To
Ralph Waldo Emerson; duplicate letters sent to
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes
27 December 1877 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: Emerson papers, MH-H, UCCL 01184)
Hartford, Thurdsday, 27th
To Mr. Emerson, Mr. Lonfgfellow,
& Dr. Holmes:1
Gentlemen: I come before you, now, with the mien & posture of the guilty—not to excuse, gloss, or extenuate, but only to offer my repentance. If a man with a fine nature had done that thing which I did, it would have been a crime—because all his senses would have warned him against it beforehand; but I did it innocently & unwarned. I did it as a innocently as I ever did anything. You will think it is incredible; but it is true, & Mr. Howells will confirm my words. He does not know how it can be true, & neither does any one who is incapable of trespassing as I did; yet he knows it is true. But when I perceived what it was that I had done, I felt as real a sorrow & suffered as shap sharp a mortification as if I had done it with a guilty intent. This continues. That the impulse was innocent, brings no abatement. As to my wife’s distress, it is not to be measured; for she is of finer stuff than I; & yours were sacred names to her. We do not talk about this misfortune—it scorches; so we only think—and think.2
I will end, now,. I had to write you, for the easement of it, even though the doing it might maybe be a further offense. But I do not ask you to forgive what I did that night, for it is not forgivable; I simply had it at heart to ask you to believe that I am only heedlessly a savage, not premeditatedly; & that I am under as severe punishment as even you could adjudge to me if you were required to appoint my penalty. I do not ask you to say one word in answer to this; it is not needful, & would of course be distasteful & difficutlt.3 I beg you to consider that in letting me unbosom myself you will do me an act of grace that will be sufficient in itself. I wanted to write such a letter as this, that next morning in Boston, but one of wiser judgment advised against it, & said Wait.4
With great & sincere respect
I am
Truly Yours
Samℓ. L. Clemens
Explanatory Notes
Nearly thirty years later, in January 1906, Clemens was reminded of “that thing which I did”—his speech at the Whittier birthday dinner—and on 11
January dictated an account of it for his autobiography. His memory was prompted
by a recent letter from Laura K. Hudson, who had read a newspaper printing of the
speech in December 1877 and thought it “the best and funniest thing” he had ever
written. Having failed to find a text of it, she asked him about the “possible
whereabouts of this delightful child of your muse” (AutoMT1, 260–67, 552–56). He
replied: I am forever your debtor for reminding me of that curious passage in my life.
During the first year or two after it happened, I could not bear to think of it. My
pain and shame were so intense, and my sense of having been an imbecile so
settled, established and confirmed, that I drove the episode entirely from my
mind—and so all these twenty-eight or twenty-nine years I have lived in the
conviction that my performance of that time was coarse, vulgar and destitute of
humor. But your suggestion that you and your family found humor in it twentyeight years ago moved me to look into the matter. So I commissioned a Boston
typewriter to delve among the Boston papers of that bygone time, and send me a
copy of it. It came this morning, and if there is any vulgarity about it I am not able to
discover it. If it isn’t innocently and ridiculously funny, I am no judge. I will see to
it that you get a copy. (AutoMT1, 260–61) The text of the speech that Clemens acquired and inserted into his autobiography
was from the Boston Evening Transcript of 18 December 1877. But contrary to his
claims to have suffered for “twenty-eight or twenty-nine years,” his chagrin had
already abated by 5 February 1878, when he wrote Mary Mason Fairbanks: I am pretty dull in some things, & very likely the Atlantic speech was in ill taste;
but that is the worst that can be said of it. I am sincerely sorry if it in any wise hurt
those great poets’ feelings—I never wanted to do that. But nobody has ever
convinced me that that speech was not a good one——for me; above my average,
considerably. I could as easily have substituted the names of Shakspeare,
Beaumont & Ben Jonson, (since the absurd situation was where the humor lay,) &
all these critics would have discovered the merit of it, then. But my purpose was
clean, my conscience clear, & I saw no need of it. Why anybody should think
three poets insulted because three fantastic tramps choose to personate them &
use their language, passed my comprehension. (Letters 1876–1880)
The responses to Clemens’s mea culpa were soon forthcoming (all in CU-MARK). Holmes wrote: Emerson’s daughter Ellen replied not to Clemens, but to Olivia: Ellen Emerson probably alluded to “Speech at the Scottish Banquet in London,”
given on 1 December 1873 in response to a toast to “The Ladies.” It was published
in Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old (28 Nov 1873 to Fitzgibbon, L5, 487–92; SLC
1875, 213–14). Longfellow also replied: For a full discussion of the Whittier dinner speech, Clemens’s letter of apology, and
the responses to it, see Smith 1955.
Source text(s):Previous publication:
Smith 1955, plates 2–4 following 156, 164, facsimile and transcript; Smith 1962, 99–100; MicroPUL, reel 1.
