§ 13. [First Letter from Rambler]
9 May 1853
(This headnote is repeated in numbers 11–16.)
Clemens himself recounted the story of “The ‘Katie of H———1’ Controversy” in April 1871 in “My First Literary Venture” (no. 357). This piece conflated his experiences in 1852 and 1853 on Orion's Hannibal Journal, but the portion of his remarks that applies to these six items—published in the Daily Journal on 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, and 13 May 1853—deserves to be quoted here:
Next I gently touched up the newest stranger—the lion of the day, the gorgeous journeyman tailor from Quincy. He was a simpering coxcomb of the first water and the “loudest” dressed man in the State. He was an inveterate woman-killer. Every week he wrote lushy “poetry” for the “Journal” about his newest conquest. His rhymes for my week were headed “To Mary in H—L,” meaning to Mary in Hannibal, of course. But while setting up the piece I was suddenly riven from head to heel by what I regarded as a perfect thunder-bolt of humor, and I compressed it into a snappy foot-note at the bottom—thus: “We will let this thing pass, just this once; but we wish Mr. J. Gordon Runnels to understand distinctly that we have a character to sustain, and from this time forth when he wants to commune with his friends in h—l he must select some other medium than the columns of this journal!”1
This recollection captures the sense of the controversy, without recapitulating its details: Clemens had no copies of his Journal pieces, and he was deliberately writing autobiographical fiction.
Albert Bigelow Paine, probably reflecting testimony from the author himself, implied that Clemens, rather than a “journeyman tailor from Quincy,” wrote the poem “addressed ‘To Mary in Hannibal,’ ” whose “title was too long to be set in one column, so he left out all the letters in Hanni- [begin page 93] bal , except the first and the last.”2 And in April 1871 Clemens clearly implied that he wrote the rest of the items, although they were obviously longer than the “snappy foot-note” to which he alluded. In fact, it seems safe to say that, like a one-man band, Clemens orchestrated the medley and played all the instruments—first as “Rambler,” then as “Grumbler,” and finally as “Peter Pencilcase's Son, John Snooks.” Rambler's poetry is as feeble as in “The Heart's Lament” (no. 10), and the raillery of all hands is crude, but vigorous. In the subtitle to “Love Concealed” Clemens may be echoing Robert Burns's poem “To Mary in Heaven” as well as Burns's frequent use of the name “Katie” in his songs. In the garbled syntax of John Snooks's letter, he was employing for the first time a technique that he later developed and perfected in such pieces as “The Facts Concerning the Recent Trouble between Mr. Mark Twain and Mr. John William Skae of Virginia City” (no. 116) and “A Reminiscence of Artemus Ward” (no. 211).3
Poor Grumbler! are you so ignorant as not to be able to distinguish “of” from “in”? Read again—see if it is not “of” H—1 (Hannibal), instead of “in” Hell. Now, did you suppose that there was another such an idiot as yourself in the city of Hannibal, one who, like yourself, would as soon address a person in “hell” as upon earth, you are widely mistaken. Poor fellow, I much fear that some Lunatic Asylum will have to mourn the absence of a fit subject until you are placed in a straight jacket and sent there. From Ⓐemendationthe remotest depths of my heart I pity you, nor will I again condescend to notice Ⓐemendationyou, for it ill becomes a rational man to engage in a controversy with one who has placed upon his shoulders a head without either eyes, brains, or sense. Now, Grumbler, one word of advice (and I leave you to the torture of your ignorance), don't, for the sake of your friends, (if any you have) expose yourself any further. I am done with you, so I wish you a safe arrival at that place for which only you are a fit subject—the Lunatic Asylum.
Rambler.
The first printing appeared in the Hannibal Daily Journal for 9 May 1853 (p. 2). The only known copy of this printing, in MoHist, is copy-text. So far as is known, there was no second printing in the Hannibal Weekly Journal (compare nos. 10–12). Clemens may have typeset and proofread the letter. There are no textual notes.