In Bed—
Albany, Jan. 10.
Click to add citation to My Citations.
Had an immense house, tonight, little sweetheart, & turned away several hundred—no seats for them. It is hard to make al Albany Dutchme an laugh & applaud, but the subscriber did it.1 One day less to worry through before my rascally pilgrimage is finished & we resign ourselves to rest & refreshment in the tranquil privacy of our own home, my darling.
Bless your little heart, you did no “impertinent thing” in opening a letter addressed to me, Livy dear. You can open any letter addressed to me—whatever is mine is Livy’s. The letter was from John McComb & I will enclose it to you. I have a secret to tell you about him when I see you again, if I do not forget it. I will write him to-night to hunt up that Blind Tom letter. I am glad & proud that my little wife takes such an interest in my scribblings.2 I plainly see, now, why Joe Goodman gradually lost all interest in his poetry (he was a born poet) & finally lost all ambition in that direction & ceased to write. The one whose applause would have been dearer to him & more potent than that of all the world beside, could not help him, or encourage him or spur him, because she was far below his intellectual level & could not [ appe appreciate ] the work of his brain or feel an interest in it. When I told him you took care of my sketches for me & listened with a lively interest to any manuscript of mine before it was printed, he dropped an unconscious remark that was so full of pathos—so fraught with “It might have been”—that my heart ached for him.3 He could have been so honored of men, & so loved by all who for whom poetry has a charm, but for the dead weight o & clog of a wife upon his winged genius, of a wife whose soul could have no companionship save with the things of the dull earth.4
But I am blessed above my kind, with a another self—a life companion o who is part of me—part of my heart, & flesh & spirit—& not a fellow-pilgrim who lags far behind or flies ahead, or soars above me. Side by side, my darling, we walk the ways of life; & the ray of light that falls upon the one, illumines the face of the other; the cloud that darkens the hope of one casts its sable shadow upon the other; & the storms that come will beat upon no single head, but both will feel its ‸their‸ might & brave its ‸their‸ desolation.
Oh, think of Mrs. Fairbanks—a [ Pa Pegasus ] harnessed with a dull brute of the field. Mated, but not matched, must be the direst grief that can befall any poor human creature—& when I think how I have escaped it when so many that are worthier than I have suffered it, I am filled with a thankfulness to God which I can feel—that rare thankfulness that such as I feel all too seldom. It is at such times that one’s heart lifts up its unspoken gratitude, & no choicely worded eloquence of lip & brain is like unto [it. ], or half so puissant.
I shall love the silk quilt, not only because our mother gave it you, but because it will always preserve that old dress that was so dear to me.5 And we never can sleep under it, darling, & forget the old pleasant days that were ours when it was “still “in the flesh,” if I may so speak. We will cherish the quilt well, & help it hoard its memory-treasures. It must be sacred to our bed—guests cannot have it.6 And I am very glad, too, that it has in it something to that knew you when you were a little girl—for I always feel a sense of loss, when I reflect that I never [knew ] you when you were little. [in margin: You darling little rascal, you must spell “[suffice]” as I spell it now. That’s all that’s wrong, [sweetheart].]
My child! I thought you had a full list.7 Here it is:
Jan. 11 (tomorrow) West Troy
12—Rondout—H. M. Crane
13—Cambridge (N. Y.) A. H. Comstock
14.—Utica—W. P. Carpenter.
15—Oswego—Joseph Owen
16—Sunday.
17—Baldwinsville (N. Y.) W. F. Morris.
—
—
20—Hornellsville
21—Jamestown, (N. Y.) C. E. Bishop.
That is the end of the list, now, & I hope no additions will be made to it.
If you hurry, honey, I guess you can get the newspaper notices to the Oswego man in time.8
I have received the bookseller’s receipt for the money paid for the Doré book, & so I suppose the book has reached you by this time—it was to be sent right away.9
Sleep in peace, my own darling, & all good angels guard your dreams & give them happy omens.
Sam.
[in ink:] Miss Olivia L. Langdon | Elmira |[N. Y.] [return address:] delavan house, albany, chas. e. leland. clarendon hotel, saratoga springs, chas. e. leland. leland hotel, springfield, ill. h. s. leland & co. metropolitan hotel, new-york. s. leland & co. [postmarked:] [albany n. y. ]jan 11 [docketed by OLL:] 10 173rd
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
delighted an immense audience last night. Tweddle
Hall was packed in every part. The Sandwich Island Savages were
described in a peculiarly droll and interesting manner, which kept
the audience in a broad grin from commencement to close. Mark is
decidedly the best of our humorists, and what is more to his credit,
he never descends to the trick of bad spelling in his writings.
(“‘Our Fellow Savages,’”
11 Jan 70, 3) The Albany Argus agreed, calling Clemens
“the best humorist now before the public” and a
success “from first to last”
(“‘Mark Twain’ at Tweddle
Hall,” 11 Jan 70, 2).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 1
The Albany Evening Journal reported that Clemens
Click to add citation to My Citations. 2
McComb was one of the editors and owners of the San Francisco Alta California. The secret about him remains a
secret. Clemens had described the blind, black piano prodigy Thomas
Greene Bethune (1849–1908) in an Alta
letter published on 1 August 1869. Olivia must have reminded him of his
earlier promise to get a copy of it for her (L2, 12 n. 1; SLC 1869; Southern, 251–54; L3, 431).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 3
This exchange took place in late December or early January, either in New
York City or Elmira, before Goodman went on to Europe (L3, 431). Goodman’s first wife, Ellen, was a native of
Ireland. They remained married until her death in 1893 (Caleb Goodman, 5).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 4
According to journalist Samuel P. Davis (1850–1918),
Goodman’s poetry, which regularly appeared in his Virginia
City Territorial Enterprise, earned him the title
“Boss Poet of the Comstock.” Goodman was often
called upon for ceremonial verse: “year after year he
furnished the odes for Decoration Day, Fourth of July and Pioneer
anniversaries. . . . Whenever Joe had to shut himself up and write a
poem for the public, Mark Twain, who was on the paper, would describe
his employer as being chained in a cell on a fish-and-water diet,
wrestling with the muses” (Samuel Post Davis). Most of
Goodman’s poetry perished with the files of the Enterprise, but some characteristic poems can be
found in Poetry of the Pacific, published in 1867
(Newman).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 5
Probably “the particular blue silk dress” that
Clemens associated with the early days of his courtship (L3, 78). The gift of a bridal quilt from mother to daughter had
been an American tradition since colonial times (Holstein, 27).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 6
“Entertainment of a welcome visitor not immediate
‘kin’ demanded that the spare bed be formally
decked in all the glory of the pièce de
résistance of the housewife’s quilts; not
so to dress a guest’s bed was a social slight”
(Finley, 128).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 7
Olivia had been using the lecture itinerary that Clemens sent her on 29
November 1869, which did not include his lectures in Oswego,
Hornellsville, and Jamestown, nor two others he did not yet know about:
Ogdensburg and Fredonia, New York, on 18 and 19 January, respectively.
Clemens’s contacts at West Troy (George R. Meneely, a bell
manufacturer), Rondout (Henry M. Crane, a bookkeeper), and Utica
(William P. Carpenter, a bookkeeper) have been previously identified
(L3, 315 n. 1 bottom, 357 n. 1 top, 415–16, 486). For his Oswego
contact see note 8. For his Cambridge, Fredonia, and Jamestown contacts,
see (14 Jan 70
to OLL, nn. 1 and 5, and 20 Feb 70 to Langdon,
n. 2. His contact at Baldwinsville is identified only by the
present list. The names of his Ogdensburg and Hornellsville contacts are
not known.
Click to add citation to My Citations. 8
Olivia had not sent the reviews Clemens requested on 6 January because
she did not know who “the Oswego man” was. She may
now have sent them to Joseph Owen, a real estate broker and a member of
the local Y.M.C.A. lecture committee. In publicizing the lecture, the
Oswego Commercial Advertiser and Times excerpted
reviews from the Boston Advertiser and the Boston
Evening Transcript (misidentified as the
“Journal”), both of 11
November 1869, the Hartford Courant of 25
November 1869, and the Troy Times of 12 January
1870, but not the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin
(6 Jan 70 to OLL, n. 4). Afterward, the Oswego paper
pronounced the performance a success, remarking that following some
“heavy lectures . . . Twain’s was thrown in just
at the right nick of time to make the course rest a little easier on our
stomachs, so to speak—like the wine after dinner”
(Oswego Commercial Advertiser and Times:
“Real Estate Office,” 13 Jan 70, 3;
“‘Mark Twain,’ . . . ,”
“Mark Twain—Notices of the Press,”
“Y.M.C.A. Lecture Course,” 14 Jan 70, 3;
“Twain’s Lecture,” 17 Jan 70, 3).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 9
See 6
Jan 70 to OLL, n. 2.
Click to add citation to My Citations. 10
Clemens’s next two letters to Olivia (docket numbers 174
and 175), probably written on 11 and 12 January after his lectures
in West Troy and Rondout, are missing (L3, 479).
Source text(s):MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley (CU-MARK), written on five leaves of the
same notebook paper as 7 Jan 70 to Fairbanks.
Previous publication:
L4, 17–20; MFMT, 209–10, excerpt; LLMT, 124–25, excerpt; MTMF, 117, excerpt.
Provenance:see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
appe appreciate • appereciate
Pa Pegasus • Paegasus
it. • [deletion implied]
knew • kn new | knew [rewritten for clarity]
suffice • suf-| fice fice [‘fice’ rewritten for clarity]
sweetheart • sweet-|heart
N. Y. •
N. Y[
]
[torn]
albany n.y. • al [bany] n.[y.] [stamped off edge; badly inked]
