Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK):

While in England in 1873, Clemens had followed the celebrated perjury case of the Tichborne claimant, an Australian butcher who claimed to be the rightful heir to the Tichborne baronetcy and estates. Stoddard, then acting as Clemens’s secretary, was charged with preserving the newspaper reports of the trial for Clemens, who intended to “boil the thing down into a more or less readable sketch some day” ( L5 , 456). Stoddard compiled six large scrapbooks of clippings from the London Standard, covering the period from 23 April to 13 October 1873, which are preserved in the Mark Twain Papers. After Clemens left England in January 1874, Stoddard visited Stratford-on-Avon, where he saw Clemens’s signature among those in the visitors’ book (see L5 , 157 n. 9). He then “chummed” in London with Wallis Mackay, an artist for Punch who had illustrated his Summer Cruising in the South Seas, the newly published English edition of his South-Sea Idyls (Charles Warren Stoddard 1873, 1874). Mackay lived with his brothers William (a writer) and Joseph (an actor). With Stoddard, they formed “a community of confirmed ‘stags,’” whose rooms on Charlotte Street were forbidden to women (Charles Warren Stoddard 1903, 322; William Mackay later published an account of visiting Clemens at the Langham Hotel in 1873: see Mackay, 39–41). In March 1874 Stoddard joined Joaquin Miller in Rome, where he continued his series of weekly travel letters for the San Francisco Chronicle. Tom Hood, who had previously forwarded Stoddard’s letters, died on 20 November 1874 (Charles Warren Stoddard 1903, 321, 333; Grenander 1960, 268–69; Austen, 67–71; L5 , 157 n. 10). For the others Stoddard mentioned, see notes 3–5.

Clemens followed the Beecher-Tilton trial throughout its long course, but did not have it “scrap-booked” (see 29? July 74 to Twichell, n. 2click to open link, and pp. 446, 448).

The Clemenses had grown fond of Lady Mary Anne Hardy, her husband, Sir Thomas, and their daughter, Iza, in London in 1873 ( L5 , 399 n. 2, 403, 408 n. 14). Lady Hardy’s letter with news of Stoddard is not known to survive. For Stoddard’s full account of his injury see 17 Mar 75 to Stoddard, n. 1click to open link.

Prentice Mulford (1834–91) was born in Sag Harbor, on Long Island. In 1855 he shipped on a clipper as a cabin boy and deck hand, and spent nearly two years at sea before settling in California. After ten years as a miner, school-teacher, and comic lecturer, he began to write poems and humorous stories for the Sonora Union Democrat under the pseudonym “Dogberry.” In 1866 the editor of the Golden Era, Joseph Lawrence, invited him to San Francisco to write for that journal, and there he became friends with the city’s other journalists and authors—among them Clemens, Stoddard, Bret Harte, and Ambrose Bierce. In 1872 he went to London with a scheme to promote emigration to California, financed by several wealthy San Franciscans. In addition, he was engaged to write travel letters for the San Francisco Evening Bulletin. His scheme was not successful, and his letters from England—which concentrated largely on the London slums and other unpleasant aspects of England—were not well received. By December 1873, when Stoddard and Clemens saw him in London, he was depressed and impecunious, and seeking Clemens’s recommendation to the Routledge publishing firm. For the story of his marriage, see 17 Mar 75 to Stoddard, nn. 1, 5click to open link (Mulford 1889, passim; “It Was Prentice Mulford,” New York Times, 1 June 1891, 1; AD, 13 June 1906, CU-MARK, in MTE , 261–62; Walker 1969, 143–44, 178–82, 334–36; Mulford to SLC, 6 Dec 73 and 7 Dec 73, CU-MARK).

This series—“Essays in Natural History,” by “Little Johnny”—appeared in sixteen issues of Fun, from 12 September to 26 December 1874. For Clemens’s opinion of some of Bierce’s earlier work, see 8 Apr 74 to Chatto and Windusclick to open link. As Stoddard’s letter noted, Bierce had two sons, both born in England: Day (b. December 1872) and Leigh (b. April 1874). His wife was the former Mary Ellen (Mollie) Day (Carey McWilliams, 90–92; Grenander 1960, 264, 276).

John Kroeger was from Indiana. According to Stoddard, writing in 1906, the church sent him to Loreto after he had “stirred up the community in that town of his, in the conservative Middle states.” Father John, who was “quite unnecessarily good-looking” and “had more shape than he knew what to do with,” talked with Stoddard about “Mark Twain and Bret Harte and A. Ward and the luckless Henry Ward Beecher” (Charles Warren Stoddard 1906, 259–62; Austen, 72). Twichell’s close friend Joseph B. O’Hagan (1826–78) was born in Ireland, but joined his brother in Nova Scotia while in his teens. He entered the Society of Jesus in Boston in 1847 and began his studies for the priesthood there. He taught in Washington, D.C., from 1852 to 1857, then went to Belgium, where he continued his studies and was ordained. During the Civil War, he served for two years as a chaplain of the Excelsior Brigade, which Twichell served as Protestant chaplain (for details of their friendship, see Strong, 25–34, 48–49). Since 1872 he had been the president of Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. He died in late 1878 of “poor health caused by his efforts in the war” (Lucey, 402–3). In a letter of 2 January 1879 to the Hartford Courant, Twichell recalled him as “one of the best and kindliest of men and one of the most delightful of comrades. He had a bright, happy wit; no discomforts could overcome his cheerful temper, and his generosity was boundless” (“Father O’Hagan,” 4 Jan 79, 4, clipping in Twichell, 3:113). In November 1874 Twichell had hoped his and Clemens’s “pedestrian excursion” to Boston would include a stop in Worcester, so that O’Hagan and Clemens could meet. He wrote to O’Hagan to propose a visit and O’Hagan “responded by telegraph ‘Come, Mark will find an Innocent at Home’” (Twichell, 1:14). Worcester was not on their route, however. On 26 January, O’Hagan wrote to Twichell:

The visit may not have taken place as tentatively rescheduled, on Monday, 1 February, the date of the present letter. Twichell’s journal entry for that day reported only that he lectured in Hartford’s Warburton Chapel, and does not mention a trip to see O’Hagan. Furthermore, Clemens may not have been well enough to travel (Twichell, 1:53; 26 Jan 75 to Howellsclick to open link; 3 Feb 75 to Barnumclick to open link). It is not known when Clemens and O’Hagan met, if not on 1 February.

Stoddard had left Rome in the fall of 1874 and traveled to Venice, where he arrived by 30 November and remained until February 1875. Over the winter he wrote nine sketches about that city for the San Francisco Chronicle. One of them, published on 17 January, he devoted entirely to a description of the cathedral of San Marco, consecrated in 1111 and alleged to house the saint’s relics, which the Venetians had removed from Alexandria. It was reprinted in the unidentified newspaper that Twichell brought back on 29 January, after two days in New York. The clipping from that newspaper that Clemens sent to Howells, by 1 February, and the letter that presumably enclosed it have not been found. (The text of Stoddard’s article is transcribed in Enclosure with 29 January–1 February 1875 to William Dean Howellsclick to open link from the original San Francisco printing.) Clemens soon qualified his favorable reaction when Howells failed to concur (10 Feb 75 to Howellsclick to open link; Austen, 72–74; Murray, 301; Twichell, 1:52).