To Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett
22 June 1876 • Elmira, N.Y.
(Transcript by Albert Bigelow Paine: UCCL 12738)
(SUPERSEDED)

Elmira, June 22.

I got the tribe here all safe, Ma, & only lost my temper once—for 2 minutes[.] I found they had provided a very nice parlor, bath-room & one bedroom for us—so I was as mad as possible till another bedroom was added.1

We are at Mother’s yet—shan’t go to the farm for a week or more. I celebrated your birthday by going to church the day before, Ma. I mean to go again on your next birthday. This is much better than making presents, I guess.2

We left George at home in good health & hard at work. His wife is getting well.3 Our babies are in excellent health. I have to put the Bay to sleep every night, because she won’t mind anybody else—wants to be rocked or sung to, & we can’t allow that.

Pamela, read the Life of Bishop Patterson, by Charlotte Yonge. The first volume will probably show you that a boy [who] attends Eton school is a gentleman when he finishes; is also a manly man; & is also more thorough in what he knows than Yale College could make him. I believe Eton is the place to send Sammy, & then to an English University—& never an American College.4

American schools & colleges must of necessity be tainted with the moral & political laxities of the present American atmosphere—whereas English schools & colleges turn out great & good & perfectly pure [men.] This latter is more important than erudition itself. Get an American taint in an American College, & will you ever get it entirely out again in an English college?

I doubt it. Of course there are impurities wherever there are boys, but they can be better resisted in English colleges than in ours. Read Ticknor’s diary & you will perceive (what you perhaps already know) that real scholarship is a thing almost unknown in America.5 We are never thorough in anything. Just the reverse in Europe. I am very glad indeed that you had a good time in New York, but am sincerely sorry you did not remain there a week longer & go with Hutchings 6 to some sea-side place. Livy & I join in love to you all.

Affly

Sam.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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1 The outburst occurred in New York, at the St. James Hotel, on Broadway at Twenty-sixth Street, where the Clemens family stopped en route to Elmira for the summer. They had left Hartford on 15 June (3 June 76 to Fairbanks; “Arrivals at the Hotels,” New York Times, 16 June 76, 3; L6, 556).

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2 This paragraph raises apparent questions about the placement of this letter in 1876. Despite Clemens’s assertion that he and his family would remain at Olivia Lewis Langdon’s home in Elmira proper “for a week or more,” the next letter indicates that they were in fact settled at Quarry Farm sometime on 22 June. Moreover, Jane Clemens’s birthday, 18 June, was a Sunday in 1876, making Clemens’s report of attending church “the day before” seem more appropriate to 1877, when her birthday fell on a Monday. But in 1877 the Clemenses were already at Quarry Farm by 14 June. No other years when Clara Clemens (“the Bay,” born on 8 June 1874 at Quarry Farm) could reasonably be considered a baby are possible: in the summer of 1875 the Clemens family did not go to Elmira; in 1878 and 1879 they were in Europe. Furthermore, allusions later in the letter to the ongoing discussion of Samuel E. Moffett’s education, to Clemens’s reading, and to Jane Clemens’s and Pamela Moffett’s travels after leaving Hartford on 10 June support 1876 as the year this letter was written.

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3 George Griffin was the family butler. He and his young wife, Mary Washington Griffin (1860–1937), moved sometime during 1876 from 132 Wells Street to 59 Farmington Avenue, about six blocks from the Clemenses (although he at that time or soon after maintained a third-floor room in the Clemens household where he regularly stayed and boarded). The nature of Mary Griffin’s illness is not known (L6, 583 n. 5; “State of New York Certificate and Record of Birth” for Lucius Griffin, dated 27 Mar 1897; Geer 1876, 70; Geer 1877, 80; Overland 2000).

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4 Yonge’s book was her Life of John Coleridge Patteson, Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands (Yonge 1874). Clemens here elaborated on the proposals for Samuel E. Moffett’s education he had made in January (see 6 Jan 76 to Moffett) and probably again during Pamela Moffett’s recent visit to Hartford.

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5 Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor (Ticknor 1876). In his youth Ticknor believed

the best plea it seemed possible to make before the bar of Europe for the intellect of America was, that the raw material was abundant, but the appliances for education so imperfect that originality had no chance of obtaining justice, for want of scholarship to place it well before the world. Mr. Ticknor felt this want; but before he sought to supply it abroad he had proved, that, when the eager thirst was accompanied by certain moral attributes, attainments were possible, even here, sufficient to place their possessor in full communion with the more fortunate inhabitants of countries which offered every means of mental training. (2:496)

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6 Unidentified.

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:

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