Mark Twain Project :: Letters :: : an electronic text

To Olivia L. Langdon
15 and 16 December 1869 • Pawtucket, R.I., and
Boston, Mass.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00388)

Click to add citation to My Citations.

Pawtucket, [R.I,] 14th.

My child, I was thunderstruck at getting no letter from you in Boston to-day. It seemed to me that I had neither seen nor heard from you for many a day—but now that I come to count up I am astonished to find that I saw you, touched you, held you in my arms, kissed you, only four days ago.1 This will give you an idea of how immensely long a lecture season seems. A 3-month season seems a year ordinarily—& when you come to add absence from one’s [sweetheart], it becomes a sort of lifetime.

Had a talk with Fred Douglas, to-day, who seemed exceedingly glad to see me—& I certainly was glad to see him, for I do so admire his “spunk.”2 He told the history of his child’s expulsion from Miss Tracy’s [school,] & his simple language was very effective. Miss Tracy said the pupils did not want a colored child among them—which he did not believe, & challenged the proof. She put it at once to a vote [of] the school, and asked “How many of you are willing to have this colored child be with you?” And they all held up their hands! Douglas added: “The children’s hearts were right.” There was pathos in the way he said it. I would like to hear him make a speech. Has a grand face.3

I have such a cold that I did not thoroughly please myself to-night though the audience seemed to like it.4 I am writing in bed, now—which you

[at least two MS pages (about 130 words) missing] 5

write a breakfast. Take all the sleep you can, little rascal, it will do you more good than harm.

I did not write you to-day—my cold reduced me to a spiritless state. I wouldn’t be writing you now, only I love you so, Livy, that I can’t help it. I have to commune with you, even if it be in simply a few sentences scratched with a vile, blunt pencil. I was afraid something was the matter, but I am content, now that I have heard from my darling.

I bless you & kiss you, my precious Livy, & have prayed that God would fill your soul with peace & shelter you from harm.

Sam.

[in ink:] Miss Olivia L. Langdon | St. Nicholas Hotel | New York. | Room 242. [return address:] [boston lyceum]bureau, no. 20 bromfield st. boston. [postmarked:] boston mass. dec. 16 8.p.m. [docketed:] [st. nicholas hotel][new-york] dec 17 1869 [docketed by OLL:] Dec 14th | 156th [and in pencil:] 6

		12 6	52
		1	6
120			312
144		25		12
264		12		30
360		50		360
624		25
2		300

7	12				[ 20 25 ]
	10				52
	120				50
	24				125
	12				1300
	1560					20
Servants		700				4
Horse		300				80
Living		1300<				150
		2300				4500
						80

	4000
	2300					12500
	1700

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 Clemens’s lecture itinerary had permitted him to spend most of 1–6 December and part of 10–11 December with Olivia in New York City. As his third paragraph here indicates, he was writing on 15 December, following his Pawtucket lecture.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2 Clemens probably spoke with Frederick Douglass (1817?–95), the former slave who had achieved fame as an abolitionist and journalist, in Boston, before leaving for Pawtucket. Douglass was himself on a month-long lecture tour of New England—he had spoken on “Our Composite Nationality” in Boston’s Music Hall, in the Parker Fraternity Course, on 7 December—and, like Clemens, may have been making Boston his headquarters (Boston Evening Transcript: “Special Notices,” 7 Dec 69, 2; “Local Intelligence,” 8 Dec 69, 4; New York Tribune: “Boston,” 11 Dec 69, 2). Olivia’s parents had known Douglass since September 1838 when, while living in Millport, New York, they abetted his escape from slavery in Maryland. Douglass recalled the assistance in a letter to Mrs. Langdon three months after her husband’s death (CtHMTH):

Rochester: Nov 9th 1870

Dear Mrs Langdon:

Pardon the Liberty, but as one who nearly thirty years ago, learned something of the noble character of your lamented Husband, I beg you to allow me to enroll myself among the many who to day hold his name and history in grateful memory. If I had never seen nor heard of Mr Langdon since the days that you and himself made me welcome under your roof in Millport, I should never have forgotten either of you. Those were times of inefface[a]ble memories with me, and I have carried the name of Jervis Langdon with me ever since. The record of his life as given in the address of his Pastor has touched me deeply—and hence these few words. Please give my thanks to your Dear son for sending me a copy of that address.

Very truly with great Respect yours

Frederick Douglass

Click to add citation to My Citations.

3 Douglass had declined to send his nine-year-old daughter, Rosetta, to one of the segregated schools that Rochester, New York, had established for black children. Instead he enrolled her in the city’s oldest female academy, the all-white Seward Seminary, headed by principal Lucilia Tracy (Blassingame et al., 534 n. 14; McKelvey, 345). The September 1848 incident he recalled for Clemens did not end with the children’s unanimous vote of acceptance. As Douglass reported at the time:

Each scholar was then told by the principal, that the question must be submitted to their parents, and that if one parent objected, the child would not be received into the school. The next morning my child went to school as usual, but returned with her books and other materials, saying that one person objected, and that she was therefore excluded from the Seminary.

This account was part of the indignant open letter to the objecting parent—H. G. Warner, editor of the Rochester Courier—that Douglass published in his own paper, the weekly Rochester North Star, on 22 September 1848. In concluding his protest, Douglass wrote:

I am also glad to inform you that you have not succeeded as you hoped to do, in depriving my child of the means of a decent education, or the privilege of going to an excellent school. She had not been excluded from Seward Seminary for five hours, before she was gladly welcomed into another quite as respectable, and equally christian to the one from which she was excluded. She now sits in a school among children as pure, and as white as you or yours, and no one is offended. (Douglass)

Click to add citation to My Citations.

4 The reviewers were unimpressed, however. The Providence Journal observed: “The lecturer labored under considerable indisposition of body, and his voice was made dry and husky by a severe cold, all of which had an unfavorable effect upon the evening’s entertainment” (“Pawtucket,” 17 Dec 69, 1). And the Pawtucket Gazette and Chronicle of 17 December (3) remarked:

“Mark Twain” delivered the opening lecture of the Young Men’s Christian Association Course, on Wednesday evening last, in Armory Hall. He was introduced by himself, and his lecture was “intensely interesting to those who were intensely interested.” We are of the opinion of our young friend Crowninshield, at No. 3 Almy’s Block, who is the sole agent for North Providence for “Mark’s” new book, that “he is a fair lecturer, but he writes much better than he talks.”

Click to add citation to My Citations.

5 Clemens wrote the following portion of this letter on 16 December, after returning to Boston. The surviving leaves show that he tore both the 15 and 16 December segments from his notebook at the same time. The missing matter almost certainly included a dateline for the continuation.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

6 Olivia canceled “Dec 14th” when she realized that Clemens’s dating of this letter was incorrect. The calculations that follow were her attempt to project her future household budget. Identifiable costs are: living expenses of $25 a week, or $1,300 a year; care of a horse at $25 a month, or $300 a year; and wages for servants—apparently including one at $10, one at $12, and one at $30 per month—totaling $624 a year, which Olivia rounded upward to $700. The total potential expenses came to $2,300 of an anticipated annual income of $4,000.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK); written on three leaves of the same notebook paper as 30, 31 October, 1 November to Olivia Langdon.

glyph Previous publication: L3, 426–429; LLMT, 127–28.

glyph Provenance:see Samossoud Collection, p. 586.

glyph Emendations and textual notes:

R.I, • [possibly ‘R.I.,’; comma over period]

sweetheart • sweet- |heart

school, • school,

of • of of

boston lyceum • [ white diamond ] oston lyceum [torn]

st. nicholas hotel • st [ white diamond ] nicholas h [o] [badly inked]

new-york • new-yor [ white diamond ] [badly inked]

20 25 • 205