Lot 486
  • 486

Clemens, Samuel L.

Estimate
5,000 - 7,000 USD
Log in to view results
bidding is closed

Description

  • paper
2 autograph letters signed ("Saml") to his wife Livy. 



4 pages in pencil on memo note paper, St. Nicholas, [Switzerland], 26 [August 1878], with salmon colored envelope addressed to Mrs. Clemens at the Hotel Jungfrau in Interlaken, date-stamped 27 August 1878, describing his rambles through the countryside with his friend, Rev. Joseph Twichell; the pages browned and  apparently torn from a small memo pad. — 6 pages on 2 sheets, [Hartford, after 19 October 1880], written partially in pidgin German, describing Mr. Beals's outside decorations of the house. Half tan morocco folding case.

Catalogue Note

A Tramp Abroad.  "Livy Darling, we came through a whooping, to-day, 6 hours tramp up steep hills and down steep hills in mud & water shoe-deep & was steadily pouring rain which never moderated a moment. I was chipper as a lark all the way & arrived without the slightest sense of fatigue." Clemens's good friend from Hartford, the Reverend Joe Twichell, joined him in Germany in July 1878. Clemens was now on Chapter 11 of his travel book and would engage in the next  thirty-five chapters at full cruising speed accompanied by Twichell who "co-stars with the narrator as the prim and naive 'Harris' " (Powers, Mark Twain, p. 419). Although Twichell was still fairly rugged at forty, Clemens dandified "Harris" in the book, whereas he concealed his own bout with rheumatism both from his wife and his readers.   

"The Awful German Language" became an appendix in A Tramp Abroad, published in 1880. In the second letter, Clemens writes to Livy in his fractured German regarding the upkeep of the house in Hartford and the outdoor decorations directed by a Mr. Beals. Clemens mentions that their housemaid Katy has made up a bed for him in the study.   Katy Leary was a native of Elmira and joined the Clemens household in late October 1880.  She worked for the Clemenses for thirty years, and was with both Susy and Livy when they died.