8–10 March 1868 • Washington, D.C., or New York, N.Y. (Paraphrase: Paine, 938, and MTB , 1:361–62, UCCL 11489)
A reply came from the Alta, but it was not promising. It spoke rather vaguely of prior arrangements and future possibilities. Clemens gathered that under certain conditions he might share in the profits of the venture. There was but one thing to do; Ⓐemendationhe knew those people, Ⓐemendationsome of them—Colonel McComb and a Mr. McCrellish—Ⓐemendationintimately. He must confer with them in person.
He was weary of Washington, anyway. The whole pitiful Ⓐemendationmachinery of politics disgusted him.Ⓐemendation
Furthermore, he was down on the climate of Washington. ⒶemendationHe decided to go to San Francisco and see “those Alta thieves face to face.” ⒶemendationThen, if a book resulted, he could prepare it there among friends. AlsoⒶemendation, he could lecture.
He had been anxious to visit his people before sailing, but matters were too urgent to permit delay.1explanatory note
Although Clemens apparently confided the seriousness of his difficulty with the Alta to Pamela, Orion, and Mollie, he seems to have enjoined such “strict privacy” on them that the bad news did not at the same time reach their mother (see 22? Feb 68 to MEC, n. 1click to open link). He presumably informed her, however, shortly before all further secrecy became impossible—that is, when he was obliged to depart for California on 11 March in the steamer Henry Chauncey, without first visiting St. Louis. The letter in which he apprised her of his plans survives only in Paine’s paraphrase of and brief quotation from it, and Paine himself did not explicitly acknowledge the letter’s existence. The span of dates during which Clemens might have written it is limited by his date of departure (11 March) and the date he claimed (in a 1 May dispatch to the Chicago Republican) he had received the Alta’s letter, confirming its earlier telegram and refusing him permission to reuse his Holy Land letters:
Three months of wintry weather in New York and Washington had begun to make me restive, and I almost wished for a good excuse to try a change of scene. It came about the eighth of March—a business call to California, and I left Washington instantly, and sailed from New York, in the steamer of the eleventh. (SLC 1868)
No copy-text. The text is a paraphrase of the original letter (now lost) based on two versions of the paraphrase published by Paine. Although in neither version did Paine explicitly mention his source, the unattributed quotation, ‘“those Alta thieves face to face.”’ (201.10), is a strong sign that it was a letter (see p. 202 n. 1). Each of the two versions appears to derive independently from a common source—probably the typescript (and carbon copy) of Paine’s biography, which he condensed and serialized in Harper’s Magazine before publishing it as a book (see pp. 508–9):
Collation shows that P1 and P2 are in the following relation to the letter MS:
L2 , 201–202; none known except P1 and P2.
It is not known whether Paine had direct or indirect access to the now-missing MS.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.