25 December 1869 • Boston, Mass. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00393)
A m happy Christmas to my darling, & to all that are dear to her! You are at home, now, Livy, & all your labors & vexations are over for a while. Poor child, I am afraid you are pretty well worn out. But you must be quiet, for a few days & recruit your strength, & then I shall find your restored & well when I see you a week hence.
I did not write you yesterday, sweetheart, & I suppose it was mutual, for you could have had no opportunity to write me.1explanatory note I called at Redpath’s a while ago when I arrived in town, thinking I might hear from you, but I did not. I shall expect a letter in the loved & familiar hand in New Haven day after tomorrow, though—& a month after that, & a litt we shall close our long correspondence, & tell each other what our minds suggest, by word of mouth. Speed the day!
It is just a year today since I quit drinking all manner of tabooed beverages, & I cannot see but that I have fared considerably better in consequence, than I did formerly—& certainly I have not upon my soul the sin of leading others to dissipate. But all that goes to your credit, not mine. I did not originate the idea.2explanatory note
I had a delightful time of it last night, with the lecture (in Slatersville—the place was changed,) & was really hospitably entertained in a private family—a rare thing in New England.3explanatory note The night before, the dog at whose house I staid took advantage of his hospitality (I was undressing & could not leave) to ask me to abate ten dollars on my lecture price.—asked it as a charity to his society. I told him I wouldn’t—that I hated the dishonored name of charity in the questionable shape it usually comes in. He said they had liked the lecture, & they wanted to keep the society all alive so that they could hear me next winter. I said that when I jammed their hall full of people & then they had the cheek to ask me to abate my price, they hadn’t money enough to hire me to talk in such a place again. In the morning he called me to breakfast, but I said it as it was only 7 o’clock I would manage to do without breakfast until I could get it in some other town. AndⒶemendation when I went down stairs I said, “Doctor Sanborn, here are ten dollars for my night’s lodging.” He said he was much obliged, & would hand it to the committee. I said he would do nothing of the kind—I would not abate one cent on my price, & he must accept ten theⒶemendation ten dollars for his New England hospitality, or not take it at all. He took it with a world of servile thanks. (He was the chief physician of Rockport & a very prominent citizen.)4explanatory note
Honey, I got the Jamaica Plains letter, & it did w Ⓐemendation just as well as a new one would have done. It was from you, my darling, & that makes a letter always fresh & full of interest.5explanatory note
Mrs. Barstow has been trying to get a clerkship for her husband in the Treasury Department at Washington, so that he could support her & the children & let her get the rest & recreation her ill health demands, but she couldn’t accomplish it right away. She did not want to bother me, she said, but it was no bother—I wrote to Senator Stewart, & he said he would put Barstow into a clerkship right away. So that is all right.6explanatory note I may write again, to-day, sweetheart, but just at present I will close & run down to breakfast.7explanatory note God’s peace be with you my darling little wife.
enclosures: 8explanatory note
Miss Olivia L. Langdon | Elmira | N.Y. return address: young’s hotel, court avenue, boston, mass. postmarked: boston mass. Ⓐemendation dec. 25. 6.p.m. docketed by OLL: 163rd
Presumably because Olivia was returning to Elmira from New York City, her wedding preparations there now completed. The letters Clemens evidently wrote to her on 21 and 22 December (docket numbers 161 and 162) are now lost.
On 26 November 1868, the day of his informal engagement to Olivia, Clemens decided to give up alcohol, but it was a month before he announced the decision to her (see L2 , 284, 354).
Clemens’s hosts in Slatersville, Rhode Island, have not been identified. He had been scheduled to lecture in Salem, Massachusetts, on Christmas Eve, but instead substituted in Slatersville for his friend Josh Billings, who was ill (“Slatersville,” Woonsocket R.I. Patriot and Rhode Island State Register, 24 Dec 69, 2; Henry Wheeler Shaw Josh Billings to James Redpath and George L. Fall, 18 Dec 69, CtHMTH).
In Rockport, Massachusetts, Clemens “was housed at the home of temperate Dr. John E. Sanborn on Broadway, next to the town hall. Despite the packed auditorium eight to twelve hundred people at twenty-five cents a ticket, the committee asked Twain to cut his fee by ten dollars. His refusal to do so and his brusque manner, especially at being called for breakfast too early, so angered his hosts that the children of the family were forbidden to read later Twain books, however diverting they were” (Swan, 190). According to a local reviewer, Clemens’s 23 December lecture also made an unfavorable impression:
Mark Twain perpetrated his talk here last Friday actually Thursday evening. His performance was according to appointment, and still it was a disappointment. A good many of the ticket holders wanted a humorous lecture, and they all know now just what a humorous lecture is, and the Rockport market is supplied with that style of goods for the present. The regular lectures are not always weekly; but this one was very weakly. He is accused of being a humorist, but his hearers here will generally vote for a verdict of not guilty of the charge. He showed at least exceeding ingenuity, for he contrived to conceal his wit and humor so adroitly, that his audience found it very difficult to detect it. In short, his lecture was remarkably satisfactory, only with an emphatic dis- before it. (“Rockport,” Gloucester Mass. Cape Ann Advertiser, 31 Dec 69, 2, TS in CU-MARK)
This letter had been pursuing Clemens since 19 November, when he lectured in Jamaica Plain.
Clemens’s letter to Senator William M. Stewart of Nevada, his former employer, on behalf of William H. Barstow, is not known to survive.
Probably Clemens did write again on Christmas Day, but that letter and one he almost certainly wrote on 26 December (docket numbers 164 and 165) have not been found.
The first enclosure was from the Boston Advertiser (“In General,” 25 Dec 69, 1). The second was from the review of Clemens’s 8 December Washington lecture that had appeared in the Washington Morning Chronicle (9 Dec 69, 4). An identical clipping from the Chronicle survives in a family scrapbook (Scrapbook 8:65, CU-MARK). The portion of the review that Clemens declined to save or pass on to Olivia read:
Many of his facts are new and interesting, but it is a pity that most of his really good stories are familiar to his audience before he tells them from having already been printed in connection with his lecture. To many, Mark fell rather below the estimate which had been formed of him from his humorous writings. It would be doing an injustice to the memory of poor A. Ward to say that the droll Mark was his equal in point of genuine wit and humor. That he approaches him there can be no doubt, but in that genial, modest, and sparkling flow of fun which Artemus used so happily, the latter was by far his superior. We do not desire to unduly depreciate the abilities of Mark, for he is very funny, and eminently satisfactory to his audience. It is by comparison, however, that we determine merit, and, no one, we believe, can object to the method, for it is the same as that by which men, as well as things, are measured and their values ascertained.
Other Washington papers of 9 December expressed no such reservations. In its review, preserved on the same page in the scrapbook, the Evening Star remarked approvingly on Mark Twain’s similarity to Artemus Ward while refraining from printing any “fine things” or “funny things” from his lecture “for they are his property, to be used a good many times in the course of the winter, and he has suffered already by newspaper depredations” (“Washington News and Gossip,” 1). The National Intelligencer and Express commented that “the lecture abounded in fresh and sparkling witticisms, which were rendered in Mark’s usual happy vein. The audience were greatly pleased with the entertainment” (“Amusements,” 2). And the National Republican reported that Mark Twain “convulsed his hearers with laughter” and achieved “a success of the most decided character” (“Mark Twain’s Lecture Last Night,”4).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK), is copy-text for the letter. Clemens tore the enclosures from the Boston Advertiser (“In General,” 25 Dec 69, 1) and the Washington Morning Chronicle (9 Dec 69, 4). They survive with the letter and are reproduced in facsimile.
L3 , 435–439; LLMT , 129–30, without the enclosures.
see Samossoud Collection, p. 586.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.