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Add to My CitationsTo Olivia L. Langdon
10 and 11 November 1869 • Boston, Mass.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00367)
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Boston, Nov. 10.

Darling, it is [midnight. ]House full—I made a handsome success—I know that, no matter whether the papers say so in the morning or not. I am dreadfully tired, & will go to bed, now—had company here till this moment.

Livy dear, (Nov. 11.) have bought full wedding outfit to-day (haven’t got a cent [left.) ]& occasionally an the packages will arrive by express directed simply to “J. Langdon, Elmira.” Now your mother must unpack them & put them away for me & be sure not to let Mr. Langdon go wearing them around. I tell you, they are starchy.

Kisses & [blessing ]on my little darling

Sam1


[enclosures:] 2


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[on a small scrap of paper:]

All between where I have torn it in two was devoted to one of those infamous synopses of the lecture. But I like this notice first-rate—it is all namby-pamby praise.3

figure-il3046

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[in ink:] Miss Olivia L. Langdon | Elmira | N. Y. [return address:] young’s hotel, court avenue, boston, mass.4 [postmarked:] [ boston mass.] nov. 11em space 3.p.m. [docketed by OLL:] 134th

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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1 Olivia’s 13 and 14 November letter—mailed to Danvers, Massachusetts, where Clemens lectured on 17 November—was in part a reply to the present letter. It is the only one of her courtship letters known to survive (CU-MARK):
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2 Clemens tore the enclosures from page one of the Boston Advertiser of 11 November and page two of the Providence Morning Herald of 10 November.

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3 Clemens wrote these two sentences on a strip he tore from the bottom of a leaf of the Eclectic Magazine for November 1869 (n.s., 10:625–26). The offending synopsis read as follows:

We are obliged to say again, as we said in the cases of Nasby and Josh Billings, that there is little use in trying to write a sketch of the discourse. But we must attempt to give our readers a little taste of the speaker’s quality. Mr. Clemens devoted the first ten minutes of his lecture to a painfully accurate description of a person afflicted with the most loathsome form of Oriental leprosy; and then he gave five minutes to the narration of a boyish adventure which ended in his seeing the horrible face of a dead man in the moonlight. And all this mass of horror for what? Simply that he might say that his memory was full of unpleasant things so linked together that when he thought of one he inevitably thought of another, and so on through the entire series; and starting with leprosy and dead faces in the moonlight his mind necessarily ran through other unpleasant things until it brought him to the Sandwich Islands and his lecture. The position of the islands he gave geographically; but why they were placed so far away from everything and in such an inconvenient space, he declined to consider. The man who would have discovered the islands but did not, he said, was diverted from his course by a manuscript found in a bottle; and this, said Mark Twain, is not the only case in which a man has been turned from the true path by suggestions drawn from a bottle. The European nations brought into the islands their own diseases, together with civilization, education and other calamities. The effect of this had been to diminish the native population:—education in particular causing a frightful mortality as the facilities for learning were multiplied. But fifty thousand natives are now left upon the islands, and it is proposed to start a few more seminaries to finish them. The country people of the islands, the women, he said, wear a single garment made of one piece: “and the men don’t.” But when the weather is inclement the men wear cotton in their ears. The hospitality of the people he declared to be of a very high and generous order. A stranger might enter any house and straightway his host would set before him raw fresh fish with the scales on, baked dogs, fricas[s]eed cats, and all the luxuries of the season. But in trade they were exceedingly sharp and deceitful,—lying invariably from one end of the transaction to the other; not descending to common lies either, but indulging in lies that are “gorgeously imposing and that awe you by their grandeur.” The fondness of the islanders for dogs he declared to be intense. Dogs had the best of everything and were the close companions of the men. “They fondle and caress the dog until he is a full grown dog, and then they eat him.” “I couldn’t do that,” said Mr. Clemens, in one of his dryest and funniest passages: “I’d rather go hungry two days than eat an old personal friend in that way.”

Clemens apparently sent another Advertiser clipping to the Buffalo Express, for on 13 November the paper reprinted it, without the synopsis (“Mark Twain in Boston,” 2). The other Boston papers seconded the Advertiser’s “namby-pamby praise.” Typical was the Herald, the city’s leading daily, whose review concluded: “The whole lecture was a rare treat, and all who were fortunate enough to hear it will remember its rich and racy points as long as they live” (“Mark Twain at Music Hall,” 11 Nov 69, 2; see also “Mark Twain ‘At Home,’” Boston Post, 11 Nov 69, 3; “Local Intelligence,” Boston Evening Transcript, 11 Nov 69, 4; “Mark Twain’s Lecture,” Boston Evening Journal, 11 Nov 69, 4).

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4 This hotel, established in 1845 by George Young, still its proprietor, was “a small and cosey hostelry, hidden from the main thoroughfares by the tall buildings in front and on either side of it. It was famous for its good beds, its solid comforts, and its choice table ... and its patronage came chiefly from businessmen” (Edwin M. Bacon, 514–15; Boston Directory, 663, 775).



glyphglyphSource text(s):glyph
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK), is copy-text for the letter. Clemens tore the enclosures from the Boston Advertiser (“Mark Twain on ‘The Sandwich Islands,’” 11 Nov 69, 1) and the Providence (R.I.) Morning Herald (“Mark Twain’s Lecture,” 10 Nov 69, 2). They survive with the letter and are reproduced in facsimile. Clemens wrote this letter on one leaf of the same notebook paper as 30, 31 October, 1 November to Olivia Langdon. He wrapped the Boston Advertiser review in a strip torn from the Eclectic Magazine, n.s. 10 (November 1869): 625–26.

glyphglyphPrevious publication:glyph L3, 391–395; MFMT, 18, without the enclosures and with omissions; LLMT, 120, 360, brief quotation and paraphrase.

glyphglyphProvenance:glyphsee Samossoud Collection, p. 586.

glyphglyphEmendations and textual notes:glyph


midnight • mid-|night

left.[deletion implied]

blessing • [‘ing’ conflated]

boston mass. • [bos]ton [m]ass. [badly inked]