25? December 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: CtHMTH, UCCL 02787)
With this I send you a loving Christmas present to remind you that it atⒶemendation this season of all seasons of the year when babies are important & their acts of great honor & significance, this baby recognizes & approves of his greatgrandma—entirely & completely.
This present is a small personal friend of mine who has gotten over his crimson period, his yaller period & his red-gum period & has bleached out & taken a good complexion.1explanatory note
He has a good many ve virtues,Ⓐemendation but his chiefest one is his mannerly & attractive quietness. He never speaks till he is spoken to—and even then he don’t answer right off. Merry Christmas to you & a great deal of love.
A photograph of Langdon Clemens may have accompanied this letter, although no such early image has been identified. Possibly, however, the enclosure was a drawing, similar to the ones Clemens had recently done for Susan Crane (19–20? Nov 70 to Craneclick to open link).
References
- Mark Twain House and Museum, Hartford, Conn.
- 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
MS, Mark Twain House, Hartford (CtHMTH).
L4 , 285.
donated to CtHMTH in 1962 by Ida Langdon.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.