To Olivia L. Clemens
23 November 1873 • London, England
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00987)

Sunday, 23d.

Sweetheart, it is a rather handsome day for London—very sunny & bright & cheery, & I heartily wish you were here to enjoy it. Stoddard & I walked through Regent’s Park & up on top of Primrose Hill & back again.

Stoddard has been spending some days at Oxford with the students, & they swear that if I will come there & lecture they will entertain me like a duke, & will also cram the largest hall in the town [for] [me.1 I] would like it—& at a lecture they would come in fu evening dress & behave with the utmost decorum—with that thorough & complete decorum which noblemen’s sons know so well how to practise when they choose—but at a common theatre what a queer [lot] they are!—& d how they do behave, these scions of the bluest aristocratic blood of Great Britain! Stoddard attended the theatre there—[at ] company of traveling actors. The house was full—both sexes—& all the students were there—or at least several hundred of them. They wore their hats all through the performance, & they all smoked pipes & cigars. Every individual devil of them had on an Ulster overcoat like mine, that came down to his heels; & every rascal of them brought a bull pup or a terrier pup under his arm, & they would set these creatures up on the broad-topped balustrades, & leave allow them to amuse themselves by barking at anybody or anything they chose to. The Some Davenport Brothers tied themselves up with ropes, & people were requested to come on the stage & examine the trick;2 where-upon, several students, in their long coats, their hats on, their pups under their arms & their pipes in their mouths stepped out over the balustrades of private boxes, & gravely sauntered around & around the tied man on the stage examining the knots & expressing their opinions—& the audience never smiled or said a [ work word ]but took the whole thing as a matter of course.

(Am called away, sweetheart,)

Saml

Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Forest street | Hartford | Conn [in upper left corner:] America. | [flourish] [postmarked:] [london • w] 7 no 24 73 [and] new[ york dec 8 paid] all

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Stoddard recounted his Oxford experiences in letters to the San Francisco Chronicle dated 10 December and 19 December (Stoddard 1874 [bib13192], 1874 [bib13193]). Clemens did not lecture there.

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2 The Davenport brothers—Ira Erastus (1839–1911) and William Henry Harrison (1841–77)—“created considerable stir in the United States, Great Britain, and other countries in the sixties and seventies.” They “performed some remarkable Indian rope-tying and sack feats,” effecting quick escapes from “rope bonds in which they were tied by representatives of the audience” (“Mr. I. E. Davenport,” London Times, 10 July 1911, 11; “Ira E. Davenport Dead,” New York Times, 9 July 1911, 9; Bryan, 1:330–31).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L5, 482–483; Wecter, 87; LLMT, 185.

Provenance:see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

for • [f]or [torn]

me. I • me.—|I

lot • [l]ot [obscured by inkblot]

at • [‘t’ partly formed; possibly ‘l’]

work word • workd

london • w • london • [w] [badly inked]

york dec 8 paid • y[ork ] 8 p [d] [badly inked]