To Jane Lampton Clemens and Family
4 December 1866 • San Francisco, Calif.
(MS, damage emended: NPV, UCCL 00112)

San.f., Dec. 4, 1866.

My Dear folks—

I have written to Annie & Sammy & [Katie some ]time ago—also to the balance of you.1

I called on Rev. Dr Wadsworth last night with the City College man, but [the old rip ]wasn’t at home. I was sorry, because I wanted to make his acquaintance. I am [thick & thieves ]with the Rev. Stebbings, & I am laying for the Rev. Scudder & the Rev. Dr Stone.2 I am running on preachers, now, altogether. I find them gay. Stebbings is a regular brick. I am taking letters of introduction to [Henry Ward ]Beecher, Rev. [Dr Tyng], & [other ]eminent parsons in the east.3 Whenever anybody offers me a letter to a [preacher now], I snaffle it on the spot. I shall make Rev. Dr Bellows trot out the fast nags of the [cloth for ]me when I get to New York. Bellows is [ cons an able], upright & eloquent man—a man of imperial intellect & matchless power—he is [Christian ]in the truest sense of the term & is unquestionably a brick.4

I lectured in [Oakland ]the other night,5—guest of J. Ross Browne & his charming family, & a Mrs. Porter was to have been there to see me, but it rained & she couldn’t—he says she [ is knew ]me in Hannibal. I wonder who it is—‸ [ neé ] ‸ Lavinia Honeyman, maybe—I cannot think of any other.6

Gen. Drum has arrived in Philadelphia & established his [head-quarters ] [ a there], as [ Aj Adjutant ]Genℓ. [ under to Maj. ]Gen. Meade. Col. Leonard has received a letter from him in which he offers me a complimentary benefit if I will come there. I am much obliged, really, but I am afraid I shan’t lecture much in the States.7

The China Mail Steamer is getting ready & everybody says I am throwing away a fortune in not going in her. I firmly believe it myself.

I sail for the States in the Opposition steamer of the 15th inst., positively & without reserve. My room is already secured for me, & is the choicest in the ship. I know all the officers.8

Yrs Affℓy

Mark

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Evidently the preceding two letters.

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2 The prominent San Francisco clergymen mentioned here were: Charles Wadsworth (1814–82), pastor of Calvary Presbyterian Church; Horatio Stebbins (1821–1902), pastor of the First Unitarian Church; Henry Martyn Scudder (1822–95), pastor of Howard Presbyterian Church; and Andrew Leete Stone (1815–92), pastor of the First Congregational Church (ET&S2, 536–37; Langley 1865, 600; Langley 1867, 655). In “Important Correspondence,” published in the Californian on 6 May 1865, Clemens had facetiously claimed: “I have a great deal of influence with the clergy here, and especially with the Rev. Dr. Wadsworth and the Rev. Mr. Stebbins—I write their sermons for them” (ET&S2, 150). Wadsworth, Stebbins, and Stone were among the signers of a 5 December “call” soliciting Clemens’s final San Francisco lecture (see 6 Dec 66 to Low and others, n. 2).

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3 Beecher (1813–87), the most widely known minister of his time, was pastor of the fashionable Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn. Clemens apparently first heard him preach on 3 February 1867 and described the experience in a letter of 18 February to the San Francisco Alta California (SLC 1867, 1). Stephen Higginson Tyng (1800–85), rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church in New York City, was a renowned preacher and the first president of the National Freedman’s Relief Association, founded in February 1862 to assist slaves freed by Union forces (NCAB, 2:187–88; “National Freedman’s Association,” New York Times, 22 Feb 62, 8).

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4 Clemens’s friend Henry W. Bellows in 1866 became editor of the Christian Examiner, published in New York. This bimonthly was “one of the most important of American religious reviews not alone because of its exposition of the Unitarian point of view in theology throughout more than half a century, but because of its distinctive work in literary criticism, and its comment on social, philosophical, and educational problems” (Mott 1939, 284–85). Bellows continued as editor through 1869.

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5 On 27 November Clemens had lectured on the Sandwich Islands at the College of California in Oakland. Chartered in 1855, the college had developed from the Contra Costa Academy, a private school for boys founded by Congregational clergyman Henry Durant two years earlier. It grew into the University of California (established 1868), which Durant served as first president (“Mark Twain’s Lecture,” Oakland News, 28 Nov 66, 3; Hart, 120–21).

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6 Travel writer J. Ross Browne (1821–75) lived with his large family on a rambling property in Oakland. He was serving the United States Treasury Department as a “special commissioner to collect mining statistics in the States and Territories west of the Rocky mountains,” having been appointed on 28 July 1866 (Browne and Taylor, 3). Lavinia Honeyman (b. 1835 or 1836) had been one of Clemens’s childhood friends in Hannibal (Wecter, 184; Hannibal Census, 310). In “Villagers of 1840–3” he recalled that she “captured ‘celebrated’ circus-rider—envied for the unexampled brilliancy of the match—but he got into the penitentiary at Jefferson City and the romance was spoiled” (Inds, 102). It is not known if she was Mrs. Porter.

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7 Brevet Brigadier General Richard Coulter Drum (1825–1909) had been assistant adjutant general of the Department of California in the Division of the Pacific of the United States Army. He had been transferred from San Francisco to Philadelphia to assume the same post in the Division of the Atlantic under General George G. Meade (1815–72). Brevet Colonel Hiram Leonard (d. 1883) was deputy paymaster general of the Department of California in the Division of the Pacific (NCAB, 12:359; Langley 1865, 159, 274, 622; Heitman, 384, 628). He was among those who signed the 5 December “call” for Clemens’s Sandwich Islands lecture.

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8 Clemens sailed on the first leg of the trip to the East Coast on 15 December aboard the America, captained by Edgar Wakeman (1818–75). The America belonged to the North American Steamship Company, which offered passage to the East via Nicaragua, in “opposition” to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s older Panama route. The day Clemens left, the San Francisco Alta California described the commission it had recently given him:

“Mark Twain” goes off on his journey over the world as the Travelling Correspondent of the Alta California, not stinted as to time, place or direction—writing his weekly letters on such subjects and from such places as will best suit him; but we may say that he will first visit the home of his youth—St. Louis—thence through the principal cities to the Atlantic seaboard again, crossing the ocean to visit the “Universal Exposition” at Paris, through Italy, the Mediterranean, India, China, Japan, and back to San Francisco by the China Mail Steamship line. That his letters will be read with interest needs no assurance from us—his reputation has been made here in California, and his great ability is well known; but he has been known principally as a humorist, while he really has no superior as a descriptive writer—a keen observer of men and their surroundings—and we feel confident his letters to the Alta, from his new field of observation, will give him a world-wide reputation. (“‘Mark Twain’s’ Farewell,” 15 Dec 66, 2, in Benson, 213)

Clemens’s account of his harrowing voyage to New York is preserved in his note-book of the trip and in his correspondence for the Alta (see N&J1, 238–99, and MTTB, 11–81). His plan to visit the Far East, in acceptance of Anson Burlingame’s invitation, and then return to San Francisco by the China Mail Steamship line was not accomplished. He did, however, visit his family in St. Louis during March and April 1867, and he visited the Paris exposition, Italy, and the Mediterranean later that year as a member of the Quaker City excursion.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L1, 368–370; MTL, 1:122, with omissions.

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

Emendations and textual notes:

Katie some • Kati[e] some [torn]

the old rip • [Revised in pencil, probably by Paine: ‘the old rip‸he‸’ or possibly ‘the old rip‸he‸’.MTL reads ‘he’.]

thick & thieves • [sic]

Henry Ward • Henry [W]ard [torn]

Dr Tyng • D[] |Tyng [torn]

other • othrer [‘e’ over ‘r’]

preacher now • preache[r] |now [torn]

cloth for • cl[] |for [torn]

cons an able • [‘an able’ over ‘cons’]

Christian • Ch[r]istian [torn]

Oakland • O[a]kland [torn]

is knew • [‘k’ over ‘is’]

neé • [sic]

head-|quarters • head-|quarters [i.e., ‘headquarters’]

a there • [‘t’ over ‘a’]

Aj Adjutant • Ajdjutant [‘d’ over ‘j’]

under to Maj. • [‘to Maj.’ over ‘under’]