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ALS signed “Lovingly, Papa,” eight pages on two sets of adjoining sheets, 4.75 x 7.75, December 27, 1893. Handwritten letter to his "Dear old Susy dear," his daughter Susy Clemens, humorously criticizing the wife of fellow writer Thomas Bailey Aldrich. In part: "I wish you were here to dine with me at Dr. Rice's tomorrow night. All the men invited are bright, & two of the women—Mrs. Rice & another. Fifty people are coming after the dinner…You never saw anybody as happy over anything as Brander Matthews is over his banquet. It is pleasant to see. I am as glad as I can be that I went. I was so prejudiced against speaking that I came near not going. It would have been villainy—a treachery. I saw him yesterday, & he said 'New York is simply resounding with your speech. I hear of it from morning till night. But those people can't rise to the size of it. They only know the words—unsurpassable words, that's true, but the delivery!—oh, it was just masterly!'"
"By gracious, to have pleased a man so much was worth—there's no telling it's worth. That man's pleasure is the pleasantest thing I have experienced in a good while. His compliments come out of his heart; it is that that makes them instantly recognizable as gold, a thousand carats fine. It was plain, at the banquet, that Brander is a most unusually well-beloved man. The speakers labored a little in the other parts of their talk, but whenever they reached the affectionate part their tongues had holiday & a free delivery."
"My Christmas dinner at Laffan's was spoiled‚ totally spoiled—irremediably spoiled—a deep, & rounded, & comprehensive, & a complete & accursed failure. For, just at the last moment, when dinner-time was 15 or 20 minutes over past, & I was perfectly happy & joyous & tongue-free & hungry, the bell rang & in came the one woman in this world whose every single detail, from her trivial head to her invisible heels, is hateful to me & maddening—& I was appointed to take her out to dinner! Her dress was as usual one of her devilish inspirations—she lives solely for clothes. It being exactly a week since her brother died & four days since he was buried, she was in mourning, ostensibly."
Clemens sketches a drawing of the "devilish inspiration," describing it in the margin: "Shiny new black satin—a bunch of great pink roses on port breast; a cob-webby transparent Oriental rag flung carelessly athwart her back; her waist away up close under her breasts—and she from there down a churn. Picturesque? Certainly, but if she belonged to me I would drown her, all the same. Lord, I loathe that woman so! She is an idiot—an absolute idiot—& does not know it. She is sham, sham, sham—not a genuine fibre in her anywhere—a manifest & transparent humbug—& her husband, the sincerest man that walks, doesn't seem aware of it. It is a most extraordinary combination: he, fine in heart, fine in mind, fine in every conceivable way, sincere, genuine, & lovable beyond all men save only Joe Jefferson—& tied for life to this vacant hellion, this clothes-rack, this twaddling, blethering, driveling blatherskite!"
"6 hours later—Midnight. What a long interval it is that occurs between those two lines! Meantime I have been to Hutton's to dinner. No outsider there but me. A most pleasant time. A Mr. Kip, of Buffalo, came in later—fine man. But at dinner, I was still full of that detested woman and turned myself loose on her, covering up her identity very artfully, as I thought. Finally Mrs. Hutton said, 'I want to shake hands with you; she is my pet detestation, too'—& she named her. But men haven't any intuitions; Hutton had guessed wide of the mark." Though he does not reveal the lady's name in his letter, it seems that Clemens is referring to Lillian W. Aldrich, wife of writer and poet Thomas Bailey Aldrich, who served as editor of the Atlantic until 1890. In fine condition.
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