To
Olivia L. Clemens
3 December 1876 • New York, N.Y.
(MS, correspondence card, in pencil: CU-MARK, UCCL 01391)
Sunday, 2.‸ 15 ‸ P. M.
slcLivy darling, I love you more than I can tell—on a card of this size, or any other. Dined with those leddy-hets last night till 12, then went to bed. It was a delicious
dinner. I have but this moment got out of bed. Used no whisky or other liquor to sleep on—was utterly tired out.1
Osgood was in 2 hours ago. Am looking for Harte, now.2
Mrs. T. B. Aldrich called—shall go presently & return it. With
vast love.
Samℓ.
[enclosure; “Coincidence”3 written in left margin, and text underlined, in pencil:]
[in ink:] Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Hartford | Conn [return address:] st. james hotel. broadway and 26th street, new york. [postmarked:] new-york e dec 3 4 pm
Explanatory Notes
Nothing is known of Clemens’s dinner with the unidentified “leddy-hets” (his daughter Clara’s pronunciation of “leatherheads”). He was on a two-night trip to New York, where he stayed at the St. James Hotel (“Arrivals at the Hotels,” New York Times, 3 Dec 1876, 2).
To confer about
Ah Sin
(see 20 Dec 1876 to Perkins).
The enclosed clipping is from the New York Times’s 3 December 1876 review of Forty Years’ Recollections of Life, Literature, and Public Affairs, a memoir by the Scottish
poet and journalist Charles Mackay (1814–89) (“New
Publications,” 10; Mackay 1877). The author of this advice
was the English banker and poet Samuel Rogers (1763–1855).
Clemens’s comment—“Coincidence”—indicates that it was his own strategy as well: see, for example,
19 Oct 1876 to Unidentified.
Source text(s):Previous publication:
MicroML, reel 4.
Provenance:
See Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
