To Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett
6 November 1872 • London, England
(MS: NPV, UCCL 00829)

London, Nov. 6, 1872.

My Dear Mother & Sister:

I have been so [everlasting] busy that I couldn’t write—& moreover I have been so unceasingly lazy that I couldn’t have written, anyhow. I came here to take notes for a book, but I haven’t done much but attend dinners & make speeches. But I have had a jolly good time & I do hate to go away from these English folks. They make a stranger feel entirely at home—& they laugh so easily that it is a comfort to mak[e] after-dinner speeches here. I have made hundreds of personal friends; & last night in the crush at the opening of the New [Guildhall] Library & Museum, it I was surprised to meet a familiar face every few steps. Nearly 4,000 people, of both sexes, came & went during the evening, & so I had a good opportunity to make a great many new acquaintances.1

Livy is willing to come here with me next April & stay several months—so I am going home next Tuesday. I would sail on Saturday, but that is the day of the Lords Mayor’s ‸annual‸ grand state dinner, when they say 900 of the great men of the city sit down to table, a great many of them in their fine official & court paraphernalia, & so I must not miss it. However, I may yet change my mind & sail Saturday.2

I am looking at a fine magic lantern which will cost a deal of money, & if I buy it Sammy may come & learn to make the gas & work the machinery, & paint pictures for it on glass.3 I mean to give exhibitions for charitable purposes in Hartford & charge a dollar a head.

I watched them weave the enclosed. A machine does it all—& almost without watching.4

In a hurry,

Ys affly

Sam.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 A costly new building had been erected to house the Guildhall Library and Museum. On 6 November the London Daily News announced:

The new Library and Museum which the Corporation of London has established for the use of its citizens, ... is sufficiently near completion to have been publicly opened last evening. ... The Library and Museum, as is now well known, is a home of literature and art for the great City of London. ... The first essential of the modern conversazione—a crush, unmitigated and continued—was of course scrupulously observed. ... The crowd was densest in the Library, where the Lord Chancellor was to declare the building open.

After the lord chancellor (Roundell Palmer) made his speech, the guests were able to “move about, to enjoy Mr. Fred Godfrey’s band, to pay one’s respects to Gog and Magog, and attempt ices, fruits, and cooling drinks” (“Opening of the City Library and Museum,” London Daily News, 6 Nov 72, 2; Kent, 431). Fourteen-foot wooden statues of the legendary giants Gog and Magog, carved in 1708, adorned the Guildhall, adjoining the new library (Kent 358–59, 362; Weinreb and Hibbert, 344).

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2 If Clemens had sailed on Saturday, 9 November (instead of on 12 November), he would have had Henry M. Stanley as a fellow passenger (London Times: “Cunard Line,” 8 Nov 72, 2; “The Discovery of Dr. Livingstone,” 11 Nov 72, 7; for the lord mayor’s dinner see 10 Nov 72 to OLC).

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3 Clemens seems to be describing a stereopticon, rather than the relatively simple “magic lantern.” The magic lantern was a projector with two lenses, between which an operator “placed slips of glass bearing transparent photographs or paintings,” causing them to be “thrown in a magnified form on the wall or screen opposite to the lantern.” The stereopticon was “an improved form of magic lantern, consisting essentially of two complete lanterns matched and connected,” allowing the “pictures shown to pass from one to the next by a sort of dissolving effect which is secured by alternate use of the two lenses”; containers of oxygen and hydrogen were attached to the device with “flexible tubes for separately conveying these gases to the burners and mixing them only as they are needed to supply light” (Whitney and Smith, 3:3350, 5:5935). Clemens apparently considered buying this complicated apparatus for his nephew, Samuel Moffett, but ultimately purchased a steam engine for him and bought the stereopticon for himself, shipping both items from London through Joseph Blamire, the Routledges’ New York agent (see 26 Nov 72 to JLC and PAM; 5 Dec 72 to JLC and family; Blamire to SLC, 6 Jan 73, CU-MARK). When Clemens and Olivia went to Europe in 1878 they lent the stereopticon to Frank Warner, the young son of Lilly and George Warner, who gave a show with it for his family and friends (Elisabeth G. Warner, 104; “Nook Farm Genealogy,” 30).

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4 The enclosed weaving sample does not survive; Clemens may have obtained it at the Guildhall opening, where many of the trade companies, perhaps including the mercers, had “curiosities” on display (“Opening of the City Library and Museum,” London Daily News, 6 Nov 72, 2).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).

Previous publication: L5, 215–217; MTB, 1:470, excerpt; MTL, 1:201–2, with omission.

Provenance:see McKinney Family Papers in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

everlasting • ever-|lasting

Guildhall • Guild-|hall