15 June 1874 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 01099)
We are still going along comfortably, especially the baby. Livy has slept but poorly the most of the week, but we made her sleep nearly all night last night, & today she seems first rate.1explanatory note
I have just made a heavy purchase for cash, & am depending on you for $2000 & on Bliss for at least as much more,—the second instalment of royalty is due now, I believe. Has it been paid? I hope so, else I shall be in an uncomfortable position.2explanatory note
Susie Clemens had such a sore throat & hoarseness last night that we feared diphtheria—but the alarm is passed, now; the cause was teething, doubtless. Love to you both.
In Talks to My Patients, Rachel Gleason remarked that for the new mother,
Much sleep is very important during the first few days. For want of it, many a patient has had puerperal convulsions or puerperal mania. Nature makes haste to repair every strain on the nervous system by sleep, if all else is favorable. To prevent the mother from being unnecessarily disturbed, have the baby removed from her at night, if she has no milk. (Gleason, 106)
Gleason devoted an entire chapter to the general importance of sleep—“not the sleep which drunkenness, narcotics, and cordials bring, but such as Nature gives to those who invite and accept her gifts.” She suggested a variety of hot and cold baths or “a brisk walk in the open air” as remedies for sleeplessness (Gleason, 192, 201). It is not known how Olivia was “made” to sleep, but walking was not the means adopted, inasmuch as she was still confined to her bed. In March 1871, during her lengthy recovery from her first delivery, she drank ale as a “tonic,” although evidently not to induce sleep ( L4 , 358).
The unidentified “heavy purchase” may have been for the Clemenses’ new Hartford house. Warner’s indebtedness to Clemens has not been explained, but it was still unpaid on 1 January 1876: Clemens’s statement of account of that date with the American Publishing Company includes a charge of $2,050 for a “Note of C. D. Warner” (APC 1876). Although no record of the June royalty payment for The Gilded Age has been found, American Publishing Company bindery records indicate that 12,642 copies were bound in March through May. If all of these were sold, Clemens’s half of the royalty paid in June would have been about $2,200 (APC 1866–79, 211).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L6 , 161–162.
donated in January 1950 by Mary Barton of Hartford, a close friend of the Warners’, who had owned it since at least 1938.