To Olivia L. Clemens
29 August 1872 • SS Scotia en route from New York, N. Y., to Liverpool, England
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00800)

Off Queenstown, Ireland,
Aug. 29/72.

Livy darling, I have little or nothing to write, except that I love you & think of you night & day, & wonder where you are, & what you are doing, & how the Muggins1 comes on, & whether she ever speaks of me—& whether mother2 is cheerful & happy. I hope & trust & pray that you are all well & enjoying yourselves—but I can’t say that I have been enjoying myself, greatly, lost in a vast ship where our 40 or 50 passengers flit about in the great dim distances like vagrant spirits. But latterly our small clique have had a somewhat better time of it, though if one is absent there can be no whist.

I have given the purser a ten-dollar telegram of 3 words to send to you from Queenstown,3 & also my journal in 2 envelops4

Saml.

[in ink:] Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Cor. Forest & Hawthorne sts. | Hartford, | Conn. [in upper left corner, boxed:] U. S. of America. [on flap:] slc [postmarked:] queenstown a au30 72 [and] new york sep 10 paid all [docketed by OLC:] Ist

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

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1 Susy Clemens. In games such as cribbage or dominoes, if a player fails to record a score, his opponent may call him a “muggins” and claim the score for himself.

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2 Mrs. Langdon was staying with Olivia in New Saybrook (11 Aug 72 to Fairbanks).

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3 At 8 a.m. on 30 August the Scotia arrived at Queenstown, where Clemens’s telegram (now lost) was sent, and this letter mailed. The ship reached Liverpool the next day (“European Marine News,” New York Times, 31 Aug 72, 8; “Home Arrivals,” London Times, 2 Sept 72, 9).

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4 In preparation for writing a book about England, Clemens kept a journal in “Francis” Highly Improved Manifold Writer,” which used “Carbonic Paper” to create duplicates of each page. The material in the journal is discursive, unlike the sketchy and elliptical notes he usually recorded in his notebooks—none of which are extant for this period. All of the journal text that has survived is transcribed in Mark Twain's 1872 English Journals.—& now I’ll rush & give him this—consider, my dear, that I am standing high on the stern of the ship, w looking westward, with my hands to my mouth, trumpet fashion, yelling across the tossing waste of waves, “I LOVE YOU, LIVY DARLING!”

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).

Previous publication: L5, 151–152; LLMT, 176; Davis 1977, 1, brief excerpt.

Provenance:see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.