5 July 1873 • London, England (MS: CtY-BR, UCCL 00945)
Indeed I would exceedingly like to make that call with you, but we shall not be in town on Tuesday—going into the country for a 24 or 48 hours’ visit. I’ll get that book.1explanatory note We think of running up to Lady Hardy’s for an hour this evening—my wife has just received her hearty & inspiriting note.2explanatory note Having Lady Hardy’s es Ⓐemendation express permission to come at the early hour, we shall doubtless get there very soon after 8, inasmuch as Mrs. Clemens was a cooped-up invalid yesterday & shan’t be allowed downstairs today until we start for North Bank this evening.
Simply reading your penmanship has distorted my own handwriting out of all shape; & so if you can’t read this, remember it is your own faus lt.3explanatory note
Clemens replied to the following note from Miller (CU-MARK):
William Hepworth Dixon (1821–79) wrote on historical and political subjects, and was the former editor of the Athenaeum (1853–69); for William Gorman Wills, see 6 July 73 to Fairbanks, n. 6click to open link. Clemens would be in Stratford on Tuesday, 8 July. He had evidently written to Miller at the Hardy mansion in North Bank, where he was a houseguest, but Miller had been “down town,” in his rooms at 11 Museum Street. Only one of the two letters is known to survive (1 and 2 July 73 to Millerclick to open link). Frederick Locker (1821–95), later Locker-Lampson, published his first book of verse, London Lyrics, in 1857, and an anthology of “vers de société and vers d’occasion” by several authors, entitled Lyra Elegantiarum, in 1867. The work containing “selections” from Locker, Tennyson, and Browning has not been identified; Clemens did, however, acquire a copy of an 1872 edition of London Lyrics (Gribben, 1:415). On 6 July Miller wrote to Locker: “You see Clemens happens also to be engaged on Tuesday; so we will drop in for you some other day and take our chances on finding you in. I enclose his letter which you may keep for your collection of letters if you like” (CtY-BR). Clemens’s 5 July letter was preserved until recently in the Locker-Lampson Papers at the East Sussex Record Office in Lewes. (Frederick Locker was Arthur Locker’s older brother: see 17 Sept 72 to Lockerclick to open link.)
Mary Anne Hardy (1825?–91), the wife of Thomas Duffus Hardy (see 6 July 73 to Fairbanks, n. 15click to open link), had written several novels, the most recent being A Woman’s Triumph (1872) (for Clemens’s description of her, see the next letter; BBA , s.v. “Hardy, Lady Duffus”). In a letter to her mother also written on Saturday, 5 July, Olivia remarked, “I have just rec’d such an urgent pleasant note from Lady Hardy to spend the evening with them that we shall go there for an hour—you remember I wrote you about our being there before—They always receive Saturday evening—” (CtHMTH; neither Lady Hardy’s invitation nor Olivia’s previous letter to her mother is known to survive).
Miller’s notoriously illegible handwriting is evident in his 4 July letter, reproduced on the next two pages. Miller allegedly “had an alibi for his wretched scribbling. It was caused by the terrible wound he had received on the right wrist, after he had been pinked by an arrow in one of his numerous battles against the Indians” (Marberry 1953, 124).
MS facsimile. The editors have not seen the MS, which is in the Locker-Lampson Papers in the Osborn Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (CtY-BR).
L5 , 398–402.
The MS was preserved in the Locker-Lampson Papers—a collection of some two thousand letters, most of them addressed to Frederick Locker—at the East Sussex Record Office, Lewes, England, until 1993, when CtY-BR acquired them.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.