To Jane Lampton Clemens and Family
7 June 1867 • New York, N.Y.
(MS: NPV, UCCL 00134)

New York, June 7.

Dear Folks—

I suppose we shall be many a league at sea tomorrow night, & goodness knows I shall be unspeakably glad of it.

I haven’t got [ anything ]to write, else I would write it. I have just written myself clear out in letters to the Alta, & I think they are the stupidest letters that were ever written from New York. Corresponding has been a perfect drag ever since I got to the Stateƒs. If it continues, abroad, I don’t know what the Tribune & Alta folks will think.

I have withdrawn the Sandwich Island book—it would be useless to publish it in these dull publishing times. As for the Frog book, I don’t believe that will ever pay anything worth a cent. I published it simply to advertise myself & not with the hope of making anything out of it.1

Well, I haven’t anything to write, except that I am so tired of staying in one place that I am in a fever to get away. Read r my Alta letters—they contain everything I could possibly write to you. Tell Zeb & John Leavenworth to write me—they can get plenty of gossip from Essie & Lou & the pilots.2

An importing house3 sent [ me two ]cases of exquisite champaign aboard the ship for me to-day—Veuve Cliquot & [ L’a Lac ]d’Or. I & my room-mate have set apart every Saturday as a solemn fast-day, wherein we will entertain no light matters or frivolous conversation, but only get drunk. {That is a joke.} His mother & sisters are the best & most home-like people I have yet found in a brown-stone front. There is no style about them except in house [& ]furniture.4

I wish Orion were going on this voyage, for I believe with so many months of freedom from business cares he could not help but be cheerful & jolly. I often wonder if his law business [it ]going satisfactorily to him, but knowing that the dull season is setting in now (it looked like it had already set [ it in ] in before,) I have felt as if I could almost answer the question myself—which is to say in plain words, I was afraid to ask. I wish I had gone to Washington in the winter instead of going West. I could have gouged an office out of Bill Stewart for him, & that would have atoned for the loss of my home [visit.5 But I am so worthless that it seems to me I never do anything or accomplish anything that lingers in my mind as a pleasant memory. My mind is stored full of unworthy [conduct ]toward Orion & toward you all, & an accusing conscience gives me peace only in excitement & restless moving from place to place. If I could say I had done one thing that ‸for‸ any of you that entitled me to your good opinions (I say nothing of your love, for I am sure of that, no matter how unworthy of it I may make myself,—from Orion down, you have always given me that, all the days of my life, when God Almighty knows I have seldom deserved it,) I believe I could go home & stay there—& I know I would care little for the world’s praise or blame. There is no satisfaction in the world’s praise, anyhow, & it has no worth to me save in the way of business. I tried to gather up its compliments to send to you, but the work was distasteful & I dropped it.6

You observe that under a cheerful exterior I have got a spirit that is angry with me & gives me freely its contempt. I can get away from that at sea, & be tranquil & satisfied—& so, with my parting love & benediction for Orion & all of you, I say good bye & God bless you all—& welcome the winds that wafts a weary soul to the sunny lands of the Mediterranean!

Yrs forever

Sam.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens admitted in December 1870 that when he published the Jumping Frog book in 1867, he “fully expected” it to “sell 50,000 copies & it only sold 4,000,” the latter being an accurate approximation of its actual sale in the United States by that time (SLC to Francis S. Drake, 26 Dec 70, NN-B; ET&S2, 544–46). Mark Twain was unaware until the spring or summer of 1868 that George Routledge and Sons had reprinted the volume in England, where it was not protected by British or American copyright law. By 1870 the book had also been reprinted in England by John Camden Hotten, and by the time of Hotten’s death in 1873, these two publishers had printed some 43,000 copies of it ( ET&S2, 547–48). Mark Twain’s Sandwich Islands manuscript, on the other hand, seems not to have interested Dick and Fitzgerald—or any other publisher. On 15 June the American Literary Gazette and Publishers’ Circular noted, “The Trade is reported quiet at present; some publishers intimating that they will now wait until fall before putting out any new books” (“Notes on Books and Booksellers,” 9 [15 June 67]: 100). The book was never published, and the manuscript is not known to survive.

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2 Zebulon Leavenworth (1830–77), still an active pilot, and his brother John M. Leavenworth (b. 1835 or 1836), formerly a clerk in a wholesale grocery firm but now a steamboat captain, were both old friends of Clemens’s whom he had doubtless seen most recently in St. Louis where, on 27 March, his application for reinstatement in the Masons’ Polar Star Lodge No. 79 was formally submitted, endorsed by “Brothers Leavenworth and W. P. Curtis” (L1, 107 n. 2; St. Louis Census 1860, 180; Edwards 1867, 511; Denslow, 57). For Essie Pepper and Lou Conrad, see 15 Apr 67 to JLC and family, n. 6.

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3 Unidentified.

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4 Ann J. Slote (b. 1801 or 1802), widow of Daniel Slote, Sr., lived with her son and his sisters—Josephine, aged about twenty-nine, and Ann, aged about twenty-six—at 44 East Twenty-sixth Street, just north of Madison Square (Wilson 1867, 957; New York Census 1860, 920–21).

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5 Although Orion had been in St. Louis or Keokuk, or both, during Clemens’s visit, he spent most of his time in 1867 attending to the family property in Tennessee. From October 1866 until nearly the end of April 1867, he contributed nine letters to the San Francisco Times, for which he was presumably paid, but probably very little. When in St. Louis, he boarded (for an unknown but probably minimal fee) with his sister and mother, listing himself in the city directory as a lawyer and taking whatever work he could find. On 9 May, for instance, Orion reported to Mollie (still living with her parents in Keokuk) that “Ludington paid me twenty dollars yesterday for legal services. I send you five. I paid Pamela five on account” (OC 1866 [bib10836], 1866 [bib10837], 1867 [bib10838], 1867 [bib10839], 1867 [bib10318], 1867 [bib10319], 1867 [bib10320], 1867 [bib10843], 1867 [bib10844]; Edwards 1867, 257; OC to MEC, 9 May 67, CU-MARK). But ]evidently he was also hoping for employment as a correspondent with a New York periodical. On 25 May Pamela reported to Orion:

I wrote you that the article you sent the N.Y. Weekly had been published. I now send you the paper. You will not fail to observe the invitation to write as often as convenient. The natural inference is that they were pleased with the article. Now I want to advise you to write several contributions, and wait until they are published, before you say anything about pay. I think this is important.

Mrs. Green says she has always liked your writings. She thinks your style is particularly pleasing. I believe it is Mrs. Ludington who says, if any thing, she likes your style better than Sam’s. I think your style will be popular if you once become known to the public. We have rec’d no California paper since you left. (PAM to OC, 25 May 67, NPV)

Orion’s last two letters to the San Francisco Times (the “California paper” Pamela mentioned) were published on 22 and 23 May, and had therefore not yet reached St. Louis. His letter to Street and Smith’s New York Weekly (presumably the journal Pamela referred to) has not been found, and Orion seems not to have pursued the matter, at least not successfully. William M. Stewart (1827–1909), Republican senator from Nevada (1864–75 and 1887–1905), had been first among equals in signing the “call” for Clemens to lecture in New York. At the time of this letter, Stewart had just sent (or was about to send) Clemens himself an offer of a post as his private secretary (Effie Mona Mack, 55).

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6 Frank Fuller did, however, collect “a lot of notices” of Clemens’s New York lecture debut, giving them to Clemens in November 1868 (28 Nov 68 to OLL).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L2, 57–59; MTB, 1:320, 322–23, excerpts; MTL, 1:127–28, with omissions.

Provenance:see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 512–14.

Emendations and textual notes:

anything • any-|thing

me two • [‘two’ over ‘me’]

L’a Lac • L‸ac‸‘a

& • [possibly ‘◇ &’]

it • [sic]

it in • [‘n’ partly formed]

visit. But • visit.—|But

conduct • co[n]-|duct [torn]