13? October 1859 • St. Louis, Mo. (MS facsimile: Daley, UCCL 00021)
Ma has not written you, because she did not know when I would get started down the river again—and sh I could not write, because, between you and I, Aunt Betsey, for once in my life I didn’t know any more than my own mother—she could not tell when she and the coal-tinted white tom-cat might hope to get rid of me, and I was in the same lamentable state of ignorance myself.
You see, Aunt Betsey, I made but one trip on the packet after you left, and then concluded to remain at home awhile.3explanatory note I have just discovered, this morning, that I am to go to New Orleans on the Col. Chambers—“fine, light-draught, swift running passenger steamer—all modern accommodations—and improvements—through with dispatch—for freight or passage apply on board or to”—but—I have forgotten the agent’s name—however, it makes no difference4explanatory note—and as I was saying, or had intended to say, Aunt Betsey, that probably, if you are ready to come up, you had better take the “Ben Lewis,” the best boat in the packet line. She will be at Cape Girardeau at noon on Saturday (day after tomorrow,) and will reach here at breakfast time Sunday.5explanatory note If Mr. Hamilton is Chief Clerk,—very well. I am slightly acquainted with him.6explanatory note And if Messrs. Carter, Gray and Dean Somebody (I have forgotten his other name,) —very well are in the Ⓐemendationpilot-house—very well again—I am acquainted with them.7explanatory note Just tell Mr. Gray, Aunt Betsey—that I wish him to place himself at your command.
All the family are well except myself—I Ⓐemendation am in a bad way again—disease, Love, in its most malignant form. Hopes are entertained of my recovery, however. At the dinner-table, I— Ⓐemendationexcellent symptom—I am still as “terrible as an army with banners.”8explanatory note
Aunt Betsey—the wickedness of this world—but I haven’t time to moralize this morning.
P. S.—All send their love.
Paine, when printing this letter in MTL (1:44–45), indicated that the source of his text gave the date as “Oct. 31”; he conjectured that the year was “probably 1859.” It seems reasonable to suppose that Paine’s copy of the letter was not the manuscript but a transcript, whose maker supplied the month and day of writing, but not the year. Unfortunately, 31 October 1859 was not a Thursday. A date of Thursday, 13 October 1859, is assigned here on the assumption that a simple transposition of numbers accounts for the transcriber’s error. This date is consistent with the schedule of the A. B. Chambers, which Clemens was about to join as pilot (see note 4). The boat’s first advertisement for the Mississippi trade appeared in the Missouri Republican on 20 October, before which time the owners would certainly have completed the hiring of the pilots.
Mrs. Elizabeth W. Smith (b. 1794 or 1795), an old friend of the Clemens family’s in Hannibal, was now living in Jackson, Missouri, just a few miles northwest of Cape Girardeau (Hannibal Census, 318; MTL , 1:44). She was remembered by Annie Moffett Webster as a frequent and welcome visitor in St. Louis (MTBus , 49). Clemens characterized her, both in his autobiographical dictations and in several fictions, as his mother’s companion and “chum”:
She wasn’t anybody’s aunt in particular, she was aunt to the whole town of Hannibal; this was because of her sweet and generous and benevolent nature and the winning simplicity of her character. . . . She and my mother were very much alive; their age counted for nothing; they were fond of excitement, fond of novelties, fond of anything going that was of a sort proper for members of the church to indulge in. . . . they were always ready for Fourth of July processions, Sunday-school processions, lectures, conventions, camp-meetings, revivals in the church—in fact, for any and every kind of dissipation that could not be proven to have anything irreligious about it—and they never missed a funeral. (AD, 30 Nov 1906, CU-MARK, in AMT , 62)
In 1894 Clemens used Elizabeth Smith and his mother as the models for Aunt Patsy Cooper and Aunt Betsy Hale in “Those Extraordinary Twins.” In 1897 he used Mrs. Smith as the model for “old aunt Betsy Davis” in “Hellfire Hotchkiss” (Inds, 109–33), and a year later for the “widow Dawson” in the “Schoolhouse Hill” version of The Mysterious Stranger (MSM , 175–220).
On 2 August 1859 Clemens began piloting the Edward J. Gay, captained by Bart Bowen, in the St. Louis–New Orleans trade. The Gay, an “elegantly furnished and fully appointed” packet on its maiden voyage, was the newest addition to the St. Louis and New Orleans Railroad Line (“River News,” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 25 July 59, 3). Presumably the third round trip of the Gay, which began on 13 September and ended on 1 October, was Clemens’s last, the “one trip” he made after Aunt Betsey’s visit. He then remained “at home awhile” in St. Louis with his mother and Pamela and William Moffett, until learning that he was to pilot the A. B. Chambers.
The A. B. Chambers was a Missouri River steamboat that sometimes switched to the Mississippi when winter conditions made the shallower Missouri impassable. In the winter of 1859–60, the Chambers, captained by George W. Bowman, began its first trip south in the St. Louis–New Orleans trade on 26 October. It is not known for certain when Clemens joined the crew, but it is probable that he was hired for the first trip and remained until 24 February 1860, when the Chambers prepared to return to the Missouri River. His later remarks indicate only that he had Will Bowen as his partner for one trip, and that he was aboard when the Chambers grounded near Goose Island (26 Feb 99 to John B. Downing, MTL , 2:674–75; N&J2 , 529; see also Bixby 1910, 3). Riverman Grant Marsh reportedly recalled that only one of the pilots hired for the first trip of the Chambers that season remained with the boat. This “smooth-faced young fellow, whose quiet and retiring manner did not prevent his being very popular with all his associates, proved a most excellent navigator, knowing his river thoroughly and possessing the judgment to make the best use of his knowledge. This young man was familiarly known as Sam Clemens” (Hanson, 26–27). In an earlier account of his friendship with Clemens, Marsh specified that they were on the Chambers together during “the winter I was married, in ’59 and ’60” (Grant Marsh 1878, 7). On 22 or 23 December 1859, during its third run from St. Louis, the Chambers grounded on a bar five miles south of Commerce, Missouri, and thirty miles above Cairo, where the channel passed between Power’s Island and Goose Island—a notorious trouble spot. It was soon “hard aground in the middle of the river, in the course of the former channel, with the ice piled up all around” (“Cairo Correspondence,” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 28 Dec 59, 4). Marsh, who was first mate at the time, recalled an exploit of Clemens’s:
I believe he once saved my life, his own and six others. Our steamer was lying above Cairo on a sand-bar. We were out of wood, and the captain ordered Sam, me and the six roustabouts to get in a yawl and row up the river and bring down a flat-boat loaded with wood. The river was full of floating ice. We rowed up on the opposite bank from the flat-boat. The ice was running almost solid, with an occasional opening by the ice blocking up. We took advantage of these openings to shoot across the river. When we got into the channel a short distance I saw the danger we were encountering. The ice was liable to close in on us and drown the whole outfit. I appealed to Sam to row back. There was an opening in the rear. Sam resolutely said “No.” In another minute the ice broke in the path behind the boat and crushed by with terrific force. Had we turned back when I suggested it, we would have been “goners,” every mother’s son of us. Sam’s judgment was not questioned again on that trip. (Grant Marsh 1881, no page)
Clemens later confirmed this account (marginal comment on Joseph M. Hanson to SLC, 9 July 1906, CU-MARK) and in turn praised Marsh’s skill in piloting the flatboat down to the stranded steamer:
When we were taking that wood flat down to the Chambers, which was aground, I soon saw that I was a perfect lubber at piloting such a thing. I saw that I could never hit the Chambers with it, so I resigned in Marsh’s favor, and he accomplished the task to my admiration. We should all have gone to mischief if I had remained in authority. (Ca. late Aug 81 to John B. Downing, MTL , 2:496–97, misdated 1888)
The Chambers finally reached Cairo safely on 29 December, and continued downriver to New Orleans on 31 December (“River News,” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 30 Dec 59, 5). The boat subsequently grounded at about the site of the December grounding on 3 February 1860, while on its fourth and final trip before returning to the Missouri trade, but the weather conditions on that occasion do not correspond to those in Marsh’s account.
The Ben W. Lewis was built in 1857–58 for the Missouri River trade. In August 1859, it was leased by the St. Louis and Memphis United States Packet Line (whose president was Clemens’s friend Captain Dan Able), which ran it regularly out of St. Louis on Mondays and out of Memphis on Thursdays (“River Intelligence,” St. Louis Missouri Democrat, 6 Aug 59, 3; “Port of Memphis,” Memphis Appeal, 7 Sept 59, 3). With this schedule in mind, Clemens advised his correspondent to board the Ben Lewis in Cape Girardeau (about three hundred miles above Memphis) on Saturday, to arrive in St. Louis (another one hundred and thirty-five miles upriver) on Sunday morning.
There was a John P. Hamilton working as clerk on the Ben Lewis at this time, but it was probably not the same John Hamilton who was a pilot friend of Clemens’s (“River News,” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 17 Oct 59, 3; Robert V. Kennedy 1859, 207; N&J1 , 37; N&J2 , 456).
Possibly one of the brothers Edmund or Lemuel Gray (pilots of the Gold Dust during Clemens’s 1882 river trip) and their brother-in-law, pilot Andrew Jackson Carter, all working on the river at this time. “Dean Somebody” remains unidentified.
Song of Solomon 6:10.
MS facsimile; MS in the collection of Robert Daley.
L1 , 93–96; MTL , 1:44–45, misdated (see p. 94, n. 1), with omissions.
Robert Daley provided CU-MARK with a photographic facsimile of the MS in August 1976.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.