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Samuel Clemens

Mark Twain letter has close geographical tie to University of Texas

May 30, 2013 - Edgar Walters

A 1900 Sanborn map, used to estimate fire insurance liabilities, depicts Bowen's house and the surrounding neighborhood at the time the letter was written. The highlighted area shows the location of Bowen's house on the map.

When Samuel Clemens—better known by his pseudonym Mark Twain—penned a letter in London in 1900 to the widow of his childhood best friend in Austin, he had no idea that it would be preserved more than a century later in the Harry Ransom Center’s archives just four blocks south. Today the letter resides in a collection of Twain-related materials that features correspondence with longtime friends and others, including one from Clemens to P. T. Barnum.

This letter’s addressee, Mrs. Dora Goff Bowen, lived at 2506 Whitis Ave. in a neighborhood just north of the burgeoning University of Texas campus. The address, now home to The University of Texas at Austin’s hulking Jesse H. Jones Communications Center, has an interesting past. A few years after Clemens wrote the letter, 2506 Whitis became the site of one of the University’s first sorority houses, that of the newly organized Pi Beta Phi chapter. Two lots down the street lay George Littlefield’s still-new Victorian mansion, built in 1893, which maintains a grandiose presence on campus to this day.

Dora’s husband, Will Bowen, had grown up with Clemens in Hannibal, Missouri. Their friendship and escapades along the Missouri River became the basis of Twain’s books The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Bowen and Clemens engaged in countless hijinks, including, as another letter reveals, stealing dinner from the town drunkard to feed “the hogs in order to keep them still till we could mount them & have a ride.”

Clemens’s letter to Mrs. Bowen begins abruptly: “Yes, I really wanted to catch the measles. I succeeded.” The statement refers to another episode of Will Bowen and Clemens’s childhood mischief. When a young Bowen came down with the measles, Clemens decided to join his friend in bed to catch the virus and “settle this matter one way or the other and be done with it,” as he revealed in a posthumously published autobiography.

But fans will notice in the letter a conspicuous absence of Twain’s characteristic humor and lightheartedness. The turn of the twentieth century was a difficult time in Clemens’s life. Will Bowen, with whom Clemens had been in correspondence for more than 30 years, had recently passed away. Shortly thereafter, in 1896, Clemens’s daughter Suzy died of meningitis. Around the same time, Clemens was forced to declare bankruptcy after investing $300,000—worth approximately $8,000,000 today—in the Paige typesetting machine, a dysfunctional technology that quickly became obsolete.

Those hardships are reflected in the melancholy tone of Clemens’s letter: “[T]he romance of life is the only part of it that is overwhelmingly valuable, & romance dies with youth. After that, life is a drudge, & indeed a sham. A sham, & likewise a failure.” He fantasizes an alternate timeline, in which he would rather “call back Will Bowen & John Garth & the others, & live the life, & be as we were, & make holiday until 15, then all drown together.”

Despite his apparently bleak outlook, Clemens insists in the letter that he does not “say this uncheerfully—for I have seldom been uncheerful.” Indeed, in a post-script, he indulges in some characteristic playfulness in his response to Mrs. Bowen’s previous letter: “P.S. What we did to Brown? Oh, no, I will never reveal that!”

Please click the thumbnails below to view full-size images.

The envelope for a letter from Samuel Clemens to Dora C. Bowen at 2506 Whitis Avenue, where the Jesse H. Jones Communication Center now stands today on The University of Texas at Austin campus.
The envelope for a letter from Samuel Clemens to Dora C. Bowen at 2506 Whitis Avenue, where the Jesse H. Jones Communication Center now stands today on The University of Texas at Austin campus.
Letter from Samuel Clemens to Mrs. Dora Goff Bowen, dated June 6, 1900.
Letter from Samuel Clemens to Mrs. Dora Goff Bowen, dated June 6, 1900.
Second page from a letter from Samuel Clemens to Mrs. Dora Goff Bowen, dated June 6, 1900.
Second page from a letter from Samuel Clemens to Mrs. Dora Goff Bowen, dated June 6, 1900.
A 1900 Sanborn map, used to estimate fire insurance liabilities, depicts Bowen's house and the surrounding neighborhood at the time the letter was written. The highlighted area shows the location of Bowen's house on the map.
A 1900 Sanborn map, used to estimate fire insurance liabilities, depicts Bowen’s house and the surrounding neighborhood at the time the letter was written. The highlighted area shows the location of Bowen’s house on the map.

Filed Under: Authors, Books + Manuscripts Tagged With: 2506 Whitis Ave., Dora Goff Bowen, George Littlefield, Jesse H. Jones Communication Center, Littlefield House, Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, University of Texas, Will Bowen

Before and After: Mark Twain’s Bible

May 22, 2012 - Io Paulo Montecillo

This copy of the Bible belonged to Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), who carried the book with him during a trip to Constantinople in 1867 while he was writing "Innocents Abroad."
This copy of the Bible belonged to Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), who carried the book with him during a trip to Constantinople in 1867 while he was writing "Innocents Abroad."

While writing Innocents Abroad, Samuel Clemens (known more familiarly as Mark Twain) carried a Bible during a trip to Constantinople in 1867. The book is now part of the Ransom Center’s collections and can be seen in the exhibition The King James Bible: Its History and Influence, which runs through July 29.

The Bible recently underwent some work in the Ransom Center’s conservation lab.

Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Conservation, Exhibitions + Events Tagged With: Before and After, bible, Conservation, Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens, The King James Bible: Its History and Influence

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