16 December 1873 • London, England (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 01007)
Livy my darling, we did have a lovely audience tonight, such bright, splendid people, & they sat as still as statues, for fear they might miss a word, but they responded promptly & vigorously to every single point. I talked half a column or a column more of stuff than usual.
Then I read Last night a portly lady very richly dressed, sat in the second row & laughed as you never saw a c any creature laugh before except Rev. Mr. Burton1explanatory note—the tears streamed down her cheeks all the time. Tonight a young English girl sat in the same row, & it seemed to me that she would simply go into convulsions. Bully audiences, these are.
Lunched with Mrs. Owen to-day—two other earl’s daughters were there, & I had a funny & a very queer adventure with th Ⓐemendation one of them which I must tell you when I see you. Mrs. Owen was splendid. I am to lunch there again, on Friday, & then we are to go to Westminster Abbey, for she wants to show me the monument to the Owen who built Condover Hall.2explanatory note
I have a pleasant note from Mr. Tennyson, to whom I sent a ticket. An autograph note from him is a powerful hard thing to get.3explanatory note
I love you, love you, love, you, Sweetheart.
Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Hartford | Conn. in upper left corner: America. | flourish on flap: slc/mt postmarked: london-w. 07 de 17 Ⓐemendation 73 and l 17 12 1873 Ⓐemendation and new york jan 2 paid all.Ⓐemendation
The Reverend Nathaniel J. Burton (1824–87), a graduate of Wesleyan University, had been pastor of the Park Congregational Church in Hartford since 1870; prior to that (1857–70) he had served the Fourth Congregational Church of that city (Burpee, 1:520; Trumbull, 1:389, 393). He and Clemens were both members of the Hartford Monday Evening Club (see 15 Feb 73 to Trumbull, n. 2click to open letter).
Victoria Alexandrina Cotes Owen was the widow of Thomas Owen (1823–64), the older brother of Reginald Cholmondeley (see pp. 432, 434). Thomas had changed his name in 1863 when he inherited Condover Hall from his cousin, Edward William Smythe Owen, who had owned it since 1804. Thomas married in March 1864, but died in Florence less than two months later, leaving Condover to Reginald. Mrs. Owen’s mother was the daughter of the third earl of Liverpool. The Clemenses probably met Mrs. Owen during their stay at Condover in early September. The “Owen who built Condover Hall” was Thomas Owen (d. 1598), a barrister and member of Parliament for Shrewsbury (1584–85); in 1594 he became a judge of the court of common pleas. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, on the south side of the choir, in a “Monument of Marble and Alabaster gilded,” surmounted by a recumbent effigy in scarlet robes (Tipping, 166). Condover Hall, completed in 1598, was a great stone mansion whose exterior had remained relatively unchanged; its interior, however, had undergone alterations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Burke 1900, 292, 353; Tipping, 162, 165–68). See the illustration on p. 433.
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L5 , 521–22; LLMT , 364, brief paraphrase.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.