20 November 1873 • London, England (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00984)
Langham Hotel
London, Nov. 19. 20
Livy darling, it is close upon half past 9, now, the breakfast is on the table getting cold, & still you & Clara1explanatory note do not come. The Modoc amused me for a while with a distant sound, down the hall, of uncertain footstepsⒶemendation & “abundance of “Tah-tah’s” for benefits conferred by somebody out there—but she is gone, now, & I have nothing now but the mor Times, with Mr. Lord Rector Disraeli’sⒶemendation speech in it.2explanatory note I am not particularly hungry, but what I mind is the delay, & the lonesomeness of waiting. As far up Portland Place as I can see, the glittering Horse-Guards are filing in stately procession; out here on Langham Place that old “semi-detached” tooth-pick of a steeple stands up just as sharp & a ugly as ever;3explanatory note that same beadle is behind a pillar “laying” for a tramp who has half a mind to venture inside the iron railings; that same one-legged crossing-sweeper is coming around the circle of the railings, & is humping himself too, to help a lady into a Hansom; that very same Punch & Judy man has arrived with a tap or two of his drum, a toot or two of his pipes & a will wildⒶemendation, shrill remark from Punch himself;—& the show is moving on again, the man taking off his hat humbly & beseechingly to people in various Langham Hotel windows—to no purpose. These sights are things that you & Clara always liked, heretofore, but now you do not care for come. Well, I will breakfast alone, then. Bacon, coffee & poached eggs are hardly worth sharing, anyhow.
But I love you my sweetheart & would give a great deal to divide these refreshments with you & have your company.
Mrs Samℓ. L. Clemens | Forest street | Hartford | Conn. in upper left corner: America. | flourish postmarked: london-wⒶemendation zb no20 73 and li and new york dec ◇ paid all Ⓐemendation
Spaulding.
The renowned Conservative statesman and novelist Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81) was installed as Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow on 19 November. After the ceremony he gave a speech, reported in the London Times the next day, in which he asserted that two kinds of knowledge were important for success in life: an accurate understanding of one’s own character and abilities, and a comprehension of the “spirit of the age” in which those abilities would be exercised (“Mr. Disraeli at Glasgow University,” 20 Nov 73, 10).
All Souls Church in Langham Place, designed by John Nash and built in 1822–24, featured a “combination of a Greek peristyle and a spire,” which was “ridiculed at the time and the portly Nash was caricatured as impaled upon it,” in a drawing by Cruikshank (Weinreb and Hibbert, 19–20).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L5 , 478–479; LLMT , 184.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.