9 December 1873 • (1st of 2) • London, England (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00994)
Livy darling, I never enjoyed delivering a lecture, in all my life, more than I did tonightⒶemendation. It was y Ⓐemendation so perfectly jolly. I And it was such a stylish looking, bright au◇ audienceⒶemendation. There were people there who gave way entirely & just went on laughing, & I had to stop & wait for them to get through.1explanatory note I wish you & Clara were here. You would enjoy it. I like this lecture ever so much better than the one on the Islands. I don’t know why, but I do. And Stoddard does, & Dolby does, & they all do. I shan’t read, in Hartford, for Alice Day, but will use this lecture. I believe I never have delivered it there yet. Ask Warner—he will know.2explanatory note Those people almost made me laugh myself, tonight.
I got Warner’s letter. Good. Let him tell Bliss I have put matters in motion about the Wood “Shells” & about canvassing Canada, & shall hear from the Routledges upon these matters tomorrow.3explanatory note And I got a whole handful of letters from you, Livy dear,—Stoddard brought then them Ⓐemendationwhile I was still in bed, & I read them there, & I did enjoy them ever so much. I wished there were more.4explanatory note Ma is a darling good old soul, & if she were only a Queen, her name would outlast that of any Monarch that ever wore a crown.5explanatory note I wish I could see you & the Modoc. She is a pretty entertaining cub I think.
The fog was so thick to-day at noon that the cabs went in a walk, & men went before the omnibuses carrying lanterns. Give that item to Warner.6explanatory note It was the heaviest fog seen in London in 20 years. And you know how the fog invades the houses & makes your eyes smart. To-night, the first thing I said on the stage was, “Ladies & gentlemen, I hear you, & so I know that you are here—& I am here, too, notwithstanding I am not visible.” The audience did look so vague, & dim, & ghostly! The hall seemed full of a thick blue smoke.7explanatory note
But I must quit, my eyes smart so. I do love you, sweetheart.
P. S. I’ve written a delicious squib, if these g papers will only just dare to print it.8explanatory note Love to our dear mother.9explanatory note
Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Hartford | Conn in upper left corner: America. | rule postmarked: london-w Ⓐemendation 12 de 10 73 and new york dec 23 paid all Ⓐemendation
The “Roughing It” lecture (first delivered on 8 December) was as well received as the Sandwich Islands talk. The London Morning Post again emphasized Clemens’s talent for descriptive writing (9 Dec 73 to Fitzgibbon, n. 1click to open letter). The London Times found that Nevada Territory, “whether considered from a moral or a material point of view,” seemed “the most objectionable place on the face of the earth”:
While we thus briefly indicate the matter of Mr. Mark Twain’s discourse, we give no notion of the exquisite humour of his manner, or of the quiet irony with which he makes a narrative that might be exceedingly dismal a cause of perpetual mirth. A smile never appears on his lips and he makes the most startling remarks as if he were uttering the merest common-place. At times, indeed, he rises into serious eloquence, as when, for instance, he describes in glowing terms the beauties of Lake Tahoe, but his great forte, like that of Artemus Ward, is his sustained irony, and this reaches its perfection when, at the end of his description of horrors, he grimly expresses a hope that he has not said anything which might tend to depopulate England, through a vast emigration to Nevada. (“Mr. Mark Twain,” 12 Dec 73, 5, clipping in Scrapbook 12:45, CU-MARK)
The London Evening Globe was more critical, describing the new lecture as
well received, but scarcely so heartily as the famous lecture on the Fiji Islands. The audience seemed to become accustomed to the speaker’s tricks of style, and to find them less amusing the oftener they were repeated. He has some genuine humour; but it is of an elementary kind, consisting for the most part of grotesque exaggeration.
Still, this critic admitted that while “most of the ‘points’ of the lecture, if read, would seem outrageously absurd, if not contemptible,” when
delivered by Mark Twain they often excite hearty laughter. He is a capital speaker, free, sympathetic, and self-confident; and he has the first essential of a good platform orator—he never laughs at his own jokes. Last night he seemed more than once the only perfectly grave person in the hall. (“Mark Twain’s Second Lecture,” 9 Dec 73, clipping in Scrapbook 12:51, CU-MARK)
Favorable reviews also appeared in the London Evening Echo (9 Dec 73), Telegraph (9 Dec 73), Standard (10? Dec 73), Observer (14 Dec 73, 2), and Figaro (17 Dec 73) (clippings in Scrapbook 12:39–51, CU-MARK; see also 11 Dec 73 to OLC, n. 2click to open letter).
Nothing is known of the reading requested by the Clemenses’ Hartford friend Alice Hooker Day. Clemens had not delivered “Roughing It” in Hartford, nor would he do so.
Warner’s letter has not been found. Bliss had evidently inquired through Warner about publishing an American edition of John George Wood’s Common Shells of the Sea-shore, first published in London in 1865 by Frederick Warne and Company. Since Warne was George Routledge’s brother-in-law, and from 1851 to 1865 had been his partner in the publishing business, Bliss probably hoped to use Clemens’s offices with Routledge to negotiate for the American rights, but nothing ultimately came of the idea. No American Publishing Company edition of the book was ever issued. In 1870 Bliss had negotiated such an arrangement for another of Wood’s works, The Uncivilized Races, or Natural History of Man, first published by Routledge (1868–70). Bliss seems also to have inquired through Warner whether Routledge would allow him to sell the American edition of The Gilded Age in Canada (Mumby, 51, 98; RI 1993 , 605–6, 820–21; 13 and 15 Dec 73 to OLCclick to open letter).
None of Olivia’s letters to her husband for the period November 1873 through January 1874 has been found.
Jane Lampton Clemens.
No such item has been found in the Hartford Courant.
Stoddard recalled this fog in 1903:
It is dense, woolly, sticky, and full of small floating particles of smut, that settle upon your face, hands, collar and cuffs, and spoil your personal appearance inside of twenty minutes. It is yellow as furnace smoke—it is furnace smoke to a great degree. . . . The Concert Rooms were hermetically sealed during the day, but at night, when the audience gathered, the fog trailed in, dimming the gaslights and flooding the place with a vague gloom. . . .
There was an evening of fog at the close of a day during which the street-lamps had in vain struggled to light the bewildered citizens through the chaotic city. At high noon linkboys bore their flaming torches to and fro; and the air was burdened with the ceaseless cries of cabmen who were all adrift, and in danger of a collapse and total wreck at the imminent lamp-post. . . . Mark began his lecture on this occasion with a delicate allusion to the weather, and said: “Perhaps you can’t see me, but I am here!” (Stoddard 1903, 67, 68–69)
Possibly Clemens’s letter of 10 December to the editor of the London Morning Post.
Olivia Lewis Langdon.
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L5 , 496–499.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.