12? September 1873 • London, England (MS, damage emended: NPV, UCCL 00962)
one-fourth of MS page (between 6 and 20 words) missing 1explanatory note
We got ma’s & Pamela’sⒶemendation seal-skin coats yesterday—£19 apiece—considerably more than double what they would have cost 2 years ago. I ordered a sealskinⒶemendation overcoat for Charley Langdon—price £50, which is just what mine cost me in Buffalo2explanatory note—I suppose it would cost $500 there now. We also got sealskin muffs for ma & Pamela yesterday—24 shillingsⒶemendation
one-fourth of MS page (about 20 words) missing
wholesale house, through an old friend of mine,3explanatory note we saved about fifteen dollars or twenty dollars on each.
Livy & the baby are well. Indeed, the baby seems to have unfailing, robust health. She is on her feet all her waking hours, and always busy—generally in matters that would fare better without her help. She says a few trifling words in broken English.
The surviving text of this letter is on a single sheet (written on both sides), from which the top quarter has been torn away, presumably by some member of the family. It survives among the letters and documents now at Vassar which originally belonged to Pamela Moffett. If the original letter comprised only this sheet, then only the dateline and salutation (perhaps six words) are missing from the first side, and about twenty words from the second. The first five words have been supplied by emendation; only the bottoms of the original characters in the manuscript are still visible (see the textual commentary).
As this letter indicates, Clemens had purchased his own sealskin coat in September 1871 (“2 years ago”). He was reported wearing it later that year, during his lecture tour (see L4 , 518–19).
Henry Lee (see the previous letter). The date of the present letter is based on the assumption that Lee responded positively and promptly to Clemens’s request.
MS, damage emended, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV). The letter was written on both sides of a single sheet, the top of which has been torn away. See the illustration below of the top of the torn page.
L5 , 438.
see McKinney Family Papers in Description of Provenance.