Samuel L. Clemens to Olivia L. Clemens, 17 May 1877 · New York, N.Y

Source: CU-MARK ([CU-MARK])

Cue: "Livy darling, it is"

Source format: "MS, correspondence cards, in pencil"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: AB

Published on MTPO: 2022

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This edited text supersedes the previously published text

MTPDocEd

To Olivia L. Clemens
17 May 1877 • New York, N.Y. (MS, correspondence cards, in pencil: CU-MARK, UCCL 01433)

slc Thursday.

Livy darling, it is 8.30 AM & Joe & I have been wandering about for half an hour with satchels & overcoats, asking questions of policemen; at last we have found the eating house I was after. Joe’s country aspect & the seal-skin coat caused one policemen to follow us a few blocks. He talked s to somebody then & disappeared—so I judge we are “shadowed” & shall be in the station house presently.1explanatory note

I thought of you all night, my darling, on account of the lightning—& especially that time the thunder crashed so. When on my way to Joe’s house I was sorry I did not leave instructions with Lizzie or Mary to go to your room in case it thundered.2explanatory note I do hope you are having a good rest this morning, & that dear old Sue3explanatory note will soon be with you.

We shall loaf around to Mr. Sage’s business place, presently.4explanatory note O, the market! We have passed by such mountains of delicacies this morning. Breakfast is here, piping hot!—so goodbye sweetheartⒶemendation—shall send another card by & by.

Sam

Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Hartford | ConnⒶemendation postmarked: new york may 17 1130am

Textual Commentary

Source text(s):

MS, correspondence cards, in pencil, CU-MARK.

Previous Publication:

LLMT , 195; MicroML, reel 4.

Provenance:

See Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.

Explanatory Notes

1 Clemens and Twichell had gone by night boat from New Haven to New York on 16 May and sailed for Bermuda aboard the S.S. Bermuda the following afternoon. While in New York, Clemens recorded the details of Twichell’s embarrassingly provincial behavior in his notebook (N&J2, 9, 13–16, 32).

2 Olivia Clemens’s fear of thunder and lightning evidently was the prompt for Clemens’s story “Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning,” published in the Atlantic Monthly for September 1880 (SLC 1880d). In it, a wife with a hysterical fear of lightning incites her husband to take a series of ridiculous safety precautions. For Lizzy and Mary, two of the Clemenses’ servants, see 17 July 1877 to OLC, n. 2.

3 Susan Crane.

4 The offices, at 67 Wall Street, of H. W. Sage and Company, the lumber firm owned by the family of Dean Sage (Goulding 1876, 234).

Emendations and Textual Notes

Ⓐ sweetheart ● sweet- | heart

Ⓐ Conn ● Con[◊] torn away

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
Wecter, Dixon. The Love Letters of Mark Twain. Edited by Dixon Wecter. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1949
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
N&J2. Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Volume II (1877–1883). Edited by Frederick Anderson, Lin Salamo, and Bernard L. Stein. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1975
SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). “Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning.” Atlantic Monthly 46 (September): 380–84. Reprinted in Budd 1992a[bib00146], 753–60. 1880

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