7 October 1869 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00361)
Well I like the Stowe article, too, for it is good. But Ⓐemendationsee how tastes run—I think the Humboldt one ever so much better. “Humboldt’s Extract of Buchu” is gorgeous. Yes, I like them both, but I stick to Humboldt. I like Humboldt the best. Maybe it is because I am prejudiced against the Byron business—because I tried to burlesque it, & had my labor for my pains—our stove got the article.1explanatory note
I thank you very much for your offer of newspaper help, & also I thank you for your friendly feeling toward a newspaper man. I find a deal of it among the boys, but one cannot have too much of it. It never palls on the appetite.
I lecture in Pittsburgh Nov. 1, & then go straight to New England & lecture there till Jan. 15, when I am obliged to close for the season2explanatory note—but I am as grateful for your tender of newspaper favors as if I were going to lecture in the West & could take advantage of them.
I am “setting” on my lecture diligently, & will hatch it & leave here early next week.
One of the articles sent by Clemens’s correspondent, evidently a western journalist, clearly was a humorous sketch about Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), the German naturalist and explorer, whose birth centennial had been widely celebrated in the United States on 14 September. “Humboldt’s Extract of Buchu” was a punning reference to the patent medicine, formulated in part from the buchu plant (source of a commonly prescribed diuretic), that Henry T. Helmbold had been promoting as a cure for bladder and kidney ailments, as well as venereal disease, since 1850 (“Humboldt,” New York Times, 15 Sept 69, 1, 8; Young, 113–14; Helmbold). The other article must have been a satire of the “Byron scandal” evoked by Harriet Beecher Stowe (see 8 and 9 Sept to OLL, n. 7click to open letter). Clemens apparently consigned his own burlesque to his files, not to his stove. Among his surviving manuscripts is an unfinished letter from Lord Byron in Hell, which reads in part:
Mr. Mark Twain—Dear Sir: I have been a good deal interested in the Byron-Scandal lately stirred up on earth by Mrs. Harriett Beecher Stowe—for the Under-World takes the papers & is always posted. ... the plain truth is, I did do all that wickedness I am charged withal. I did that, & more. I am the Wickedest Man in—in this region. My conscience tortures me night & day. Nothing will relieve me but a confession. The recent revelation gave me some relief, but only a little—only a little. It only revealed one of my crimes—one of my mildest. What I need is a full exposé. Let me whisper in your ear: I had nine children by the late Mrs. Leigh. I devoured them. I destroyed my maternal grandfather with a pitchfork—not in a spirit of revenge, but simply as an experiment, to see if one’s grandfather could be destroyed with a pitchfork. I threw my paternal grandfather out of the fifth story window, just to see what he would say. He never se said anything. I flayed my brother John alive, merely to annoy him. I have committed all the crimes known to the law. I have robbed, & burned, & betrayed, & assassinated. (SLC 1869, 1, 3–5)
There are some things which cannot be burlesqued, for the simple reason that in themselves they are so extravagant and grotesque that nothing is left for burlesque to take hold of. For instance, all attempts to burlesque the “Byron Scandal” were failures because the central feature of it, incest, was a “situation” so tremendous and so imposing that the happiest available resources of burlesque seemed tame and cheap in its presence. (SLC 1870, 137)
In fact Clemens’s tour was extended to 21 January 1870 (see Lecture Schedule, 1868–1870click to open letter).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L3 , 366–367.
sold by John Howell Books in 1972 and donated to CU-MARK in 1973; see Appert Collection, p. 588.