13 December 1865 • San Francisco, Calif. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00093)
Send the memoranda at once.
I have just made a proposition to an old friend of mine—a “rustler,” an energetic, untr untiring Ⓐemendationbusiness man & a man of capital & large n New ⒶemendationYork business associations & facilities. He lev leaves Ⓐemendationfor the east 5 days hence—on the 19th. I told him we had 30,000 acres land in Tennessee, & there was oil on it.—Ⓐemendation& if he would send me $500 from New York to go east with, $500 more after I got there, & pay all my expenses while I assisted him in selling the land, I would give him one-half of the entire proceeds of the sale of the land.
Herman Camp offered me half, 2 years ago, if I would go with him to New York & help him sell some mining Ⓐemendationclaims, & I, like a fool, refused. He went, & made $270,000 o in Ⓐemendationtwo months. He is independent, now, & I had to make him a liberal offer. Men from New York tell me that Camp’s mines have given better satisfaction than any that were sold in that market; he was shrewd enough to sell them well.1explanatory note
Now I don’t want that Tenn land to go for taxes, & I don’t want any “slouch” to take charge of the sale of it. I am tired being a beggar—tired being chained to this accursed homeless desert,—I want to go back to a Christian land once more—& so I want you to send me immediately all necessary memoranda to enable Camp to understand the condition, & quantity & resources of the land, & how he must go about finding it. He will visit St Louis & talk with the folks, & then go at once & see the land, & telegraph me whether he closes with my proposition or not. Write me these particulars at once, as he la leaves Ⓐemendationon the 19th. Send letters of introduction to me for him—to dwellers on the Tenn. land who can assist in showing him over it. He says the land is valuable now that there is peace & no slavery, even if it have no oil in it.2explanatory note
Dear Mollie—It keeps raining, so we can’t go shopping, Mrs. B.3explanatory note being unwell. Hold on a day or two.
Herman Camp was an early locator on the Comstock lode and an aggressive speculator in Washoe mining stocks. He had been friendly with Clemens in Virginia City and then in San Francisco while Clemens was staying there in mid-1863. Camp had gone from San Francisco to New York in June 1863, apparently remaining at least until late August 1864. At the end of January 1865 Clemens had made the following notebook record of Camp’s mining sales: “Herman Camp has sold some Washoe Stock in New York for $270,000” ( N&J1 , 73; Angel, 58, 59; ET&S1 , 487; “The Departing Steamer,” San Francisco Alta California, 3 June 63, 1; Marshall, 1).
Clemens later gave this account of Camp’s plans and their outcome:
He agreed to buy our Tennessee land for two hundred thousand dollars, pay a part of the amount in cash and give long notes for the rest. His scheme was to import foreigners from grape-growing and wine-making districts in Europe, settle them on the land, and turn it into a wine-growing country. . . . I sent the contracts and things to Orion for his signature, he being one of the three heirs. But they arrived at a bad time—in a doubly bad time, in fact. The temperance virtue was temporarily upon him in strong force, and he wrote and said that he would not be a party to debauching the country with wine. Also he said how could he know whether Mr. Camp was going to deal fairly and honestly with those poor people from Europe or not?—and so, without waiting to find out, he quashed the whole trade, and there it fell, never to be brought to life again. The land, from being suddenly worth two hundred thousand dollars, became as suddenly worth what it was before—nothing, and taxes to pay. (AD, 5 Apr 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA , 2:320–21)
Unidentified.
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L1 , 326–327.
probably Moffett Collection; see p. 462.