29? November 1868 • New York, N.Y. (MS facsimile, damage emended: Davis, UCCL 02771)
eleven or twelve lines (about 70 words) missing
Rondout & Newark & one or two other Ⓐemendationplaces, I go West to deliver 21 lectures at $100 a piece—beginning at Detroit, Michigan Dec. 23, & ending at some Wisconsin town Jan. 182explanatory note—after which I have promised to preach in New York city for the Fireman’s Fund.3explanatory note I would send Ma some money, but Dan has gone home (he is my banker,)4explanatory note
twelve or thirteen lines (about 80 words) missing
Now—Private—Keep it to yourself, my sister—do not evenhint it, to any one—I make no exceptions. I can trust you. I love—I worship—Olivia L. Langdon, of Elmira—& she loves me. When I am permanently settled—& when I am a Christian—& when I have demonstrated that I have a good, steady, reliable character, her parents will withdraw their objections, & she may marry me—I say she will—I intend she shall—the earth will cease to turn round & the sun to traverse his accustomed courses when I give it up. Cool, deliberate, critical Mrs. Fairbanks says her peer does not exist upon earth—& cool, deliberate, critical Mrs. Brooks of New York, says the same, & I endorse it with all my heart. Both have informed me frankly that neither I nor any other man is Ⓐemendationworthy of her & that I can never get her. What will they say now, I wonder? Her parents have refused to permit the attentions of anybody, before, but I was mean enough to steal a march on them. They are not very much concerned about my past, but they simply demand that I shall prove my future before I take the sunshine out of their house. I have made that household spend several sleepless nights lately. But they all like me, & they can’t help it. Now you know why I was so savage & crazy in St Louis. I had just been refused by my idol a few days before—was refused again afterward—was warned to quit after that—& have won the fight at last & am the happiest man alive. If I were in St Louis now you would see me in my natural character, & love me. I drink no spirituous liquors any more—I do nothing that is not thoroughly right—I am rising. I think Mrs. Fairbanks (who loves me like a son,) will go beside herself for joy when she hears of my good fortune. For in her eyes & mine, Livy Langdon is per fection itself. Mind—no word of this to anybody. The above is my address for ten days. 5explanatory note
The missing portion of this letter (the top two-thirds of its first leaf) was cut away from its surviving, “Private,” portion. The letterhead and date have therefore been supplied from other evidence. Clemens’s statement below (see note 5) that Slote’s New York address was to be his for the “next ten days” indicates, depending on how precise he was being, that he wrote the letter on 29 or 30 November. Twenty-nine November has been supplied here chiefly because the “private” portion of this letter resembles so closely the previous 28 November letter to Twichell (also marked “private”). Both letters are similar in content and tone, both are inscribed on Slote and Woodman stationery (in the case of this letter, the letterhead stationery survives only from the second leaf), and both were returned to Clemens at some point, since their provenance is the Samossoud Collection (see pp. 515–16). These similarities have led to the conjecture that the two letters were probably written within a day of each other, and have provided part of the rationale for restoring the missing letterhead to page one (see the textual commentary for this letter).
Clemens would lecture in Rondout, New York, on 2 December; Newark, New Jersey, on 9 December; Norwich, New York, on 11 December; Scranton, Pennsylvania, on 16 December; and at Fort Plain, New York, on 19 December. The Lecture Schedule, 1868–1869click to open link lists his known lecturing appearances in the “West” from late December through 18 January. Several changes were made while the tour was in progress; the engagements scheduled at this time were, so far as is known, in the following seventeen cities. Michigan: Detroit, 23 December; Charlotte, 25 December; and Tecumseh, 26 December. Ohio: Akron, 30 December, and Dayton, 31 December (see 21 and 23 Dec 68 to OLLclick to open link). Indiana: Fort Wayne, 29 December, and Indianapolis, 4 January. Illinois: Rockford, 6 January; Chicago, 7 January; Monmouth, 8 January; Galesburg, 10 January; Peoria, 11 January; Bloomington, 12 January (see SLC to OLL, 2 Jan 69, CU-MARK); and Ottawa, 13 January. Iowa: Davenport, 14 January, and Iowa City, 15 January. The “Wisconsin town” was probably Sparta, where he was scheduled to appear on 17 or 18 January (see SLC to OLL, 17 Jan 69click to open link misdated 16 Jan and 19 Jan 69click to open link, CU-MARK, in LLMT , 54, 55).
Clemens had been asked to give a benefit lecture for the old New York Volunteer Fire Department (now apparently operating solely as a charity), probably by Dan Slote (a member) or Alonzo Slote (its treasurer). The Slotes, now living at the same address, were almost certainly brothers (“Daniel Slote,” New York Herald, 14 Feb 82, 5; “Amusements,” New York Times, 14 Dec 68, 7; Wilson 1868, 1005).
According to Jane Clemens’s own record, in 1868 she received $50 from Clemens on 13 March, $50 on 5 May, $100 on 7 August, $50 on 19 September, $20 (twice) on 8 December, and $20 again on 11, 14, 17, and 28 December (JLC, no page).
Although Clemens left New York briefly several times in early December, he departed for a more extended period on 10 December, spending that night at the Delavan House in Albany, presumably en route to his lecture the next day at Norwich and then to Elmira (12 Dec 68 to OLLclick to open link). The “above” address to which Clemens refers is the address of Slote, Woodman & Co., given in the letterhead, which in the surviving manuscript appears only at the top of the fourth and last page (beginning at “the sunshine out of their house,” 295.20).
MS facsimile, damage emended. The editors have not seen the MS, but in 1982 a photocopy was provided to the Mark Twain Papers by its owner, Chester L. Davis (1903–87), then executive secretary of the Mark Twain Research Foundation (now Chester L. Davis, Jr.), in Perry, Mo. This four-page letter was written on both sides of two sheets of Slote, Woodman & Company letterhead. In compliance with the words ‘Now—Private—Keep it to yourself, my sister’ (295.5), and at the point where these words began a paragraph, two-thirds of the way down MS page 2, Moffett (presumably) cut apart the first sheet (pages 1–2). She preserved the bottom third of it and left the second sheet intact (pages 3–4), possibly even returning them to her brother for safekeeping (see Provenance). The top two-thirds of the first sheet were not preserved, however, resulting in the loss of some 150 words: only the bottom third of page 1, written on the other side of the preserved third of page 2, survives from the nonprivate portion of the letter. Despite this damage, the now-missing letterhead on page 1, including the dateline, has been conjecturally restored, on the assumption that the two sheets of paper originally carried identical letterheads. Clemens began the second sheet on its blank side (page 3), ignoring the letterhead at the top of what became page 4, which therefore preserves it, unused but intact. The inscribed date (‘Nov. 29’) is a less certain but necessary conjecture entailed by this restoration, since Clemens would not have left the dateline on page 1 blank. The inscribed date is thought to be one day later than, but otherwise identical to, the inscribed date on the previous letter, to Twichell, which this letter to Moffett resembles in many other ways (see pp. 295–96 n. 1).
L2 , 294–296; LLMT , 28–29.
At least this private part of the letter was returned to Clemens, presumably by Moffett, for it survived in the Samossoud Collection until 1947 or later: sometime between then and 1949 Dixon Wecter saw the MS there and made a typescript of it. Davis evidently acquired the MS, by gift or purchase, directly from Clara Clemens Samossoud sometime after 1947 (see Samossoud Collection, pp. 515–16).
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.