25 September 1872 • London, England (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00814)
Livy darling, got yours of 8th tonight, & was amused to see how you always complain of being “ st sleepy Ⓐemendation & stupid” when you write, & I am always “in haste—dinner ready”——so Mother Fairbanks says, anyway. Glad to hear good accounts of the Muggins—don’t let her be carried always, but make her crawl—& help herself all she can.
Been to hear the Messiah, to-night, sung by Titiens & a chorus of several hundred.1explanatory note A box was placed at our disposal a week ago. There are 350 private boxes in that magnificent Albert Hall,2explanatory note & they are all larger & in every way more comfortable than our stage-boxes at home. The house seats 10,000, & wherever you sit you can see about two-thirds of the people. Mind, it seats 10,000 roomily—we would put 20,000 in the same space.
Sir John Bennett, the sheriff of London,3explanatory note called, in our box & invited me to a trial at the Old Bailey4explanatory note tomorrow, & also to the election for Lord Mayor on Saturday, & also to the Sheriff’s dinner on the same day—not a private dinner, strictly speaking, for there are to be 450 others present.5explanatory note I was to have dined with him & the Newgate judges,6explanatory note to-day, at the Old BailyeyⒶemendation, but did not know it. Mr. Douglas Straight, Member of Parliament,7explanatory note na made Ⓐemendation the appointment, but he misunderstood me, for I told him I had a previous engagement. Sir John Bennett said they waited dinner some time for me & were considerably disappointed, for they had all read the Innocents & hadeld thems & had traveled over the same ground, & held themselves under obligations to the author of the best book of travel extant. He said that at the Lord Mayor’s banquet some time ago8explanatory note a number of big-wigs made my books the subject of an o hour’s laudation. Very pleasant—isn’t it? I had lost my pencil, & sadly needed one—so he gave me his; & as it is gold, or silver, or something of the kind, & has a gold pen in it, I am very much obliged.
The Duke of Wellington & the Duchess of Cambridge (the Queen’s cousin) were in the neighboring royal box, with a prince Sob SomebodyⒶemendation. The Duke has white hair & is the picture of the Great Duke his father.9explanatory note
I enclose a couple of pennies which were made for me in the mint to-day. Also an Emeu’s feather.10explanatory note Observe that an emeu’s feather is a double feather on a single stem.
I do love you Livy darling, & I do most powerfully want to see you. Good-bye sweetheart.
Let o Orion or Warner publish the Enclosed.11explanatory note
Mrs. S. L. Clemens | Cor. Forest & Hawthorne | Hartford | Conn. in upper left corner: U. S. of America. | flourish on flap: slc postmarked: london.w i sp26 72 and new york oct 7 paid all Ⓐemendation
On 25 September Teresa Titiens (or Tietjens) (1831–77), an internationally known Hungarian soprano, sang in a one-time production of Handel’s most popular oratorio, Messiah (1742), which featured a “band and chorus of 700 performers” (advertisement, London Times, 25 Sept 72, 1).
The Royal Albert Hall, directly across Kensington Road from the Albert Memorial, was designed by Captain Francis Fowke of the Royal Engineers. The work was completed in 1871, after his death, by Colonel H. Y. Darracott Scott. The elliptically shaped hall is covered by a dome 135 feet high. In June 1873 Clemens described it in a New York Herald letter as “a huge and costly edifice, but the architectural design is old, not to say in some sense a plagiarism; for there is but little originality in putting a dome on a gasometer” (SLC 1873 [MT01111]; Weinreb and Hibbert, 11; Kent, 4).
Sir John Bennett (1814–97) was the leading watchmaker in London. He served as a member of the common council for the ward of Cheap (1862–89), as a member of the London school board (1872–79), and as one of two sheriffs of London and Middlesex (1871–72). On 14 March 1872 he was knighted at Buckingham Palace (Boase, 4:361).
The Old Bailey Sessions House, named for the street on which it stood, housed the Central Criminal Court. It was built in 1774 to replace its predecessor, erected in 1539. The sheriffs had chambers there. Although the courts were nominally open to the public, the sheriffs—together with the aldermen—had the privilege of issuing tickets of admission “on the occasion of great trials” (Pardon, 95; Weinreb and Hibbert, 133, 783).
The election of the lord mayor, chief magistrate of the Corporation of London and chairman of its two governing bodies (the Court of Aldermen and the Court of Common Council), usually takes place on Michaelmas Day, 29 September. In 1872, however, this day fell on a Sunday, so the election was held on Saturday, 28 September. The sheriffs, who are elected on Midsummer Day (24 June), take the oath of office on Michaelmas Eve, 28 September. The event is then celebrated by an inauguration banquet in the evening (Weinreb and Hibbert, 480–81, 783; “Election of Sheriffs,” London Times, 25 June 72, 10; “Election of Lord Mayor,” London Morning Post, 30 Sept 72, 2). See the next two letters.
Clemens evidently referred to the criminal judges who presided at the Old Bailey, which was connected to Newgate Prison by an underground passage. Built in 1783, Newgate housed defendants awaiting trial and convicts sentenced to death; it was demolished in 1902 to make way for a new Central Criminal Court. There had been a prison on this site, at Newgate Street and Old Bailey, since the twelfth century (Pardon, 95; Weinreb and Hibbert, 544–46). Clemens may not have visited Newgate Prison in 1872, but he certainly did so in 1873, during his next visit: on 9 September 1873, in a letter to the Cincinnati Commercial, Moncure Conway reported the following conversation between a warder at Newgate and an American visitor, identified only as a “Quakeress.” The warder said:
“I was showing our place the other day to a remarkably intelligent American who admired our arrangements exceedingly, only he thought we were too lenient. That gentleman said that the great mistake in America was leniency. ‘Would you believe it,’ said he, ‘we caught a rascal in America the other day whom we ought immediately to have burned, and we only hung him. But we are coming to our senses, and are now making arrangements to burn certain men for whom the gallows is too good.’”
“Will thee be good enough to tell me the name of the American gentleman who made that remark to thee?” said the Quakeress.
“Ah, yes,” said the warder reflectively; “let me see—it was a Mr. Mark Twain.”
The lady gave a smile of relief and went off. I am happy to say that Mr. Mark Twain is now at the Langham Hotel, busily at work on a book about the English, wherein, I venture to predict, he will give a readable account of his conversations at Newgate, of which I have been able to report only one sentence. (Conway 1873)
Douglas Straight (1844–1914) became a successful barrister at a young age, and was involved in several sensational criminal cases. Under the pseudonym “Sidney Daryl” he wrote short stories, many of them reminiscences of his school days at Harrow, and between 1867 and 1877 published several volumes, including Routledge’s Hand-Book of Quoits and Bowls (1868). In 1870 he was elected the Conservative member of Parliament for Shrewsbury, retaining the seat until 1874. He served as a judge in India from 1879 until 1892, when he was knighted. In his later years he turned to journalism: from 1896 until 1909 he edited the London Pall Mall Gazette. According to his biographer, Straight was “one of the most popular men in London,” well liked for the “brisk bonhomie and humour of his conversation” (Griffiths, 541; BBA , s.v. “Straight, Sir Douglas”).
The lord mayor’s banquet, hosted by the new lord mayor on the occasion of his succession to office and held annually in the Guildhall since 1501, was (and still is) a major social event attended by hundreds of distinguished guests. Until the twentieth century it took place after the Lord Mayor’s Show on 9 November; now it is held on the following Monday (Weinreb and Hibbert, 481–84; Baedeker: 1878, 62; 1900, 135; 10 Nov 72 to OLCclick to open link).
The present duke of Wellington was Arthur Richard Wellesley (1807–84), a lieutenant general in the army who had served as a member of Parliament (1830–52). His father, the first and “Great Duke,” was Arthur Wellesley (1769–1852), celebrated for his rout of the French at Waterloo in 1815. The duchess of Cambridge was Augusta Wilhelmina Louisa of Hesse Cassel (1797–1889), who in 1818 married the duke of Cambridge, Adolphus Frederick (1774–1850), the seventh son of George III. The duchess was a first cousin of George III, Queen Victoria’s grandfather. Their son, George William Frederick Charles (1819–1904), inherited his father’s title in 1850, but his 1847 marriage to an actress was not considered legal (being in contravention of the Royal Marriage Act of 1772), and so his mother retained the title of duchess (Burke 1904, clxxxii–clxxxvi, 1606; Cokayne, 2:497–99).
The enclosures are now lost. The Royal Mint was on Little Tower Hill. According to Routledge’s Guide to London, it was
an elegant and extensive building. ... designed and executed, in the Grecian style of architecture, by Robert Smirke, jun. ... The interior is arranged in the most appropriate and systematic manner; and the various engines and machines for the making of gold and silver coin are constructed in the very first style of ingenious excellence. Steam-engines of vast power give motion to the machinery. (Pardon, 147)
Clemens enclosed a clipping (now lost) of his 20 September letter to the London Spectator. Charles Dudley Warner reprinted the letter in the Hartford Courant on 7 October (“Mark Twain and His English Editor,” 2). Orion Clemens was evidently now working on the Hartford Evening Post, “the pleasantest berth he had ever had in his life,” as Clemens later described it (see AD, 5 Apr 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA , 2:322–23; 5 May 73 to OC and MEC, n. 1click to open link). The Post did not reprint the Spectator letter. On 10 October, however, it published a brief article (possibly by Orion) which argued that “the justice of an international copyright is manifest.” After summarizing Clemens’s grievances against Hotten, it reprinted an item from the Manchester Guardian giving the gist of Clemens’s “extremely humorous letter to The Spectator” and quoting his remark that no author would like Hotten to “sit down and stimulate his powers and drool out two or three original chapters” for his book (10 Oct 72, 2).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L5 , 178–182; 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.