‸P.S—Oh, excuse haste, bad grammar & everything. I am in a fidget all the time. {I am getting to italicise, like a girl.}‸
N. Y. Tribune Bureau
Washington D.C. Dec. 2.
My Dear Forgiving Mother—
It all came of making a promise! I might have known it. I never keep a promise. I don’t know how. They only taught about the wise virgins & the stupid ones, in our Sunday School—never anything about promises. The truth is, Mr. Bennett1 sent for me two or three times before I consented to approach‸ed‸ the Herald. They found me, the last time, within 200 yards of the St Nicholas, whither I was going to dine with you & Charlie. Well, I was bitter on those passengers. You don’t know what atrocious things women, & men too [ old gray-haired ]& old to have their noses pulled, said about me. And but for your protecting hand I would have given them a screed or two that would have penetrated even their muddy intellects & given ‸afforded‸ them something worth abusing me about.2 Well, the last time I was sent for, Mr it was Mr. Glen, chief of the foreign correspondence department that came, & he just happened to touch this old bitterness & in the right place. I had had no time to go anywhere or get any money; I wanted fifty dollars; I thought, now, I can make that in two hours, & stir up those Quakers most lusciously ‸delightfully‸ at the very same time—& yet, say nothing that will sound malicious. I found part of that old article in my pocket, & roped ‸rung‸ ‸darted‸ it in.3 It was well I didn’t find it all—& well it was, also, that all real malice passed out of my heart while I wrote. Else I would ‸must‸ have said be itter things. And yet to this day I have a strong desire, whenever I think of some of the events of that trip with that menagerie, to print the savagest kind of a history of the excursion. I hear that I have promised you that I wouldn’t, & so I haven’t the slightest doubt in the world but that I will. I can’t keep a promise. When I get married I shall say: “I take this woman to be my lawfully wedded wife, & propose to look out for her in a sort of a general way, &c. &c.” It would be dangerous to go beyond that.
But I didn’t promise you that I wouldn’t swear—yet no man is freer from the sin of swearing than is thy servant this day; & no man is freer from the inclination to swear, than he, whether ‸he is‸ in a passion or otherwise. I was the worst swearer, & the most reckless, that sailed out of New York in the Quaker City. I shamed Bursley; I shamed Harris;4 I shamed the very fo’castle watches, I think. But I am as perfectly & as permanently cured of the habit as I am of chewing tobacco. Your doubts, Madam, cannot shake my faith in this reformation. I have no inclination to swear, albeit I boil over as often as ever; more this than this, I feel the same uncomfortableness in the hearing of oaths that I feel when I listen to things that have always been distasteful to me. Shall these signs pass for nothing? Have not they a deep meaning? Do not they show that it is not merely that the idle tongue [has ]been taught a new trick which it may discard when the novelty is gone, but that the lesson has gone down, down, to the spirit that orders the tongue & commands its movements? Verily this is so, O thou of little faith!5 And while I remember you, my good, kind wo mother, (whom God preserve!) never believe that tongue or spirit shall forget this priceless lesson that you have taught them.
But as for those Quakers, I don’t want their friendship, I don’t want their good opinions, I wouldn’t have their good offices. I don’t want any commerce with people I don’t like. They can hurt me. Let them. I would rather they should hurt me than help me. All the friends I wanted in that ship were: Yourself; Mr & Mrs. Severance; the cub;6 Emma Beach; Dan; Moulton; Jack; I don’t remember any others—I don’t suppose there were any others.7 My opinion of the rest of the gang is so mean, & so vicious, & so outrageous in every way, that I could not collect the terms to express it [with out of ]any less than sixteen or seventeen different languages. Such another drove of cattle never went to sea before. Select party! Well, I pass.
Those vapid, senseless letters I published in the Tribune had one good effect. They procured me several propositions from the book publishers. I like that of the American Publishing Co., of Hartford, much they best. They publish only by subscription, & by this means gave A. D. Richardson’s first book 100,000 circle circulation & have already given his last one 41,000. I have written them to give me an explicit statement of what they want, when they want it, &c.
I am Tribune “occasional,” Alta “special” & have propositions from the Herald. I have magazine engagements—but unhappily I have promised. I have had, & still receive, lecturing invitations, but cannot accept, of course.8 I am full of work, &, as usual, am doing nothing. I give you these foolish details, believing they will interest you.
Yr. Improving p Prodigal,
Sam L. Clemens
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Mr. Clemens did “take on” about
some of the “pilgrims.” ... There was a
charmed circle on the steamer, Mr. Clemens, Mrs. Fairbanks, Mrs.
Severance, Langdon and Yours Truly. It was very interesting to see
the way Mrs. Fairbanks mothered him and how well he obeyed....
Reading this over I am sure that I should add a few more names to
the “charmed circle”, Emma Beach, Dan Slote,
Jack Van Nostrand, and Moulton. (Severance to A. B. Paine, 23 Nov
1911, Davis 1967, 2) Clemens was also on good terms with Dr. Jackson and Julia Newell, whom he
does not mention here.
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L2, 121–124; MTL, 3–6.
Provenance:deposited at ViU on 17 December 1963.
Emendations and textual notes:
old gray-haired • [‘gray’ over wiped-out ‘old’]
has • has has
with out of • [sic]
[¶] Give me • ‸Give me‸ Give me [‘Give me’ indented as a paragraph but miswritten, then canceled, and rewritten to the left of the original margin.]
