Paste one of these in “Sketches” & one in “Tom
Sawyer” & send them to
Miss Kirkham
Hamilton
Bermuda.1
S. L. C.
[letter docketed on the back:] Samuel Clemens | June 4th 77
Explanatory Notes
Emily (Emmie) Kirkham (b. 1853?) was the daughter of Clemens’s and
Twichell’s Bermuda landlady (29 May 1877 to Howells, n. 1). On 8 August she
acknowledged receiving a letter (unrecovered) that Clemens sent from Elmira, as
well as copies of Sketches, New and Old and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, presumably
with the enclosed but unrecovered inscriptions. She wrote, in part (CU-MARK): I received your very welcome letter by last mail, and I do myself the pleasure
of sending you a few lines by return of same. What a nice time you must be
having, on the top of that big hill, I wish I could enjoy some of the nice pure air
you have, it is awfully warm down here now, and this climate makes one feel very
lazy. I am pleased you enjoyed your excursion to Bermuda so much, is it correct
that you had visited Bermuda before Your nice books I have read with much
pleasure, I am quite the envy of some of the Bermudians in having them, I prize
them highly She concluded, “I hope you will visit our little Island, again some day. I suppose you will not go to Europe, before the Spring of next year, I wish you were coming to
Bermuda instead.” Thirty years later, when Emily was managing the boarding house (her mother having
died in 1894), Clemens and Twichell again stayed there (Hoffmann 2006, 73–74;
AutoMT2, 359–60, 611).
Source text(s):Provenance:
Purchased on 12 December 2011 from Marion N. Fay, who acquired it from one of Conway’s granddaughters.
