27 November 1871 • Bennington, Vt. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00680)
Livy darling, good house, but they laughed too much. A Ⓐemendationgreat fault with this lecture is, that I have no way of turning it into a serious & instructive vein at will. Any lecture of mine ought to be a running narrative-plank, with square holes in it, six inches apart, all the length of it; & then in my head mental slo shop I ought to have plugs (half marked “serious” & the others marked “humorous”) to select from & jam into these holes according to the temper of the audience.
I am so sorry to have to leave you with all the weight of housekeeping on your shoulders—& at the same time I know that it is a blessing to you—for only wholesome care & work can make lonely people endure existence. I particularly hate to have to inflict on you the bore of answering my business letters. That is a hardship indeed.1explanatory note
I think Bliss has gotten up the prospectus book with taste & skill.2explanatory note The selections are good, & judiciously arranged. He had a world of good matter to select from, though. This is a better book than the Innocents, & much better written. If the subject were less hackneyed it would be a great success.3explanatory note But when I come to write the Mississippi book, then look out! I will spend 2 months on the river & take notes, & I bet you I will make a standard work.4explanatory note
Well, it is late bedtimeⒶemendation—so with a loving good night kiss, I send my deep love to my mother Olivia Langdon; & to my wife Olivia Langdon; to my niece Olivia Langdon; & to my future daughter Olivia Langdon.5explanatory note
Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Cor Forest & Hawthorne | Hartford | Conn. postmarked: bennington Ⓐemendation vt. nov.Ⓐemendation 29
On 20 November Olivia had written the following letter, which Clemens received in Rondout on 22 November (CU-MARK):
llc
My Darling
Last night you were here and how much nicer it was than it is tonight when you are away— Did n’t we have a good visit together? I do hope that this will be the last season that it will be necessary for you to lecture, it is not the way for a husband and wife to live if they can possibly avoid it, is it? Seperation comes soon enough— The Pottier and Stymus bill has come, it is $128.00, I thought it would probably be 150.00. at least— Then the bill on the insurance of our goods against accident—$60.00—so it is well that you left me the additional $150.00 if you had not I should have run ashore—
I answered all your letters today except the one from Meline that I could not find, if I do not find it I will get his address in some way and write him— It was a pleasure to be writing letters for you, it is a pleasure to do any thing for you——
As soon as I had the baby washed and dressed this forenoon I went up in the guest room and lay down and slept until two o’clock.
I am going over to “the club” now in a few minutes I wish you were going with me I rather dread it— I want you along to protect me.
The baby is so sweet and dear, I know as he grows older you and he will love each other like every thing What a wonderful thing love is, I do trust that we shall be a thoroughly united loving family—it certainly is the heaven here below— Youth in certain things you must teach me a “don’t care” spirit, as regards cooks and the like, and I too will endevour to teach myself— I believe there is nothing that sooner ruins the happiness of a family than a worrying woman—
Cubbie is very anxious to have you get home Sat. he hopes that you will not fail us on any account—
I hope it is a pleasant evening in Phila it is rainy and unpleasant here, I have not been out today, I have slept and visited with the baby most of the day—
Mother sits near me at work on her silk quilt I will try to add a line to this when I come home from Mr Warners
Send Annie’s and Sammy’s watches to me, so that I can send them with the other gifts— Am home from Mr Ws, will write about it tomorrow—too sleepy tonight
Your Livy
Pottier and Stymus, New York furniture manufacturers, had billed the Clemenses for “10 Days Labor packing furniture . . . Express, Board, &c”; the Western Insurance Company of Buffalo provided $20,000 of insurance on the furniture for its shipment to Hartford in September (receipts of 15 Nov 71, 18 Nov 71, CU-MARK). None of the business letters Olivia wrote for Clemens is known to survive. James Florant Meline (1811–73) was the author of Two Thousand Miles on Horseback. Santa Fé and Back (1867). His letter may have been a follow-up to one of 11 May 1871 in which he requested Clemens’s help in publishing “a new, revised and enormously improved edition” of the book (CU-MARK). The club was the Hartford Monday Evening Club (founded in 1869), which met periodically at the homes of members for discussion and the reading of essays. “It was the early rule that the wife of the host invited two or three of her intimates to sit with her.” On 20 November 1871, at the home of Charles Dudley Warner, Joseph R. Hawley read a paper on “Labor Reform.” Clemens did not become a member of the club, or read an essay, until 1873 (Monday Evening Club, 3–7, 11–12, 14, 28).
Bliss must have sent Clemens one of the first copies of the prospectus for Roughing It, which had arrived from the bindery on 22 November. A revised version with a much more complete listing of chapters and illustrations was issued on 23 January 1872 ( RI 1993 , 812, 871, 875).
A proliferation of books about the West contributed to Clemens’s sense that his subject was “hackneyed” ( RI 1993 , 798, 828).
As early as January 1866 Clemens seems to have planned a Mississippi River book ( L1 , 329, 331 n. 8). He finally began to explore the subject in his “Old Times on the Mississippi” series, published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1875. A four-week tour on the river in April and May 1882 helped him expand the Atlantic articles into Life on the Mississippi (SLC 1875; N&J2, 432–37).
In addition to his wife and his mother-in-law, Olivia Lewis Langdon, who was still visiting Hartford, Clemens refers to his niece, Julia Olivia Langdon, born to Ida and Charles J. Langdon on 21 November 1871, and his first daughter, Olivia Susan Clemens, born on 19 March 1872. He seems to have visited Charles and Ida in Elmira on 25 or 26 November (3 Dec 71 to OLC, n. 3click to open link).
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L4 , 498–500; LLMT , 165–66.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.