15 March 1868 • SS Henry Chauncey en route from New York, N.Y., to Aspinwall, Panama (MS: NPV, UCCL 00201)
P. S. Got Pamela’s letter—will be no scoffing at sacred things in my book or lectures. 1explanatory note
I have nothing to write, except that I am well—that the weather is fearfully hot—that the Henry Chauncey is a magnificent ship2explanatory note—that we have twelve hundred passengers on board—that I have two staterooms, & so am not crowded—that I have many pleasant friends here & the d people are not so stupid & old & as on the Quaker City—that we had Divine Service in the main saloon at 10.30 this morning—that we expect to meet the upward bound vessel in latitude 23, & this is why I am writing now.3explanatory note
We shall reach Aspinwall Thursday morning at 6 oclock, & San Francisco less than two weeks later. I worry a great deal about being obliged to go without seeing you all, but it could not be helped.
Dan Slote, my splendid room mate in the Quaker City & the noblest man on earth, will call to see you within a month. Make him dine with you & spend the evening. His house is my home always in New York.4explanatory note
As Clemens’s later letters to the Alta came into print (one every Sunday for most of the spring), it became more obvious that he was willing to “scoff at”—express irreverence toward—the Holy Land. It is not known which Alta dispatch prompted Pamela’s cautioning remark, which Clemens presumably received shortly before his departure on 11 March, but it is unlikely that she had seen anything published later than 1 March, letter number 44 (SLC 1868).
At 25⁰ latitude, the Henry Chauncey was just below the tip of Florida. A wooden-hulled sidewheeler of 2,656 tons built in New York in 1865, it was owned and operated by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company (Lytle, 83; “For California via Panama,” New York Tribune, 7 Mar 68, 3).
The Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s “upward bound” steamer left Aspinwall (now Colón) on 15 March, “met and communicated with” the Henry Chauncey on 16 March, and arrived in New York on 22 March. Clemens described his fellow passengers and their pastimes on the Henry Chauncey in a letter to the Chicago Republican dated 1 May (“Marine Intelligence,” New York Times, 23 Mar 68, 8; “Miscellaneous,” San Francisco Alta California, 24 Mar 68, 1; SLC 1868).
Slote’s visit to St. Louis has not been documented.
MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).
L2 , 203–204; MTL , 1:152, without the postscript.
see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 512–14.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.