and Kate Field
23 June–18 July 1873 • London, England (MS: Uk, UCCL 03718)
Mr. Clemens, called, representing in his person the family.1explanatory note
For Ch Sir Chas.1explanatory note & Lady Dilke
& Miss
Field.
This note (written on a torn piece of paper rather than on a calling card) was presumably delivered when the Clemenses made their obligatory courtesy call on the Dilkes and Field after dining with them on 22 June. (It is possible, but less likely, that the call followed the social engagement proposed for 11 June: see 9 June 73 to Fieldclick to open link.) In any event the call must have preceded the Clemenses’ departure for York on 19 July, since Field left London on 31 July, well before they returned from Scotland. In a letter dated 24 June to the New York Tribune, Kate Field described a recent dinner party at which “an American by the singular name of Mark Twain” was present:
Mr. Twain is endeavoring to instil civilization into the Shah by sitting on the floor and playing draw poker, and says that his august pupil makes wonderful progress in this great American game, and will soon be able to play against the American Minister or the brilliant editor of The Louisville Courier-Journal, who now pines in May Fair for a partner worthy of his deal. (Field 1873)
Robert C. Schenck was the U.S. minister in London; the editor of the Courier-Journal was Clemens’s cousin, Henry Watterson. The date of Field’s letter suggests that she may have been describing the Dilkes’ 22 June dinner party, but their appointment book notes the presence only of the Clemenses and Field, making no mention of the shah. Still, she might have seen Clemens instructing the shah at another of the many official and private parties given for him, even though no independent corroboration of her report has so far been found (Additional MS 43902, folio 185, and Additional MS 43964, folio 46, Dilke Papers, Uk; Whiting, 315).
Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke (1843–1911) was a liberal statesman, member of Parliament for Chelsea since 1868, and proprietor of the Athenaeum, a weekly journal of literary and artistic criticism. According to Dilke’s biographers, Clemens had dined at the Dilkes’ during his first visit to England in 1872, but no primary evidence for this has been found in the Dilke Papers. In mid-June 1873, Clemens’s secretary entered the title of one of Dilke’s books, Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866 and 1867 (1868), in his stenographic notebook—indicating that Clemens may have had some interest in Dilke’s account of traveling in the western United States (Newspaper Press Directory, 18–19; Gwynn and Tuckwell, 1:160; N&J1 , 529).
MS, Dilke Papers, British Library, London (Uk).
L5 , 386–387.
The Dilke Papers were deposited at the British Library in 1939 by Gertrude Tuckwell, the niece of the second Lady Dilke.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.