10 January 1870 • (2nd of 2) • Albany, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00407)
Albany, Jan. 10.Ⓐemendation
Had an immense house, tonight, little sweetheart, & turned away several hundred—no seats for them. It is hard to make al Albany Dutchme an laugh & applaud, but the subscriber did it.1explanatory note One day less to worry through before my rascally pilgrimage is finished & we resign ourselves to rest & refreshment in the tranquil privacy of our own home, my darling.
Bless your little heart, you did no “impertinent thing” in opening a letter addressed to me, Livy dear. You can open any letter addressed to me—whatever is mine is Livy’s. The letter was from John McComb & I will enclose it to you. I have a secret to tell you about him when I see you again, if I do not forget it. I will write him to-night to hunt up that Blind Tom letter. I am glad & proud that my little wife takes such an interest in my scribblings.2explanatory note I plainly see, now, why Joe Goodman gradually lost all interest in his poetry (he was a born poet) & finally lost all ambition in that direction & ceased to write. The one whose applause would have been dearer to him & more potent than that of all the world beside, could not help him, or encourage him or spur him, because she was far below his intellectual level & could not appe appreciate Ⓐemendation the work of his brain or feel an interest in it. When I told him you took care of my sketches for me & listened with a lively interest to any manuscript of mine before it was printed, he dropped an unconscious remark that was so full of pathos—so fraught with “It might have been”—that my heart ached for him.3explanatory note He could have been so honored of men, & so loved by all who for whom poetry has a charm, but for the dead weight o & clog of a wife upon his winged genius, of a wife whose soul could have no companionship save with the things of the dull earth.4explanatory note
But I am blessed above my kind, with a another self—a life companion o who is part of me—part of my heart, & flesh & spirit—& not a fellow-pilgrim who lags far behind or flies ahead, or soars above me. Side by side, my darling, we walk the ways of life; & the ray of light that falls upon the one, illumines the face of the other; the cloud that darkens the hope of one casts its sable shadow upon the other; & the storms that come will beat upon no single head, but both will feel its their might & brave its their desolation.
Oh, think of Mrs. Fairbanks—a Pa Pegasus Ⓐemendation harnessed with a dull brute of the field. Mated, but not matched, must be the direst grief that can befall any poor human creature—& when I think how I have escaped it when so many that are worthier than I have suffered it, I am filled with a thankfulness to God which I can feel—that rare thankfulness that such as I feel all too seldom. It is at such times that one’s heart lifts up its unspoken gratitude, & no choicely worded eloquence of lip & brain is like unto it. Ⓐemendation, or half so puissant.
I shall love the silk quilt, not only because our mother gave it you, but because it will always preserve that old dress that was so dear to me.5explanatory note And we never can sleep under it, darling, & forget the old pleasant days that were ours when it was “still “in the flesh,” if I may so speak. We will cherish the quilt well, & help it hoard its memory-treasures. It must be sacred to our bed—guests cannot have it.6explanatory note And I am very glad, too, that it has in it something to that knew you when you were a little girl—for I always feel a sense of loss, when I reflect that I never knew Ⓐemendation you when you were little. in margin: You darling little rascal, you must spell “ suffice Ⓐemendation ” as I spell it now. That’s all that’s wrong, sweetheart Ⓐemendation.
My child! I thought you had a full list.7explanatory note Here it is:
Jan. 11 (tomorrow) West Troy
12—Rondout—H. M. Crane
13—Cambridge (N. Y.) A. H. Comstock
14.—Utica—W. P. Carpenter.
15—Oswego—Joseph Owen
16—Sunday.
17—Baldwinsville (N. Y.) W. F. Morris.
—
—
20—Hornellsville
21—Jamestown, (N. Y.) C. E. Bishop.
That is the end of the list, now, & I hope no additions will be made to it.
If you hurry, honey, I guess you can get the newspaper notices to the Oswego man in time.8explanatory note
I have received the bookseller’s receipt for the money paid for the Doré book, & so I suppose the book has reached you by this time—it was to be sent right away.9explanatory note
Sleep in peace, my own darling, & all good angels guard your dreams & give them happy omens.
in ink: Miss Olivia L. Langdon | Elmira | N. Y.Ⓐemendation return address: delavan house, albany, chas. e. leland. clarendon hotel, saratoga springs, chas. e. leland. leland hotel, springfield, ill. h. s. leland & co. metropolitan hotel, new-york. s. leland & co. postmarked: albany n. y. Ⓐemendation jan 11 docketed by OLL: 10explanatory note 173rd
The Albany Evening Journal reported that Clemens
delighted an immense audience last night. Tweddle Hall was packed in every part. The Sandwich Island Savages were described in a peculiarly droll and interesting manner, which kept the audience in a broad grin from commencement to close. Mark is decidedly the best of our humorists, and what is more to his credit, he never descends to the trick of bad spelling in his writings. (“‘Our Fellow Savages,’” 11 Jan 70, 3)
The Albany Argus agreed, calling Clemens “the best humorist now before the public” and a success “from first to last” (“‘Mark Twain’ at Tweddle Hall,” 11 Jan 70, 2).
McComb was one of the editors and owners of the San Francisco Alta California. The secret about him remains a secret. Clemens had described the blind, black piano prodigy Thomas Greene Bethune (1849–1908) in an Alta letter published on 1 August 1869. Olivia must have reminded him of his earlier promise to get a copy of it for her ( L2 , 12 n. 1; SLC 1869; Southern, 251–54; L3 , 431).
This exchange took place in late December or early January, either in New York City or Elmira, before Goodman went on to Europe ( L3 , 431). Goodman’s first wife, Ellen, was a native of Ireland. They remained married until her death in 1893 (Caleb Goodman, 5).
According to journalist Samuel P. Davis (1850–1918), Goodman’s poetry, which regularly appeared in his Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, earned him the title “Boss Poet of the Comstock.” Goodman was often called upon for ceremonial verse: “year after year he furnished the odes for Decoration Day, Fourth of July and Pioneer anniversaries. . . . Whenever Joe had to shut himself up and write a poem for the public, Mark Twain, who was on the paper, would describe his employer as being chained in a cell on a fish-and-water diet, wrestling with the muses” (Samuel Post Davis). Most of Goodman’s poetry perished with the files of the Enterprise, but some characteristic poems can be found in Poetry of the Pacific, published in 1867 (Newman).
Probably “the particular blue silk dress” that Clemens associated with the early days of his courtship ( L3 , 78). The gift of a bridal quilt from mother to daughter had been an American tradition since colonial times (Holstein, 27).
“Entertainment of a welcome visitor not immediate ‘kin’ demanded that the spare bed be formally decked in all the glory of the pièce de résistance of the housewife’s quilts; not so to dress a guest’s bed was a social slight” (Finley, 128).
Olivia had been using the lecture itinerary that Clemens sent her on 29 November 1869, which did not include his lectures in Oswego, Hornellsville, and Jamestown, nor two others he did not yet know about: Ogdensburg and Fredonia, New York, on 18 and 19 January, respectively. Clemens’s contacts at West Troy (George R. Meneely, a bell manufacturer), Rondout (Henry M. Crane, a bookkeeper), and Utica (William P. Carpenter, a bookkeeper) have been previously identified ( L3 , 315 n. 1 bottom, 357 n. 1 top, 415–16, 486). For his Oswego contact see note 8. For his Cambridge, Fredonia, and Jamestown contacts, see (14 Jan 70 to OLLclick to open link, nn. 1 and 5, and 20 Feb 70 to Langdon, n. 2click to open link. His contact at Baldwinsville is identified only by the present list. The names of his Ogdensburg and Hornellsville contacts are not known.
Olivia had not sent the reviews Clemens requested on 6 January because she did not know who “the Oswego man” was. She may now have sent them to Joseph Owen, a real estate broker and a member of the local Y.M.C.A. lecture committee. In publicizing the lecture, the Oswego Commercial Advertiser and Times excerpted reviews from the Boston Advertiser and the Boston Evening Transcript (misidentified as the “Journal”), both of 11 November 1869, the Hartford Courant of 25 November 1869, and the Troy Times of 12 January 1870, but not the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin (6 Jan 70 to OLL, n. 4click to open link). Afterward, the Oswego paper pronounced the performance a success, remarking that following some “heavy lectures . . . Twain’s was thrown in just at the right nick of time to make the course rest a little easier on our stomachs, so to speak—like the wine after dinner” (Oswego Commercial Advertiser and Times: “Real Estate Office,” 13 Jan 70, 3; “‘Mark Twain,’ . . . ,” “Mark Twain—Notices of the Press,” “Y.M.C.A. Lecture Course,” 14 Jan 70, 3; “Twain’s Lecture,” 17 Jan 70, 3).
Clemens’s next two letters to Olivia (docket numbers 174 and 175), probably written on 11 and 12 January after his lectures in West Troy and Rondout, are missing ( L3 , 479).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK), written on five leaves of the same notebook paper as 7 Jan 70 to Fairbanksclick to open link.
L4 , 17–20; MFMT , 209–10, excerpt; LLMT , 124–25, excerpt; MTMF , 117, excerpt.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.