31 July 1871 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: NN, UCCL 00641)
Private.Ⓐemendation
My friend Beecher has sent me your note (inquiring into the trustworthiness of my account of his proposed church) & asks me to answer it.—which I do in this wise: In got the first place I heard Mr. Beecher, months ago, describe (from his pulpit) the sort of church he desired to have built—& he mentioned every particular that is mentioned in my article, as nearly as I remember, baths & all. Here lately I got from an old personal friend (a member of the building committee,) the details of the projected edifice stri exactly as they are set forth in my article.2explanatory note
If I erred anywhere, it was in stating positively that the church would be built on that plan, when perhaps I ought not to have gone so far. As close near as I can come to at it, I did not utter a falsity, in so speaking, but divulged too much, considering the fact that building committees’ & pastors’ powers are not absolute, & that their determinations are best kept to themselves till they are irrevocably compacted into brick & mortar. However, the plan for the church is not likely to be altered.
Edward P. Ackerman of Brooklyn, New York, edited the Cherub, a magazine published by J. Latham and Company, patent medicine manufacturers (Wilson 1871, 24; Mott 1957, 39 n. 54; “Mark Twain on the New Beecher Church,” Buffalo Courier, 16 Sept 71, Supplement, 1).
Ackerman’s letter to Thomas K. Beecher has not been found. In “A New Beecher Church,” in the July American Publisher, Clemens described Beecher’s innovations, among them “six bath-rooms!—hot and cold water—free tickets issued to any applicant among the unclean of the congregation.” The idea was “sound and sensible”
:Many members of all congregations have no good bathing facilities, and are not able to pay for them at the barber-shops without feeling the expense; and yet a luxurious bath is a thing that all civilized beings greatly enjoy and derive healthful benefit from. . . . In speaking of this bath room project, I have revealed a state secret—but I never could keep one of any kind, state or otherwise. Even the congregation were not to know of this matter; the building committee were to leave it unmentioned in their report, but I got hold of it—and from a member of that committee, too—and I had rather part with one of my hind legs than keep still about it. The bath-rooms are unquestionably to be built, and so why not tell it? (SLC 1871)
Ackerman probably published Clemens’s letter in the Cherub. It was published in full in the Buffalo Courier and in part in the Hartford Courant, both on 16 September 1871 (“Mark Twain on the New Beecher Church,” Supplement, 1; “Odds and Ends,” 2). On 6 December 1871, Beecher wrote to Olivia Clemens in appreciation of the attention Clemens’s article had drawn “to the quiet devices of a country parson. . . . I might have preached & printed to no effect, but that Clemens published. Look at him gratefully, therefore & say—well done” (CU-MARK).
MS, in Edward P. Ackerman’s autograph album, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN).
L4 , 439–440; “Mark Twain on the New Beecher Church,” Buffalo Courier, 16 Sept 71, Supplement, 1, with omissions; “Odds and Ends,” Hartford Courant, 16 Sept 71, 2, excerpt.