1 Clemens’s “inveterate sham” was Kate Field, as his enclosure makes clear. His private note to Mrs. Raymond has not been found. She was Marie E. Gordon (d. 1891), born Marie Eugenie Phillips in New Orleans. She first appeared on stage in Baltimore in 1864, where she met Raymond, a fellow cast member, and married him some three years later. Since then she had traveled with at least two different theater companies. By 30 March 1875 she was appearing with her husband in the Gilded Age play, as Laura Hawkins. When the play returned to Hartford for a single performance on 6 May, Gordon won praise for her “grace of motion, great beauty of person and a sincerity of expression,” which made her “a very remarkable, a very gratifying representative of the role” (“Colonel Sellers,” Hartford Times, 7 May 75, 2). She was “tall and well proportioned,” possessing “brilliant eyes and a shapely head, covered with blonde hair of genuine hue” (“Obituary,” New York Dramatic Mirror, 8 Aug 91, 7; “Elmira Opera House,” Elmira Advertiser, 30 Mar 75, 4).

2 Clemens delayed sending this enclosure until Monday, 25 January, when he added the cover letter to Stillson, former managing editor of the New York World, but perhaps at this point no longer with the newspaper in any capacity (see 23 Mar 74 to Stillson, n. 1). The World published neither the letter nor the enclosure. Clemens had met Kate Field, a successful author and lecturer, briefly in 1871, and became better acquainted with her in London in 1873. In the fall of 1874 she launched a new career as a dramatic actress (against the advice of most of her friends), but her debut at Booth’s Theater in New York that November was a decided failure. Her friend Whitelaw Reid, editor of the New York Tribune, offended her by publishing his drama critic’s negative review (“Booth’s Theater—Masks and Faces—Miss Kate Field,” 16 Nov 74, 5). Nevertheless, Raymond engaged her for the role of Laura Hawkins in the touring company of the Gilded Age play, replacing Gertrude Kellogg, who had enjoyed great critical success in New York. Clemens had entertained Field in Hartford on 11 January, but did not attend her performance there that evening (see 11 Jan 75 to Raymond, n. 4). Although his relations with her were apparently cordial, he had little regard for her as a performer. The Hartford press also was unenthusiastic. The Courant remarked:

And the Times commented:

The “improved & strengthened” version of what Clemens admitted he wrote to Mrs. Raymond appeared in one of three favorable reports of Field’s performance in the Gilded Age play in the New York Tribune for 19 January 1875 (“Miss Kate Field in the Country,” 5; L4, 322–24; L5, 369–70 n. 4, 375, 386–87; Whiting 1900, 322–28, 335, 337; Field, 112–14; Bryant Morey French, 246).