In his 22 January letter from London, the only one to survive from his African excursion, Riley enclosed “Memoranda of trip thus far, believing that I have jotted down quite sufficient to talk on for the mere stepping-stone to the long trip to come” (CU-MARK). That enclosure probably included at least the first two of the extant sixteen pages of Riley’s “Memoranda,” detailing his transatlantic voyage, his sojourn in Liverpool, and his arrival in London (Riley). To date Clemens had evidently received seven more pages (only four of which survive) enclosed in letters Riley wrote before his departure from England.

The furniture was worth “$10,000 or $12,000,” the horse, carriage, and sleigh between $3,000 and $7,000 (6? Feb 70 to McComb, n. 2click to open link).

Clemens had difficulty disposing of his one-third interest in the Express. He had paid Thomas A. Kennett $15,000 of the full purchase price of $25,000 in August 1869, $12,500 of it advanced by Jervis Langdon. In August 1870 he probably paid Kennett an additional $2,500. Then, on 1 March 1871, with a $7,500 debt to Kennett remaining, Clemens drew up and signed a contract to transfer his holdings to one of his partners, George Selkirk, with Selkirk to pay him $15,000: $1,000 upon execution of the contract and the rest over five years. Selkirk apparently could not make the first payment until mid-April, when the contract was activated. Under its terms, Clemens remained responsible for the obligation to Kennett, paying him $2,500 plus interest in August 1871 and again in August 1872, leaving $2,500 to be paid. Meanwhile the terms of Selkirk’s financial obligations to Clemens changed as a result of his own partial transfer of ownership in the Express Printing Company, although in early 1873 Clemens still expected payment from him. By early 1878, almost seven years after he signed the contract with Selkirk, Clemens still had not received complete payment. Of the $12,500 Clemens owed to Jervis Langdon, he evidently began paying Langdon before the end of 1869, and completed payment to J. Langdon and Company by 28 December 1871 (Selkirk to SLC, 17 Jan 78, CU-MARK; L3 , 294 n. 2; 7 Jan 70 to Fairbanks, n. 6click to open link; 2 and 3 Mar 70 to Langdon, n. 4click to open link; 1 Apr 70 and 16 and 17 Apr 70, both to the Langdonsclick to open link; 23 Apr 70 to Blissclick to open link; contract of 1 Mar 71 between Selkirk and SLC, CtHMTH; Kennett to SLC, 13 July 72, CU-MARK; 6 Aug 72 to Charles M. Underhill, NN-B; Theodore Crane to SLC, 16 Aug 72, CU-MARK; 22 Mar 73 to Josephus N. Larned, NBuHi; Smith, 339; Charles J. Langdon to SLC, 7 Jan 78, CU-MARK; 28 Dec 71 to OLCclick to open link).

The essence of Clemens’s public explanation for leaving Buffalo. For example, on 2 May the Washington National Republican reported on “good authority” that Mark Twain “was induced to sell his interest in the Buffalo Express solely on account of the health of his wife, who, we are sorry to hear, is extremely delicate. These steps were taken by him on the advice of his physicians” (“Mark Twain . . . ,” 2).

The April (not the March) issue of the Galaxy, which was to carry Clemens’s “Valedictory” and two sketches for his final “Memoranda.” See 4 Mar 71 to OC, n. 2click to open link.

Harte’s poem had achieved enormous popularity in the fall and winter of 1870. Taking advantage of this sudden fame, Harte decided to go east. He turned down the offer of a professorship at the University of California in Berkeley (for an annual salary of $3,600). And he failed to negotiate satisfactory terms to remain as editor of the Overland Monthly, which he had edited since 1868. On 2 February 1871, he left San Francisco for Boston, where he planned to sign a contract with James R. Osgood and Company. The New York Evening Express, complaining that accounts of Harte’s journey resembled “a royal progress,” noted that “the papers have been deluged with telegrams and private communications in regard to the movements of the gentleman from California” (“Movements, Doings, Etc.,” 21 Feb 71, 2). In Chicago, Harte was urged to remain as editor and part owner of the Lakeside Monthly at a salary of $5,000. Instead he continued his journey to Boston, where he was given an extravagant welcome on 25 February. He stayed with William Dean Howells and on his first day met “among others, Louis Agassiz, Henry W. Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Richard H. Dana, Jr.” (“Personal,” Buffalo Courier, 7 Mar 71, 1). Soon after, he signed a year’s contract for $10,000 to write exclusively for Osgood’s publications (26 Nov 70 to Webb, n. 7click to open link; “Don’t Be Rash, ‘Bret,’” San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser 20 [21 Jan 71]: 8; “Personal Paragraphs,” Hartford Courant, 14 Feb 71, 2; “Bret Harte to Become a Chicagoan,” Buffalo Courier, 15 Feb 71, 1; “Literary,” New York Evening Express, 11 Mar 71, 1; Thomas, 1:167, 169; Merwin, 222–23, 232; Weber, 120).

Clemens had seen both Adolph Sutro and George Alfred Townsend while in Washington on Langdon family business in early February. Although he had sworn Riley to secrecy about the diamond mine scheme, Riley had good reason to speak, at least in general terms, to both Sutro, who had informally employed him for several years, and to Townsend: “I have not said a word to anyone about the matter, and only spoke to Sutro of my having almost decided to accept of a position that might take me away from here at the holidays, and to Geo. Alfred Townsend about doing the corres for the Alta in case I have to go away from here for a few months” (Riley to SLC, 6 Dec 70, CU-MARK). See 2 Dec 70 to Riley, nn. 1–3click to open link.

Hiram J. Ramsdell (1839–87), whom Clemens had known since the winter of 1867–68, was currently a correspondent for the New York Tribune. Originally from Laona, New York, he was an editor of the Wellsboro (Pa.) Agitator by his early twenties, served three years in the Sixth Pennsylvania Reserves during the Civil War, and came to Washington in 1866. After serving as James Rankin Young’s assistant in the Tribune’s Washington bureau, he became a correspondent for the Cincinnati Commercial and other newspapers, returning to the Tribune bureau again under Zebulon L. White. In 1869 negotiations had begun for annexation of the Dominican Republic (San Domingo or Santo Domingo), but on 30 June 1870 the Senate rejected President Grant’s proposed treaty toward that end. In January 1871, while Dominican supporters and opponents of annexation were at war, Grant complied with a congressional directive and dispatched a three-member commission to the island to report on conditions there and on prospects for future annexation. Ramsdell was one of several correspondents who accompanied the mission, which left New York on the Tennessee on 17 January and returned to the United States on 26 March. It is not known whether either of his two children was born before his return. Ramsdell soon became world famous when, during secret deliberations, he and Zebulon L. White transmitted the text of the Treaty of Washington between Great Britain and the United States to the Tribune, which embarrassed both governments by publishing it on 11 May 1871. Ramsdell refused to divulge his source at a Senate hearing (Poore 1870, 122; L2 , 196 n. 1; Ramsdell 1871 [bib12091], 1; Appleton: 1873, 675–77; 1875, 654–68; “The Treaty of Washington,” New York Tribune, 11 May 71, 1, and 17 May 71, 1; “Death of Mr. Ramsdell,” Washington Critic, 26 May 87, 1).

Townsend was himself one of the “Row boys” or correspondents on Washington’s newspaper row, much of which was owned by C. C. Willard, the proprietor of the Ebbitt House, “of whom the Herald, the Tribune, the Times, the World, the Gazette and the Commercial rent their offices in this city. In addition to these papers, there are represented on the ‘Row’ four Boston papers, three or four Chicago papers, three Philadelphia papers, two or three Cincinnati papers, two St. Louis papers, two Baltimore papers, three or four New York papers, and many others” (Ramsdell 1871 [bib12092]).