§ 15. [Letter from Peter Pencilcase's Son, John Snooks]
12 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
Mr. Editor:
Several articles have recently appeared in the Daily Journal, over the signature of “Rambler” (truly appropriate).
It is really amusing to every intelligent and intellectual mind, to see how consequential some coxcombs are. The parlor is too remote a place, and not conspicuous enough to reveal the overflowing Ⓐemendationaffections of the H-e-a-r-t. In (yes too obscure) the columns of the public presses are resorted to, by the venerable writer, as being in keeping, with, and a more appropriate way of infusing the sentiments of an all loving h-e-a-r-t into the mind of one of the Misses of the city of Hannibal, from the tone of the above writer. It is desired, that the world should awake from its slumbers, and learn that there is one loving heart extant. “Vanity of Vanities!” such may be the custom from whence he hails, but I can assure Mr. “Rambler,” that the above course will never win the affections and admiration of the young Misses in this latitude; such a course is not congenial to their nature.
Peter Pencilcase's Son,
John Snooks.
Hannibal, May 12, 1853.
The first printing appeared in the Hannibal Daily Journal for 12 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, which is deliberately mispunctuated throughout, precluding emendation. There are no textual notes.