To Pamela A. Moffett
per Unidentified Stenographer
6 and 7 January 1876 • Hartford, Conn.
(Transcript by Albert Bigelow Paine: CU-MARK, UCCL 12737)
(SUPERSEDED)

(Stenographic letter.)

Hartford, Conn., Jany. 6th 1876.

My Dear Sister:—

I have not sent my last letter to the Secretary of the Navy, and believe I will not send it at all. I can’t write him a letter without losing my temper, and so perhaps it will be politer to keep still. I may possibly get down to Washington during the winter and be able to talk by word of mouth. But, in truth, I have been wondering lately if there might not be a wiser course to pursue with Sammy.1 It seems to me that if Sammy’s income is as much as $1000. a year perhaps the very best thing to do with him will be to send him to England to be educated.2 Give him a preparatory course at Eton or Rugby, or still better, at Marlborough school, and then finish him at [Baliol] College, Oxford.

[Or, what] may possibly be as well, and less expensive, educate him at Heidelberg. If he had no resources and was going to be obliged to fight his way hard in the world I should be the last person to recommend to him an exhaustive education—or much education of any kind. But since his livelihood is going to be pretty fairly provided for it seems to me no good reason why he should harness himself to the navy, or be anybody else’s servant. If he possessed only ordinary talent the navy might be a good place to waste him on; but the more I think of it the more I am inclined to the belief that he ought to go to Oxford or Heidelberg and be furnished with a complete education. I should say Oxford because a youth would get a political training there—a training for citizenship that he can get no where else in the world, least of all in America.

Moncure D. Conway, an old London friend of ours, who has a delightful wife and an equally delightful family of young people, is visiting us, and he says that whenever Sammy needed to run down to London he would always be welcome at his house. He knows the head master of Marlborough school; he knows Prof. Jowett of [Baliol] College; he knows various people in Oxford. A brother of our English friend, Mr. Wyndham, is a professor in Oxford; and no doubt Sammy would have a pleasant time there.4 The students of the various colleges in Oxford have promised me a tremendous blow-out several times if I would come down, and no doubt they would take good care of Sammy. I wish you would think of this matter and write me about it.5

We seemed to gather from Molly that Ma has been sick. Is this so? We heard nothing of it. How is she now? Is she recovered? It seems a long ways to go to Keokuk for family news.6

I have been in the doctor’s hands for four weeks and have not written to anybody, hardly, but am trying to catch up with my correspondence again now, with assistance.7

Yr Bro.

[ Sam. ]

[P.S.—(Jan. 7)—Am well again, at last, after 5 weeks illness. Did a full day’s work yesterday.]

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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1 In 1874 and 1875 Clemens had tried in vain to help his nephew, Samuel E. Moffett, secure an appointment to the Naval Academy. Secretary of the Navy George Robeson had annoyed Clemens by not providing expected assistance. Clemens’s unsent letter to Robeson probably was the unrecovered one that he wrote on 22 December 1875 (L6, passim, especially 603).

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2 The source of this income has not been determined. Presumably it was from investments that Pamela held in her own or Samuel Moffett’s name, possibly deriving from the estate of her husband, William, a St. Louis merchant who had died in 1865 (L1, 2).

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4 Benjamin Jowett (1817–93) was professor of Greek and master of Balliol College at Oxford University. Edward Wyndham would host the Clemenses during their visit to Oxford in August 1879 (see N&J2, 290, 337). Clemens may have met him when he first visited Oxford in 1872 (L5, 189–90, 614). His brother has not been identified. The current headmaster of Marlborough School was Frederic William Farrar (1831–1903), a scholar of philology and ordained priest, who resigned later in 1876 to become canon of St. Margaret’s parish of Westminster Abbey (T. E. Rogers, Hon. Archivist of Marlborough College, personal communication).

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5 Pamela Moffett’s reply has not been found. None of Clemens’s present proposals for Samuel Moffett’s education were adopted. Instead he was educated at the University of California at Berkeley and at Columbia University <L6, 603).

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6 Jane Clemens was living in Fredonia, New York, with Pamela and Samuel Moffett. Orion and Mollie Clemens were living in Keokuk, Iowa. No family letters reporting on Jane Clemens’s current health are known to survive.

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7 That is, from the unidentified stenographer. Clemens’s physician was Cincinnatus A. Taft (L4, 333 n. 3).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Copy-text:

Transcript by Albert Bigelow Paine, CU-MARK.

Provenance:See Paine Transcripts in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

Baliol • [sic]

[¶] Or, what • [flush left, no ¶] Or, what

Baliol • [sic]

Sam. |[paraph] • Sam.

P.S. . . . yesterday. • P.S. . . . yesterday. [probably added in SLC’s hand]