6 November–10 December 1872 • London, England, or Hartford, Conn. (Transcript: CtHSD, UCCL 11817)
Indeed Susie Crane is an angel,1explanatory note & it is such a comfort to me to know that if I do chance to wind up in the fiery pit hereafter, she will flutter down there every day, in defiance of law & the customs of the country & bring ice & fans & all sorts of contraband things under her wings & sit there by the hour cheering me up, & then go back home not caring two cents that her scorched feathers, & dilapidated appearance & brimstone smell are going to get her into trouble & cause her to be shunned by all proper angels as an eccentric and disreputable saint. I can believe a good deal of the bible but I never will believe that a heaven can be devised that will keep Susie Crane from spending the most of her time in Hell trying to comfort the poor devils down there.
It sounds extravagant, but if I don’t believe it I wish I may be hanged in a minute. Sue couldn’t enjoy heaven if there was supplicating suffering in sight,. Hell is in sight; because we all know that Lazarus saw Dives & heard him beseech a drop of water—which Lazarus declined to furnish.2explanatory note
When Susie Crane gets to her final rest, you mark my words, the first party she will go for will be that same John W. Dives, you hear me!
This fragment of a letter to Fairbanks survives only in a transcription by Julia Beecher, who copied it into a letter that her husband, Thomas K. Beecher, wrote on 13 December 1872 to Ella L. Wolcott, one of his parishioners and a close family friend. Beecher ended his portion of the letter, “Julia will insert a squib of Mark Twain’s—that bears many perusals—& I am yours as ever,” and Mrs. Beecher introduced her transcription as an “Extract from Mark Twains letter to Mrs. Fairbanks.” Fairbanks had evidently sent the Beechers this portion of Clemens’s letter (or a copy of it), knowing they would enjoy his description of their mutual friend Susan Crane. Wolcott was traveling in the Midwest in late 1872. After visiting her brother in Cleveland, she went in November to Jacksonville, Illinois, where Beecher’s letter of 13 December was directed ( L3 , 13 n. 4, 243–44 n. 6; L4 , 191 n. 1; Boyd and Boyd, 219; Thomas K. Beecher to Ella L. Wolcott, 25 Nov 72 and 13 Dec 72, CtHSD; Wolcott, 389–90, 413–14). Clemens’s image of Susan Crane as an angel was clearly a response to a remark Fairbanks had made to him in a letter of 26 October (CU-MARK). Since this letter would have taken at least eleven days to reach him, he could have answered her no sooner than 6 November from London—nor any later than about 10 December (if he delayed responding until after his return to Hartford), in order for the Beechers to have included his words in a letter of 13 December. (By 10 December, in fact, he had received another letter from Fairbanks: see 10 Dec 72 to Nastclick to open link.) Fairbanks wrote:
Fair Banks Oct. 26th
My dear “Savage”
I wrote you a note a few days ago, but Mr. Fairbanks thinks he forgot to put on more than an ordinary stamp. We are not accustomed to foreign correspondence. As the newspaper begins to talk about you now and you seem to be the fashion, I can afford to send you the second letter, but I stipulate right here for an early and a double answer.
Who do you think ate our wild ducks, last Friday and gathered our flowers, and said pretty things about our home? Susie Crane and her husband. Was n’t it nice in them to come, and to be so pleased with everything, and to make us so happy? Is n’t Susie an angel—I know there are places for wings on her shoulders—and I begin to see new loveliness in Theodore. We talked of you and we all concluded you were worth loving. The day they left brought “Joaquin” Miller to rhapsodize over Fair Banks. He spent a night with us and I like the man as I had not thought to. He won us in spite of prejudice and newspapers. Is he a villain! He certainly has genius in rich measure—and he has grown so delicate & gentle and unaffected. He has dropped the barbaric element and is ambitious to seem a refined gentleman. He has shorn his Absalom locks, he wears kid gloves and black neck-tie. What do you believe of his domestic life? He adores you and England.
They are treating you handsomely in England—we are glad—and everybody is watching you here—and I your anxious mother am stretching my neck over all the great audience. I know you’ll say and do your best and simplest things. Don’t write newspaper letters of anything you are to put in a book, will you? Your next book, make a fresh surprise. Joaquin Miller says, “write to Twain & thank him for his letter to Hutton the Publisher.”
Your little “after dinner” at the Club was nice. Keep doing the nice things. Say nothing irreverent—make your wit exquisite (as you know how) not broad—touch lightly, rather tenderly upon departed goodness, even if it was not greatness (see Albert memorial), and then I’ll just settle back to my knitting and dream of your glory.
Good bye—I shall send no more cautions nor suggestions till I hear from you.
I am always your loving Mother,
M. M. F.
For Clemens’s letter to Hotten (“Hutton”) see 20 Sept 72 to the editor of the London Spectator. For his “‘after dinner’ at the Club” see 22 Sept 72 to Conway (2nd)click to open link. The speech had been reprinted in Abel Fairbanks’s Cleveland Herald on 19 October.
In the Bible parable, Lazarus, the sick beggar, finds comfort after death in “Abraham’s bosom,” while Dives, the rich man who ignored him, is tormented by thirst. It is Abraham, not Lazarus, who denies Dives relief, explaining that the “great gulf” between the saved and the damned prevents any contact (Luke 16:19–31).
Transcript, handwritten by Julia Beecher in Thomas K. Beecher to Ella L. Wolcott, 13 Dec 72, Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Hartford (CtHSD).
L5 , 217–219.
Thomas K. Beecher’s letters to Ella Wolcott are part of the extensive Beecher family collection at CtHSD, whose holdings were originally collected by Katharine Seymour Day (1870–1964), grandniece of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.