1 While visiting the Clemenses, Annie doubtless talked about her suitor (and future husband), Charles Luther Webster (1851–91). A native of Charlotte, New York, Webster was a land surveyor and civil engineer in Dunkirk, about three miles from Fredonia, his home since the age of five and Annie’s since the spring of 1870. Whitney (1827–94), an eminent linguistic scholar and lexicographer, had been a professor of Sanskrit at Yale since 1854. The relationship to him was an enduring Webster tradition. According to Annie’s 1918 “Family Chronicle,” Charles Webster’s mother, Maria Whitney Webster (d. 1906), was the daughter of Calvin Whitney, who “was related to Professor Whitney of Yale” (Annie M. Webster, 24, 26, 36). Whitney was unable to confirm a connection, however, writing to Clemens on 18 January (CU-MARK):

And he added, “I feel almost personally acquainted with you thro’ Mr. Trumbull, and have besides been one of the collaborators (several times removed) in the ‘Gilded Age.’” James Hammond Trumbull had provided the multilingual chapter epigraphs for The Gilded Age, including one in Sanskrit for chapter 54, evidently prepared or verified by Whitney (MTBus, 239; “Business Directory,” Fredonia Censor, 13 Jan 75, 1; L4, 115 n. 2, 117–18; L5, 297–98).

2 The “gossips” possibly condemned Webster for a “terrible misfortune in his childhood”: at age nine he accidentally killed a four-year-old girl while playing with a gun (PAM to SLC, 10 July 87, CU-MARK). Nevertheless, on 25 May 1875 Pamela Moffett wrote to Mollie Clemens: “Annie thinks everything of C. W. I believe he does of her. His character and antecedents have been pretty thoroughly sifted and we have every reason to have confidence in him” (CU-MARK).