From Samuel L. and Olivia L. Clemens
to John Brown
22 June 1876 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: Sotheby’s, New York, December 1993, UCCL 01343)
June 22/76.
Elmira, New York, U. S.
Dear friend the Doctor—it was a perfect delight to see the well-known [handwriting] again!1 But we so grieve to know that you are feeling miserable. It must not last—it can not last. The regal summer is come & it will smile you into high good cheer; it will charm away your pains, it will banish your distresses.2 I wish you were here, to spend the summer with [us. We] are perched on a hill-top that overlooks a little world of green valleys, shining rivers, sumptuous forests, & billowy uplands veiled in the haze of distance. We have no neighbors. It is the quietest of all quiet places., & we are hermits that eschew caves & live in the sun. Doctor, if you’d only come!
I will carry your letter to Mrs. C., now, and there will be a glad woman, I tell you! And she shall find one of those photos to put in this for Mrs Barclay; & if there isn’t one here we’ll send right away to Hartford & get one. Come over, Doctor John, & bring the Barclays, the Nicolsons & the Browns , one & all!
Affectionately Yours
Samℓ. L. Clemens
Dear Doctor Brown
Indeed I was a happy woman to see the familiar hand writing, I do hope that we shall not have to go so long again with out a word from you—3
I wish you could come over to us for a season, it seems as if it would do you good—you and yours would be so very welcome—
We are now where we were two years ago when Clara (our baby) was born, on the farm on the top of a high hill where my sister spends her Summers.
The children are grown fat and hearty feeding chickens & ducks twice a day, and are keenly alive to all the farm interests.
Mr J. T. Fields was with us with his wife a short time ago and you may be sure we talked most affectionately of you—4
We do so earnestly desire that you may continue to improve in health, and do let us know of your welfare as often as possible—
as ever,
affectionately your friend
Livy L. Clemens
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Brown had written (CU-MARK): Brown mentioned: a copy of the recent photograph of Susy and Clara Clemens taken in Hartford by Isaac
White (see 3 or 4 May 1876 to Kingsbury); an unidentified photograph of Susy
in an ormolu frame; his son, John (Jock); his unmarried sister, Isabella; his daughter, Helen Brown Law; and his friends whom the Clemenses
had met in 1873, George and Elizabeth Barclay and
Alexander Nicolson, an undersheriff who functioned as a judge. Barclay had led the campaign
to raise a retirement fund for Brown, to which Clemens had contributed. Brown also alluded to a private joke about Olivia Clemens’s eyes. In 1873 he had described Olivia to Nicolson as “a startingly pretty little
creature, with eyes like a Peregrine’s” and gave the nickname “Megalopis” to Susy Clemens, “her ludicrous miniature—and such eyes!” (see 17 Mar 1876 to
Redpath, n. 2; and 28 Feb 1874 to Brown, L6, 56–57 n. 5; OLD and SLC to Olivia Lewis Langdon, 2 and 6 Aug 1873, L5, 428 n. 2, 430 n. 7).
Retirement had eased Brown’s
physical and financial burdens, but his emotional state remained precarious. On 5 May George
Barclay had informed Clemens that Brown’s “morbid tendency to doubt and depreciate himself
will I fear never now be overcome, but can only be at best kept down” (CU-MARK).
Prior to his 8 June 1876 letter, Brown had last written on 11 October 1875 to Olivia (see OLC and SLC to Brown, 25-28 Oct 1875, L6, 572 n. 1).
The Fieldses had spent
27–29 April with the Clemenses (see the Appendix “Excerpts from Annie Fields’s Diary”).
Source text(s):Previous publication:
MTL, 1:280, SLC’s portion of letter only; MTA, 2:233, OLC’s portion only; Brown 1907, 353–54; Daniel F. Kelleher catalog, 22 July 1982, lot 21, partial publication; Sotheby’s catalog, sale of 10–11 December 1993, lot 218, transcript and paraphrase.
Provenance:
The MS, acquired by Robert Daley in 1982 or after, was offered for sale by Sotheby’s in December 1993.
Emendations and textual notes:
handwriting • hand- | writing
us. We • ~.— | ~
please) • [sic: no open parenthesis]
