11 May 1869 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00294)
Well, I did manage to leave Elmira, but I had to promise that I would return in fourteen days. Mr. Langdon said it was useless & foolish to go away at all—let the world talk, if it wanted to.
I have read 500 pages of proofs—have less than 200 more to read. It will be out in a few weeks, now. They have spent $5,000 on the engravings. It will be a stylish volume.
I am very glad you are going to live by yourselves, for I have felt for a long time that the care of keeping boarders ing was just undermining your health & Pamelas Ⓐemendation—now I am sure both will improve. And besides, a boarding-house was no place for Annie. Boarders, as a rule, are a bad lot—though you had an exceptionally good lot, with one or two exceptions—you remember to whom I refer, no doubt. I am grateful to Pamela for promising me a bed when I come—have some hope of getting there before many months.
I don’t know the date of the last money I sent. Ⓐemendation—but it seems a good while ago. If you require some, let me know—I am economising because I am at a perfectly ruinous expense here—but I do not mean to economise at your expense—so speak out, if you want it.2explanatory note
Yes, Annie could come to the wedding if we had one, & freely—but there won’t be any—only the family & a couple of witnesses will be present, & it will take place in Mr Langdon’s house.3explanatory note
It is 2 o’clock in the morning. Good-night. Love to Orion & Mollie & all.
I don’t know your address. 4explanatory note
Actually 11 May. When writing after midnight, as the penultimate paragraph shows he was doing, Clemens normally carried over the previous day’s date.
Jane Clemens had last received money from her son, $20, on 30 March, the twelfth such payment he had sent since December 1868. She next received $30 from him, on 29 May (JLC, 4). For Clemens’s own accounting of his contributions to her support, as well as his personal expenses, see 23 June 69 to PAMclick to open link.
Pamela Moffett and her daughter, Annie, did attend Clemens’s wedding, on 2 February 1870, in the parlors of the Langdon house. The Buffalo Express reported: “Only the immediate friends of the bride and bridegroom were present, forming quite a large company, however, and including many from a distance” (“Personal,” 3 Feb 70, 4). And Albert Bigelow Paine, presumably repeating information received from Clemens, noted: “The guests were not numerous, not more than a hundred at most” ( MTB , 1:394).
That is, the new address in St. Louis—203 South 16th Street—to which Jane Lampton Clemens and the Moffett family had moved, or were about to move, from 1312 Chesnut Street.
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK). A photographic facsimile of the letter is on pp. 532–34. The MS consists of a torn folder (two leaves) of embossed, blue-lined off-white laid paper, approximately 4 13/16 by 7 11/16 inches, inscribed on the first three pages in black ink, now faded to brown.
L3 , 218–219.
see Moffett Collection, pp. 586–87.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.