Clemens’s doubt whether the Quaker City would ever sail was prompted at least in part by General Sherman’s decision to withdraw. On 27 May, the Brooklyn Eagle reminded readers of Captain Duncan’s recent difficulties over Beecher’s withdrawal in April, and pointed out that Duncan had resolved this earlier problem

In a letter dated 25 May and published in the principal New York newspapers on 31 May, Sherman made it clear that “circumstances have occurred to prevent the fulfillment” of his intention to go to Europe with the Duncan party. Sherman’s command covered vast areas of Indian territory, and because “various tribes of Indians ... being pressed from every quarter, have become nervous, excited, and, in some cases, positively hostile,” he could not leave his post for so long a period (“Major-General Sherman,” New York Tribune, 31 May 67, 5). Shortly after the Quaker City departed in June, the Times described the effect that the withdrawals of Beecher and Sherman seemed to have had on the passenger list:

Moses Beach had postponed his own decision to go until mid-May, when he finally wrote Duncan a letter (widely reprinted) in which he praised the plans for the excursion and promised to be on board when “the Quaker City parts Company with that Steamboat escort down the bay, which you propose to provide for the friends of her passengers” (“The Mediterranean Excursion,” Brooklyn Eagle, 18 May 67, 2). Beach was accompanied by his seventeen-year-old daughter, Emeline (Emma), and in Paris they would meet his son Charles, who took another ship to Europe. A member of Plymouth Church since 1854, Beach lived next door to Beecher on Columbia Heights, Brooklyn, and seems to have assumed something of Beecher’s role when Beecher himself could not go. He wrote a series of letters to the Sun about the excursion, and before departure he provided passage money for the unofficial photographer of the trip, William E. James (Hirst and Rowles, 15–17). On 6 June the passengers were to convene at his home “to consult concerning the voyage, and to get acquainted.” The Sun reported that the seventy guests present enjoyed an “excellent repast,” and that “Mark Twain ... enlivened the company with ebullitions of wit” (SLC 1867; “Brooklyn,” New York Sun, 7 June 67, 4).

The Reverend Eleazer Carter Hutchinson (1804–76), a fellow excursionist and evidently an acquaintance of Jane Clemens’s, in 1855 founded the Trinity Protestant Episcopal Church in St. Louis, where he was currently rector. Educated at Brown University and Princeton Theological Seminary, he served as president of Kemper College in 1840–45, and in 1845–52 as pastor of St. George’s Church, both in St. Louis (Conard, 3:337, 523; Scharf, 2:1724–26).

X

Carte de visite of the Reverend E. Carter Hutchinson, preserved and identified by Colonel William R. Denny. Collection of Mrs. Theodore Whitfield. See p. 51 n. 3.

Clemens described Daniel Slote (1828?–82) in an Alta letter written on 28 May as “a nice moral room-mate” who “has got many shirts, and a History of the Holy Land, a cribbage-board and three thousand cigars. I will not have to carry any baggage at all.” Fellow passenger (Confederate) Colonel William Ritenour Denny recorded in his journal that Slote was “a short, fat chubby fellow that has a portly face, a clean black eye, an open countenance, that loves good living and laughf’s and grows fat over it, clever to a fault.” Slote—who, like Clemens, was a Mason—was co-owner of Slote and Woodman, a blank-book and stationery manufacturer in New York (SLC 1867; Denny, entry for 11 Sept; “Daniel Slote,” New York Herald, 14 Feb 82, 5; Wilson 1867, 957; “Business Notes,” Publishers’ Weekly 14 27 July 78: 124).

Street and Smith’s New York Weekly had been courting Clemens as a contributor since early 1867 and by 27 June had reprinted five of his Sandwich Islands letters. Within a week, Clemens arranged to write letters during the trip for two other New York newspapers (see 2? Feb 67 to MEC, n. 3click to open link, and 7 June 67 to Bowen, n. 3click to open link).