per Samuel C. Thompson
25 June 1873 • (1st of 2) • London, England (Stenographic draft: CU-MARK, UCCL 00931)
I thk Ⓐemendationyou very much for your kid offers, Ⓐemendationbut I fear that ◇ ◇ ⒶemendationI shall not have an op. Ⓐemendationof visiting Manchtr. ⒶemendationI shall prob Ⓐemendationhave no time to travel Ⓐemendationabout any while I am here. I am dear sir yours fathfly Ⓐemendation,
This and several other letters sent in late June and early July have been found only as Thompson took them down in his notebook from Clemens’s dictation. Their texts are a pastiche of shorthand symbols and scrawled, sometimes nearly illegible, longhand, often including abbreviated or misspelled words. The fair copies that Thompson sent presumably corrected all or most of these errors: two such fair copies are extant, and they corroborate this assumption (16 July 73 to Blissclick to open link and 16 July 73 to Warnerclick to open link; see also 29 Apr 73 to Mouland, n. 1click to open link). In the absence of fair copies, however, the notebook texts have been transcribed without emendation.
Cowley-Squier has not been identified, although he was apparently connected with the London Examiner (see the next letter).
Dictation recorded by Samuel C. Thompson in his stenographic notebook, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L5 , 388–389; N&J1, 545.
Thompson’s notebook was purchased by CU-MARK in 1958 from Dawson’s Book Shop (Los Angeles).
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.
As with all letters transcribed from Thompson’s notebook, the words inscribed in longhand are noted; the balance of the text was written in shorthand symbols. All the draft letters were canceled, probably by Thompson when he had completed his fair copies.