To Olivia L. Clemens
1 September 1872 • Liverpool, England
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00803)

slc

Liverpool, Sunday.

Livy darling, I wonder if you are back home yet; & I wonder how the Muggins is & what she looks like.1 I seem only a stone’s-throw from you, & cannot persuade myself that this is a foreign land & that an ocean rolls between us. I feel very near to you.

I have just finished a long & laborious conning of newspapers & pasting extracts & jotting down trivialities in my journal, & now comes my bete noir—for I must shave.

I will put in another 20 minutes cutting out my journal to enclose with this. It seems to take a power of time to cut out those flimsy leaves.2

Kiss mother & the baby for me & accept of the world of love I bear you sweetheart.3

Samℓ

[in ink:] Mrs. Saml. L. Clemens | Cor Forest & Hawthorne [sts]| Hartford | Conn. [in upper left corner:] U.S. of America. | [flourish] [on flap:] liverpool adelphi hotel company limited liverpool [postmarked:] f f liverpool 2 sp 72 2 [and] new york sep 14 paid all

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens told Mrs. Fairbanks that Olivia, Susy, and Mrs. Langdon planned to stay in Saybrook “till cool weather” arrived; they probably left during the first week of September (11 Aug 72 to Fairbanks; OLC to MEC, 27 Aug 72 and 28 Aug 72, CU-MARK).

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2 Clemens pasted the “extracts” into a scrapbook (Scrapbook 9, CU-MARK). See, for example, Enclosure with 25 Jan 73 to Reid, nn. 6, 8. The journal pages were very thin to facilitate the copying process (see Mark Twain’s 1872 English Journals).

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3 Mrs. Langdon evidently accompanied her daughter back to Hartford, remaining until Clemens’s return in November (Julia Beecher to Olivia Lewis Langdon, 15 Oct 72, CtHMTH; 26 Nov 72 to JLC and PAM).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).

Previous publication: L5, 152–153; LLMT, 363, brief paraphrase.

Provenance:see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

sts • s[ts] [torn]