Samuel L. and Olivia L.
Clemens
To Mrs. Wetherbee
May 1877 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, photograph: C, UCCL 11503)
To Mrs. Wetherbee
May 1877 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, photograph: C, UCCL 11503)
on the back:
For Mrs. Wetherbee1explanatory note
With kindest remembrances of
Mr. & Mrs. Clemens,
May ’77
warren’s
239 washington street
boston, mass.
under the superintendence of
mr. s. b. heald.
Explanatory Notes
1 Hannah Nye Wetherbee (1845?–1909) was the wife, since 1867, of hotelier Gardner Wetherbee
(1838–1916). In 1868 he had been the manager of the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco,
where Clemens stayed from April to July, while negotiating with the Alta California for the rights to his Quaker City excursion letters and writing The Innocents Abroad. In 1873 Wetherbee became a partner in the management of New York’s Windsor Hotel,
on Fifth Avenue at 47th Street, “a new and exceedingly handsome hotel, situated in
the heart of the fashionable residence section of the city” (Henry Hall 1895–96, 1:719). The Clemenses had stopped there in April 1874, as did members of the Langdon
family in 1874 and 1875. The photo Clemens inscribed was taken on 14 or 16 November
1874 (10 Mar 1868 to Fairbanks, L2, 203 n. 2; L6: 18 Apr 1874 to Gray, 109 n. 2; 2? Dec 1874 to Miller, 302–3; link note following
21 Dec 1874 to Pugh, 328; 27 Jan 1875 to Langdon, 363 n. 1).
References
- California State Library, Sacramento
- 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
- Microfilm Edition of Mark Twain’s Previously Unpublished Letters. Prepared by Anh Quynh Bui, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Robert H. Hirst, Lin Salamo, and Harriet Elinor Smith. 8 vols. Berkeley: The Bancroft Library. 2001
- 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
- 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
MS, cabinet card photograph, C.
MicroPUL, reel 1.