15 December 1866 • San Francisco, Calif. (MS: NPV, UCCL 00116)
I sail tomorrow per Opposition—telegraphed you to-day—leaving more friends behind me than any newspaper man that ever sailed out of the Golden Gate,1explanatory note Phoenix not excepted.2explanatory note The reason I mention this with so much pride is because our fraternity generally leave not none Ⓐemendationbut enemies here when they go—as, for instance, Webb,.Ⓐemendation 3explanatory note I stepped in at the great church Fair at Platt’s Hall,4explanatory note to-nightⒶemendation, & all the Cannibals (I mean ladies & gentlemen of Sandwich Island nativity) I ever knew & 30 or 40 I never heard of before, came forward, without the formality of introductions, & bade me good bye & God speed. Somehow these people touch me mighty close to home with their eloquent eyes & their cordial words & the fervent clasp of their hands.
Love to all
Evidence of the affection that San Franciscans felt for Clemens is provided by the following anecdote:
How “Mark Twain” Got ahead of the Highwaymen.—That robbery of the “Philosopher,” on the Divide, was generally considered a good joke by every one, except the subject of it. He kept his temper, however, and fate has made him even at last. The story of his robbery travelled East, and a warm-hearted and impulsive friend in New York, before the explanation of the story reached there, immediately dispatched the following:
On receipt of this very comforting telegram, the “Philosopher,” who is remarkable for the fidelity with which he obeys orders, collected a hundred dollars from the firm, and will give tickets to his lectures for that amount on the other side. He leaves for New York to-day, and of course will lecture there. The “hundred in coin” will be a capital starter, when mutual explanations will have been made. As the darkey might say, “Mark” would not object to “a nudder” message on the same terms. (San Francisco Morning Call, 15 Dec 66, 1)
Asa D. Nudd, Charles S. Lord and Company were “importers and wholesale dealers [in] wines and liquors” (Langley 1867, 372). The “robbery” was the prank Denis E. McCarthy and Steve Gillis had played on Clemens in November (see 2 Nov 66 to JLC and family, n. 4click to open letter).
George Horatio Derby (1823–61), a graduate of West Point who attained the rank of captain in the United States Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, was best known for his humorous writings under the pseudonym “John Phoenix.” His sketches, widely reprinted in newspapers during the 1850s, were collected in two volumes: Phoenixiana; Or, Sketches and Burlesques (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1856) and, posthumously, The Squibob Papers (New York: Carleton, 1865). Although Derby acquired his reputation while stationed on the Pacific Coast (1849–56), St. Louis citizens and newspapers took a special interest in his writings because of his connections to the area: he had married a St. Louis woman and his family was living near Carondelet at the time of his death. The St. Louis press prominently reported his burial in Bellefontaine Cemetery early in June 1861—the month before Clemens, who knew Derby’s work well, left Missouri for Carson City (“Military Burial To-day, of Capt. George H. Derby,” St. Louis Missouri Democrat, 3 June 61, 2).
Charles Henry Webb had relinquished the editorship of the faltering Californian in April 1866, leaving San Francisco on the eighteenth of the month and settling permanently in the East (“Sailing of the ‘Sacramento,’” San Francisco Evening Bulletin, 18 Apr 66, 3; Webb, 8–9). His departure was not mourned, for during his three-year stay he had given offense in the Californian with caustic criticism of the local scene (see Walker 1969, 183–84).
A “Festival and Fair,” featuring food, music, and “tableaux vivants,” was put on from 10 to 15 December by the women of the Reverend Henry Martyn Scudder’s Howard Presbyterian Church to “raise funds for upholstering the new church” (“Platt’s Music Hall,” San Francisco Alta California, 11 Dec 66, 4). This building on Mission Street, erected in 1866 and dedicated on 6 January 1867, was described as “an elegant brick structure, in the Anglo-Norman style, the auditorium of which is in the form of an ellipse, with a concave roof, which gives it a peculiar appearance” (Langley 1867, 15, 659).
Mollie Clemens added the following note to Orion before forwarding this letter to him:
I believe Mela is writing. All told me to forward you their love in the last letter but, “O! I forgot” But I send it now all the same. Mother is very anxious to see you. Pa and Will sold their Tennessee lands to Jo. I told them they were to write you what you were to do, as you were authorised to sell and would if you could get $1.00 or 50¢ per acre. They are responsible to Jo for that, they did not tell me to write any thing about it. Jo asked me to tell you to write to him. Please do so.
A copy of the S F Times came yesterday
At the time she wrote this note, probably in February 1867, Mollie Clemens seems to have been in Keokuk, Iowa, with her family. Orion was in Tennessee, trying to dispose of his family’s Fentress County land and corresponding with the San Francisco Times under the pen name “Cumberland” (OC 1867, OC 1867, OC 1867). Mentioned in this passage are: Pamela Moffett (“Mela”); William Stotts (1799–1888) and Mary Patterson (Polly) Stotts (1797–1869), Mollie’s parents; and William L. Stotts (b. 1829) and Joseph Patterson Stotts (1824–93), two of Mollie’s brothers.
MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).
L1 , 373–375; MTB , 1:304, brief excerpt; MTBus , 89.
see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 459–61.