224 F street,
St Valentine’s Day
Washington, Jan. 8.
Click to add citation to My Citations.
My Dear Miss Emma—
It is singular that the battle of New Orleans1 & St Valentine’s Day both come on the same day this year—singular is too tame a word—it is positively astounding. However, that isn’t [ wat what ]I was going to write about.
I am a thousand times obliged to you for that most charmingly [worded ]letter. You have not listened to Mr. Beecher & marked his felicity of expression for nothing. I am not saying these things because I think they will be news to you, for they will not, or because I was surprised that you should write an excellent letter, for I was not, but because it is easier to say what is in one’s mind than to leave it unsaid.
And while I think of it, Miss Emma, I wish you would—well, never mind—it would be putting you to too much trouble. I am trying my best to write so that you can read the manuscript, but I am not succeeding very well. I have been up all night writing a lecture which [ I is ]to be delivered to-morrow evening, & now my fire is out, & the gray dawn is chilly, & my hand is unsteady with cold & fatigue. But I shall be very busy [to-morrow ]& the next day (when I ‸am to‸ lecture again,) & I must thank you for writing.2 People don’t like to have their self-complacency touched, you know, & I did feel so ridiculous in church last Sunday for writing a Valentine to a young lady, there present, who hadn’t taken any notice of it! I am very grateful that that humiliation is removed, I do assure you.3
With enormous effrontery, I have entitled my lecture “The Frozen Truth. !” How will that strike Mrs. Beach?4 It has got just about as much truth in it h as it has poetry—& you may reprove me for that, now, & I won’t get angry {but if that chambermaid don’t quit hammering at that door, I’ll make her jump out of the window—I wonder if she thinks I am the early bird that catches the worm.} Chambermaids are absurd people. I hate the whole tribe of them. I wouldn’t want any better fun than writing obituaries for ‸chambermaids.‸ [ them. ]But I am wandering from my subject. I am going to send Mr. Beecher my book5 as soon as I recover from this rush of business. I was going to hand it to Mr. Beach in New York, but I had so many things to do that I could not attend to it. I am going to send Mrs. Beach one, ‸also,‸ so that she can see that I can tell the truth in print when I brace myself up to it.
When you see Capt. Duncan I wish you would tell him how busy I am, getting ready to tell the truth to-morrow night; I told him I would be present at his lecture this evening, but now I shall not be able to do it. ‸Never mind—I WILL go & hear him to-night.‸ 6 I did not know that I was to lecture, myself, until I was informed of it at 10 o’clock last night. If I were unoccupied, I would run about town & canvas for the Captain to-day. It wouldn’t help his pocket any, but lecturers always like to have a crowded house.
You do say the naivest things that ever anybody said in the world, & hit the hardest possible hits, in the most comfortable way—but I like it. Your reproofs are so honest, & so pleasant, withal, that I really can’t help feeling a strong desire to deserve more of them! But I will conquer it & try to behave myself. I won’t make fun of the prayer-meetings any more. But the idea of my “reproving you in return” won’t do at all. I don’t know anything to reprove you about. I don’t know anything except to reprove you for your curious notion of offending me with a long letter. Nothing is pleasanter to me than to be offended in that way, & I shall reprove you very severely if you don’t do it again. I shall be ever so much obliged to you if you will sit down now & proceed to offend me awfully.
What was it I put on that envelop that suggested that Mrs. Beach was the principal of a boarding school? What in the world could it have been? What do you ask such conundrums for, & then not send the answer? I only wrote “Miss Emma Beach, 66 Columbia Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.”—that was all. Now tell me what it was that put that notion in your head?
I have searched everywhere for my photographs, but I cannot find a single one. I must have put them away somewhere very carefully—& when I put anything away, I never can find it again. Still, I will institute another search, & will find a picture & send it to you. Those Constantinople pictures were very bad, though. I might almost as well send you a photograph of the Sphynx—it would look as much like me.7
I got a good long letter from Mrs. Fairbanks, yesterday,—just such a bright, pleasant letter as that most excellent woman always writes.
Come, Miss Emma, send me some more [ ref reproofs], & upon my word I will do all I can to profit by them—do you note my address?
Your friend, & always your well-wisher,
Sam L. Clemens.
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Click to add citation to My Citations. 1
The final engagement of the War of 1812 occurred on this day in 1815.
Click to add citation to My Citations. 3
Beach evidently did not reply to Clemens’s letter of 5
December until after they met at Henry Ward Beecher’s on
Sunday, 5 January: see the previous letter.
Click to add citation to My Citations. 4
Chloe Buckingham Beach, originally from Waterbury, Connecticut, married
Moses S. Beach in 1845.
Click to add citation to My Citations. 6
Captain Duncan repeated his Quaker City lecture
(first given on 3 December in Brooklyn and again on 26 December in New
York) for a Washington audience in Metzerott Hall on 8 January
(advertisement, Brooklyn Eagle, 24 Dec 67, 1;
advertisement, Washington National Intelligencer,
8 Jan 68, 3).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 7
The photograph of Clemens taken in Constantinople is reproduced on p.
92.
Source text(s):MS, Estelle Doheny Collection, The Edward Laurence Doheny Memorial Library,
St. John’s Seminary, Camarillo, Calif. (CCamarSJ).
Previous publication:
L2, 147–149; Booth, 221–23; Christie, lot 1186, excerpts.
Provenance:see Doheny Collection, pp. 511–12.
Emendations and textual notes:
wat what • w‸hat‸ at
worded • worded worded [corrected miswriting]
I is • [‘i’ over partly formed ‘I’]
to-morrow • to-|morrow
them. • [deletion of period implied]
ref reproofs • refproofs
