19? April 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00456)
Orion, if this needs a stamp, put it on.1explanatory note
As for the land, sell it at once & forever, if that Pittsburgh man sticks to his word. $50,000 is all it is worth. , maybe. 2explanatory note
Orion Clemens Esq | 1114 Locust st | St. Louis | Mo. postmarked: buffalo n.y ◇◇◇ ◇◇ Ⓐemendation . 3explanatory note
Clemens wrote this note on a scrap of paper, the bottom third of a full sheet. Its approximate date is suggested by the third paragraph of the next letter. As that letter indicates, the present enclosure was probably a letter of introduction for Orion to either mail or deliver by hand.
The land was the large tract in undeveloped Tennessee that Clemens’s father had acquired in about 1830 and that his sons had been trying to dispose of profitably at least since the late 1850s. Clemens had renounced his interest in it in November 1869 ( L1 , 77, 326, 341, 343; L2 , 11 n. 1, 59 n. 5, 219; L3 , 270–72, 279–80, 386–87). The “Pittsburgh man” may have been the “Capt. White” whose proposals for a sale or trade Orion was still considering in June (PAM to OC and MEC, 14 June 70, and JLC to OC and MEC, 25 June 70, both in CU-MARK).
Despite the partly illegible postmark, this envelope almost certainly belongs to this letter. The Moffett family’s move to Fredonia (see the next letter) had caused Orion and Mollie Clemens to relocate from 1511 Pine Street, in St. Louis, where they had lived with the Moffetts for seven months. This new address was a boarding house belonging to Elizabeth M. Kennedy, a widow. By 28 June Orion and Mollie had moved again—to “comfortable quarters” at 1112 Locust Street, the home of a “Mrs. H.,” not otherwise identified (PAM to OC and MEC, 28 June 70, CU-MARK; L3 , 280 n. 2; Edwards 1870, 494, 966).
References
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
- 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’s Letters, Volume 4: 1870–1871. Edited by Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Lin Salamo. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1995
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 1: 1853–1866. Edited by Edgar Marquess Branch, Michael B. Frank, and Kenneth M. Sanderson. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1988
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 2: 1867–1868. Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, Richard Bucci, and Lin Salamo. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1990
- 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
- Edwards, Richard. [Edwards’ Twelfth Annual Director to the . . . City of St. Louis, for 1870]. St. Louis: Southern Publishing Company. 1870
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L4 , 113–114.
see Moffett Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.