (P1)

I . . . Ella soon. (MS facsimile,P3) • [not in] (P1,P2)

Brother (MS facsimile,P3) • Brother, (P1); brother, (P2)

Sam (MS facsimile) • Sam. (P1, P2, P3)

P.S (MS facsimile) • P. S. (P1,P3); P.S.— (P2)