To Olivia L. Clemens
19 August 1872 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: NN-B, UCCL 00795)

Midnight Aug 18.

Livy darling, when these lines reach you I shall still be [ na near ] enough at hand to blow a loving kiss to you over the few intervening acres of soil, & you will be near enough to intercept it before its expression has cooled in the morning breeze.1

While this moon lasts it will be easy, on shipboard or on shore, to look up at the vague shapes in it & recal our last night on the verandah when they were our only witnesses. And as long as we are separated we can still regard the waxing & waning phases of this moon & commune with each other through her across the waste of seas, sending & receiving messages that shall ignore distance & count the [accumulated ] meridians of longitude as nothing.

Livy darling, I love you, truly & tenderly, & you d alone—

And am now & shall always be,

Your most affectionate husband—

Samℓ.

To my dear little wife.

(I have used the worthiest paper.)2

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens had left New Saybrook on the first leg of his trip to England. Although he may have sent this letter from New York City, his reference here to being near to Olivia suggests that he stayed at the Hartford house on the night of 18 August. He probably arrived in New York on 19 August, since his presence at the St. Nicholas Hotel was reported on 20 August (“Prominent Arrivals,” New York Tribune, 8; “Morning Arrivals,” New York Evening Express, 3).

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2 Clemens wrote on the white stationery, monogrammed in red, gold, and black, which he had purchased earlier in the summer (25–27? July 72 to MEC, n. 1).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN-B).

Provenance:purchased in 1972 from Seven Gables Bookshop.

Emendations and textual notes:

na near • naear

accumulated • accumultated