18 December 1871 • Chicago, Ill. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00690)
My dear dear old darling, I went to bed considerably after midnight yesterday morning, got up again at 4 oclock & went down (breakfastless,) to the depot, & found, with unspeakable gladness that there stood a sleeping car which I might have been occupying all night—but as usual, nobody about the hotel or among the lecture committee knew anything certain about any train. IⒶemendation took a berth—the train left immediately, & of course I couldn’t go to sleep. We were due here at in two hours—weⒶemendation fooled along & got here in eleven hours—3 P.M. Ha Could get nothing to eat, all that time. Not a vehicle at the omnibu station, nor a man or a boy. Had to carry my two satchels half a mile, to Mr. Robert Law’s house, & it did seem to me they weighed a couple of tons apiece before I got through. I then ate a perfectly enormous dinner (a roast turkey & 8 gallons of Oolong tea—well it was “long” something—it was the longest tea that ever went down my throat—it was hours in passing a given point.2explanatory note
Then Mr. Law & I immediately hopped into his buggy & for 2 steady hours we capered among the solemn ruins, on both sides of the river—a crisp, bitter day, but all days are alike to my seal-skin coat3explanatory note—I can only tell it is cold by my nose & by seeing peo Ⓐemendation other people’s actions. There is literally no Chicago here. I recognize nothing here, that ever I saw before.
We sat up & talked till 10, & all went to bed. I worked till after midnight on my Ⓐemendation amending & altering my lecture, & then turned in & slept like a log—I don’t mean a brisk, fresh, green log, but an old dead, soggy, rotten one, that never turns over or gives a yelp. All night long. Awoke 15 20 minutes ago—it is now 11 A. M., & there is a gentleman up yonder at the depot with a carriage ready to receive me as I step out of the cars for from Kalamazoo. I telegraphed him I would be in Chicago promptly at 11 oclock this morning, & I have kept my word—here I am. But I can easily explain to him that the reason he missed me was that I mean 11 oclock in a general way, & not any particular way, & that I don’t blame him,—particularly. 4explanatory note
It is
I shall now get & g Ⓐemendation up and go to Dr Jackson’s house & be his guest for 2 days.5explanatory note I feel perfectly splendid. One night’s rest always renews me, restores me, makes my life & vigor perfect. I wish I could see my darling this morning, & rest her head on my breast & make her forget this dismal lecture business & its long separations. But time moves along, honey! Not so very many days yet!
Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Cor Forest & Hawthorne | Hartford | Conn postmarked: chicago ill.Ⓐemendation dec 19
Actually Monday, 18 December.
Robert Law was a Chicago coal dealer, undoubtedly a business acquaintance of the Langdons’. He lived at 838 Prairie Avenue, near Lake Michigan but well south of the area devastated by the Chicago fire in October. Although his home was spared, Law may have suffered business losses in the fire: his coal business was listed at three addresses in the city in 1870, but at only one location in the 1871 directory, issued after the fire ( Chicago Directory: 1870, 484, 984; 1871, 103, 178).
Clemens had purchased this coat in Buffalo in September 1871 (27 Dec 71 to OLC, n. 2click to open link). In 1910 William Dean Howells still recalled the impression it had made on him. Howells was mistaken, however, in reporting that Clemens was wearing it at their first meeting, in November or December 1869, when he came to the Boston offices of the Atlantic Monthly to express gratitude for the magazine’s review of The Innocents Abroad:
Clemens . . . was wearing a sealskin coat, with the fur out, in the satisfaction of a caprice, or the love of strong effect which he was apt to indulge through life. I do not know what droll comment was in James T. Fields’s mind with respect to this garment, but probably he felt that here was an original who was not to be brought to any Bostonian book in the judgment of his vivid qualities. With his crest of dense red hair, and the wide sweep of his flaming mustache, Clemens was not discordantly clothed in that sealskin coat, which afterward, in spite of his own warmth in it, sent the cold chills through me when I once accompanied it down Broadway, and shared the immense publicity it won him. (Howells 1910, 4)
The expression of gratitude that Howells remembered, “which the mock modesty of print forbids my repeating,” has been shown to have been made in 1872 about Roughing It (Howells 1910, 3; RI 1993, 888 n. 270; L3 , 382–83 n. 6).
Clemens had apparently expected to spend Sunday, 17 December, in Kalamazoo. An invitation to spend Sunday night at Robert Law’s home presumably convinced him to make an early departure for Chicago.
Abraham Reeves Jackson, the “doctor” of The Innocents Abroad, had moved from Pennsylvania to Chicago in 1870 and had married Julia Newell, his Quaker City shipmate, in February 1871. They lived at 785 Michigan Avenue. Jackson was chief surgeon of the newly established Woman’s Hospital of the State of Illinois. He was Clemens’s host and companion for the balance of the Chicago visit ( L2 , 65–66; Chicago Directory 1871, 94; “Personal Paragraphs,” Chicago Times, 19 Dec 71, 8). After the first of Clemens’s two Chicago lectures, on 18 December,
a few of the journalists of the city were pleasantly entertained at the residence of Dr. Jackson, a gentleman whom Twain immortalized in “The Innocents Abroad.” During this supplemental two hours, the guest of the evening was even more quaintly humorous and interesting than during his public talk, developing a strong placer of fun that will stand a great deal of industrious mining before it begins to be exhausted. (“Mark Twain Last Night,” Chicago Evening Post, 19 Dec 71, 4)
And on 20 December, the Chicago Times reported that Mark Twain,
swathed in a seal-skin overcoat and huge muffler, and accompanied by Dr. Jackson and Mr. Steiner, looked in upon several old and a few new acquaintances on yesterday. He leaves for the east to-day. (“Personal Paragraphs,” 20 Dec 71, 2)
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L4 , 516–519; Wecter 1948, 84–85; LLMT , 169–70.
see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.