3 September 1869 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00346)
Oh no, my darling, you are making a wild mistake—I do love to wear a button-hole bouquet, Livy, about the house, especially & particularly when you make it for me.1explanatory note I like them well I do not think I ever wore one until you taught me to like them, but now, I under your instructions I have learned to like them well enough to make them for myself when I get a chance & you are not by to do it for me. AtⒶemendation the Press Dinner out at Mr Jewelsl’s a fortnight ago2explanatory note I decorated myself with a delicate & beautiful panzyⒶemendation or two, & first one admired & followed suit & then another, until presently every individual present had flowers in his button-holeⒶemendation, & we wore them all the afternoon. And seeing how our tastes ran, Mr. J. set a his gardener quietly to work, & when we were ready to leave, at night we were each presented with an elaborate bouquet. No, dearie, I have such an invincible repulgnanceⒶemendation to show or display in a man’s dress, or anything that has a snobbish air about it, that I can’t wear flowers in the street yet, but what I meant you to understand, was, that I would break down my prejudice & learn to do it because to please you, dearie. That was all. Livy, in all my experience I never saw an American in the street with flowers in his button-holeⒶemendation but he happened to be a fellow who had a weak spot about his head somewhere. Now you know, dearie, that that will give a man a pej prejudice, bye-&-bye. It always brings San Francisco to my mind, & Geo. Ensign & Emperor Norton, who have just about monopolized bouquet wearing in that city. If my memory serves d me you I did what I could to paint Eng Ensign’sⒶemendation portrait in my book—maybe as “M’sieu Gor-r-dong,” but I am not sure. Anyway, it closes by saying he does all he can to inspire the idea that he looks like Napoleon “& with an amount of gratitude entirely disproportioned to the favor done him, he thanks his Maker that he is as he is, & goes on enjoying his little life just the same as if the he had really been deliberately designed & erected by the great Architect of the Universe!” That is meant for Geo. Ensign—& when I uttered it in a lecture on Venice in San Francisco there was a perceptible flutter all over the house, because they recognized the poo portraitⒶemendation—& poor George was present, though I didn’t know he was there—only thought it likely he would be. He never appears anywhere, in the house or out of it, without his buttonhole bouquet—& so other people eschew them, to a great extent.3explanatory note Now darling, there are good,, & great men, no doubt, who wears these flowers publicly, like George, but the awful majority are insufferable snobs. And there are good & great men, no doubt, who put an initial for their first name & spell their second out in full—but the awful majority of men who do that, will lie, & swindle & steal, just from a natural instinct. Livy dear, I am writing all this because it is important—it is not a ti trivialⒶemendation matter, in my eyes, that you should do anything for me & see me receive it tranquilly., or possibly shrinkingly, when my natural impulse ought to be to receive it with warm delight & gratitude, as another token of your love for me. I should not seem unenthusiastic at such a time without being able to give you a most ample & convincing reason for it. AndⒶemendation many a time I have remembered m remorsefully how your the knot of tube-roses w Ⓐemendation which your loving fingers formed for me lay neglected in on the library table simply because I had a silly prejudice against wearing them in the street—& I have been angry at myself & wished I could have the opportunity over again. My darling, I love the flowers as bouquets on the table, & am proud when I arrive at home & fancy they were put there for me, though I would never dare to say a world wordⒶemendation or seem to notice them lest I might discover to my chagrin that my vanity had led me astray & attributed to me an honor not intended for me. And I love the button-hole bouquets in the house, honestly—better than in the street, you will readily believe, by this time. Livy dear, you will hurt me if you neglect to decorate my button-hole hereafter—& I will do penance & wear a sunflower down street if you say so.
I am so disappointed. Redpath says he can’t get me free from Boston & 2 or 3 other places—& so I submit, & have written him to let me out to lyceums far & near, & for half the winter or all of it—do with me as he chooses while the lecture season lasts. There was no way that was better. It isn’t worth the bother of getting well familiarized with a lecture & then deliver it only half a dozen times. I considered the matter well, & concluded that I ought to have some money to commence married life with, & if I tried to take it out of the office I might fail to be able to pay the first note that falls due next August.4explanatory note And yet the distress of it is, that the paper will suffer by my absence, & at the very time that it ought to keep up its best gait & not lose the start we have just given it & have the long, hard pull of giving it a new start after a while. I am feel sure that the money I make lecturing, the paper will lose while I am gone—but you see how I am situated. When I once start in lecturing I might as well consent to be banged about from town to town while the lecture season lasts., for it would take that shape anyhow.
But our marriage! That is where the shoe pinches hard, dearie. It will just suit you to put it off till spring, but it don’t suit me. Suppose we Ⓐemendation we However, I don’t really think I shall have to talk any to speak of after the first of February, & so I shan’t be delayed over more than a month, after all. Last year I hadn’t a great many appointments in February, & if the same is to be the case this time I won’t talk at all in that month. I shall know about this matter shortly, through Redpath. Livy dear, have I done wisely, or foolishly? Two things demand that the season shall stop as early as possible—my desire to bring you home as my wife; & the interest of the paper. Both touch me as being urgent. Tell me all you think, Livy darling.
Another of those anti-monopoly thieves sent in a long gratuitous advertisement to-night, about coal “for the people” at $5.50 a ton—& I have deposited it under the table. The effrontery of these people transcends everything I ever heard of. Do they suppose we print a paper for the fun of it? This man Deuther sent in just such a thing the other day, & I left that out. The other papers insert both of them for nothing. Day before yesterday there was a sneaking little communication in one of the other papers wondering why the Express had become so docile & quiet about the great coal monopoly question. If Mr Deuther don’t go mighty slow I will let off a blast at him some day that will lift the hair off his head & loosen some of his teeth.5explanatory note Good-bye little sweetheartⒶemendation—I’ve lost my temper, now.
Miss Olivia L. Langdon | Elmira | N. Y. postmarked: buffalo n.y. sep 4 docketed by OLL: 113th
That is, the dinner given by Elam R. Jewett (see 14 Aug 69 to Bliss, n. 3click to open link).
Joshua Abraham Norton (1818–80) was the famous San Francisco eccentric who declared himself “Norton I, Emperor of the United States” and during more than two decades prowled the city in quasi-military dress and a plumed top hat ( L1 , 324–25 n. 2; Hart 1987, 354–55). George H. Ensign (1822–71), a San Francisco real estate broker and a founder of the Spring Valley Water Works, which supplied San Francisco with drinking water, was known as “the Beau Brummel of the town” (Woods, 128; “Died,” San Francisco Morning Call, 4 Oct 71, 4; Langley 1868, 204; Wheat, 283; Pisani, 354–55). The passage Clemens quotes, evidently from memory, appears in chapter 23 of The Innocents Abroad. He had used it in his San Francisco lecture of 2 July 1868, “The Oldest of the Republics, VENICE, Past and Present,” drawn from the then recently completed manuscript of Innocents. In October 1868 he had identified the prototype of “M’sieu Gor-r-dong” not as George Ensign, but as one of Mary Mason Fairbanks’s friends ( L2 , 233–35, 263).
Probably a payment on the $10,000 Clemens owed Thomas A. Kennett rather than the interest on his $12,500 indebtedness to Jervis Langdon, which he was planning to pay to John D. F. Slee “as it falls due” (see 12 Aug 69 to Bliss, n. 2click to open link; and 20 and 21 Aug to PAMclick to open link, p. 311). Clemens’s letter to James Redpath is not known to survive. He himself announced his decision to lecture (see 9 Sept 69 to the Lyceumsclick to open link).
One of the more vigorous organizers of the Citizen’s Mutual Coal Mining, Purchasing and Sale Company—a cooperative intended to undercut the Anthracite Coal Association, whose price per ton of coal was $10.50—was George A. Deuther, a Buffalo dealer in “Mouldings, Window and Looking Glass Plates at wholesale, and a complete stock of Artists’ Materials” (“Be Wise ...,” Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, 18 Sept 69, 2). Although the Express had given detailed coverage to the public meetings that led up to the formation of the cooperative, articles on the “coal question” virtually ceased after Clemens’s editorial, “The Monopoly Speaks” (see 19 Aug 69 to OLL, n. 3click to open link), a fact noted by the Buffalo Courier on 1 September:
A change seems to have come over the tone of the Express in reference to the coal monopoly. A very short time ago, it was engaged in an honorable rivalry with us to be foremost in the effort to confer the benefit of cheap coal on the people, and bring down the present high prices of fuel. Is the change merely temporary and accidental? Or may we look for an unfavorable reverse of the politics of that journal on this and kindred topics? The recent silence seems ominous. What is the reason for it? (“Change in the Express,” 1)
The Courier and the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, both sympathetic to the anti-monopolists, regularly printed submissions from Deuther. On 4 September, both papers published his latest notice, which the editors of the Advertiser said would be “read with pleasure by all interested in the procurement of cheap coal” (“Samples of Cheap Coal.—Card from Mr. Deuther,” 3):
Pursuant to my recent public promises through the press, I now announce that the promised coal for samples has arrived, the delay of which will, perhaps, be explained through our courts, as some evil spirit has tampered with two consignments to me ...
On the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th days of this month the distribution of the above coal will take place in samples from ten to twenty-five pounds or more, in front of my store, No. 184 Washington street ...
From September 6th up to the 13th—seven days only (Sundays excepted)—I will devote to taking orders, free of all commission, from such anti-monopoly coal citizens as may wish to buy the coal at $5 50 per ton ...
On the 14th of September I would ask to be considered as discharged from my voluntary gratuitous services in this matter, although this is not to say that I shall stop to “pitch into” the coal monopoly in another way, which at present would not be proper to make public.
N. B.—No orders will be taken from coal dealers on this occasion. With due respect,
GEO. A. DEUTHER.
(Buffalo Express: “Notes from the People,” 6 Aug 69, 4; Buffalo Courier: “Anti-Monopoly Coal Business—Notice,” 19 Aug 69, 2; Buffalo Commercial Advertiser: “Cheap Coal—Card from Mr. Deuther,” 20 Aug 69, 3; “Cheap Coal,” 18 Sept 69, 3.)
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L3 , 331–335; LLMT , 106–9.
see Samossoud Collection, p. 586.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.