12 April 1869 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: CSmH, UCCL 00282)
I Ⓐemendation One thing I do pride myself on—& that is, that I am a dutiful son. Now you always told me, on board the ship, to revere the Old Masters & love them, & speak well of them & appreciatively. It was on that account that I took pains all through the book (for I am publishing a book) to make mention of them & their works. And now I perceive that my engravers have caught my spirit of adulation & are helping me to glorify Titian & those other scrubs. They have made some very beautiful studies from the Old Masters—& I enclose the rough proofs. (They will be handsome when well printed.) Do you know, I think these things unequaled in American art. Notice the cheerful satisfaction that is in St Mark’s face—& also the easy confidence of his manner. Could anything be finer? 2. The St Matthew is the noblest work of art I ever saw. There is an amount of feeling about it that you find nowhere else except in the Paul Veronese school. The pleasant negligé of the attitude irresistibly suggests Leonardo da Vinchi. The calm thoughtfulness dreamy spirituality of the face at arrests the attention of even the most careless observer.) 3.—The Ⓐemendation Jerome is after Tintoretto. There are touches here & there & dainty little effects, that will bring that great artist to your mind.1explanatory note 4.—Now the tranquil satisfaction with which St Sebastian goes about with a lot of arrows sticking in him, will remind you of St Sebastians by all the old masters—every one of them.
We must go to dinner, now els—Livy & I2explanatory note—else I would write you more about the old masters. Love to the family. And to Mr & Mrs Severance. Allong &c
enclosures:
Mrs. A. W. Fairbanks | Care “Herald” | Cleveland | Ohio. postmarked: elmira n. y. apr 12
Clemens enclosed illustrations from chapter 23 (pages 238–39) of The Innocents Abroad, which he had cut from the proofs he probably received on this day. His references here to Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti, 1518?–94), Paul Veronese (Paolo Caliari, 1528–88), Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), and Titian (Tiziano Vecellio, 1488?–1576) are all clearly playful, but do not appear to refer to specific paintings by them, even though Tintoretto and Veronese did paint St. Jerome and St. Matthew, respectively.
The company at dinner may well have included Anna E. Dickinson, who had arrived in Elmira on Saturday, 10 April, to visit with the Langdons (“City and Neighborhood,” Elmira Advertiser, 12 Apr 69, 4). Apparently Clemens first met Dickinson during this visit, although he had seen her lecture and known of her friendship with the Langdons much earlier.
References
- Henry E. Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, Calif.
- Machlis, Paul, ed. Union Catalog of Clemens Letters. Edited by Paul Machlis. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. [In some cases, UCCL catalog numbers cited in this volume supersede those assigned in 1986 and reflect corrections or additions to the catalog since publication. An updated version of the catalog can be consulted via the Letters Search page at MTPO.] 1986
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain to Mrs. Fairbanks. Edited by Dixon Wecter. San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library. 1949
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 3: 1869. Edited by Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Dahlia Armon. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1992
MS and enclosed illustration proofs, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. (CSmH, call no. HM 14249).
MTMF , 90–91, without the enclosures; L3 , 190–192.
see Huntington Library, pp. 582–83.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.