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Add to My Citations To John Brown
30 October 1873 • SS Batavia en route
from Liverpool, England, to New York, N.Y.
(MS: CLjC, UCCL 00978)
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cunard steam ship batavia

[Mid-Atlantic]
em spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceem spaceOct. 30.

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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1 Clemens began this letter on the front of a four-page folder, then turned it over and continued on the back before writing the last two pages on the inside.

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2 Possibly a quotation, although no source has been found.

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3 See 22 and 25 Sept 73 to Brown.



glyphglyphSource text(s):glyph
MS, James S. Copley Library, La Jolla, California (CLjC).

glyphglyphPrevious publication:glyph 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.

glyphglyphProvenance:glyphThe 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.

glyphglyphEmendations and textual notes:glyph


Mid-Atlantic • Mid-Atlandtic

smoothe • [sic]

overboard • over-|board

y[partly formed]