Letters Of Note’s Most Fascinating Letters

Fascinating Letters Of Note: Mark Twain Decimates Snake-Oil Salesman

When most people catch a liar in his lie, a simple refutation will often put the fibber in his or her place. But when Mark Twain received an advertisement for a so-called panacea for diseases that previously took two of his children, he felt that polite corrections were too lenient a response. Twain’s letter is short and sweet, and wastes no time in leveling into its victim. Truly an inspiration for trash talkers the world over:

Nov. 20. 1905

J. H. Todd
1212 Webster St.
San Francisco, Cal.

Dear Sir,

Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link. It puzzles me to make out how the same hand could have constructed your letter and your advertisements. Puzzles fret me, puzzles annoy me, puzzles exasperate me; and always, for a moment, they arouse in me an unkind state of mind toward the person who has puzzled me. A few moments from now my resentment will have faded and passed and I shall probably even be praying for you; but while there is yet time I hasten to wish that you may take a dose of your own poison by mistake, and enter swiftly into the damnation which you and all other patent medicine assassins have so remorselessly earned and do so richly deserve.

Adieu, adieu, adieu!

Mark Twain

Vonnegut’s Heartfelt Condolences To A Widow

For such a prolific writer, Vonnegut managed to find the time to write quite a few personal correspondences. His brief response to a grieving fan is a stark contrast to his letter to the Drake superintendent, offering more consolation, advice, and support in five sentences than most can convey in five pages. Perhaps recognizing its potential for auction, he even drew one of his characteristic doodles in the empty space:

Nov. 30 ’90

Dearest Marianne Brown —

It can’t be said often enough, “It is the woman who pays.” The miracle is that so many can and do somehow. I was in love (still am) with a widow with four kids (two not her own). She somehow raised them all on a teeny weeny salary. I told her one time, “I worry about women.” She said, “Don’t.”

Cheers —

(Signed)

Kurt Vonnegut