10 December 1867 • Washington, D.C. (MS: NPV, UCCL 00171)
Washington Dec. 10.Ⓐemendation
I called on the Secretary of the Interior, yesterday, but said nothing about a place for Orion, of course—must get better acquainted first—must see his wife—she is the power behind the throne.1explanatory note If it were myself, I could get a place pretty easily, because I have friends in high places who offer me such things—but it is hard to get them interested in one’s relatives. Judge Field of the Supreme Bench Ⓐemendation is a case in point.2explanatory note He wanted to make me Post Master of San Francisco, & I suppose I would have been, without knowing it myself, but that the place was had just been filled when he spoke to the President.3explanatory note I told him I didn’t want any office. But he said, “You must have an office, with a good salary & nothing to do. You have writt Ⓐemendation You are no common scrub of a newspaperman. You have written the best Ⓐemendationletter about Pompeii that ever was written about it4explanatory note—& if you had an easy berth you could write Ⓐemendation more.” Say what office you want in San Francisco, & the President shall give it you.” I thou didn’t remember the Pompeii letter, but I thought I wouldn’t say so. But I did think like compliments from people who take an interest in me—newspaper compliments I don’t care anything about beyond their market value. But I did think that if I could only turn his good offices over to Orion, it would suit exactly. I had no chance to try it, & it is a delicate business anyhow. But I will call & see him privately in a few days.Ⓐemendation
I am writing a lecture—have half promised to deliver it b for the Cor Newspaper Correspondents’ Club here after the holidays— may, Ⓐemendation maybe I may—& I may not.5explanatory note
Dr Birch, of Hannibal, has got a bottle of water which he & I got out of the Pool of Bethesda, in Jerusalem one Sunday morning when the angel wasn’t around.6explanatory note Part of it is mine. I’ll give it to you & Mr. Schroter & Sallie Hawes, if you want it & will send for it.7explanatory note You can get Essie,8explanatory note or Lou Conrad, or some other angel to stir it, & you can start a hospital & cure all the cripples in your camp. I have got some Jordan & some Dead Sea water somewhere, too. I guess it must be in Y ⒶemendationNew York.
Inclosed is a letter to me from the wife of the editor of the Cleveland Herald. one of our fellow-passengers. 9explanatory note She was the most refined, intelligent, educated & cultivated lady in the ship, & altogether the kindest & best. She sewed my buttons on, kept my clothes in presentable trim, fed me on Egyptian jam, & cured (when I behaved,) lectured me awfully on the quarter-deck on moonlit promenading evenings, & cured me of several bad habits. I am under lasting obligations to her. She looks young, because she is so good—but she has a grown son & daughter at home.10explanatory note I wrote her, the other day, that my buttons were all off, again. She Ⓐemendationhad another pup under her charge, younger than myself, whom I called always called the “cub.”11explanatory note Hence her reference to cubs & bears. Lucius Moulton12explanatory note was another cub of hers. We all called her “mother” & kept her in hot water all the time about her brood. I always abused the sea‐sick people—I said nobody but almighty mean people ever s got sea-sick—& she thought I was in earnest. She never got sick herself. She always drummed us up for prayer meeting, with her monitory “Seven bells, my boys—you know what it is time for.” We always went, but we liked six four bells best, because it meant hash—dinner, I should say.
Love to all the household, & amen.
Orville Hickman Browning (1806–81) was secretary of the interior from 1866 to 1869. As a strong opponent of Radical Reconstruction he supported President Johnson throughout the effort to impeach him in 1867–68. He had been married to the former Eliza Caldwell since 1836.
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Stephen Johnson Field (1816–99), originally from Connecticut, went to California in 1849, where he was elected to the state legislature in 1850 and appointed to the state supreme court in 1857. In March 1863 Lincoln appointed him to the United States Supreme Court. Clemens had probably met him while working for the San Francisco Morning Call in 1864, when Field was presiding in San Francisco over the United States Circuit Court for the District of California (CofC, 189). In a letter dated 20 December 1867 to the Enterprise Clemens declared that “Associate Justice Field of the Supreme Bench is widely talked of, latterly, as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States—an able man, a just one, and one whose judicial and political garments are clean—a man well fitted for the place” (SLC 1868 [MT00609]).
The four-year commission of the incumbent San Francisco postmaster would expire in January, but his successor was not in fact appointed for many months. From innumerable candidates only three were actually nominated by the president, and only the last gained the approval of the Senate. At the time of this letter, the candidate most recently said to be under consideration was Samuel Purdy, formerly (1852–56) lieutenant governor of California under John Bigler. In a letter to the Enterprise Clemens explained that as soon as a candidate “gets the President in his favor the Senate will be down on him for it, and ... if he gains the Senate’s affections first, the President will be down on him” (SLC 1868 [MT00641]). The current assistant postmaster, Holland Smith, was finally confirmed as the new postmaster on 25 July 1868 (Rincon 1868; Hittell, 4:81, 134–35; Senate 1887, 13:380, 386, 16:319, 322, 340, 341, 357, 370; Langley 1867, 652; Langley 1868, 458, 734). Before that date, however, the subject of the postmastership recurred several times in Clemens’s personal letters as well as in his newspaper correspondence (see 4 and 6 Feb 68 to Blissclick to open letter; 6 Feb 68 to JLC and PAMclick to open letter; 10 Feb 68 to Beachclick to open letter; 21 Feb 68 to JLC and familyclick to open letter; 21 Feb 68 to OCclick to open letter; SLC 1868 [MT00612], 1868 [MT00653]).
Field was praising Clemens’s letter to the Alta dated “August” from Naples, which was published on 29 September (SLC 1867 [MT00568]).
The Washington Correspondents’ Club, an association of journalists writing about Washington news for newspapers elsewhere, was founded in February 1867. In an Alta letter dated 17 December, Clemens mentioned being “at a dinner in the early part of the week” (probably 8 or 9 December) “given ... to the Newspaper Correspondents’ Club, of Washington.” And in the fall of 1868 he was still listed as an active member, without newspaper affiliation. His friend John Henry Riley, the regular Washington correspondent for the Alta, said in a newspaper letter dated 15 December 1867 that Mark Twain was “preparing a lecture to be delivered shortly before the Washington Press Club,” evidently a misnomer for the Correspondents’ Club. Clemens did speak at the club’s first annual dinner on 11 January 1868, but his talk on that occasion was a response to the toast to “Woman,” not the lecture called “The Frozen Truth,” on which he was presently working (see 8 Jan 68click to open letter and 13 Jan 68, both to JLC and family). Even after his successful toast, however, he still planned to give a benefit lecture for the club: on 22 January one Washington paper reported that a “loud call has been made upon him by the Correspondents’ Club to ‘speak his piece’ in public, about his trip to the Sandwich Islands, preluded by his affecting story of the ‘Miner and his Cat.’” And on 26 January, Riley again noted that “‘Rev.’ Mark Twain has promised to lecture before the Washington Correspondents’ Club at an early date.” No evidence has been found, however, that Clemens ever did lecture for it (SLC 1868 [MT00618]; Marbut, 243; Riley 1868 [bib10876]; “Washington News and Gossip,” Washington Evening Star, 22 Jan 68, 1; Riley 1868 [bib10877]).
Dr. George Bright Birch (1822?–?73) lived in Hannibal, Missouri. He was a member of Clemens’s party on the Holy Land trek and, according to Colonel Denny (writing in September 1867), he was “rather heavy set a plain, old fashioned Gentleman that cares more for substance than show, and hartily despises meanness, parade and vanity. He is about forty five years old and does not belong to church.” In 1874, on hearing of his death, Clemens wrote Emma Beach: “I have always held Dr. Birch in grateful memory because he stood by me so stanchly when I was dangerously ill in Damascus.” In chapter 47 of The Innocents Abroad, Clemens attributed this steadfastness to William F. Church, whom he overheard say “he did not care who went or who staid, he would stand by me till I walked out of Damascus on my own feet or was carried out in a coffin” (Denny, entry for 11 Sept; SLC to Beach, 4 Feb 74, CCamarSJ, in Booth, 230; SLC 1869, 499). The pool of Bethesda was traditionally identified with a large reservoir called Birket Israíl, near St. Stephen’s gate in Jerusalem. According to John 5:4, its water had miraculous healing powers: “For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.” Clemens called the pool a “slimy cesspool” in an Alta letter, but he and Dr. Birch returned to it on Sunday, 29 September, after their side trip to Bethlehem, specifically in order “to get a flask of the water” (Thomson, 2:524; Murray, map following 1:72, 107; Louisa M. Griswold, 251; SLC 1868; N&J1, 434, 442 [entry misdated 28 Sept], 485).
George Schroter (b. 1813 or 1814) had been William A. Moffett’s business partner, first in Hannibal, and then in St. Louis from about 1855 until Moffett’s death in 1865. Although Schroter may not have been living in St. Louis at the time of this letter, he did have frequent contact with Clemens’s family during 1867 and early 1868 (OC to MEC, 9 May 67 and 20 Feb 68; OC to JLC and PAM, 17 Nov 67; all in CU-MARK). Sarah (Sallie) Humphreys Hawes (b. 1828 or 1829) was the wife of George A. Hawes, a prominent Hannibal merchant and a nephew of Clemens’s uncle John Quarles; Hawes had lived with William Moffett’s family in Hannibal for a time before his marriage in 1851 ( MTBus , 26, 38, 72; Hannibal Census, 306, 310, 323; PAM to MEC, 23 June 70, CU-MARK; Holcombe, 953; Portrait, 198).
Essie Pepper.
The letter from Mrs. Fairbanks is not known to survive, but some idea of its contents may be inferred from the next letter, evidently Clemens’s response to it.
Mrs. Fairbanks was thirty-nine. Her stepchildren, offspring of Abel Fairbanks and his first wife, Alice Holmes (d. 1849), were Frank Fairbanks (b. 1845) and Alice Holmes Fairbanks (b. 1847) (Lorenzo Sayles Fairbanks, 552).
Charles J. Langdon.
Julius Moulton.
MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).
L2 , 129–133; MTB , 1:327, excerpt; MTBus , 96–97.
see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 512–14.