To Mary Mason Fairbanks
13 October 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: CSmH, UCCL 00512)

llc

Buffalo, Oct [ 12 13.]

Dear Mother:

Your news is superb—about Allie, I mean. I never was satisfied with that old match, but we both (Livy & I,) take ever so kindly to the new one. We send reams of good wishes & congratulations—& now & henceforth the chiefest of them is that Allie & her in her new relations may be as entirely [ ha ] and perfectly happy & contented as Livy & I are. If I wished all night & started fresh in the morning & kept it up a century I could not wish her better than that.1

We were fully expecting a visit from you & yours this very day, but your letter blighted all that, & we are so disappointed. But you must stop on your way east & stay as long as you can—& if you can’t on your way east, then you must tarry on your [return. We’ll ] not have any shirking on that matter.2

We have a telegram from home saying that Charley’s wedding passed off all right, yesterday, & that the two happy children left for the east at noon. I was entirely too busy to leave here, & Livy couldn’t go.3

My book is not named yet. Have to write it first—you wouldn’t make a garment for an animal till you had seen the animal, would you? I am getting along ever so slowly—so many things have hindered me.4

Miss Emma Nye lingered a month with typhoid fever, & died here in our blue own bedroom on the 29th Sept. She was buried in Elmira. Her family are still in S.C.

I kissed Livy several times for you, according to order. Will do it again.

The reason I haven’t written before is because I am in [such ] a terrible whirl with Galaxy & book work that I am so jubilant whenever my each day’s task is done that I have to dart right off & play—nothing can stop me. I never want to see a pen again till the task-hour strikes next day.

Now you’ll stop here, you understand.

Lovingly

Samℓ.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 Alice Holmes Fairbanks had become engaged again, this time to William Henry Gaylord (b. 1842), a Cleveland lawyer (7 Jan 70 to Fairbanks, n. 12; 8 Jan 70 to OLL [1st]; Lorenzo Sayles Fairbanks, 552; Cleveland Census, 91; Cleveland Directory 1870, 123, 139).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2 Within the week Mrs. Fairbanks evidently did stop in Buffalo (5 Nov 70 to OC, n. 5).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

3 Charles J. Langdon and Ida B. Clark were married at the Elmira home of her parents, Jefferson Burr Clark and Julia McDowell Clark, the latter a member of “one of the oldest and in their times most conspicuous families” of Chemung County, New York (Towner, 615). George H. McKnight, pastor of Elmira’s Trinity Episcopal Church, and Thomas K. Beecher, the Langdons’ pastor, officiated. Olivia Clemens, beginning her eighth month of pregnancy, was confined to Buffalo. Clemens was kept there by the literary commitments he goes on to describe (Hebb, 1; “Local Jottings,” Elmira Saturday Evening Review, 15 Oct 70, 8; Boyd and Boyd, 43).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

4 Clemens did not settle on “Roughing It” as the title for his book until October 1871, just three months before the first bound volumes were ready (RI 1993, 869, 871, 873, 876).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Huntington Library, San Marino (CSmH, call no. HM 14266).

Previous publication: L4, 208–209; MTMF, 138–39.

Provenance:see Huntington Library in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

12 13 • 123

ha • [‘a’ partly formed]

return. We’ll • return.—|We’ll

such • suchch [canceled ‘h’ partly formed; ‘ch’ over miswritten ‘u’]