22 April 1873 • (3rd of 3) • Hartford, Conn. (MS: DLC, UCCL 00907)
Warner hasn’t finished up & isn’t going to get away for a week or more yet—& I guess I’m in the same boat. But the main bar with me is that my wife is pretty ill with diphtheria, & will not be on her feet for some little time. So Ⓐemendation we have to lose the chance of a good time at the Lotos, for which I am very truly sorry.1explanatory note
letter docketed: 1873
Clemens replied to the following invitation from Reid, dated 21 April: “If you and Warner are coming here next week, why not arrange to be in town Saturday night at the Lotos Club? It is the closing dinner of the season, and you should meet plenty of people you like” (Whitelaw Reid Papers, DLC). No other surviving documents mention that Olivia was ill, and only two days later, on 24 April, she and Susy accompanied Mrs. Langdon and Hattie Lewis on their return to Elmira. Nevertheless, she may have been experiencing early symptoms of the quinsy she developed in Elmira (Elisabeth G. Warner to George H. Warner, 24 Apr 73, CU-MARK; 17 Feb 73 to Langdon, n. 3click to open link; 25 and 26 Apr 73 to OLCclick to open link; 5 May 73 to OC and MECclick to open link).
References
- United States Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
- 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 5: 1872–1873. Edited by Lin Salamo and Harriet Elinor Smith. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1997
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
MS, Whitelaw Reid Papers, Library of Congress (DLC).
L5 , 353–354.
The Whitelaw Reid Papers (part of the Papers of the Reid Family) were donated to DLC between 1953 and 1957 by Helen Rogers Reid (Mrs. Ogden Mills Reid).
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.