To Orion Clemens
18 March 1861 • St. Louis, Mo.
(Typed transcription by or for Albert Bigelow Paine and MS: CU-MARK and NPV, UCCL 00022)

St. Louis, Mch 18.0 1

My Dear Bro,

Your last has just come to hand. It reminds me strongly of Tom Hood’s letters to his family, (which I have been reading [lately).]2 But yours only remind me of his, for although there is a striking likeness, your humour is much finer than his, and far better expressed. Tom Hood’s wit, (in his letters) has a savor of labor about it which is very disagreeable. Your letter is good. That portion of it wherein the old sow figures is the very best thing I have seen lately. Its quiet style resembles Goldsmith’s “Citizen of the World” and “Don Quixotte,”—which are my beau ideals of fine writing.

You have paid the preacher! Well, that is good, also. What a man wants with religion in these breadless times, surpasses my comprehension.

Pamela and I have just returned from a visit to the most wonderfully [beautiful] painting which this city has ever seen—Church’s “Heart of the Andes”—which represents a lovely valley with its rich vegetation in all the bloom and glory of a tropical summer—dotted with birds and flowers of all colors and shades of color, and sunny slopes, and shady corners, and twilight groves, and cool cascades—all grandly set off with a majestic mountain in the background with its gleaming summit clothed in everlasting ice and snow! I have seen it several times, but it is always a new picture—totally new—you seem to see nothing the second time which you saw the first. We took the opera glass, and examined its beauties minutely, for the naked eye cannot discern the little wayside flowers, and soft shadows and patches of sunshine, and half-hidden bunches of grass and jets of water which form some of its most enchanting features. There is no slurring of perspective effect about it—the most distant—the minutest object in it has a marked and distinct personality—so that you may count the very leaves on the trees. When you first see the tame, ordinary-looking picture, your first impulse is to turn your back upon it, and say Humbug—but your third visit will find your brain gasping and straining with futile efforts to take all the wonder in—and appreciate it in its fulness—and understand how such a miracle could have been conceived and executed by human brain and human hands. You will never get tired of looking at the picture, but your reflections—your efforts to grasp an intelligible Something—you hardly know what—will grow so painful that you will have to go away from the thing, in order to obtain relief. You may find relief, but you cannot banish the picture—it remains with you still. It is in my mind now—and the smallest feature could not be removed without my detecting it. So much for the “Heart of the Andes.”3

Ma was delighted with her trip, but she was disgusted with the girls for allowing me to embrace and kiss them—and she was horrified at the Schottische as performed by Miss Castle and myself. She was perfectly [willing] for me to dance until 12 o’clock at the imminent peril of my going to sleep on the after watch—but then she would top off with a very inconsistent sermon on dancing in general; ending with a terrific broadside aimed at that heresy of heresies, the Schottische.4 But then she is an old fogy, you know.

I took Ma and the girls in a carriage, round that portion of New Orleans where the finest gardens and residences are to be seen, and although it was a blazing hot, dusty day, they seemed hugely delighted. To use an expression which is commonly ignored in polite society, they were “hell-bent” on stealing some of the luscious-looking oranges from branches which overhung the fences, but I restrained them. They were not aware before that shrubbery could be made to take any queer shape which a skilful gardener might choose to twist it into, so they found not only beauty but novelty in their visit. We went out to Lake Pontchartrain in the cars.

Give my love to Mollie and Jeannie.

Ma will send you some money.

Your Brother

Sam. Clemens

P.S. Ma has got a check for the money ‸($25)‸ and asked me to enclose it.

P.P.S.—I owe Mollie one!

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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0The present text, notes, and apparatus supersede those previously published in L1, 320–21. L1’s version is available here.

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1In the absence of all but a few fragments of the original manuscript, the principal source for this letter is Paine’s typed transcript, on which he posited the year of composition as “59 or 60.” The transcript served as copy for his publication of the text in Paine 1912, 124:224, MTL, and MTB, where he printed the year as 1860—probably a guess necessitated by the manuscript’s giving place and day but no year. The correct year is established by Clemens’s subsequent reference to Church’s Heart of the Andes, first exhibited in St. Louis between 27 February and 21 March 1861 (“Amusements,” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 27 Feb and 18 Mar 61, 4).

Heart of the Andes by Frederic E. Church, oil on canvas, 1859. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Mrs. David Dows, 1909 (09.95).

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2Clemens was probably referring to Thomas Hood’s Up the Rhine (1839), an epistolary novel recounting a family’s holiday in Germany (see Brashear 1934, 218–22).

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3Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900) first exhibited this painting in the spring of 1859 at his New York studio, drawing crowds of thousands willing to pay twenty-five cents to view it. After showings in London and Edinburgh, Heart of the Andes was returned to New York and subsequently exhibited in Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis (Huntington 1966, 5–6). Clemens’s “several” visits to see it at the Western Academy of Art must have occurred between 15 and 18 March (see note 4). Almost thirty years later Clemens became friends with Church, visiting him at Olana, his mansion on the Hudson River (Church to SLC, 16 Dec 87, CU-MARK).

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4Clemens had taken his mother, a Miss Castle from St. Louis, and an otherwise unidentified young woman to New Orleans aboard the Alonzo Child. On 27 February, the Child left St. Louis carrying twenty to thirty couples of young people from Boonville, Missouri—for many years Captain David DeHaven’s home—for a pleasure trip south. “They were a gay party, and came in a body as a special compliment to Captain D. DeHaven, who has just resumed command of his fine boat, after a protracted illness” (“River News,” St. Louis Evening News, 28 Feb 61, 3). The Child reached New Orleans on 6 March, departed two days later, and arrived back in St. Louis on 15 March. A “fine band of music,” which presumably played for the schottische (a dance similar to the polka), reportedly accompanied the party (“River News,” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 16 Mar 61, 4). Paine identified the third guest, with varying degrees of certainty, as Clemens’s cousin Ella Creel (see MTB, 1:156, and MTL, 1:47).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

This composite text is based on a typed transcript that derives directly from the MS (Tr), and fragments of surviving manuscript (MS). Three other partial texts, Paine 1912, 124:224, MTB, 1:155–56, and MTL, 1:45–47, all derive from Tr.

Tr	Typed transcription by or for Albert Bigelow Paine, CU-MARK. ‘St. Louis . . . was perfectly willing’ and ‘at that heresy . . . for the money.’
MS	Jean Webster McKinney Papers, Special Collections, NPV. ‘for me to dance . . . broadside aimed’ and ‘Your Brother . . . one!’.

Previous publication:

L1, 116–18, partial publication.

Provenance:

See McKinney Family Papers and Paine Transcripts in Description of Provenance.

Emendations, adopted readings, and textual notes:

lately). • ~,) (Tr)

beautiful • beautifully (Tr)

willing • [‘willing’ was divided at the end of a line in the MS text; the surviving fragment begins with ‘ling’] (MS)