8 and 9 March 1869 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00272)
written upside down in top margin: P.S. I enclose the Sphynx. 1explanatory note
How this precious little wife of mine does tantalize me! Here we have been married ever since the 4th of February, as it were, & she tells me half an incident, & then magnifies her misdemeanor by leaving out the names! Bow your naughty head & receive your scolding, you most lovely & lovable of all creatures that be upon the earth. Tell Ⓐemendation me who you were irritated with, & what it was about, Louise?. Every Ⓐemendation single little thing that concerns you has a great, broad, measureless interest to me, & now you have given me only half of your confidence, Livy. I want it, all, dear. Trust me Livy, won’t you?—in little matters at as Ⓐemendation well as great ones. Don’t have any reserve—any weighings—any questionings about the propriety of Ⓐemendation things, Livy. Tell anything & everything, with the absolute knowledge that it will interest me & be honored & respected. You will—won’t you, Livy? Except, of course, it be a matter which I have manifestly no business to know, or a thing which it would be unpleasant to you to tell. In such cases of course I would have you be silent—for it would ill become me to pry into them. But you understand me, my princess.
It was a happy, generous letter, Mrs. Crane’s, & I thank her ever so much for it. She means that she & I shall be friends, & I mean it too.—& what you don’t approve in her note, young woman, is what pleases me most. Do you suppose I could listen with any patience or any friendly feeling to a body who ventured to point out a flaw in my Livy? I wouldn’t speak to my own brother if he did it, until he took it back again. To hear people praise you is music to me, & I could listen to it always—but I can’t allow anybody to disparage you. I couldn’t like Mrs. Crane if she were to do that.2explanatory note Bless your good old heart, I love you past all power of language to tell.
Now it’s a darling Livy!3explanatory note That is right. When I can know that you are sleeping late at last—the later the better—I shall be as happy as a king. Mr. Langdon will keep his promise, & from the day you begin you will grow stronger, & more happy-spirited & beautiful.—though sooth to say, there isn’t much room for you to grow more beautiful than you are. Commence now, Livy—right away.
You will talk back, will you? , you obstinate thing? Ⓐemendation SILENCE! He does love you! You had better be careful, now. If you don’t walk pretty straight I will kiss you when I come. You are a good, noble girl, Livy—& if you won’t give up your opinion, why—I’ll give up mine.
I was going to sit for my picture to-day, but hard work to-day & a sleepless night last night had damaged my beauty too much. I hope to do it tomorrow, though, if I can get the fagged look out of my countenance. And then I’ll send it to you right away, & bring the original very shortly afterward. Only nine more days between me & happiness! But how they do drag.
Yes, the re-union will easily keep till I return from Cal. I can’t talk about Cal—I dread the trip so much—not the trip, but the long separation. Unless Charlie telegraphed me every now & then, it would just be insupportable. I mean to arrange that with him.
No, Livy, I yield in the matter of sowing the wild oats. I have thought it over—& I have also talked it over with Twichell the other night, & I fear me I have been in the wrong. Twichell says, “Don’t sow wild oats, but burn them.” I was right, as far as I went.—for I only thought of sowing them being the surest way to fit the make the future man a steady, reliable, wise man, thoroughly fitted for this life, equal to its emergencies, & triple-armed against its wiles & frauds & follies. But there is a deeper question—whether it be advisable or justifiable to trample the laws of God under foot at any time in our lives? I had not considered that. Through your higher wisdom I now & then catch glimpses of my own shallowness, my idol, my darling. God keep you always free from taint of my misshapen Ⓐemendation, narrow, worldly fancies—& keep me always pliant to your sweet influence. You must lead, till the films are cleansed from my eyes & I see the light. Thenceforward we will journey hand-in-hand,. Hand in hand till we emerge from the twilight of Time into the fadeless lustre of Eternity.
Do I dislike to have you write of those past experiences? Why, no Livy. To tell of them draws their sting, reliveves their pain—& who should joy to help you, to suoo bear you up, to soothe your troubled heart to rest & peace, if not I? Who can feel for you as I do? Who has such absolute part & ownership in all that touches you as I have? With whom can you experience such close, in peculiar, interior communion as with me? Whom can you open your secret heart to so unreservedly as to me? No, my Livy, you can have no grief, no burden, but that half of it, by divine right of the hopes, the loves, the lives we have blended together for ever & ever, is mine. Tell me all that grieves you, my other self,—give me all trust & confidence.
I am sorry that this trial came upon you, Livy, but glad that your love for me proved so sound, so strong, so sufficient. I am glad, a thousand times glad—glad, & proud, & grateful. It is a love that cannot perish.
Do you mean your cousin Andrew Atwater? Whoever it is, I wish to hold him in grateful remembrance if he did that which made it possible for you & me to— become all in all to each other. 4explanatory note Oh, Livy! The clock has just struck 3! Another night without sleep! I am terrified. With kisses & blessings, good-bye my own darling.
March 9—Noon—Have just awakened out of such a delicious dream of you, Livy—thought you slept late, & I marched uninvited into your room & thanked you & kissed you for doing it!—a preposterous thing, which I certainly could have no excuse for doing, except in a dream. It was very delightful, but I thought you did not entirely appreciate being woke up to be felicitated, & you turned over & went immediately to sleep again! But it was plainly & distinctly the dear old face that I so love, & the memory of it is with me yet. I hope you did sleep late.
Read this part of the Miscellany again, Livy, & tell me truly if your ever saw a text so misconstrued, so utterly misinterpreted in all your life before—see if you ever saw a sermon wander so prodigiously wide of its proposition. And then imagine yourself to have been the utterer of the text, & see if you would acknowledge any man’s right to deliberately make you appear to have said what you never had any idea of saying. Mr. Greeley has always argued simply against a poor, unmanly, mean-spirited dependence of a man upon his friends for his bread—& behold how Mr. Beecher has distorted his intent. It is not right. I say nothing against the sermon as a sermon, but I do say that it ought never to have been placed after that text. You can damn any text if you can have the privilege of placing it in an utterly false light. “Thoug shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”5explanatory note
Yes indeed, Livy dear, I will furnish articles for you to cut out. You are the very little help-meet I have needed so long in this regard. Thank Ⓐemendation you.
Now you can turn over & go to sleep again.—but with a kiss first. Good-bye, my darling.
enclosure 1:
enclosure 2:
FRIDAY MISCELLANY.
BY T. K. B.
These homes may be rude and humble; the
inmates may be compelled for years to work
hard and live
coarsely; but then toil will be
sweetened by a proud consciousness that they
no longer owe their
livelihood to man’s favor.
—Horace Greeley in Independent.
This sentiment, which we italicise is a
favorite one with Mr. Greeley. It
ap-
pears often in his writings. It may be read
always in his counsel to young men and to
depressed classes. It is
the “moral” of
his autobiography. Ask no favors—help
yourself—rely on your
own energy—hold
up your head—work your way—be a man!
To this style of sentiment and exhorta-
tion we reply:—
All grace, mercy and charity are effectu-
ally shut out from any society made up of
struggling,
determined, self-asserting atoms.
The fish in the sea that eat and are eaten;
cats, tigers and birds of prey that
devour
their palpitating victims; and great trees
that rob the grass of sunshine and the
earth of moisture,
forbidding little ones to
grow—such lower forms of life obey na-
ture’s law, (might makes right) and their
laborious
victories are inspired with a
“proud consciousness that they owe their
livelihood to no favor.”
But we cannot consent that man comes by
his fairest and noblest dimension in any such
struggle
for existence or race for preference.
Gratitude for favors received; a cheerful con-
tented dependence of weakness upon
strength; a Godlike sense of care and re-
sponsibility nobly freighting the rich, the
powerful and the wise, a
willingness to grant
favors and a willingness to receive favors
thankfully;—these and similar graces of
spirit and conduct seem to us far more de-
sirable than the hard and merciless compe-
titions which Mr. Greeley has so coura-
geously challenged and so famously out-
run.
Every right-spirited man will long to sup-
port himself and be burdensome to no one.
Every loving
child will early wish to bring
in something to the family treasury. Not
for the sake of a proud consciousness of
in-
dependence, pride has nothing to do with it.
It is love that prompts. The loving are
never too proud to ask
help from the lov-
ing! The humble would rather ask and
receive, than demand and exact!
The society of men should not be a great,
pushing, scrambling crowd in which the
strong and the
cunning get ahead, and never
say thank you. Society should be a great
family, in which the strong bear the weak,
and please not themselves, while the weak
do their best and say “thank you sir.”
We cease to be sons of God and brethren
of Jesus
whenever we begin our races or
determine to hew our own path to pros-
perity. Let every man please his neighbor
unto edification.
We would rather die in the county-
house, an unnamed pauper having led a life
of gentleness and
industry, than by striv-
ings for masteries to have gained place and
renown among men and a “proud
consci-
ousness of independence.” Because all
good and perfect gifts come from above, we
believe in
looking up and asking. We be-
lieve and teach that dependence, humble
dependence is the social law of Christ’s
kingdom. And they who must be indepen-
dent, and must have that “proud conscious
ness” are as
the prodigal son who took his
goods and went to a far country and found
loneliness and rags. Like him still, may
all such find also seasonable
repentance.
Miss Olivia L. Langdon | Elmira | New York. postmarked: 6explanatory note hartford conn. mar 10
Clemens added this postscript on 9 March, enclosing a proof of the wood engraving for a full-page illustration that eventually appeared in chapter 58 of The Innocents Abroad. The proof he enclosed has not been found: it has been simulated by reproducing the printed illustration.
Susan Crane’s letter, probably written in late February and received in Elmira about 4 March, has not been found. It was evidently addressed to her family, among whom she now ceremoniously and cordially included Clemens. Jervis Langdon replied to her as follows:
Dear Sue,—I received your letter yesterday with a great deal of pleasure, but the letter has gone in pursuit of one S. L. Clemens, who has been giving us a great deal of trouble lately. We cannot have a joy in our family without a feeling, on the part of the little incorrigible in our family, that this wanderer must share it, so, as soon as read, into her pocket and off upstairs goes your letter, and in the next two minutes into the mail, so it is impossible for me now to refer to it, or by reading it over gain an inspiration in writing you. . . . ( MTB , 1:379)
For Clemens’s synopsis of Crane’s letter, insofar as it concerned him, see 9 and 31 Mar 69 to Craneclick to open link.
In this paragraph and the next four, Clemens addresses Olivia’s responses to matters he discussed in his letters of 27 February, 28 February, and 2 March, in particular: Jervis Langdon’s endorsement of his campaign for “late sleeping”; rejected suitor Edward Bement; the planned reunion of Quaker City friends; and his advice to his Geneseo hosts about sowing wild oats.
That is, by withdrawing some prior claim on Olivia’s affections, possibly in response to a recent letter from her (see 27 Feb 69 to OLLclick to open link, p. 118).
Clemens must have enclosed the first section (about one-fourth) of the two-column article that Olivia had originally sent him on Friday, 5 March, or the following day: the Elmira Advertiser’s latest “Friday Miscellany” by the Reverend Thomas K. Beecher (Beecher 1869). Horace Greeley had made the remarks that provoked Beecher in a thoughtful essay in the New York Independent of 25 February, “The Future of the Blacks in America,” in which he suggested that they improve their lot by forming self-sufficient communities where they could have employment, land, and homes independent of the antagonistic white society (Greeley). The original enclosure has not been found: it is simulated here in a line for line resetting.
Although Clemens addressed to Olivia, and even stamped, the envelope of his 8 March letter, this is the first letter that he actually mailed directly to her since their informal engagement on 26 November 1868 (see 2 Jan 69 to OLL, n. 12click to open link).
Olivia seems to have experimented with a monogram for herself, which she then canceled by writing her docket number over it.
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK), is copy-text for the letter. Neither enclosure survives. Copy-text for the first, a partial clipping of the 5 March “Friday Miscellany” from the Elmira Advertiser (Thomas K. Beecher 1869; see p. 157, n. 5), is a microfilm edition of the newspaper in CU-MARK. Because a fully legible photographic facsimile is not feasible, it is reprinted here line-for-line. Copy-text for the second, a full-page illustration proof for The Innocents Abroad (“Pyramids and Sphynx”), is the published illustration facing page 629 in the first issue of the first American edition, reproduced here from a copy owned by Robert H. Hirst now on deposit in CU-MARK.
L3 , 151–157; LLMT , 74, 358, brief excerpt and paraphrase.
see Samossoud Collection, p. 586.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.