Milton Hill
Dec 31st 1877
Dear Mrs Clemens,
At New Years our family always meets to spend two days together. Today my Father came last and brought with him Mr Clemens’s letter, so that I read it to the assembled family, and I have come right up stairs to write to you about it. My sister said “Oh let Father write!” but my Mother said “No, don’t wait for him. Go now, don’t stop to pick that up, go this minute and write. I think that is a noble letter. Tell them so.” First let me say that no shadow of indignation has ever been in any of our minds. The night of the dinner, my Father says, he did not hear Mr Clemens’s speech he was so far off, and my Mother says that when she read it to him the next day it amused him. But what you will want is to know without any softening how we did feel. We were disappointed. We have liked almost everything we have ever seen over Mark Twain’s signature. It has made us like the man, and we have delighted in the fun. Father has often asked us to repeat certain passages of “The Innocents Abroad,” and of a speech at a London dinner in 1872, and we all expect both to approve and to enjoy when we see his name. Therefore when we read this speech it was a real disappointment. I said to my brother that it didn’t seem good or funny, and he said “No it was unfortunate. Still some of those quotations were very good,” and he gave them with relish and my Father laughed, though never having seen a card in his life, he couldn’t understand them like his children. My sister says“ When I read the speech I only felt sorry for Mr Clemens, for I was sure that someday he would regret it, and I couldn’t bear to think he would have to.” My Mother read it lightly and had hardly any second thoughts about it. To my Father it is as if it had not been, he never quite heard, never quite understood it, and he forgets easily and entirely. I think it doubtful whether he writes to Mr Clemens for he is old and long ago gave up answering letters. I think you can see just how bad, and how little bad, it was as far as we are concerned, and this lovely heart-breaking letter makes up for our disappointment in our much-liked author, and restores our former feeling about him.
Ellen T. Emerson
