To Olivia L. Langdon with a note to Charles J. Langdon
12 January 1869 • El Paso, Ill.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00227)

El Paso, Ill., Jan. 12.

My Dearest Livy—

I talked in Peoria, last night, to a large audience, & one whose intellectual faces surprised as well as pleased me, for I certainly had expected no such experience in Peoria.1 They want me to come again next season, & I am sure I shall like to do it if I am so unhappy as to be still in the lecture field. That audience reminded me of my Michigan audiences. Do you know, that with the exception, perhaps, of Mrs. Fairbanks’, the Michigan reviews of the lecture were the best-written I have seen yet. I received some last night, & have half a mind to send them to you.2

I have to stay here half the day—I am on my way to Decatur.3 They say I shall probably not be able to get to Ottawa & shall have to skip it. This is bothering me a good deal, for I wanted so much to see Mr. Lewis;4 & besides I was feeling so sure that your letter with the longed-for picture in it would be there. I was so certain I was going to see your dear face there. This will be a hard disappointment to bear. But I shall telegraph for my letters, & get them as quickly as possible.

I wish I could have gone with you in the sleigh, but at that time I was taking a long, dreary trip in the cars.

Why bless your darling heart I do love to hear you scold!—& rather than have you stop, Livy, I will be distressed when you do it. It does make an impression, Livy—it makes a deep impression, it does indeed—it makes me just as happy as I can be. Now I know you won’t stop scolding, since it makes me happy, you precious little philosopher. And besides, whenever it is “something that really troubles you,” I will try honestly to listen & behave better, even if I do seem to talk so jestingly about [it. But ] to tell the truth, I love you so well [ than that ] I am capable of misbehaving, just for the pleasure of hearing you scold. You know I used to surreptitiously provoke Charlie into uttering outrageous speeches simply that I might hear see you look astounded & hear you say “O Charlie!” ‸Forgive me, darling.‸

I remember the cribbage right well, & how I used to swindle you into the notion that I had sixteen in my hand when I hadn’t a point, you innocent! And I remember how I used to prevent your putting in your pegs at the beginning of the game—& did it merely because it gave me a chance to touch your hand—noth & for no other reason in the world. I always thought the cribbage was profitable, because I could sit there & look into your eyes all the time—it was much better than reading any other book, Livy! I wish I could have a chapter now. But when we are serene & happy old married folk, we will sit together & con other books all the long pleasant evenings, & let the great world toil & struggle & nurse its pet ambitions & glorify its poor vanities beyond the boundaries of our royalty—we will let it lighten & thunder, & blow its gusty wrath about our windows & our doors, but never cross our sacred threshold. Only Love & Peace shall inhabit there, with you & I, their willing vassals. And I will read:

& worship Tennyson, & you will translate Aurora Leigh & be gentle & patient with me & do all you can to make help me understand what the mischief it is all about. And we f will follow the solemn drum-beat of Milton’s stately sentences; & the glittering pageantry of Macaulay’s, & the shuddering phantoms that come & go in the grim march of Poe’s unearthly verses; & bye & bye drift fairly dreamily into fairy-land & with the [magicaian ] laureate & hear “the horns of elfland faintly blowing.”5 And out of the Book of Life you shall call the wisdom that shall make our [ life lives ] an anthem void of discord & our deeds a living worship of the God that gave them.

Livy, I comprehend, I thoroughly comprehend your method of acquiring the religious emotion, & shall practice it, with full faith in it. You are worth a dozen preachers to me, & I love to follow your teachings. Every day in my little Testament I track you by your pencil through your patient search for that wisdom which adorns you so much; & every marked verse calls to mind some remark of yours & shows me how deeply the beautiful precept had sunk into your heart & brain. No unmarked Testament could teach me half as much as this one, & I am so glad you gave it me, & I thank ‸you‸ so much for it, my idolized Livy.6

The time will drag, drag, drag, until I see you again—but I am thankful that your letters come so often. I wish they came every day. They so fill me with pleasure that I have not the heart to harbor an unkind sentiment toward any creature after I have read one of them.

I want to write more, but I suppose I ought to lie down a while. Please give my love to the good household. Good-bye, & happy dreams to you, Livy, darling,—& a loving kiss, & all thanks for yours.

Always & devotedly

Samℓ. L. C.

[on back of letter as folded:]

‸

You didn’t answer my last dozen, Charlie. Why is this thus?

Sam.

“Miss Olivia L. Langdon,—

Present.”

[docketed by OLL:] 25th

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 On 11 January, sponsored by the Mercantile Library Association of Peoria, Clemens lectured to a capacity audience of about twelve hundred in Rouse’s Opera House. The National Democrat reported that “the house was as full as comfort would allow,” and observed that Clemens’s “subject, ‘The American Vandal Abroad,’ suggested something of reproof, but the wit and humor that tempered the speech made every one forget every thing but that. The public owe the lecture committee thanks for providing for them such an entertainment.” The Transcript gave a full synopsis, remarking that Mark Twain “is unmistakably a man of high natural ability and considerable culture, and could not fail to make his mark in other than his chosen themes. As a satirist and humorist, he places no dependence upon uncouth spelling or local vernacular. He has an easy don’t-carative manner and a little of the swagger of the traditional Yankee joker without a single low or ungrammatical phrase” (“Twain’s Lecture,” Peoria National Democrat, 12 Jan 69, 3; “Mark Twain’s Lecture,” Peoria Transcript, 12 Jan 69, 3; Wallace, 17–20).

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2 Mary Mason Fairbanks reviewed Clemens’s 17 November 1868 lecture in the Cleveland Herald the following day (L2, 280 n. 1). Clemens had lectured four times in Michigan: at Detroit, Lansing, Charlotte, and Tecumseh on 22, 23, 25, and 26 December, respectively. He sent the reviews he had just received to Mrs. Fairbanks: see the next letter.

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3 Where Clemens lectured later on 12 January to “a large and respectable audience. Broadcloths and silks were in the ascendant, and the rowdy or ‘fast’ element congenial to negro minstrel exhibitions was but slimly represented. The intelligence of our city was out in full force, to be entertained as well as instructed, and decency and decorum were the marked characteristics of those assembled to hear Mark Twain’s discourse” (“Mark Twain,” Decatur Republican, 14 Jan 69, 1).

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4 Olivia’s maternal uncle, the father of Harriet Lewis. Despite the “extreme inclemency” of the weather, Clemens managed to make the 106-mile trip northward from Decatur to Ottawa and called on the Lewis family (“Lectures,” Ottawa [Ill.] Free Trader, 16 Jan 69, 1). See 13 and 14 Jan 69 to OLL.

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5 Clemens’s quotations are both from one of his favorite poems, the untitled prefatory lyric (known as the “bugle song”) to the fourth canto of Tennyson’s The Princess; A Medley, first included in the third edition, published in 1850 (Tennyson 1987, 2: 185–86, 230–31; Gribben, 2:695). One of Olivia’s favorite poems was Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh (1857), which Clemens more than once professed to find incomprehensible (see L2, 268).

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6 Olivia had given this Bible to Clemens, perhaps as a Christmas present, during his 17 and 18 December visit to Elmira (L2, 334, 348).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L3, 24–28; Wecter 1947, 37–38, with omissions.

Provenance:see Samossoud Collection, p. 586.

Emendations and textual notes:

it. But • it.—|But

than that • thant

magicaian • [‘a’ partly formed]

life lives • lifeves