Mark Twain Project :: Letters :: : an electronic text

To Olivia L. Clemens
25 December 1873 • Salisbury, England
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 01017)

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white hart hotelsalisbury

Christmas Day, 1873.1

Livy my darling, I sent you a cable telegram from here last night to say “Merry Christmas!”

Today I attended the grand Christmas service in Salisbury Cathedral, in company with recumbent mail-clad knights who had lain there 650 years. What a fascinating building it [is! It ]is the loveliest pile of stone that can be imagined—think of comparing it with that solemn barn at York.2 And then we drove by Old Sarum3—all day I was thinking lovingly of my “Angel in the House,”—for Old Sarum & Salisbury naturally recal Coventry Patmore’s books4—& then we went to Stonehenge. A wonderful thing is Stonehenge. It is one of the most mysterious & satisfactory ruins I have ever seen.5

Time to dress for dinner. With a world of love to you & to all,

Samℓ.

Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens
Hartford
Conn. [in upper left corner:] America | [flourish] [on flap:] white hart hotelsalisbury [postmarked:] salisbury e de 25 73 [and] l [2 white diamond 12 ] 1873 [and] [new york ]jan 10 paid all

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens and Stoddard visited Salisbury for Christmas. They took rooms at the White Hart Hotel, near the cathedral, and were entertained during their stay by William Blackmore (1827–78), a native of the area. Blackmore was trained as a solicitor, and became wealthy from the commissions he earned helping European capitalists invest in American ventures. He traveled widely in the American West, acquiring interests in gold and salt mines, railroads, and real estate. As an amateur anthropologist he collected prehistoric artifacts from America and England and donated them to the city of Salisbury, building the Blackmore Museum (opened in 1867) to house them (Brayer, 29–33, 318; Willoughby, 317, 320–21). Stoddard described the Salisbury trip in a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle:

Well, our Christmas mess took rail for Salisbury, and reached the “White Hart” hotel in good season. . . . The landlord “hoped we would find everything to our satisfaction,” and we hurried into carriages at the door and went to our Christmas Eve dinner at a friend’s house not far away. The dining-hall was as charming as possible; high and frescoed ceilings, paintings of defunct ancestry upon the walls; three great windows opening upon a faultless lawn. (Stoddard 1874)

And to his family Stoddard wrote:

On Wednesday, the 24th, Mark, Mr. Porton (of Arizona, etc.), and I, took train for Salisbury. We were to be entertained by Mr. Blackmore who has often been to America, chiefly to hunt Buffalo and to explore the unknown regions of the West. . . .

After dinner we spent the evening in the beautiful museum of the Blackmore’s, full of antiquities collected and housed at an expense of fifty thousand dollars—and it goes to the town as a free gift.

We went to service Christmas morning in the old Salisbury cathedral, called the finest building in all Europe.

After luncheon we drove over to Stonehenge, a curious old Druid ruin: then home across the Salisbury plains. . . . In the evening a grand dinner, with some invited guests. After it, snap-dragon, music, etc. etc. (Stoddard to “My Own Dear Ones at Home,” 29 Dec 73, Bell, 278–79)

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2 Clemens and Stoddard attended “choral service” in the cathedral, and enjoyed the “lark-like carrol of the boy-soprano, who sent his notes off into the air like parti-colored sunbeams” (Stoddard 1874). Salisbury Cathedral, whose foundation was laid in 1220, was one of the first and finest examples of early English Gothic architecture. Although its four-hundred-foot spire is the tallest in the country, the cathedral is considerably smaller than York Minster, the largest Gothic building in Great Britain (Murray, 355–56, 475).

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3 Old Sarum, about two miles north of Salisbury, was formerly the site of an ancient British camp, then a Roman station, a Saxon town, and finally a Norman town. From 1075 it was the seat of a bishopric, which was moved to Salisbury in 1220. All that remained of this formerly important settlement was a huge knoll, “encircled by two deep vertical entrenchments, with a central mound, the citadel of the fortress, peering above them” (Murray, 357).

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4 The Salisbury area was the setting for Coventry Patmore’s four-volume verse narrative, The Angel in the House, which the Clemenses had enjoyed during their courtship (L2, 276 n. 7).

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5 Stonehenge, the largest megalithic monument in Britain, lies about eight miles north of Salisbury. It is thought to have been in continuous human use from about 3100 to 1100 b. c. (Gascoigne, 610).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

glyph Previous publication: L5, 534–535; LLMT, 364, brief paraphrase.

glyph Provenance:see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.

glyph Emendations and textual notes:

is! It • is!—|It

2 white diamond 12 • 2[ 12] [badly inked]

new york • n [ white diamond ] [badly inked]