[slc]
farmington avenue, hartford.
Sunday. 1
Dear Mother: I’m always writing you in spirit—ain’t that enough? I write all my other letters by the hand (& brain) of an amanuensis—but yours I think out myself though I do not set them down on paper. I have wholly lost the habit of letter-writing, & you know I never did have it in a largely developed way. My correspondence grew upon me to such an [extent] that it stopped [all of my] labor, nearly, & so [was] destructive to our bread & butter. I have been emancipated, for a good while, but I am soon to lose my private secretary,2 now, & don’t know what I shall do, for there are few people whom Livy will allow in the house. I shall go to Europe, then
O, I could give you a world of gossip about our cubs, but I won’t, because you & Mollie must come & hear it from our lips & see the brats themselves. It will be worth the journey, I promise you. We hope you will step in here in April or May, before we make our June exodus. Please won’t you? Livy says we will do the same by you as soon as the children are old enough to release us from the bondage of our service to them. Come—you can’t ask anything fairer than that.3
Your letter was lovely. It shows that you are ‸at‸ peace in your sould & & haven’t anything to do. Nobody can write like that who has any responsibilities.4
I have written to Mollie. It was doleful to news to me that she had “come out.” She ain’t a little girl any more, now. I’m not writing to you, now—this is only a postscript. I shall write you a letter by & by.
Lovingly,
Samℓ.
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Clemens canceled his dateline after making his playful concluding claim that he was only adding a postscript to his letter of 9 February to Mollie Fairbanks. The first Sunday
after that date was 13 February.
Mrs. Fairbanks and Mollie visited Hartford
in March 1876, about three months before the Clemens family
departed for its customary summer in Elmira, New York (24 Mar 1876 to
Fairbanks, 22 June 1876 to Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela
Moffett).
Fairbanks’s “lovely” letter was dated 2 February (CU-MARK): Charles Mason Fairbanks was Mrs. Fairbanks’s nearly twenty-one-year-old son (Fairbanks 1897, 552, 755). Her cousin Harriet (1839?-98) was the wife of Camden, New Jersey, pharmacist Dillwyn P. Pancoast.
Source text(s):Previous publication:
MTMF, 197–98.
Provenance:
See Huntington Library in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
slc • [◊◊◊] [monogram cut away]
extent • e[◊◊◊◊◊] [cut away]
all of my • al[◊ ◊◊ ◊]y [cut away]
was • [was] [partly cut away]
