8 July 1870 • Washington, D.C. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00488)
Livy my Darling, the bill having been reported in the Senate last night, & th Ⓐemendationnot yet being printed—& the House proposing to take it up & in its original form & come snap judgment on the Senate, to-day, there was naturally (whic (but never got to it,) there was naturally nothing for me to do but wait—which I did.1explanatory note Borrowed $100 from Bennett (having come off with only $50 or thereabouts, & I had ordered a suit of clothes for my friend Riley,) this morning,)2explanatory note & spent half the day (after an in the House gallery (after first giving an hour to Brady to take my picture in.)3explanatory note
This evening dined with Ex-Vice President Hamlin, Senator Pomeroy, Mr. Gardiner G. Hubbard & Mr. Richard B. Irwin, & had a good time. Hubbard wants to be remembered cordially to father, & Irwin spoke with great satisfact Ⓐemendationappreciation of how Charley wrote back from Japan to thank him for the pains he had taken to make him & the Prof. comfortable in the ship—a courtesy which Irwin said most people forgot after enjoying his hospitable services & reaching dry land where they no longer needed his attentions. I was glad to hear him compliment Charley so.4explanatory note
Drove up to the Senate & staid till now (10.30 PM) & came back to hotel. Oh, I have gathered material enough for a whole book! This is a perfect gold mine.
Called on the President in a quiet way this morning. I thought it would be the neat thing to show a little embarrassment when introduced, but something occurred to make me change my deportment to calm & dignified self-possession. It was this: The General was fearfully embarrassed himself! 5explanatory note
I have promised to come down some time & go off with Gen. Dent on a “tear” for a whole day.6explanatory note
I was sorry to hear that father was feebler, but very glad to know that it was nothing serious.
My precious child, I shall stop now, write a note to Twichell killing our trip,7explanatory note & then go to bed. God bless & angels keep my darling.
Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Elmira | N. Y. return address: return to j. langdon, elmira, n. y., if not delivered within 10 days. postmarked: washington d.c. jul 9
Although Senate Bill 1025 was reported out of committee on 7 July, no further action was taken on it. House Bill 1573 was not reported out of committee until 2 February 1871, during the third session of the Forty-first Congress (Congressional Globe: 1870, 6:5344; 1871, 2:909; BDUSC , 187). Clemens made another, ultimately futile, attempt to secure passage of the legislation at that time (see pp. 325–26).
John Henry Riley (1830?–72), a Philadelphian, had emigrated to California in 1849, eventually becoming a newspaper reporter in San Francisco, where he met Clemens. In November 1865 he departed for Washington, D.C., where he corresponded for the San Francisco Alta California and other papers and served as a clerk to the House Committee on Mines and Mining. Clemens described him in “Riley—Newspaper Correspondent,” in the Galaxy for November 1870, and based the “mendicant Blucher,” in chapter 59 of Roughing It, on him ( RI 1993 , 407–11, 701–3; L2 , 196 n. 1; Boyd 1870, 506; “South African Diamonds,” Chicago Times, 21 Dec 71, 1; SLC 1870, 726–27).
Clemens visited the House of Representatives press gallery, as he had also done on 7 July, when he was “made much of by his brethren of the quill” (“Washington News and Gossip,” Washington Evening Star, 7 July 70, 1). Mathew B. Brady (1823–96) photographed Clemens at his National Photographic Art Galleries on Pennsylvania Avenue (Boyd 1870, facing p. 9, 42). The photograph that he took on 8 July is reproduced here. For the photograph of Clemens taken at Brady’s galleries in 1871, see Photographs and Manuscript Facsimilesclick to open link.
Clemens’s dinner companions were: Hannibal Hamlin (1809–91), Lincoln’s first vice-president and currently Republican senator from Maine (1869–81); Samuel Clarke Pomeroy (1816–91), Republican senator from Kansas (1861–73), who became the model for the corrupt Senator Dilworthy in The Gilded Age; Gardiner Greene Hubbard (1822–97), lawyer, pioneer in education of the deaf, and, beginning in the mid-1870s, leader in the commercial development of the telephone invented by his son-in-law, Alexander Graham Bell; and Richard B. Irwin, of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company in San Francisco, who had assisted Charles J. Langdon and Darius R. Ford (Bryant Morey French, 87–95; L3 , 369 nn. 3, 5).
In a reminiscence of Grant dictated in 1885, Clemens recalled this occasion:
Senator Bill Stewart, of Nevada, proposed to take me in and see the President. We found him in his working costume, with an old, short, linen duster on, and it was well spattered with ink. I had acquired some trifle of notoriety through some letters which I had written, in the New York Tribune, during my trip round about the world in the Quaker City expedition. I shook hands and then there was a pause and silence. I could n’t think of anything to say. So I merely looked into the General’s grim, immovable countenance a moment or two, in silence, and then I said: “Mr. President, I am embarrassed—are you?” He smiled a smile which would have done no discredit to a cast iron image, and I got away under the smoke of my volley.
In the same sketch, Clemens recalled his next meeting with Grant, in 1879, when the mayor of Chicago, Carter H. Harrison
said would n’t I like to be introduced to the General? I said, I should. So he walked over with me and said, “General let me introduce Mr. Clemens.” We shook hands. There was the usual momentary pause and then the General said: “I am not embarrassed—are you?”
It showed that he had a good memory for trifles as well as for serious things. (SLC 1885, 1–3)
Frederick Tracy Dent (1821–92), Grant’s military secretary, was also his brother-in-law and his former classmate at West Point. During the Civil War he had served as Grant’s aide-de-camp, as the military governor of Richmond, and as commander of the garrison of Washington, attaining the rank of brigadier-general in the United States Volunteers.
Jervis Langdon’s condition may not have been the only reason for cancellation of the Adirondacks trip. Olivia Clemens was now over four months pregnant, possibly making the excursion seem impractical.
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L4 , 167–169; LLMT , 154–55.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.