13 and 14 February 1869 • Ravenna, Ohio (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00250)
I am able Ⓐemendation to inform the blessedest girl in all the world that the lecture to-night Ⓐemendation was a complete success—& they said, as usual, that it was the largest audience of the season, a thing that necessarily gratifies me, for you know one naturally likes to be popular. And it is Saturday night, too—think of it!—& I need not hide to-morrow Ⓐemendation, but can go to church morning & evening. Somehow I don’t often make a Saturday success.
Now wasn’t it rascally to badger Fairbanks so much for not telegraphing me about the Alliance lecture, when I was cordially glad, all the time Ⓐemendation when I thought it over, that he didn’t? Because if he had done it we could not have knelt in the presence of God & bound ourselves together that night, my Livy.1explanatory note I didn’t badger him much, though, & showed no ill humor.
L Ⓐemendation I love you, Livy.—Ⓐemendationindeed I do love you, Livy Good-nightⒶemendation—I love you beyond all expression, Livy—it is strange I never thought to tell you before. But I do love you, darling. remainder in ink
Sunday—It rained this morning, & was muddy. I attended the Congregational church—Rev. Mr. Mason. He is florid & flowery, & full of talk, & very disjointed & incoherent. I never made out what he was driving at.2explanatory note You could have done it, just as unerringly as you unravel the marvelous ravings of old Mother Browning—now I beg pardon, Livy, with a kiss—you know I am learning to love Browning, but I can’t altogether help poking fun at her a little. I shall always have an affection for Browning because she exhibits your brains so well. It always makes me proud of you when you assault one of her impenetrable sentences & tear off its shell & bring its sense to light.3explanatory note Well, as I was saying, Mr. Mason talked, & talked, & talked, without rhyme or reason—but at last he said something. He showed how trifling all the plans & thoughts & deeds of this summer-day’s life of ours were, & of how little real use, unless they were woven into a ladder to scale the heavens with—& how worse than frivolous it is to live only for this world & its blessings. That Ⓐemendation started a train of thought—or rather it resurrected a train of thought which has been dwelling in my mind for many weeks, & growing more & more comprehensible & more & more tangible day by day. So the sermon was not lost. I don’t know whether I shall go to church again to-night or not. This is my ninth letter, & I have some more to write.4explanatory note
I am about written out—but then this is St. Valentine’s Day, & I must give the greetings of the occasion to the darling little woman who has lifted the clouds from my firmament & made it glad with sunshine. I must lay at her feet a life which she has reclaimed from its waste & its worthlessness & made valuable; I must consecrate to her the worldly ambitions which were aimless till she gave them ob Ⓐemendation an object, a direction, a goal to be attained; I must offer a prayer for the dear heart that first taught my lips to pray; I must beseech Jesus to bless her who has so blessed me; I must take my noble Livy to my arms, & this day, of all days in the year, & swear to love, honor & cherish her, through joy & sorrow, through pleasure & pain, through sun & storm, & toil & scheme & labor for her, with hand & brain, by day & by night, all the years of my life, till the shadows of that evening whose sun rises only in eternity, shall close around me., & thicken into the long night of death. God shield you, & love you & bless you always, my darling!
You will see by the enclosed note from Gen. Hawley, that he w Ⓐemendation does not wish to say anything of a definite nature until he can consult with his partner, Mr. Warner.5explanatory note I look more & more favorably upon the idea of living in Hartford, & feel less & less inclined to wed my fortunes to a trimming, time-serving, policy-shifteding, popularity-hunting, money-grasping paper like the Cleveland Herald. It would change its politics in a minute, in order to be on the popular side, I think, & do a great many things for money which I wouldn’t do.6explanatory note These are hard things to say about a newspaper, but still I think them, & of course I am justified in saying things to you which it would not be right to say to anybody else. I would much rather have a mere comfortable living, in a high-principled paper like the Courant, than a handsome income from a paper of a lower standard, & so would you, Livy. Well, I shall reach Hartford during the last week in this month, no doubt, & then I will talk the matter all over with Gen. Hawley.
Oh, bother! I’m going to bed. I am not doing anything but thinking of you—& I can’t write about other things & think of you all the time, Livy. I could write about you, easy—quires & reams—& never get done; but to write to you, with only one subject in my head & that subject yourself, is impossible. I have the little picture on the table, & it looks on quietly, & never says a word, & don’t smile, or laugh, or offer me a kiss—but it is very pleasant, & comforting & companionable, for all that. It keeps my mind off my work, but I can see that it takes an interest in what I am doing, & so I love it & like to have it about. And better than all, I can never think an impure thought with that honored face before me—I would have to close the case before I could do that. It is my little guardian angel.
I take you to my loving arms in and kiss you fond good-night Ⓐemendation, my Livy.
Clemens and Olivia must have “knelt in the presence of God” in Elmira on the evening of 12 February—just before his departure and at about the time he should have been lecturing in Alliance.
The Reverend Edward B. Mason (b. 1837 or 1838) was pastor of the First Congregational Church in Ravenna from 1863 to 1873. Mason was something of a lecturer himself and had been giving a series of highly praised talks in Ravenna, the most recent on 10 February, about a European tour he made in 1868 (McClelland, Riddle, and Kertscher, 11; various reports about Mason, Ravenna Portage County Democrat, 1 Apr 68–10 Feb 69, transcriptions supplied by Julie McElroy; personal communication, Betty J. Widger).
Any of the next three letters may have been among the eight that preceded the Sunday portion of this one.
The enclosure, Joseph Roswell Hawley’s letter of 10 February, does not survive, but its import is clear from Clemens’s reply to it, and from his next letter to Twichell (both dated 14 February). Clemens was trying to secure a position on the Hartford Courant, of which Hawley (1826–1905)—lawyer, anti-slavery crusader, founder of the Connecticut Republican party, distinguished Civil War veteran (retired as a brevet major-general), and former governor of Connecticut (1866)—was editor in chief. In 1857 Hawley had established the Hartford Evening Press, where he was joined three years later by associate editor Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900). In 1867 he, Warner, and their Evening Press associate Stephen A. Hubbard (d. 1890), merged that paper with the Hartford Courant, also a Republican journal, then owned by William H. Goodrich and his silent partner, Thomas M. Day. On the new Courant Warner was again associate editor (acting as editor in chief during Hawley’s frequent absences), Goodrich was business manager, and Hubbard had editorial responsibilities and served as business manager when Goodrich retired at the end of 1868. Goodrich’s retirement lasted only a year, but it, along with Hawley’s political activities during the 1868 presidential campaign, and Warner’s six-month absence in Europe, may have created a need for help that Clemens now hoped to satisfy ( BDUSC , 1157; McNulty, 70–71, 85, 87–91, 100, 131; Rowell, 13; Lounsbery, x–xii; Trumbull, 1:170, 606).
The particular reasons, if any, for these charges have not been determined.
Olivia’s docket number for this letter does not survive, probably because she wrote it on the envelope, now lost. It was letter number thirty-nine.
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L3 , 94–97; LLMT , 357, brief paraphrase; MTMF , 71, 73, brief quotations.
see Samossoud Collection, p. 586.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.