To Olivia L. Clemens
27 November 1871 • Bennington, Vt.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00680)

llc

Bennington, [Monday ]PM

Livy darling, good house, but they laughed too [much. A ]great fault with this lecture is, that I have no way of turning it into a serious & instructive vein at will. Any lecture of mine ought to be a running narrative-plank, with square holes in it, six inches apart, all the length of it; & then in my head mental slo shop I ought to have plugs (half marked “serious” & the others marked “humorous”) to select from & jam into these holes according to the temper of the audience.

I am so sorry to have to leave you with all the weight of housekeeping on your shoulders—& at the same time I know that it is a blessing to you—for only wholesome care & work can make lonely people endure existence. I particularly hate to have to inflict on you the bore of answering my business letters. That is a hardship indeed.1

I think Bliss has gotten up the prospectus book with taste & skill.2 The selections are good, & judiciously arranged. He had a world of good matter to select from, though. This is a better book than the Innocents, & much better written. If the subject were less hackneyed it would be a great success.3 But when I come to write the Mississippi book, then look out! I will spend 2 months on the river & take notes, & I bet you I will make a standard work.4

Well, it is late [bedtime]—so with a loving good night kiss, I send my deep love to my mother Olivia Langdon; & to my wife Olivia Langdon; to my niece Olivia Langdon; & to my future daughter Olivia Langdon.5

Samℓ.

Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Cor Forest & Hawthorne | Hartford | Conn. [postmarked:] [bennington ] vt. [nov.] 29

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 On 20 November Olivia had written the following letter, which Clemens received in Rondout on 22 November (CU-MARK):

UCCL00679

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Pottier and Stymus, New York furniture manufacturers, had billed the Clemenses for “10 Days Labor packing furniture . . . Express, Board, &c”; the Western Insurance Company of Buffalo provided $20,000 of insurance on the furniture for its shipment to Hartford in September (receipts of 15 Nov 71, 18 Nov 71, CU-MARK). None of the business letters Olivia wrote for Clemens is known to survive. James Florant Meline (1811–73) was the author of Two Thousand Miles on Horseback. Santa Fé and Back (1867). His letter may have been a follow-up to one of 11 May 1871 in which he requested Clemens’s help in publishing “a new, revised and enormously improved edition” of the book (CU-MARK). The club was the Hartford Monday Evening Club (founded in 1869), which met periodically at the homes of members for discussion and the reading of essays. “It was the early rule that the wife of the host invited two or three of her intimates to sit with her.” On 20 November 1871, at the home of Charles Dudley Warner, Joseph R. Hawley read a paper on “Labor Reform.” Clemens did not become a member of the club, or read an essay, until 1873 (Monday Evening Club, 3–7, 11–12, 14, 28).

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2 Bliss must have sent Clemens one of the first copies of the prospectus for Roughing It, which had arrived from the bindery on 22 November. A revised version with a much more complete listing of chapters and illustrations was issued on 23 January 1872 (RI 1993, 812, 871, 875).

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3 A proliferation of books about the West contributed to Clemens’s sense that his subject was “hackneyed” (RI 1993, 798, 828).

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4 As early as January 1866 Clemens seems to have planned a Mississippi River book (L1, 329, 331 n. 8). He finally began to explore the subject in his “Old Times on the Mississippi” series, published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1875. A four-week tour on the river in April and May 1882 helped him expand the Atlantic articles into Life on the Mississippi (SLC 1875; N&J2, 432–37).

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5 In addition to his wife and his mother-in-law, Olivia Lewis Langdon, who was still visiting Hartford, Clemens refers to his niece, Julia Olivia Langdon, born to Ida and Charles J. Langdon on 21 November 1871, and his first daughter, Olivia Susan Clemens, born on 19 March 1872. He seems to have visited Charles and Ida in Elmira on 25 or 26 November (3 Dec 71 to OLC, n. 3).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).

Previous publication: L4, 498–500; LLMT, 165–66.

Provenance:see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

Monday • M Monday [corrected miswriting]

much. A • much.—|A

bedtime • bed-|time

bennington • b [enn] ton [badly inked]

nov. • [] [badly inked]