December 22 Monday – In London, Sam wrote twice to Livy. Though the first letter was mentioned in Vol. I, no excerpt was given, and the second, a short note on George MacDonald’s of Dec. 19, was not listed. A recent item for sale on eBay, hitherto unknown, leads to the addition of this entire first letter and a picture of the “dragon” item. Sam to Livy:

Livy my darling, this is Monday. Yesterday I said it had been more than a week since I had heard from you; Stoddard said, no, just a week; but that letters would come today. When I woke this morning & was going to turn over & take another nap, I remembered that there would doubtless be letters. So I got up at once & dressed. There were two, my child—one about Dr Browne’s [sic Brown’s] “Margaret” & the other about Mrs. Cowan & the private theatricals at the ladies club, & all that gossip—which is exactly what I like. I have always contended that Ma was the best letter-writer in the world, because she threw such an atmosphere of her locality & her surroundings into her letters that her reader was transported to her, & by the magic of her pen moved among creatures of living flesh & blood;, talked with them, hoped & feared & suffered with them.

      I’ll look up the Thackeray & Dickens. And as Finlay leaves for Belfast tomorrow he shall take the order for the dragon [see insert, Belleek Dragon teapot], & then I will get it when I lecture there.

      I’ve got 7 razors all in one box, with the days of the week marked on them. That is to give each razor a week’s rest, which is the next best thing to stropping it. Stoddard, Finlay & I are to dine with the Dolby to-night at the Westminster Club & I reckon we’ll have a pretty good time (now here’s that Punch & Judy devil just struck up on his drum over by the church railings—but it is a dark, rainy day & he won’t take a trick.)

Another Tichborne case—no, I mean a case of mistaken identity. Finlay & I started out for a walk yesterday afternoon—met a very young & very handsome [man] within 5 steps of the door, who looked at me as if he knew me, & I looked at him, not expecting to know him, but instantly recognizing the fact that I had seen the face somewhere before.

      Very well. I kept telling Finlay I knew that face—& by & by, when we were well up Portland Place, I said “Now I’ve got it!—it is the young Lord MacDuff pre who presided at a Morayshire Banquet in Regent street the other night.”

      Very good again. Half an hour later, in Regent’s Park we met a lady whom Finlay knew,—she was giving 3 or 4 of her children an airing. We walked with her an hour, then went to her house in Harley street (the “Long, unlovely street” of Tennyson In Memoriam) to drink a glass of wine—sat there half an hour, when in comes that same man we met before the hotel (Finlay nodded to me as much as to say, “Here he is again”) & then, lo & behold you he was introduced to us as The “Lord Arthur Hill,” (and, in a whisper, “heir to the Marquis of Downshire.”) I studied the fellow all over for more than half an hour, & there was no difference between the two men except that the hair of one was wavy & that of the other was not. The Mac Duff is a Scotchman, but this chap is Irish, born close to Belfast & is heir to one of those mighty estates there that Finlay tell told us of, with 40 miles extent & 60,000 population. It was a curious case, all around, considering the exceeding scarcity of lords. / I love you, my child [MTPO]. 

Notes: Sylvester Judd’s Margaret: A Tale of the Real and Ideal, Blight and Bloom (1845) is likely the book Livy wrote Dr. John Brown about locating, her letter not extant (see Gribben 361); Mrs. Sidney J. Cowan, president of the Union for Home Work; The “dragon” Belleek teapot was for sale on eBay in Feb. 2009, Item 150323635050, for $15,000; the insert is a picture of an identical item. See other notes for this letter on MTPO.

Sam’s second note to Livy was one line on the back of George MacDonald’s Dec. 19 invitation: “Just wrote you a moment ago, Livy dear, / Dec. 22 / Saml” [MTL 1: 531]. Note: See Dec. 19 in addenda items for MacDonald’s letter.

Routledge & Sons published The Gilded Age in London.

The New York Herald wasted no time in reviewing GA:

Upon the title page the authors emphatically announce it as “a tale of to-day.” But it is so in none of the senses in which the phrase is appropriately employed….Neither of them has yet given evidence that he could command an interesting plot, the conduct of which would develop lifelike characters. Each of them, however, has expressed his talents in a method eminently pleasing….We admit that something unusual has been produced—something unusually clever, too—only it is not, strictly speaking, a tale…(“American Satire” p.6) [Budd, Reviews 117].

Sam, Frank Finlay and others went to a humorous reading called “Happy Thoughts” by Sir Francis Cowley Burnand (1836-1917) [MTL 5: 532]. Later, Sam gave his dinner speech to a small gathering at the Westminster Club, London [MTL 5: 526 paraphrased].