To Mary Mason Fairbanks
29 June 1871 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: CSmH, UCCL 00629)

Elmira, 29th.

Dear Mother:

It was hard to give up the Cleveland trip—& after the letter was written1 & given to Crane to mail, we so hated to give it up that we lay & talked till midnight about it & then went & woke Crane & told him not to mail it, but give us one more day to try to contrive the journey——so we tried all ways, but no use—I couldn’t dare make another break in my work lest I fail entirely. So we reluctantly shipped the ll etter. Don’t do anything to weaken our resolution, because it has been mighty hard to arrive at it & it would be awful to have to go through the wear & tear of it again.

I [ w ] have written a lecture which I just know will “fetch” any audience I spout it before. I do hope to talk it before you in Cleveland.2 You shall say it is tip-top. I call it “Reminiscences of some Un-Commonplace Characters I have Chanced to Meet.” It tells a ‸personal‸ memory or so of Artemus Ward,; Riley Blucher, an eccentric, big-hearted newspaper man;3 the King of the Sandwich Islands;4 Dick Baker, California Miner, & his wonderful cat;5 Dr. Jackson & the Guides;6 the Emperor Norton, a pathetic San Franciscan lunatic;7 Blucher & our Washington landlady, a story I told in the Galaxy;8 the a grand oriental absolute monarch, the Rajah of Borneo;9 the our interview with the Emperor of Russia, about as I told it before—didn’t alter it ‸(a great deal)‸ because it always “took” on the platform in that shape;10 & Blucher’s curious adventure with a beggar. I give this man the name of Blucher merely for convenience.11

Of course you can’t tell much about the lecture from this, but see what a splendid field it offers, & you know what a fascination there is in personal matters, & what a charm the narrative form carries with it.

Lovingly yr son

Samℓ.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 See 27 June 71 to Fairbanks.

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2 The 1871–72 tour did not include a Cleveland appearance.

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3 Probably adapted from “Riley—Newspaper Correspondent” (8 July 70 to OLC, n. 2; 28 Nov 70 to Bliss, n. 1).

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4 Kamehameha V (1830–72), whom Clemens hoped to meet on a visit to Iolani Palace on 4 April 1866, but evidently saw only once, at a royal funeral. Clemens made both complimentary and uncomplimentary remarks about the king in his 1866 notebooks and newspaper letters, but finally held a high opinion of him (N&J1, 98–233 passim; RI 1993, 717; SLC 1866 [MT00463], 1866 [MT00466], 1866 [MT00469], 1866 [MT00472], 1873).

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5 See 26 Jan 70 to Gillis, n. 5.

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6 Clemens described Abraham Reeves Jackson’s guide-baiting techniques in chapter 27 of The Innocents Abroad (L2, 65–66).

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7 Joshua A. Norton had proclaimed himself “Norton I, Emperor of the United States” in the late 1850s (L1, 324–25 n. 2; Hart 1987, 354–55). In 1880, Clemens wrote:

O, dear, it was always a painful thing to me to see the Emperor (Norton I., of San Francisco) begging; for although nobody else believed he was an Emperor, he believed it. . . . Nobody has ever written him up who was able to see any but his ludicrous or his grotesque side; but I think that with all his dirt & unsavoriness there was a pathetic side to him. Anybody who said so in print would be laughed at in S. F., doubtless, but no matter . . .; I have seen him in all his various moods & tenses, & there was always more room for pity than laughter. (3 Sept 80 to Howells, MH-H, in MTHL, 1:326)

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8 Clemens first told this anecdote in an 1868 letter to the Chicago Republican and in 1870 retold it in “Riley—Newspaper Correspondent.” The subject is the lament of an “oppressively emotional” and “morbidly sentimental” landlady for a neighbor’s servant who was “‘a-sitting over the red-hot stove at three o’clock in the morning and went to sleep and fell on it and was actually roasted! not just frizzled up a bit, but literally roasted to a crisp!’” The landlady asks Riley to suggest an appropriate epitaph: “‘Put it “Well done, good and faithful servant!”’ said Riley, and never smiled” (SLC: 1870, 727; 1868).

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9 Joseph W. Torrey (1828–84) was an American merchant who, in 1865, acquired a ten-year concession on a large tract of land in northern Borneo. The local sultan conferred the titles of Rajah of Ambong and Marudu and Sir Maharajah of North Borneo upon Torrey. In late 1865 he established a small colony as a base for trading operations, but it was abandoned before the end of 1866. Although never formally encouraged by the United States government, Torrey continued to exploit his concession until 1881 (L. R. Wright, 49–55, 116, 142–43, 165; Tregonning, 6–12, 24–25; MTMF, 155–56 n. 7). Clemens had met Torrey in March of 1868 while traveling by ship from New York to San Francisco (N&J1, 496–97):

We established a Jokers’ Society, and fined every member who furnished an unbearably bad joke. We tried one man for his life (the Rajah of Borneo), for building a conundrum of unwarranted atrocity. Mr. Cohen disliked his trunk, and often spoke angrily of its small size. The conundrum touched upon this matter:

“Why is one of the passengers, or his trunk, like a certain geographical, algebraical, geometrical, technical term? Answer—Because he is a truncated cone (trunk-hated Cohen).”

We hung him. (SLC 1868)

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10 Clemens described the encounter of the Quaker City passengers with Tsar Aleksandr II in his 1868–69 “American Vandal Abroad” lecture (“Mark Twain,” Chicago Republican, 8 Jan 69, 4; “Mark Twain’s Lecture,” Peoria Transcript, 12 Jan 69, 3; Fatout 1976, 27–36). See also 30 May 70 to Bliss, n. 3.

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11 Still another anecdote about Riley, this time recalling an occasion when he treated a beggar to an elaborate meal while destitute himself. Clemens used it in chapter 59 of Roughing It (RI 1993, 407–11).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Huntington Library, San Marino (CSmH, call no. HM 14275).

Previous publication: L4, 424–426; MTMF, 154–56.

Provenance:see Huntington Library in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

w • [partly formed]