15 and 16 March 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: MoSW, UCCL 01063)
My boy, you notice that at “No. 1” (page 257) I started to mark out words, intending to try to re-arrange the paragraph so as to make the man say there was gold dust there, and nuggets—but I saw in a moment that only an author can make his own people talk as they should talk. Of course I didn’t mean to write a line that should be permanent, however,—I only wanted to make a rough draft for you to refine. You see I didn’t get far—& so I didn’t do much harm.1explanatory note
I see, now, that the thing for you to do is to make the corrections yourself (if the matter seems important enough to you—& I think it is important) & then send the MS to me for revision.
May I suggest?
{SUGGESTIONS.Ⓐemendation}
At No. I—Leave out the words marked b out by me. Let Nevins say there are nuggets, too—& leave them unmentioned—just as you prefer.2explanatory note
No. 3 (page 259)—fix the nugget business.3explanatory note
100 tons of 40-dollar ore $4,000
700 tons—$28,000
No 4—Strike out the last sentence of the paragraph, & go on to say that when their shaft was piercing deeper & deeper into the earth & their rock growing richer & richer & their hopes &c &c & all that sort of thing, the lode began to grow narrow—6 feet wide at first it when it began to narrow—narrowed grad relentlessly day by day for a fortnight & then was a thin seam like a knife-blade——then “pinched out” & utterly disappeared—four weeks of drifting, shafting & all manner of prospecting failed to find it again & they gave up. Some said it was only a rich “chamber;” some said it was one of those infamous treacherous “pockets;” some said it was a good “chimney” & was down in there yet, somewhere—but no matter what its name or its nature might be they recognized the fact that it had got away from them, & that was the main grievance. But they had managed to get out close upon a thousand tons of forty-dollar rock before the calamity came, & after all expenses of mining & crushing were paid they found themselves nearly $30,000 in pocket.
No. 5—they can turn the gold into greenbacks & hide them in the tent as you make them do, later on.4explanatory note
(Concerning the silver ore, I wish to remark that I have made them take out 1,000 tons—that is enough “sorted” pay rock to take out in a month or two; they took out 3,000 tons, maybe, but only 1000 was pay rock. You may reduce its value to $30 a ton or raise it to $60, in order to get your aggregate sum to suit you, but don’t let them but get it out of the 1000 tons.
{NOTES.Ⓐemendation}
1. The “wide-gash,” or ancient river-bed. These ancient river-beds have several representatives in California; they are technically called “channels;” but they lie under the mountain-ranges—you can’t see them, you discover them in by their little gravelly outcrop on the mountain side, & then you follow them in; or else select a other people take up claims, mile after mile along the range,—the channel being there but invisible—& they tunnel the mountain & prospect month after month till they find the hidden channel—& you bet a gold-bearing channel is a noble good thing.
2. But there would be nuggets in an ancient “channel”—it is the place where you are just dead sure to find them, if you find gold at all.
{You suggest that the rushing waters “ground” the gold fine to dust. But this channel gold is pure—absolutely alloyless—& therefore as malleable as pure lead—so I doubt if attrition would powder it. Even the smallest particle of “channel” gold has a rubbed, smoothe, Ⓐemendation worn look. Gold dust comes from the crumbling quartz outcroppings Ⓐemendation on the mountain-sides. It is bedded in the quartz rock like fly-specks, & when the quartz crumbles to pieces & frees it, it is really dustⒶemendation—it is washed down the mountain, is by the rains, is mingled with the soil by the way, & further down is mingled with the sands in the torrent’s bed,—but it hasn’t a worn look, its attri the attrition of its brief journey being imperceptible.}5explanatory note
Mem—I substitute “dirt” for “clay” but—I don’t know why, except that it is so much more natural & easy to liberate a gold-speck from mere dirt than from your unrelinquishing clay. But is it’s Ⓐemendation no matter—did it before I thought.6explanatory note
3. I repeat, there must have been nuggets there in such a river-bed—in fact in any gold-bearing river-bed, ancient or modern—because all the gold in quartz is not in specks, but there’s an occasional ml chunk.
4.—They couldn’t tell much about a silver lode in a “month or two.”
Their lode cropped out aboveground like a curb-stone (else they would have been considerably more than a “month” or two finding it.) They would naturally select the richest spot in the outcrop, & then claim 300 feet along the length of the lode on each side of it, running north & south (the direction that all good silver lodes follow). Their working place being in the centre of a claim 600 feet long, & all solid rock & mighty hard rock, too, they couldn’t work clear along & take out 300 feet of the lode & run into the next claim Ⓐemendation —at least they couldn’t in a “month or two.”7explanatory note And besides, they wouldn’t work along the lode at all—they would go straight down, where the central rich spot was, & work toward the centre of the earth. Don’t you see?
5—They wouldn’t hide silver ore—nobody would be muggins enough to steal that. They couldn’t hide it in a tent—at least the ordinary tent would ho not hold more than $1,000 worth of it—f & you don’t mention that it was a circus tent, though of course you may have meant that.
6—“& ore” marked out for above reasons.8explanatory note
7—I know it is hypercriticism, but then your rough miners always abbreviate given-nameds—they might have called him Fred—though it is my opinion that they would have been offended with any syllable of so genteel a name & would have swapped it off for an invention more to their liking.9explanatory note I believe they would have called him “Spotty “Star◇◇y”
Now for
TALKⒶemendation.
My Dear Aldrich:
This long delay comes of a threatened domestic calamity. Three or four days ago labor pains came on & my wife was in imminent danger, for 10 hours, of a miscarriage—& the child not due for 3 months yet.10explanatory note So I have been sitting by the bed ever since persuading the madam to lie still and never mind the racking back-aches that come of long, tiresome recumbency. She is still on her back, but we shall let her sit up a little tomorrow if she continues to improve.
I’ve been wanting very much to get a moment’s spare time wherein to write you about this thin & stop the purchase of the brewery; because you see this accident knocks our Boston visit m relentlessly in the head & we’ve got to obey the doctor & stay at home.11explanatory note We are ordered to leave for Elmira long before we had intended to. The Ⓐemendation doctor says we must start as early in April as Mrs. C. can travel—first week if possible.
We are just as sorry as we can be to miss the visit to you, for we had promised ourselves a good time. Will you thank Mrs. Aldrich for her letter (I suppose she is back home now,) & say my wife will answer it as soon as she gets about again. I want those two women to preserve & strengthen their impressions of each other by frequent meeting.12explanatory note
You needn’t read all the MS I’ve sent—just read what I have headed “ Suggestions Ⓐemendation”—that’s sufficient. I Ⓐemendation think it is marvelous that you have made so few mistakes about mining, & that what you have written about it sounds so easy-going & natural.
We all send love to you & yours—
Although the actual pages Clemens referred to and enclosed with this letter have not been found, they clearly consisted of tear sheets of pages 257–64 from the March Atlantic Monthly, the first printing of chapter 7, “How John Dent Made His Pile and Lost It,” of Aldrich’s Prudence Palfrey. (Serialization began in January and ended in June.) Aldrich had asked for Clemens’s advice on chapter 7, presumably during his 7–10 March visit to Hartford. Before James R. Osgood and Company published the book version of Prudence Palfrey in late May, Aldrich revised the chapter in response to the present letter and Clemens’s letter of 25 March. In the absence of the actual enclosures, Clemens’s suggestions are made intelligible chiefly by reconstructing what Aldrich did in response to them: see the next eight notes (Thomas Bailey Aldrich 1874 [bib13309], 1874 [bib13311]; BAL , 1:278).
Aldrich must have revised the passage on page 257 that Clemens marked number one, but in two stages. He followed Clemens’s advice in his suggestion “No. 1” and in his “NOTES” numbered 1, 2, and 3 (later in this letter). But Clemens’s letter of 25 March shows that when he saw the page proofs, he called for still more revision, which Aldrich evidently also did before the book was published:
“Dent,” whispered George Nevins, impressively, “there is gold here.” Then he sat motionless for a few minutes, taking in every aspect of the cañon. “But we will get no nuggets, mind you,” “What gold there is over yonder,” he presently added, in a the same low voice, “That wide gash you see in the mountain, running down through the valley like a swath cut by some gigantic mowing-machine, is the ancient bed of a river. The little smooth pebbles that lie thick in the gulches, though we cannot see them from this height, were mighty bowlders once. The rush of the water, which maybe has not been here for thousands of years, ground them small. It treated the gold with no more distinction; what there is in this place is pulverized, lying in dainty drifts or pockets, two, ten, or twenty feet down on the pipe clay. But no nuggets, John Dent.” “is pulverized, lying in secret crevices, or packed away in the sands of the river-bed; troublesome hard work to get it, too. How neatly Nature stows it away, confound her!”
“But there is gold?”
“Tons—for the man that can find it the rich spots.”
“And nuggets?”
“And nuggets.”
(Thomas Bailey Aldrich: 1874 [bib13311], 257–58; 1874 [bib13308], 108–9)
Clemens either skipped inadvertently from “No. 1” to “No. 3,” or else the number two he wrote on the tear sheets needed no further comment in his letter. Aldrich did “fix the nugget business” when he revised the passage Clemens identified as number three on Atlantic page 259:
“Nevins has not mistaken the geological any more than he has the moral character of the cañon,” writes John Dent in his journal under date of September 30 October 12. “Gold-dust has been found scattered all along the bed of the pre-Adamite river, and in some instances lucky prospectors have struck rich pockets; but of those massive nuggets which used to drive men wild in the annus mirabilis ’49, there are none here, and no likelihood of any, confound it! we have seen none yet, though there is a story afloat about a half-breed finding one as big as a cocoanut! I am modest myself, and am willing to put up with a dozen or twenty nuggets of half that size. It does n’t become a Christian to be grasping. Mem. Digging for gold, however it may dilate the imagination in theory, is practically devilish hard work.” (Thomas Bailey Aldrich: 1874 [bib13311], 259; 1874 [bib13308], 113–14)
Clemens must have marked as number four and number five the first and last paragraphs of a four-paragraph sequence on Atlantic page 261. Aldrich revised in accord with “No 4” and “No. 5” and “NOTES” 4 and 5:
John Dent’s visions of wealth would have been realized in a month or two, but unfortunately the silver lode, as if repenting its burst of generosity, abruptly turned coy, and refused to lavish any more favors. It did worse than that, it ran into the next claim. Just when their shaft was piercing deeper and deeper into the earth, and their rock growing richer and richer,—just as they had fallen into a haughty habit of looking upon each other as millionnaires,—the lode began to narrow. It was six feet wide when it began to narrow; from that point it narrowed relentlessly day by day for a fortnight, and then was a thin seam like a knife-blade,—then “pinched out” and utterly disappeared. After four weeks of drifting, and shafting, and all manner of prospecting, they failed to find it again, and gave up. Some said it was only a rich “chamber”; some said it was one of those treacherous “pockets”; and some said it was a good “chimney,” and was down there yet, somewhere: but whatever its name or its nature might be, Dent, Nevins, and Twombly recognized the fact that it had got away from them, and that was the main grievance.
“It is a shame we cannot follow it,” said Nevins; “but we—or rather you—have made a fair haul.”
“Anyhow, we have made a fair haul,” remarked Nevins, “thanks to you, Jack, for it was you who lighted on the thing.”
“My luck is your luck and Twombly’s,” Dent replied.
They had, as Nevins observed, made a fair haul. They had managed to get out close upon a thousand tons of forty-dollar rock before the calamity came, and after all expenses of mining and crushing were paid, they found themselves nearly thirty thousand dollars in pocket. ¶Their pile was so large now,—they had reduced it to greenbacks which they concealed on the premises,—and its reputation so much exaggerated, that they took turns in guarding the tent, only two going to work at a time. (Thomas Bailey Aldrich: 1874 [bib13311], 261; 1874 [bib13308], 121–22)
The Atlantic text made no mention of greenbacks. The gold was converted to “bank-notes” at a later point in chapter 7. This later passage was revised as follows:
“It will never do for us to keep all this dust here,” said Nevins; “there is at least thirty thousand dollars. I could pick you out fifty men in Red Rock who would murder us for a tenth of it.” “we can’t hide it as cunningly as we do the greenbacks.” (Thomas Bailey Aldrich: 1874 [bib13311], 261–62; 1874 [bib13308], 125)
In the book the characters persist in deciding to convert the gold dust to “bank-notes” even though earlier they had reduced their silver “pile” to “greenbacks.”
Clemens’s “NOTES” 1, 2, and 3 all apply to the revised passage reproduced in note 2. Aldrich adopted Clemens’s “sands” in place of “pipe-clay” and eliminated all mention of attrition.
Aldrich made one change, accepting Clemens’s substitution of “dirt” for “clay”:
In the morning, eating his breakfast, he had stuck his sheath-knife for convenience into the earth beside him; on withdrawing it he saw a yellow speck shining in the bit of clay dirt adhering to the blade. (Thomas Bailey Aldrich: 1874 [bib13311], 258; 1874 [bib13308], 112)
For Aldrich’s revision of this phrase, see note 4. Aldrich added a paragraph at the bottom of Atlantic page 260, doubtless attributable to Clemens, but which is not mentioned explicitly either in this letter or Clemens’s letter of 25 March. Possibly Clemens asked for it in a notation on the tear sheets. He may also have called for it by annotating the page proofs when he read them on 25 March:
One fact was clear to both our Rivermouth friends,—Nevins was worth his weight in gold to them.
The piece of rock that John Dent had picked up on the mountain-side was, in fact, a fragment of silver-bearing quartz,—the zig-zag thread of blue which ran like a vein across the broken edge betrayed its quality to Nevins at a glance.
The next morning A week after this, it was noised through Red Rock that . . . (Thomas Bailey Aldrich: 1874 [bib13311], 260; 1874 [bib13308], 120)
Aldrich adopted this suggestion:
Those treasures had now become a heavy care to the young men. “We keep the dust and ore”—I am quoting from the journal—“in a stout candle-box set into the earth at the foot of the tent-pole, and one of us lies across it at night.” (Thomas Bailey Aldrich: 1874 [bib13311], 261; 1874 [bib13308], 124)
Aldrich revised as follows:
“I knew he’d levant with the pile, some day. . . . Frederick King His true name was n’t Dick King, I reckon, because he said it was. Cool Dick was what they called him in Tuolumne County in ’56.”
Several ears in the crowd pricked up at the words Frederick King Cool Dick. It was a name pseudonyme rather well known on the Pacific slope. (Thomas Bailey Aldrich: 1874 [bib13311], 263; 1874 [bib13308], 130)
The Clemenses’ second daughter, Clara, was born on 8 June. The “long delay” was the week that had passed since Aldrich had asked Clemens for advice on chapter 7 of Prudence Palfrey. Speed was important because page proofs for the book would soon arrive (24 Mar 74click to open link and 25 Mar 74, both to Aldrichclick to open link).
Aldrich had facetiously offered to buy a brewery to induce Clemens to visit. The joke alluded to the unhappy first meeting of Clemens and Lilian Aldrich, which, according to her 1920 memoir, occurred in January 1872:
Mr. Aldrich came home bringing with him a most unusual guest, clothed in a coat of sealskin, the fur worn outward; a sealskin cap well down over his ears; the cap half revealing and half concealing the mass of reddish hair underneath; the heavy mustache having the same red tint. The trousers came well below the coat, and were of a yellowish-brown color; stockings of the same tawny hue, which the low black shoe emphasized. May and December intermixed, producing strange confusion in one’s preconceived ideas. Was it the dress for winter, or was it the dress for summer? Seemingly it all depended on the range of vision. If one looked up, winter; if one looked down, summer. But when the wearer spoke it was not difficult for the listener to believe that he was not entirely accountable for the strange gear. It was but too evident that he had looked upon the cup when it was red, for seemingly it had both cheered and inebriated, as the gentleman showed marked inability to stand perpendicular, but swayed from side to side, and had also difficulty with his speech; he did not stammer exactly, but after each word he placed a period. His sentences were whimsical, and host and guest laughed loudly, with and at each other. The hostess happened to be in the hall as Mr. Aldrich’s key turned in the lock and host and guest entered. Obviously something very amusing was being said, interrupted for the moment by the words of introduction “My wife,” and the gay laughter continued, dying down for a minute, to start up again; no intimation whatever given as to what name might be attached to this strange-looking personage.
Winter disappeared with the removal of the guest’s fur coat and cap, and summer, or at least early springtime, emerged in the violet tint of the carelessly tied neck-knot, and the light gray of under coat and waistcoat; but for the third one in the group a cold and repellent frost had steadily set in, stiffening and making rigid the face and figure of an inhospitable hostess, who cast reproachful glances at the blameless householder who had taken the unauthorized liberty of bringing home a guest to dinner. . . .
When the hands of the clock pointed to the usual dinner hour, no maid appeared with the announcement that dinner was served, nor was there any answering notice or fellow sympathy to the eye that looked to the mistress of the feast, and then back to the clock, whose hands slowly moved to quarter past—half past—quarter of—and then the strange guest arose and said he thought he would go. The adieus were made and accepted, by one with icy formality, which the other member of the fraternity tried to make atonement for by an exuberant cordiality as he escorted his guest to the door. On his return to the library with unwonted sternness he asked why the dinner was three quarters of an hour late, and why the guest had not been asked to stay; his answer was hysterical tears, and in his bewilderment he heard: “How could you have brought a man in that condition to your home, to sit at your table, and to meet your wife? Why, he was so intoxicated he could not stand straight; he stammered in his speech—” With those words the tangled knot was cut. Quickly the answer came: “Why, dear, did you not know who he was? What you thought wine was but his mannerisms and idiosyncrasies, characteristics of himself, and born with Mark Twain.” There was silence for the moment, and then louder grew the hysterical sobs, muffling and choking the voice: “Mark Twain! Was that Mark Twain! Oh, go after him, go after him; bring him back and tell him, tell him—O, what can you tell him!” But it was not until years afterwards that he was told. (Lilian W. Aldrich, 128–32)
The brewery allusion suggests that Clemens had already been told, at least by Aldrich. Clemens had bought his sealskin coat in September 1871 ( L4 , 525 n. 2).
Lilian Aldrich’s letter, presumably thanking the Clemenses for their recent hospitality, does not survive. (For her account of the visit to Hartford, see 24 Mar 74 to Aldrich, n. 13.click to open link) Despite the friendly feeling Clemens here expressed for Lilian Aldrich, in an Autobiographical Dictation of 3 July 1908 he remarked that she was
a strange and vanity-devoured, detestable woman! I do not believe I could ever learn to like her except on a raft at sea with no other provisions in sight. . . . I conceived an aversion for her the first time I ever saw her, which was thirty-nine years ago, and that aversion has remained with me ever since. She is one of those people who are profusely affectionate, and whose demonstrations disorder your stomach. You never believe in them; you always regard them as fictions, artificialities, with a selfish motive back of them. Aldrich was delightful company, but we never saw a great deal of him because we couldn’t have him by himself. (CU-MARK, in MTE , 293, 295)
Clemens could not have met Lilian Aldrich as early as 1869 (“thirty-nine years ago” in 1908). He first met her husband in late 1871 ( L4 , 304 n. 1), and met her soon after, as she herself recalled.
MS, George N. Meissner Collection, Washington University, St. Louis (MoSW). The letter consists of three sections, each numbered separately. Section 1, which ends with ‘tons.’ (75.22), consists of pages numbered 1 through 8, each with a star in the top right margin. Section 2, ‘{NOTES.}... “Star◇◇y”’ (75.23–77.22), consists of pages numbered 1 through 12, each with a double dagger (‡) in the top right margin. The last section, from ‘Now’ (77.23) to the end, consists of pages numbered 1 through 5, with no symbol in the top margin. It is not known whether Aldrich or Clemens himself added the stars and daggers, but they were clearly a helpful guide to the page order of the lengthy letter.
L6 ,74–82; AAA/Anderson 1937, lot 83, brief extracts.
donated in about 1960 by the family of businessman and collector George N. Meissner (1872–1960).
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.