No letters written between 3 and 13 February 1872 have been found. The Greeley birthday party ended about midnight, and Clemens remained in New York at least overnight. He was listed among the guests at the St. Nicholas Hotel in the New York Evening Express of Monday, 5 February (“Morning Arrivals,” 3), probably because he had arrived late on Saturday, either just before or just after the Greeley birthday party (the newspaper did not publish on Sundays). It is likely that he returned to Hartford on 4 February or shortly thereafter, but his activities for the next week or so are undocumented. In fact, Clemens’s presence in Hartford is demonstrable only on Saturday, 10 February, when he purchased a pair of “patent Congress Gaiters” from Casper Kreuzer, a Hartford bootmaker (receipt in CU-MARK; Geer 1871, 173).
Before he left New York City, Clemens may have visited the medium James Vincent Mansfield. (Taking into account Clemens’s lecture schedule, the visit must have occurred after 24 January and before 27 February, when Clemens mentioned his experience with “spirit mediums in New York” at a reception in Amherst, Massachusetts.) Mansfield, listed only as a “writer” in the New York City directory, had been for at least fifteen years a “writing medium of great celebrity” (Hardinge, 186), who conducted a mail-order spiritualism business from his home at 361 Sixth Avenue in New York City, “Terms, $5 and four three-cent stamps” (“Mediums and Magnetic Physicians,” Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, 18 May 72, 13). His extraordinary apartment was described by one visitor as “an enormous baby house in which 10,000 bits of glass and china had been arranged with no other purpose than to produce an overpowering glare of dazzle” (“Off the Beaten Track,” New York World, 25 Feb 72, 3). His specialty, according to P. T. Barnum, was “the answering of sealed letters addressed to spirits”:
Mr. Mansfield does not engage to answer all letters; those unanswered being too securely sealed for him to open without detection. To secure the services of the “Great Spirit-Postmaster,” a fee of five dollars must accompany your letter to the spirits; and the money is retained whether an answer is returned or not. ...
Time and again has Mansfield been convicted of imposture, yet he still prosecutes his nefarious business. (Barnum, 59–60)
In 1882, in writing chapter 48 of Life on the Mississippi, Clemens would fictionalize his session with Mansfield (called “Manchester” in the book), explaining, “I called on him once, ten years ago, with a couple of friends, one of whom wished to inquire after a deceased uncle.” In the manuscript draft of the chapter, before revision, Clemens himself was the client, and the spirit contact was Henry Clemens, killed in a steamboat explosion in 1858. The accompanying “friends” have not been identified:
I remember Mr. Manchester very well. I called on him once, ten years ago, with a couple of friends, to inquire after my brother, lost on the Pennsylvania in a distant relative, killed in a cyclone. I asked the questions, & my brother late relative wrote down the replies by the hand of the medium—I mean the medium said it was my brother. relative.
The séance concluded with Clemens’s comical attempts to make the spirit state when and how he died. Clemens told the medium
that when my brother relative was in this poor world, he was endowed with an extraordinary intellect & an absolutely defectless memory, & it seemed great pity that he had not been allowed to keep some shred of these. ... But I explained that if I had had the slightest idea that I was really conversing with a departed human being, I would not have uttered any light word whatever, but would have spoken in all cases reverently. I added that while I could not say I had not been talking with my brother, relative, I was at least quite able to say I did not believe I had been talking with him.
This man had plenty of clients—has plenty yet. He receives letters from spirits located in every part of the spirit world, & delivers them all over this country through the United States mail. These letters are filled with advice—advice from “spirits” who don’t know as much as a tadpole—& this advice is religiously followed by the receivers. Of course every man in the world is in one way or another a fool, & is well aware of it; but why should he be this kind of a fool? (SLC 1882, 18–19, 29–32)
In 1866, in San Francisco, Clemens had attended spiritualist demonstrations, and lampooned the new “wildcat religion” in several newspaper sketches (SLC 1866, SLC 1866, SLC 1866, SLC 1866, SLC 1866). His visit to Mansfield came at a time of renewed interest in spiritualism, fanned by the recent publication of Robert Dale Owen’s The Debatable Land between This World and the Next (New York: G. W. Carleton and Co., 1872) (H. Wilson 1871, 761; L1 , 80–86; N&J2 , 310–11 n. 41; Kerr, 110, 114, 164–68; SLC 1883, 481–85; Branch 1950, 144–46; “New Publications,” New York Tribune, 26 Dec 71, 6; “New Publications,” New York Times, 27 Jan 72, 2).