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30 October 1873 • SS Batavia en route
from Liverpool, England, to New York, N.Y.
(MS: CLjC, UCCL 00978)
cunard steam ship batavia
Our dear friend the doctor:
We have plowed a long way over the water, ‸sea,‸ & there’s twenty-two hundred miles of restless water between us, now, beside the railway stretch. And yet you are so
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present with us, so close to us that a span & a whisper would bridge the distance.2
The first three days were stormy, & wife, child, maid & Mrs. & Miss Spaulding were all sea-sick 25. hours out of the 24, & I was sorry I ever started. However, it has been [smoothe,] & balmy, & sunny & altogether lovely for a day or two now, & at night there is a broad luminous highway stretching over the sea to the moon, over which the spirits of the sea are traveling up & down all through the secret night & having a genuine good time, I make no doubt.
To-day they discovered a “collie” on board! I find (as per advertisement which I sent you) that they won’t carry dogs in these ships at any price. This one has been concealed up to this time. Now his owner has to pay £10 or heave him [overboard.] Fortunately the doggie is a performing doggie & the money will be paid. So [ y ] after all it was just as well you didn’t c entrust your collie to us.3
A poor little child died at midnight & was buried at dawn this morning—sheetted & shotted & sunk in the middle of the lonely ocean in water 3,000 three thousand fathoms deep. Pity the poor mother.
With our love,
L S. L. Clemens
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
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Previous publication:
L5, 459–460; Paine 1912, 112, brief excerpt; MTB, 1:494, brief excerpt; MTL, 1:209–10; Christie 1981, lot 69, excerpts; Sotheby 1983, lot 4, excerpts.
Provenance:
The MS was sold by Christie in May 1981, by Charles W. Sachs of the
Scriptorium (Beverly Hills) after July 1981, and then by Sotheby
Parke-Bernet in April 1983. It was purchased by CLjC in May 1983 from an unidentified dealer.
Emendations and textual notes:
Mid-Atlantic • Mid-Atlandtic
smoothe • [sic]
overboard • over-|board
y • [partly formed]