121 William street
New York, Nov. 28.
Click to add citation to My Citations.
‸☞Please address “Everett House, Union Square, New York.”
‸
My Dear, Dear Livy:
When I found myself comfortably on board the cars last night (I see Dan has just come in from breakfast, & he will be back here, within five minutes & interrupt me,)—when I found myself comfortably on board the cars, I said to myself: “Now whatever others may think, it is my opinion that I am blessed above all other men that live; I have known supreme happiness for two whole days, & now I ought to be ready & willing to pay a little attention to necessary duties, & do it cheerfully.” Therefore I resolved to go deliberately through that lecture, without notes, & so impress it upon my memory & my understanding as to secure myself against any such lame delivery of it in future as I thought characterized it in Elmira. But I had little calculated the cost of such a resolution. Never was a lecture so full of parentheses before. It was Livy, Livy, Livy, Livy, all the way through! It was one sentence of Vandal to ten sentences about you. The insignificant lecture was hidden, lost, over-whelmed & buried under a boundless universe of Livy! I was sorry I had ever made so reckless a resolve, for its accomplishment seemed entirely hopeless. Still, having made it, I would stick to it till it was finished, & I did—but it was rather late at night. Then, having a clear conscience, I prayed, & with good heart—but it was only when I prayed for you that my tongue was touched with inspiration. You will smile at the idea of my praying for you—I, who so need the prayers of all good friends, praying for you who surely need the prayers of none. But never mind, Livy, the prayer was honest & sincere—it was that, at least—& I know it was heard.
I slept well—& when I woke my first thought was of you, of course, & I was so sorry I was not going to see you at breakfast. I hope & [ belive believe ]you slept well, also, for you were restful & at peace, darling, when I saw you last. You needed rest, & you still need it, for you have been so harassed, & so persecuted with conflicting thoughts of late—I could see it, dear, though I tried so hard to think my anxiety might be misleading my eyes. Do put all perplexing reflections, all doubts & fears, far from you for a little while, Livy, for I dread, dread, dread to hear you are sick. No mere ordinary tax upon your powers is likely to make you ill, but you must remember that even the most robust nature could hardly hold [out ]against the siege of foodless, sleepless days & nights which you have just sustained. I am t not talking to you as if you were a feeble little child, for on the contrary you are a brave, strong-willed woman, with no nonsense & no childishness about you—but what I am providing against is your liability to indulge in troubled thoughts & forebodings. Such thoughts must come, for they are natural to people who have brains & feelings & a just appreciation of the responsibilities which God places before them, & so you must have them,—but as I said before, my dearest Livy, temper them, temper them, & be you the mistress & not they. Be cheerful—always cheerful—you can think more coolly, & calmly, & justly for it. I leave my fate, my weal, my woe, my life, in your hands & at your mercy, with a trust, & a confidence & an abiding sense of security which nothing can shake. I have no fears—none. I believe in you, even as I believe in the Savior in whose hands our destinies are. I have faith in you—a faith which is as simple & unquestioning as the faith of a devotee in the idol he worships. For I know that in their own good time your doubts & troubles with will pass away, & ‸then‸ you will give to me your whole heart & I shall have nothing more to wish for on earth. This day I prize above every earthly gift so much of your precious love as I do possess, & so am satisfied & happy. I feel no exacting spirit—I am grateful, grateful, unspeakably grateful for the love you have already given me. I am crowned—I am throned—I am sceptred. I sit with the s Kings.
I do love, love, love you, Livy! [ And I do My whole ]being is permeated, is renewed, is leavened with this love, & with every breath I draw its noble influence makes of me a better man. And I shall yet be worthy of your priceless love, Livy. It is the ta glad task of my life—it is the purest ambition & the most exalted, that ever I have known, & I shall never, never swerve from the path it has marked out for me., while the goal & you are before me. Livy, I could not tell your honored father & mother how deeply I felt for them, & how heartless it seemed in [ my me ]to come, under cover of [ ther their ]trusting, generous hospitality, & try to steal away the sun out of their ‸domestic‸ firmament & rob their fireside heaven of its angel. I could not tell them in what large degree (& yet [how ]feebly in comparison with the reality,) I appreciated & do still appreciate the tremendous boon I was asking at their hands. I could not tell them how grateful I was, & how I loved them for pausing to listen to my appeals when they could have upbraided me for my treachery & turned me out of doors in deserved disgrace. I call these things by their right names, Livy, because I know I ought to have spoken to them long before I spoke to you—& yet there was nothing criminal in my intent, Livy—nothing wilfully & deliberately [underhanded ]& dishonorable—I could say it in the high court of Heaven. You know I would scorn to do a shameful act, my darling—you know it & will maintain it.—for never yet had any friend a stauncher, braver defender than you—you—you Perfection! Ah, how “deluded” I am, & how I do love to be so “deluded!” I could not tell them those things, Livy, but if it shall seem necessary, I know that you can. And moreover you can always say, with every confidence, that I have been through the world’s “mill”—I have traversed its ramifications from end to end—I have searched it, & [ prov probed ]it, & put it under the microscope, & I know it, through & through, & ‸from‸ back to [back;,— ]its follies, it[s] frauds & its vanities—all by personal experience & not through dainty theories culled from nice moral books in luxurious parlors where temptation never comes & it is easy to be good & keep the heart warm & one’s generous ‸best‸ impulses fresh & strong & uncontaminated—& now I know how to be a better man, & the value of so being, & when I say that I shall be, it is just the same as if I swore it! Now! 1
Good-bye, Livy. You are so pure, so great, so good, so beautiful. How can I help loving you? Say, rather, how can I keep from worshipping you, you dear little paragon? If I could only see you! I do wish I could. Write me im-mediately. Don’t wait a minute. You are never out of my waking thoughts for a single fraction of a second, & I do so want to hear from you. Ah, well, I suppose I shall lecture to those Rondout pirates about you, & yet, poor confiding creatures, they think I am going to talk about the Vandal. But such is life. And mind you just keep on, writing until you [ bef begin ]to feel tired.—but not a moment afterward, my peerless Livy, for I love you too dearly to wish to see you have you tire yoursel do irksome things, even to gratify me.
Tell me the name of that book you were going to lend me, Livy, so that I can get it. I shall send those books by Ed, if I can find him.2
I saw an old friend of mine at breakfast a while ago, (ex-Gov. Fuller,) & he gave me a lot of notices of my New York lecture delivered 18 months ago. I inflict them on you,—for why shouldn’t I? The house was [ full o crowded], on that occasion, but it was not my popularity that crowded it. The exertions of my friends did that. They got up the whole thing—suggested it, engineered it, & carried it through successfully. If any man has p a right to be proud of his friends, it is I, thy servant. The Tribune notice is by Ned House, who ranks as the most eminent dramatic critic in the Union.3
Good-bye, Livy. All this time I have felt just as if you were here with me, almost—& part of them ◇ time as if I could see you standing by me. But you are vanished! I miss a gracious presence—[ I l a ]glory is gone from about me. I listen for a dear voice, I look for a darling face, I caress the empty air! God bless you, my idol. Good-bye—& I send a thousand kisses—pray send me some.
Most lovingly, Yours
P.S.—I do LOVE you, Livy!
P.P.S.—I enclose a melain ferrotype—don’t you see how soft, rich, expressive, human, the featur ‸the‸ lights & shades are, & how human the whole picture is? If you can’t get me the porcelain [ or picture], Livy, do please s have a ferrotype taken for me. This pretty little sixteen-year-old school-girl is Gov. Fuller’s daughter—Fuller gave it to me this morning. I never saw the young lady but once—at a party in Brooklyn a short time ago—& then I petrified her by proposing with frozen gravity, (just after introduction,) to kiss her because I was acquainted with her [father [.] ] He enjoyed the joke immensely (because he has known me so long & intimately,) but she didn’t.4
P.P.P.S.—I do love, [ love ], LOVE you, Livy, darling. Write immediately—do.
[in margin]If any of the family inquire of me, give th remember me kindly to them—& please convey to Mr. & Mrs. Langdon my love & respectful duty. They know that is sincere [enough], no matter what may befal you & I. I love you, Livy!
[on back of letter as folded:]
Livy, shan’t you come to New York this winter?
I love, love, love you, Livy!
PPPPP.S—I do love you, Livy!
Miss Olivia L. Langdon | Present.5 [docketed by OLL:] 6th [and in pencil] Nov. 29th 1868
[enclosure:]
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Click to add citation to My Citations. 1
Clemens’s remarks about Mr. and Mrs. Langdon filled three
manuscript pages: “Livy” (290.12) is the third
word on the eighth page, and “Now!” is the last word on the tenth page. Olivia could
therefore have easily shown them to her parents without revealing
anything else in the letter.
Click to add citation to My Citations. 2
The book Olivia intended to lend Clemens has not been identified. The
books he planned to send her may have been Coventry Patmore’s
four-part verse narrative, The Angel in the House
(see 30 Oct 68 to OLL, n. 7). By early December Clemens had
evidently not carried out his plan, since the book he elsewhere called
“exquisite”—possibly part of the
Patmore tetralogy—was still in his possession (see 5 and 7 Dec 68
to OLL). “Ed” was almost certainly
Olivia’s cousin Captain Edward L. Marsh
(1842–1906), who stayed with the Langdons from late November
until 16 December. Marsh, whom Clemens later described as “a
handsome young bachelor,” was the son of Mrs.
Langdon’s twin sister, Mrs. Sheppard Marsh; the Marshes had
lived in Iowa since leaving Elmira in 1857. Marsh served as captain of
the Second Iowa Regiment during the war and later went into the
real-estate business (OLL to Alice B. Hooker, 16 Dec 68, CtHSD; AD, 26 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:250–51).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 3
The enclosed clippings, notices of Clemens’s 6 May 1867
Sandwich Islands lecture, do not survive. In addition to
House’s New York Tribune review, they
may have included, among others, favorable brief reviews in the New York
Herald, Times, Evening Post, and Evening Express (7 May); the Brooklyn Union and Eagle (9 May);
the New York Dispatch (12 May); the New York World (13 May); Street and Smith’s New York Weekly (30 May). House’s
review appeared on 11 May 1867; it is reprinted in full in Enclosure with 28
November 1868 to Olivia L. Langdon.
Click to add citation to My Citations. 4
The enclosure has not been found. “Melainotype”
(or “melanotype”) was an early name for a
ferrotype, later known as a tintype: a positive photograph produced
by the wet collodion process on sheet-iron plates (Jones, 240). Fuller and his
wife, Mary F. Fuller (1829?–1870), had two daughters: Ida
F. (b. 1849 or 1850), now aged eighteen or nineteen, and Anna Cora
(b. 1853 or 1854), now aged fourteen or fifteen (Portsmouth Census, 740). The “party in
Brooklyn” has not been further identified. [Mary F. Fuller's dates corrected 2011.]
Click to add citation to My Citations. 5
Beginning with this letter, the first after their informal engagement,
Clemens sent his letters to Olivia sealed within a second envelope
addressed and mailed to her brother, Charles. Only the
“inside” envelopes directed to Olivia survive; on
many of them Clemens wrote “Present” or
“Politeness of” Charles—conventional
ways to inscribe letters entrusted to another for delivery. According to
Olivia’s cousin Harriet Lewis, this procedure was adopted
because of Clemens’s “prominence and also because
there was no engagement,” and Olivia “did not wish
their names coupled together in the newspapers” (Paff, 5).
Source text(s):MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley (CU-MARK).
Previous publication:
L2, 288–293; LLMT, 23–27.
Provenance:See Samossoud Collection, pp. 515–16.
Emendations and textual notes:
belive believe • believe believe
out • out | ou
And I do My whole • [‘My whole’ over wiped-out ‘And I do’]
my me • mye
ther their • therir
how • how how
underhanded • under-|handed
prov probed • provbed
back;,— • [semicolon mended to a comma by inserting the dash over the period of the semicolon]
bef begin • befgin
full o crowded • [‘crowded’ over wiped-out ‘full o’]
I l a • [‘a’ over wiped-out ‘I l’]
Mark Samuel • [‘Samuel’ over wiped-out ‘Mark’]
or picture • [‘p’ over wiped-out ‘or’]
father [.] • [period written off edge of page or possibly torn away]
love • [possibly ‘LOVE’]
enough • enough | enough [corrected miswriting]
