8 October 1853 • New York, N.Y. (MS, damage emended: CU-MARK, UCCL 00001)
I have not written to any of the Ⓐemendationfamily for some time, from the fact, firstly, that I didn’t know where they were, and secondly, because I have been fooling myself with the idea that I was going to leave New York, every day for the last two weeks. I have taken a liking to the abominable place, and every time I Ⓐemendationget ready to leave, I put it off a day or so, from Ⓐemendationsome unaccountable cause. It is just as Ⓐemendationhard on my conscience to leave New York as it Ⓐemendationwas easy to leave Hannibal. I think I shall get off Tuesday, though.
Edwin Forrest has been playing, for the last sixteen days,
at the Broadway Theatre, but I never went to see him till last night. The play
was the “Gladiator.” I did not like parts of it much, but
other portions were really splendid. In the latter part of the last act, where
the “Gladiator” (Forrest) dies at his brother’s Ⓐemendationfeet, (in all the fierce pleasure of gratified revenge,) after working the
latter’s revenge, the man’s whole soul seems absorbed in
the part he is playing; and it is really startling to see him. I am sorry I did
not see him play “Damon and
PythiasⒶemendation”—the former character being his greatest. He
appears in Philadelphia on Monday night.2explanatory note
I have not received a letter from home lately, but got a “Journal” the other day, in which I see the office has been sold. I suppose Ma, Orion and Henry are in St. Louis now. If Orion has no other project in that his head, he ought to take the contract for getting out some weekly paper, if he cannot Ⓐemendationget a foremanship. Now, for such Ⓐemendationa paper as the “Presbyterian” he cou (containingⒶemendation about 60,000,) he could get $20 or $25 perⒶemendation week, and he and Henry could easily do the work:—nothing to do but set the type and make up the forms. I mean they could easily do the work if $5.00 for 25,000 (per week) could beat a little work in to into Ⓐemendation(no offence to him) Henry’s lazy bones!3explanatory note Orion must get Jim. Wolfe a sit. in St. Louis. He Ⓐemendationcan get 20 cents per 1.000.4explanatory note The foreman of Gray’s office5explanatory note has taken a great fancy to go to St. Louis, Ⓐemendationand has got everything out of me that I Ⓐemendationknow about the place, and I shouldn’t be surprised if he should go. there.Ⓐemendation
If my letters do not come often, you need not bother yourself about Ⓐemendationme; for if you have a brother nearly eighteen years
of age, who is not
able to take care of himself a Ⓐemendationfew miles from home, such a brother is not Ⓐemendationworth one’s thoughts: and if I don’t manage to take
care of No. 1., be assured
you will never know it. I am not afraid, however: I shall
b ask Ⓐemendationfavors from no one, and endeavor to be, (and shall
be,) as “independent as Ⓐemendationa wood-sawyer’s Ⓐemendationclerk.”6explanatory note
I never saw such a place for military companies, as New York. Go on the street when you will, you are sure to meet a company in full uniform, with all the usual appendages Ⓐemendationof drums, fifes, &c. I saw a large company Ⓐemendationof the soldiers Ⓐemendationof the war of 1812, the other day, with a ’76 veteran scattered here Ⓐemendationand there in the ranks. And when I passed through one Ⓐemendationof the parks lately, I came upon a company of boys on parade. Their uniforms were neat, and their muskets about half the common size. Some of them were not more than seven or eight years Ⓐemendationof age; but had evidently been well drilled.7explanatory note
Passage Ⓐemendationto Albany Ⓐemendation(160 miles) in the finest Ⓐemendationsteamers that ply the Hudson, is now 25 cents—cheap enough, but is generally cheaper than that in the summer.8explanatory note
I want you to write as soon as I
tell
you Ⓐemendationwhere to direct your letter. I would let you Ⓐemendationknow now, if I knew myselfⒶemendation. I may Ⓐemendationperhaps be here a week longer; but I cannot tell. When you
r write Ⓐemendationtell me the whereabouts of the family. My love to Mr. Moffett and
Ella.9explanatory note Tell Ella I intend to write to her soon, whether she wants me to or not.
The manuscript of this letter (the earliest known to survive in holograph) has been damaged: several dozen words, letters, and marks of punctuation have been obliterated, including the last two digits of the year in Clemens’s dateline. Fortunately, most of the affected text can be confidently (albeit conjecturally) restored: see the textual apparatus for a detailed report of these emendations. Context establishes the year as 1853 and shows that Clemens twice mistook the day of the month while correctly naming the day of the week.
Clemens attended a Friday evening performance of The Gladiator by Robert Montgomery Bird (1806–54), then a proprietor and literary editor of the Philadelphia North American and United States Gazette. From 19 September through the date of this letter, Edwin Forrest (1806–72), for whom Bird wrote this play, had been appearing at the Broadway Theatre in a variety of roles, including Spartacus in The Gladiator (30 September and 7 October) and Damon in John Banim’s popular 1821 tragedy Damon and Pythias (19 and 24 September). On Monday, 10 October, Forrest began an engagement at Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theatre (“Amusements,” New York Tribune, 19 Sept–9 Oct 53; “Mr. Forrest” and “Amusements,” Philadelphia Public Ledger, 10 Oct 53, 2, 4).
Clemens was unsure of his family’s whereabouts because, probably sometime between 2 and 6 October, he had received the final, 22 September issue of the Hannibal Journal, which contained Orion’s valediction:
Notice to the Public.
Notice is hereby given that I have this day sold the “Journal” office, with its patronage to Wm T. League, Esq., Proprietor of the “Whig Messenger.” The “Hannibal Journal” will therefore after this date cease to be published. (OC 1853, 3)
Jim Wolfe (or Wolf) had been “printer’s devil” and then apprentice printer on Orion’s Hannibal Western Union (later the Hannibal Journal) since 1851. Wolfe boarded with the Clemens family during much of this time. “A Gallant Fireman,” the first sketch Clemens is known to have published, tells of Wolfe’s dim-witted effort to be of assistance during a January 1851 fire at the shop next door to the Western Union (ET&S1 , 62). He is likewise characterized as simple and rather gullible in an 1867 sketch, “Jim Wolf and the Tom-Cats,” based on another humorous incident in Hannibal. And in 1880, he would appear in chapter 23 of A Tramp Abroad as the “inconceivably green and confiding” Nicodemus Dodge, “a butt to play jokes on.”
Unidentified.
The simile derives from the “advantageous and strategic position occupied by the wood-sawyer, which was naturally reflected in the attitude of his clerk,” during “the pressing demand for wood in the days of early steamboat travel” (Lex , 261).
On 17 October the New York Tribune called the prevalence of soldiers in the city “a new and frightful form of spotted fever”: “The peculiar symptom . . . is a species of insanity which induces the patient, at all hours of the day and night, to suddenly rush from the bosom of his family and imagine himself a soldier!” To the “detestation of pedestrians, ladies and omnibus-drivers,” the victims appeared dressed variously in “scarlet, blue, green and yellow. . . . These unhappy beings, ranged in platoons, sections, squadrons, hollow-squares, and other military positions, and preceded by a band furiously blowing upon a number of brass stovepipes, parade the town from morning to night, making it appear a beleaguered city” (“The Spotted Fever,” 6).
Although he soon went to Philadelphia, Clemens may have considered Albany, New York, as an alternative.
Ella Hunter Lampton.
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK). The MS, which is damaged and has been silked, is reproduced in facsimile in Photographs and Manuscript Facsimilesclick to open link. It consists of a single folder of cream-colored wove paper, 7 ⅝ by 9 ¾ inches (19.3 by 24.8 cm), inscribed on all four pages. The folder is blind embossed in the upper left corner with a five-pointed star enclosed in a circle of words, of which ‘oakland’ is the only one legible. The paper is probably the same as that used in 26–?28 Oct 53 to OC and HCclick to open link. The letter was written in black ink, now faded to brown.
L1 , 16–18; MTB , 1:97, excerpts; and MTL , 1:23–25, with minor omissions indicated by ellipses. Collation shows that both printings derive from a common source with the same errors, presumably Paine’s transcription of the original. This transcription may have been made when the MS was in a less damaged state, for the paper had not cracked when Paine penciled an x following ‘revenge,)’ (16.16), but nothing in Paine’s texts establishes that he was able literally to copy anything that must now be wholly conjectured. Consequently, for the now missing portions of the MS, Paine’s texts must be regarded as without authority. The few cases in which their readings differ from the present text and are not clearly refuted by the surviving manuscript evidence are reported in the record of emendation.
In about 1880, Orion Clemens incorporated this letter MS in the draft of his autobiography then in progress: his page numbers appear in purple ink atop each page. The penciled notations are by Paine, probably added when he had the letter transcribed for publication. The circled ‘2’ canceled at the top of the first page probably refers to the position of this letter in MTB or MTL , in both of which it is the second letter printed. On the first page the note ‘3½″ wide’ and the xs inserted before ‘Edwin’ (16.11) and after ‘revenge,)’ (16.16) suggest that Paine may have been planning to publish a facsimile of part of the letter; both MTB and MTL are printed with a type line 3½ inches wide. No such facsimile is known to exist, however. On the last page Paine wrote ‘(An early M. T. letter)’. The MS may have been in the Mark Twain Papers since Paine’s service as literary executor of the Mark Twain Estate (1910–37). It is more probable, however, that it is part of the Moffett Collection; see p. 462.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.