17 May 1882 • Quincy, Ill. (MS, in pencil: CU-MARK, UCCL 02190)
Livy darling I am desperately homesick. But I have promised Osgood, & must stick it out; otherwise I would take the train at once & break for home.
I have spent three delightful days in Hannibal, loitering around all day long, examining the old localities & talking with the friends grey-heads who were boys & girls with me 30 & 40 years ago. It has been a moving time. I spent my nights with John & Helen Garth, three miles from town, in their spacious & beautiful house. They were children with me, & afterwards school-mates. Now they have a daughter 19 or 20 years old. D Spent an hour, yesterday, at A. W. Lamb’s, who was not married when I saw him last. He married a young lady whom I knew. And now I have been talking with their grown-up sons & daughters. Lieutenant Hickman, the spruce young han[d]somely-uniformed volunteer of 1846, called on me—a grisly elephantine patriarch of 65, now, his graces all vanished.
That world which I knew in its blossomy youth is old & bowed & melancholy, now; its soft cheeks are leathery & wrinkled, the fire is gone out in its eyes, & the spring from its step. It will be dust & ashes when I come again. I have been clasping hands with the moribund—& usually they said, “It is for the last time.”
Now I am under way again, upon this hideous trip to St Paul, with a heart brimming full of thoughts & images of you & Susie & Bay & the peerless Jean. And so good-night, my love.
Address, Miss Koto House, Tokio, Japan.
I thank Bay & Susie ever so much for their letters. Jean’s Kitty’s fall was a good deal of an adventure.
in ink: Mrs. S. L. Clemens | Hartford | Conn on the flap: slc postmarked: keokuk ioa. may 18 9am and rec’d. hartford conn. may 23 8pm
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
- Paine, Albert Bigelow, ed. Mark Twain’s Letters. Edited by Albert Bigelow Paine. 2 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1917
- Microfilm Edition of Mark Twain’s Manuscript Letters Now in the Mark Twain Papers. Prepared by Anh Quynh Bui, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Robert H. Hirst, Lin Salamo, and Harriet Elinor Smith. 11 vols. Berkeley: The Bancroft Library. 2001
MS, in pencil, CU-MARK.
MTL, 1:419, postscript omitted; MicroML, reel 4.
See Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.