To Jane Lampton Clemens and Family
4 June 1869 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: NPV, UCCL 00315)

Elmira, June 4.

Dear Folks—

Livy sends you her love & loving good wishes, & I send you mine. The last 3 chapters of the book came to-night—we shall read it in the morning & then, thank goodness, we are done.

In twelve months (or rather I believe it is fourteen,) I have earned just eighty dollars by my pen—three two little magazine squibs & one newspaper letter—altogether the idlest, laziest 14 months I ever spent in my life.1 And in that time my absolute & necessary expenses have been scorchingly heavy—for I have now less than three thousand six hundred dollars in bank out of the eight or nine thousand I have made during those months, lecturing. My expenses were something frightful during the winter.2 I feel ashamed of my idleness, & yet I have had really no inclination to [do] anything but court Livy. I haven’t any other inclination yet. I have determined not to work as hard traveling, any more, as I did last winter, & so I have resolved not to lecture outside of the 6 New England States next winter. My western course would easily amount to $10,000 next winter, but I would rather make 2 or 3 thousand in New England than submit again to so much wearing travel. {I have promised to talk ten times for nights for a thousand dollars in the State of New York, provided the places are close together.} But after all, if I get located in a newspaper in a way to suit me, in the meantime, I don’t want to lecture at all next winter, & probably shan’t. I most cordially hate the lecture-field. And, after all, I shudder to think I may never get out of it. In all conversations with Gough, & Anna Dickinson, Nasby, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips & the other old stagers, I could not observe that they ever expected or hoped to get out of the business.3 I don’t want to get wedded to it as they are. Livy thinks we can live on a very moderate sum & that we’ll not need to lecture. I know very well that she can live on a small allowance, but I am not so sure about [myself. I] can’t scare her by reminding her that her father’s family expenses are forty thousand dollars a year,4 because she produces the documents at once to show that precious little of this outlay is on her account. But I must not commence writing about Livy, else I shall never stop. There isn’t such another little piece of perfection in the world as she is.

My time is become so short, now, that I doubt if I get to California this summer. If I manage to buy into a paper, I think I will visit you a while & not go to Cal at all. I shall know something about it after my next trip to Hartford. We all go there on the 10th—the whole family—to attend a wedding., on the 17th.5 I am offered an interest [in] a Cleveland paper which would pay me $2,300 to $2,500 a year, & a salary added of $3,000. The salary is fair enough, but the interest is not large enough, & so I must look a little [further. The] Cleveland folks say they can be induced to do a little better by me, & urge me to come out & talk business. But it don’t strike me—I feel little or no inclination to go.6

I believe I haven’t anything else to write, & it is bed-time. I want to write to Orion, but I keep putting it off—I keep putting everything off. Day after day Livy & I are together all day long & until 10 at night, & then I feel dreadfully sleepy. If Orion will bear with me & forgive me I will square up with him yet. I will even let him kiss Livy.

My love to Mollie & Annie & Sammie & Margaret & all. Good-bye.

Affectionately,

Sam.

I see

P.S. I see that the toast I am [ respond ] appointed to respond to at the New York Press Club dinner to-morrow night is, “When I, twain, shall become one flesh—the future husband the husband of the future.” Pretty pointed—& pretty suggestive. But I shan’t be there—& as I am only an invited guest & a sort of honorary member (for I never have joined,) I have used my privilege of proposing my own toast & making my own speech upon it in my own way—& have forwarded the manuscript.7

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens had in fact written and published at least fifteen newspaper and magazine pieces since April 1868. He had also produced several manuscripts he did not publish (see SLC 1869 [MT02039], 1869 [MT00759], 1869 [MT00760], 1869 [MT00761]; 15 and 16 May 69 to OLL, n. 5; and SLC 1868 [MT00656], SLC 1868 [MT00658], SLC 1868 [MT00733], and SLC 1868aaa –rrr).

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2 The “eight or nine thousand” included profits from ten lectures Clemens gave in California and Nevada in the spring and summer of 1868 (an eleventh was a benefit performance). Receipts then were sometimes disappointing, but on the whole the brief tour was remunerative: the first of three San Francisco performances alone earned Clemens about $1,600. Although his total western earnings cannot be known, any reasonable estimate, added to the hundred-dollar fees of his November 1868–March 1869 tour—at least forty-two lectures, but with expenses that consumed as much as half his gross earnings (see 14 Jan 69 to PAM)—makes the approximate figures he gave here quite plausible (17 Feb 69 to Goodman, n. 2; L2, 205–10, 212, 213 n. 4, 216, 217, 233–35).

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3 Clemens discussed lecturing with Nasby in Hartford on 9 and 10 March, and with him and Holmes in Boston on 14 or 15 March. He talked with Wendell Phillips on 18 March at the Langdon home, and with Anna Dickinson after she arrived there on 10 April. It is not known when he had last spoken with John Bartholomew Gough.

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4 Jervis Langdon’s taxable income for 1868 was $43,500, an amount exceeded by only one other Elmira resident. (The average income of the 305 Elmirans who paid taxes—on incomes ranging from $1.00 to $58,503—was about $1,600.) Langdon paid an income tax of $2,175 (“Incomes,” Elmira Advertiser, 24 Apr 69, 1).

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5 While in Hartford for the wedding of Alice Hooker and John Day, Clemens investigated the possibility of becoming a partner in the Hartford Courant (see 21 June 69 to OLL, n. 3).

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6 Nevertheless, Clemens did meet with the Cleveland Herald owners in Cleveland in mid-July, a month before he bought a share in the Buffalo Express (see 5 July 69 to Fairbanks, n. 4).

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7 Clemens probably received word of his appointed toast in a letter from the New York Press Club, after he mailed his letter of 1 June. The toast would not have been published, since the proceedings of the club were confidential (see 1 June 69 to Packard and others, n. 3).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).

Previous publication: L3, 259–261; 1:379, brief excerpt; MTL, 158–59, without postscript; MTBus, 106, postscript only; MTMF, 100, brief excerpts.

Provenance:see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 583–85.

Emendations and textual notes:

myself. I • myself.—|I

further. The • further.—|The

respond • [‘d’ partly formed]