slc/mt
Nov. 10.
My Dear Finlay:
Now one of these days you must come over here. Never mind the sea. Come over in winter, on skates. We are in our new house—& so are the carpenters—[ t ]but we shall get the latter out, by & by, even if we have to import an epidemic to do it. My play has run close upon two months, now, in New York—a success seldom achieved in this country. We expect it to run 2 or 3 months longer.1
Is it possible that it was Sir Chas. Dilk‸e’s‸ s wife whose body was burned? I wouldn’t have obeyed her dying injunctions.2
I began writing because I meant to say something—but you wait. I’ll consider. We both send our warmest regards.
Ys Ever
S. L. Clemens
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
The body of Lady Dilke, who died five weeks ago in London, was burned
on the 10th inst. at Dresden. The ceremony was performed in the
furnace recently invented for burial purposes by Herr Siemens, and
the relatives of the deceased lady permitting strangers to be
present, a large number of scientific men attended the experiment.
When the company had complied with Herr Siemens’ request
to offer up a mental prayer, the coffin was placed in the chamber of
the furnace; six minutes later the coffin burst; five minutes more
and the flesh began to melt away, ten minutes more and the skeleton
was laid bare; another ten minutes and the bones began to crumble.
Seventy-five minutes after the introduction of the coffin into the
furnace all that remained of Lady Dilke and the coffin were six
pounds of dust, placed in an urn. The brother-in-law of the deceased
was present. (“Cremation of Lady Dilke,”
6) The Hartford Times reprinted the
same account on 2 November (“Cremation in Actual
Practice—The Case of Lady Dilke,” 2). On 18
November, that newspaper excerpted a letter to the Cincinnati Commercial from its London correspondent, Moncure
Conway (a friend of Clemens’s), which confirmed the fact of
Dilke’s cremation but declared
“apocryphal” the “sensational
account” of it that “has gone the rounds in
America as here”: The furnace used at Dresden and the intense heat
around it, admits of no such minute inspection of the process of
combustion as is indicated in the paragraph that professes to
describe it. The twelve responsible persons who were present at the
event engaged solemnly not to disclose the details, and there is no
reason to believe that they have broken their word. The paragraph
has evidently been written by an opponent—so at least the
London Lancet believes—to try and produce in the public
mind a revulsion against the process. (“The Cremation of
Lady Dilke’s Body,” 2)
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L6, 276–277; AAA/Anderson 1935, lot 57, excerpts; Brownell 1944, 2.
Provenance:Norman D. Bassett, a Madison alumnus, purchased the MS at a Chicago auction
sale in 1936. He donated his Mark Twain collection to WU on 9 July 1955.
Emendations and textual notes:
t • [partly formed; doubtful]
