3 December 1872 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CtHMTH, UCCL 00838)
We have not heard of your arrival, but we judge that you must have reached home, s before this, else some of the people there would be inquiring into it by telegraph, maybe. I was uneasy & uncomfortable a good while, the day you left, for I dreaded some more railroad obstructions—& I was not over the discomfort till we got your dispatch next morning—& then it occurred to me that as you went down in a daylight Ⓐemendation train no obstructor would be muggins enough to try to throw it off the track.1explanatory note
You left your muff here & we are going to send it to you by mail—would do it today, but are out of prepaidⒶemendation envelops. We have been pretty homesick for you, & even my potent presence was not sufficient to keep Livy from missing you day & night & talking about it.
Send Sue & The. along—we want them ever so much. The little Susie needs them, too.2explanatory note She has a marvelous cold—as bad a one as I ever had myself, I think. It pulls her down at a wonderful rate. She is nothing now but skin & bones & flesh.
I h went to work on my English book yesterday & turned out 36 pages of on Ⓐemendation satisfactory manuscript, but the baby kept me awake so much last night that today I find the inspiration is vanished & gone, right in the middle of my subject.
Clara may as well get ready, for she has to go with us to England in May.3explanatory note
How stands Elmira on the Beecher Scandal?4explanatory note Miss Catherine Beecher5explanatory note tells us that Mr. Moulton6explanatory note did go after a MS., to Mr. Beecher, & su exspe expecting that he “would be mad,” took a pistol with him. The poor old soul was in considerable trouble, evidently, & fully appreciated the damaging effect of one statement in the Woodhull arraignment being a fact. She was sorry a sweeping assertion of the untruth of the said arraignment would not do—because of that unlucky pistol business. However, she said Beecher didn’t give up the paper.7explanatory note The Twichells now tell us that th Ⓐemendation a full year ago the Tiltons (both the he one & the she one)8explanatory note gave to Mr. Beecher an absolute denial of all these slanders, & that that paper is still in Mr. B.’s possession.9explanatory note
Very well, then. The Twichells say, with us, that that paper ought at once to be printed. Whoever feels uncertain about the truth or falsehood of those slanders (& I would extremely like to know who feels certain) is suffering shame & defilement, & is continuing to carry a filthy subject in his mind, to his further defilement, when possibly the Beecher party are all the while able to sweep away his doubts & purify his mind with a breath. I think the silence of the Beechers is a hundred fold more of an obscene publication than the thatⒶemendation of the Woodhulls. 10explanatory note—for & the said silence is a thousand-fold more potent in convincing people of the truth of that scandal than the evidence of fifty Woodhulls could be. Silence has given assent in all ages of the world—it is a law of nature, not ethics—& HenryⒶemendation Ward Beecher is as amenable to it as the humblest of us. You will find presently that the general verdict thought of the nation will gradually form itself into the verdict that there is some fire somewhere in all this smoke of scandal.
Mrs. Hooker has gone down to see Mr. Beecher—moved thereto by a talk with Miss Catharine, its is said.11explanatory note
Mother dear, the autumn leaves are exquisite, & so is the frame that encloses them—& more prized than all is the mother-love of which they are the expression. The gift occupies the middle of my study mantel, & is flanked by your & father’s12explanatory note portraits in the lovely blue velvet mounting—Livy’s birthday gift to me. These things give the study a dainty air that marvelously assists composition.
Nasby has just gone—been here an hour on a flying visit.13explanatory note
Love to you & to all the household.
Susan and Theodore Crane, and Susy Clemens.
Clara Spaulding, a close friend of Olivia’s, had agreed to accompany the Clemenses to England. Susan Crane later recalled:
Miss Clara Spaulding had long desired to go abroad. Mrs. Clemens desired her company, for there had never been any break in the friendship beginning in early girlhood—Mr. Spaulding, with large means was happy to send the daughter to whom he was devoted.
It proved to be one of the experiences where friends can travel many months together, with increasing devotion. (Susan L. Crane to Albert Bigelow Paine, 2 June 1911, Davis 1956, 3)
Author and educator Catharine Beecher was seventy-two years old. She came out of retirement in August 1870 to serve as principal of the Hartford Female Seminary, the school she had founded in 1827, but resigned in February 1871. Beecher was not listed in the Hartford directory in the 1870s. She may have been living with any of her numerous family, perhaps in Hartford or Brooklyn (Trumbull, 1:648–49; Stowe, 133–36; information about Hartford Female Seminary courtesy of the Connecticut Historical Society).
Francis D. Moulton (1836–84) had been an intimate friend of Theodore Tilton’s since they were classmates at the College of the City of New York. After Moulton graduated in 1854, he accepted a position with Woodruff and Robinson, a mercantile establishment, becoming a partner in the firm in 1861. His wife, a niece of one of his partners, was a member of Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Church, although Moulton himself was not. In December 1870 Tilton confided in Moulton, who thereafter acted as a mediator between Tilton and Beecher over the next four years. During Beecher’s trial Moulton’s testimony was crucial, and in 1874 Beecher brought a charge of criminal libel against him, but later dropped it (“The Mutual Friend Dead,” New York Times, 5 Dec 84, 8; Hibben, 193, 213, 283).
Victoria Woodhull’s “arraignment” (her version of the “Beecher Scandal”) appeared in the 2 November 1872 issue of Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly. Claiming that her information came largely from the Tiltons themselves, she reported that in December 1870 Elizabeth Tilton had confessed her adultery with Beecher to her husband. Beecher then visited Mrs. Tilton and “compelled or induced” her to “sign a statement he had prepared, declaring, that . . . there had never been any criminal intimacy between them.” Theodore Tilton was outraged, and asked Moulton to retrieve the statement for him: “My friend took a pistol, went to Mr. Beecher and demanded the letter of Mrs. Tilton, under penalty of instant death.” This was the “fact” that Catharine Beecher acknowledged. Contrary to her statement, however, Beecher did “give up the paper” to Moulton, who put it in his safe (Woodhull, 13–14; Clark, 215–20). In December 1872 Mrs. Tilton confirmed that two years earlier she had
signed a paper which he Beecher wrote, to clear him in case of trial. . . . I found on reflection that this paper was so drawn as to place me most unjustly against my husband, and on the side of Mr. Beecher. . . . Mr. Moulton procured from Mr. B. the statement which I gave to him in my agitation and excitement, and now holds it. ( Beecher Trial , 6–7)
Mrs. Tilton changed her mind again during Beecher’s trial and wrote another statement denying his guilt.
Theodore Tilton (1835–1907) gained experience as a journalist on the New York Tribune. Later, as a reporter for the New York Observer (a Presbyterian weekly), he took down Beecher’s sermons in shorthand. In 1855 he married Elizabeth Richards (1834–97), a Sunday school teacher at Plymouth Church, with Beecher performing the ceremony. The following year he became managing editor of the Independent, a Congregationalist weekly. In this position he gained a national reputation, transforming the religious journal into one of broad appeal. In addition, he edited the Brooklyn Union. In December 1870 he was dismissed from both these positions when he and Henry C. Bowen, who owned both journals, had a disagreement over the Beecher affair. Elizabeth Tilton for a time edited Revolution, a suffragist publication, and both she and her husband were active in the Equal Rights Association. Theodore Tilton’s journalism career, as well as his marriage, was ruined by the Beecher scandal. He left the country in 1883, and lived in Paris on the meager wages he earned from writing novels and poetry.
The Twichells may have heard an inaccurate rumor about a peculiar and equivocal “disavowal” signed in April 1872 by Tilton, Beecher, and Henry C. Bowen, in an attempt to “remove all causes of offense existing between us, real or fancied, and to make Christian reparation for injuries done or supposed to be done” (Oliver, 251). The document capped a tangled series of events: Tilton’s accusation against Beecher, Bowen’s initial encouragement of Tilton (fueled by his own enmity toward the minister), Bowen’s abrupt reversal of position and dismissal of Tilton, and Tilton’s subsequent lawsuit for breach of contract—settled by Bowen for $7,000. Tilton’s statement read, in part:
I, Theodore Tilton, do, of my own free will and friendly spirit toward Henry Ward Beecher, hereby covenant and agree that I will never again repeat, by word of mouth or otherwise, any of the allegations, or imputations, or innuendoes contained in my letters hereunto annexed. (Oliver, 251–52)
This document was not made public until the spring of 1873, when someone furnished a copy of it to the press (Oliver, 230–54; Clark, 208).
As soon as Woodhull’s account appeared in her Weekly (see note 7), she and her sister were arrested and charged with sending obscene literature through the mail, a federal offense. They were freed on bail a month later, then tried and acquitted in June 1873 (Marberry 1967, 112–13, 127, 147).
On 27 November Isabella Hooker had written to Beecher, proposing to “appear in his pulpit and take sole charge of the services to read a paper she would write ‘as one commissioned from on high.’ . . . She named a meeting place and demanded that Henry come to see her.” Theodore Tilton came instead of Beecher, and (according to Moulton’s later testimony) silenced Hooker by threatening to expose a past adultery of hers. Tilton reported his action to Beecher, who “was delighted with it” (Andrews, 38).
Jervis Langdon, who died in August 1870.
Petroleum V. Nasby (David Ross Locke) was on his way to Middletown, Connecticut, where he lectured on the evening of 3 December (“Local Personals,” Hartford Courant, 4 Dec 72, 2).
MS, Mark Twain House, Hartford (CtHMTH).
L5 , 235–238.
donated to CtHMTH in 1962 or 1963 by Ida Langdon.