From Samuel L. Clemens and Olivia L. Langdon to Mary Mason Fairbanks
31 March and 1 April 1869 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: CSmH, UCCL 00280)

Dear Mother—

Bless you I don’t want to go to California at all—& really I have not by any means determined to go, as yet. I know very well that I ought to go, but I haven’t the slightest inclination to do it. Indeed, indeed, indeed I do want to go & see you first, but if I do that I shall have to go to St. Louis also, & I just hate the idea of that. I don’t think April a good month to take Livy to Cleveland in, do you? The grass & flowers & foliage will not be out, then; & wherever Livy goes, Nature ought to have self-respect enough to do look her level best, you know.

We have read & re-shipped some fifty pages of proof, & it looks like it is going to take a month to finish it all. I rather hope it will take six.

I am in exile here at the office, for an hour, while the girls take their chemistry lesson. However, I suppose it is about over, now, & so I will return. {Livy will begin to feel anxious.}

I saw M Dr. & Mrs. What you may call him—the [Comm[i]ssioner ] of the US of America to Europe Asia & Africa, at Sharon, Pa., the other day. They came 20 miles to hear me lecture. Lord, They ought to read the book—there is where the interest will be, for them. Mrs. G. is grown stout & fat, & absolutely immense. She looks as tall & as huge as Pompey’s p Pillar, & inconceivably vulgar. She cannot weigh less than three hundred pounds. This is honest.2

[on smaller paper:]

‸April 1.‸ 3

Livy says—well, I can’t get the straight of it—but the idea of it, is, that some western friends are to be visited in May, & so maybe she & I & Mrs. Langdon can go out a little in advance, otherwise if it was, & so she could—but if not, then perhaps it would be just as well for [ bu both ] of us & certainly as convenient for you, especially while Severance is. {Well, that is what she says, you know, but [ blamed if ] I ‸don’t‸ know what it means.} {She made that correction—I like “blamed.”} Well, the general idea is, that maybe we can go out to Cleveland & see you, in advance of the gathering of the clans. Savez? So, therefore, whereas, if we do go, Fairbanks & I can talk business4—but we are not at all certain that we can go, for Livy has to be bridesmaid for Alice Hooker & both of us have to read proof for a month (because I am publishing a book, you know,) Livy is here (Mrs. Crane’s parlor,) & we are writing letters & been two hours writing four ‸two‸ pages, & she has only written a page & a half—dinner time, now & we must tell you good-bye how do you like the enclosed portrait of Mr. Cutter which I [ snaked ] ‸cut‸ it out of the proofs we have been reading Andrews always distorted the phrase “Poet Laureate” into Poet Lariat if you remember I do love to all good bye5

Yr Dutiful Scrub

Mark.

(e-hic!) [ Drat t Those ] sighs. Mr Clemens wants me to find a word to put in the place of the one erased, but I do not know how to translate the word

{That was a much more [ bullyer ] ‸ [appropriate‸ ] word than any other I can ever find—but she has marked it out & so it has got to go, you know.}

{There is another word [ busted ] ‸scratched‸ out—Who’s a-writing this letter, anyway, I want to know?} {We are.} {She would have the last word.}

[enclosure:]

Mrs. A. W. Fairbanks | Care “Herald” | Cleveland | Ohio. [postmarked:] [ elmira n.y. ]apr 1

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens wrote the 31 March portion of this letter in red ink.

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2 Dr. William Gibson and his wife, Susan, were from Jamestown, Pennsylvania, and had been among the passengers on the Quaker City excursion. Dr. Gibson, though never mentioned by name, was ridiculed throughout The Innocents Abroad—starting with a reference to his title, which he had acquired by offering to collect samples for the Department of Agriculture, and which he was evidently inclined to elaborate. In chapter 2, Mark Twain is found reading over the passenger list before departure when he comes across “a gentleman who had ‘Commissioner of the United States of America to Europe, Asia, and Africa’ thundering after his name in one awful blast.” On 20 February 1868, Clemens had sent Mrs. Fairbanks a copy of this passage from his manuscript, noting that it “touches Dr. Gibson on a raw place. If he were a man of any appreciation, it would be a royal pleasure to see him waltz around when he reads that. But bless you it will all be lost. That complacent imbecile will take it for a compliment” (L2, 189–90). Pompey’s Pillar was a large granite monolith in Alexandria, mentioned in chapter 57 of The Innocents Abroad, where “One of our most inveterate relic-hunters” tried and failed to break off a piece, another reference to Gibson (L2, 192–93 n. 4).

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3 Clemens wrote the date in black ink, the rest of the letter in purple.

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4 That is, Clemens’s possible partnership in the Cleveland Herald.

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5 The actual enclosure has been lost. It is simulated here from chapter 10 (page 91) of The Innocents Abroad, which was among the proofs (chapters 10–14, pages 90–138) that Clemens had returned to Elisha Bliss on 30 March. Mark Twain never referred by name to Dr. Edward Andrews of Albany, New York, calling him instead “the Oracle” and describing him as “an innocent old ass” who “never uses a one-syllable word when he can think of a longer one, and never by any possible chance knows the meaning of any long word he uses.” The prototype for the “‘Poet Laureate,’” also unnamed in Innocents, was Bloodgood Haviland Cutter, a wealthy Long Island farmer, who gave “copies of his verses to Consuls, commanders, hotel keepers, Arabs, Dutch,—to any body, in fact,” and who began signing his gifts as “the Laureate of the Ship” (chapter 7). In chapter 10, where this illustration (actually a caricature of Mark Twain) occurs, the Oracle addresses the poet as “Poet Lariat.”

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. (CSmH, call no. HM 14248), is copy-text for the letter. The enclosure, an illustration which Clemens cut out of the Innocents Abroad proof sheets (“Poet Lariat”), does not survive. Copy-text is the published illustration on page 91 in the first issue of the first American edition, reproduced from a copy owned by Robert H. Hirst now on deposit in CU-MARK.

Previous publication: L3, 184–187; MTMF, 88–90, without the enclosure.

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

Emendations and textual notes:

Comm[i]ssioner • [‘mm’ conflated]

bu both • buoth

blamed if • [canceled by Olivia Langdon]

snaked • [canceled by Olivia Langdon]

Drat t Those • [revised by Olivia Langdon]

bullyer • [canceled by Olivia Langdon]

appropriate • appr[o]priate [badly inked]

busted • [canceled by Olivia Langdon]

elmira n.y. • [e] ira [n]. [badly inked]