148 Asylum st.
Hartford, May 101
Click to add citation to My Citations.
Dear Mother—
Well, I did manage to leave Elmira, but I had to promise that I would return in fourteen days. Mr. Langdon said it was useless & foolish to go away at all—let the world talk, if it wanted to.
I have read 500 pages of proofs—have less than 200 more to read. It will be out in a few weeks, now. They have spent $5,000 on the engravings. It will be a stylish volume.
I am very glad you are going to live by yourselves, for I have felt for a long time that ‸the care of‸ keeping board‸ers‸ ing was just undermining your health & [Pamelas ]—now I am sure both will improve. And besides, a boarding-house was no place for Annie. Boarders, as a rule, are a bad lot—though you had an exceptionally good lot, with one or two exceptions—you remember to whom I refer, no doubt. I am grateful to Pamela for promising me a bed when I come—have some hope of getting there before many months.
I don’t know the date of the last money I [sent. ]—but it seems a good while ago. If you require some, let me know—I am economising because I am at a perfectly ruinous expense here—but I do not mean to economise at your expense—so speak out, if you want it.2
Yes, Annie could come to the wedding if we had one, & freely—but there won’t be any—only the family & a couple of witnesses will be present, & it will take place in Mr Langdon’s house.3
It is 2 o’clock in the morning. Good-night. Love to Orion & Mollie & all.
‸I don’t know your address.‸ 4
Lovingly
Sam.
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Click to add citation to My Citations. 1
Actually 11 May. When writing after midnight, as the penultimate
paragraph shows he was doing, Clemens normally carried over the
previous day’s date.
Click to add citation to My Citations. 2
Jane Clemens had last received money from her son, $20, on 30
March, the twelfth such payment he had sent since December 1868. She
next received $30 from him, on 29 May (JLC, 4). For Clemens’s own accounting
of his contributions to her support, as well as his personal expenses,
see 23 June 69
to PAM.
Click to add citation to My Citations. 3
Pamela Moffett and her daughter, Annie, did attend Clemens’s
wedding, on 2 February 1870, in the parlors of the Langdon house. The
Buffalo Express reported: “Only the
immediate friends of the bride and bridegroom were present, forming
quite a large company, however, and including many from a
distance” (“Personal,” 3 Feb 70, 4).
And Albert Bigelow Paine, presumably repeating information received from
Clemens, noted: “The guests were not numerous, not more than
a hundred at most” (MTB, 1:394).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 4
That is, the new address in St.
Louis—203 South 16th Street—to which Jane Lampton
Clemens and the Moffett family had moved, or were about to move, from
1312 Chesnut Street.
Source text(s):MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley (CU-MARK). A photographic facsimile of the
letter is on pp. 532–34. The MS consists of a torn folder (two
leaves) of embossed, blue-lined off-white laid paper, approximately 4 13/16 by 7
11/16 inches, inscribed on the first three pages in black ink, now faded to
brown.
Previous publication:
L3, 218–219.
Provenance:see Moffett Collection, pp. 586–87.
Emendations and textual notes:
Pamelas • [sic]
sent. • [deletion implied]
