6 March 1869 • (1st of 2) • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00268)
Livy my darling, when I arrived here yesterday it had been seven days since I had seen a line from you, & it seemed that never anything in the world looked so good to me as your letter when they handed it to me. I can very easily appreciate how you felt when my letters failed so long. And Ⓐemendation it was singular, wasn’t it? I wrote almost every day—& as I write slowly, I was up very late at night writing, sometimes—. Got a letter to-day. I have only received five letters from you since I saw you, twelve Ⓐemendation days ago. Can it be possible that I have written fewer than you? If Ⓐemendation I had only had sense enough to think of it I could have written a letter in the St. Nicholas reading-room that day in New York instead of waiting all day for a room. Ⓐemendation —but that was the only really good opportunity of writing to you that I lost while I was gone.1explanatory note I am too fond of writing to you to, let Ⓐemendation ever let chances slip heedlessly. Why, Livy dear, when I begged you to write me three times a month (& you wouldn’t, you know), I used to write to you every day, just the same—but I didn’t send them!2explanatory note Where is that first Geneseo letter? It must be at the office. Do send down & see, Livy. If I catch Ed Bement reading that, I’ll tomahawk him. It was addressed to Mr Langdon.3explanatory note
I like the pictures (for the book) ever so much. Only a dozen or two of them are finished, but they are very artistically engraved. Some of the little Cathedral views are very fine.4explanatory note Many of the pictures are simply illustrative of incidents. They were drawn by a young artist of considerable talent.5explanatory note I have asked for copies to send to you. There is one of me “on the war-path,” which is good.6explanatory note Ever since I got up today I have been re-reading the old MS, but I find little to alter. It will take me several days to get through, & in the meantime the proofs will begin to come in. So I shall need you, my little wife. However, most of the proofs will come to me at Elmira, & then I can make use of you. Bless you, I long to see you, Livy.
I cut yesterdays letter short last night & went up to see the Twichells (who send their love & blessing to you—baby7explanatory note & all), but my head was so full of you & the letter cut short which I so wanted to write, that I was fidgety & unhappy, & so I came away at half past eleven. They insisted on my making my home at their house while I stay, but I feared to be in the way, & so refused. {It is funny that I am so willing to be in the way at your house—isn’t it Livy? But then I have always felt perfectly comfortable there, & never once suspected that you so regretted my concluding to stay a fortnight Ⓐemendation that first time I visited Elmira—why it even touches my pride yet to think of it!—what did you want to go & tell me that, for, you dear little persecutor?}8explanatory note
I was just savage for I while Ⓐemendation yesterday, Livy—all through the agents, as usual. After traveling one whole night & more than half a day, I arrived here only to find that I must turn right around & go back to fill two appointments fifty or a hundred miles southwest of Lockport! They had written me at Lockport, as usual, in violation of my oft-repeated appeal to them to always telegraph me. I finally sent word that I wouldn’t go—that I would pay all expenses the societies have incurred, & come on or after March 20, if they still wanted me—& I fervently hope they won’t.9explanatory note It does seem as if I never am going to get a week with you undisturbed by the ghost of some villainous forthcoming lecture. If I had made that long trip I would be in a nice condition, now, to lecture.
After I came home last night I wrote quite a letter to Mrs Brooks, & accepted her “right hand of fellowship” & guaranteed her a “warm nook by our fireside”—& I tir tried Ⓐemendation to quiet any misgivings she may have about our future happiness. I know we shall be happy—I don’t bother anything at all about it. I shan’t have any aim or object or ambition of an earthly nature but just to cherish you, & honor you, & love you, & help you, & fill all your days with rest, & peace, & happiness—& as concerns what you will do for me, I never have had a misgiving about that, & never shall. Your phantoms of mismated marriages, you must enjoy all to yourself my Livy—they never scare me. You are my very ideal of a wife, “healthy” or not healthy, & I know of nothing that could make you more absorbingly lovable than you are—& so I am well content. I know, that I am not your ideal of what a husband should be, though, & so your occasional doubts & misgivings are just & natural—but I shall be what you would have me, yet, Livy—never fear. I am improving. I shall do all I possibly can to be worthy of you—& my assurance of it is that I never for one moment cease to be grateful for the dear love you have given me. God grant I may live to prove my gratitude.
I comprehend Mr. Beecher’s sermon as you have synopsized it, Livy, & I recognize in it hope for me.10explanatory note I had a long talk with Mr. Twichell upon religion last night, but, as I told you, I was thinking of you, & besides I was repentant & down-hearted Ⓐemendation for having allowed myself to get t Ⓐemendation so angry at the agent in the afternoon, & so I was not in a fit frame of mind to converse upon so hallowed a subject—I did not & could not feel worthy.
Since you speak of it, I propose to call on the Hookers to-night—not the Hookers exactly, but the Burton branch,11explanatory note & then if the original branch invite me, I will visit there also. I am afraid I never shall feel right in that house, though. I let my trust & confidence go out to them as I seldom do with new acquaintances, & they responded by misunderstanding me. If I had given them all of my trust & confidence, they never could have humiliated me by any ordinary slight, because then, not expecting such things, I would have been stupidly blind to them—{it just occurs to me that maybe Ⓐemendation Mrs. Fairbanks has slighted Ⓐemendation me fifty times, but I never thought of it before—I suppose she would have to knock me down to make me understand it—& even then I guess I wouldn’t give her up till she told me why}—But it is different with the Hookers. I like them pretty well, but I believe it is more because you like them than for any other reason. And for the same reason I shall choke down my gorge & do the very best I can to like them well—always provided, that they will give me a chance—can’t seek it, though, Livy darling.12explanatory note
You see I don’t care much about acquaintances. When I can come & go, & not be misunderstood, & can be at liberty & unweighed, uncriticised, unsuspected, a part of the very household, as at your house & Mrs. Fairbanks’ my “friendship” (as we term it) really comes nearer being worship than anything else I can liken it to—but to be a ceremonious visitor; a person of set hours & seasons; a foreigner in the household, without naturalization papers; an alien from whose ears the language of the fireside Ⓐemendation is withheld; an effigy to poke politenesses at & offend with affabilities that are hollow, invitations that are not meant, & complimentary lies that are as thin & perishable as the air they are made of—this is Acquaintanceship, & a very little of it goes a great way with me.
But I must go & call on my friends (or acquaintances?) the Hookers, & learn to like them with all my might for your sake—if they will let me.
And so good night, my own darling, & God & the sinless angels guard you. Please take this kiss, Louise.
☞ Please deliver this letter, Charlie—How are you, Cub?
docketed by OLL: 48 th 49th
Inasmuch as Clemens received a letter from Olivia on 1 March (as he reported to her the following day) and another on 5 March, it only seemed like seven days since he had last heard from her. He himself had written seven letters in the eleven days since 24 February, the day he spent waiting at the St. Nicholas Hotel.
These unsent letters must have preceded 30 October, by which time Olivia had granted Clemens the “privilege of writing as much as I please” ( L2 , 274).
Bement, Olivia’s former suitor, soon left Jervis Langdon’s employ. On 24 April 1869 he became the new proprietor of the Bazaar, on Water Street in Elmira, “a popular place for the purchase of fancy goods, toys, &c.” (“The Bazaar,” “Bazaar,” Elmira Advertiser, 24 Apr 69, 4).
One full-page and five “little” cathedral views appeared in The Innocents Abroad (chapters 18 and 22). The list of illustrations in the front of the book numbered them 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, and 79 which, together with other evidence, suggests that Clemens certainly saw more than “a dozen or two” illustrations at this time. His report that only that number had been “finished” must therefore mean electroplated and sent to the typesetter—presumably those that would be needed soonest: twenty-one illustrations for chapters 1–9, numbered 3 through 23 in the list of illustrations. Probably the only form of the illustrations Clemens saw at this time were the artist’s, or engraver’s, proofs, taken directly from the woodblock. Notably, he gives no sign that he was troubled by how few illustrations were “finished,” even though a month earlier Bliss assured him that the American Publishing Company was about to receive the “first batch” of electros that week, and could thereafter “push the electrotyping, rapidly” (14 Feb 69 to Bliss, n. 1click to open link).
True W. Williams, the principal illustrator for The Innocents Abroad, was employed at this time by the New York firm of Fay and Cox, which had contracted with Bliss to provide the 234 wood engravings for the book. Williams later contributed illustrations to Roughing It (1872), The Gilded Age (1874), and A Tramp Abroad (1880), and he was the principal illustrator for Sketches, New and Old (1875) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He also helped illustrate, for the American Publishing Company and other Hartford publishers, a number of works by other authors ( MTB , 1:366; Hirst, 198–99, 207; Sinclair Hamilton 1958, 116, 155, 223–24; Sinclair Hamilton 1968, 100, 151).
This illustration (numbered 40 in the list of illustrations) was probably drawn by Williams. Appearing in chapter 13, it was captioned “Return in War-Paint” and accompanies the following passage:
The guides deceive and defraud every American who goes to Paris for the first time and sees its sights alone or in company with others as little experienced as himself. I shall visit Paris again some day, and then let the guides beware! I shall go in my war-paint—and I shall carry my tomahawk along.
The same illustration was later used to embellish advertising circulars and wall posters for the book (see, for example, the Advertising Circular for The Innocents Abroad click to open link).
Two-month-old Julia Curtis Twichell.
Clemens’s initial visit with the Langdons lasted from 21 August through 8 September 1868 ( L2 , 242–44, 247–49).
Only one of these two unidentified societies appears to have accepted Clemens’s offer. On 20 March he lectured at Sharon, Pennsylvania, about 160 miles southwest of Lockport, New York (“Mark Twain,” Sharon Times, 24 Mar 69, or Sharon Herald, 27 Mar 69, reprinted in the Advertising Circular for The Innocents Abroad click to open link).
It is not known which of the recent sermons by Thomas K. Beecher or Henry Ward Beecher Olivia had “synopsized.”
In 1866, Hartford attorney Henry Eugene Burton (1840–1904) had married Mary Hooker (1845–86), the eldest daughter of John and Isabella Beecher Hooker (“Nook Farm Genealogy,” Beecher Addenda, iv; Geer 1869, 70).
From 22 to 25 January 1868, while on his first visit to Hartford, Clemens had stayed with the “original branch” Hookers in their home on Forest Street. Exactly how they misunderstood and humiliated him is not known, but whatever occurred was the more memorable to Clemens because it followed upon an illusion of acceptance which lasted at least until 24 January, when he wrote his family that he was having “a tip-top time” ( L2 , 161). His determination to like John and Isabella Hooker at any cost was especially prompted by Olivia’s warm friendship with their second daughter, Alice, and also by Mrs. Langdon’s intimacy with Isabella (“Nook Farm Genealogy,” Beecher Addenda, iv; Van Why, 4–5, 9).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L3 , 138–143; Wecter 1947, 67, brief paraphrase; LLMT , 78, 84, 358, excerpt, brief quotation, and paraphrase; MTMF , 81–82, excerpts.
see Samossoud Collection, p. 586.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.