17? November 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, possibly not sent: CU-MARK, UCCL 09071)
Livy is tolerable, the rest of us well.
The man who said I did not write the play, lied.1explanatory note
Nov 12th ’74
My Dear Clemens:
As you may be interested in the geneological revellations contained in this answer to a kind note lately received from your mother I send you the enclosed for perusal and re-posting. 2explanatory note If we are, mutually, the long lost being each of us has been in search of, what do you say to joining me in a great theologic work to commemorate the occasion? Are you devout? Did you really marry a fortune? Begad, the last stumps me. The Lampton’s were ever an unlucky set, except Mich, who is as rich as a demijon of crow-whiskey, in Missouri. 3explanatory note Leastways, run out here on a lecturing tour, and let’s reckon up the score, and have a tear generally.
The letter that Clemens answered is not known to survive. He probably replied soon after his return to Hartford from Boston late on the night of 16 November. For his response to accusations that he did not write the Gilded Age play, see 3 Nov 74 to the editor of the Hartford Evening Post click to open link.
Jane Clemens had written to Watterson after reading his comments to Clemens about his connection with the Lampton family (see 8? Nov 74 to Wattersonclick to open link). Watterson now replied, sending his answer first to Clemens, with a cover letter asking him to “re-post” it to Jane. Only the cover letter is known to survive and is transcribed here because Clemens wrote a brief note to his mother on the back. This document was among his papers when he died, suggesting that it may never have been sent, or if sent, was eventually returned to him. Clemens certainly did send the enclosure, Watterson’s letter containing the “geneological revellations.” The exact sequence is not known, but he could have sent the letter first to Orion in Keokuk, who in turn wrote a note to their mother on the back and sent it to her, or Jane could have sent it independently to Orion, who returned it with his note. Watterson’s original was in the Samuel C. Webster Collection in the 1940s, and Orion’s note on it was transcribed from the original, probably by Bernard DeVoto’s assistant, Rosamond H. Chapman. If Chapman also transcribed Watterson’s note, her typescript has been lost, but she did clearly describe Orion’s note as “on back of letter from Henry Watterson to Mrs. Jane Clemens, written on 1/h of Courier-Journal, Louisville.” The original is not now in the inventory of the Webster Collection, which was given to Vassar College in 1977 as part of the Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers. As transcribed, Orion’s note to Jane reads:
Dear Ma:—
I am glad we are kin to Watterson, because he is talented and a friend to Sam. If he were correct in his supposition you and he would be second cousins. As it is his grandmother’s sister who married Lewis Lampton, and you were the daughter of Lewis’s brother Benjamin Lampton, and the kin is on the Morrison side as to him, and on the Lampton side as to us, but not mutual on either side, it is too distant for blood kin, but near enough for good fellowship, good feeling, and an approximation to kinship. Let us all join in welcoming the new member of the family.
I am getting to be distinguished myself. The Chicago Journal and a Desmoines paper have discovered that a brother of Mark Twain is farming near Keokuk. One of them wonders if there is fun enough in me to see any joke in plowing.
Someone in the Clemens family eventually provided this correct information to Watterson, whose later explanation of the relationship conformed with Orion’s (Watterson 1910, 372).
Probably Mitchell Mortimer Lampton (1819–85), the younger brother of James Lampton, and therefore also a first cousin to Jane Clemens. “Crow-whiskey” was the popular sour-mash bourbon first produced in Kentucky in the 1820s by Scottish-born physician and chemist James C. Crow (1789–1856), and later marketed as “Old Crow” (Lampton 1990, 4, 140; Carson, 46–47; Cowdery, 3–4).
MS, possibly not sent, on the back of Henry Watterson to SLC, 12 Nov 74 (UCLC UCCL 32667), Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L6 , 286–287.
see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.