Of course, the reference to his wife's criticism in this is tenderly
playful, as always—of a pattern with the severity which he pretends
for her in the next.
To Mrs. W. D. Howells, in Boston:
1875
DEAR MRS. HOWELLS,—Mrs. Clemens is delighted to get the pictures, and so am I. I can perceive in the group, that Mr. Howells is feeling as I so often feel, viz: “Well, no doubt I am in the wrong, though I do not know how or where or why—but anyway it will be safest to look meek, and walk circumspectly for a while, and not discuss the thing.” And you look exactly as Mrs. Clemens does after she has said, “Indeed I do not wonder that you can frame no reply: for you know only too well, that your conduct admits of no excuse, palliation or argument—none!”
I shall just delight in that group on account of the good old human domestic spirit that pervades it—bother these family groups that put on a state aspect to get their pictures taken in.
We want a heliotype made of our eldest daughter. How soft and rich and lovely the picture is. Mr. Howells must tell me how to proceed in the matter.
Truly Yours
SAM. L. CLEMENS.
In the next letter we have a picture of Susy—[This spelling of the
name was adopted somewhat later and much preferred. It appears as
“Susie” in most of the earlier letters.]—Clemens's third birthday,
certainly a pretty picture, and as sweet and luminous and tender
today as it was forty years ago-as it will be a hundred years hence,
if these lines should survive that long. The letter is to her uncle
Charles Langdon, the “Charlie” of the Quaker City. “Atwater” was
associated with the Langdon coal interests in Elmira. “The play”
is, of course, “The Gilded Age.”