To Mary Mason Fairbanks
24 March 1869 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: CSmH, UCCL 00278)

Dear [Mother— ]

Why in the world didn’t Mr. Fairbanks & my dear sister Allie wait a little? I arrived the day after they left. Wanted to see both of them. I can see that they were just as fascinating as ever, by the way they all talk at the house.

Why, it don’t astonish me that Mr. Fairbanks liked Livy. How could he have helped it, I would like to know? No—it don’t astonish me—it only gratifies me.

Did you see “J. B.’s” able bosh in reply to me, in the last Packard? I hate to talk back at such small fry, but how can I resist the opportunity of saying something deliciously mean & vicious it offers me?1

The idea that I don’t love Mrs. Severance! I never heard such a preposterous thing in my life. I won’t entertain such nonsense. I do think the world of her—all that she will let me, I know.

Don’t you worry about the proofs. Livy & I will read them backwards, & every other way.—but principally backwards I guess. I think of calling the book “The Innocents Abroad—Or, The New Pilgrim’s Progress.” Isn’t that better than “Alonzo & Melissa” & that other rubbish you propose?2 And how could it be “The Loves of the Angels,” when there’s only one angel—only one that’s fledged, anyway?

I am glad about the fire—glad they put it out, I mean. And glad they saved the shirts—though I wasn’t particular—got some of Dan’s yet.3 Well, I hope you won’t have any more distress with fires.

Have just about decided to go to California by sea. I am very sorry about that, because in that case I’ll not see you for months, you know—& I want to see you badly. If it warn’t for Livy, I would be in Cleveland now. Livy has about half a mind to forbid the California journey altogether. She is a small tyrant, physically, but a powerful one when she chooses to let herself out. Well, I guess I’m needed up at the house, now, & I’ll close this. The Princess is well, & would send her love to you all if she were here—so I send it for her, along with mine.

Faithfully, lovingly & dutifully, your cub,

Sam.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 “J. B.” had published “An Open Letter to Mark Twain” in the April number of Packard’s Monthly (2:120–21), which appeared on 20 March (“New Publications,” New York Tribune, 20 Mar 69, 5). Answering Clemens’s “Open Letter to Com. Vanderbilt” in the previous number, “J. B.” argued at length that Vanderbilt’s money had been “honestly earned” through “financial genius” and that his fortune and his various enterprises afforded jobs “to thousands of men directly employed thereon.” Clemens is not known to have rebutted this “able bosh” in print.

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2 Alonzo and Melissa; or, the Unfeeling Father was Daniel Jackson’s title for the gothic romance he plagiarized from Isaac Mitchell in 1811. Mitchell had serialized the story in 1804, and published it in book form as The Asylum; or, Alonzo and Melissa in 1811, but it was under Jackson’s title that it achieved great popularity, going through numerous editions during the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century (Hart 1983, 42, 498).

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3 On 28 May 1867, Clemens had informed his San Francisco Alta California readers that Daniel Slote would be a satisfactory cabin mate aboard the Quaker City because he “has got many shirts, and a History of the Holy Land, a cribbage-board and three thousand cigars. I will not have to carry any baggage at all” (SLC 1867). His own “saved” shirts were some he had left with Mrs. Fairbanks for laundering, his customary practice, when he stopped at her Cleveland home on 13 February, between the two fires there (see 7 Jan 69 to Fairbanks and others, and 5 Feb 69 and 13 Mar 69 to Fairbanks).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. (CSmH, call no. HM 14247).

Previous publication: L3, 176–177; MTMF, 86–88.

Provenance:see Huntington Library, pp. 582–83.

Emendations and textual notes:

Mother— • [After writing the salutation, Clemens turned the page ninety degrees clockwise and wrote the remainder of the letter perpendicular to the letterhead, dateline, and salutation]