20–23 July 1872 • New Saybrook, Conn. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00771)
Please send me 50 of my visiting cards.
Have Downey put up a bell in his house right away & carry the wire to our bedroom window—& another one to y wire to your bedroom Ⓐemendation window, while the plumber is at it.1explanatory note
I want Ed & Orion to borrow fire arms from Burton2explanatory note & watch for that man & lay a snare for him & kill him. And I want the police to hound him down. I will pay $100 for his capture & conviction.3explanatory note
O. K. | At Clemens’s | Cor Forest & Hawthorne | Hartford | Conn. Ⓐemendation return address: if not delivered within 10 days, to be returned to postmarked: new saybrook conn. jul 2◇ 1872 Ⓐemendation written in top margin of first page of letter, in MEC’s hand:
| 30 | 25 | 25 | |
| 12 13 Ⓐemendation | 35 | 35 | |
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| 20 | 30 35 Ⓐemendation | 40 | |
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| 90 95 Ⓐemendation | 100 |
Downey, Patrick McAleer’s replacement, apparently served as both coachman and handyman until the spring of 1874. He may have been either John or Patrick Downey, both listed in the Hartford directory as laborers employed or residing on Forest Street (Geer: 1872, 57; 1873, 58). His house—perhaps a carriage house—seems to have been adjacent to the Burton property on Forest Street, which was next door to the Hooker house rented by the Clemenses. The alarm bell was installed according to Clemens’s instruction (OC to SLC, 2 Aug 72, CU-MARK; 8 May 74 to Charles E. Perkins, CtHMTH).
Probably Henry Eugene Burton. “Ed” has not been identified. Only the first digit of this letter’s postmark (“2”) is visible. Since Orion was out of town from 23 July until the morning of 29 July, the letter seems likely to have been written before his departure—between 20 and 23 July (OC to SLC, 2 Aug 72, CU-MARK).
Presumably, Clemens had learned of the presence of a prowler in the neighborhood from Orion or Mollie in a letter now lost. On 2 August Orion sent him a detailed account of the man’s frightening activities since “the early part of July”(CU-MARK). Both the Clemens household and the adjacent Burton household, as well as Miss Apthorp at 15 Hawthorn Street, were disturbed by the prowler, who was finally arrested on 4 August, as reported in the Hartford Courant:
An unknown scallawag has bothered the police and frightened a good many people, especially women, by going about all parts of the city and spying through the window blinds of dwelling houses in the night season. . . . In one locality a vigilance committee was organized, the men in the neighborhood sitting up nights to catch him. . . . Yet he has evaded capture, and has at last been discovered by an accident. His name is William Jackson, and he is about twenty-two years of age. He was arrested as a vagrant on Sunday. . . . The police officers, who saw that he was half-witted, held some conversation with him, and he said that he was a detective, and had been sent here from Providence to find a woman who had left that city. He then proceeded to detail his mode of operation, saying that whenever he saw a light in a dwelling house, he always took the precaution to look through the window, lest some crime should be committed that it was his duty, as an officer, to ferret out. This admission led the officers to a further investigation, and the result proved that he was the man they had for three months been looking after. He has gone to the workhouse for sixty days. (“Arrested at Last,” 6 Aug 72, 2)
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L5 , 127–128.
see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.