29? July 1874 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: CtY-BR, UCCL 01113)
Stop our postman (I would have written him if I had been sure of his name) & tell him somebody keeps carrying my letters to the Courant office. I telegraphed the postmaster the other day, but it didn’t do any good. I suppose he thought I was in a petulant humor—which was not the case.1explanatory note
Livy doing tolerably well. Little baby has the peculiarity of crying, & Livy sits up till 2 in the morning to marvel at the novelty. We shall institute a change in the Nurs Ⓐemendation nurse-department right away. We must have a nurse that has a native faculty for soothing little people. We must have one that breathes ether from her nostrils & oozes chloral hydrate from every pore. We must have one who is worthy to stand in the pulpit.
How about the Beecher Scandal now? If Mr. B. had done this in the first place no doubt it would have been better. And by George it’s Tilton that is on trial, at last!—& before a packed jury. Beecher’s own people say it is Tilton that is on trial. & Bee I like the idea of a man insulting my wife & then I being tried for the heinous offense of complaining about it. But I have no sympathy with Tilton. He began by being a thundering fool & a milksop, & ends by being a hopeless lunatic—& a lunatic of that poor kind that hasn’t even spirit enough to be interesting. Mr. Tilton never has been entitled to any sympathy since the day he heard the news & did not go straight & kill Beecher & then humbly seek forgiveness for displaying so much vivacity.2explanatory note
Love to you all.
The telegram has not been recovered. In early July, while Clemens was in Hartford, Olivia had sent her letters to the Courant office, evidently confusing the postman (3 July 74 to OLC, n. 1click to open link).
Clemens and his Hartford friends and neighbors had been following the “Beecher scandal” since 1872, when the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher was first publicly accused of committing adultery with a parishioner, Elizabeth Tilton (see L5 , 231 n. 3, 235–38). During the summer of 1874 the allegation was under investigation by a committee of Beecher’s Plymouth Church, in Brooklyn, New York. Progress was reported on a daily basis by newspapers across the United States, including at least two of Clemens’s local papers, the Hartford Courant, which was forwarded to him in Elmira, and the Elmira Advertiser. The event Clemens alluded to was the 28 July arrest, and release on his own recognizance, of Theodore Tilton, husband of Elizabeth, on charges of libeling Beecher in an article in the Brooklyn Eagle of 20 July, which provided details of the alleged adultery. Clemens assumed that Beecher had caused Tilton’s arrest, while others believed that Tilton or his friends had engineered it to get the matter into the courts. In fact, as was reported in the first accounts on 29 July, the arrest was the result of a libel suit brought independently by William J. Gaynor, a twenty-seven-year-old lawyer. Gaynor, who had a checkered past working for collection agencies, was on the staff of another Brooklyn paper, the Argus, but claimed to be acting out of public spirit. The suit never came to trial. On 1 August the newspapers reported that it would be dismissed, and four days later it was. Clemens must have written the present letter early in the course of these events, probably on 29 July. The Beecher-Tilton scandal truly became a national obsession in August when Tilton sued Beecher for alienation of affections. Clemens and Twichell closely followed the resultant trial, which culminated in July 1875 with a hung jury voting nine to three for Beecher’s innocence (see 1 Feb 75 to Stoddardclick to open link and pp. 446, 448). In February 1876, Twichell was a delegate to an advisory council of Congregational ministers convened by Plymouth Church, which reviewed the matter and exonerated Beecher (Elmira Advertiser: “It Has Come!” 29 July 74, 1; “Tilton-Beecher,” 30 July 74, 1; “Tilton’s Trial,” 30 July 74, 2; “The Beecher Scandal,” 1 Aug 74, 1; “The Brooklyn Argus . . .,” 1 Aug 74, 2; Hartford Courant: “It is evident . . .,” 29 July 74, 2; “Tilton’s Last Move,” 29 July 74, 3; “The Tilton-Beecher Scandal,” 30 July 74, 3; “The Tilton-Beecher Scandal,” 4 Aug 74, 3; “The Scandal,” 6 Aug 74, 3; New York Times: “The Scandal Not Settled,” 3 July 75, 1; MTB, 1:544–45; Andrews, 35–41; Twichell, 2:4–5, 20–21, 27–36).
MS, Joseph H. Twichell Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (CtY-BR).
L6 , 201–203.
Twichell’s papers were passed on to his children. Although CtY received some items in 1951 from Joseph H. Twichell and Mrs. Charles Ives, his son and daughter, the main collection was donated in 1967 by Charles P. Twichell, his grandson.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.