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Add to My Citations To Jane Lampton Clemens and Family
8–10 March 1868 • Washington, D.C., or New York, N.Y.
(Paraphrase: Paine, 938, and MTB, 1:361–62, UCCL 11489)
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A reply came from the Alta, but it was not promising. It spoke rather vaguely of prior arrangements and future possibilities. Clemens gathered that under certain conditions he might share in the profits of the venture. There was but one thing to [do; ]he knew those [people, ]some of them—Colonel McComb and a Mr. [McCrellish—]intimately. He must confer with them in person.

He was weary of Washington, anyway. The whole [pitiful ]machinery of politics disgusted [him.]

[Furthermore, he was down on the climate of Washington. ]He decided to go to San Francisco and see “those Alta [thieves face to face.” ]Then, if a book resulted, he could prepare it there among friends. [Also], he could lecture.

He had been anxious to visit his people before sailing, but matters were too urgent to permit delay.1

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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1 Although Clemens apparently confided the seriousness of his difficulty with the Alta to Pamela, Orion, and Mollie, he seems to have enjoined such “strict privacy” on them that the bad news did not at the same time reach their mother (see 22? Feb 68 to MEC, n. 1). He presumably informed her, however, shortly before all further secrecy became impossible—that is, when he was obliged to depart for California on 11 March in the steamer Henry Chauncey, without first visiting St. Louis. The letter in which he apprised her of his plans survives only in Paine’s paraphrase of and brief quotation from it, and Paine himself did not explicitly acknowledge the letter’s existence. The span of dates during which Clemens might have written it is limited by his date of departure (11 March) and the date he claimed (in a 1 May dispatch to the Chicago Republican) he had received the Alta’s letter, confirming its earlier telegram and refusing him permission to reuse his Holy Land letters:

Three months of wintry weather in New York and Washington had begun to make me restive, and I almost wished for a good excuse to try a change of scene. It came about the eighth of March—a business call to California, and I left Washington instantly, and sailed from New York, in the steamer of the eleventh. (SLC 1868 [MT00734])



glyphglyphSource text(s):glyph
No copy-text. The text is a paraphrase of the original letter (now lost) based on two versions of the paraphrase published by Paine. Although in neither version did Paine explicitly mention his source, the unattributed quotation, ‘“those Alta thieves face to face.”’ (201.10), is a strong sign that it was a letter (see p. 202 n. 1). Each of the two versions appears to derive independently from a common source—probably the typescript (and carbon copy) of Paine’s biography, which he condensed and serialized in Harper’s Magazine before publishing it as a book (see pp. 508–9):
P1 Paine, 938
P2 MTB, 1:361–62
Collation shows that P1 and P2 are in the following relation to the letter MS:
figure-il2026
Copies #1 and #2 were initially identical, or nearly so, before Paine edited each for its respective publication. The chief difference between the two versions is that P1 aimed at an abbreviated form of the work eventually published in MTB. But we cannot rule out the possibility that some differences arose because Paine added material for P2 after the copy for P1 had been separated from it. The objective here is thus to reconstruct the relevant portion of Paine’s printer’s copy before it was separately edited for P1 and P2, and to depart from that reconstruction only insofar as it does not represent a paraphrase of the missing letter MS.

glyphglyphPrevious publication:glyph L2, 201–202; none known except P1 and P2.

glyphglyphProvenance:glyphIt is not known whether Paine had direct or indirect access to the now-missing MS.

glyphglyphEmendations, adopted readings, and textual notes:glyph

No copy-text. The text is a paraphrase of the original letter (now lost) based on two versions of the paraphrase published by Paine. Although in neither version did Paine explicitly mention his source, the unattributed quotation, ‘“those Alta thieves face to face.”’ (201.10), is a strong sign that it was a letter (see p. 202 n. 1). Each of the two versions appears to derive independently from a common source—probably the typescript (and carbon copy) of Paine’s biography, which he condensed and serialized in Harper’s Magazine before publishing it as a book (see pp. 508–9):

Collation shows that P1 and P2 are in the following relation to the letter MS:

figure-il2026
Copies #1 and #2 were initially identical, or nearly so, before Paine edited each for its respective publication. The chief difference between the two versions is that P1 aimed at an abbreviated form of the work eventually published in MTB. But we cannot rule out the possibility that some differences arose because Paine added material for P2 after the copy for P1 had been separated from it. The objective here is thus to reconstruct the relevant portion of Paine’s printer’s copy before it was separately edited for P1 and P2, and to depart from that reconstruction only insofar as it does not represent a paraphrase of the missing letter MS.


do; (P2) • do: (P1)

people, (P1) • people— (P2)

McCrellish— (P1) • McCrellish‸ (P2)

pitiful (P2) • beautiful (P1)

him. (P1) • him. In his notebook he wrote: [¶, reduced type:] Whiskey is taken into the committee rooms in demijohns and carried out in demagogues. [regular type, flush left:] And in a letter: [¶, reduced type:] This is a place to get a poor opinion of everybody in. There are some pitiful intellects in this Congress! There isn’t one man in Washington in civil office who has the brains of Anson Burlingame, and I suppose if China had not seized and saved his great talents to the world this government would have discarded him when his time was up. (P2) [These two quotations came from Notebook 10 (see N&J1, 488) and from 21 Feb 68 to OC (see 197.26–198.3), respectively. They are not in P1 and were probably removed from the copy for P1 during the process of condensation, but they might have been added to the copy for P2 after P1 had been separated from it. In either case, they are not adopted here because they are clearly not part of the letter paraphrase.]

[] Furthermore ... Washington. (P2) • [not in] (P1)

thieves ... face.” (P2) • thieves” ... face.‸ (P1)

Also (P2) • Furthermore (P1)