To Olivia L. Clemens
20 January 1872 • Harrisburg, Pa.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00720)

Harrisburgh, 20th.

Livy darling, I am here to stay over Sunday.1

Sent Ned House’s letter back to you for preservation. Give it to Orion & let him hand it to Bliss to be read—then let Bliss send it back to you. Don’t forget.2

Had a magnificent time at Lancaster last night. Stormy night, but brilliant, crowded audience. I wrote a new, long clause jammed it into the lecture & talked it off from memory without missing a word—a mistake would have been ghastly. All these late places insist on my coming back.3

I enclose a poem—or rather, two poems. The woman’s poem is exquisite—[Mr.] Longfellow’s is not to be mentioned in the same day with it. But Mr. L. has not plagiarized. If he had been stealing from this woman he would not [ o ] have [overlooked] one of her finest points—the one where the old Monk’s simple sense of duty makes him spring up & go to his charitable work when the bells ring——Longfellow makes him drag himself reluctantly away in answer to a plain call “within his breast”—a call so worded as to give the instant impression that he recognized in it a command, (& a [ promise ], almost,) from the Vision.4

I have seen this beautiful old legend put into all manner of poetical measure, but never so touchingly & effectively as this woman has done it. Show it to Warner.

So Joe is in N. York. I will write him.5

Slee writes that Larned thinks he has sold his interest in the Express & wants to pay my notes.6

Only a few days, my old darling, & I shall have you in my arms. I love you Livy darling.

Samℓ.

[enclosure:]

Mrs. Samℓ. L. Clemens | Cor Forest & Hawthorne | Hartford | Conn. [return address:] if not delivered within 10 days, to be returned to [postmarked:] harrisburg pa. jan 20

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Clemens lectured in Harrisburg on 18 January, drawing mixed reviews from the local press. The Harrisburg Telegraph deemed his performance “the roughest excuse for a lecture we ever heard”:

The peculiar drawling style of the lecturer does not add to the interest of the subject—many of the jokes were very far-fetched, and the lecture itself was as devoid of interesting matter as it well could be. It was indeed all “chaff,” hardly a good seed in the lot. Any person hearing Mark Twain once won’t desire to hear him again. (“Mark Twain’s lecture ...,” 19 Jan 72, 3)

At the other extreme, the Harrisburg Evening Mercury called it “a grand success oratorically and facetiously” (“Amusement Notes,” 19 Jan 72, 1). The temperate Harrisburg Patriot found that the lecture afforded “much agreeable amusement” and described at length the crush in the hall: “The only vacant space left when the lecturer commenced was his mouth, and that nobody crowded down his throat was astonishing” (“Local Intelligence,” 19 Jan 72, clipping in CU-MARK). Clemens lectured on Friday, 19 January, in Lancaster (see note 3); with no lecture scheduled for 20 or 21 January, he returned to Harrisburg for the weekend.

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2 Edward H. House’s letter has not been found. It probably concerned the book about Japan which, through Clemens, he had offered the American Publishing Company in May 1871. House had been in Japan since 1870, teaching English at the University of Tokyo and corresponding for the New York Tribune (see, for example, “Progressive Japan,” New York Tribune, 12 Feb 72, 3, from “e. h. h.,” the Tribune’s “regular correspondent”). He did not return to America until March 1873 (L4, 149–50 n. 3, 388, 389 n. 1; House to Whitelaw Reid, 20 and 21 Mar 73, Whitelaw Reid Papers, DLC; see 3 May 73 to Bliss, n. 2).

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3 “Mark Mark Twain as the sensation of our course of lectures,” said the Lancaster Intelligencer. Clemens held a capacity crowd “in rapt admiration of his beautiful descriptions of scenery or convulsed them with laughter by his humorous sketches. His manner is admirably suited to his subject and matter, and his strong clear voice enabled all to hear him distinctly” (“Mark Twain’s Lecture,” 20 Jan 72, 2). According to the Lancaster Evening Express, he “paid Lancaster the compliment of saying that he never appeared before a finer and more appreciative audience, and added that if he could always have such audiences he would stick to lecturing as a profession” (“Mark Twain had the pleasure ...,” 23 Jan 72, 2).

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4 The original enclosures have not been found. The “woman’s poem” remains unidentified. Longfellow’s poem was “The Legend Beautiful,” which was the “Theologian’s Tale” in the second installment of Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863–74). Clemens may have clipped the poem from the pages of the Atlantic Monthly, where it first appeared in December 1871; it did not appear in book form until May 1872, when it was reprinted by James R. Osgood and Company in Three Books of Song. The Atlantic’s text is transcribed in Enclosure with 20 January 1872 to Olivia L. Clemens. Longfellow’s monk, called to attend to the poor at the convent gate, hesitates to leave the splendid “Vision” of Christ which has visited him in his cell. Clemens refers to the climactic verse: “Then a voice within his breast/ Whispered, audible and clear/ As if to the outward ear:/ ‘Do thy duty; that is best;/ Leave unto thy Lord the rest!’” (Longfellow 1871, 659; “Advance Book-Notes,” Publishers’ and Stationers’ Weekly Trade Circular 1 [23 May 72]: 464).

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5 Clemens’s old Nevada friend and employer, Joseph T. Goodman, proprietor of the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, left Virginia City in December 1871, accompanied by his wife, Ellen, for a visit to Washington, New York, and other eastern cities. The Goodmans did not leave New York until 1 April 1872; doubtless they were able to see Clemens in February or March. Goodman had last visited Clemens in the spring of 1871 in Elmira during the composition of Roughing It (Virginia City Territorial Enterprise: “Gone East,” 13 Dec 71, 3; “Home Again,” 25 Apr 72, 3; Goodman to SLC, 24 Mar 72, CU-MARK; L4, 378, 379 n. 2; RI 1993 , 840–42).

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6 John D. F. Slee, the “very able” young businessman who since May 1870 had been a partner in J. Langdon and Company, had often advised Clemens about his financial affairs, including the $3,000 loan he made to his Buffalo Express associate, Josephus N. Larned, in April 1870 (L4, 157 n. 1). On 20 January 1872 the Buffalo Express editorial page included Larned’s “Personal” announcement: “Having sold my interest in the Express Printing Company to my recent partner, George H. Selkirk, I retire to-day from the editorial management of the Express” (2). Larned’s retirement after thirteen years’ association with the Express was closely followed by his election as Buffalo’s superintendent of education. Selkirk, president of the Express Printing Company, which published the Buffalo Express, was now sole owner, having also purchased Clemens’s shares in March 1871 (L3, 401–2 n. 2; L4, 81–82, 109, 140 n. 2, 338–39 n. 3; “Charter Election,” Buffalo Express, 7 Feb 72, 4).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L5, 28–31; LLMT, 363, brief paraphrase.

Provenance:see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

Mr. • Mr[] [written off edge]

o • [possibly ‘a’]

overlooked • overlool ked

promise • prom-|ise