30, 31 October, and 1 November 1869 • Pittsburgh, Pa. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00365)
We I have just this moment returned & gone to bed.
We had a pleasant time of it. They came for me at 7.30, & we went to a private room in a restaurant & had an oyster supper in a quiet, comfortable, sensible way—no wine, no toasts, no speeches—nothing but conversation. (Though it was appalling to have 30 newspaper men lay down their napkins with the last course & gather their chairs together in front of me, a silence following—for that silence naturally had the effect of suggesting that I was expected to do the talking—a thing which was not meant at all. Still, it was a little startling.)2explanatory note
During the evening, a dry, sensible genius, a Mr. Smythe, told his experiences as a lecturer. He said:
“A year ago, I was ass enough to go to Europe. When I came back I was ass enough to think I was stocked with knowledge about Europe that the public would like to hear. I expected they would be calling on me for a lecture, & so hurried to get ready. I wrote my lecture in the third story of a printing office in the intervals between calls for “copy,” & I judged it was a pretty creditable effort. I said to myself, I can do this sort of thing just as well as Mark Twain did—& if I had his house to hear me, I could show them. Then I waited for the flood—the freshet of calls from the lyceums. It was a good opportunity to wait—a singularly good one—it never has ceased to be. , to I am still waiting. I did not get any calls. I could not understand it. But I knew the people were suffering for the lecture, & so I quit bothering about calls, & went & took the Academy on my own hook. At Ⓐemendationthe appointed time I was on hand, & so were eleven other people. At half past 8, observing that the rush had ceased Ⓐemendation& that the audience were unquestionably assembled, I stepped on to the stage with my MSS, & for an hour & a half I instructed those 11 people. I was “out” $75 on the experiment. A friend met me a day or two afterward & said he had heard I had been out lecturing. I said Yes, I was out yet, Ⓐemendation.
I waited again for calls. They did not come. I then cast my eye upon East Liberty, a suburb of Pittsburgh. I knew they were aching to have me there but dare n’t invite me. And so I went there on my own hook. I paid $35 for the use of the theatre. At half past 7 I took a retired stand opposite & watched. At 8 or a little after, the first great wave of relief se swept over my soul—I saw a man enter the hall. I went into a saloon & drank to him. Bye & bye I saw two men go in at once. I took a drink to them. After a little a carriage drove up & the estimable Mrs. Swisshelm, of whom you may have heard, went in.3explanatory note I drank to her. At 8.30, nobody else having come, I drank to the absent.
Then I went over & read my MSS. drearily, & was absolutely happy, even cheerful, once—when I got through.Ⓐemendation
Then I rested for a while & at length determined to go up to Steubenville, O., & give those people a taste of my quality. When I got there I looked wistfully about the street corners for my posters, but I did not see any. I hunted Ⓐemendationup the bill poster, & he explained he that it had been rainy, & he had refrained from posting the bills because they would not stick. I went to the village newspaper man Ⓐemendationwho had been advertising me, & he encouraged me to believe there would be a slim attendance. He was a man of very good judgment. At 8.30 nobody had come, & for the sake of economy I discharged the doorkeeper, & went off with the journalist to take a drink. I could not get rid of him, somehow—on account of one of us being in the other’s dist debt, pe I thought. At 9 we went back & found one man in the house. I felt a little cheered, for this was nearly as large an audience as I had ever had. I began my lecture, but when I was half through a thought occurred to me & I asked that man who he was. He said he was the janitor. “Then I suppose you do not pay?”
“No.”
So I closed the lecture at that point.
Subsequently I received my first invitation. This began to look like business. It was to go to Greensburg & lecture for the benefit of the Methodist Mite Society—$25 & expenses.4explanatory note I went with a light heart. Some newspaper friends volunteered to go with me—& they are a class of people who are given to drink. They were companionable, but expensive.
We arrived in a rain storm—& very dark. The Rev. Mr. Noble received me in considerable state & walked me to the Court House. At 8.30 an audience of nearly 13 persons had assembled—it seemed a sort of ovation—I was not accustomed to these multitudinous manifestations of popular favor. The Rev. Noble introduced me in a right pretty speech, & then I delivered my lecture. It was complimented a good deal, & the Rev. Noble was so kind as to say they might want me again in case the Society survived this ordeal. The Secretary then came forward & said there had not been as large an attendance as he had hoped for & so the finances were correspondingly s meagre, but if five dollars would be any object to me, the a draft for that amount——
I begged him to let the whole sum go into the coffers of the Mite Society, & I hoped that in its sudden acquisition of wealth it would not grow proud, but would sometimes think of its benefactor.
Since then I have thought seriously of forsaking the lecture field, & will remark that my lecture, unmutilated, & with all the places for applause legibly marked in it, is for sale.”5explanatory note
I walked all around town this morning with a young Mr. Dean, a cousin of Wm D. Howells, editor of the Atlantic Monthly. He kindly offered to give me a letter of introduction to Mr. Howells, but I thanked him sincerely & declined, saying I had a sort of delicacy about using letters of introduction, not simply because they place the other party in the position of being obliged to take the stranger by the hand whether or no & show him civilities which he may not feel like showing him, or at least may not feel like it at that particular time. He may have engagements—business—the headache—twenty circumstances may conspire to make the entertainment of a guest a hardship. I prefer to be casually introduced, or to call ceremoniously with a friend—then the afflicted party is perfectly free to treat me precisely as he chooses, & no harm done.6explanatory note
Many gentlemen have called on me to-day. ⒶemendationMr. E. B. Coolidge, formerly of the Navy—met him once when I was visiting Admiral Thatcher in San Francisco, on on board his flagshipⒶemendation, at San Francisco. W. A. Taylor, of the Post; Asa L. Waugaman ( ke knew Ⓐemendationhim in Nevada); A H Lane, Jno. G. Holmes, Wm. L. Chalfant, Wm. C. Smythe of the Dispatch; W. W. Thompson; ⒶemendationWm. N. Howard; Geo. W. Dean; O. T. Bennett of the Commercial; & ten or more a number of gentlemen whose came with one or another of the above & sent no cards.7explanatory note So they have dropped in one after another all day long & have made the time busy & pleasant. I am to go to church to-night Ⓐemendationwith Mr. Chalfant.
Waugaman made me go to his house to see his wife,. 1 st I knew her in Nevada, too. I staid 15 minutes, & would have remained to supper, for the table looked tempting, but their young boy of 7 is one of your petted smarties whose entire mind is given to climbing around & getting where he can intercept your vision & attract your attention—industriously watching your eye & changing position so as to intercept it again if you change the direction of your glance—a child with a feverish desire to do something surprising & win the notice of the stranger—a creature that parades its toys & asks its mother questions concerning them which it is plain are merely asked to compel the stranger’s attention to them & gouge a remark out of him—a soiled & stubb nasty imp that sings nursery stuff in the a loud & still louder & louder key as the conversation rises to meet the emergency, & does it all to win coveted admiration—a small wit whelp that says those ineffably stupid flat things which mothers treasure up & repeat, & regard as “smart” things, purring & smiling blandly the while—a little pug-nosed, mop-headed, sore-toed, candy-smeared beast that paws after things at table, & spills Ⓐemendationits coffee, & eats mashed potatoes with its fingers, & points & clamors for “some of that”—a sinful, tiresome, homely, ha hatefulⒶemendation, execrable NUISANCE at all times & in all places whatsoever!Ⓐemendation
I may be a brute. Doubtless I am. But such is my opinion of this breed of children, nevertheless. The “four-year-old” department of Harper’s Monthly is written in vain for me.8explanatory note
Well, Livy dear, I was afraid that brat would be at supper—mothers who rear such prodigies always like to have them on exhibition—& so I first started to ask, & then, recognizing that that would not be strictly polite, I simply declined supp Ⓐemendation& returned to the hotel.
One of the newspaper gentlemen who called today was Mr. Bennett of the Commercial, a good fellow, modest & pleasant. He wants to make a synopsis of my lecture to-morrow Ⓐemendationnight, or report it in full. I told him a synopsis of a humorous lecture holds up all the jokes, in a crippled condition for the world to remember & so remembering them hate them if ever they hear that lecturer repeat them in solemn & excruciating succession one after the other.
And I said to take the points out of a humorous lecture was the same as taking the raisins out of a fruit cake—it left it but a pretense of a something it was not, for such as came after.
And further, the charm of a humorous remark or still more, an elaborate succession of humorous remarks, cannot be put upon paper—& whosoever reports a humorous lecture verbatim, & necessarily leaves the soul out of it, & no more presents that lecture to the reader Ⓐemendationthan does a man bring a woman’s husband to her a person presents Ⓐemendationa man to you when he ships you a corpse.
I said synopses injure—they do harm, because they d travel ahead of the lecturer & give people a despicable opinion of him & his productionⒶemendation.
I said my lecture was my property, & no man had a right to take it from me & print it, any more than he would have a right to take away any other property of mine. I said “I showed you what time it was by my watch a while ago, & it never occurred to me that you might pull the hands off it so that it would be only a stupid blank to the next man that wanted the time—but yet I see you meditate pulling the hands off my lecture with your synopsis & making it a blank to future audiences. You see me sitting here perfectly serene although I know you could walk off with my valise while I am talking with these other gentlemen—but won’t steal my valise because it is property—my property. Now do take the valise & let the lecture alone. I own Ⓐemendationboth of them—I alone. P ⒶemendationTake the valise—it is only worth a hundred dollars—the lecture is worth ten thousand.”
This was all perfectly friendly & good-naturedⒶemendation, of course. I was trying to show how him Ⓐemendationhow in the wrong he was—I had no desire to offend him, & I didn’t.
But Livy if his chief orders him to report the lecture he can’t help himself9explanatory note—for although the law protects rigidly the property a shoemaker Ⓐemendationcontrives with his hands, it will not protect the property I create with my brain.10explanatory note
I went to church & heard a man from a distance preach, a sermon without notes—which was well—but in a frozen, monotonous, precise & inflectionless way that showed that his discoursed Ⓐemendationwas a carefully memorized production. There was something exceedingly funny about this bald pretense of delivering an off-hand speech—& something exceedingly funny, too in a full-grown man “speaking a piece” after the manner of a little schoolboyⒶemendation. His gestures were timid—never could finish one—always got scared & left it half made. He evidently had the places marked, & knew how he wanted to make them, but he didn’t dareⒶemendation.
Oh, the music was royal! It was superb! It was the very ecstasy of harmony! With the first grand explosion of rich sounds, I started from my reverie & thought, Heavens! What a choir we’ve got here! And I looked up, & there were only 4 singers! But how their voices did match, —& blend—& wind in & out, & blend together— & how they did peal out at times—& then languish & die—& then swell upward again & reel away drun through the charmed atmosphere in a drunken ecstasy of melody!
My! what a soprano singer! When I thought the very hair would stand up straight with delight, & looked again & wondered if that grand flood of mellow sound did issue from so small a constitution—& how it could come with such utter absence of effort.
And when they sang “O”er the Dark Waves of Galilee” I didn’t feel as if I could sit still. What worship was in the music! And h ⒶemendationHow it preached, how it pleaded! And how earthy & merely human seemed the clergyman’s poor vapid declamation! He couldn’t make us comprehend Christ desolate & forsaken, but the music did.11explanatory note
Oh, wouldn’t Hattie Lewis have stood on her head if she had been there! Livy I never heard anything like it in all my life.
And do you know there are some people whose complacency nothing can subdue. In the midst of the beautiful music a skinny old cat sitting next me tuned her pipe & began to yowl. Well ⒶemendationI came as near as anything to banging her over the head with a pew. Now was there ever such effrontery as that woman’s.
The second tune was a little too complicated for her & I had a rest. On the third, I waited in pure torture all through the first verse, & felt re happy, satisfied, safe—but on the second the venerable screech-owl Ⓐemendationcame to the rescue again & filed her saw all through the hymn.
The young man who went with me got tired of the sermon early. He evidently was not used to going to church, though he talked Ⓐemendationas if he was. Toward the last he got his himself Ⓐemendationdown till he was resting on the end of his backbone; & then he propped his 2 knees Ⓐemendationhight against the pew in front of him; he stroked his thighs reflectively with his palms; he yawned; he started twice to stretch, but cut it short & looked dejected & regretful; in he looked at his watch 3 times; & at last he got to belching.* I then threw him out of the window. {1 PM.12explanatory note Good night & God bless & preserve you, my own darling.}
*’Tisn’t elegant, but there isn’t any other, Livy
in ink: Miss Olivia L. Langdon | Elmira | N.Y. postmarked: pittsburgh Ⓐemendation pa. nov Ⓐemendation i and philada. p.o Ⓐemendation. received nov 2 10 am docketed by OLL: 128 Ⓐemendation 128th
Evidently Clemens considered writing his lecture tour letters to Olivia in the form of a diary. Of the sixteen letters to her that survive from the last nine weeks of 1869, he in fact wrote eight in his notebook, but never attempted to preserve them as a unit, instead tearing each out upon completion for immediate mailing. The present letter is the first of the eight. The others are his letters of 10 November, 10 and 11 November, 15 and 16 November, 14 December, 15 and 16 December, 18 and 19 December, and 27 December. Clemens also wrote his letters of 15 December to Jane Lampton Clemens and family and 17 December to Pamela A. Moffett on notebook pages. The notebook itself does not survive.
Clemens arrived in Pittsburgh on the afternoon of Saturday, 30 October. That evening he was the guest of honor at a banquet, at “McGinley’s dining saloon, on Wood street,” hosted by the lecture committee of the Mercantile Library Association, whose annual course of lectures he opened at the Academy of Music on 1 November. In addition to the committee, the dinner was attended by a few other members of the association and by representatives of the city press. “The occasion was marked by a total absence of formality and stiffness. ... Mr. Clemens made two or three dozen warm personal friends during the evening; friends who will long remember pleasantly the two hours spent in his quaint, genial society” (“Sociability with Mark Twain,” Pittsburgh Evening Chronicle, 1 Nov 69, 3).
Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm (1815–84), the journalist, antislavery reformer, and women’s rights advocate. In 1847 she founded the Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter, a political weekly that she edited for ten years, producing the caustic editorials denouncing slavery that made the paper one of the best known of the abolitionist journals.
The object of a “mite society” was to collect funds for charitable purposes (Mathews, 2:1066). The term alludes to the widow’s “two mites, which make a farthing” of Mark 12:42–44—a small contribution willingly given and all that the giver could afford. Greensburg was about twenty-five miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
This tale of frustrated ambition, told by William C. Smythe of the Pittsburgh Dispatch, was noted by a reporter for the Pittsburgh Commercial—undoubtedly Oliver T. Bennett (both men were among the callers Clemens mentions later in this letter)—who remarked that after the meal “an hour was spent in social conversation. Mr. Clemens gave a humorous account of his railway experience in coming to Pittsburgh, and also gave an interesting and humorous description of his first lecture in San Francisco. A member of the press who was present related his experience as a lecturer, and although his efforts had not been so successful as Mark Twain’s, his account of the difficulties he encountered was an excellent one” (“Compliment to Mark Twain—The Lecture To-night,” 1 Nov 69, 4).
Clemens’s guide was George W. Dean, Pittsburgh agent of the Enterprise Insurance Company of Philadelphia. His father, William, a former Ohio River steamboat pilot and now the general agent and a director of the Allegheny Insurance Company of Pittsburgh, was William Dean Howells’s maternal uncle. Clemens soon managed his own introduction to Howells (1837–1920), who since 1866 had been assistant to Atlantic Monthly editor James T. Fields and was in charge of the magazine’s “Reviews and Literary Notices.” In reviewing The Innocents Abroad at length in the December 1869 issue (published by mid-November), Howells praised Clemens’s “good-humored humor” and “ironical drollery” and pronounced him worthy of “something better than the uncertain standing of a popular favorite” (Howells 1869, 765, 766). Pleased, Clemens paid a visit to the Atlantic editorial office at 124 Tremont Street, Boston, later in November or in December, to express his appreciation to Fields—whereupon he met the review’s author (Cushing, 559–60; Thurston 1869, 121, 143, 26 back advertising section ; Gould, 633–37; Anderson, Gibson, and Smith, 430; Howells 1910, 3; MTHL , 1:6).
Clemens must have met E. B. Coolidge, now working as a clerk in Pittsburgh, in May or June 1868, the only time they and Rear Admiral Henry Knox Thatcher (1806–80), commander of the North Pacific Squadron, were all in San Francisco together. The San Francisco directory for 1868–69 lists Coolidge, but does not confirm a connection with the United States Navy or otherwise identify his occupation. No details of Clemens’s meeting with Thatcher aboard his flagship Pensacola have been found. Asa Lobeus Waugaman (b. 1830 or 1831), a native of Pennsylvania and now owner of a saloon, name undetermined, at 44 Smithfield Street in Pittsburgh, had been one of the proprietors of the El Dorado Saloon and Chop House in Virginia City from 1862 (possibly earlier) until no later than November 1866, by which time he was operating Asa’s, a San Francisco saloon. Of Clemens’s other callers, four were members of the Pittsburgh Mercantile Library Association’s lecture committee: Augustus H. Lane (d. 1896), a partner in B. Wolff, Jr., and Company, a hardware firm, John Grier Holmes (1849–1904), who in 1869 joined his family’s banking house, N. Holmes and Sons; William Lusk Chalfant (1843–95), a lawyer; and William Neill Howard (b. 1834), the chairman of the lecture committee, who was connected with local manufacturing and mining firms. The remaining visitors were editor William A. Taylor of the Pittsburgh Post, attorney William W. Thomson (d. 1899), and reporters William C. Smythe, of the Pittsburgh Dispatch, and Oliver T. Bennett, of the Pittsburgh Commercial (Langley 1868, 154; San Francisco City and County, s.v. “Wangaman i.e., Waugaman , Asa Lobeus”; Thurston 1869, 59, 106, 254, 433, 467, 511, 63 back advertising section; Thurston 1870, 437, 458, 480; Bench and Bar, 2:883, 901–2; Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania, 1:427–29; San Francisco Alta California: “Visiting the ‘Pensacola,’” 5 May 68, 1; “Gone North,” 25 June 68, 1; Virginia City Territorial Enterprise: “E1 Dorado Saloon ...,” 10 Jan 63, 4; “Local Matters,” 24 Nov 66, 3; “Asa’s,” 24 Nov 66, 2; Pittsburgh Post: “Academy of Music,” 30 Oct 69, 4; Pittsburgh Gazette: “Death Notices,” 24 Jan 96, 5).
The “Editor’s Drawer” of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine often printed the “smart” comments of children. Clemens’s impatience with the Waugamans’ son recalls his similar irritation at the home of Henry Clay Trumbull (see 15 May 69 to OLLclick to open link 1st of 2 ).
Bennett contented himself, and presumably his “chief,” with a two-sentence summary of “Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands,” preceded by a paraphrase of Clemens’s opening remarks:
Mr. Howard, Chairman of the Lecture Committee, introduced Mr. Clemens, who said he could not recommend the lecture he was going to deliver, because he was not familiar with it himself. He had delivered it before the pupils of a deaf and dumb asylum and they said it was as good a lecture as they ever heard; he had also delivered it before the inmates of an insane asylum, and they were enthusiastic; he had also experimented a little with it on a sick man and it was very successful—poor fellow he was gone now. Nothing could reconcile him to his approaching doom; but when the third portion of the lecture was being delivered he went off as smoothly and serenely as a bombshell. The subject of the lecture was then discussed at considerable length, the speaker alluding to the geographical position of the islands, and describing the habits of the people, the climate, and the volcanoes. The lecture was interspersed with humorous passages that kept the audience in the best humor, and they appeared highly entertained, and also had an opportunity of acquiring a great deal of valuable information. (“The Lecture Season,” Pittsburgh Commercial, 2 Nov 69, 4)
The Pittsburgh Gazette, seconding reports by Bennett and the Pittsburgh Post, noted that Clemens attracted to the Academy of Music “the very largest audience we have ever seen assembled to greet a lecturer.” When all twenty-five hundred seats were occupied, additional chairs were placed on stage for the lecture committee and the local press, while another five hundred spectators had to stand during the performance. The Gazette deemed it “an able and brilliant effort in keeping with the high reputation of its author. There were just enough funprovoking passages introduced to lighten up the burdensome task of properly describing a region about which most people think little and care much less.” And the Pittsburgh Evening Chronicle commented: “Perhaps the lecture was not so thoroughly delightful as that on the ‘American Vandal,’ but it was very delightful, notwithstanding. ... Rarely has the closest student of geography or ethnology obtained so much information so delightfully about the Hawaiians and their homes as last night. The lecture had one grave fault—it was not long enough” (“Mark Twain Last Night,” Pittsburgh Gazette, 2 Nov 69, 4; “Academy of Music—Mark Twain’s Lecture,” Pittsburgh Post, 2 Nov 69, 1; “The Lecture Season,” Pittsburgh Evening Chronicle, 2 Nov 69, 3). The $120 that Clemens received in Pittsburgh was, as far as can be determined from the partial records that survive, the highest fee of his 1869–70 tour. Usually he received either $75 or $100 (Erasmus Wilson, 886; George L. Fall to SLC, 27 Oct 69, 7 Dec 69, James Redpath Letterpress Book, 26, 632, IaU).
The copyright law of 1831, still in effect in 1869, permitted a twenty-eight-year copyright with renewal for an additional fourteen years. Throughout his career, Clemens protested the inadequacy of such protection, sometimes in language that echoed his present complaint to Olivia. For example, in an interview with New York Times reporter Robert Donald in December 1889, he remarked: “Every one ought to get value for his labor, whether he makes boots or manuscripts” (Donald). And on 7 December 1906, testifying before the joint Congressional Committee on Patents, which was considering new copyright legislation, he argued that a book, although consisting “solely of ideas, from the base to the summit,” was “like any other property, and should not be put under the ban of any restriction.” Rather, it was the possession of its author and his heirs “forever and ever, just as a butcher shop would be, or—I don’t care—anything, I don’t care what it is. It all has the same basis. The law should recognize the right of perpetuity in this and every other kind of property” (SLC 1906, 119).
“O’er the Dark Wave of Galilee” was by William Russell (1798–1873), a Glasgow-born educator who settled in the United States in 1817 (Julian, 982). Set to the long-meter tune “Warner,” it was included in the Plymouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes, familiar to Clemens and probably used by Olivia and her family:
O’er the dark wave of Galilee The gloom of twilight gathers fast, And on the waters drearily Descends the fitful evening blast. The weary bird hath left the air, And sunk into his sheltered nest; The wandering beast has sought his lair, And laid him down to welcome rest. Still near the lake, with weary tread, Lingers a form of human kind; And on His lone, unsheltered head, Flows the chill night-damp of the wind. Why seeks He not a home of rest? Why seeks He not a pillowed bed? Beasts have their dens, the bird its nest; He hath not where to lay His head. Such was the lot He freely chose, To bless, to save the human race; And through His poverty there flows A rich, full stream of heavenly grace. (Henry Ward Beecher 1864, 72)Actually 1 a.m. on Monday, 1 November.
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK). This letter, written on twenty-one leaves cut from a pocket notebook, was the first of ten surviving letters (eight of them to Olivia Langdon) written on notebook pages before the end of 1869. The notebook no longer survives (see pp. 381–82, n. 1).
L3 , 375–385; Wecter 1947, 69–71, with omissions; LLMT , 112–18.
see Samossoud Collection, p. 586.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.