1 January 1874 • London, England (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 01025)
Livy darling, what an access of love, a bit of separation brings! I have such a longing for you, these days; & the lesson it teaches, is, separate yourselves every now & then. When I have been away from you 2 days, I am wild to see you. So I mean to go away every now & then, just to renew that feeling el——but never more than 48 hours. As long as we live I hope it will never be more than 48 hours that will intervene between our seeing each other. It seem◇s Ⓐemendation that it will be a whole age before I see you again.1explanatory note
11.30 AM. Horseguards Ⓐemendation just passing—tremendous procession of them.
But dearie I only took the pen to tell you the address of Mrs. Brooks’ friends—it has just occurred to me this moment, & if I vei nture to sit down to breakfast before writing it, I shall surely forget it. It is Wm Jacox, Venetia Cottage, Streatham. Now you can write them if you want to.2explanatory note
I love you, honey
Clemens had left his wife in Hartford on 7 November and arrived in England on 17 November 1873. The purpose of this trip, his third since August 1872, was to ensure a British copyright for The Gilded Age (published in London on 22 December 1873); to give a second series of lectures; and to finish gathering material for a book about England. (For details of all three trips, see L5 .) Despite the printed letterhead, Clemens wrote this letter from the Langham Hotel in London—on one of the sample stationeries that he purchased from James T. Stockley, a Bond Street stationer, engraver, and bookseller. (Previously it was thought that Olivia had sent the stationery for his approval.) Throughout the early months of 1874 he continued to use sample letterhead. The family did not move into its new home, on Farmington Avenue in Hartford, until 19 September 1874 (SLC 1874; L5 , 472, 476, 509 n. 1, 532 n. 2; London Directory , 1323; 20 Sept 74 to Parishclick to open link).
Fidele A. Brooks, of New York City, was a close friend of Olivia’s family ( L2 , 276 n. 10). William Jacox of Streatham (a village slightly south of London) has not been further identified.
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 6: 1874–1875. Edited by Michael B. Frank and Harriet Elinor Smith. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 2002
- Wecter, Dixon. The Love Letters of Mark Twain. Edited by Dixon Wecter. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1949
- 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
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). The Gilded Age: A Novel. Charles Dudley Warner, coauthor. 3 vols. London: George Routledge and Sons. 1874
- London Directory. The Post Office London Directory, 1874. . . . Printed and Published for Frederic Kelly, Proprietor. London: Kelly and Co. 1873
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 2: 1867–1868. Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, Richard Bucci, and Lin Salamo. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1990
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L6 , 1–2; LLMT , 189.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.