1 August 1876 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: CtY-BR, UCCL 01353)
No, I do not remember ever writing anything for the St Louis Republican;2explanatory note & I used the nom de plume first in Nevada Territory.3explanatory note
I am sorry, but there is not a letter-sheet on the place—this note size is the best I can do4explanatory note—but you will observe it is the size most affected by Henry VIII, Richard III, & other people of consequence.
Mark Twain
Lewis Jacob Cist (1818–85), a poet as well as a banker and government official in St. Louis and Cincinnati, amassed a collection of more than eleven thousand autographs and portraits ( VAB 2005). The letter from him that Clemens answered is now lost.
In fact the St. Louis Missouri Republican had published at least five contributions by Clemens between 1858 and 1867: on 22 October 1858 a piece of chatty river correspondence (signed “C.”), written while he was serving as steersman on the packet John H. Dickey; on 27 May 1860 a brief, matter-of-fact river report signed by him and Wesley Jacobs, his City of Memphis copilot; on 30 August 1860 a subtly humorous “Pilot’s Memoranda,” signed by him and J. W. Hood, his Arago copilot; on 17 March 1867 “Cruelty to Strangers,” a letter to the editor, signed with his pen name, making a punning complaint about a local prohibition of “lying on the grass”; and on 24 March 1867 “Explanatory,” also a letter to the editor signed with his pen name, humorously announcing a 25 March St. Louis performance of his Sandwich Islands lecture (SLC 1858; SLC 1860a; SLC 1860b; SLC 1867d; SLC 1867e; Branch 1982, 199–201; ET&S1 , 142–45). Clemens is not now believed to have written “Special River Correspondence,” which appeared in the paper on 8 September 1860 and has been attributed to him (Ganzel 1967, 396–400).
Clemens first used his pen name on a letter from Carson City, Nevada Territory, published by the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise on 3 February 1863 (SLC 1863; 16 Feb 1863 to JLC and PAM, L1 , 245–46 n. 1).
MS, Willard S. Morse Collection, Collection of American Literature, CtY-BR.
MicroPUL, reel 1.
The Morse Collection was donated to CtY in 1942 by Walter F. Frear.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.