To Olivia L. Clemens
14 November 1873 • SS City of Chester en route
from New York, N. Y., to Liverpool, England
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00983)

7th day out.

Livy darling, we have had a half-gale & a very tumultuous sea for 2 days & nights, & I found that this ship could roll, though nothing compared to the Batavia. The seas swept the ship several times & gushed through the saloon [skylights] in [drowning] volumes. Last night at dinner fifty dishes leaped clear off the table & fell in one common ruin. My dead-light did not fit closely, & so all night the seas came in—my floor got as much as a barrel of water, altogether. Now the port is well caulked with tallow & is all right. I have read all night during this weather.—sleep would only tire me. Yesterday two or three people were hurt by being thrown down on the deck. A lurch sent a hurled a d steerage passenger across the ship & against a boat. People heard the concussion a great distance. He wilted down limp & senseless.

But she is a much more comfortable ship than any Cunarder.

Just been answering the enclosed rather difficult letter. The old man was in one of his childish moods I guess. The letter came to me Saturday as we were leaving port.1

Button gone from the shirt I brought in the satchell—Mrs. Slote sewed it on for me.2 Cravat fell to pieces Tuesday—Mrs. Nobles reconstructed it. One suspender broke down to-day—& all the women sea-sick. But no matter, there’s only men to see that I need a suspender.

I do hope you are well & jolly, old chap. I don’t believe I dare ask you by telegraph. I am afraid to do it. But you must be well, my darling—you must—I cannot have it otherwise. I love you.

Saml.

[in ink:] Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Forest street | Hartford | Conn | [flourish] [in upper left corner:] America | [rule] [postmarked:] [queenstown] b no18 73 [and] [boston] dec 3 paid

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 The enclosure, now lost, was probably a letter from John Mouland, whom Clemens referred to as the “old man” in his letters of 22 Jan 73 to Mouland and 26 Apr 73 to Greene.

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2 Clemens apparently spent the night before his departure with Daniel Slote and his family, at 110 East Fifty-fifth Street, the address to which they had recently moved. The household may have included Slote’s elderly mother, Ann, but it was probably his wife who sewed on Clemens’s button. Her first name has not been discovered, but at the time of Slote’s death in 1882 she was identified as “the third daughter of ex-Alderman James Griffiths” (“Daniel Slote,” New York Tribune, 14 Feb 82, 2; “Obituary Notes,” New York Times, 14 Feb 82, 5; H. Wilson: 1869, 1023; 1872, 1122; 1873, 1212).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L5, 475; LLMT, 363, brief paraphrase.

Provenance:see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

skylights • sky-|lights

drowning • drown drowning [corrected miswriting]

queenstown • queenstow[n] [badly inked]

boston • b[ost]o[n] [ badly inked ]