February 5 Sunday – In Florence in the evening, Sam wrote to daughter Clara:

It is lonesome, Ben, dear, and I turn to you for company. Susy has gone down town to a ball at the Countess de Something-or-other’s with Mademoiselle [Lançon]; and Jean and Mamma are gone to bed.

There’s nothing to think about, nothing to talk about, nothing to write about — so there is nothing for you and me to do but look at each other across Germany and the intervening lands and be silently sociable.

Mamma has the toothache pretty much all the time and suffers greatly. The dentist has filled one of her teeth without entirely killing the nerve. He ought to be killed himself.

Sam also told of quarreling servants, of Susy leaving her slippers in the carriage, and of a “new French book out about that ancestor of General von Versen’s who drove the carriage when Louis XVI escaped to Varennes.” Sam was hoping to get the book. Sam ended with,

There, 4 pages and nothing in it! Still, the blanks are filled, and I don’t feel so lonesome now.

Take care of yourself, Benny. Give my best regards to Mrs. Willard.

With heaps of love, / Papa [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Frederick J. Hall, having received a check for £102.8.4. Sam thanked him and expressed a wish not to draw on their letter of credit except when obliged.

I shall cable you tomorrow to leave out Ambulinia, Preface and all. If the man who wrote the Preface wrote the story too, then it’s a sell, and we can’t risk printing it. But who, then, wrote the “Oration” delivered in that Southern village? — for it is as idiotic as Ambulinia [MTLTP 339].

Note: Ambulinia Valeer and Elfonzo were the two lovers in Royston’s The Enemy Conquered; or, Love Triumphant. Calling the piece “Ambulinia” simply saved ink. The twin pieces of this work, prefaced, “The Curious Book Complete,” preceded by Sam’s parody of it (“A Cure for the Blues”) were published in The £1,000,000 Bank-Note and Other Stories (1893).

Sam also wrote to Laurence Hutton, who the Clemens children called “Uncle Larry.” Sam’s letters to Hutton were usually playful. This one’s no exception. It opened with a heading of “Feb. 6 thinkitis — bleeveitis — damsureitis /93,” under which Livy wrote in pencil, “I am perfectly shocked / O.L.C.”

All right, go on with your good times while you are young & frivolous — there’s another state of things coming. But still you do beguile us, and I shall not be surprised if we try the Nile next winter ourselves. Mrs. Clemens is full of the idea.

We are going along at the same dog-trot, with a sunny & beautiful winter for it. I’ve never enjoyed being alive more than I enjoy it now. Susy goes to balls & dances 3 hours into the Sabbath; Jean is flourishing & satisfied, Mrs. Clemens spends most of her days in the dental chair, Clara is happy in Berlin — now what more can people ask? [MTP].

Sam also wrote to his sister, Pamela Moffett after hearing from Orion that she had been ill several weeks.

Nobody seems to have good health but me, & I hadn’t last year. …It is a marvelously beautiful winter–& quiet & restful out here in the country. Livy is not very well or strong, & here lately the dentist is trying to kill her. He seems to have furnished her a permanent toothache.

I have written a ton of manuscript in the last few months. I very seldom lose a day, but to-day I was tired & took a holiday — the first time I have felt fatigue for a long time [MTP].