To Schuyler Colfax
9 October 1869 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: MH-H, UCCL 00362)

Dear Mr. Colfax—

I write now, in the hope of catching you just as you reach home—the telegraph says you left Salt Lake yesterday.1

Just this side of Salt Lake you must have met the a train containing two especial friends of mine—young Chas. J. Langdon (whose sister I am to marry during the coming winter,) & his tutor & traveling companion Prof. D. R. Ford, of Elmira College. Mr. Langdon has shipped them off on a ‸pleasure‸ tour round the globe, with orders to take their time & ransack it thoroughly.2

They have special letters from the Gov. Hoffman, Simon Cameron & others, to friends in Europe, & I have given them letters all the letters they need for California.3 Now can’t you & won’t you sit down & write a line of general introduction to—to—well, to anybody—Ministers & Consuls, say—just the grandeur of the thing is what I am looking at—for any hotel-keeper will know that parties can be trusted who carry letters from Vice Presidents. I have no compunctions about asking this favor, for you know Prof. Ford a little, & Mr. Langdon senior, also, I believe—& the Langdons knew your first wife well, both here at the water-cure & in Washington some 7 years ago. This almost makes you kin.4

Yrs Cordially

Mark Twain.

P. S.—If you write it you can send it either to me, here, or to Prof. Ford, Occidental Hotel, San F. They do not sail from San F. till about Nov. 1, for Japan. Six weeks ago I sent you my new book [ (“Innocents”)]—sent it to Washington.5

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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1 Vice-President Schuyler Colfax (1823–85) was returning to Washington, D.C., after a two-month tour of the Pacific states. His visit to Salt Lake City on 5 October and his departure for the East the following day (not on 8 October) were reported in the Elmira Advertiser’s “News by Telegraph” summary on 9 October (“Vice President Colfax at Salt Lake City,” 1; Hollister, 342).

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2 Olivia Langdon emphasized the educational goals of the world trip in a letter of 1 November 1869 to Alice Hooker Day:

Father wanted to compensate Charley as much as he could for his inability to study, he was obliged to gain information in some other way than from books—Father felt that if he could get Prof. Ford to go as Charlies companion, he would be just the right man, when they were on ship board, Charlie would be able to study with him some, and when traveling on land, Prof. Ford could give him all the history of the place, also the Geology and Botany of the country—They intended to take up Astronomy while on the ocean—(CtHSD)

The Langdons hoped that Ford would teach Charles moderation as well (see 8 and 9 Sept 69 to OLL, n. 5).

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3 The letters of introduction from John Thompson Hoffman (1828–88), former Democratic mayor of New York City (1865–68) and incumbent governor of New York State (1869–72), and Simon Cameron (1799–1889), Republican (formerly Democratic) senator from Pennsylvania (1845–49, 1857–61, 1867–77), presumably were secured by Jervis Langdon, who may have become acquainted with both men as a result of his extensive coal business in New York and Pennsylvania. Clemens gave Langdon and Ford letters to at least two San Franciscans, George E. Barnes and Mathew B. Cox. And either at Clemens’s request or Cox’s, Richard B. Irwin, an agent for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company in San Francisco, assisted the travelers (21 Sept 69 to Barnes; 24 Sept 69 to Cox; 8 July 70 to OLC, CU-MARK, in LLMT, 154; Sobel and Raimo, 3:1085–86; BDUSC, 732; Langley 1869, 329).

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4 Colfax and his first wife, Evelyn Clark, whom he married in 1844, had gone to Washington, D.C., in 1855, when he began his initial term in the House of Representatives as a Republican from Indiana. Evelyn Colfax, an invalid for several years before her death in 1863, had received treatment at the Elmira Water Cure, a health resort on East Hill, not far from the Langdon home. Nothing is known of the Langdons’ association with her there or in Washington. Colfax had been married to his second wife, Ellen W. Wade, niece of Benjamin F. Wade, former Republican senator from Ohio, for almost a year (Hollister, 208, 210; Jerome and Wisbey, 36, 116; Boyd and Boyd, 114).

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5 Colfax, an admirer of Clemens’s work at least since early 1868, provided the requested introduction (see L2, 155, and 10 or 11 Dec 69 to Colfax). Langdon and Ford had left by rail for California on 4 October, planning, according to Olivia Langdon, to visit “Salt Lake City, and other places of interest. (silver mines &c) on the way.” They sailed from San Francisco for Japan on 4 November aboard the Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s America, and then were to proceed “through China and India, visiting Palestine, then into Egypt, going up the Nile. They will spend the hottest months of next Summer in the Northern countries of Europe—Russia, Germany, England, Scotland &c.—From there to France, Switzerland and Italy in the Fall—they expect to be gone from a year to eighteen months” (OLL to Alice Hooker Day, 1 Nov 69, CtHSD; “Passengers for China and Japan,” San Francisco Morning Call, 5 Nov 69, 2).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Houghton Library, Harvard University (MH-H).

Previous publication: L3, 368–69; Anderson Galleries, lot 21.

Provenance:Sold in 1928 as part of the manuscript collection of Schuyler Colfax; inserted in a copy of The Innocents Abroad (1869) from the library of Harold Murcock; donated to Harvard University in 1935.

Emendations and textual notes:

(“Innocents”) • [possibly ‘‸(“‸Innocents‸”)‸’]