To
Mary Mason Fairbanks
2–14 April 1868 • San Francisco, Calif. (MS: CSmH, UCCL 02737)
2–14 April 1868 • San Francisco, Calif. (MS: CSmH, UCCL 02737)
. . . .
The Prodigal in a far country chawing of husks,1explanatory note
Sam. L. Clemens
P.S.—& with nobody to molest or keep him straight.
(!)mild exultation.
Explanatory Notes
1
The allusion is to Luke 15:13–16:
And not many days after the younger son
gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country,
and there wasted his substance with riotous living.
And when he had spent all, there arose a
mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want.
And he went and joined himself to a citizen
of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine.
And he would fain have filled his belly with
the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.
Clemens could have written this letter, the body of which has not been found, anytime between his arrival in San Francisco on 2 April and his lecture there on 14 April, the income from which must have obviated any need for “chawing of husks” (see 1 and 5 May 68 to Fairbanksclick to open link). The likelihood is strong, in fact, that it was written toward the beginning of this span of dates, perhaps to announce his safe arrival in San Francisco.
MS, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. (CSmH, call no. HM 14228). The surviving MS consists of the bottom third of a single leaf, inscribed on one side, and cut from a full leaf containing at least one additional line of text, now lost: two descenders from the line above show below the cut edge. There is a residue of dried glue on the otherwise blank back of the fragment (indicating it may have once been mounted), and there are faint, possibly caprine, teeth-marks on the lower left corner.
L2 , 208; MTMF , 33, dated by Dixon Wecter, “in the midst of this California sojourn.”
see Huntington Library, p. 512.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.