13 January 1870 • Cambridge, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00408)
No, Livy dear, I shall treat smoking just exactly as I would treat the fore-finger of my left hand: If you asked me in all seriousness to cut that finger off, & I saw that you really meant it, & believed that the finger marred my well-being in some mysterious way, & I it was plain to me that you could not be entirely satisfied & happy while it remained, I give you my word that I would cut it off. I Ⓐemendation might think what I pleased about it, & the world might say what it pleased—it should come off. There would be nothing foolish in the act—& all wordy arguments against it would sink to their proper insignificance in presence of the one unanswerable argument that you desired it, & our married life could not be completely in unison while that bar remained.
Now there are no arguments that can convince me that moderate smoking is deleterious to me. I cannot ac attach any weight to either the arguments or the evidence of those who know nothing about the matter personally & so must simply theorize Ⓐemendation. Theorizing has no effect on me. I have smoked habitually for 26 of my 34 years, & I am on Ⓐemendation the only healthy member our family has. (What do mere theories amount to in the face of a fact like that.) My health is wholly faultless—& has been ever since I was 8 years old. My physical structure—lungs, kidneys, heart, brain—is without blemish.1explanatory note The do life insurance doctor pronounced me free from all disease & remarkably sound.2explanatory note Yet I am the victim of this fearfully destructive habit of smoking. My brother’s health has gradually run down instead of up—yet he is a model of propriety, & has no bad habits. My mother smoked for 30 years, & yet has lived to the age of 67.
Livy dear, make no argument of the fact that you have seen me “nervous, irritable,” &c., &c., for it happens to be no argument. You Ⓐemendation can see your father nervous, worn, restless—you can see any anti-smoker affected just as you have seen me. It is not a stat Ⓐemendation condition confined to smokers—as you ps possibly Ⓐemendation know in your own experience.
There is no argument that can have even a feather’s weight with me against smoking Ⓐemendation (in my case, at least,) for I know, & others merely suppose.
But there is one thing that will make me quit smoking, & only one. I will lay down this habit which is so filled with harmless pleasure, just as soon as you write me or say to me that you desire it. It shall be a sacrifice—just the same as if I simply asked you to give up going to church, knowing that no arguments I offered could convince you that I was right. It will not be hard for me to do it. I stopped chewing tobacco because it was a mean habit, partly, & partly because my mother desired it.3explanatory note I ceased from profanity Ⓐemendation because Mrs. Fairbanks desired it. I stopped drinking strong liquors because you desired it. I stopped drinking all other liquors because it seemed plain that you desired it.4explanatory note I did what I could to learn to leave my hands out of my pantaloons pockets & quit lolling at full length in easy chairs, because you desired it. There was no sacrifice about any of these things. Discarding these habits curtailed Ⓐemendation none of my liberties—on the contrary the doing it released me from various forms of slavery. With smoking it is different. No argument is against it is valid—& so to quit it I must do without other reason that that Ⓐemendation you desire it. The desires of all others have weight with me, but are not strong enough quite.
But even if you never said the words, if I saw that my smoking was a bar to our perfect wedded unity and happiness, it should go by the board—& pitilessly.5explanatory note
You seem to think it will be a Herculean task for me to suddenly cast out a loved habit of 26 years, Livy dear. Either you do not know me, or I do not know myself. I think differently about it. Speak Ⓐemendation the words, Livy dear—unaccompanied by any of the hated arguments or theories—& you shall see that I love you well enough to follow your desires, even in this matter. Nothing shall stand in the way of our perfect accord, if I can help it.
If you had ever harried me, or persecuted me about this thing, I could not speak as I do—for persecution only hardens one in evil courses. But it is you, darling, that have suffered the persecution (& yet, being you, it has seemed to be me, & so I have resisted all along.) You have had to listen to it all, & it grieves my heart to think of it. It has had its necessary effect in making me more loth to yield up this habit than I would have been otherwise. We do hate to be driven.
Ah, Livy, if the whole matter had been left solely in your hands, I would have been quit of the habit of smokingⒶemendation, long ago, & without a pang or a struggle. It was bad judgment to attack so strong a vice saf save through you. There could be little prospect that other means would succeed if your gentle ministrations failed.
It is about supper time, & some new friends are to come in after supper & sit with me till lecture time. Just as usual, I am in splendid trim for this little country town—& just as usual I must get up at 6 in the morning & be in a lifeless lethargy for the next large city—Utica, & so make a botch of it.
I am so sorry I have been the prime cause of blasting a happy Sunday for my darling—sorry & dejected—& resolved to make up for it in some way. Poor child, nobody shall harass you when my roof covers you. I won’t even let Mr. Langdon do it, dear good father though he is to both of us.6explanatory note I kiss you good night, darling.
in ink: Miss Olivia L. Langdon | Elmira | N. Y. return address: if not delivered within 10 days, to be delivered to postmarked: cambridge Ⓐemendation n.y. jan 14 docketed by OLL: 176th
Clemens was consistent in his accounts of when he began smoking, and of the habit’s effects on him, but did not always claim moderation. In 1882 he wrote:
I am forty-six years old, and I have smoked immoderately during thirty-eight years. . . . During the first seven years of my life I had no health—I may almost say that I lived on allopathic medicine, but since that period I have hardly known what sickness is. My health has been excellent, and remains so. As I have already said, I began to smoke immoderately when I was eight years old; that is, I began with one hundred cigars a month, and by the time I was twenty I had increased my allowance to two hundred a month. Before I was thirty, I had increased it to three hundred a month. (14 Mar 82 to Alfred Arthur Reade, in Reade, 120–21)
In November 1869 ( L3 , 387).
In early 1859 ( L3 , 76 n. 3).
By November 1867 (swearing) and November 1868 (alcohol) ( L2 , 122, 166, 284, 354).
Clemens had long anticipated such gentle persuasion ( L2 , 354). He did stop smoking not long after his marriage—possibly as soon as 6 February—although complete abstinence was only temporary (see the next note).
Nothing has been learned of the pretext for Jervis Langdon’s most recent remarks to Olivia about Clemens’s smoking. Possibly she shared Clemens’s facetious report of stupefying his Amenia hosts “with smoke in the parlor” (8 Jan 70 to OLLclick to open link [1st]). Since their discussion spoiled a Sunday and, according to the next letter, Olivia returned “from church all worn & unhappy,” her father may have enlisted the family’s pastor, Thomas K. Beecher, at Congregational (later Park) Church, on 9 January. Jervis Langdon soon made a direct appeal to Clemens, some details of which are preserved in the diary of Annie Adams Fields, wife of Boston publisher James T. Fields. Describing an occasion in March 1876 when Clemens told her husband “the whole story of his life,” she made special note of an incident that demonstrated Clemens’s “strength of character and rightness of vision”:
He said he had not been married many months when his wife’s father came to him one evening and said, “My son, would n’t you like to go to Europe with your wife?” “Why yes, sir,” he said, “if I could afford it.” “Well then,” said he, “if you will leave off smoking and drinking ale you shall have ten thousand dollars this next year and go to Europe beside.” “Thank you, sir,” said Mark, “this is very good of you, and I appreciate it, but I can’t sell myself. I will do anything I can for you or any of your family, but I can’t sell myself.” The result was, said Mark, “I never smoked a cigar all that year nor drank a glass of ale; but when the next year came I found I must write a book, and when I sat down to write I found it was n’t worth anything. I must have a cigar to steady my nerves. I began to smoke, and I wrote my book; but then I could n’t sleep and I had to drink ale to go to sleep. Now if I had sold myself, I could n’t have written my book, or I could n’t have gone to sleep, but now everything works perfectly well.” (Diary entry of 6 Apr 76, in Howe, 244–46)
In 1882 Clemens recalled that his abstinence lasted “a year and a half,” but he probably exaggerated its length (14 Mar 82 to Alfred Arthur Reade, in RI 1993 , 819). No documents have survived to show that he did not quit smoking as soon as he was married, but the remembered interview with Jervis Langdon could not have occurred before 1 May. By mid-December he was smoking only on Sundays, and his work on Roughing It, begun in late August, had stalled. He may not have fully resumed smoking until March or April 1871, when he also resumed work on the book in company with Joseph T. Goodman (2 Sept 70 to OC, n. 1click to open link; 19 Dec 70 to Twichellclick to open link; 18 Apr 71click to open link and 30 Apr 71click to open link, both to OC; RI 1993 , 819–42).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK), written on six leaves of the same notebook paper as 7 Jan 70 to Fairbanksclick to open link.
L4 , 21–24; Wecter 1947, 71–72, with omission; LLMT , 134–37; MTMF , 112, excerpt.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.