18 June 1858 • Memphis, Tenn. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00016)
Long before this reaches you, my poor Henry,—my darling, my pride, my glory, my all, will have finished his blameless career, and the light of my life will have gone out in utter darkness. O, God! this is hard to bear. Hardened, hopeless,—aye, lost—lost—lost and ruined sinner as I am—I, even I, have humbled myself to the ground and prayed as never man prayed before, that the great God might let this cup pass from me.—Ⓐemendationthat he would strike me to the earth, but spare my brother—that he would pour out the fulness of his just wrath upon my wicked head, but have mercy, mercy, mercy upon that unoffending boy. The horrors of three days have swept over me—they have blasted my youth and left me an old man before my time. Mollie, there are grey hairs in my head to-night. For forty-eight hours I labored at the bedside of my poor burned and bruised, but uncomplaining brother, and then the star of my hope went out and left me in the gloom of despair. Then poor wretched me, that was once so proud, was humbled to the very dust.—Ⓐemendationlower than the dust—for the vilest beggar in the streets of Saint Louis could never conceive of a humiliation like mine. Men take me by the hand and congratulate me, and call me “lucky” beg because ⒶemendationI was not on the Pennsylvania when she blew up! My ⒶemendationGod forgive them, for they know not what they say.1explanatory note
Mollie you do not understand why I was not on that
boat—I will tell you. I left Saint Louis on her, but on they Ⓐemendation
was wayⒶemendation down, Mr. Brown, the pilot that was killed
by the explosion (poor
fellow,) quarreled with Henry without cause, while I was
steering—Henry started out of the pilothouse—Brown jumped
up and collared him—turned him half way around and struck him in the face!—
Bro and Ⓐemendationhim nearly six feet high—struck my little brother. I was wild
from that moment. I left the boat to steer herself, and avenged the
insult—and the Captain said I was right—that he would
discharge Brown in N. Orleans if he could get another pilot, and would do it in
St. Louis anyhow.2explanatory note Of course both of us could not return to St. Louis on the same
boat—no pilot could be found, and the Captain sent me to the A. T.
Lacey, with orders to her Captain to bring me to Saint Louis.3explanatory note Had another pilot been found, poor Brown would have been the
“lucky” man.4explanatory note
I was on the Pennsylvania five minutes before she left N.
Orleans, and I must tell you the truth, Mollie—three
hundred human beings perished by that fearful disaster.5explanatory note Henry was asleep—was blown up—then fell back on
the hot boilers, and I suppose that rubbish fell on him, for he is injured
internally. He got into the water and swam to shore, and got into the flatboat
with the other survivors.6explanatory note He had nothing on but his wet shirt, and he lay there burning up with a
southern sun and freezing in the wind till the Kate Frisbee came along. His
wounds were not dressed till
M heⒶemendation got to Memphis, 15 hours after the explosion. He was senseless and
motionless for 12 hours after that.7explanatory note But may God bless Memphis, the noblest city on the
face of the earth.
She has done her duty by these poor afflicted creatures—especially
Henry, for he has had five—aye, ten, fifteen, twenty times the care and attention that any one else has had.8explanatory note Dr. Peyton, the best physician in Memphis (he is exactly like the
portraits of Webster,)
st sat Ⓐemendationby him for 36 hours. There are 32 scalded men in that room, and you would
know Dr. Peyton better than I can describe him, if you could follow him around
and hear each
o man Ⓐemendationmurmur as he passes—“May the God of Heaven bless
you, Doctor!”9explanatory note The ladies have done well, too. Our second Mate, a handsome,
noble-hearted young fellow, will die. Yesterday a beautiful girl of 15 stooped
timidly down by his side and handed him a pretty bouquet. The poor suffering
boy’s eyes kindled, his lips quivered out a gentle “God
bless you, Miss,” and he burst into tears. He made them write
her name on a card for him, that he might not forget it.10explanatory note
Pray for me, Mollie, and pray for my poor sinless brother.
P. S. I got here two days after Henry.
One Memphis journalist later remembered that Clemens was “almost crazed with grief” at the sight of Henry, whose “fair young face . . . was almost the only one unmarred by steam and flame” (“‘Mark Twain.’ A Sad Incident of His Early Life Recalled,” Memphis Avalanche, 5 Nov 76, 4, clipping in Scrapbook 8:13, CU-MARK, facsimile in Branch 1985, 37–39). Another observer provided the following account of Clemens’s arrival at the Memphis Exchange, temporarily converted into a hospital for the Pennsylvania victims:
We witnessed one of the most affecting scenes at the Exchange yesterday that has ever been seen. The brother of Mr. Henry Clemens, second clerk of the Pennsylvania, who now lies dangerously ill from the injuries received by the explosion of that boat, arrived in the city yesterday afternoon, on the steamer A. T. Lacy. He hurried to the Exchange to see his brother, and on approaching the bedside of the wounded man, his feelings so much overcame him, at the scalded and emaciated form before him, that he sunk to the floor overpowered. There was scarcely a dry eye in the house; the poor sufferers shed tears at the sight. This brother had been pilot on the Pennsylvania, but fortunately for him, had remained in New Orleans when the boat started up. (“A Sad Meeting,” St. Louis News and Intelligencer, 19 June 58, reprinting the Memphis Eagle and Enquirer, 16 June 58, clipping in Scrapbook 1:7, CU-MARK)
In 1882 Clemens placed his fight with William Brown in Eagle Bend at Island 103 (Pawpaw Island), approximately eighteen miles above Vicksburg (see N&J2 , 454, 555). Known details of the Pennsylvania’s movements on this trip indicate that the incident occurred Thursday morning, 3 June 1858. Clemens described the fight and its aftermath in chapters 19 and 20 of Life on the Mississippi.
Like the Pennsylvania, the Alfred T. Lacey (sometimes Lacy), captained by John P. Rodney, belonged to the St. Louis, Cairo, and New Orleans Railroad Line of steamboats. Rodney’s pilot was Clemens’s Hannibal friend Barton S. Bowen (see 7 May 66 to William Bowen, n. 4click to open link). The Lacey departed New Orleans for St. Louis on 11 June 1858, two days after the Pennsylvania. Word of the explosion reached it at stops before Memphis, where it docked on 15 June. In 1897 Clemens recalled that Bowen gave him twenty dollars, presumably to help defray his expenses in Memphis, but the money was stolen (“Villagers of 1840–3,” Inds, 97).
Brown, who had probably gone off duty at 4:00 a.m., about two hours before the explosion, was blown into the river. Reed Young, a coalboat pilot taking passage on the Pennsylvania, was also blown into the river. He seized a floating life preserver and grasped the injured Brown, who soon slipped away. Brown’s last words, as reported by Young, were “my poor wife and children” (“The Explosion of the Pennsylvania!” Louisville Courier, 17 June 58, 3).
Contemporary newspaper reports, some based on the opinions of surviving crew members, estimated that of the more than three hundred aboard the Pennsylvania, passengers and crew, between one and three hundred lost their lives. Captain Klinefelter at first asserted that only twenty-five to thirty had died, a figure that he and pilot George Ealer later revised to thirty-eight. St. Louis steamboat inspectors, having investigated the explosion, first put the number at between one hundred fifty and one hundred sixty, then scaled it down to sixty. William M. Lytle’s “Losses of United States Merchant Steam Vessels, 1807–1867” reported only twenty fatalities (Lytle, 247). Weighing all available evidence, eighty to one hundred deaths seems a reasonable estimate, but the loss of the ship’s register and papers and the inconclusiveness of missing persons data, especially for an unknown number of immigrants traveling deck passage, leave any estimate in doubt (“Burning of the Steamer Pennsylvania,” St. Louis Missouri Democrat, 16 June 58, 2; “The Pennsylvania Disaster,” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 18 June 58, 2; “Further Particulars of the Pennsylvania Disaster,” New Orleans True Delta, 16 June 58, 2; “Terrible Steamboat Disaster,” Memphis Morning Bulletin, 15 June 58, 2; “The Steamer Pennsylvania,” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 18 July 58, 2, clipping in Scrapbook 1:7, CU-MARK; “Report Relative to the Explosion of the Boilers of Steamer Pennsylvania,” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 8 Aug 58, 3; U.S. Congress, Senate, 6 [pt. 2]: 271–72; Way 1983, 367).
The explosion had occurred less than a mile below the foot of Bordeaux’s (sometimes Burdeau’s or Burdoo’s) Chute and about sixty miles below Memphis, and approximately four miles above the head of Ship Island and twenty miles above Helena, Arkansas. According to eyewitness George C. Harrison, the boat was “not more than one or two hundred yards” off the Mississippi shore and “some three or four hundred yards” above the Harrisons’ woodyard landing. Harrison, his father, and two friends manned a large flatboat and propelled it to meet the wrecked steamer, which was drifting downriver:
The passengers were very slow in embarking at first, many being more anxious to save their property than to assist others to get on board. Fortunately the fire did not break out for some thirty or forty minutes (perhaps longer) after the explosion. So soon as the fire did break out, they then began to tumble in pell-mell, by which some were hurt. Some already on board were slightly hurt by trunks being thrown upon them. When the fire broke out, it spread with the greatest rapidity. We remained along side of the burning mass until it was with the greatest difficulty that we extricated the wood-boat from her perilous situation. Had we remained one minute longer it would have been impossible to have escaped. The heat was most intense as we passed around the stern of the burning and floating mass, and made a landing on a towhead just below. . . . On board the wood-boat, as near as we could ascertain, were from 180 to 200. (Harrison, 2)
The burned-out hulk of the Pennsylvania sank several miles below the point of explosion, near the Mississippi shore and above Austin, Mississippi, and Ship Island—a location that remained memorable to Clemens (see N&J2 , 536). His fullest account of the disaster is in chapters 18–20 of Life on the Mississippi, although his narrative of the destruction of the Amaranth in chapter 4 of The Gilded Age also draws heavily on the Pennsylvania disaster. For a detailed reconstruction of the event, see Branch 1985, 11–25.
According to reports in Memphis newspapers, Henry arrived at Memphis on the Kate Frisbee (Captain Richard M. Mason) at 3:00 a.m. on 14 June, about twenty-one hours after the explosion. He and thirty-one other victims were then placed in the Memphis Exchange, where mattresses had been hastily assembled and arranged into five “wards,” attended by the city’s physicians, nurses, and many volunteers. Clemens provided further details of Henry’s injuries and sufferings in a tribute he published, probably in late June or early July:
Henry’s stateroom was directly over the boilers, and he was asleep when the explosion occurred. He was never able to give an account of the matter himself, but from what others have said, and also from the nature of his injuries, it is supposed that he was thrown up, then fell back on the heated boilers, and some heavy substance falling upon him, injured him internally. His terrible burns did not seem as if they had been caused by steam or boiling water. After extricating himself, he escaped on a mattrass to a raft or open wood boat, where he lay exposed (with a hundred others,) to the wind and the scorching rays of a Southern sun, for eight hours, when he was taken on board the Kate Frisbee and conveyed to Memphis. He arrived there in a senseless, and almost lifeless condition. He lingered in fearful agony seven days and a half, during which time he had full possession of his senses, only at long intervals, and then but for a few moments at a time. His brain was injured by the concussion, and from that moment his great intellect was a ruin. We were not sorry his wounds proved fatal, for if he had lived he would have been but the wreck of his former self. (SLC [1858], 1:15)
Clemens later presented a different scenario in chapter 20 of Life on the Mississippi. There he claimed that after Henry was flung in the river by the force of the explosion he returned to the burning boat to help others before finally succumbing to his injuries
Clemens’s gratitude toward Memphis was not diminished by time. This is evident from his 25 October 1876 letter in reply to a Memphis woman (possibly the “Miss Wood” to whom Orion Clemens wrote in 1858; see MTB , 3:1591–92) who had watched over Henry. After apologizing for failing to remember her in particular, Clemens wrote:
What I do remember, without the least trouble in the world, is, that when those sixty scalded and mutilated people were thrown upon her hands, Memphis came forward with a perfectly lavish outpouring of money and sympathy, and that this did not fail and die out, but lasted through to the end. . . . Do you remember how the physicians worked?—and the students—the ladies—and everybody? I do. If the rest of my wretched memory was taken away, I should still remember that. (“‘Mark Twain.’ A Sad Incident of His Early Life Recalled,” Memphis Avalanche, 5 Nov 76, 4, clipping in Scrapbook 8:13, CU-MARK)
Clemens’s belief that Henry received special attention is borne out by the Avalanche, which observed: “Every one had been attracted by this young boy Henry, whose youth and slight physique were called upon to endure so much, and whose refined, graceful manner made it a gladness to do for him what could be done in the absence of a mother and sister for whom his heart grew sick.”
“What a magnificent man he was!” Clemens remarked of Thomas F. Peyton in his 25 October 1876 letter; “what healing it was just to look at him and hear his voice!” Almost thirty years later he recalled Peyton as “a fine and large-hearted old physician of great reputation in the community” (AD, 13 Jan 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA , 1:311). Peyton, who attended patients in the third ward at the Memphis Exchange, provided this description of the treatment he gave to the Pennsylvania victims:
The free use of white lead in linseed oil, such as is used in ordinary painting, and covering the part well with soft carded cotton, kept on until signs of sloughing, then remove, and re-apply to all parts not deeply injured, to the deep sloughs; apply fine olive oil and lime water, equal parts, on soft linen, and as the wound heals dress twice daily, with ointment of the sub-acetate of lead. (“The Treatment Generally Pursued with the Sufferers by the Steamer Pennsylvania,” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 18 July 58, 2, clipping in Scrapbook 1:7, CU-MARK)
The Pennsylvania’s badly scalded second mate, James M. Thompson, died at the Memphis Exchange on 27 June, six days after Henry Clemens (“The Pennsylvania Disaster. Additional Particulars,” Memphis Avalanche, undated clipping in Scrapbook 1:11, CU-MARK; “The Sufferers,” Memphis Appeal, 29 June 58, 2).
MS, Moffett Collection, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK). A photographic facsimile of the MS is on pp. 421–23. The MS consists of a folder of blue-lined off-white laid paper, 7 ¾ by 9 ¾ inches (19.6 by 24.9 cm), inscribed on the first three pages in a black ink, now faded to brown.
L1 , 80–85; MTB , 1:141–42, with omissions; MTL , 1:39–41.
see Moffett Collection, p. 462.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.