To Olivia L. Clemens
3 January 1874 • London, England
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 01029)

London, [ T ] Jan. 3.
2 A.M.

Livy darling, it is 2 in the morning here, & about 9 in the evening in Hartford, or half past 8. I am imagining you to be in the parlor, & the Modoc1 d gone to bed. You are sitting by the table & the Warners are about to go home in the snow2—& then you will go to bed [too. Well ], I wish I were there with you. Here, Stoddard & I have been talking & keeping a lonely vigil for hours—but I won’t talk of it any more.3 It is so unsatisfying. I want you—& nobody else. I do love you so.

Saml.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Susy Clemens, who would be two years old in March. For the explanation of her nickname, see L5, 409 n. 19.

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2 Charles Dudley Warner and his wife, Susan, were Hartford neighbors of the Clemenses’.

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3 Charles Warren Stoddard acted as Clemens’s secretary in London. He later described the many nights the two men spent conversing—and drinking cocktails—after Clemens’s lectures (see L5, 477–78, 493).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L6, 4; LLMT, 189.

Provenance:see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

T • [partly formed; possibly ‘F’]

too. Well • too.—|Well