To
Olivia L. Langdon with a note to Charles J. Langdon
23 and 24 December 1868 • Lansing, Mich.
(MS, damage emended: CU-MARK, UCCL 00208)
Lansing, Mich., Dec. 23.
My Dearest Livy—
Twenty minutes after I had mailed my Detroit letter to you this morning, (in Detroit,) your letter reached me. I was sorry it had not come a little sooner, so that I could have told you, because you will fear I did not get it at all. I was not at all satisfied with my performance in Detroit, for notwithstanding I had the largest audience they had seen there for a long time, I was awkward & constrained—ill at ease—& did not satisfy them, I think.1 But if I had only had your letter in my pocket, then, how different it would have been—! Livy, dear, you don’t know what inspiration flows from your pen. I can please any audience when I have a new [letters ]of yours by me. It is because I always feel a tranquil gladness, a glow of happiness, then, & it is easy to impart it to the multitude about [me. Now ]tonight we had the largest audience that has ever attended any lecture ‸here‸ but Gough’s,2 & I honestly believe I pleased every individual in the house. The applause of the serious passages was cordial & unstinted. The gentlemen of the Society pledged me to come again (in case I lecture another season—I always make that reservation, because I don’t want to run about any more unless I must.)3
As usual, I found an old friend4 here, & we have had a glorious talk over old times. I am to dine with him & other friends tomorrow. I shall spend my Christmas Eve in this delightful little city.
“Are you interested in these profound matters of the evening?” Bless your dear old heart, Livy, I am interested in everything you do & say—nothing that concerns you is unimportant to me. And those little personal details are the very things that please me most—because they bring you before me—& to me you are the world—you are the universe! I so love you, Livy, & am so proud of you, that I cannot hear too much about you. Your letter brings you back to me, & I see you in your dainty room, among your books & pictures—I see the south window & the hanging basket of flowers—& [more ]than all, I see your precious little figure bending over that fanciful portfolio—the one vision in all the world that my eyes most love to look upon.
Why yes—you must have “banished all suspicion” from [ Mis Mr. ]Coleman’s5 mind by calling him by my name twice in the same evening! You dear little concentration of gravity, that looks very much to me like a modest ebullition of humor! Look out—you are on dangerous ground—be careful, or you will blossom into a humorist when you least expect it, & so distress yourself beyond [measure! ]But your humor is kindly & gentle, Livy, & will not make anybody unhappy.
No indeed, Livy, you cannot tell me too much about yourself. When you tell me what you have are doing, I know it—but at other times I can only [guess. And ]so I am always guessing. At 8 in the morning—(or ten minutes after)—I say to myself, “Now she is at breakfast”—just after noon, “Now she is at luncheon”—at six in the evening, “Now she is at dinner”—but after that, & during the odd hours of the day, I can only form random conjectures of what you are about. But o there is one thing that I am always conscious of, & that is, that whatever you are doing or saying, I would like ever so much to know all about it.
Ladies don’t usually like those books, Livy, I don’t know why—because those same books praise them so much, maybe.6 [ Hor Honoria ]is a great-souled, self-sacrificing, noble woman like you (I can see you in everything she does) & she is so happy in the weal of others & so compassionate of their woes. And she is so thoughtful, & so tender, & so exquisitely womanly. One learns to love poor Jane, ‸by & bye,‸ & feel a longing to caress her secret sorrows away & do something to make glad the grieving little heart that so yearned to be loved. And how death hallows her!—how it shames away all ungenerous criticism of her little faults, ennobles her virtues & makes sweet womanly graces of what seemed blemishes before! Even the reader feels that he himself has somehow lost something when poor Jane is gone.
Did I scare you, Livy? And did I make you sad, talking of the home in Cleveland? I know it—I know I did. Oh, child! [your ]write so tenderly, so beautifully of it! “To think of having them grow used to my being absent, so that at last they would cease to miss me, made me feel as if I wanted father to put his arms about me & keep me near him always.” English literature cannot show a [finer ]passage than that, Livy. “Honesty is the best policy,” in literature, always. One who writes from his heart, can never write badly—& ‸but‸ the daintiest paragraph that was ever written cannot deceive if it is a lie—if it is a pretense of what is not felt. No one ever wrote well, who wrote [ wa what ]was not in his heart. I said you wrote well—more than well, Livy—& I knew I could bide my time in with confidence—I knew I could prove it, whenever I chose. Write whatever an honest impulse dictates, Livy, without ever stopping to think whether it will be better to say it or not, or to consider much how it ought to be said—it will find its own proper [language. What ]would Mrs. Fairbanks say to that passage? She would say it was worthy of Sterne. I don’t know what reminded me of Sterne—but do you remember Uncle Toby & the [ woul wounded ]soldier? (I hope not, because the book is coarse, & I would not have you soil your ‸your pure‸ mind with it.) But the incident I speak of is match beyond praise in its treatment—it is such a noble burst of generous feeling. The poor wounded soldier (wounded unto death,) pleads so touchingly that the doctors will make him a little better, so that he can go & see his home & its idols again—& good old Uncle Toby’s honest whole honest heart is in the matter. Then in the midst of his generous ‸kindly‸ enthusiasm some one comes & tells Toby that it cannot be—it cannot be—the soldier must die—he will never march again. And then old Toby’s ire bursts out in a great avalanche of generous wrath,—& forgetting his gout, he rises up & tries to take the grand step of a soldier (for his heart is full & his body must act his thought,) & he thunders:
“He shall not die! He shall march!—by God he shall march [again!”]
[six lines (about 30 words) torn away]
[insertion on a page left partly blank:]
‸ [[in top margin: ‸ (M ‸]
“And the ministering spirit that flew up to Heaven’s chancery with the oath blushed as he gave it in; & the recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word & blotted it out forever.”7
{Made a mistake of memory before.}
[fourteen blank
lines]]
‸
Livy, that is the finest thought in the English language—& no thought could be more exquisitely expressed. It is one of the most famous passages in our literature, too—& [whenever everything ]else that Lawrence Sterne ever wrote shall have been forgotten, that one little paragraph will still secure to him an enduring fame—a fame that shall last while English is written & noble impulses still stir in the human heart. You touch one as nearly as Lawrence Sterne, if I do say it myself—but I have a right to say it, because if you are not my Livy you are not anybody else’s Livy that I know of—not with my consent, you ain’t, [anyhow?.]
I just don’t wonder that it makes you sad to think of leaving such a home, Livy, & such household Gods—for there is no other home in all the world like it—no household gods so lovable as yours, anywhere. And I shall feel like a heartless highway robber when I take you away from there—(but I must do it, Livy, I must—but I shall love you so dearly, & try so hard all the days of my life to make you happy, & shall so strive to walk as you do in the light & the love of God, that some of the bitterness of your exile shall be spared you.) But Oh, they never would cease to miss you, darling—they—
I’ll not read that passage again for an hour!—for it makes the tears come into my eyes every time, in spite of me. You shall visit them, Livy—& so often that they cannot much well realize [ than that ]you are an absentee. You shall never know the chill that comes upon me [ when sometimes ]when I feel that long absence has made me a stranger in my own home—‸(not that I ever seem a stranger to my mother & sister & my brother, for their love knows no change, no modification[)]—but then I see them taking delight in things that are new to me, & which I do not comprehend or take an interest in; I see them heart-&-heart with people I do not know, & who are nothing to me; & so I can only look in upon their world without entering,:‸ & I turn me away with a dull, aching consciousness that long exile has lost to me that haven of rest, that pillow of weariness, that refuge from care, & trouble & pain, that type & symbol of heaven, Home—& then, away down in my heart of hearts I yearn for the days that are gone & the phantoms of the olden time!—for the faces that are vanished; for the forms I loved to see; for the voices that were music to my ear; for the restless feet that have gone out into the darkness, to return no more forever!
But you shall not know this great blank, this awful vacancy, this something missed, something lost, which is felt but cannot be described, this solemn, mysterious desolation. No, you I with my experience, I should dread to think of your old home growing strange to you. Don’t be sad, Livy—any more than you can help—we’ll have all the folks out in our home often—& we will make them sorry to go away again, too. Cheer up, Livy, you dear good girl, & go & invite them. We’ll have no sorrow, darling, that shall abide with us!—we’ll model our home after the old home, & make the spirit of Love lord over all the realm—& Sorrow shall be banished the royalty! Smile again, Livy, & be of good heart. Turn toward the Cross & be comforted—I turn with you— What would you more? The peace of God shall rest upon us, & all will be well.
Good-bye, Livy, dear—& good night. It wasn’t not midnight when I began, but I [have ]written so leisurely (for this room is very, very pleasant—reminds me of my room in your house) that it is half-past 2 in the morning, now, & so it is Christmas Eve. I guess I shall sleep rather late. Good bye, & God bless you for the coveted words that close your letter: “With a kiss & increasing love.” So may it increase till it can go no farther—till it is ‸be‸ perfect, darling, & our two hearts pulse in unison, our hands be joined one with the other, & our feet & our eyes be turned, together, toward [ & th the ]far shores of eternity.
Good-bye. Write me all the letters you can, Livy, to reach Cleveland on the 28th, 29th, 30th, 31st, of Dec., & 1st of Jan.—now you will, won’t you, you dear little woman? I talk in Akron, but I shall return to Cleveland the same day. And send the picture, dear, so I can show it to my good, noble old Mother Fairbanks, & make her heart glad. Please, Livy.
In spirit I kiss you—would it were [ real. ‸in reality.‸ ]
In loving devotion, always
Samℓ. C
[in top margin:]
You know I don’t talk in
Dayton, Livy.
Present.
Christmas gift, Charley!—send me a keg of nails.8
[docketed by OLL:] 15th [OLL, in pencil:] Home, & the quotation from Sterne
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
He talked easily, walking up and down the stage at a pace that slowly
marked the time of his words. His delightful description of Venice
by moonlight, the Sphinx, the Acropolis at Athens, were as fine
specimens of word painting as can be drawn by any other lecturer.
(“The Lecture of Mark Twain,” Lansing State Republican, 31 Dec 68, 3)
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L2, 342–347; LLMT, 34, brief excerpt.
Provenance:see Samossoud Collection, pp. 515–16.
Emendations and textual notes:
letters • [‘s’ partly formed]
me. Now • me.—|Now
more • more | more [corrected miswriting]
Mis Mr. • M‸r.‸ is [‘is’ doubtful]
measure! • [possibly ‘measure.!’ with the deletion implied]
guess. And • guess.—|And
Hor Honoria • Hornoria
your • [‘r’ partly formed]
finer • finer | finer [corrected miswriting]
wa what • wahat
language. What • language.—|What
woul wounded • woulnded
again!” • [Clemens tore away the remainder of MS page 9, which contained an apparently faulty quotation from Sterne; see the next entry.]
‸ [in . . . lines] ‸ • [Clemens inserted this corrected quotation and explanation on an otherwise blank page that he numbered ‘9½’; before doing so, he had at least started his MS page 10, which begins ‘Livy,’ (345.1).]
whenever everything • whenever every-|thing [‘every-’ over wiped-out ‘ever’; possibly corrected false start]
anyhow?. • [possibly ‘anyhow!.’]
than that • thant
when sometimes • [‘some’ over wiped-out ‘when’]
have • [possibly ‘harve’; ‘r’ mended to ‘v’]
& th the • [‘the’ over doubtful wiped-out ‘& th’]
real. ‸in reality.‸ • ‸in‸ real.ity. [‘in’ interlined with a caret; ‘ity.’ added to ‘real.’ and underscored once]
L. L Livy • L‸ivy‸ . L
