1 September 1872 • Liverpool, England (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00803)
Livy darling, I wonder if you are back home yet; & I wonder how the Muggins is & what she looks like.1explanatory note I seem only a stone’s-throw from you, & cannot persuade myself that this is a foreign land & that an ocean rolls between us. I feel very near to you.
I have just finished a long & laborious conning of newspapers & pasting extracts & jotting down trivialities in my journal, & now comes my bete noir—for I must shave.
I will put in another 20 minutes cutting out my journal to enclose with this. It seems to take a power of time to cut out those flimsy leaves.2explanatory note
Kiss mother & the baby for me & accept of the world of love I bear you sweetheart.3explanatory note
in ink: Mrs. Saml. L. Clemens | Cor Forest & Hawthorne stsⒶemendation | Hartford | Conn. in upper left corner: U.S. of America. | flourish on flap: liverpool adelphi hotel company limited liverpool postmarked: f f liverpool 2 sp 72 2 and new york sep 14 paid all
Clemens told Mrs. Fairbanks that Olivia, Susy, and Mrs. Langdon planned to stay in Saybrook “till cool weather” arrived; they probably left during the first week of September (11 Aug 72 to Fairbanksclick to open link; OLC to MEC, 27 Aug 72 and 28 Aug 72, CU-MARK).
Clemens pasted the “extracts” into a scrapbook (Scrapbook 9, CU-MARK). See, for example, Enclosure with 25 Jan 73 to Reid, nn. 6, 8click to open link. The journal pages were very thin to facilitate the copying process (see Mark Twain’s 1872 English Journalsclick to open link).
Mrs. Langdon evidently accompanied her daughter back to Hartford, remaining until Clemens’s return in November (Julia Beecher to Olivia Lewis Langdon, 15 Oct 72, CtHMTH; 26 Nov 72 to JLC and PAMclick to open link).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L5 , 152–153; LLMT , 363, brief paraphrase.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.