29 April 1873 • Hartford, Conn. (Transcript: CU-MARK, UCCL 00910)
The bearer is my friend and London helpmeet, Mr. Samuel C. Thompson. He would like to sail with us, May Ⓐemendation17th in the “Batavia” & I would exceedingly like it myself. I hope that the ship is not so full but that a shelf can be found for him to dispose himself upon.1explanatory note
My wife Ⓐemendationand I send warm regards.
Capt. Jno. E. Mouland
Steamer Batavia.
The text of this letter is preserved only in Samuel Chalmers Thompson’s unpublished autobiography (written between 1918 and 1921), together with his account of meeting Clemens and offering to act as his stenographic secretary during the upcoming trip to England. Thompson (b. 1848) was born in Georgia. At sixteen he went to sea on a whaling ship. Upon his return he attended the University of Georgia, and then Trinity College in Hartford. He worked briefly as a reporter for the New York Tribune in the summer of 1872, and then “obtained a position of teacher at Vernor Episcopal Institute, East Windsor Hill, eight miles above Hartford,” where his friend Azel Stevens Roe, Jr., was also employed teaching music (Thompson, 72–73). Roe was a California acquaintance of Clemens’s who had visited him in Hartford in mid-January (Thompson, 1, 4, 32, 53, 59, 203; L3, 253 n. 2; OLC to Olivia Lewis Langdon, 19 Jan 73, CtHMTH). According to Thompson, his first meeting with Clemens occurred soon after that visit, probably in mid-March, when Clemens “came out to give us a lecture in the school hall; but a blizzard blocked the gathering. . . . He, Roe and I passed the hours till bed time in solemn discourse. . . . He and Dudley Warner were now colaborating on ‘The Gilded Age,’ a chapter a day.” Thompson further recalled:
Clemens complained of forgetfulness; lost much by not writing things down at once; thought of learning short hand, but found the only way to learn would be to hire a teacher to live with him till he mastered it. . . . Also he wished he could have with him the coming summer in England a suitable person to help take notes. An Englishman would not notice things that would strike Americans as peculiar. And in some cases a substitute could go when he wanted to go somewhere else. Having been a sailor I had thought of taking a healthful summer holiday by shipping before the mast for a voyage or two, and doing a little sight seeing about the ports. But it occurred to me that I might get up short hand and go for the summer with Clemens if he wanted me. He seemed pleased at the idea. I had occasion to run down to New York. Monson’s was the leading system in shorthand. He was in Park Row. I had a talk with him and got a copy of his work. . . . I put in all my spare time for six weeks, teaching and timing myself. . . . Then I went again to see Clemens. Dudley Warner was with him in his study, manuscript all around, hurrying to finish “The Gilded Age.” . . . He wanted me to go over in the same steamer, and all the state rooms had been engaged weeks before, his on the Cunarder “Batavia.” Warner suggested that Clemens write to the Captain, Mouland. The latter and Clemens were chummy. The Captain had visited him and he preferred to cross by the Batavia when possible. (Thompson, 76–78)
Clemens “wrote and handed” the present letter to Thompson: “In New York I took my letter to the Captain and he went over to the main office and got me a birth in the last state room aft on the port side” (Thompson, 79–80). Thompson taught himself a system of shorthand developed by James E. Munson (1835–1906), who had published the first edition of his Complete Phonographer in 1866 (New York: Robert H. Johnston and Co.). Munson had been a law reporter since 1857, and later became the official stenographer for the Superior Court of New York. He based his shorthand on the phonetic symbols invented by Isaac Pitman, which he modified to “adapt the system to the requirements of the reporter” (Munson, title page, iii, v; Westby-Gibson, 138; see also L2 , 311 n. 8).
Typed transcript in the autobiography of Samuel Chalmers Thompson, 79, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L5 , 359–360.
Thompson’s autobiography was purchased by CU-MARK in 1978 with funds donated by Elinor R. Heller.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.
Changes deemed to be simple corrections of typing errors or omissions are not reported.