MT as SLC/MARK

This 1886 letter to E.H. House, an old friend of MT's and familiar of the Clemens family, shows MT's conscience in characteristically fine form. Written on "Jean's Birthday," it also gives a glimpse into domestic life in the big Hartford house, including private theatricals of The Prince and the Pauper. But it's most interesting for the signature, which dramatizes the kind of choice MT, as a person with so many ways of referring to himself, had to make at the close of a letter. He originally signed this one "SLC," but then decided -- and I wish I knew why -- that he should be "Mark" instead, and so blotted "SLC" and wrote "Mark" right over that cancelled identity. There are many letters to House in the Barrett Collection; most, but not all, are signed "Mark." I'm not sure that explains, however, why he changed referents in this case -- i.e. why "SLC" was wrong and "Mark" was right for this letter.

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