23 April 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00459)
All right—the tri‐ Ⓐemendationquarterly statement will arrive in a good time.1explanatory note For I shall pay a debt or two then, & I shall be paying a thousand dollars & some other money toward buying a beautiful home for my mother in a neighboring town village near here—my sister paying the other five or six thousand.2explanatory note
When you come we’ll talk books & business. I wish my wife wanted to spend the summer in England, but I’m afraid she don’t. But we shall soon know, now, whether Mr. Langdon will try Europe or not.3explanatory note I shall watch this
I shall watch this Galaxy business pretty closely, & whenever I seem to be “letting down,” I shall withdraw from literature & recuperate. But Ⓐemendation this month’s “Memoranda” hasn’t hurt my reputation, & next month’s won’t—I want to bet something in on that.4explanatory note
Will you let some neat-handed & artistic person, like Miss Nellie,5explanatory note for instance, paste the enclosed in the title page fly-leaf of the nicest copy of the Innocents you have got, & send it express paid (& charged to me,) to
Mrs. Bart. Bowen,6explanatory note
Columbia,
Mo.
letter docketed: ✓ auth Mark Twain and /70
The third quarter for Innocents ended on 30 April. Bliss’s letter, to which Clemens replied here, has not been found.
In Fredonia, about forty miles from Buffalo, the Moffetts and Jane Clemens rented a brick house on Day Street (across from the village common), the former rectory of Trinity Episcopal Church. Pamela may have hoped to buy this house, which the church designated for sale on 24 March, setting the price at $5,000 on 17 May. It sold, however, to Sarah Greene on 18 March 1871. Probably in late November 1871 the Moffetts and Jane Clemens moved to the frame house on Temple Street where they were living by 1875. Local records indicate that Pamela did not purchase the Temple Street house either. In 1912, Paine reported that in recommending Fredonia, Clemens had advised Pamela to “Try to select a place where a good many funerals pass. Ma likes funerals. If you can pick a good funeral corner she will be happy” ( MTB , 1:424). According to Douglas H. Shepard of Fredonia, “both the Day St. and the Temple St. homes were on the direct route for almost all funerals in Fredonia” (Shepard to Michael B. Frank, 14 Nov 1993, 26 Jan 1994, 4 Feb 1994, 30 Apr 1994, 8 May 1994, CU-MARK; MTBus , 112, 129, 170).
Clemens was anticipating the Langdons’ return. On the day of this letter the Elmira Saturday Evening Review reported that they “are now in Savannah, and are not expected home for two weeks” (“Local Jottings,” 8). See 4 May 70 to Janney, n. 1click to open letter.
Clemens’s first “Memoranda” appeared in the Galaxy for May, published by mid-April (SLC 1870 [MT00883]). The New York Tribune called “Memoranda” a “pleasant admixture of sense and nonsense” (“New Publications,” 15 Apr 70, 6). The Elmira Advertiser observed:
Mark Twain’s Department is especially noticeable, and will be a feature of the Magazine much sought after. This gentleman forms another example of the truth of the saying that the person who possesses qualities of the richest humor, has also command of the tenderest pathos. His Memoranda is composed of matter, part of which will move one to mirth, and another part induce sadness and sympathy. (“Editorial Small Talk,” 18 Apr 70, 1)
On 26 April, Francis Church wrote Clemens, enclosing a “check for the 12th part of $2000 for the May Memoranda” and an unidentified review or reviews, indicating that “it has made a hit” (CU-MARK). He also reminded Clemens that copy for the June issue was due by 3 May. The June “Memoranda” (SLC 1870 [MT00917]) was also well received. The New York Tribune pronounced it one of the Galaxy’s best elements; the Elmira Advertiser called it “overwhelmingly funny”; and the Elmira Saturday Evening Review said that “Mark Twain’s contributions now constitute a steady and very valuable feature—they are super excellent” (“New Publications,” New York Tribune, 19 May 70, 6; “Editorial Small Talk,” Elmira Advertiser, 23 May 70, 1; “Dramatic Notes,” Elmira Saturday Evening Review, 28 May 70, 5). Clemens’s own confidence in both the May and June “Memoranda” remained strong: he eventually reprinted six of their eleven sketches, both in 1872 with George Routledge and Sons (Mark Twain’s Sketches) and in 1875 with Bliss (Sketches, New and Old).
Sarah Robards Bowen (1836–1918), a former Hannibal schoolmate, was the recent widow of Clemens’s good friend and fellow pilot, later captain, Barton W. Stone Bowen, who had died at Hannibal on 21 May 1868 ( L1 , 340–41 n. 4; Inds , 94, 97, 304, 345; “Death of Captain Bart Bowen,” St. Louis Dispatch, 2 June 68, 1; “Death of a Steamboat Captain,” San Francisco Times, 23 June 68, 1).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L4 , 117–119; MTMF , 132, brief excerpt; MTLP , 33–34.
see Mendoza Collection in Description of Provenance.