To George H. Fitzgibbon
5 October 1872 • London, England
(MS: CtHMTH UCCL 00820)

slc

The Langham Oct. 5. PM

My Dear Sir:

I thank you very heartily for saying that good word for me. 1 I don’t know when that ‸St Andrews‸ dinner is to come off, but if it transpires before the middle of November, & if I am invited; & if they give me a toast to respond to & two days to get ready in, I would just as soon discharge a little instruction from my system as not—& I’ll give you a verbatim copy!

I thank Mrs. Fitzgibbon for reminding me, though indeed I had not forgotten, about the photos. They only came yesterday (I had to write & hurry up Mr. Watkins)2 —& he goodnaturedly begged pardon & said it was owing to his card-maker’s dilatoriness; & that if the world had had to wait on that man to build the Ark, we wouldn’t have had the flood yet!

I believe I was to send four photos—but if there are too many, burn the rest, or put them in the British Museum. And I was to send the London picture.—which was very well, for only 2 of the Brighton ones have arrived thus far.3 I sent one home4 & rushed the other off (along with a London one,) to Miss Florence Stark5 —for you know & I know that she didn’t put a great deal of confidence in me, & I was anxious to bolster up my credit. She has written me a pleasant note & confessed her suspicions, & now I think she believes in me. She is a very charming little lady, I think. The picture in the Graphic is very good. It was made from the London photo.6

With the kindest regards to you & to all your pleasant household,

‸I am‸ Ys faithfully

Saml. L. Clemens.

G. FitzGibbon Esq

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

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1 See the article enclosed with the previous letter, written by Fitzgibbon for the Darlington Northern Echo. Fitzgibbon must have sent Clemens the clipping, with a letter that does not survive. Very little is known about George Hyett Fitzgibbon, except that he corresponded for the Echo, reporting on events in London—including Parliamentary proceedings—in irregular letters headed “From Our London Correspondent.” A remark of Clemens’s in a letter to Fitzgibbon, indicating that he had planned to write an article for the London Observer, suggests that he may have been associated with that weekly (12 June 73 to Fitzgibbon;28 Nov 73 to Fitzgibbon, n. 2). Clemens probably met Fitzgibbon at the sheriffs’ inauguration dinner on 28 September, and by the date of this letter had apparently been to his home in Islington, a northern London suburb, and become acquainted with his wife and two daughters (London Directory, 2057; Fitzgibbon to SLC, 27 Dec 72, CU-MARK; Dixon Wecter asserted that Fitzgibbon was an associate of the Routledges’, but offered no evidence: seeMTMF, 175 n. 1).

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2 Clemens posed for photographer Charles Watkins, at 54 Chancery Lane, soon after his arrival in London; only one pose from this session is known to be extant (it is reproduced in Photographs and Manuscript Facsimiles). Since Clemens must have provided aprint of the photograph some days earlier for the engraver of the Graphic portrait (see note 6), the batch of photographs that arrived “yesterday” was a reorder. By 14 September Watkins had given a copy to at least one London journalist, and on 1 November John Camden Hotten would order a hundred copies for resale (see 23 Dec 73 to OLC, n. 3).

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3 Clemens evidently enclosed four prints of the Watkins photograph.

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4 A copy of the Brighton photograph of Clemens, Henry Lee, and Edmund Routledge, mounted on a card measuring 4 3/16 by 6½ inches, survives in the Mark Twain Papers and is reproduced in Photographs and Manuscript Facsimiles (13–18 Sept 72 to Osgood, n. 4). It is addressed in Clemens’s hand on the back: “U.S. of America ǀ Mrs. S. L. Clemens ǀ Cor. Forest & Hawthorne ǀ Via Queenstown ǀ Hartford ǀ Conn. ǀ S. L. Clemens” (CU-MARK). Since there is no postage on the card, however, it is unclear whether it was actually mailed. Clemens may have sent one of the portraits of himself instead.

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5 This friend of the Fitzgibbons’ has not been identified. Clemens would visit Miss Stark and her family in Ventnor, on the Isle of Wight, in December 1873(30 Dec 73 to Fitzgibbon).

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6 see 17 Sept 72 to Locker, n. 2. The engraved portrait of Clemens in the Graphic for 5 October 1872 is a reverse image of the Watkins photograph.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Cyril Clemens Collection, Mark Twain House, Hartford (CtHMTH). The MS was written entirely in pencil. Sometime later an unidentified person, using ink, attempted to trace over the pencil exactly, often obliterating the pencil beneath. The tracer occasionally missed punctuation and the crossbars on t’, and in one case mistraced entirely, so that Clemens’s ‘kindest’ (194.19) became ‘kindact’ in the ink version.

Previous publication: L5, 193–195; Henkels 1930, lot 380; AAA/Anderson 1934, lot 127; Parke-Bernet 1946, lot 88; all brief excerpts.

Provenance:The MS was apparently purchased in 1930 by Edmund W. Evans, Jr., of Oil City, Pennsylvania, who offered it for sale again in April 1934. In 1946 it was sold as part of the collection of W. W. Cohen. Cyril Clemens donated it to CtHMTH in 1984.