1 Clemens wrote this note on the front and back of his calling card, as he had done on 17 May, with his letter to Warner (reproduced in Photographs and Manuscript Facsimiles). Louisa MacDonald (1822–1902), the former Louisa Powell, had married George in 1851. Although her time was largely occupied with rearing her eleven children (see the next letter), in 1870 she published Chamber Dramas for Children, a collection of pieces she had adapted for family theatrical performances. Since 1867 the MacDonalds had lived in the Retreat, in Hammersmith (the westernmost of London’s inner boroughs), a large late-Georgian house with a long drawing-room facing the river and an orchard and vegetable gardens in the rear. Neither the invitation to the Retreat which Clemens alluded to, nor his response to it, is known to survive. Louisa MacDonald replied to the present note immediately, however, proposing an alternative:

Since 1871 the MacDonalds had leased Halloway House, a brick house on Old London Road in Hastings, as a second home (MacDonald, 101, 561; Weinreb and Hibbert, 353; Raeper, 234–35, 270–71, 333, 335).