Description of Texts and Provenance

The George H. Brownell Collection is housed in the Rare Book Department of the Memorial Library of the University of Wisconsin (WU-MU). George H. Brownell (1875–1950) was a midwestern newspaperman who eventually became a full-time Mark Twain scholar, devoted especially to the task of obtaining photocopies (or originals) of Clemens’s uncollected journalism and letters. In 1935 he helped found the Mark Twain Society of Chicago and, in 1941, the Mark Twain Association of America. In January 1939 he became the first editor of the Twainian, a position he held until his death. In October 1936, Brownell acquired an unusual collection of Clemens material from a Mark Twain collector, Irving S. Underhill (who died in 1937, in Buffalo). According to Brownell,

Brownell’s conjecture was correct. The copies had been made by Dana S. Ayer of Worcester, Massachusetts, a book and manuscript dealer who had been a salesman (as of the late 1890s) for the American Publishing Company ( BAL 3521; Second Life Books, 1983, lot 764; Samuel R. Morrill to Clifton W. Barrett, 24 April 1957, ViU). Brownell compiled a list of Underhill’s documents, which included 158 Ayer transcriptions of Clemens letters (Brownell 1941). None of these letters was written earlier than 1867, when Clemens first corresponded with Elisha Bliss of the American Publishing Company. More than half of them were addressed to Bliss or to his son, Francis E. Bliss, who were both officers of the American Publishing Company. Most of the remaining letter transcriptions were addressed to Frank Fuller, Clemens’s business agent from the spring of 1867 until sometime in 1868, when Clemens presumably placed Bliss in charge of past as well as his then current business correspondence (Brownell 1941). In the fall of 1942, Brownell loaned the Ayer transcriptions to Bernard DeVoto, who in turn had the majority of them retranscribed, depositing these retranscriptions in the Mark Twain Papers (described below). Brownell ultimately bequeathed the documents to the University of Wisconsin, where they now reside.

The original manuscripts for most of the letter transcriptions in the Brownell Collection have been found and are accessible to the editors, but a few letters are known only by the copy Ayer made of the original. By assessing the overall accuracy of Ayer’s transcriptions and identifying the kinds of errors he introduced into them, it is possible to emend the texts of those few letters or parts of letters for which no manuscript survives, in order to restore the likely reading of the lost original. Four letters from 1876–80 derive wholly or partially from Ayer transcriptions.

The Estelle Doheny Collection at the Edward Laurence Doheny Memorial Library, St. John’s Seminary, Camarillo, California (CCamarSJ). In 1940 Estelle Doheny (1875–1958), philanthropist and widow of wealthy oil man Edward Doheny, became a major patron of St. John’s Seminary, funding the construction of its library facility and donating to that facility “her superb collection of rare books, illuminated manuscripts, paintings, paper-weights and works of art” (Mahony, 4). From 1940 until her death, Estelle Doheny donated to the seminary many literary manuscripts and manuscript fragments (about a dozen of which were Clemens’s), more than seven thousand rare books (including sixty volumes from Clemens’s library), and about fifteen hundred autograph letters (of which approximately fifty were Clemens’s). In 1987 St. John’s Seminary began liquidating the Doheny Collection at auction, and by February 1989 all the Mark Twain holdings had been sold. In this volume, there are four letters that were in the Doheny Collection, all written to Emeline B. Beach: 5 December 1867, and 1 January, 31 January, and 10 February 1868 (the last two are now in the collection of John L. Feldman). These are all the letters Clemens is known to have written Beach before his marriage, and they were eventually returned to Clemens by the addressee herself. Paine, in preparing Mark Twain: A Biography (MTB) and Mark Twain’s Letters (MTL), sent out letters of inquiry to Clemens’s friends and associates. From Emma Beach Thayer he received a response on 22 June 1907, which read in part: “The following winter i.e., 1868 Mr. Clemens came several times to our home—went with us I think to hear Mr. Beecher preach, and wrote when he was in Washington. If he wants the letters I have them, I think” (Davis 1967a, 2). Eight months later, Clemens’s secretary, Isabel Lyon, made the following entry in her “Daily Reminder” for 1908: “Feb 12—At the King’s request I wrote Mrs. Thayer to ask if she would send down the letters the King wrote her many years ago just after the Quaker City Expedition, for the King & Paine to see. Copies can be made there or here.” The “King” in fact appears to have kept the originals. Paine, however, did not publish them in MTL or MTB , although in MTB he attributed a quotation from one of them to a letter Clemens “wrote home” (1:359). Since the Beach letters were not included in the Mark Twain Papers, they were probably kept with the private papers of Clara Clemens, and eventually sold by her or her husband, Jacques Samossoud. Mrs. Doheny purchased a substantial amount of Mark Twain materials from Maxwell Hunley, a Beverly Hills book and manuscript dealer who bought extensively at a 1951 auction of some of Clara’s holdings, and who may have sold additional Mark Twain material for Samossoud (Frederick Anderson to Robert Daley, 2 Sept 1977, CU-MARK). The letters in the Doheny collection were sold at auction by Christie’s on 17 and 18 October 1988.

It is not known when, before his death in 1920, Howells agreed to a sale, but the survival of the letter to Ayer (quoted above) with the letters to Howells now in the Berg Collection suggests that Ayer may have negotiated a successful offer. In any event, the full history of the letters subsequent to 1918 has not been traced. By 1941 they formed part of the large and important collection of Owen D. Young, former chairman of the board of the General Electric Company. In that year, Albert Berg purchased half of Young’s collection for the New York Public Library, and Young donated the remainder. Meanwhile, after Howells’s death, the unpublished Clemens letters in his possession passed to his surviving children, John Mead and Mildred Howells. In late 1937 they sold them to Harvard University, together with some two thousand additional letters written to their father by famous American and English literary figures. In 1876–80, there are ninety-two letters (or parts of letters) to William Dean Howells from these two archives: thirty-five from the Berg Collection, and fifty-seven from the Houghton Library.

Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927), financier, railway executive, and heir to Collis Porter Huntington’s railroad fortune, bequeathed his San Marino, California, estate as an endowed public museum and art gallery for his enormous collection of rare books, manuscripts, and paintings. The Clemens material at the Huntington Library includes literary manuscripts and nearly two hundred autograph letters. Over half of these letters are addressed to Mary Mason Fairbanks, and were bought by Henry Huntington from William K. Bixby in 1918 (not from the Fairbanks family, as stated in L2 , 512, and L3 , 583). Charles Mason Fairbanks, Mary Mason Fairbanks’s son, had sold the letters in 1911 to “a collector in the West,” probably Bixby (Robert H. Dodd to Charles Mason Fairbanks, 8 Mar 1911, CtHMTH). Nineteen letters written in 1876–80 belong to the Huntington Library, all but two to Mary Mason Fairbanks.

The Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, housed in the Francis Fitz Randolph Rare Book Room, Helen D. Lockwood Library, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York (NPV). This collection was given to Vassar in 1977 by Ralph and Jean Connor of Tymor Farm, LaGrangeville, New York. Jean Connor inherited the papers from her mother, Jean Webster McKinney, who had in turn inherited them from her mother, Annie Moffett Webster, Clemens’s niece and the wife of Charles L. Webster, his business partner from 1884 to 1888. The letters and other Clemens materials in the collection represent one of the three principal caches of family letters, which passed from Clemens to his mother, Jane Lampton Clemens (d. 1890), his brother Orion (d. 1897) and sister-in-law Mollie Clemens (d. January 1904), and ultimately to his sister, Pamela A. Moffett (d. August 1904). Some of these documents went eventually to Pamela’s son, Samuel E. Moffett (see Moffett Collection), and some to her daughter, Annie Moffett Webster. Not surprisingly, therefore, several manuscript letters are now found partly in the McKinney Family Papers and partly in the Moffett Collection.

Mollie Clemens wrote her nephew Samuel Moffett on 31 July 1899, “We never destroyed Sams letters—excepting by his request, or a few no one should see” (CU-MARK). At least one partly destroyed (censored) letter survives in this collection (see L1 , 347–49), but by far the larger toll was probably taken by accidental physical damage or loss, and by the deliberate destruction, following Mollie Clemens’s death, of most of Clemens’s letters to his mother. As early as 1881, Orion Clemens had assembled a number of his brother’s letters written between about 1853 and 1865 as part of a sprawling manuscript for his own never-published autobiography, finding even then that not all the letters had been preserved intact. On 6 October 1899, Pamela Moffett sent an unknown number of original letters to her son, Samuel Moffett, then a journalist in California, saying in part that she “was sorry to see that parts of some of the letters were missing” (CU-MARK). He tried to publish at least a few of these letters in biographical sketches of Clemens, but was eventually told to preserve them for publication after Clemens’s death. Some, if not all, of these letters must eventually have become part of the Moffett Collection.

But in 1904, according to a 1935 Associated Press story in an unidentified newspaper clipping, Mollie Clemens’s executor, John R. Carpenter, burned “almost four trunks” of Clemens’s letter to his mother, “as requested by the famous humorist.” Carpenter confided his story, according to this report, to Dr. G. Walter Barr of Keokuk, who gave this account:

That this story was not a fiction is suggested by the postscript of Clemens’s 14 February 1904 letter to Carpenter, the original draft of which survives in the Mark Twain Papers: “If there are any letters of mine, I beg that you will destroy them.”

The McKinney Family Papers consist of Clemens documents typically left by him, at various times, with his sister. They include his earliest surviving notebook (probably written in 1855; see N&J1 , 11–39); half a dozen literary manuscripts, incomplete and unpublished, written principally between 1859 and 1868 (see ET&S 1–3 ; more than six hundred letters and telegrams from Clemens to various members of his family, and to business associates like Webster, as well as family photographs and mementoes, and letters and documents by other family members and close associates (Simpson 1977, 6–14). Twenty-eight letters written in 1876–80 are from the McKinney Family Papers.

The Charles E. Perkins Collection consists of ninety-two items—for the most part letters or notes by Samuel Clemens addressed to his friend, lawyer, and business agent Charles E. Perkins—found in the files of the Hartford law firm of Howard, Kohn, Sprague and Fitzgerald. They were donated to the Mark Twain House (CtHMTH) as the Perkins Collection in January 1975 by William W. Sprague. Charles Perkins was a partner in this law firm (then called Perkins and Perkins) until his death in 1917 (“Large File of Twain Letters Discovered in Area Law Firm,” Hartford Courant, 11 Mar 1975). Thirty-five letters written in 1876–80 are from the Perkins Collection.

The Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK). The core of this collection consists of the original documents that Clemens made available to Albert Bigelow Paine for the official biography Paine was to produce, and from which (in part) Paine eventually published his selected editions of letters, notebooks, and the autobiography. Since Clemens’s death in 1910, these papers were successively in the care of Paine (1910–37); Bernard DeVoto at Harvard (1938–46); Dixon Wecter at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, and later at the University of California in Berkeley (1946–50); Henry Nash Smith (1953–63); and Frederick Anderson (1963–79), both of the latter at the University of California in Berkeley, and both successors to Paine, DeVoto, and Wecter as the official literary executor of the Clemens estate. Upon the death of Clara Clemens Samossoud in 1962, the papers were bequeathed to the University of California, and in 1971 they became part of The Bancroft Library, where they now reside. Since 1980, the Papers have been in the care of the General Editor of the Mark Twain Papers, Robert H. Hirst, of the University of California in Berkeley.

The original collection segregated by Clemens for Paine included forty-five of the approximately fifty extant notebooks kept between 1855 and 1910; approximately seventeen thousand letters received by Clemens or his family; an estimated six hundred literary manuscripts, most of them unpublished, including the autobiographical dictations; as well as photographs, clippings, contracts, and a variety of other documents originally owned by Clemens. Thirty-eight letters by Clemens in the years 1876–80 are from this original collection. Since Paine’s tenure, primary and secondary documents have been added in various ways to the Papers—ranging from gifts of both photocopied and original manuscripts and documents, to large purchases and bequests comprising many hundreds of documents, to the systematic compilation of a secondary archive of photocopies, collected from institutions and private owners of the original documents around the world, for the specific purpose of publishing a comprehensive scholarly edition of Mark Twain’s Works and Papers.

Samossoud Collection (1952), The Mark Twain Papers. Among the documents in Clemens’s possession at the time of his death, but not included in the Mark Twain Papers or made wholly available to Paine, were the letters written to his fiancée and wife, Olivia L. Langdon, and later to their daughters, Susy, Clara, and Jean. Dixon Wecter was permitted to transcribe most of these letters, as well as some that were still owned and separately housed by Clara. He used these transcriptions as the basis for his selected edition, The Love Letters of Mark Twain ( LLMT ), published in 1949, and ultimately deposited all of them in the Mark Twain Papers. On 21 March 1952, however, the University of California purchased from Clara’s husband Jacques Samossoud (d. 1966) approximately five hundred original letters written to Olivia between September 1868 and her death in 1904. Other parts of the large cache of family letters still held by Clara and her husband were sold or given at various times between 1949 and 1962 to other persons and institutions, including Chester L. Davis, Sr., and the Mark Twain Foundation of Perry, Missouri. Twelve letters in the years 1876–80 are from the Samossoud Collection.

Moffett Collection (1954), The Mark Twain Papers. This collection represents the portion of Pamela Moffett’s papers which passed to her son, Samuel, instead of her daughter, Annie (see McKinney Family Papers). The collection became the property of Samuel Moffett’s daughter, Anita Moffett (d. 1952), either upon his death in 1908, or upon the death of Anita’s younger brother, Francis Clemens Moffett, in 1927. The papers were discovered in 1953 by Paul P. Appel, a Mamaroneck, New York, book dealer (not in 1954 by Jacob Zeitlin, as reported in L2 , 516), in a warehouse sale that included some of Anita Moffett’s effects: sixteen hundred letters by Clemens, his family, and associates (including Pamela’s letters to her son and daughter); ten scrapbooks of newspaper clippings for the period 1858–98, evidently compiled by Orion and Mollie Clemens, and containing original printings of Clemens’s (and Orion’s) western journalism, which had been largely unknown to Paine and all subsequent scholars (see MTEnt ); deeds to 1860s Nevada mining claims owned by Clemens or his brother; family photographs; and a family Bible. The collection was purchased for the University of California in 1954 by a group of anonymous donors. The inventory of Clemens letters made at the time is not always specific enough to enable the editors to be certain whether some letters were part of the Moffett acquisition or were already part of the Mark Twain Papers in 1954. Twenty-two letters in 1876–80 are from the Moffett Collection.

Mendoza Collection (1957), The Mark Twain Papers. In January 1957 the University of California purchased a collection of one hundred sixteen Clemens letters written between 1867 and 1905 (all but one of them to Elisha Bliss or Henry H. Rogers), as well as eleven other miscellaneous items. This collection was offered for sale to the University by Aaron Mendoza of the Isaac Mendoza Book Company, New York City. The letters came from the collection of C. Warren Force (1880–1959), who had bought the letters to the Blisses in 1938 at the sale of the collection of George C. Smith, Jr. (Parke-Bernet 1938). In 1939 Force had given Bernard DeVoto transcripts of the letters to the Blisses. The Mark Twain Papers now contain about eighty-five letters to Rogers (or members of his family) and fifty-seven original letters to Elisha Bliss or Francis E. Bliss. Of the total, all but roughly thirty letters were part of the Mendoza Collection, from which three letters in 1876–80 are drawn—two to Elisha Bliss and one to Fanny C. Hesse.

Whitmore Collection (1964), The Mark Twain Papers. In the summer of 1964 the University of California purchased the Franklin Gray Whitmore Collection from Whitmore’s granddaughter, Frances Whitmore Hartwell, of Pasadena, California. It consists in part of two hundred and two letters by Clemens and about fifty by Olivia L. Clemens, Isabel V. Lyon, and various associates, written between 1880 and 1908, primarily addressed to Clemens’s friend and business agent, Franklin Gray Whitmore, or to Harriet Eliza Goulden (Mrs. Franklin) Whitmore, of Hartford, Connecticut. It also includes books, photographs, and other miscellaneous materials. Prior to the purchase, the collection was on deposit at the Mark Twain House in Hartford. Although the bulk of the collection was sold to the University of California, Frances Hartwell retained six items and sold about twenty-four others to the Mark Twain House. Two letters written in 1876–80 are from the Whitmore Collection.

Tufts Collection (1971), The Mark Twain Papers. The James and John M. Tufts Collection was assembled chiefly by James Tufts, an acquaintance of Clemens’s and, for more than forty years (1892–1935), a prominent San Francisco journalist who at various times was an editor for the Call, the Chronicle, and the Examiner. The collection was purchased in 1971 from Tufts’s son, Dr. John M. Tufts of Kentfield, California. It includes twenty-three original letters by Clemens to various correspondents, literary manuscripts, first printings of his sketches, first editions of his books, and photographs. Two letters written in 1876–80 are from the Tufts Collection.

Appert Collection (1973 and 1977), The Mark Twain Papers. The gift of Mr. and Mrs. Kurt E. Appert of Pebble Beach, California, this collection includes more than fifty letters by Clemens to various correspondents, literary manuscripts, photographs, letters from various hands to Clemens, first editions of his works, and books from his library. Three letters written in 1876–80 are from the Appert Collection.

Paine Transcripts. Cushman Collection (2003), The Mark Twain Papers. Between 1906 and 1917, Albert Bigelow Paine transcribed some eighteen hundred letters, most of them written by Samuel L. Clemens, to various correspondents. In late 2003, Anne T. Cushman, the widow of Bigelow Paine Cushman, Paine’s grandson, donated most of these typed transcriptions to the Mark Twain Papers. The scope and significance of the collection were described by Robert H. Hirst in 2004:

The transcripts provide many texts which are entirely new, as well as some that are new in part. Collation of the texts against those published in MTB and MTL has confirmed that the transcripts served as some stage of copy for the books and that they are often considerably more complete and accurate than the published versions. Some of the transcripts exist in two stages: a typescript (and its carbon) taken directly from the manuscript and then corrected, styled, and otherwise edited by Paine; and a second typescript (and its carbon) made from the first, incorporating Paine’s editorial changes, which is in turn often marked with further corrections and editing by Paine. Individual letter commentaries explain which transcripts survive and how they contribute to the texts. Nineteen texts (or parts of texts) written in 1876–80 derive from the Paine transcripts.

The Morris Collection comprises nine letters that Clemens wrote to William Wright (Dan De Quille) between 1864 and 1876. After Wright’s death in 1898 they were preserved by his daughter, Mell Wright Evans, who in turn “passed them on to her daughter, Irma Evans Morris. Effie Mona Mack learned of them while doing research for Mark Twain in Nevada, and purchased photographic negatives of them” (Berkove 1988, 4, 18 n. 1; Mack 1947). Mrs. Morris bequeathed the letters to her children, and after the death of her son, Evans Morris, in 1990, the letters were sold. Although most were acquired in March 1993 by the James S. Copley Library in La Jolla, California (CLjC), the purchasers of the rest have not been identified. In 2010 and 2011 the holdings of the Copley Library were sold at auction by Sotheby’s, New York. The current location of the nine letters is therefore not known.