28 June 1874 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: DLC, UCCL 01104)
I’ve written the introductory letters (Livy reading & admiring the same) & they are gone to the following addresses:
Frank D. Finlay, editor Northern Whig, R Ⓐemendation 4 Royal Terrace, Belfast.
Dr. John Brown, (author of “Rab & His Friends”) 23 Rutland st., Edinburgh.
Rev. George MacDonald, The Retreat, Hammersmith, London.
Sir Thomas & Lady Hardy, 35 North Bank, Regent’s Park, London, W.
(No lummuxes among these.)
When you get over, pray drop your card through the post to these parties. You more nee particularly need to know Geo. W. Smalley & wife 8 Chester Place, Hyde Park Square, W. than anybody else over there, but forty people whom you know can give you letters to them, & I don’t do it because I think maybe you already know them. Miss Kate Field should introduce you to Sir Chas. & Lady Dilke. Livy & I think they are lovely people, though we know them only slightly.2explanatory note
Am just running up to Hartford, so am in a most desperate hurry & must not gossip longer.3explanatory note
Miss Anna Dickinson | 1326 Arch st | Philadelphia. postmarked: elmira n. y. jun 28
Clemens answered the following letter (CU-MARK):
Dickinson was suffering poor health after completing an exhausting but largely unsuccessful lecture season. In the spring of 1874, her candid talks on the “social evil” of prostitution, a subject considered inappropriate for an unmarried woman, drew much criticism in the press. To heal her shattered nerves, her physician “advised complete rest from labors of body or mind for at least a year and recommended that she go abroad to recover her strength” (Chester, 154–56). For the book she was writing and her negotiations with Elisha Bliss, see 8–10 July 74 to Dickinson, nn. 1, 2click to open link.
For details of Clemens’s acquaintance with the individuals he wrote to and recommended, all of them friends he made while visiting England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1873 (with the exception of Kate Field, whom he had met in 1871), see L4 and L6 .
Clemens had planned an earlier trip to Hartford: his neighbor Lilly Warner had expected him on Saturday, 20 June (Elisabeth G. Warner to George H. Warner, 16 June 74, CU-MARK). Possibly he had wanted to attend the organizational meeting, held that day, of the stockholders of the new Hartford Accident Insurance Company, in which he had recently invested (see pp. 171–72). He postponed his trip, however, evidently because he was reluctant to leave Olivia, who was still confined to bed. He finally left for Hartford the day after writing this letter.
MS, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress (DLC). The editors have not seen the envelope flap, which was probably imprinted with a monogram matching the one on the stationery.
L6 , 169–70.