Explanatory Notes        Apparatus Notes (Ⓐ)

Source: New York Public Library, Albert A. and Henry W. Berg Collection, New York ([NN-BGC])

Cue: "I beg to"

Source format: "MS"

Letter type: "[standard letter]"

Notes:

Last modified:

Revision History: Paradise, Kate

Published on MTPO: 2007

Print Publication:

MTPDocEd
To Susan L. Warner
25 December 1880 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: NN-BGC, UCCL 08919)
slc/mt                        farmington avenue, hartford.
Xmas, 1880.
Dear Mrs. Susie:

I beg to enclose to you one of my works, along with the compliments & good wishes of the season.

This work is not as satisfactory a success as I had hoped to make it—it fails of exactness in places. I have thrown a Japanese cast around the Sphinx, in deference to the art-taste of the day. Brer Joseph was very difficult to do. I did as well as I could, with him but am dissatisfied with him, because he does not lay still enough. He interrupts the repose of the picture. I was obliged to hump up the mule that way in order to get him in; but if I had had room I could have made him better. Would you mind explaining to friends that the Sphynx is neither a gorilla nor a Lord Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench, but only just a simple Sphinx?

Merry Christmas!

Truly Yours
S. L. Clemens

the enclosed drawing depicts one man sitting at feet of Sphinx and another reclining at the foot of the monument next to a donkey-like animal; the picture is entitled:

(Study from still life)—Le Repos en Egypte.

par S. L. C.

slc/mt                        farmington avenue, hartford.
xmas, 1880.
For. Mrs. C. D. W.
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):

MS, NN-BGC.

Previous Publication:

MicroPUL, reel 1.

Provenance:

Sometime before 1939 the MS was purchased by businessman William T. H. Howe (1874–1939); in 1940 Dr. Albert A. Berg bought and donated the Howe Collection to NN.

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

Top