25 November 1869 • Boston, Mass. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00378)
Well! here I am, with only the little picture to kiss when I could just as well have had the blessed original in my arms at this moment as any other way.1explanatory note Nasby broke down & closed out the Rutland, Vt., Society, & that relieved me & the rest of going there2explanatory note—& that gave me two idle days following Hartford, which I’d Ⓐemendation I could have spent in New York if I had known you would be there, but somehow I had gathered the impression that you wouldn’t be there till the latter part of the week. I do not really believe you are ther in New York yet—for I telegraphed your father today & got no reply. But I suppose you will be there shortly.
I got a letter from you in Jamaica Plains—isn’t that the one? I have written them at Rutland to forward my letters here. If I had only known anything about the may map Ⓐemendation, there never would have been any necessity of your writing me anywhere but Boston, up to this time. I turn up here every day or two. Don’t know how it will be in the future—will send you the new list to-morrow.
I don’t see how I ever could have been so stupid as not to telegraph Elmira from Hartford—only, I hadn’t the remotest possible idea that you were going down the first of the week. I am just as grieved as if I had lost a month right out of the middle of my life. Even though I live to see you day & night for many years, I still have suffered loss, for I cannot get back those two days—& I might have been with my darling. Well, let’s be cheerful, anyway, old sweetheart, you precious darling, you blessed dream & blessed reality—let us find no fault with circumstances that may have been ordered by Providence—how can we know.
It is midnight—Billings has just gone—had a quiet, pleasant, conversational evening. Showed me his photographs—has two enchanting daughters, both married & mothers.3explanatory note
BEDⒶemendation! That is the idea now. Bless you sweetheart you are so lovely in the little picture tonight. I shall have to take it to bed with me so that I can look at it the first thing in the morning. I kiss you, darling & bless you.
Miss Olivia L. Langdon | St. Nicholas Hotel | New York. | flourish return address: boston lyceum Ⓐemendationbureau, no. 20 bromfield st. boston . postmarked: boston mass.Ⓐemendation nov. 26. 2 p.m.Ⓐemendation docketed: st. nicholas hotel Ⓐemendationnew york nov 27 1869 Ⓐemendation docketed by OLL: 148th
The “little picture” was probably a small, oval porcelaintype in a velvet-and gold-lined wooden case. On the inside of the case, beneath the picture, is inscribed “Oct. 29 1869” in an unknown hand (see p. 504).
That is, Nasby had made a concession to Redpath’s other lecturers in consenting to be the last speaker in the Rutland course. He lectured on “The Struggles of a Conservative on the Woman Question” in the Rutland Opera House on 17 November, “to the evident satisfaction of his hearers”—the local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic (“Nasby’s Lecture,” Rutland Weekly Herald, 18 Nov 69, 8). Clemens evidently had been scheduled to lecture in Rutland on 24 or 25 November.
Henry Wheeler Shaw (Josh Billings) had been married to the former Zilpha E. Bradford since 1845. Their daughter Kate Alice had two children, Henry Shaw and Rosa Grace, with her husband, Jose Ventura Santana, of Caracas, Venezuela. Their daughter Grace Ann had one child, Bradford, with her husband, William H. Duff, of New York City (Cyril Clemens, 31, 45, 145, 152, 179).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L3 , 409–410; LLMT , 360, brief paraphrase.
see Samossoud Collection, p. 586.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.