To Olivia L. Clemens
18 October 1871 • Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00664)

Wilkesbarre, Oct. 18.

Livy darling, what a thin I am in a bother, & don’t know whether to be irritated or amused. I was mourning over my miserable lecture this afternoon, & saying I would give Reading & Easton a lecture for nothing in February & do it gladly, if I could get off from those engagements now & thus gain time to write a new lecture. I was thoroughly miserable and broken-hearted. An old Californian friend1 proposed various ways to accomplish the thing—none seemed to hit it—finally he said leave it to him & let him telegraph those people in my name & he would fix it. I said go it! The next I saw of him he told me he had telegraphed them that I was called away immediately by sickness in my family; & that they must advertise the postponement freely amply at my expense, & that I would come & lecture for them for nothing between the 5th & tenth of February! Horrible—but in spite of everything I could not keep from secretly rejoicing there was such a load taken from my breast. I am beginning to get really happy & light hearted & by morning shall be absolutely jubilant, I think. Reading & Easton promptly telegraphed acceptance of the proposition.2

But don’t let this unhappy business get into the papers—I mean contradictions of it. If Warner3 speaks of it you can tell him all about it & stop the contradictions. I seem doomed to be always in the papers about private matters.

Bless your dear old heart, I shall reach Washington tomorrow night, & then for two days & nights I shall work like a beaver on my new lecture. How I ever came to get up such a mess of rubbish as this & imagine it good, is too many for me.4

But good night, my best beloved darling for I must [rise &] 6.30 & start.

Ever & ever so lovingly

Samℓ.

Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Cor. Forest & Hawthorne | Hartford | Conn [postmarked:] [wilkesbarre pa.]oct 19

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Unidentified.

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2 Clemens had been scheduled to lecture at Easton, Pennsylvania, on 19 October and at Reading the following evening. The Easton Free Press, probably of 19 October (reprinted in McIlhaney), commented on the postponement:

We do not think the friends of Trinity church have missed much. The lecture which Mark Twain had commenced this season with is a failure. The people in Bethlehem and Allentown were greatly disappointed. It consisted of the recital of eleven jokes or stories most of which are in the “Innocents Abroad.” We hope Mark will rewrite his lecture before coming to Easton.

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3 Charles Dudley Warner, associate editor of the Hartford Courant and a neighbor of the Clemenses’.

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4 The Wilkes-Barre Luzerne Union concurred with Clemens’s assessment of the “Reminiscences” lecture delivered on the evening of 18 October, calling it “stale” and remarking that “one dose of such stuff was sufficient for a generation” (25 Oct 71, 3, TS in CU-MARK). The postponement of his Easton and Reading engagements gave Clemens time to prepare a new lecture for his 23 October appearance in Washington.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L4, 475–477; LLMT, 362, brief paraphrase.

Provenance:see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

rise & • [sic]

wilkesbarre pa. • [wileb] arr [ ]. [badly inked]