To Olivia L. Clemens
21 December 1873 • London, England
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 01011)

Dec. 21.

Livy darling, I dined at Smalleys, last night., Finlay & I. His sister & her [ hun husband ](Mr. & Mrs. Hill, editor Daily News),1 our Mrs. Jones,2 & John Russell Young, formerly of N. Y. Tribune, were present. Mrs. Hill called upon you when you were here, but you were out. All the ladies asked after you. Mrs. [Jones ]said the Dilkes were on the Continent, but will be back & take their Christmas dinner with her3—asked me to come, but I was already engaged to go to the country, close to Stonehenge & Salisbury, to stop with an English gentleman there.4

Mrs. Smalleys dinner was perfect. I ate heartily of every single course, & then asked them to start some more along. All the glassware was from Salviati’s, & as dainty as it could be.5 The flowers roosting about the table in [Venition ]glass vases before every plate were of the choicest & newest pets of the hot-house. Livy dear, her mantel-pieces are the things to have. You had better a long sight have yours that way than the old conventional patterns, even though they be carved oak. And mind you, these are Mrs. S.’s own invention. You can’t find them in another house in the world. And they do look so bewitching with the dainty [glassware ]gems in their shelves & niches.6 I propose to bring home one or two Venetian ware jugs or vases. And the more I see of the colored tiles for fire-places, the more I am out of conceit of cold white marble ones or sullen brick or soapstone. You better order some for our fire-places, hadn’t you.

Well, Mrs. Smalley’s dinner kept me awake the entire night & until 7 or 8 this morning, I ate so much of it. So now I’ll say I do love you, sweetheart, & go to bed.

Samℓ.

Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens
Hartford
Conn. [in upper left corner:] America. | [rule] [on flap:] slc/mt [postmarked:] london-w 5 de 22 73 [and] new york [jan 5 ]due 13 u. s. currency [and] insufficiently [stamped] [and] 13 7

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Jane Dalzell Finlay Hill (d. 1904), Frank Finlay’s sister, wrote literary articles and reviews for the Belfast Northern Whig—the newspaper owned by her father until 1857 and thereafter by her brother—and, after her marriage in 1862, for other publications as well, among them the London Saturday Review. Frank Harrison Hill (1830–1910) was educated at Unitarian New College in Manchester and then at the University of London, and worked for a time as a private tutor. He edited the Belfast Northern Whig from 1861 until late 1865, when he took a position as assistant editor and political writer on the London Daily News, becoming its editor in chief in 1869. Although his keen understanding of politics helped make the newspaper an influential supporter of the Liberal party, his refusal to support Gladstone’s home rule policy led to his abrupt dismissal in 1886. He thereafter worked for twenty years as the lead political reporter for the London World.

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2 Probably “Mrs. Inwood Jones (Lady Morgan’s niece),” a friend of the Dilkes’ and of Kate Field’s but not further identified; possibly the same “Mrs. Jones, an Irish literary lady” who attended the dinner at the Smalleys’ on 2 July (Gwynn and Tuckwell, 1:241; Whiting, 284; Moran, 35:218).

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3 The Dilkes had left for Monaco “late in autumn”; they remained abroad “until after Christmas” (Gwynn and Tuckwell, 1:168, 169).

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4 See 25 Dec 73 to OLC.

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5 A. Salviati and Company of Venice were famous manufacturers of glassware; especially admired were their fragile and richly decorated drinking glasses. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the company rediscovered many ancient secrets of glassmaking which had been lost since the industry’s zenith in the Renaissance. The Clemenses purchased glassware from Salviati’s in 1878, during the European trip that led to the writing of A Tramp Abroad (Baedeker 1895, 237, 289–90; N&J2, 219, 221, 340).

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6 Moncure Conway praised the recently decorated Smalley residence at 8 Chester Place in a December 1874 article on English homes in Harper’s Monthly, giving primary credit to “Mrs. Smalley, whose taste has been the life of the ornamentation of her house”:

The wood used in Mr. Smalley’s drawing-room is ebonized, and of it are several cabinets—one displaying some fine specimens of china—bracket-shelves, and two remarkably beautiful chimney-pieces supporting beveled mirrors, framed with shelves which display porcelain and other ornaments. (Conway 1874, 40)

For Benjamin Moran’s description of the house see 1 and 2 July 73 to Miller, n. 1.

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7 This short letter was assessed thirteen cents for postage due, indicating that it originally contained an enclosure, now lost.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L5, 527–528; LLMT, 364, brief paraphrase.

Provenance:see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

hun husband • hunsband

Jones • [possibly ‘Johnes’; ‘h’ partly formed]

Venition • [sic]

glassware • glass-|ware

jan 5 • jan [5] [badly inked]

stamped • s[t]amped [badly inked]