17 January 1869 • Chicago, Ill. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00234)
I am uncomfortably lame this morning. I slipped on the ice & fell, yesterday, in Iowa City, just as I was stepping into an omnibus. I landed with all my weight on my left hip, & so the joint is rather stiff & sore this morning.
I have just been doing that thing which is sometimes so hard to do—making an apology. Yesterday morning, at the hotel in Iowa City, the landlord called me at 9 o’clock, & it made me so mad I stormed at him with some little violence. I tried for an hour to go to sleep again & couldn’t—I wanted that sleep particularly, because I wanted to write a certain thing that would require a clear head & choice language.1explanatory note Finally I thought a cup of coffee might help the matter, & was going to ring for it—no bell. I was mad again. When I did get the landlord up there at last, by slamming the door till I annoyed everybody on my floor, I showed temper again—& he didn’t. See the advantage it gave him. His mild replies shamed me into silence, but I was still too obstinate, too proud, to ask his pardon. But last night, in the cars, the more I thought of it the more I repented & the more ashamed I was; & so resolved to make the repentance good by apologizing—which I have done, in the most ample & unmincing form, by letter, this morning. I feel satisfied & jolly, now.2explanatory note
“Sicisiors” don’t spell scissors, you funny little orthographist. But I don’t care how you spell, Livy darling—your words are always dear to me, no matter how they are spelt. And I Ⓐemendation if I fancied you were taking pains, or putting yourself to trouble to spell them right, I shouldn’t like it at all. If your spelling is never criticised till I criticise it, it will never be criticised at all. I do wish I could have been at the birthday dinner.3explanatory note All that, & the paragraphs about your conversations were just as pleasant as they could be—& yet you thought it was foolish to write them. I am glad enough that you didn’t mark them out. It was a good, long, pleasant letter, & I thank you ever so much for it. I can easily see that Mr. Beecher was preaching upon a subject that was near his heart.4explanatory note People can always talk well when they are talking what they FEEL. This is the secret of eloquence . Ⓐemendation —I wish you could hear my mother, sometimes. In the cars, the other day I bought a volume of remarkable sermons—they are from the pen & pulpit Ⓐemendation of Rev. Geo. Collyer, of Chicago. I like them very much. One or two of them will easily explain the Christian history of the sea Captain’s wife of whom you wrote me. These sermon’s Ⓐemendation lack the profundity, the microscopic insight into the hidden secret springs & impulses of the human heart, & the searching analysis of text & subject which distinguish Henry Wards Beecher’s wonderful sermons, but they they are more polished, more poetical, more elegant, more rhetorical, & more dainty & felicitous in wording than those. I will send you the book before long.5explanatory note
Now am I not going to get a letter at Norwalk, Ohio, (Jan. 21,) nor Cleveland, (Jan. 22.)? I do hope I wrote you of those appointments, but I am a little afraid I didn’t.6explanatory note
Your Iowa City letter came near missing—it arrived in the same train with me.
It was just like Mr. Langdon in his most facetious mood, to say he would kill me if I wasn’t good to you—& it was just like you, you dear true girl, to say you’d never tell—for I believe you would go bravely on, suffering in secret from ill-treatment, till your great heart broke. But we shall circumvent Mr. Langdon, utterly—he never will have the satisfaction of killing me—because you & I will live together always in closest love & harmony, & I shall be always good to you, Livy dear—always. And whenever he needs a a Ⓐemendation model married couple to mo copy after, he will only have to come & spend a few weeks at our home & we will educate him. He will see me honor you above all women, & he will also see us love each other to the utmost of human capability. So he can just put up his tomahawk & wash off his war-paint. He won’t have to kill me—will he, Livy?
So I am to be three days without a letter. I don’t like that much. It comes so naturall to get a letter from you every two days that I shall feel odd without one this evening. I am so bound up in you, & you are in my thoughts so constantly by day & in my dreams by night, & you have become so completely a part of my life—of my very flesh & blood & bone, as it were—that I shall feel lost, to-day while this temporary interruption of communication lasts. Ⓐemendation —I shall feel as if the currents of life have ceased to flow in some part of my frame, having been checked in some mysterious way. Oh, I do love you, Livy! You are so unspeakably dear to me, Livy.
I am to start for Sparta, Wisconsin, at 4 PM., to-day. And I am to talk in Franklin, Pa., Feb. 14, Ⓐemendation & in Titusville, (Pa., I suppose,) Feb. 15—the New York appointment is changed.7explanatory note
Give my loving duty to your father & mother,—please, & tender my savage regards to Miss Lewis & Charlie. And I wish that you would remember me most kindly to Mr. & Mrs. Crane when you write. I like Mr. Crane—I never have seen anything whatever about him to dislike—& you know one can’t help liking Mrs. Crane.8explanatory note
Have you got a good picture yet, Livy?—because I want it so badly. Good-bye. Reverently & lovingly I kiss your forehead & your lips, my darling Livy, & wish you rest, & peace, & happy dreams.
Charlie, this makes about twenty-five letters I have directed to you—& you have been faithful in answering in the same way—that is, in directing | centered and boxed on its own line: Miss Olivia L. Langdon. | letters to me written by other people—& a little more interesting than if you had written them yourself, my boy.
9explanatory notedocketed by OLL: 28th
Possibly the special conclusion Clemens added to his benefit lecture for the Cleveland Protestant Orphan Asylum on 22 January: see 5 Feb 69 to Fairbanks, n. 4click to open link.
S.B. Sanford managed the recently refurbished Clinton House for its owners, E. Clark and Thomas Hill (“The Clinton House,” Iowa City Republican, 2 Dec and 23 Dec 68, 3). Clemens’s letter apologizing to Sanford is not known to survive. His offending show of temper occurred on 16 January, the morning after he opened the season’s lecture course for the Young Men’s Christian Association at Iowa City’s Metropolitan Hall. The Iowa City Republican denounced both performances:
The Vandal in Iowa City.—A splendid audience turned out to hear Mark Twain discourse about “The Vandal abroad,” and we fear were generally disappointed. As a lecture it was a humbug. As an occasion for laughter on very small capital of wit or ideas it was a success. There were one or two passages of some merit. His apostrophe to the Sphinx was decidedly good, as was also his description of the ruins of the Parthenon, and of Athens by moonlight. Some touches of Venice did very well, but it was impossible to know when he was talking in earnest and when in burlesque. It was amusing and interesting to see such a crowd of people laughing together, even though we knew half of them were ashamed that they were laughing at such very small witticisms. We were very much disappointed that there was so little substance to his lecture. We would not give two cents to hear him again.
But, lest he might not have succeeded with his “Vandal Abroad,” he illustrated the character at the Clinton House, where he stopped. The morning after the lecture nothing was seen of him up to nine o’clock, and the landlord, in his kindness, went to his room to see if he might not be in want of something, but received a storm of curses and abuse for disturbing him. Of course the landlord retreated and left him. After a while a terrible racket was heard and unearthly screams, which frightened the women of the house. The landlord rushed to the room and there found a splendid specimen of the vandal and his works. There, before him, was the veritable animal, with his skin on at least, but not much else, and in a towering rage. He had kicked the fastenings from the door, not deigning to open it in the usual way—that would have been too much like other folks. He poured upon the landlord another torrent of curses, impudence and abuse. He demanded to know where the bell-pull was. The landlord told him they were not yet up, as they had not yet got the house fully completed. His kicking the door open and his lung performance were his substitute for a bell. At two o’clock P.M. he had not dressed, and whether he did before he left on the five o’clock train we did not learn. The Y.M.C.A. were wretchedly imposed upon by Mark Twain, and so of course were the audience. He is the only one engaged for the course whose personal character was unknown. (20 Jan 69, 3)
The same newspaper, in another column, reported that “Mark Twain netted the Y.M.C.A. $130 and yet they did not re-engage him.” The Iowa City State Democratic Press, also on 20 January, confined its remarks to his lecture performance, calling it a success and declaring that his humor was “quite original and his sentiment, though mostly borrowed from Alexander Kinglake’s ‘Eothen’ a work published in 1845, was yet well rendered. The attendance was good and the Y.M.C.A. realized handsomely” (“Twain’s lecture . . . ,” 3; Lorch 1929, 513–17). A later review in the monthly University Reporter, although generally favorable, concluded: “We came away feeling a satisfaction that we had heard and seen the man whose fun we have read, but dissatisfied in this, that we had heard so much that we never care to hear again. It is sad to know that so much power and genius as he possesses are not the instruments for accomplishing a holier purpose than is exemplified by the man’s life” (1 Feb 69: 74).
For Jervis Langdon’s sixtieth birthday, on 11 January.
Olivia must have described a sermon that Thomas K. Beecher had delivered on Sunday, 10 January, but no text for it has been found.
Clemens discussed the “sea-Captain’s wife” in his letter of 14 January to Olivia (p. 40). The book was Nature and Life: Sermons by Robert Collyer (Boston: Horace B. Fuller, 1867), which had gone through eight editions by this time. Robert Collyer (1823–1912) was an English-born former blacksmith and Methodist lay-preacher who had been ordained a Unitarian minister and served as pastor of Unity Church, in Chicago, from 1859 until 1879. Clemens soon sent his book to Olivia (see 26 and 27 Jan 69 to OLLclick to open link, p. 78).
Clemens had, in fact, mentioned these appointments at least twice: see 7 Jan 69click to open link (from Chicago) and 14 Jan 69, both to OLLclick to open link.
The New York City lecture for 15 February was canceled and the two Pennsylvania lectures were rescheduled (see the Lecture Schedule, 1868–1870click to open link).
Susan Langdon Crane (1836–1924), Olivia’s foster sister, was born Susan Dean. Her mother, Mary Andrus Dean, died in 1837 and her father, Elijah Dean, three years later, and Susan and her three siblings were adopted by various families. Susan’s husband, Theodore, was one of Jervis Langdon’s principal business associates. In May 1870, when Langdon reorganized his coal firm as J. Langdon and Company, Crane became one of his partners (Sharlow; “In Memoriam,” Elmira Saturday Evening Review, 13 Aug 70, 5).
See 2 Jan 69 to OLL, n. 12click to open link. Clemens crowded in the note to Charlie, both above and below Olivia’s name, which he had written first, then boxed.
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L3 , 45–49; Wecter 1947, 38, with omissions; LLMT , 52–55.
see Samossoud Collection, p. 586.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.