7 January 1869 • Chicago, Ill. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00224)
Chicago, Jan. 7.
My Dear dear dear dear dear dear dear Livy—(that is the tamest word Ⓐemendation that ever I saw—you have to repeat it 6 or 7 Ⓐemendation seven times to make it express anything)—I shall heap some more newspaper abuse on this house when I get a chance. It does them good. They give me their best room, now, & treat me like a lord.1explanatory note
I am tired again, Livy. There were many visitors in, during the afternoon, & I got no chance to lie down & rest. This is the tenth letter I have written since I finished the lecture to-night. {They want me to lecture here again 2explanatory note I Ⓐemendation have to write these letters—there isn’t any getting around it—they are answers to letters received. But don’t you know, I was so disappointed, when they gave me a batch of letters today & I ran them over & found not a line from you. No—not disappointed, because exact I had felt just as sure as I could be, that a letter would reach Cleveland after I left, & be re-mailed to Chicago. But bless your old heart, you are just as good as you can be, & I forgive you. Forgive you, indeed!—I am all gratitude to you for what you do write.
I have a religious experience (Indianapolis) to tell you about, when I see you—I can’t write it, well.3explanatory note Considering that I must get up & Ⓐemendation start at 7 in the morning on a 9-hour railway Ⓐemendation trip, I had better be getting to bed.4explanatory note I was ever so smart, to write last to you, to-night, Livy—otherwise those other letters never would have been written. I wrote you from Rockford, last night—did you get it? I sent a porter to mail the letter.
You won’t need a long letter from me to-night, for I enclose a couple to make up. Now perhaps I ought not to have begge asked Mrs. Fairbanks to write you, because it is so fatiguing & troublesome to you to write letters, & you have so much of it to do. But in about a week you must answer her letter—& you will, won’t you? She is a noble, good woman. I am enclo I will spare you just one day to write her—no more—all the other days you must write to me, Livy dear. I am going to enclose her to-days note in this, whether she likes it or not—I like it.
Livy, please put Cleveland, Jan. 22, & Norwalk, Ohio, Jan. 21, in the list of lectures I left you.
The other enclosed letter is from a most estimable young lady whose friendship I acquired in St Louis two years ago. She is a thorough Christian. She was a near ne a near neighbors Ⓐemendation of ours, & my mother & sister are very fond of her, & of all her family.5explanatory note The letter won’t interest you, but I thought I would send it because it would be such a good hint to you to send me all the letters which young gentlemen may chance to write to you, Livy—{& then I will go & break their necks for them!}
I am going to bed, now, for I am in a hurry to get to Monmouth, where I know I shall get a letter from you. Leaving you in the loving protection of the Savior, & the gentle guardianship of the angels, I bid you good-bye, & kiss you good-night, my darling Livy.
enclosure:
{Preceding this was a formal invitation to lecture for the orphans in Cleveland, Ⓐemendation.} 6explanatory note
There—Have n’t I done that properly? but it is painful this being parlai amentary. It would suit Col. Kinney but not me. 7explanatory note
Mr. Fairbanks sent your shirts to Chicago Monday—We miss you—all of us, but when I feel quite dreary, I go up and open your door to regale my senses with the still lingering perfume of your cigars—
“You may break, you may miss the vase if you will But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.” 8explanatory noteTouchingly appropriate— {Isn’t that plaintive, Livy?}
Allie 9explanatory note is quite as inconsolable as Hattie Lewis ., whose comical estimate of your devotion amuses me exceedingly. 10explanatory note I shall write to Livy in the morning—but I’m a goose to do it, for what could I say that she end of page
on back of letter as folded:
Miss Olivia L. Langdon
Present.
Politeness of Charlie.
docketed by OLL: 23rd
Clemens had described his recent stay at the Sherman House in a letter published on 15 November 1868 in the San Francisco Alta California. The letter, or at least this part of it, was widely reprinted by such newspapers as the New York Tribune (17 Dec 68, 8), the Iowa City State Democratic Press (6 Jan 69, 1), and the Indianapolis Journal (7 Jan 69, 6):
I will remark, in passing, that the Sherman House is a good hotel, but I have seen better. They gave me a room there, away up, I do not know exactly how high, but water boils up there at 168⁰. I went up in a dumb waiter which was attached to a balloon. It was not a suitable place for a bedchamber, but it was a promising altitude for an observatory. The furniture consisted of a table, a camp stool, a wash-bowl, a German Dictionary and a patent medicine Almanac for 1842. I do not know whether there was a bed or not—I didn’t notice. (SLC 1868)
The Sherman House was designed in 1861 by “the supreme architect of the Chicago hotel, William Boyington.” It “rose up in six stories of finely cut Athens marble, could accommodate 300 guests, and always had an orchestra playing in its grand dining room.” The imposing structure had “a frontage of one hundred and eighty feet on Clark Street and one hundred fifty on Randolph Street” and cost, with furnishings, half a million dollars. It was destroyed by fire in 1871 (Lowe, 66, 95, 114; Masters, 111).
Under the auspices of the Young Men’s Library Association, Clemens had delivered his “American Vandal Abroad” lecture in Library Hall to an audience the Chicago Times called “quite large” and “very select.” Noting that Mark Twain had gained “the title of ‘The American Humorist,’” the Times reviewer nevertheless unsmilingly reported his assurance “that he used the word vandal, not in its harsher meaning, but as representing an individual who was a jolly, good-natured, companionable adventurer, who is at home everywhere, and delivered his opinions with a perfect freedom and innocence.” This critic noticed that the
recital was interspersed with anecdotes, comparisons, and incidents, which were highly interesting, and frequently utterly ridiculous and absurd. At other times the audience were enraptured with the charming oratorical powers of the speaker. ... The lecture through-out was one of Mark-ed ability, and was listened to by a delighted audience. (“The American Vandal Abroad,” Chicago Times, 8 Jan 69, 3)
Clemens next lectured in Chicago, on “Roughing It,” in December 1871 (Fatout 1960, 166–67).
Nothing has been learned about Clemens’s “religious experience.” He had lectured in Metropolitan Hall in Indianapolis, under the auspices of the Young Men’s Library Association, on 4 January.
On 8 January Clemens traveled from Chicago to Monmouth, Illinois, about 170 miles to the southwest, presumably on the “Day Express and Mail” of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, which departed at 7:30 a.m. He lectured in Monmouth that evening, in Hardin’s Hall, under the aegis of the Quaternion Association (“Railroad Time-Table,” Chicago Times, 8 Jan 69, 3; “Mark Twain,” Monmouth Review, 8 Jan 69, 2; Wallace, 14–16).
This enclosure does not survive. It was a letter from Louisa (Lou) Conrad, whom Clemens had met in March 1867 while he was in St. Louis visiting his family ( L2 , 18 n. 1, 19 n. 3, 26 n. 6). She evidently was no longer living there (see 14 Jan 69 to PAMclick to open link).
See 7 Jan 69 to Mary Mason Fairbanks and others, n.1click to open link. The page enclosed with the present letter is the only part of Mrs. Fairbanks’s original 5 January letter known to survive.
Peter Kinney from Portsmouth, Ohio, had been one of the Quaker City excursionists. He had served during the Civil War as a colonel in the Fifty-sixth Ohio Infantry ( L2 , 387; Heitman, 2:118).
The concluding lines of one of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies: “Farewell!—But Whenever You Welcome the Hour” (1813). Mrs. Fairbanks wrote “miss” for Moore’s “ruin”; Moore himself had ultimately revised “ruin” to “shatter” (Moore: 1820, 131; 1829, 299–300, 302; 1833, 232–33; 1851, 1:43).
Alice Holmes Fairbanks.
While visiting Mrs. Fairbanks in Cleveland, Clemens doubtless had spoken to her about Harriet (Hattie) Lewis’s part in his courtship of Olivia—and may even have shown her the letter from Lewis to which he replied on 10 January.
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK). A photographic facsimile of the letter is on pp. 516–22. Clemens’s MS consists of five leaves (torn from folders) of blue-lined onionskin, approximately 5⅛ by 8 1/16 inches, inscribed on the rectos only in black ink. His enclosure, from Mary Mason Fairbanks’s 5 January 1869 letter to him, consists of one sheet (torn from a folder) of blue-lined off-white wove paper, 5 1/16 by 8⅛ inches, inscribed by Fairbanks on the recto in purple ink and by Clemens on the recto and verso in black ink.
L3 , 18–21; LLMT , 356, brief paraphrase; MTMF , 64, brief excerpt.
see Samossoud Collection, p. 586.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.