Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes (Ⓐ)

Source: CU-MARK ([CU-MARK])

Cue: "On the 10th"

Source format: "MS, correspondence card, in pencil"

Letter type: "correspondence card"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: AB

Published on MTPO: 2022

Print Publication:

This edited text supersedes the previously published text
MTPDocEd
To Susan L. Crane
23 April 1877 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, correspondence card, in pencil: CU-MARK, UCCL 01415)
Monday,
1877
slcSusie Dear—

On the 10th of May I am going off on a sea voyage, to be gone till toward the end of that month.1explanatory note It is to get the world & the devil out of my head so that I can start fresh at the farm early in June.2explanatory note My great problem is how to leave Livy for 2 or 3 weeks so that my absence will be no detriment to her. We can’t think of any company that can compensate her for my absence & be able to make her forget that absence but you. Could you come & stay here while I am gone? Livy says you had better go to the farm, & insists that I shan’t urge you to come here. So I don’t urge, but only ask if you can come without inconvenience & without detriment to your plans.3explanatory note With love to you all—affectionately

Samℓ.
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):

MS, correspondence card, in pencil, CU-MARK.

Previous Publication:

MicroML, reel 4.

Provenance:

Donated in 1972 by Mrs. Eugene Lada-Mocarski, Jervis Langdon, Jr., Mrs. Robert S. Pennock, and Mrs. Bayard Schieffelin.

More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.

Explanatory Notes
1 By 6 May 1877 Susan Crane, Olivia Clemens’s foster sister, knew that Clemens had postponed his Bermuda excursion until the seventeenth of the month (OLC to Olivia Lewis Langdon, 6 May 1877, CtHMTH). The present letter, which must precede that date, was probably written on Monday, 23 April, just before Clemens left Hartford to attend the Baltimore rehearsals of Ah Sin.
2 The Clemens family typically spent their summers at Quarry Farm, the property outside Elmira owned by Susan and Theodore Crane.
3 Clemens’s letter to his wife from New York on 17 May indicates that Susan Crane complied with this request.
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