To Olivia L. Clemens
26 December 1871 • Champaign, Ill.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00694)

Livy Darling, it is almost lecture time, & I thought I would rattle off a line to tell you how dearly I love you, child—for I cannot abide this execrable hotel & shall leave for Tuscola after the lecture & see if I can’t do better.1 My new lecture is about licked into shape, & this [afternoon] ; after trimming at it all day I memorized one-fourth of it. Shall commit another fourth tomorrow, maybe more—& shall begin talking it the moment I get out of the range of the cursed Chicago Tribune that printed my new lecture & so made it impossible for me to talk it with any spirit in Illinois. If these devils incarnate only appreciated what suffering they inflict with their infernal synopses, maybe they would try to have humanity enough to refrain.

I am so sorry you are so lonesome, honey, but keep bravely up till by & by. With ever so much love,2

Samℓ.

Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Cor Forest & [Hawthorne] | Hartford | Conn [postmarked:] champaign [ill] dec 27

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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1 While still in Chicago, Clemens had noted in his lecture itinerary book, for 26 December: “Ill. Central. Leave Chicago 9.20 AM—get to Champaign 2.50 or 3 PM—128 miles” (Redpath and Fall 1871–72, 9). Like the Doane House, the Champaign lecture, presumably on Artemus Ward, was unsatisfactory. The Champaign County Gazette commented: “By Mark Twain’s lecture the Young Men’s Social Club made $159. The people who heard it are ahead 0” (“Local Chunks,” 3 Jan 72, 1).

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2 Olivia replied on 30 and 31 December (CU-MARK):

UCCL00699

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In addition to Olivia Lewis Langdon and Susan and Theodore Crane, Olivia mentioned: Clara and Alice Spaulding; George H. Warner, a Forest Street neighbor and the brother of Charles Dudley Warner; and Lucy Adams Perkins, who lived on Woodland Street and whose husband, Charles, was to be the Clemenses’ Hartford attorney. Clara Spaulding was looking at Falstaff and His Companions (1872), a collection of silhouette portraits by popular illustrator Paul Konewka (1840–71), and she and Olivia were reading Howells’s Their Wedding Journey (1871). The edition of Reynard the Fox the Cranes were examining has not been identified (Geer 1871, 192, 217; “Nook Farm Genealogy,” 22; NUC, 303:287; Lyceum 1872, 96).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L4, 522–24; LLMT, 171; MTMF, 159 n. 2, brief excerpt.

Provenance:see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

afternoon • after-|noon

Hawthorne • Hawthorn[] [torn]

ill • [] [badly inked]