11 September 1872 • London, England (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00805)
Livy darling, I was getting positively uneasy until this morning, when I got your two fr firstⒶemendation letters (one dated Aug. 20 & one Aug. 28).2explanatory note I was going to telegraph you today, to ask what the matter was. But now I am all right. You are well, Mother3explanatory note is with you & the Muggins is jolly & knows what her hands are made for. I would like very much to see you all just now.
Confound this town, time slips relentlessly away & I accomplish next to nothing. Too much company—too much dining—too much sociability. (But I would rather live in England than America—which is treason.) Made a speech at the Whitefriars Club4explanatory note—very good speech—but the shorthand reporters did not get it exactly right & so I do not forward it. No that is not it. I neglected to buy copies of the papers.5explanatory note The only places I have been to in this town are the ChrystalⒶemendation Palace, the Tower of London & Old St. Paul’s.6explanatory note Have not even written in my journal for 4 days—don’t get time. Real pleasant people here.
Left Londay Ⓐemendationday before yesterday with Osgood the Boston publisher7explanatory note & spent all day yesterday driving about Warwickshire in an open barouche. It is the loveliest land in its summer garb! We visited Kenilworth ruins, Warwick Castle8explanatory note (pronounce it Warrick) and the Shakspeare celebrities in & about Stratford-on-Avon—(pronounce that a just as you would the a in Kate).9explanatory note Go down to Brighton tomorrow with Tom Hood. (Tell Warner a Philadelphia paper, just arrived, abuses Hood for not separating his own feeble name from his father’s great fame by calling himself “Thomas Hood the Younger”—& the joke of it is that the son’s name is not Tom ThomasⒶemendation, but simply Tom, & so there was no Tom Hood the elder.)10explanatory note
Indeed Charley’s letter11explanatory note is in the last degree comforting—isn’t it? Charley’s a good brother, & I don’t know how we ever could get along with our money matters without him.
Young
I send all my love to you & our dear babies12explanatory note —& to Mother.
“The Broadway,
Ludgate Hill
London.”
Mrs. S. L. Clemens | Cor Forest & Hawthorne | Hartford | Conn. in upper left corner: U.S. of America | flourish across envelope end: Did Charley send the $500 $600Ⓐemendation from Arnot’s Bank?13explanatory note on flap: g. routledge & sons broadway ludgate hill e c postmarked: j i london ii sp 72 and new yorkⒶemendation sep 24 paid all.
Clemens used the stationery of George Routledge and Sons.
None of Olivia’s letters to Clemens in this period is known to survive.
Mrs. Langdon.
The Whitefriars Club was “founded in 1868 by a band of journalists, actors, and artists, who met together in mutual regard and gracious friendship to discuss the affairs of the universe over a tankard and a pipe” (Watson, 125). At the club’s Friday dinners,
some leading light in literature, science, or art is invited to open a “conversation” on a selected topic; after which a pleasant couple of hours are spent in discussing or talking round the subject. ... The meetings are well attended by authors, journalists, and members of kindred professions; and confrères from across the Atlantic or elsewhere are frequently present as guests. (Sims, 3:160)
The newspapers that first reported Clemens’s speech of 6 September at the Whitefriars Club dinner, probably on the following day, have not been identified. One of them must have been the source, however, for articles that appeared in the South London Press and the London Court Journal (weekly publications) on 14 September, both of which began with the following explanation: “Within the last few days the celebrated humorist Mark Twain has arrived in England, and he was on Friday evening present at dinner with the members of the Whitefriars Club, at the Mitre Tavern” (“Mark Twain at the Whitefriars Club,” South London Press, 14 Sept 72, 4; “‘Mr. Mark Twain, I Believe,’” London Court Journal, 14 Sept 72, 1081). According to the Press, which printed an apparently complete version of his speech, Clemens was the guest of Tom Hood. Among the “members and friends” present were George and Edmund Routledge, as well as Ambrose Bierce (see note 9), “of the San Francisco News Letter, himself a well-known American humorist”:
In the course of the evening, the chairman took occasion to propose the health of their visitor in eloquent terms, dwelling on the fact that it was often the privilege of the Whitefriars to welcome men of ability belonging to the great brotherhood of brains—men who, not having greatness thrust upon them, had achieved positions of eminence in the literary world, and they felt peculiar pleasure in welcoming one who had won more than an European reputation—one who was recognized on both sides of the Atlantic by his genius, by his peculiar humour, and as possessing those special claims to consideration which it was the delight of the club to acknowledge. The toast was drunk with enthusiasm.
Mr. Mark Twain responded after his peculiar fashion, amidst roars of laughter, with an effect of which the simple words convey but little idea, so much depended on the quaint and original manner of the speaker.
Clemens delivered a humorous speech in which he claimed it was he who found Dr. Livingstone, while Henry M. Stanley got “all the credit” (SLC 1872 [MT01084]; see (25 Oct 72 to OLCclick to open link). In response the club extended the “privilege of honorary membership to their distinguished visitor during his stay in England—a mark of respect which had been accorded to few strangers” (“Mark Twain at the Whitefriars Club,” South London Press, 14 Sept 72, 4).
The Crystal Palace, an immense glass and iron exhibition hall, was built in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851, and moved afterward to Sydenham, a suburb of London. It was destroyed by fire in 1936. In September 1872 its attractions included a fine-arts gallery, technology and natural history collections, an aquarium, fountains and fireworks displays, and orchestral and band concerts (Weinreb and Hibbert, 215–16, 853; advertisement, London Times, 9 Sept 72, 1). The Tower of London, the “most perfect medieval fortress in Britain,” was begun by William the Conqueror and enlarged over the next two centuries, serving as a palace, prison, and place of execution, and housing such valuables as the royal armory, mint, Public Records, and Crown Jewels (Weinreb and Hibbert, 871). “Old St. Paul’s” was the usual designation of the large Norman cathedral built in the late eleventh century and destroyed in 1666 by the Great Fire. In his English journal Clemens wrote a humorous account of his visit to the site, on which stood “new” St. Paul’s, a church completed in 1710 from a design by Christopher Wren (Mark Twain’s 1872 English Journalsclick to open link; Weinreb and Hibbert, 756–59).
Osgood was traveling in England, having sailed from New York in mid-August (“Personal,” New York Tribune, 15 Aug 72, 5).
Kenilworth Castle, one of the finest “baronial ruins” in England, is five miles from the town of Warwick. Founded about 1120, it was greatly enlarged and improved in the sixteenth century by the earl of Leicester. His lavish entertainment there of Queen Elizabeth was immortalized by Sir Walter Scott in Kenilworth (1821). Cromwell’s officers destroyed most of the structure; only the gatehouse was still in use, by its present owner, the earl of Clarendon (Baedeker 1901, 256–57; Murray 1890, 222). Warwick Castle, in Warwick on the banks of the Avon, is a picturesque structure dating from Saxon times, although most of the residential sections were built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. On display were paintings, old armor, and other “curiosities” (Baedeker 1901, 255). In 1886 Clemens used Warwick Castle for the opening scene in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court ( CY , 5–6, 47).
In a letter to the San Francisco Alta California dated 3 October, Ambrose Bierce described his own visit to Shottery, a village near Stratford, where “Ann Hathaway, aged twenty-five, wooed and won Will Shakspeare, aged eighteen”:
I cannot say I was much interested in Ann and her affairs. The visitors’ book here was very much more to my mind; and therein, among a multitude of famous autographs I found those of General Sherman and Mark Twain. I could not repress a smile as I read the name of the grim, heartless, and unimaginative warrior recorded at this shrine of pure sentiment—a sentiment, too, of the sicklier sort. From Mark something like this was to be expected. I had met him a few evenings before in London. We had dined together at one of the literary clubs, and in response to a toast Mark had given the company a touching narration of his sufferings in Central Africa in discovery of Dr. Livingstone! It was, therefore, not surprising that he should have penetrated as far as Shottery. He was probably looking for Sir John Franklin. (Bierce)
The given name of Tom Hood (1835–74), the son of poet and humorist Thomas Hood (1799–1845), was the same as his father’s, and the title pages of some of his works identify him as “Thomas Hood, the younger,” but he was commonly known as “Tom.” Educated at Oxford, he published his first poem in 1853. From 1856 to 1859 he worked on the Liskeard Gazette, and in 1860 took a position as a clerk in the war office. Since May 1865 he had been the editor of Fun, for which he not only wrote material but drew and engraved illustrations. In 1865 he published a three-volume novel, and in 1869, Rules of Rhyme, a Guide to English Versification. He began publishing his annual anthologies of humor in 1867. Tom Hood’s Comic Annual for 1873, available by 7 December 1872, included an original sketch by Mark Twain, “How I Escaped Being Killed in a Duel” (SLC 1872 [MT01062]). In 1894 Clemens recalled that Hood had encouraged him to write down the story after hearing him tell it at a dinner party (advertisement, Fun, 7 Dec 72, 240; “Mark Twain and the Reporter,” Buffalo Express, 1 Apr 94, part 2:15).
Charles Langdon’s letter to Olivia is not known to survive.
Since Langdon Clemens had died in June, Clemens may have been referring to his niece, Julia Langdon, in addition to Susy Clemens.
John Arnot was president of the Chemung Canal Bank in Elmira (Boyd and Boyd, 59).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L5 , 154–158; LLMT , 177, with omission; Davis 1977, 1, brief excerpt.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.