12 November 1874 • Ashford, Conn. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 01149)
Near Westford Ⓐemendation
Livy darling, this hotel is 28 miles from Hartford—& here we tie up for the night. We got here at 7—an hour or more after dark. Westford is 2 miles further on.1explanatory note Our last 3 or four miles found my knee-joints aching fit to give me the lock-jaw Ⓐemendation—that is one reason why we didn’t go along to the town.
We have had supper & a smoke, & now (8 oclock) we are about to go to bed. It is bitter cold, & I question if we shall sleep warmly enough —but no matter, we shall sleep.
Good night my child—you & the babies.
addressed by OLC, in ink: Mrs S. L. Clemens | Farmington Avenue | Hartford | ct. postmark: illegible
Clemens and Twichell had stopped in Ashford. In his journal, Twichell recalled the “hotel” as
a low tavern, but the best that was to be had. Mark was pretty lame (the distance was 28 m.) but we went to bed early expecting to be in shape for a big days work Friday—We arranged to be off at 6 ◇ o’clock. I saw some characters at this tavern, notably a sublimely profane hostler whom you couldn’t joggle with any sort of mild remark without bringing down upon yourself a perfect avalanche of oaths.— (Twichell, 1:15)
In a notebook entry of May 1878, Clemens wrote, “The funniest scene I ever saw was when my poor parson struck up a talk with the hostler at Ashland.” He planned to “try the whole story, with dashes to represent swearing & obscenity” ( N&J2 , 87). In 1882 he did try it, calling the village “Duffield” in a nineteen-page account of the hostler’s “crimson lava-jets of desolating & utterly unconscious profanity,” which he included in, and then excised from, the manuscript of chapter 34 of Life on the Mississippi (SLC 1882, 431, 437).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L6 , 278–279.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.