To Silas S. Packard and Other
Members of the New York Press Club
1 June 1869 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS, damage emended: ViU, UCCL 00311)

Friend Packard—

Can’t come—enclose letter & speech to be read in meeting—best I can do under the circumstances. If these & your other proceedings are published, should like to have a copy or two secured for my scrap-book—will you?—for I am pleasantly employed & don’t look at newspapers.1

Shall be at St Nicholas Hotel from 11th to 15th.

Good-bye.

Samℓ. Clemens

The punctuation & [names ] are [ exactly ] as they should be ([“fought, bled & lied” should have no itali[c]s & no marked emphasis].2

[]

Hartford, June 1, 1869.3

Gentlemen of the N. Y. Press Club:

I thank you kindly for your invitation to be present at the Press Club dinner4 & take part in the general destruction of provisions & rhetoric. I sincerely regret that I shall not be able to attend. I had [felt ] so sure of being present that I constructed a toast & speech for the occasion, & sat up several ‸two‸ nights memorizing them. And now that I am all fixed, ‸set,‸ I can’t go. Still, I cannot consent that this thunder shall be wasted, & therefore I beg to append my toast & speech, just as I would have expelled them from my system had it been my fortune to assist at the dinner. As follows:

“Mr. President5 & Gentlemen—I thank you most heartily—I, that is, I—I am happy in being considered worthy to—to—in truth, gentlemen, I am unprepared to make a speech—this call is entirely unexpected, I assure you—I did not expect it—that is, I did not expect to be called upon—if I had expected to be called upon I would have prepared myself, but not ex—being, as I may say, entirely unprepared & not expecting it, it is entirely unexpected to me, & I am entirely unprepared. But I thank you very kindly, I assure you. However, at this moment a thought occurs to me. I will offer a sentiment, & preface it with a few subsequent remarks which I hope to be able to make in the interim, if the theme shall chance to suggest to me anything to say. I beg that you will fill your horns

(Private memorandum—To recollect to take notice, at this point, whether these fellows are drinking out of gourds, goblets, jugs, or what they are drinking out of, & so not make any stupid blunder, & spoil the effect of the [speech,)

and] join me in a toast:—

“Mr. President & Gentlemen—It is my painful duty to mar these festivities with the announcement of the death of one who was dear to us all—our tried & noble friend, the ‘Reliable Contraband.’ To the world at large this event will bring no sorrow, for the world never comprehended him, never knew him as we did, never had such cause to love him—but unto us the calamity brings unutterable anguish, for it heralds the loss of one whose great heart beat for us alone, whose tireless tongue vibrated in our interest only, whose fervent fancy wrought its miracles solely for our enrichment & renown.

“In his time, what did he not do for us? When marvels languished & sensation dispatches grew tame, who was it that laid down the shovel & the hoe & came with healing on his wings? The Reliable Contraband. When armies fled in panic & dismay, & the great cause seemed lost beyond all hope of succor, who was it that turned the tide of war & gave victory to the Vanquished? The Reliable Contraband. When despair hung its shadows about the hearts of the people & sorrow sat upon every face, who was it that braved every danger to bring cheering & incomprehensible news from the front? The Reliable Contraband. Who took Richmond the first time? The Reliable Contraband. Who took it the second time? The Reliable Contraband. Who took it every time until the last, & then th felt the bitterness of hearing a nation applaud the man more who took it once7 than that greater man who had taken it six times. before? The Reliable Contraband. When we needed a bloodless victory, whom did we look to to win it? The Reliable Contraband. When we needed news to make the people’s bowels yearn & their knotted & [combinéd ] locks to stand on end like quills upon the fretful porcupine,8 whom did we look to to fetch it? The Reliable Contraband. When we needed any sort or description of news, upon any sort or description of subject, who was it that stood always ready to steal a horse & bring that news along? The Reliable Contraband.

“My friends, he was the faithfullest vassal that ever fought, bled & lied in the glorious ranks of journalism. Thunder & lightning never stopped him—annihilated railroads never delayed him—the telegraph never overtook him—military secresy never cru crippled his [ n ] knowledge—strategic feints never confused his judgment—cannon balls couldn’t kill him—clairvoyance couldn’t find him—Satan himself couldn’t catch him! His information comprised all knowledge, possible & impossible—his imagination was utterly boundless—his capacity to make mighty statements & so back them up as to make an inch of truth cover an acre of ground without appearing to stretch or tear, was a thing that appalled even the most unimpressible with its awful grandeur.

“The Reliable Contraband is no more. Born of the war, & a necessity of the war & of the war only, he watched its progress, took note of its successes & reverses, manufactured & recorded the most thrilling features of its daily history, & then when it died his great mission was fulfilled, his occupation gone, & he died likewise. No journalist here present can lay his hand upon his heart & say he had not cause to love this faithful creature over whose unsentient form we drop these unavailing tears—for no journalist among us all can lay his hand upon his heart & say he ever lied with such pathos, such unction, such exquisite symmetry, such sublimity of conception & such felicity of execution as when he did it through & by the inspiration of this regally gifted marvel of mendacity, the lamented ‘Reliable Contraband.’ Peace to his ashes!”

Respectfully, Subm

Mark Twain

[letter docketed:] Mark Twain

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens’s employment was the proofreading of The Innocents Abroad, pleasant now since once again it was shared by his fiancée.

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2 Packard followed the instructions for this phrase exactly when he published Clemens’s speech as “Mark Twain’s Eulogy on the ‘Reliable Contraband’” in Packard’s Monthly for July (SLC 1869).

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3 “Hartford” presumably was a subterfuge by which Clemens hoped to avoid published comment on his reason for being in Elmira, which was well known to members of the Press Club (see the postscript to 4 June 69 to JLC and family). Above this dateline, Packard noted: “To follow Ed. Remarks.” When he printed the letter, however, he omitted Clemens’s dateline, salutation, and first two paragraphs, replacing them with this introduction:

Our estimable contributor, Mark Twain, is at present busy at Hartford, crowding his new book, “The New Pilgrim’s Progress,” through the press. How busy, will be apparent in the fact that he could not find time to eat a Delmonico Dinner with the members of the New York Press Club. With his usual sagacity, however, he saw the advantage of being represented; and so, when he found it impossible to go, he sent on his speech, to be orated by another—the very identical speech, he writes, which he should extemporaneously have “expelled from his system” had he been present. As the proceedings of the Press Club are never made public, this document, like other as brilliant lucubrations of the evening, would have been doomed to the darkness of silence but for the timely aid of that ubiquitous “Reliable Contraband,” who, though dead enough for an eulogy and an epitaph, is sufficiently alive to serve his old friends when he knows them. So this morceau was rescued from oblivion and the hands of the reporters for exclusive publication in Packard’s Monthly. (SLC 1869, 220)

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4 Held on 5 June.

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5 Unidentified.

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6 During the Civil War, slaves who lived in areas captured by Union forces or fled behind Union lines were generally considered “contraband of war.” Hence “contraband” became synonymous with “Negro” or “slave.” As Clemens makes clear, reporters sometimes attributed rumors and other dubious news items to such individuals. Having read Clemens’s speech in Packard’s Monthly, David Ross Locke (Petroleum V. Nasby) ironically seconded his lament at the demise of the “Reliable Contraband”:

You know that that lemon, our African brother, juicy as he was in his day, has been squeezed dry. ... You see friend Twain the 15th Amendment busted Cussed be Canaan. I howled feelingly on the subject while it was a living issue for I felt all that I said and a great deal more, but now that we have won our fight, why dance frantically on the dead corpse of our enemy? ... The Reliable Contraband (by the way that thing of yours is good) is contraband no more, but a citizen of the United States and I speak of him no more. (Locke to SLC, 14 July 69, CU-MARK; published with omissions in MTB, 1:385–86)

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7 Ulysses S. Grant, whose forces captured Richmond, the Confederate capital, in early April 1865, after a protracted siege, and a few days later brought the Civil War to an end at Appomattox.

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8 Hamlet, act 1, scene 5. Also Genesis 43:30 (“And Joseph made haste; for his bowels did yearn upon his brother ...”) and I Kings 3:26 (“Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son ...”).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, damage emended, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (ViU).

Previous publication: L3, 255–259; SLC 1869 (Press Club letter only), with omissions.

Provenance:Deposited at ViU by Clifton Waller Barrett on 17 December 1963.

Emendations and textual notes:

names • n[m]es [torn]

exactly • exac[ty ] [torn]

(“fought ... emphasis • [no closing parenthesis]

felt • [doubtful ‘fetlt’; ‘t’ partly formed]

speech,)|and • speech,)——|and

‘Reliable • [possibly ‘ “ ‘Reliable’]

combinéd • [sic]

n • [partly formed]