23 June 1869 • New York, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00320)
We have all been to Hartford, for the last ten days, attending the wedding of a niece of Henry Ward Beecher.1explanatory note Mr. Beecher congratulated me very cordially on my engagement. He thinks Livy is a gem of a girl. I concur.
Mr. & Mrs. Langdon went home day before yesterday,2explanatory note but as I had some business to attend to, Livy waited for me, & is stopping with some friends in Fifth Avenue., where I go to see her every day. These friends are great favorites with the Langdons, & will spend the month of August at his house. They are Mr. & Mrs. Brooks & son, & a young sister of Mrs. B. I never saw anybody absolutely worshipped as they worship Livy. I think Brooks would give half his fortune to have us take up our permanent residence in his family. They think ever so much of George Wiley & his wife, too. George was very kind to Livy the last time she was here, & so I am commanded to go & call on him to-morrow.3explanatory note
I mean to go to Cleveland in a few days, to see what sort of an arrangement I can make with the Herald people. If they will take sixty thousand dollars for a one-third Ⓐemendation of the paper, I know Mr. Langdon will buy it for me. This is strictly private—don’t mention my affairs to anybody.
The first edition of the book—20,000 copies—is being printed.
Mr. Langdon thinks it is very unfortunate if you have contracted to part with the land at $1 per acre—especially if the other party is empowered to sell at any figure he pleases. But Ⓐemendationif you get $30,000 cash out of it, I shall be satisfied. The rest of us might afford to hold on for higher prices, but Ma can’t—she is growing old, & I do wish I could see her in liberal circumstances. I should not think Mr. Langdon would have much patience with any sort of Tennessee matters, for the city of Memphis owes him five hundred thousand dollars, & he is having a lively time getting it. I tell him he never will get it, but I don’t find it easy to discourage him. His agent there is a pretty live man, & if he hadn’t his hands so af awfully Ⓐemendationfull I would touch him up on Tennessee land through Mr. Langdon. However, if your present contract is binding it would not be worth while.4explanatory note
I will go down town tomorrow & get some money to send to Ma. For a week or two I have been away from my base of supplies & could not make a remittance. I am economising as well as I can, but I am not making a cent. However, I don’t wish to economise at Ma’s expense. I am afraid I shall be in a poor condition to marry in the winter, but I shall marry, nevertheless, if I get settled. If I go into the Cleveland Herald I mean to make my salary Ⓐemendation support me, (if I have only an eighth or tenth interest,) without touching the profits. Livy will be well suited with that arrangement.
She wants to see you all—but I guess she must wait awhile. She is a staunch friend of Orion’s, & I fancy she is about half in love with him.5explanatory note
Don’t you worry about my “taking away the only daughter” when they are so anxious to have us remain in Elmira. I will engage that they follow that daughter within twelve months. They couldn’t stay away from her. And they think about as much of me as they do of her6explanatory note—& Ⓐemendationso with both of us away, I fancy they will pack up & come along bye & bye. And Mr. Langdon has his prodigious coal business so well in hand that he could sit down in Cleveland & manage it about as well as in Elmira.
You seem to think that I spend money foolishly—but I don’t. My absolute expenses are $50 a week, just for food, lodging & washing, & it is not possible to live for less. My other expenses are not very heavy. , but still unavoidable, & not very light. Then add large & contrstant railroad expenses, & you see it foots up. I have not run behindhand with Ma. She only asked $35 a month, & I have paid her a ($400 a year,) & I have paid her as much as $500 in the last thirteen months.7explanatory note I ought to have done better, I know (& one $50 bill I believe she said she didn’t receive, & so I have not counted it,) but then you must give me the little credit that is due me, you know. If ever I get settled, I can supply her easily—could now if I were only located instead of moving constantly from one expensive hotel to another.
Send me the land agent’s prospectus—to Elmira. Livy will forward it to me, in case I am not in St Louis by that time. I will pay my exp share of the taxes & things—I would do pretty much anything to “get shut” of that land.8explanatory note And Pamela, I will gladly repay you for the expenses you incur on Ma’s account, only give me a little time. You bear with my shortcomings as patiently as a saint.
I must go. Good-bye. Love to all, & all good fortune attend you.
Mrs. W. A. Moffett | 203 South 16th st9explanatory note | St. Louis | Mo. return address: S. Clemens Ⓐemendation everett house w. b. borrows,10explanatory note new-york . hotel stamp: everett house union square, n.y. Ⓐemendation jun 23 1869 Ⓐemendation postage stamp and postmark torn away
Alice Hooker Day’s mother, Isabella Beecher Hooker, was Henry Ward Beecher’s half-sister (“Nook Farm Genealogy,” Beecher Addenda, ii–iv).
In fact, the Langdons seem to have left New York on 22 June (see 21 June 69 to OLL, n. 5click to open link).
Olivia had met George and Elmira Wiley sometime between 26 January and 3 February 1869 (see 29 and 30 Jan 69 to OLL, n. 2click to open link, and 5 Feb 69 to JLC and family, n. 3click to open link).
Orion Clemens had given land agents J. E. Merriman and Company of St. Louis an exclusive option until April 1870 to sell the Clemens family’s land in Fentress County, Tennessee, at a base price of one dollar per acre. (Orion had surveyed the land in 1858, deciding then that title could be established to thirty thousand acres—possibly less than half of his father’s original purchase, which in 1870 Samuel Clemens estimated as about seventy-five thousand acres.) Orion explained his agreement with the St. Louis agents in a letter to his brother in late June, since lost, and then repeated the essentials in a letter to him on 7 July (see 26 June 69 to JLC and PAMclick to open link and 3? July 69 to OC, n. 1click to open link). Pamela clearly had anticipated Orion, advising Clemens in a letter written around mid-June, also lost, in which she asked for Jervis Langdon’s opinion of the arrangement with Merriman and Company, probably because she and her mother distrusted Orion’s estimate of the land’s value. Langdon’s Memphis agent has not been identified (Richard Edwards 1869, 1088; OC to MEC, 28 May 58, CU-MARK; SLC 1870, 1; L1 , 326).
For an instance of Olivia’s friendly feeling for Orion, see 10 and 11 Nov 69 to OLL, n. 1click to open link.
“It is just a twelve-month tomorrow since Mr Clemens first talked with me of his love for Livia, now he seems so incorporated into our whole being that I seem hardly to remember when it was not so. ... We are all increasingly attached to Mr Clemens, every time he leaves us loving him better than when he came” (Olivia Lewis Langdon to Mary Mason Fairbanks, 25 Nov 69, CtHMTH).
Jane Clemens’s financial record shows that she “received of Sam” a total of $470 between 5 May 1868 and 29 May 1869 (JLC, 4).
On 28 January 1869 Jane Clemens noted that she “paid Ten, Taxes $17,50 for Sam and me” and on 8 March 1869 she recorded an additional payment of $7.35 for “Tenn land” (JLC, 9).
The address to which Pamela moved in May. She moved again, to 1511 Pine Street, by early September (see 3? July 69 to OC, n. 2click to open link).
William B. Borrows, presumably the manager of the Everett House (Wilson 1869, 114).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L3 , 270–273.
Mark Twain Papers of Moffett Collection, see pp. 585–87.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.