No letters are known to survive between 31 January and 9 February 1871. On 31 January Clemens left Susan and Theodore Crane in Buffalo with Olivia, and went to New York for two days, 1 and 2 February, stopping at the Grand Hotel. There he met with Elisha Bliss, Francis P. Church, and probably Isaac E. Sheldon. He and Church worked out the terms of his planned withdrawal from his monthly Galaxy “Memoranda,” and persuaded Whitelaw Reid, of the New York Tribune, to report the results on 2 February:
Mark Twain threatens to cease writing periodically. He says trying to think how he shall be funny at a certain date, is very melancholy; keeps him awake at night; prompts him to commit suicide, run for Congress, or describe in print his reminiscences of distinguished men whose funerals he has had the pleasure of attending. With the April number of The Galaxy it is therefore understood that he will make his bow, and retire from this field of his triumphs. He will still, however, contribute to its further glories, as occasion and inspiration may allow. (“Personal,” 5)
Church also prepared a more detailed paragraph for the Tribune, which published it the next day:
Mark Twain, who has been spending a few days quietly in New-York, left last night for Washington. He has arranged with Mr. Church, the Editor of The Galaxy, a transformation of his department. In the May number, for “Memoranda” will be substituted a humorous department to which widely-known writers will contribute, in addition to Mark Twain, who desires to be released from carrying on his unaided and already overloaded shoulders the heavy burden of a whole department. He will still remain, however, the leading and frequent contributor to the new one, the only magazine articles he will write being those he is to furnish The Galaxy. (“Personal,” 3 Feb 71, 5)
Clemens arrived in Washington, D.C., on the night of 2 February or early the next morning and registered at the Ebbitt House. Already at the Ebbitt House were several other Buffalo residents, including Josephus Larned, who was overseeing the publication of a trade report he had written. By 7 February David Gray was also in town.
The impulse for Clemens’s trip was the delay in Jervis Langdon’s lawsuit against Memphis, Tennessee, initiated in 1869, for non-payment of a five-hundred-thousand-dollar street paving bill. With Langdon’s death in 1870, the affairs of the estate had been thrown temporarily into a crisis, which Clemens described in a 1906 Autobiographical Dictation:
[Talmage Brown] had paved Memphis, Tennessee, with the wooden pavement so popular in that day. He had done this as Mr. Langdon’s agent. Well managed, the contract would have yielded a sufficient profit, but through Brown’s mismanagement it had nearly merely yielded a large loss. With Mr. Langdon alive, this loss was not a matter of consequence, and could not cripple the business. But with Mr. Langdon’s brain and hand and credit and high character removed, it was another matter. . . . His agents were usually considerably in debt to him, and he was correspondingly in debt to the owners of the mines. . . . A careful statement of Mr. Langdon’s affairs showed that the assets were worth eight hundred thousand dollars, and that against them was merely the ordinary obligations of the business. Bills aggregating perhaps three hundred thousand dollars—possibly four hundred thousand—would have to be paid; half in about a month, the other half in about two months. The collections to meet these obligations would come in further along. (AD, 23 Feb 1906, in MTA , 2:135–36, with omissions)
Clemens now hoped to revive the stalled legislation he had first tried to advance, with limited success, in July 1870 (6 July 70click to open link, 8 July 70click to open link, both to OLC). His present effort was summarized, in a letter to the Chicago Tribune, by his friend George Alfred Townsend, who also described a literary collaboration probably plotted during several convivial dinners:
BUFFALO’S ABROAD
The venerable Mark Twain came to Washington a few days ago to have Tennessee divided into two Judicial Districts. It appears that the city of Memphis stands indebted to an estate, of which he is an executor, in the sum of three or four hundred thousand dollars, but that, owing to the long docket in the Tennessee District, the case is never reached for adjudication. He wants the district cut into “twain,” but even the great humorist sometimes fails in politics, and, after three days’ hopeless meandering in that great bourse of the Capitol, Mark gave the town his blessing, and hastened to Buffalo. He is said to be writing a comic Bible, with Samson for the central character, and he makes his hero bring down the house, hitting the Philistines hard. The ascetic David Gray, editor of the Buffalo Courier, furnishes some chapters in this book on the Song of Solomon, and the Rev. J. N. Larned, of the Buffalo Express, institutes some happy comparisons between Canada and the land of Canaan. Buffalo deserves the cognomen of “the comic city of the Western hemisphere.” (Townsend 1871)
A note from 1870–71 evidently provides the working title for the “comic Bible”: “Samson Humorist” (CU-MARK).
Meanwhile, in Buffalo, Olivia had fallen ill with what was eventually diagnosed as typhoid fever. On 3 February she wrote Pamela Moffett, “I am not feeling well today” (NPV), and by 6 February she was so ill that Susan Crane wrote Clemens in Washington (CSmH):
Mon Feb 6. 1871
Dear Mr Clemens.
Livy has consented to allow me to write you that she is not well, and has not been since you went away.
She has had some fever, no appetite, no power to sleep, & great depression of spirits. Livy did not like that, so I did not say it. This although she has kept about every day & this morning is up when I think she is far from able to be.
The Dr has seen her twice, giving her some vigorous remedies and said that she must not have the baby at night, and for three nights the girls have cared for him. He is doing quite well now although he has not been well. & it is the anxiety in part which has worn Livy. The Dr thinks her nervous system has been overtaxed & her stomach has been deranged thereby.
Now why I write is this—or why Livy allows me to write—If your business would take you over into next week Livy feels that it would be almost unendurable but if your knowing these facts, would help you to close it this week, or defer it, she is willing to have you know how she is.
Of course she knows that you will come as soon as possible any way, but rather than have you remain until next week, she would rather have you give up the business. She would rather give up her interest in Memphis.
If you will dispatch as soon as this is recd we will tell you just how Livy is at that time. She did not wish to alarm you with a dispatch now & there really is no need of it now.
You may trust to my letting you know the truth—
Theodore goes home this afternoon & I shall take as good care of Livy as she will allow me, but she is not very good to be taken care of. Do not be worried. I think Livy will be better but I wanted to feel that we were not keeping you entirely in the dark.
Before receiving this letter, Clemens had independently telegraphed his plans to Buffalo, for Sue Crane noted on the envelope “Feb 6 | PS—1 AM | Your Dispatch recd and answered.” (Neither Clemens’s telegram nor Crane’s answer survives.) On 7 February, Clemens visited Mathew Brady’s studio, where he was photographed with Gray and Townsend (Horan, 404 illustration; see p. 571 for a reproduction of one of the photographs from that sitting), and later attended a dinner reported in the Washington National Republican: “Hon. S. S. Cox gave a dinner to Mark Twain, at Welcker’s on Tuesday evening, at which were present Hon. Charles E. Eldridge, Mr. Gray, of the Buffalo Courier, Donn Piatt, George Alfred Townsend and W. W. Warden, as representative(?) Washington correspondents” (“Our Fashionable Society,” 9 Feb 71, 1). Welcker’s restaurant was called by one reporter “one of the best restaurants in the world,” and its proprietor was noted for furnishing “all the big dinners and suppers, whose beauty and elegance and cost so often astonish the people at the Capitol” (Ramsdell 1871). Charles Augustus Eldredge (1820–96), a lawyer, had been a Democratic congressman from Wisconsin since 1863. William W. Warden, also a lawyer, was a correspondent for the Boston Post, the Philadelphia Day, and the Richmond (Va.) Dispatch. Donn Piatt (1819–91) was a veteran correspondent of several newspapers and currently Washington correspondent for the Cincinnati Commercial. He, in partnership with Townsend, had just bought a two-thirds interest in the weekly Washington Sunday Herald, which they transformed into a new weekly, The Capital. In describing the Cox dinner, Piatt remarked:
This was my first meeting with Mark Twain. . . . He is not only careless about his clothes, but he is positively ignorant on the subject, and labors under the impression that the garment that hangs so loosely upon his shoulders is a coat. From under his bushy hair his face peers out, presenting a square, well-proportioned forehead, keen gray eyes, and hooked nose, a well developed mouth, exhibiting a good deal of decision, and a chin that rounds out, supporting the whole, in no part of which will you find a particle of the humor for which he is distinguished. His face, on the contrary, is a sad one, and when all are in roars about him he continues in a state of dense solemnity. . . .
It is quite impossible for him to produce in his conversation a serious effect. The exceedingly droll quaintness of his solemn countenance, added to the drawl of his voice, makes one laugh when the speaker is really striving to be serious. . . .
I am told by those who know him well that he is a very kind hearted fellow. He has generous impulses and a gentle, patient nature. We had an illustration of his affection, for unfortunately in the midst of the dinner he received a telegram telling him of the sickness of his wife, and he was forced to leave upon the next train. Mr. Barry [i.e. David] Gray, a gentleman who has written some of the most beautiful and quaintest poems of the day, left with him. This blank at the table brought our dinner to an abrupt termination. I was very sorry, not only on account of the cause for Mr. Clements’ leaving, but the lost opportunity for becoming better acquainted with him. Regarding Mark Twain as a man equal to Hood, and one whose humor is producing so marked an effect upon our literature, I was anxious to know him personally. He and Bret Harte are the two men of all others one would go the greatest distance to look into and study. (Piatt 1871)
The telegram was from Susan Crane, who, concerned about the increasing severity of Olivia’s illness, was unable to wait for Clemens’s response to her letter of 6 February. It brought him back to Buffalo, doubtless by the morning of 8 February (“Morning Arrivals,” New York Evening Express, 1 Feb 71, 3; “Personal,” New York Tribune, 3 Feb 71, 5; Townsend 1871; Casual; “Personal,” Washington National Republican, 19 Jan 71, 2; “Personal,” Washington Evening Star, 4 Feb 71, 4; “George Alfred Townsend and Donn Piatt . . .,” Washington National Republican, 11 Feb 71, 2; Boyd: 1871, 363, 369; 1872, 478; BDUSC , 956; Poore 1870, 122; “Personal,” Buffalo Courier, 26 Jan 71, 1; L2 , 196 n. 1).