To Mary Mason Fairbanks
12 October 1868 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: CSmH, UCCL 02758)

148 Asylum st,
Hartford, Monday.

Dear Mother:

Yes, “how well we timed it—what a beautiful tableau,” &c. Plague take it, there wasn’t enough of it. If I had broken a leg, I would have been infinitely better satisfied. As you say, “No place could have been better chosen.”

Why didn’t I get your letter sooner, & so used your cool head instead of my hot one? I’ll [better I ]have written a letter that will finish me. I wish I had it back again—I would tone it down some.1

And thunder, I wrote the lecture the day before your letter came, too. That is to say, I “smouched” a lecture out of my [ bood book]—a good part of it, at least., came from the book. I had planned the lecture just about as you did, & wrote & wrote & kept writing till I saw that I was never going to weave a web that would suit me. So then I altered the [tittle ]to “The American Vandal Abroad,” & began again. Ther I treat him gently & good-naturedly, except that I give him one savage blast for aping foreign ways (illustrating with your friend late from Paris who gave a French pronunciation to his Cleveland friend’s name).2 To tell the truth there isn’t a great deal of Vandal in the [lecture. I ]glance at him in the Boulevards & at the Opera Comique—make him moralize poetically over the tomb of Napoleon—& I mention his execrable French. Then I describe the Park at Versailles—brief. Trot the gentleman to Genoa & Milan & let him see that hideous statue of a skinned man in the Cathedral (‘twill make you shudder)3—then shoot him by Como to Venice, where I become elaborate on the gondola in its queer aspect as a private carriage. And then I observe that:

“Our Vandals hurried away from Venice, & scattered abroad everywhere. You could find them breaking specimens from the dilapidated tomb of Romeo & Juliet, at Padua—& infesting the picture-galleries of Florence—& gravely seeking information concerning sausages, at Bologna—& risking their necks on the Leaning Tower at Pisa—& snuffing sulphur fumes from the crater of Vesuvius—& burrowing among the exhumed wonders of Herculaneum & Pompeii. And you could behold [ him ‸them‸ ], with specul ‸ta‸cles on & blue cotton umbrellas under their arms, benignantly contemplating Rome from the venerable arches of the Coliseum.”4

Now that isn’t ill-natured, is it? Then some more description: the Acropolis, the Parthenon & then, Athens by [moonlight. Then ]a glance at the Emperor of Russia—then the moral of the lecture, which is Let the Vandal continue to travel—it liberalizes him & makes a better man of him (though the moral is an entirely gratuitous contribution & will be a clear gain to the societies employing me, for it isn’t deduced from anything there is in the lecture)—& then, we close with a starchy & a high-toned [glimpse ]at each of the most imposing pictures we saw—Gibraltar, St Peters, Venice, the Pyramids, Damascus, &c—fireworks, you know—then, finis.5

Of course, scattered all through, are the most preposterous yarns, & all that sort of thing. But I think it will entertain an audience, this lecture. I must not preach to a select few in my audience, lest I have only a select few to listen, next time, & so be required to preach no more. What the societies ask of me is to relieve the heavieness of their didactic courses—& in accepting the contract I am just the same as giving my word that I will do as they ask.

Blame the fine arts & the Old masters, mother mine—that is forbidden ground for me—couldn’t say a word without abusing the whole tribe & their works like [pickpockets. Only ]a wholesome dread of you kept me from doing it anyhow.6

Col. Herrick writes & asks if I can lecture in Cleveland in Nov. at all.7 I’ve a notion to say I will, any time between the 1st & 15th. I would like you to write the first critique on this lecture—& then it wouldn’t be slurred [over ]carelessly, anyhow.

Give my love to all the family.

Your dutiful brick,

SamℓL. Clemens

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 See 5 Oct 68 to Mary Mason Fairbanks. The “letter that will finish me” was the one Clemens wrote on 4–5 October to Olivia. The present letter was therefore written on 12 October, the only “Monday” between 5 October and Clemens’s next, penitent letter to Olivia, dated 18 October.

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2 In his manuscript draft of the lecture Clemens wrote, “A lady passenger of ours used to tell of a fellow citizen of hers—in Pittsburgh—who spent 8 weeks in Paris & then went back home & addressed his dearest old bosom friend Herbert as ‘Mr. Erbair!’”; he went on to identify this Frenchified tourist as “Mr. Gordon” (SLC 1868, 7–8). Almost a year later he told Olivia that his description of Gordon in chapter 23 of Innocents (partly repeated in the lecture draft) was intended as a “portrait” of George Ensign, a San Francisco dandy: “When I uttered [it] in a lecture on Venice in San Francisco there was a perceptible flutter all over the house, because they recognized the portrait—& poor George was present, though I didn’t know he was there—only thought it likely he would be” (SLC to OLL, 3 Sept 69, CU-MARK, in LLMT, 107).

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3 Baedeker’s Italy. Handbook for Travellers described this statue of Saint Bartholomew by the late-sixteenth-century sculptor Marcus Agrate as “anatomically remarkable” because “the saint is represented flayed, with his skin on his shoulder” (Baedeker 1879, 120). Clemens commented in his lecture draft that it

looked natural, because it looked somehow as if it were in pain. A skinned man wd be likely to look that way—unless his attention were occupied by some other matter. It was a hideous thing, & yet there was a fascination about it somewhere. I am very sorry I saw it, because I shall always see it now. I shall dream of it, sometimes. I shall dream that it is resting its corded arms on the bed’s head & looking down on me with its dead eyes; I shall dream that it is stretched between the sheets with me & touching me with its exposed muscles & its stringy cold legs. (SLC 1868, 22–23)

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4 In his lecture draft Clemens wrote:

Our Vandals hurried away from Ven. & scattered abroad everywhere. You could find them breaking specimens from the ‸dilapidated‸ tomb of Romeo & Juliet at Padua—& infesting the picture-galleries of Florence—& risking their necks on the Leaning Tower at ‸of‸ Pisa—& snuffing sulphur fumes on the summit of Vesuvius—& burrowing among the exhumed wonders of Hercul & Pom—& you might see them with spectacles on & ‸blue cotton‸ umbrellas under their arms benevolently ‸benignantly‸ contemplating Rome from the venerable arches of the Coliseum. (SLC 1868, 42)

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5 The “starchy” closing Clemens describes here does not survive in the lecture draft, but the “moral” does:

If there is a moral to this lecture it is an injunction to all Vans to travel. I am glad the Am. Van goes abroad. It goes him good. It makes a better man of him. It rubs out ‸a multitude‸ [of] his old unworthy biases & prejudices. ‸It aids his religion for it‸ It enlarges his charity & his benevolence & makes ‸—it‸ broadens his views of men & things; it deepens his charity ‸generosity‸ & his compassion for the failings & shortcomings of his fellow-creatures. Contact with men of various nations & many creeds, teaches him that there are other people in the world besides his own little clique, & other opinions as worthy of attention & respect as his own. He finds that he & his are not the most momentous matters in the universe. Cast into trouble & misfortune in strange lands & being mercifully cared for by those he never saw before, he begins to learn that best lesson of all, ‸—that one wh culminat[e]s in the conviction that‸ that God puts something good & something lovable in every man his hands create.—that the men are not—that the world is not a cold, harsh, cruel & degraded prison-house, stocked with all manner of selfishness & hate & wickedness. It liberalizes the Van to travel—you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn, narrow-minded, self-conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place all ever since he was born & thought God made the world & dyspepsia & bile for his especial comfort & satisfaction. So I say, by all means, let the Am. Van. go on traveling. ‸—& let no man discour him.‸ (SLC 1868, 55–57)

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6 Clemens nevertheless did include a paragraph about the Vandal’s opinion of The Last Supper: “The Vandal goes to see this picture, which all the world praises—looks at it with a critical eye & says it’s a perfect old nightmare of a picture & he wouldn’t give $40 for a million like it—(& I endorse his opinion,) & then he is done with Milan” (SLC 1868, 27).

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7 Lieutenant Colonel John French Herrick (1836–1909) was elected corresponding secretary of the Cleveland Library Association in May 1868. He also served on its lecture committee, which eventually arranged for Clemens to appear in Cleveland on 17 November. Having won distinction in the Civil War as commander of the Twelfth Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, Herrick was now practicing law in partnership with his brother and acting as a United States court commissioner for northern Ohio (Cleveland Leader: “Cleveland Library Association,” 6 May 68, 1; advertisement, 17 Nov 68, 4; Van Tassel and Grabowski, 500; Cleveland Directory 1868, 186, 349).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. (CSmH, call no. HM 14234).

Previous publication: L2, 262–265; MTMF, 43–46.

Provenance:see Huntington Library, p. 512.

Emendations and textual notes:

better I • [‘I’ over wiped-out ‘ter’]

bood book • boodk

tittle • [sic]

lecture. I • lecture.— I

him ‸them‸ • ‸thie‸m

moonlight. Then • moonlight.—| Then

glimpse • glimps | glimpse [corrected miswriting]

pickpockets. Only • pickpockets.—| Only

over • ov | over [corrected miswriting]