To Joseph H. Twichell
5 January 1874 • London, England
(MTL, 1:210–12, UCCL 01032)

[London, Jan. 5 1874. ]

[My Dear Old Joe:

I ]knew you would be likely to graduate into an ass if I came away; [& ] so you have—if you have stopped smoking. However, I have a strong faith that it is not too late, yet, & that the judiciously managed influence of a bad example will fetch you back again.1

I wish you had written me some news—Livy tells me precious little. She mainly writes to hurry me home & to tell me how much she respects me: but she’s generally pretty slow on news. I had a letter from her along with yours, today, but she didn’t tell me the book is out.2 However, it’s all right. I hope to be home 20 days from today, & then I’ll see her, & that will make up for a whole year’s dearth of news. I am right down grateful that she is looking strong & “lovelier than ever.” I only wish I could see her look her level best, once—I think it would be a vision.

I have just spent a good part of this day browsing through the Royal Academy Exhibition of Landseer’s paintings. They fill four or five great salons, & must number a good many hundreds. This is the only opportunity ever to see them, because the finest of them belong to the queen & she keeps them in her private apartments. Ah, they’re wonderfully beautiful! There are such rich moonlights & dusks in “The Challenge” & “The Combat;” & in that long flight of birds across a lake in the subdued flush of sunset (or sunrise—for no man can ever tell tother from which in a picture, except it has the filmy morning mist breathing itself up from the water). And there is such a grave analytical profundity in the faces of “The Connoisseurs;” & such pathos in the picture of the fawn suckling its dead mother, on a snowy waste, with only the blood in the footprints to hint that she is not asleep. And the way he makes animals absolute flesh & blood—insomuch that if the room were darkened ever so little & a motionless living animal placed beside a painted one, no man could tell which was which.3

————

I interrupted myself here, to drop a line to Shirley Brooks & suggest a cartoon for Punch. It was this. In one of the Academy salons (in the suite where these pictures are), a fine bust of Landseer stands on a pedestal in the centre of the room. I suggest that some of Landseer’s best known animals be represented as having come down out of their frames in the moonlight & grouped themselves about the bust in mourning attitudes.4

Well, old man, I am powerful glad to hear from you & shall be powerful glad to see you & Harmony.5 I am not going to the provinces because I cannot get halls that are large enough. I always felt cramped in Hanover Square Rooms, but I find that everybody here speaks with awe & respect of that prodigious place, & wonder that I could fill it so long.6

I am hoping to be back in 20 days, but I have so much to go home to & enjoy with a jubilant joy, that it seems hardly possible that it can ever come to pass in so uncertain a world as this.

I have read the novel here, & I like it.7 I have made no inquiries about it, though. My interest in a book ceases with the printing of [it. ]

With a world of love,

[Saml.]

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 The letter from Twichell (pastor of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church and Clemens’s good friend) that Clemens answered is not known to survive. Except for a brief period after his marriage in February 1870, Clemens was an unrepentant smoker, and even suggested that his good health was the result of this habit. At least once before, in December 1870, he had discouraged Twichell from quitting (see L4, 21–24, 275–76).

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2 The American Publishing Company edition of The Gilded Age was issued on 23 December 1873, one day after the British edition (L5, 532 n. 2).

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3 Edwin Henry Landseer (1802–73) was famous for his paintings of animals with human characteristics, in humorous or poignant scenes. He began his career while still a boy, and grew to become the most popular painter of his day. He was knighted by Queen Victoria, a great admirer, in 1850. After Landseer’s death on 1 October 1873, the Royal Academy mounted an exhibition of four or five hundred of his paintings, loaned by private owners. Many of the finest examples came from the queen’s collection. Clemens attended the exhibition on opening day, 5 January. The Challenge (1844), also known as Coming Events Cast Their Shadows before Them, depicts a stag on shore bellowing defiance at a challenger swimming toward it. In The Combat (1853), two stags have locked horns. The picture with a “long flight of birds across a lake” in twilight is entitled The Sanctuary (1842) and depicts a hunted stag taking refuge on an island; it belonged to the queen. The Connoisseurs (1865) is a self-portait: Landseer is seen drawing on a sketch pad, with a dog looking over each shoulder. He painted the dead doe and her fawn, The Random Shot, in 1848 (Engravings from Landseer, frontispiece, list of illustrations, engravings facing 8 and 10, 64–71, 79; Lennie, 144; “Landseer at the Royal Academy,” London Times, 5 Jan 74, 6).

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4 Clemens met Brooks, the editor of Punch since 1870, in the fall of 1873 (L5, 442 n. 1). His suggestion did not lead to a cartoon in Punch, which had already published a poetic tribute to Landseer on 11 October 1873 (143).

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5 Twichell’s wife, Julia Harmony Cushman Twichell.

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6 The main concert hall at Hanover Square Rooms seated at least nine hundred people (Margetson, 1290). Clemens lectured there six times between 13 and 18 October, and twenty-three times between 1 and 20 December (he gave two performances on Wednesdays) (L5, 447, 481 n. 1). According to Stoddard,

In this same hall Dickens used to read, and when Mark took it people were turned from the door on the last nights of his first week. It was a dangerous experiment to think of renewing the season after the interval of a month, during which time he went to America and returned; but he opened his new season to good business, and lectured seven times a week for three consecutive weeks in London, closing the engagement in the most satisfactory manner. (Charles Warren Stoddard 1874)

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7 The Gilded Age.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MTL, 1:210–12. The rationale for emendations to remove MTL styling is given in Description of Texts.

Previous publication: L6, 11–13; MTB, 1:499–500, excerpts.

Emendations and textual notes:

London, Jan. 5 1874. • London, Jan. 5 1874.

My Dear Old Joe: [¶] I • [¶]My dear old Joe,—I

& • and [here and hereafter]

it. • it.—

Saml. • Saml.