Details
5CLEMENS, SAMUEL L. ("Mark Twain"). Autograph letter signed ("Saml") ÿto his wife, Livy Clemens, Hotel d'Europe, Avignon, 8.p.m., 28 September [l891]. 4 pages, large 8vo, in pencil on pale green stationery, with original envelope addressed by Clemens to Livy (in Ouchy, near Lausanne), 3/4 of page 3 browned from contact with the brown-paper envelope.
REMEMBERING THE DAWN OVER THE MISSISSIPPI
"It is early to be in bed, but I am always abed before 9....If I ever take such a trip again, I will have myself called at the first tinge of dawn & get to sea as soon after as possible. The early dawn on the water, nothing can be finer, as I know by old Mississippi experience.
"I did so long for you & Sue [Susy Clemens, their eldest daughter] yesterday morning! The most superb sunrise! The most marvelous sunrise! & I saw it all, from the very faintest suspicion of the coming dawn all the way through to the final explosion of glory. But it had an interest private to itself & not to be found elsewhere in the world; for between me & it, in the far distance eastward, was a silouetted mountain range in which I had discovered, the previous afternoon, a most noble face upturned to the sky, & mighty form outstretched, which I had named Napoleon Dreaming of Universal Empire -- & now, this prodigious face, soft, rich, blue, spirituelle, asleep, tranquil, reposeful, lay against that giant conflagration of ruddy & golden splendors all rayed like a wheel with the upstreaming & far-reaching lances of the sun. It made one want to cry for delight it was so supreme in its unimaginable majesty & beauty.
"We had a curious experience to-day.... We got lost. We ceased to encounter any villager or ruin mentioned in our particularized & detailed Guide of the Rhone -- went drifting along by the hour in a wholly unknown land & an uncharted river! Confound it we stopped talking & did nothing but stand up in the boat & search the horizons with the glass & wonder what in the devil had happened. And at the last, away yonder...when some vast towers & fortresses hove in sight we couldn't recognize them for Avignon, yet we knew by the broken bridge that it was Avignon....We shall leave here tomorrow & float down to Arles, arriving about dark, & there bid good-bye to to the boat, the river trip finished...."
REMEMBERING THE DAWN OVER THE MISSISSIPPI
"It is early to be in bed, but I am always abed before 9....If I ever take such a trip again, I will have myself called at the first tinge of dawn & get to sea as soon after as possible. The early dawn on the water, nothing can be finer, as I know by old Mississippi experience.
"I did so long for you & Sue [Susy Clemens, their eldest daughter] yesterday morning! The most superb sunrise! The most marvelous sunrise! & I saw it all, from the very faintest suspicion of the coming dawn all the way through to the final explosion of glory. But it had an interest private to itself & not to be found elsewhere in the world; for between me & it, in the far distance eastward, was a silouetted mountain range in which I had discovered, the previous afternoon, a most noble face upturned to the sky, & mighty form outstretched, which I had named Napoleon Dreaming of Universal Empire -- & now, this prodigious face, soft, rich, blue, spirituelle, asleep, tranquil, reposeful, lay against that giant conflagration of ruddy & golden splendors all rayed like a wheel with the upstreaming & far-reaching lances of the sun. It made one want to cry for delight it was so supreme in its unimaginable majesty & beauty.
"We had a curious experience to-day.... We got lost. We ceased to encounter any villager or ruin mentioned in our particularized & detailed Guide of the Rhone -- went drifting along by the hour in a wholly unknown land & an uncharted river! Confound it we stopped talking & did nothing but stand up in the boat & search the horizons with the glass & wonder what in the devil had happened. And at the last, away yonder...when some vast towers & fortresses hove in sight we couldn't recognize them for Avignon, yet we knew by the broken bridge that it was Avignon....We shall leave here tomorrow & float down to Arles, arriving about dark, & there bid good-bye to to the boat, the river trip finished...."