To Pamela A. Moffett
9 November 1869 • Boston, Mass.
(Transcript made for Albert Bigelow Paine, MTL, 1:167–69, and Paine 1912, 946: CU-MARK, UCCL 00371)

[Boston, Nov. 9.]0

[My dear Sister—]

[Three] or four letters just received from home. My first impulse was to send Orion a check on my publisher for the money he wants, but a sober second thought suggested that if he has not defrauded the government out of money, why [pay] simply because the government chooses to consider him in its debt? No. Right is right. The idea don’t suit me. Let him write the Treasury the state of the case, [&] tell them he has no money. If they make his sureties pay, then I will make the sureties whole, but I won’t pay a cent of any unjust claim. You talk of disgrace. To my mind it would be just as disgraceful to allow one’s self to be bullied into paying that which is unjust.1

Ma thinks it is hard that Orion’s share of the land should be swept away just as it is right on the point (as it always has been) of becoming valuable. Let her rest easy on that point. This [not letter] is his ample authority to sell my share of the land immediately [&] appropriate the proceeds—giving no account to me, but repaying the amount to Ma first, or in case of her death, to you or your heirs, whenever in the future he shall be able to do it. Now I want no hesitation in this matter. I renounce my ownership from this date, for this purpose, [provided] it is sold just as suddenly as he can sell it.

In the next place—Mr. Langdon is old, [&] is trying hard to withdraw from business [&] seek repose. I will not burden him with a purchase—but I will ask him to take full possession of a coal tract of the land without paying a cent, simply conditioning that he shall [throw mine] [&] throw the coal into market at his own cost, [&] pay to you [&] all of you what he thinks is a fair portion of the profits accruing—you can do as you please with the rest of the land. Therefore, send me (to Elmira,) information about the coal deposits so framed that he can comprehend the matter [&] can intelligently instruct and agent how to find it [&] go to work.2

[Your depressing letters catch me at a bad time]

[unknown amount of text missing]

[Tomorrow] night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience—4,000 critics—[&] on the success of this matter depends my future success in New England.3 But I am not distressed. Nasby is in the same boat. [Tonight] decides the fate of his [brand-new] lecture. He has just left my room—been reading his lecture to me—was greatly depressed. I have convinced him that he has little to fear.4

I get just about five hundred more applications to lectures than I can possibly fill—[&] in the West they say “Charge all you please, but come.” I shan’t go West at all. I stop lecturing the [22d] of January, sure. But I shall talk every night up to that time. They flood me with high-priced invitations to write for magazines [&] papers, [&] publishers besiege me to write books. Can’t do any of these things.

I am twenty-two thousand dollars in debt, [&] shall earn the money [&] pay it within two years—[&] therefore I am not spending any money except when it is necessary.5

I had my life insured for $10,000 yesterday (what ever became of Mr. Moffett’s life insurance?) “for the benefit of my natural heirs”—the same being my mother, for Livy wouldn’t claim it, you may be sure of that. This has taken $200 out of my pocket which I was going to send to Ma.6 But I will send her some, soon. Tell Orion to keep a stiff upper lip—when the worst comes to the worst I will come forward. Must talk in Providence, R. I., tonight. Must leave now. I thank Mollie [&] Orion [&] the rest for your letters, but you see how I am pushed—ought to have 6 clerks.

Affectionately,

[Sam.]

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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0The present text, notes, and apparatus supersede those previously published in L3, 386–88. L3’s version is available here.

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1Orion Clemens was being dunned by R. W. Taylor, comptroller of the United States Treasury Department. At issue were disbursements of government funds that Orion, as secretary of Nevada Territory, had made between 1 July 1863 and 31 October 1864 for the printing of the laws and documents of the territorial legislature. On 9 June 1869 Taylor wrote Orion two letters, demanding reimbursement totaling $1,330.08: $954.43 in disallowed payments to printers; and $375.65 for the “Balance due the United States per your last a/c” (CU-MARK). Taylor’s letters did not reach Orion immediately because they were mistakenly sent to Carson City. Although he received them in St. Louis by August, he did not reply until 4 October. In his letter to Taylor that day, Orion reported that he was requesting the printers to “send me forthwith the money overpaid them.” Doubtful that they would be able to do so, he respectfully protested that it was “rather severe to require me to refund to the United States out of my own pocket all the profit those printers ever got.” He explained that after converting the government’s greenbacks to coin, “which alone was used as currency” in Nevada, at the rate of “40 cents on the dollar or less,” and after paying their compositors, the printers had received only “FIVE CENTS per 1000 ems for profit, presswork, binding, paper, ink, delivery, &c! Even if I paid them more, were they not justly entitled to a fair profit?” (rough draft in CU-MARK). On 30 October Taylor responded, informing Orion that allowance of a previously disallowed payment of $375 would be “considered” as soon as he deposited “to the credit of the U.S. Nine hundred and fifty five dollars and eight cents” (CU-MARK). Orion had been bonded for $10,000 before assuming his post in 1861—the “sureties” to which Clemens alludes—but he was apparently too intimidated to remind Taylor of that fact and had instead appealed to Clemens for help in meeting the Treasury Department’s demand. Clemens referred the matter to his old Virginia City acquaintance Thomas Fitch, who in early 1869 had taken office as a Republican congressman from Nevada. Writing to Pamela Moffett on 14 January 1870, he enclosed “a note from Tom Fitch by which Orion will see that Tom is moving in the matter. Let Orion drop him simply a line, thanking him” (NPV). Fitch’s note does not survive; at present nothing is known of his assistance to Orion or of the resolution of the government’s claim (Miller 1973, 1; L1, 319 n. 4).

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2Jervis Langdon had offered to buy the Tennessee land outright in late June or early July 1869, but Orion had declined to sell (see 3? July 1869 to OC). Presumably the demand from the Treasury Department had now made him reconsider. In a letter to Olivia Langdon—probably written on 9 November (docket number 132, now missing)—Clemens did propose that her father mine the land for coal; Jervis Langdon’s failure to respond frustrated that plan (see 10 and 11 Nov 1869 to OLL, n. 1). Subsequently Orion exercised the authority over the property that his brother granted him in the present letter. Writing to Clemens On 4 November 1880, he remembered making an unprofitable trade in which “the mass of the Tennessee land was swept away,” but noted that “Ma has some of the Tennessee land left.” And he confessed: “I deeply regret that I did not send you a deed for all the Tennessee land when you had a chance to trade with Mr. Langdon. But I feared you would unconsciously cheat your prospective father-in-law” (CU-MARK).

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3In 1898 Clemens recalled the importance of a Boston debut and described the preparations for it managed by the Boston Lyceum Bureau:

We had to bring out a new lecture every season, now, ‸(Nasby with the rest,)‸ & expose it in the “Star Course,” Boston, for a first verdict, before an audience of 2500 in the old Music Hall; for it was by that verdict that all the lyceums in the country determined the lecture’s commercial value. The campaign did not really begin in Boston, but in the towns around; we did not appear in Boston until we had rehearsed about a month in those towns, & made & all the necessary corrections & revisings.

This system gathered the whole tribe together in the city early in October, & we had a lazy & sociable time there for several weeks. We lived at Young’s hotel; we spent the days in Redpath’s bureau, smoking & talking shop; & early in the evenings we scattered out amongst the towns & made them indicate the good & poor things in the new lectures. (SLC 1898, 7–8)

Clemens’s first Boston appearance was in the Boston Lyceum Course, organized by Redpath “as a relief to the earnest, stately and solemn programmes of the other courses,” and offering a “bright, brilliant and sunny series of Lectures and Entertainments, which will be given in Music Hall on successive Wednesday evenings” (“Boston Lyceum Course,” Boston Advertiser, 22 Sept 69, 1). Built in 1852 and acclaimed for its fine acoustic properties, Music Hall seated about 2,600, not 4,000 (Moses King 1885, 252; Bacon 1883, 304).

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4Entitled “The Struggles of a Conservative on the Woman Question,” Nasby’s new lecture was a satirical attack on the opponents of women’s rights. He delivered it in the Parker Fraternity Course (Redpath did not represent him until the 1870–71 season). The Boston Evening Transcript remarked that the lecture afforded “much amusement to a large audience in Music Hall last evening. They (the struggles) were well spiced with humor, and the serious passages were well received by Mr. Locke’s hearers” (“Rev. Petroleum V. Nasby’s Conservative ...,” 10 Nov 69, 4). The Boston Advertiser called the performance “one of Nasby’s peculiar efforts in the serio-comic line,—in which he represents himself as holding certain opinions for the purpose of making those opinions ridiculous.” Although critical of Nasby’s rapid and monotonous speaking style, and unpersuaded that his serious message would have effect, the paper took note of the audience’s “applause and laughter ... in unstinted measure” and predicted that “Mr. Locke’s native shrewdness and good sense and his funny sayings will win a reasonable degree of favor for this lecture wherever it is delivered” (“Nasby on ‘The Woman Question,’” 10 Nov 69, 1; Redpath and Fall 1870, 3, 17; Eubank 1969, 295, 297).

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5Clemens had borrowed $12,500 from Jervis Langdon in order to make a $15,000 down payment to Thomas Kennett for a share of the Express Printing Company, and still owed Kennett $10,000 for the balance of the purchase price.

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6 Presumably Pamela had collected the life insurance left by her husband, William, when he died in 1865. Clemens purchased policy number 11439 from the Continental Life Insurance Company of Hartford, through Lyman Beecher, a nephew of the Reverends Thomas K. and Henry Ward Beecher. In partnership with James S. Parsons and Arthur S. Winchester, Lyman Beecher represented Continental Life in Boston. An 1877 letter to Clemens from Beecher’s brother, Robert, then the secretary of Continental, reveals that Clemens allowed his policy to lapse after making two premium payments. The record of Clemens’s cash account with the Express Printing Company indicates that he paid the second of these, $187.60, to Lyman Beecher on 7 November 1870 (18 and 19 Dec 1869 to OLL; “Nook Farm Genealogy,” Beecher Addenda, ii–iii; Boston Directory, 76, 480, 653, 921; Robert E. Beecher to SLC, 16 June 77, CU-MARK; “Statement of S. L. Clemen[s]’s acc’t from Sept 25/70 to Feb 20/71,” CU-MARK).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

None. The text is based on three transcripts, one mostly complete and two partial. Tr, which survives in an incomplete carbon copy typescript only, was evidently typed directly from the MS. About four-fifths of the second page is torn away and the text ends mid-sentence. P1 probably derives from the complete original of Tr, corrected against the MS and styled for publication by Paine. P1 provides the only text of the last three paragraphs of the letter, along with its complimentary close and signature. P2, which publishes one paragraph only, most likely independently derives from the lost original of Tr. In 1912 Paine published for the second time the paragraph that appears in P2, with no change except the styling of ampersand to ‘and’ in MTB, 1:389.

Tr	Transcript made for Albert Bigelow Paine, CU-MARK: ‘Boston . . . at a bad time’
P1	MTL, 1:167–69
P2	Paine 1912, 946 ‘To-morrow night . . . little to fear.’ (2.3–8)

Previous publication:

L3, 386–88, partial publication.

Provenance:

See MTL in Description of Texts and Paine Transcripts in Description of Provenance.

Emendations, adopted readings, and textual notes:

Boston, Nov. 9. (MTP) • Boston, Nov. 9. ‸1869‸ [added by Paine] (Tr); Boston, Nov. 9, 1869. (P1)

My dear Sister— (Tr) • My dear Sister,— (P1)

[¶] Three (Tr) • [no¶] Three (P1)

pay (Tr) • ~, (P1)

& (Tr) • and (P1)

not letter (Tr) • letter [The typed strikeout and revised word are included in the text here in the likelihood the typist was recording Clemens’s revision in the MS] (P1)

& (Tr) • and (P1)

provided (P1) • provided (Tr)

& (Tr) • and (P1)

& (Tr) • and (P1)

throw mine (Tr) • mine [The typed strikeout and revised word are included in the text here in the likelihood the typist was recording Clemens’s revision in the MS] (P1)

& (Tr) • and (P1)

& (Tr) • and (P1)

& (Tr) • and (P1)

& (Tr) • and (P1)

& (Tr) • and (P1)

Your . . . time (Tr) • [words not in] (P1)

Tomorrow (P1) • To-morrow (P2)

& (P2) • and (P1)

Tonight (P1) • To-night (P2)

brand-new (P1) • brand- | new (P2)

& (MTP) • and (P1)

22d (MTP) • 22d (P1)

& (MTP) • and (P1)

& (MTP) • and (P1)

& (MTP) • and (P1)

& (MTP) • and (P1)

& (MTP) • and (P1)

& (MTP) • and (P1)

& (MTP) • and (P1)

Sam. (MTP) • Sam. (P1)