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Add to My CitationsTo Olivia Lewis Langdon
25 December 1877 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 01517)
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Xmas Morning.

Mother dear, the Satsuma ware is exquisitely beautiful.1 One likes to sit down & study each stroke & tint & delicate line in it & as we do a with a marvelous picture. We thank you much more than we can put on paper, you may be sure of that. The two quilts are too lovely for indiscriminate use; I shall use them myself, exclusively. I think that that dainty Japanese fish came from you; [& so] I will thank you for it, anyway, “jus’ e’ [same.” The] Emperor’s [handwriting] suggests yours, foreignized.

It was a wonderful box you you people sent, & we had a charming time making discoveries in it. I have taken Ida’s House Beautiful & Baby Days & Ik Marvel’s Book, & shall give Livy & the children copies of my works in place of them.2 Theodore could hardly have sent me a book more to my liking than Miss Martineau’s Western Travels—I am charmed with the calm way she sharpens the hob-nails in her No. 13s & walks over our late fellow citizens.3 I am considering whether

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Well, we are having a pretty booming sort of a Christmas, both in the library & the nursery. We send you all a power of love, & the merry wishes of the season, with prayers for many happy returns.

Affectional tely

Sam.

P.S.

The ordering of father’s picture from Le Clere, by the boys, was an inspiration worthy of the time & of them.4

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

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1Satsuma is a Japanese pottery decorated with blue, red, green, orange, or gold on a background of beige crackled glaze. It was especially popular during the Meiji Period, 1868–1912.

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2The gifts from Ida Langdon, wife of Charles J. Langdon, were: Clarence C. Cook’s The House Beautiful: Essays on Beds and Tables, Stools and Candlesticks (New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Co., 1878); Baby Days: A Selection of Songs, Stories, and Pictures for Very Little Folks (New York: Scribner and Co., 1877), taken from the pages of St. Nicholas magazine and introduced in verse by Mary Mapes Dodge, the magazine’s editor; and a book by Donald G. Mitchell, who used the pseudonym “Ik Marvel,” probably About Old Story-Tellers: Of How and When They Lived, and What Stories They Told (New York: Scribner, Armstrong, and Co., 1878) (Gribben 1980, 1:477).

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3Harriet Martineau’s two-volume Retrospect of Western Travel (London: Saunders and Otley, 1838; sold by Harper and Brothers, New York). Clemens had owned a copy of at least volume one in 1875. A copy of volume two, in which he wrote “T. W. Crane | to | S. L. Clemens | Xmas 77,” survives in the Mark Twain Papers (Gribben 1980, 1:454–55). It contains no relevant marginalia, so it is not possible to explain what he meant by “walks over our late fellow citizens,” but he might have been referring to Martineau’s sharp criticism of slaveholders and anti-abolitionists.

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4The American artist Thomas Le Clear (1818–82) was best known for his portraits of prominent men. Charles J. Langdon and Theodore Crane had evidently commissioned a portrait of Jervis Langdon, to be painted from a photograph. In April 1879 Le Clear painted Mrs. Langdon from life (Olivia Lewis Langdon to OLC, 17 Apr 1879, CU-MARK). Neither portrait has been found.



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MS, CU-MARK.

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MicroML, reel 4.

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Donated in 1972 by Mrs. Eugene Lada-Mocarski, Jervis Langdon, Jr., Mrs. Robert S. Pennock, and Mrs. Bayard Schieffelin.

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