15 and 16 November 1869 • Clinton and Holyoke, Mass. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00368)
I had to submit to the customary & exasperating drive around town in a freezing open buggy this morning (at Norwich) to see the wonders of the village.1explanatory note
{Mem.—They always consist of the Mayor’s house; the ex-mayor’s house; the house of a State Senator; house of an ex-governor; house of a former Member of Congress; the public school with its infernal architecture; the female seminary; paper mill or factory of some kind or other; the cemetery; the Court house; the plaza; the place where the park is going to be—& I must sit & shiver & stare at a melancholy grove of skeleton trees & listen while my friend gushes enthusiastic statistics & dimensions. All towns are alike—all have Ⓐemendation their Ⓐemendationsame stupid trivialities to show, & all demand an impossible interest at the suffering stranger’s hands. Why won’t these insane persecutors believe me when I protest pleadingly that I don’t care two cents for all the thrilling wonders the village can boast.
{How ⒶemendationI gloat in secret when one of these people regrets that I cannot “remain over” & see his accursed village! And how unblushingly I repeat the threadbare Ⓐemendationlie that I am sorry!
{After the natural wonders are all visited, then we have to call on other inanimate wonders with dull faces, but with legs to them that show them to be human: the mayor; the richest man; the wag of the village (who instantly assails me with old stale jokes & humorous profanity); the village editor—& a lot more of people I take no possible interest in & don’t want to see. And when by some divine accident one of them isn’t at home, what a fervent prayer of thankfulness rises up in my heart!}
I only have to submit to these inflictions when I am the guest of somebody & cannot refuse to suffer in return for his hospitality. When I am paying my own bills, at a hotel, I talk out & say No Sir—not any village wonders for the subscriber, if you please.
Here I am in a hotel—the Clinton House—& a villainous one it is—shabby bed, shabby room, shabby furniture, dim lights—everything shabby & disagreeable.
Livy Darling—
I got your little letter a while ago & am therefore glad & happy—happier & more & more grateful for your love with every day that goes over my head. I would not know what to do or whither to turn to give life a value if I were to lose my darling now. I am so wrapped up in you, I so live in you, that it to lose you would be equivalent to losing life itself.
I left Boston without baggage, thinking I would go back there from Norwich the same night—but the trains left at such inconvenient hours that I went from there to Clinton—found a similar state of things — came straight here. But as I am clear out of shirts (wore this one yesterday) I shall take an early train to Boston tomorrow before I go to Danvers.2explanatory note
P. S.—The photograph was Josh Billings.3explanatory note
This is the way to spell a certain word, little sweetheart—“pretty”—do you see, honey? I have not looked to see whether any others are misspelt Ⓐemendationor not, because I don’t care whether they are or not—but that one just happened to fall under my eye at this moment.
I am so dead stupid, from getting up so early this morning, that I fairly dread going on that state stage Ⓐemendation to-nightⒶemendation. Come, my darling, stam check that cold immediately, & look out for the sore throat—don’t you dare to go out with only one shawl.
I cured my cold with two long & severe Turkish baths taken in immediate succession, with cold shower baths between4explanatory note—next morning I was entirely well.
in ink: Miss Olivia L. Langdon Ⓐemendation | Elmira | N. Y. Ⓐemendation postmarked: holyoke mass. nov 17 docketed by OLL: 138th | S S | P. S
Clemens had lectured in Norwich, Connecticut, on 13 November.
Norwich was about 80 miles southwest of Boston. From there Clemens had traveled about 65 miles northeast to Clinton, to lecture on 15 November. Holyoke, where he performed the following evening, was about 50 miles southwest of Clinton and about 80 miles west of Boston. Danvers, Massachusetts, the site of his 17 November lecture, was 15 miles north of Boston.
Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw, 1818–85) had been a farmer, real estate salesman, Ohio River steamboat owner, and auctioneer before, in the late 1850s, he began contributing to newspapers the steady stream of aphorisms, short essays, and sketches that made him a popular cracker-barrel philosopher. His third book, Josh Billings’ Farmer’s Allminax (New York: G. W. Carleton), the first of a series of ten comic annuals, was published in October 1869 and reportedly sold 30,000 copies in its first week and over 90,000 within three months. Also popular as a humorous lecturer, Billings had appeared in Boston’s Music Hall on 27 October, two weeks before Mark Twain, speaking on “Milk and Natral Histry” in James Redpath’s Boston Lyceum Course (Kesterson, 20–24; “Neighborhood and News Items,” Elmira Advertiser, 2 Dec 69, 4; Cyril Clemens, 115; “Special Notices,” Boston Evening Transcript, 27 Oct 69, 4). The photograph of Billings has not been identified, but he must have given it to Clemens in the second week of November, around the time the two men were photographed with Petroleum V. Nasby (see 24 and 25 Nov 69 to OLL, n. 10click to open link). Clemens probably enclosed it in one of three letters he wrote to Olivia between 11 and 15 November (docket numbers 135–37), now lost.
A variant of the “water cure” therapy that became popular in the United States in the 1840s and 1850s in treating everything from nosebleeds to cancer (see Inds , 267).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK); written on five leaves of the same notebook paper as 30, 31 October, 1 November to Olivia Langdon.
L3 , 395–397; LLMT , 121–22, 360, excerpt and brief paraphrase.
see Samossoud Collection, p. 586.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.