Mark Twain Humorously Accepts Invitation "all shaved & fixed up...innocent amusements, or crime, or anything that is going."

This letter by Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel L. Clemens, accepts an invitation to a friend's home on June 16, but his wife Olivia needed to remain home to continue packing trunks. Clemens promised to attend, "all shaved & fixed up" and ready for "innocent amusements, or crime, or anything that is going." The recipient is likely Eliza Robinson (1833-1916), the wife of Henry C. Robinson (1835-1900), a Yale graduate, attorney, and former mayor of Hartford (1872-1874). The Robinsons were close friends of the Clemens.

SAMUEL L. CLEMENS / MARK TWAIN, Autograph Letter Signed, to Mrs. Robinson, June 16, [ca. 1883], [Hartford, Connecticut]. 2 pp., 4.5" x 7". Tape residue on extreme edge of second page from prior mounting; bold signature.

Complete Transcript
Dear Mrs. Robinson:
This extremity of the family accepts, with the greatest pleasure, but the other end of it has been packing trunks for two or three days, & still has twenty-four hours of the same recreation before her; therefore she is obliged to stay home this evening, which she greatly regrets. But I shall be there, all shaved & fixed up, beyond expression, & ready to engage in innocent amusements, or crime, or anything that is going.
Yours sincerely
S. L. Clemens (for us both.)
June 16.

Ex. Autograph book of Detroit pianist Kathleen S. Trowbridge, the volume is the result of a lifetime of collecting. She obtained most from her own correspondence or attendance at musical and theatrical performances in Detroit, but she also benefited from private school teachers who wrote to prominent acquaintances and received signatures for Trowbridge and the generosity of descendants of Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan. Her cousin Donald M. Dickinson was Postmaster General during the second Grover Cleveland administration, giving Trowbridge access to the White House, where she gained a letter from First Lady Frances Cleveland and access to other influential people. Many other items and the balance of the book are included in this auction.

Historical Background
Samuel L. Clemens and his family lived in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1874 to 1891, but they often spent a part or all of the summers in Elmira, New York, at the Quarry Farm home of his sister-in-law Susan Crane. This letter was likely written before one of their annual relocations from Hartford to Elmira.

In June 1891, Samuel L. Clemens, better known by his pen name of Mark Twain, and his family left their home in Hartford, Connecticut. Except for a few visits to the United States on business and a portion of an around-the-world tour, Clemens remained abroad until 1900. In mid-June, before Twain's departure, the New York Sun announced that they had paid him for a series of letters from Europe "the largest sum ever offered in the history of journalism in this country or any other."

Samuel L. Clemens / Mark Twain (1835-1910) was born in Florida, Missouri, and grew up in nearby Hannibal on the banks of the Mississippi River, a boyhood he described in Life on the Mississippi (1883). His father, an attorney and judge, died with Clemens was 11. The following year, he became a printer's apprentice. When he was 18, he worked as a printer in New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, educating himself at public libraries in the evenings. He then began training to be a pilot on Mississippi River steamboats and worked as a pilot until the Civil War began. He briefly enlisted in a local Confederate unit for two weeks, then left for Nevada to work for his brother Orion Clemens, who was secretary of the Nevada Territory, an experience he described in Roughing It (1872). Clemens mined on the Comstock Lode in Virginia City but failed and worked for a local newspaper and first began using the pen name Mark Twain in 1863. He moved to San Francisco in 1864 and achieved his first literary success with "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" in November 1865. In 1867, a local newspaper funded his trip to Europe and the Middle East, which he chronicled in a collection of travel letters published as The Innocents Abroad (1869). In 1870, he married Olivia Langdon (1845-1904), and they lived in Buffalo, New York, where he worked for a local newspaper and wrote. The couple had one son and three daughters. Their son died as an infant. In 1873, they moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where he wrote many of his classic novels, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889). In the 1870s and 1880s, the Clemens family spent their summers in Elmira, New York, where Olivia's sister Susan Crane lived. Twain was deeply interested in science and technology and held three patents, including a successful one for a self-pasting scrapbook, which sold more than 25,000 units. Though he earned a substantial amount from his writings, he lost a great deal of it through poor investments. In 1891, Clemens moved his family to Europe in June 1891. He embarked on a year-long around-the-world lecture tour in July 1895 to pay off his creditors and returned to England in July 1896. Clemens and his family returned to the United States in 1900 and settled in Manhattan. The deaths of two of his daughters and his wife between 1896 and 1909 sent him into an extended period of depression.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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