9 and 10 December 1868 • New York, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 02727)
At 1 o’clock this morning, Twichell & I were playing praying for you. You were asleep & knew nothing of it, but I hope that your slumbers were none the less peaceful, or your dreams less pleasant for it. We had been sitting alone in his parlor since 10 P. M., & I was to leave in the 1:20 A.M. train. We Ⓐemendationhad talked a great deal about you, of course; & we had also held a long & earnest conversation upon the subject of religion. I Ⓐemendationtold him, Livy, what was the truth—that although I had been praying more or less since th about the middle of September, & here latterly day by day & earnestly, I feared I had not made as much progress as I ought to have done—& that now I began clearly to comprehend that one must seek Jesus for himself alone, & uninfluenced by selfish motives.
And so my perplexities had increased; for wheresoever I turned to seek the sav Savior ⒶemendationI was confronted by the phantom of a selfish impulse: first, my measureless love for you & the impossibility of my remaining content to give you Ⓐemendationdaily pain by my separation from the Christian fold if you were my wife (which, may God grant you shall be,)—second, my natural desire to cheer my aged mother’s closing days with those tidings that would make her old heart young again & her failing pulses leap for joy—third the great calm that would descend like a benediction upon my sister’s spirit to know that the gates of God were open to me—& finally the great wave of happiness that would sweep athwart the Ⓐemendationbreast of that faithful pilgrim mother of mine1explanatory note & erase in a single instant the mighty debt of gratitude scored there against me. I said I was warring against these human impulses, now, but wa Ⓐemendationthe tide of battle was against me. I would succeed at last, but when? ⒶemendationAnd Livy, that most excellent friend told me clearly & concisely how to seek the better life—& showed me how to utilize these fettering impulses & make of them aids, in some sense, when they could not be driven away, instead of fatal obstacles. Then ⒶemendationI was glad I went to Hartford. And at last, in the midst of the solemn night, he prayed fervently for my conversion, & that your love & mine might grow until it was made perfect love by the approving spirit of ⒶemendationGod—& that hand in hand & with hearts throbbing in unison we might compass that only worthy journey of life whose latest steps ushered the wayfarer into the home of eternal peace. But when he do dropped Ⓐemendationhis voice to a gentler tone, & prayed so touchingly & so tenderly for you, Livy, & that you might be shielded from all harm & spared all suffering & sorrow, I felt as if I were almost the light from the Better Land shot its rays above the dark horizon of my mind & gilded its barren wastes with its glory. I am a hundred times thankful that I made this little journey to Hartford. The twichell’s send their warm love & friendship & esteem to you, Livy, for I told them it would be acceptable. I took two sets of their pictures, on purpose that I might send one set to you.2explanatory note They do not do them justice, of course. in margin: PPPS.—Don’t you kiss Twichell’s picture—I can’t permit it, by any manner of means.
I was sorry the ferrotype had not come, so that I might show them a picture more like you than my little bosom friend the photograph. When will it come, Livy?
Of course I did not sleep a wink, coming down in the cars—being excited—& I must not go to bed till after the Newark lecture. And now I am going down to the Metropolitan to get your letter. & your picture, & shall be disappointed. I may be disappointed. But I shall love & bless you just the same, since I cannot help it. I shall get a them at Scranton, Pa., the 16th—please make up your mind that I shall, Livy. {You see I have already lost hope that I am to be permitted to look upon your face on the 12th.} I wish I had begged for one more day in Elmira.
I fully appreciated your grief at parting with Mrs. Crane & was as sorry for you as if the grief had been my own. But I did & do think so much of you for hiding it from the rest of the household, hard as the task was, for I know they can bear anything else better than to see you in distress. , Livy
If I’ had the time, now, I would write & ask Mrs. Langdon to forgive my impatient demands upon her leniency, & would also drop a line to Mr. Langdon—but I suppose I must Ⓐemendationnot attempt it. Tender to them my loving honor, Livy, if I may offer it. Livy, whom I do love more tenderly than ever, so be Ⓐemendationgood & generous, now, & send me a kiss & all the love you can spare. Good-bye. I kiss you.
Yrs, always
Wednesday Night.
I just can’t estimate how many thanks I owe you, Livy, for your good, long, delightful letter. It saved me—saved me from another Elmira failure before a great audience in Newark. I felt so heavy & stupid from what of rest ‘sleep, & from wearing excitement at Twichell’s, th that Ⓐemendationwhen I went down town at noon it was with many misgivings about to-night’s work. So much so that I began to think of leaving some of the serious paragraphs out of the lecture rather than read them badly. I Ⓐemendationknew I had asked you to write a cheery letter for to-day, & I knew you had done it, because you are always faithful to every legitimate & useful reasonable trust, & are so are always to be depended upon—but I feared that the letter had not yet arrived. I was so glad to find it had come, I do assure you. It brightened me up so much that I knew perfectly well I was entirely safe for every line of the lecture. I Ⓐemendationsaid to myself, “I can make that audience laugh whenever I please—so I will talk the humorous to them; but when I come to the serious passages, I will enthrone my matchless little princess (the same being you,) in the chief seat in the house, & talk that to her.” And “Livy, I would have given anything if you had really been there. Then you would have heard a lecture delivered as it should be delivered; you would have seen a lecturer perfectly at his ease; you would have seen a brilliant audience pretty completely at the mercy of the speaker, too, & swung “from grave to gay, from lively to serene,”3explanatory note without the least perceptible effort in the world. It was splendid. I enjoyed every sentence of the discourse, & was sorry to quit was when it was finished. I wished it had been before a metropolitan audience of 5,000; I could have persuaded them with just as much ease—I could have carried them with me with just the same facility.4explanatory note Tonight you would not have recognized this as the same dull harangue I dragged my self myself Ⓐemendationthrough so painfully in Elmira. Of course the people came trooping to the stage to be introduced & offer congratulations (they always do after a startling success, but they promptly don’t under other circumstances,) & so I missed the New York train & was delayed an hour—but they did n’t succeed in champaigning me, Livy—I took one glass of ale & refused to be fèted further. It isn’t a bit of trouble to refuse. I elaborated my closing “moral” somewhat, & one gentleman said that that gave the lecture a sort of Sabbath-school cast. I said if he meant that it gave it a religious cast, it was precisely what I intended—whereupon he hastened to say that he had meant no offense & was finding no fault. The Society tried to bind me to open their course next season, but I said I could not make promises so far in advance—would comply, however, in case I entered the lecture field no Ⓐemendationany more. But what a string of boastful confidences I am making! I wouldn’t dare think Ⓐemendationof so unbosoming myself on paper to anybody but you—but then there isn’t anything I wouldn’t dare to unbosom to you, you fascinating rascal! {No, you are not a rascal—you are the very dearest girl in all the wide world, & anybody who says the contrary Ⓐemendationis taking his life into his own hands.} Livy, I do thank you ever so much for that happy letter, & I want you to write many, many more like it. You were just your dear little self in it, & you talked just as you would talk if I were by your side & Mrs. Hayloft & Bement were far away. {It tickles me every time I think of your adventure with Bement that day, poor fellow!}5explanatory note I can pray with great good heart this night, Livy, no fear of that.—for I am grateful to God. I shall not forget you in my petitions.
Livy it makes me proud & glad to hear you give voice to such invincible faith in my sure conversion—glad to know that your faith in me rests upon a foundation that is firm & certain, & proud to know that I possess the nine-tenths Ⓐemendationof the heart of the best & purest girl I ever have known. Nine-tenths, Livy—if you deny it I shan’t believe you; & so you needn’t waste time denying it at all. Your denial would only be premature, anyhow, because I will have the nine-tenths—& the other tenth too—I will, I will—& so restez tranquille, as we Frenchmen say. in margin: PPPPPS—I can’t correct this, Livy—guess out the mistakes.] And I am glad, ever so glad, to perceive that you really know me better than any one else does. Mrs. Fairbanks often says you are a surprisingly shrewd reader of character, & I believed her from the first.
“If there is any change,” you “love me more instead of less.” Scratch out all the first part, & simply say you do love me more—& more—& more—do, Livy, there’s a dear, good, honest girl. Be honest, Livy, just for once! {Now don’t you apply your damaging litt literal Ⓐemendationtest to that—I know you are always good & honest.}
Livy, I am glad you wrote me that little lesson about the proper manner of applying the gift of humor—& you knew perfectly well I would be, for all you pretended you didn’t—you wise bundle of InnocenceⒶemendation! It gratifies me to have you make such suggestions, & I want you to make them as much as you will. There won’t be anything to “forgive,” at all. I honor & appreciate the sentiments you expressed, & shall follow out your suggestion—for it is sound & right. And I won’t tear up any more pages, Livy, to make my letters shorter—your ban upon such conduct delighted me, for I do love to scribble long letters to you. I seem with you, & having my little visit when I am writing you.
in margin: P.P.-S.—I will obey the order, Livy, & send the removed pages of that letter—but next time, please, m dear—let me hurry to bed, now. 6explanatory note
I was so glad to her hear Ⓐemendationof your long walk, Livy—& yet it makes me a little uneasy, too, for fear you may injure yourself in this way. in margin: P.S.—And now I pray for you, my own heart’s love.Ⓐemendation But tell me all such exploits, Livy—tell me everything you can think of about yourself—you will always had have Ⓐemendationa glad & loving listener. And write your religious thoughts freely—I like to read those, too.
I shall be sure to call on m ⒶemendationMiss Emma Nye.7explanatory note
I glory in your womanly “impulse”—down with “ja “judgment” Ⓐemendationwhen it interferes! LivyⒶemendation, please do write me just as often as you can—never mind “judgment.” And don’t you know, I asked you for a kiss, & you didn’t send it—give it to me now, Livy, please. Your dear letter isn’t half answered, but I am so worn out (it is 2 A M—must be up at 8) &—Ⓐemendationhaving had no sleep for two days & more than one night—& I am so sleepy. in margin: Doubt your love? No—I never seriously thought of such a thing for a moment, Livy. Never once. Good-bye. I do love you so tenderly, Livy. Please write me to Scranton, Pa., right away.
Sam L. C.
on back of page 1, used as a wrapper: Do—do—do send the picture, Livy—S to Scranton, care of A. Crandall.
Livy, I am giving my whole
heart to God.
on envelope:Charley it would look better if you would write occasionally yourself, instead of occupying your time teaching your betters how to make S’s. How do you like that?
Miss Olivia L. Langdon
Present.
Politeness of Charley
(who isn’t polite enough to write to a fellow.)
across envelope end: P.S. It was happy news about Charlie & Miss Ida—I am glad. Tell the lazy cub to write me all about it.8explanatory note
docketed by OLL: 11thMary Mason Fairbanks.
The photographs Clemens enclosed have not been found. A photograph of Joseph Twichell is reproduced on p. 438.
Clemens’s variation on a line from Pope’s “Essay on Man” (1734): “From grave to gay, from lively to severe” (Pope, 59).
Sponsored by the Clayonian Society, Clemens’s “American Vandal Abroad” lecture was enthusiastically received on the evening of 9 December at the Newark Opera House, which was filled to capacity. Clemens himself made, or was sent, clippings of at least two newspaper notices: the Newark Press (a weekly) and the Newark Courier, whose reviewer, “Lorgnette,” wrote:
It was beyond all question the most enjoyable lecture of the season, and never went away an audience better satisfied with an hour’s entertainment....
His descriptive passages, wherein he painted Venice, Rome, and Athens, in all the varied hues and phases of their marvelous beauty, showed the ideality of the real poet under the kindly satire of the genuine humorist. A most delicious talker, drawing his purposely homely words up out of a heart overflowing with generous sentiments of true manliness. (Lorgnette, no page)
“Mrs. Hayloft” (or “Haycroft,” as Clemens called her in a later letter) has not been further identified. Edward P. Bement was an Elmira friend of the Langdons’. Clemens came to regard him as one of Olivia’s disappointed suitors, a circumstance which may be alluded to here (31 Dec 68 to OLLclick to open link; Boyd and Boyd, 67; SLC to OLL, 27 Feb 69, CU-MARK, in LLMT , 70).
If Clemens ever did send these suppressed pages and parts of pages from his 4 December letter, they have not been found.
Emma M. Nye (1846?–70) was the daughter of Catherine and George M. Nye, an Elmira water-pipe manufacturer (Elmira Census, 534). Emma had been a schoolmate of Olivia’s. She was visiting friends in Detroit, where Clemens was scheduled to lecture on 22 December.
Since at least the spring of 1868, Charles Langdon had been quietly courting Ida B. Clark (1849–1934), daughter of Elmira businessman Jefferson Burr Clark and his wife, Julia (Susan L. Crane to Ida B. Clark, 19 Mar 69, owned by Jervis Langdon, Jr., PH in CU-MARK; Salsbury, 430). In a letter to Alice Hooker probably written sometime in the last ten days of November, he indicated that he had not yet told his parents of his intentions toward Ida:
Please be a little careful about what you say in regard to Ida in the presence of either Father or Mother, because they are a little exercised on the subject, as they are watching Libbie & hate to have me fall into the same error. Therefore if you will please say nothing in their presence I will thank you very much. I have had a delightful talk with you tonight & have already set you down among my best & most respected friends.... If Libbie wants or asks to hear this you can read it to her. CJ (CtHSD)
He must, nevertheless, have informed them shortly thereafter, for in a 25 November 1869 letter to Mrs. Fairbanks, Mrs. Langdon said in part:
And what a family! such a change has come over it in one short year that sometimes I can hardly recognize it as my own. It is just a twelve-month tomorrow since Mr Clemens first talked with me of his love for Livia.... One short year ago Charlie was with us, & he also had just told us of his love for Ida. (CtHMTH)
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L2 , 318–324.
see Samossoud Collection, pp. 515–16.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.