To Susan I. (Belle) Stotts
11 August 1860 • Cairo, Ill.
(MS: NPV, UCCL 00024)

Cairo, Saturday, Aug. 11.

Dear Belle:

Confound me if I wouldn’t eat up half a dozen of you small girls if I just had the merest shadow of a chance this morning. Here I am, now, about 3 weeks out from Keokuk, and 2 from St. Louis, and yet I have not heard a word from you—and may not, possibly, for 2 or 3 more weeks, as we shall go no further up the river at present, but turn back from here and go to New Orleans.1

Just go on, though—go on. I have had a pleasant trip, and there is consolation in that. I quarreled with the mate,2 and “made it up” with him; and I quarreled with him again, and made it up again; and quarreled and “made up” the third time—and I have got the shell of half a [watermelon ]by me now, ready to drop on his head as soon as he comes out of the “Texas,”—which will produce quarrel No. 4, if I have made my calculations properly.

Yes, and I have disobeyed the Captain’s orders over and over again, which produced a “state of feeling” in his breast, much to my satisfaction—(bless your soul, I always keep the law on my side, you see, when the Chief Officer is concerned,) and I am ready now to quarrel with anybody in the world that can’t whip me.3 Ah me, I feel as strong as a yoke of oxen, this morning, and nothing could afford me greater pleasure than a pitched battle with you three girls.4 [It ] can’t be, though. However, [ I f I’ll ] “fix” the mate when he comes out.

Belle, you ought to see the letter I wrote last night for a friend of mine. He is fearfully love-sick, and he feared he should die, if he didn’t “pour out his soul” (he said—“stomach,” I should say,) in an epistolary form to the “being,” (Ella Creel knows what that word means,) who has entrapped his virgin affections. Poor devil—he said “Make it the letter sweet—fill it full of love,” and I did, as sure as you live. But if the dose don’t turn the young lady inside out, she must certainly [ ha be ]endowed with the stomach of an ostrich.

But did you girls see the Aurora Borealis last night (Friday?) It was very beautiful, but it did not last long. It reckon you girls had been home from choir-meeting about an hour when I saw it—or perhaps you were out on the [bluff. “Somebody ]remarked [ “A “Snag ]ahead!” and I lost the finest part of the sight.

Now, Belle, can’t you write to [me], right away, to “Care of Eclipse Wharf Boat, Memphis, Tenn?”5 Of course you can, if you will. I sent you 2 pieces of instrumental music and a song to Ella Creel from [Vicksburgh]—did they arrive safely?

Oh, confound Cairo.

Good-bye my dear

Sam

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Having left his berth on the City of Memphis, Clemens visited Keokuk during the first three weeks of July before returning to St. Louis for a new assignment: he was aboard the Arago for its 28 July departure for Vicksburg. A small, recently built steamer under Captain George P. Sloan, the Arago was not, as previously conjectured (Bates 1967, 102–3), operating as a “transient” or “tramp steamboat,” but as a scheduled boat for a major company, the St. Louis and Vicksburg Mail Packet Line. On Clemens’s first trip, the Arago did not reach St. Louis in time for its regularly scheduled departure (Saturday, 11 August), having spent about two days lightening off the City of Memphis, which had grounded on a sandbar near Greenville, Mississippi. The Arago’s owners earned $1,300 for this service, but were obliged to substitute another boat in the schedule. Captain Sloan transferred his St. Louis-bound freight at Cairo and began loading there for the return trip south, departing on 12 August. Clemens remained as one of the Arago’s pilots (the other was J. W. Hood) until 31 August. He apparently was no longer aboard when, on 9 September, the boat struck a snag and sank near Goose Island; contemporary reports of the accident do not mention him. The Arago was soon refloated and, by mid-October, ready for business, but Clemens was by then established as a pilot of the Alonzo Child, a berth he assumed on 19 September (Bates 1968, 148).

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2 Unidentified.

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3 Captain Sloan, who owned a two-thirds interest in the Arago, was characterized in the river columns as a well-known, popular steamboat commander. Clemens’s disobedience of his orders presumably involved navigational decisions made while the boat was under way in the river. At such a time the pilot’s authority was absolute, as Clemens reported in chapter 14 of Life on the Mississippi:

The captain could stand upon the hurricane deck, in the pomp of a very brief authority, and give him [the pilot] five or six orders while the vessel backed into the stream, and then that skipper’s reign was over. The moment that the boat was under way in the river, she was under the sole and unquestioned control of the pilot. He could do with her exactly as he pleased, run her when and whither he chose, and tie her up to the bank whenever his judgment said that that course was best. His movements were entirely free; he consulted no one, he received commands from nobody, he promptly resented even the merest suggestions. Indeed, the law of the United States forbade him to listen to commands or suggestions, rightly considering that the pilot necessarily knew better how to handle the boat than anybody could tell him.

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4 Probably (in addition to Belle Stotts herself) Eleanor J. (Ella) Patterson, born in 1840, and Mary E. (Ella) Creel, born in 1840 or 1841. Paine reported that Clemens’s “favorite companions” during the Keokuk years were “Ella Creel, a cousin on the Lampton side, a great belle; also Ella Patterson (related through Orion’s wife and generally known as ‘Ick’), and Belle Stotts” (MTB, 1:106). Belle Stotts and Ella Patterson were cousins. Ella Patterson, though virtually the same age as Ella Creel, was nevertheless her aunt. And Ella Creel was Clemens’s second cousin, the daughter of his mother’s cousin Robert P. Creel and Ella Patterson’s oldest sister, Mary Ann (see 5 Aug 56 to HC, n. 6). Ella Patterson was never known as “Ick,” who in fact was one of her sisters, Margaret Patterson Starkweather. By all accounts the two Ellas were good friends and frequent companions. In her diary for 11 April 1862, for instance, Mollie Clemens noted, “Went to Ick Starkweathers, E. C, E P. there had a nice time” (MEC, 40). Paine’s report that Ella Creel was Clemens’s “one-time sweetheart” (MTL, 1:23) has not been confirmed (Biographical Review, 492; Keokuk Census [1850], 423, 433; Keokuk Census [1860], 151–52; JLC to “Livy Children & Sam,” 24 Jan 85, Davis 1981, 2).

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5 The Eclipse was “the longest, largest, most elegant, and just about the fastest” steamboat on the Mississippi from the time of its construction in 1852 until February 1860 when, severely damaged in a storm, it was dismantled (Way 1975, 40, 46). J. D. Morton and Company had purchased the hull and, on 28 July, anchored it as a wharfboat on the upper levee at Memphis. Clemens later commemorated the Eclipse in Life on the Mississippi (chapter 30).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).

Previous publication: L1, 99–102; MTBus, 34–35, misdated 1857; someone, probably Paine, wrote ‘[1857]’ in the top margin of the first MS page.

Provenance:see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 459–61.

Emendations and textual notes:

water‐|melon • watermelon

It • [‘t’ inserted in pencil. Clemens wrote the letter in pencil and probably corrected it himself, but the contrast between the block-letter form of the ‘t’ and the cursive text around it raises the possibility that someone else, possibly Paine, made the change.]

I f I’ll • I‸’ll‸ f [‘’ll’ over ‘f’ before underscore was written; ‘I f’ possibly ‘If’]

ha be • [‘be’ over ‘ha’]

bluff. “Somebody • bluff.—| “Somebody

“A “Snag • ‸“Snag‸ A [‘S’ over possible ‘A’]

me • [me] [torn]

Vicksburgh • [sic]