Stoddard (whose South-Sea Idyls had recently been issued by James R. Osgood) had arrived in London on 13 October, on a one-year assignment as a roving reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. He settled into Joaquin Miller’s rooms on Museum Street, while Miller was traveling on the Continent. Clemens later recalled, “He was refined, sensitive, charming, gentle, generous, honest himself & unsuspicious of other people’s honesty, & I think he was the purest male I have known, in mind & speech” (SLC 1900, 33–34; Austen, 58–59, 65; Stoddard 1908, 273). Clemens also reportedly characterized Stoddard as “such a nice girl” (see, for example, Fatout 1960, 184), but the remark has not been confirmed.

Firmin, a Langham Hotel employee, has not been further identified.

In 1900 Clemens recalled his employment of Stoddard (see also pp. 476–78):

Stoddard cut out and pasted up six scrapbooks of clippings containing verbatim transcripts of the Tichborne trial from the London Standard, ranging in date from 23 April to 13 October 1873 (Scrapbooks 13–18, CU-MARK). The “Tichborne Claimant” was a butcher from Australia who claimed to be Roger Charles Tichborne (b. 1829), believed to have died at sea in 1854. Lady Henriette Tichborne refused to accept Roger’s death, and after her husband died in 1862 she began advertising for news of her son’s whereabouts. In late 1866 the claimant arrived from Australia, and Lady Tichborne (as well as several former associates and one other family member) soon identified him as Roger Tichborne, the rightful heir to the Tichborne baronetcy and estates. In 1872, four years after Lady Tichborne’s death, the claimant lost an ejection suit against his nephew, the present baronet, and was subsequently charged with perjury. After the longest imposture trial in British history—lasting from April 1873 until February 1874—he was convicted, and declared to be Arthur Orton, a Cockney butcher who had emigrated to Australia. The claimant served ten years of a fourteen-year prison sentence. In 1895, when desperate for money, he admitted to being an impostor, but then recanted, claiming he had been paid for his confession. He died three years later. The notorious trial—which included testimony about a tattoo and a genital malformation, multiple aliases and assumed identities, and allegations of false testimony, forged documents, murder, seduction, and insanity—fascinated the public, and interest was briefly revived when new evidence supporting the claimant came to light during his prison term. A modern historian has concluded that he was almost certainly not Orton, and might well have been the actual Tichborne (Woodruff, 33–38, 51–66, 85–116, 123, 138–40, 166, 176, 180–85, 206, 213–17, 251–372, 395–96, 420–42, 448–62). Clemens was greatly intrigued by the case, in part because it reminded him of “the claimant in the Lampton family, who from time to time wrote him long letters, urging him to join in the effort to establish his rights to the earldom of Durham” ( MTB , 1:497; N&J1 , 546 n. 36, 550–51). Clemens may have attended the trial on 10 June, and apparently met the claimant in person at one of his “showy evenings” (SLC 1897, 157; N&J1 , 527 n. 2). Nevertheless, he made little literary use of the story, devoting about two pages to it in chapter 15 of Following the Equator.

On 19 October Clemens and his traveling party left London for Liverpool, where he lectured the following evening (see the next letter, n. 1). They departed for home the following morning, a few days earlier than they had originally anticipated. The Clemenses had known for some time that they would remain in England until late October (27 July 73 to Pughclick to open link). Dolby evidently pressed Clemens to extend his visit, to meet additional lecture engagements. Olivia, however, could not bear the thought of remaining any longer. “I am blue and cross and homesick,” she wrote in an undated letter, probably to her mother or sister:

Olivia’s yearning for home may have been reinforced by her suspicion that she was pregnant: she would give birth to her second daughter in June 1874. Clemens decided to accompany his family back to America, and then return to London alone for “a more extended course” of lectures ( MTL , 1:209). After they reached New York on 2 November, Clemens escorted his wife and daughter to Hartford and returned almost immediately to New York, where he reembarked on 8 November (see pp. 460–61 and 7 Nov 73 to Bowen, n. 1click to open link).