To Susan L. Crane
9 and 31 March 1869 • Hartford, Conn., and Elmira, N.Y.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00273)

Hartford, March 9, 1869.

Dear Friend—

You must let me thank you with all my heart for your cordial words.; for your praises of Livy; for your kindly prepossession toward me; for your welcome to the family circle & its altar; for the high position you assign me there; and for the generous interest you manifest in our future, whose slowly-lifting curtain is already revealing soft-tinted visions of the mysterious land we are approaching. I [thank you ] & Mr. Crane most kindly for all your w good words & good wishes.

[Elmira ], March 31.

t The difference in the color of the ink will si must signify an interval of about 3 weeks.1 I had [ w ] just finished that first paragraph at 10 oclock one night, in Hartford, when Rev. Petroleum V. Nasby came in & introduced himself, & we sat up & talked a while—until 5 minutes after 6 in the morning, in fact. Press of business prevented my finishing my letter after that.

Livy told you that [secret, ] after all? I hoped she would. I had a vague sort of idea that she would—& so, after a fashion, I was a prophet. And I further [prophecied ] that you would reveal it to me—& therein, also, was my judgment correct. Now that the revelation has been made by you, & endorsed by Livy, I am entirely satisfied & happy. And now, being a member of the family by brevet, I & gladly & cheerfully accepting the responsibilities of the position, I am doing the best I can to fill your place & [Mr. ] Crane’s while you are absent2—& not succeeding very well, I can tell you, for they sigh for you & long for you with a frequency & a fervency that is in the last degree discouraging to me, considering the efforts I am making. And now Mr Langdon is gone, & I am of [ cou ] of course I am trying to fill his place, too—but I didn’t know, before, how much room he took up. I am a failure. That is apparent enough. So you & Mr. Crane may come back by the next train (regardless of any previous orders you may have received,) & I will telegraph for Mr. Langdon. I will subside, & take care of Livy—I am equal to that position, anyhow.

Charley’s new horse is lame.3 The bird-cages hang in the conservatory & the [ br birds ] birds make music during meals. Mark & Jep are well & cheerful—Jep is going to be sold, or given away, or executed—I do not know his crime. Julia is gone—went to-day. Mary is back—came yesterday. George the [coachman ] has a wife—had her before, likely, but I did not know it until to-day.4 He is sociable—calls Miss Langdon “Livy.” Hattie Lewis grows more & more outrageous every day—& so everybody likes her better & better. Two milliners ‸have‸ been in the house for a week, making up things for Livy & me. They have n’t begun on me yet, but I suppose they will. I occupy your rooms, & smoke in them occasionally, but ever so gently—& with the windows wide open. It is cool, but comfortable. I will get away before you come, & then you cannot scold. Livy & I read a Testament lesson in your parlor every afternoon. Your clock is running, your exquisite little picture of a sunset view in the country hangs in its place in the corner over the desk; everything is just as you left it—except, somehow, it seems to me that the engraving of “Shakspere’s Courtship”5 did not always hang with its face to the wall. However, I may be mistaken. Livy & the Spaulding girls are taking chemistry lessons, & we are all afraid to stay in the house from 11 till noon, because they are always cooking up some [new-fangled ] gas or other & blowing everything endways with their experiments.6 It is dreadful to think of having a wife who will be always inventing new chemical horrors & experimenting on me with them. However, if Livy likes it, I shan’t mind being shot through the roof occasionally & scattered around among the neighbors. I shall get rich on acci [extra-hazardous ] accident-policies. The family has got to be supported [ some ] way or other. {Livy will probably read this before she sends it, & then she’ll scratch out all that don’t suit her.} It is a prerogative she [has. She ] acquired it helping me read “proof” for my book. Mr. Beecher has gone off on a week’s holiday.7 The river is up, & flooding things.8 It is supper time, now. I [must ] get an early start & clear [out.; ]—for [ those the ] Spaulding girls are coming right away after supper to help Livy finish blowing out the starboard side of the house with what a rascally new gas that didn’t go good to-day. They expect me to hold the retort while they touch it off—they always expect me to do that—they never get in danger themselves—but I am not going to do it— —I am going down town. My eye-winkers are all singed off, now.

I have told you all the news that the others would not be likely to tell you (except that we play euchre every night, & sing “Geer,” which is Livy’s favorite, & “Even Me,” which is mine, & a dozen others hymns—favorites of the other members)9—& although this news sounds trifling, [ & ] it still mentions names you love to hear, & [ things things ] that are [familiari ] to your [memory, — ]& those features of a letter were what I always liked best when in exile in the lands beyond the Rocky Mountains.—so I offer no apologies.10 {And you know they never would have told you about that chemistry diabolism—you never would have gotten the straight of it from anybody but me.}

I shake hands cordially with you both, & wish you well, & hope I may yet have the happiness of seeing you before I sail for California.

Sincerely Yours

Samℓ. L. Clemens.

‸

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens wrote the first part of this letter in black ink, now faded to brown. Beginning with “wishes” (180.5), he completed it in purple, except for two words (“Now” and “I” at 180.16 and 180.25), which are in brown. The change to purple ink signaled the passage of time; the two changes back to brown ink, whether intentional or accidental, have not been explained.

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2 The Cranes were spending the winter in the South, mostly in Florida, hoping that the climate would help remedy Susan’s throat ailment. Theodore returned to Elmira on 17 April, Susan about two weeks later, following a stay in Richmond, Virginia (OLL to Alice B. Hooker, 16 Dec 68, CtHSD; “City and Neighborhood,” Elmira Advertiser, 19 Apr 69, 3).

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3 This horse, if it recovered sufficiently to be serviceable, may have been the one later noticed by the Elmira Saturday Evening Review: “Charles Langdon has a stepper, Hambletonian brown mare” (“Horse Flesh,” 21 Aug 69, 8).

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4 Jep, presumably a dog, had committed the crime of “landscape gardening” (17 and 18 May 69 to OLL, p. 242). The departing visitor may have been Olivia’s cousin and contemporary, Julia Langdon, the daughter of Jervis Langdon’s brother John (1806–61). “Mary” has not been certainly identified, but see 12 Mar 69 to OLL, n. 2. “George” and his wife are likewise unidentified (“Langdon Line,” TS genealogy in CU-MARK; “Personal Record of Andrew Langdon,” NBuHi; Gretchen Sharlow and Herbert A. Wisbey, Jr., personal communication).

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5 Unidentified.

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6 Olivia’s interest in chemistry may have been stimulated by a 12 March meeting of the local Academy of Sciences in the Langdon home. “About fifty Academicians and their invited guests were present, and were elegantly entertained by their generous host and hostess.” In his inaugural address that evening, President William H. Gregg emphasized the importance of chemistry, which, “more than either of the other sciences, develops our resources and adds to our national wealth, by the introduction of new and cheap processes for the utilization of the raw and waste materials of our large manufacturing interests” (“Academy of Sciences,” Elmira Saturday Evening Review, 13 Mar 69, 5, and 20 Mar 69, 7). Joining Olivia for instruction by Darius Ford were Clara L. Spaulding (1849–1935) and her older sister Alice (d. 1935), daughters of Henry Clinton Spaulding, a prosperous Elmira lumber merchant, and his wife, the former Clara Wisner. In 1906 Clemens described Clara Spaulding as “my wife’s playmate and schoolmate from the earliest times, and she was about my wife’s age, or two or three years younger—mentally, morally, spiritually, and in all ways, a superior and lovable personality” (AD, 26 Feb 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:140). Spaulding, who married lawyer John Barry Stanchfield (1855–1921) in 1886, became Clemens’s trusted friend as well as Olivia’s, and was regarded as an aunt by their children (OLL to Alice B. Hooker, 3 Mar 69, CtHSD; Salsbury, 433; “Matrimonial Mentions,” Elmira Morning Telegram, 5 Sept 86, 8; “Stanchfield Funeral to Be Held Tuesday,” Elmira Star Gazette, 1 July 1935, 10; Towner 1892, 128; Herbert A. Wisbey, Jr., personal communication).

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7 The Reverend Thomas K. Beecher, the Langdons’ pastor, had left Elmira for Pittsburgh probably on 25 or 26 March. The Reverend James Chaplin Beecher (1828–86), of Owego, New York, Thomas’s younger brother, substituted for him on Easter Sunday, 28 March, both at the morning service in Park Congregational Church and at the Elmira Opera House that evening. Beecher returned in time to publish his regular “Friday Miscellany” in the Elmira Advertiser on 2 April, the first part of which described his recent trip. Shortly after his return there were new developments in the controversy over his Opera House services (see 20 and 21 Jan 69 to OLL, n. 9). The New York Evangelist announced on 1 April:

The Ministerial Union of Elmira, N. Y., at a recent meeting, passed resolutions disapproving the teachings of Rev. T. K. Beecher, declining to cooperate with him in his Sunday evening services at the Opera House, and requesting him to withdraw from their Monday morning meeting. This has resulted in his withdrawal, and thus the pastors are relieved from further responsibility as to his action. (“Ministers and Churches,” 4)

On 7 April, Jervis Langdon wrote a letter supporting Beecher to the Elmira Advertiser, which published it the next day as “Mr. Beecher and the Clergy.” Reproducing the Evangelist notice, Langdon asked sarcastically that “all orthodox sectarian papers” copy it because he thought it “very unfair that the clergymen of Elmira should be held responsible by any one for Mr. Beecher’s action and teaching in the Opera House” (Langdon). Langdon also “headed a movement to buy shares in the Opera House to ensure the future of this outrage” (Max Eastman, 624–25). Clemens himself was soon drawn into the effort on Beecher’s behalf, writing “Mr. Beecher and the Clergy” (SLC 1869), signed “Cheerfully, S’cat” and published in the Advertiser on 10 April (“Nook Farm Genealogy,” Beecher Addenda, iv; Elmira Advertiser: “Services To-morrow,” 27 Mar 69, 4; “City and Neighborhood,” 29 Mar 69, 4; “Friday Miscellany,” 2 Apr 69, 3).

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8 Melting snow and recent heavy rains had swelled the Chemung River, but the danger of a flood, initially thought serious, proved “not so imminent as to excite serious apprehensions” (“City and Neighborhood,” Elmira Advertiser, 31 Mar 69, 4).

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9 “Geer” probably was the “common meter tune ... composed by Henry Wellington Greatorex in 1849” (Ensor, 21). Among the hymns sung to it were three included in the Plymouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes (originally published in 1855), a volume familiar to Clemens from the Quaker City excursion and probably used by the Park Congregational Church in Elmira: “While Thee I seek, protecting Power,” by Helen Maria Williams (1762–1827); “O God of Bethel! by whose hand,” the version by John Logan (1748–88) of a hymn by Philip Doddridge (1702–51); and “How deep and tranquil is the joy,” by Andrew Reed (1787–1862) (Henry Ward Beecher 1864, 218). It is not known which, if any, of these was Olivia’s favorite. “Even me” was the refrain to “Lord, I hear of showers of blessing,” an 1860 hymn by Elizabeth Codner (1824–1919) not included in the Plymouth Collection. Its tune, also known as “Even Me,” was composed by William B. Bradbury in 1862. In his and Olivia’s copy of Holmes’s Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, Clemens wrote: “Midnight March 25, 1869—I wish ‘Even Me’ to be sung at my funeral” (PH in CU-MARK, in Booth, 461). The hymn was not performed at his memorial service in New York City on 23 April 1910, or at his funeral in Elmira the following day (Julian, 1:187–88, 305, 690, 831, 2:953–54, 1281; Frost, 495, 544; Dawson, 551; Leonard Woolsey Bacon, 201; New York Times: “Last Glimpse Here of Mark Twain,” 24 Apr 1910, part 2, 3; “Mark Twain At Rest; Buried Beside Wife,” 25 Apr 1910, 9).

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10 Writing from Virginia City on 18 March 1864, Clemens reproached his sister Pamela for failing to be particular about such details in her letters to him: “An item is of no use unless it speaks of some person, & not then, unless that person’s name is distinctly mentioned. The most interesting letter one can write to an absent friend, is one that treats of persons he has been acquainted with, rather than the public events of the day” (L1, 274). Clemens addressed the same advice, “and with asperity, to every man, woman, and child east of the Rocky Mountains” when he published “An Open Letter to the American People” in February 1866 (SLC 1866).

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11 No fair copy of this letter has been found. The document transcribed here was almost certainly the one sent, and remained in the Langdon family until 1972. The witness’s signature was probably written by Clemens, in imitation of Olivia’s handwriting.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L3, 179–184.

Provenance:This letter, evidently the document sent to Susan Crane, remained in the Langdon family until 1972 when it was donated to CU-MARK by Mrs. Eugene Lada-Mocarski, Jervis Langdon, Jr., Mrs. Robert S. Pennock, and Mrs. Bayard Schieffelin.

Emendations and textual notes:

thank you • thanky you [false start]

Elmira • E Elmira [corrected miswriting]

w • [partly formed, possibly ‘v’ or ‘u’]

secret, • [comma in purple ink covered by stray mark in brown ink, not intended as a cancellation]

prophecied • [sic]

Mr. • [possibly ‘Mr.s’, deletion of partly formed ‘s’ implied]

cou • [‘u’ partly formed]

br birds • brirds

coachman • coach-|man

new-fangled • new-|fangled

extra-hazardous • extra-|hazardous

some • [possibly ‘some’; heavy underscore with a pronounced waver traced over]

has. She • has.—|She

must • musust [corrected miswriting]

out.; • [possibly ‘out.,’, deletion implied]

those the • the ose

& • [possibly ‘(’]

things things • [two underscores altered to one]

familiari • [deletion implied]

memory, — • [deletion implied]

LIVY. • [‘Livy’ underscored three times. The signature was almost certainly written by Clemens, although the handwriting resembles Olivia’s (see the illustration reproduced below). Even if she had signed it, however, it is likely that he would have added the three underscores.]