31 October 1871 • Milford, Mass. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00668)
Livy darling, the same old practising on audiences still goes on—the same old feeling of pulses & altering manner & matter to suit the symptoms. The very same lecture that convulsed Great Barrington was received with the gentlest & most well-bred smiles & rippling comfort by Milford. Now we’ll see what Boston is going to do. Boston must sit up & behave, & do right by me. As Boston goes, so goes New England.
I got no letters at Brattleboro. None a had come. None in the post office, either. No proofs from Bliss.3explanatory note Brattleboro is unreliable, I guess.
I didn’t write last night. Felt kind of beat out. To-day I traveled the entire day in piddling trains Ⓐemendation that stopped every four or five minutes. P Am lazy, but not a bit tired—hot bath fetched me around handsomely. Saw Mrs. Lee’s brother Ⓐemendation tonight Ⓐemendation (we saw her at Gov. Hawley’s.)4explanatory note
Read Eugene Aram all day—found it tedious—skipped 4 pages out of 5. Skipped the corporal all the time. He don’t amount to anything.5explanatory note World of love. Kiss mother & cubbie for
After his Great Barrington lecture of Friday, 27 October, Clemens had a free weekend. Probably he spent it in Hartford, about sixty miles away, before keeping his engagements in Brattleboro, Vermont, and Milford, on 30 and 31 October, respectively.
Possibly an indication that Clemens “had received no proof at all since leaving on tour” ( RI 1993 , 870). See 9 Oct 71 to Redpath, n. 2click to open link.
Possibly Mrs. William Elliott Lee, the mother of Charles Dudley Warner’s wife, the former Susan Lee (“Mrs. Charles Dudley Warner,” New York Times, 14 Jan 1921, 11). Warner’s partner in the Hartford Courant was Joseph R. Hawley, former governor of Connecticut.
Ex-corporal Jacob Bunting was a humorous character in Edward Bulwer Lytton’s 1832 novel about the murderous crime of a quiet schoolmaster.
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
- Wecter, Dixon. The Love Letters of Mark Twain. Edited by Dixon Wecter. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1949
- Davis, Chester L., Sr. “Family Letters of the 1870’s.” Twainian 36 (July-August): 1–4. 1977
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Roughing It. Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, Edgar Marquess Branch, Lin Salamo, and Robert Pack Browning. The Works of Mark Twain. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. This edition supersedes the one published in 1972. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1993
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L4 , 483–484; LLMT , 162–63; Chester L. Davis 1977, 1, excerpt.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.