November 10 Sunday – In Hartford Sam wrote to his niece, eighteen-year-old Julia Langdon (daughter of Charles J. Langdon) now in Geneva, Switzerland with her family.

Thank you ever so much for your stirring letter from Paris, & the vivid glimpse you gave us of our mightily — prized & gratefully remembered guide, Joseph Very….

      Julie, it distresses me to know the family have settled in Geneva — but only on your father’s account. It will take years of endeavor to persuade him to leave there. You must try to keep him away from some of the sights there — some of the most exciting & intoxicating ones, I mean.

Sam recommended Julie “rush him out of there — quick!” or he’d never leave [MTP]. Note: Joseph Verey was the Clemens family guide during their 1878-9 European trip. Katy Leary, in her memoirs, A Lifetime with Mark Twain (1925) writes,

“They called him Joseph Very. But that really wasn’t his own name. It was some awful Russian name — nobody could pronounce it, but he named himself ‘Very,’ because he said all the Americans were always saying ‘very’ to everything — it was ‘very nice, very good, very beautiful, very big,’ so he thought as long as that was a word they all liked so much, he’d just take it himself for his own name, and he did — called himself Joseph Very — which was kind of sensible to him, I think” [Lawton 122-3].

In Cambridge, Mass., William Dean Howells wrote about seeing a play of his novel, A Foregone Conclusion. (See MTHL 2: 619n1 about this play.)

They give it this week on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday nights; and we shall be glad if you can come for the whole week, or any part of it. Just telegraph me at Belmont, Mass., what day to expect you. / Last night, I read your last chapter [CY]. As Stedman says of the whole book, it’s Titanic [2:618-19].

Howells also wrote a postcard, which was not mailed until Thursday, Nov. 14:

I expect to start for Hartford at four o’clock Saturday afternoon. Stop me if you can’t bear it [MTHL 2: 618]. Note: This may be misdated and related to W.D.H.’s Nov. 2-3 visit, since the Clemenses were in N.Y. later in the week, returning home on Saturday.

Thomas Getufaugit wrote on M.S. Gibson Co., Portland, Maine letterhead to Sam, though he signed off as from “Temple Court, N.Y.” Thomas was soliciting a “first class line of ‘A-one’ affidavits,” for what purpose isn’t entirely clear [MTP].