SIGNED SLC

MT as SLC

This sardonic Christmas greeting was sent in 1890 to Fred Hall, business manager and, because of Webster's illness, effective head of MT's publishing company. It's a good, short example of MT's temper, and his fluency in the language of vituperation; the occasion here is a lawsuit which Webster & Co. had recently lost to someone named Gill. It's also an example of the way MT most often signed letters to both Webster and Hall, younger men who worked for him: "SLC" here -- in other cases, "S.L.C." The shortest of his signatures (except when he would add a postscript to a letter intended for publication and sign the addendum "M.T.") it seems to me to have been used most often when he felt surest of his authority.

TRANSCRIPT OF LETTER
1890 LETTER TO FRED HALL: PAGE 2






YOURS TRULY HOMEPAGE