6 January 1874 • London, England (MS: CtHMTH, UCCL 01035)
Many T thanks, my dear Mr. Fitz Gibbon. I send you, for Mr. Clifford,1explanatory note a note to m an old friend of mine, Col. John McComb, of the “Alta California” Editorial staff, San Francisco. McComb knows everybody, & so a note to him covers the whole ground.2explanatory note
If I don’t see you again, good-byeⒶemendation, & good luck & long life attend you & yours.
Probably Frederick Clifford (1828–1904), a journalist and legal writer who reported on the House of Commons for the London Times. (Fitzgibbon covered Parliament for the Darlington Northern Echo.) In 1863 he became co-owner of the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, and in 1868 helped found the Press Association, which supplied London and provincial newspapers with home and foreign news.
McComb, the supervising editor of the San Francisco Alta California, had been Clemens’s good friend and supporter for at least a decade ( L2 , 12–13).
MS, Cyril Clemens Collection, Mark Twain House, Hartford (CtHMTH).
L6 , 14; AAA/Anderson 1934, lot 136, brief paraphrase.
The MS was owned by Robert Dorn in May 1943; Cyril Clemens donated it to CtHMTH in 1984.