To Olivia L. Langdon
20 and 21 January 1869 • Toledo, Ohio
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00236)

Toledo, D Jan. 20.

My Dearest Livy—

It was splendid, [to-night ]—the great hall was crowded full of the pleasantest & handsomest people, & I did the very best I possibly could—& did better than I ever did before—I felt the importance of the occasion, for I knew that, this being Nasby’s residence, every person in the audience would be comparing & contrasting me with him—& I am satisfied with the performance. The audience were quiet & critical at first but presently they became warmly enthusiastic, & remained so to the very close. They applauded the serious passages handsomely. I have carried off the honors on the Rev. Nasby’s own ground—you can believe that, Livy.1 At the close, the people in the front seats came forward & I made a number of pleasant acquaintances of both sexes & several ages. I watched one young lady2 in the front row a good deal, because she looked so sweet & good & pretty & reminded me all the time of you—& I made almost made up my mind to go down & introduce myself—but she & her party hesitated for some time & finally came forward & were introduced—& I just think I looked some love into that girl’s eyes—couldn’t help it, she did so much remind me of you. I have forgotten her name, but she was from Providence, R. I., & is visiting some friends in Norwalk, Ohio, where I lecture [to-morrow ] night. I felt ever so kindly toward her for bringing you before me—I could hardly help telling her so. But she would have resented that, I suppose. Oh, why ain’t you here? Being reminded of you isn’t enough—I want to see you, you darling “sunbeam,” as Mrs. Fairbanks calls you—& it just describes you, too, Livy.

I am most handsomely housed here, with friends—John B. Carson & family. Pleasant folks, & their home is most elegantly appointed. They are as bright & happy as they can be. He is 35 & she is 31 & looks 25. They have a son 14 [ yeas years ] old & a daughter 13.3 The editors of the [newspapers, ] & some other gentlemen & ladies have been up to call on me since the lecture, & sat till midnight.4 They thought it fun[n]y that I would taste neither shampagne nor hot whisky punches with them, but Mrs. Carson said they needn’t mind urging me, as she had provided for me—& she had—a pot of excellent coffee & a lot of cigars. This reminds o me of that Chicago newspaper [notice. It ] was exquisitely lubberly & ill-written all the way through, & made me feel absurd at every other sentence—but then it was written in the kindest spirit, Livy, & the reporter had honestly done his very best, & so we must judge him by his good intent, Livy, & not his performance.5

And this naturally reminds me of the California letter you speak of (what you had previously said of it—or them, if there was more than [one,) has gone to Sparta, Wis., I guess, & I haven’t received it yet.) ] I don’t mind anything bad those friends have written your father about me, provided it was only true, but I am ashamed of the friend whose friendship was so weak & so unworthy that he shrank from coming out openly & above-board & saying all he knew about me, good or bad—for there is nothing generous in his grieving insinuation—it is a covert stab, nothing better. We didn’t want innuendoes—we wanted the truth. And I am honestly sorry he did not come out like a man & tell it.6 I am glad & proud that you resent the innuendo, my noble Livy. It was just like you. It fills me with courage & with confidence. And I know that howsoever black they may have painted me, you will steadfastly believe that I am not so black now, & never will be, any more. And I know that you are satisfied that whatever honest endeavor can do to make my character what it ought to be, I will faithfully do. The most degraded sinner is accepted & made clean on high when his repentance is [sincere—his ] past life is forgiven & forgotten—& men should not pursue a less magnanimous course toward those who honestly struggle to retrieve their past lives & become good. But what I do grieve, over, Livy, is that those letters have pained you. Oh, when I knew that your kind heart had suffered for two days for what I had done in past years, it cut me more than if all my friends had abused me. Livy I can’t bear to think of you suffering pain—I had rather feel a thousand pangs than that you should suffer one. I am so glad to know that this pain has spent its force & that you are more at peace, now. Do try to banish these things from your mind, Livy, please. You are so ready & so generously willing to do whatever will please me—now this will please me above all things. Think, Livy darling, how passionately I love you, how I idolize you, & so how distressed I cannot but feel to know that acts of mine are causing you pain—think how wretched such a reflection as that must make me, & summon back your vanished happiness, Livy. And reflect, in its place, that I will be just as good as ever I can be, & will never cause you sorrow any more. You will do this, won’t you, Livy? Oh, Livy, I dread the Sparta letter—for I know I shall find in it the evidence of your suffering—a letter, too, which I have watched the mails so closely for. And those California letters made your father & mother unhappy. But I knew they would—I knew they must. How wrong & how unfair, it seems, that they should be caused unhappiness for things which I alone should suffer for. I am sorry—I will atone for it, if the leading a blameless life henceforward can atone for it. Already the pleasure of my triumph of this evening is passing from me, & seems only trivial, at best, in presence of this graver matter.

Why, Livy dear, you didn’t “wound” me—you cannot do that, for I don’t judge you by your acts, but simply by your intent—& how could I suppose you would intend to wound me? I do not suppose, & could not suppose such a thing—& so I was not wounded, Livy—it is I that should be sorry that I wrote so heedlessly as to make you think so.

Livy, you didn’t write a “miserable, unsatisfactory note” to Mother Fairbanks at all—for I read it saw how it pleased her, & I read it & I know it pleased me, ever so [much. You ] didn’t know I would see it, but I meant to see it, for Saturday, Sunday & Monday had passed since I had seen a line from your dear hand, & I would have taken it away from her by main force if she hadn’t relented & given it to me. I was famished for a letter.7 Ah, I had boundless fun there all Monday & Tuesday. Nobody there but just the family, & I could relax & talk just as much nonsense as I pleased. We didn’t carry any sober faces about the house. Charlie Stillwell came home last night, & he & I sat there & swapped horrible ghost storeies till they were all half afraid to go to bed, & poor Mollie8 was sick with fright. Poor child, she loves to hear the stories, but then she can’t [ se sleep ] afterward. Whenever you write any of them again, please say, “It was a black cat—two o’clock in the morning.”

Oh you dear little stubborn thing, don’t I tell you you must be literal?—& yet here you come again & say, “How foolish I was to take that “week” with positive literalness.” You precious intractable [pupil! But ] I will forgive you—for a kiss.

Livy, I am mad at myself for my thoughtlessness—making you run to the daguerrean gallery five times, when I know that it is nothing less than punishment to make you sit up & be stared at by those operators—& I don’t want them staring at you, & propping up your chin, & profaning your head with the touch of their hands—& so, please don’t go again, Livy. Never mind the picture, now—wait till you are in New York again. I was too selfish—I thought only of my own gratification & never once of the punishment I was inflicting on you. But bless your heart, Livy, I never thought of your going five times. Don’t you go again, dear—now don’t you do it. And just you be the lovely good girl you are, & forgive my stupid thoughtlessness.

I am sorry for Mr. Beecher, for he does seem to have great trouble. It is such a pity that people will blindly criticise his acts, instead of looking deeper & discerning the noble intent that underlies them. [ How ] can people ever hope to judge correctly when they persist in forgetting that a man’s intent is the only thing he should fairly be judged by? But he ought not to grieve so much. God sees his heart—God weighs his intent—He cannot be deceived. I hope his Christian enterprises will succeed, in spite of all obstacles.9 Yes, Livy, I guess it is right for you to attend the sociables & do what you can, but I fancy you introducing yourself to a stranger & opening [a conversation ] calculated to make him feel comfortable & at home! You would couldn’t do it—& I am wicked enough to say I am glad of it, too. Let them introduce the strangers to you—that is the proper way, & the [safest. Some ] homely woman would be sure to repulse your advances, & I wouldn’t blame her—that is just the style of those homely women. And if you made advances to the men, you know perfectly well they would fall in love with you—& if you don’t, I do—& I couldn’t blame them, either. I can’t keep from falling in love with you—& nobody else. Well, I do love you—I do love you, darling, away beyond all expression. ‸Just kiss me once, Livy, please.‸

“Letters shall go to you as often as possible, but I cannot lock myself up to them.” Why you blessed little spitfire, you [ alwa almost ] got mad, that time, didn’t you! But when you say in the next sentence, “with a kiss, lovingly, Livy,” I [want ] to take you in my arms & bless you & soothe your impatience all away; & tell you that howsoever foolishly I talk, I love & honor you away down in my heart, & that its every pulse-beat is a prayer for you & my every breath a supplication that all your days may be filled with the ineffable peace of God.

Livy, don’t talk about my “crying out against long letters.” Just write them, dear, & I shall be only too glad to read them. You cannot make them too long, & you can’t make them uninteresting, for that is simply impossible. Child, I take an interest in even the blots you make! Make them as long as you can, Livy, please.

But it is just 2:30 A.M. & I breakfast at 8 precisely & take the train for Norwalk. Don’t forget the appointments, Livy:

Good-bye, with a loving kiss & a blessing—

For all time,

Samℓ. L. C.

Miss Olivia L Langdon

Present

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Toledo’s resident celebrity was David Ross Locke (1833–88), since 1865 editor, and by 1868 part-owner, of the Toledo Blade. In 1862 Locke had begun writing a series of newspaper letters in the guise of the bumptious and bigoted Reverend Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby. Rendering dialect in violently phonetic detail, and making use of the full range of ironic devices, he effectively championed liberal causes by seeming to oppose them. As Nasby he first took to the lyceum circuit with his “Cussed be Canaan,” a vitriolic attack on racial prejudice and injustice, which Clemens would soon hear for the first time in Hartford (see 10 Mar 69 to OLL). In late 1868, Locke added an alternate lecture on women’s rights, “The Struggles of a Conservative with the Woman Question.” He regularly earned $200 to $250 for each appearance, and as much as $400 in larger cities (Harrison, 3, 97–109, 121–23, 181–85, 192–201; Austin, 34–36, 74–98, 111–19; Toledo Blade History, 1–2). Locke was on tour himself at this time and therefore did not attend Clemens’s lecture in Toledo, although the Blade printed an appreciative review of it (reprinted in Enclosures to 23 Jan 69 to Twichell and family ).

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2 Unidentified.

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3 Carson was the general freight agent for the Toledo, Wabash and Western Railway. He and his family, who have not been further identified, lived at 190 Superior Street in Toledo (Scott 1868, 60, 103, 386). It is not known when Clemens became acquainted with the Carsons.

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4 Clemens’s visitors may have included the Reverend Robert McCune, Locke’s associate editor on the Blade, as well as J. W. Evers of the Deutsche Zeitung, and Clark Waggoner (1820–1903) of the Commercial (Scott 1870, 240; Rowell, 90).

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5 Clemens had forsworn “spirituous liquors” and “social drinking,” but not smoking cigars, to please Olivia (see L2, 284, 353, 354). The Carsons’ offer of refreshments had apparently recalled to him a well-intentioned but embarrassing passage from the Chicago Tribune’s “lubberly & ill-written” review of his lecture: “Next to Grant, he wears the belt for smoking. He smokes tobacco. Drink never crosses the threshold of his humorous mouth” (“Mark Twain,” 8 Jan 69, 4). He had probably described the review or enclosed a clipping in his twenty-fourth letter to Olivia, written between 8 and 12 January, but now lost, although she may have independently seen the following excerpt in the Elmira Advertiser on 16 January:

The Chicago Tribune says that the real name of Mark Twain is Samuel G. Clemens. Blessed with long legs, he is tall, reaching five feet ten inches in his boots; weight, 167 pounds; body lithe and muscular; head round and well set on considerable neck, and feet of vast size. He smokes tobacco. The eyes are deepset, and twinkle like stars in a dark night. The brow overhangs the eyes, and the head is protected from the weather by dark and curling locks. He looks as if he would make a good husband and a jolly father. (“Brevities By Pen and Scissors,” 4)

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6 In late November 1868 Clemens had provided Olivia’s parents with the names of “six prominent men, among them two clergymen” in San Francisco to serve as character references for him (L2, 358–63; AD, 14 Feb 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:110). The Langdons had now begun to receive replies from these men. Included was one that Olivia evidently described in the letter she sent to Sparta, Wisconsin, about 15 January, but which Clemens had yet to receive because he had been unable to get there (see 19 Jan 69 to OLL). This “California letter” may have been from James S. Hutchinson, who was not a reference provided by Clemens, but a former employee of Jervis Langdon’s, now a bank cashier in San Francisco. Langdon had instructed Hutchinson to solicit opinions from two men whom Clemens did give as references because he thought he was on good terms with them—the Reverend Horatio Stebbins, pastor of the First Unitarian Church, and the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, pastor of the Calvary Presbyterian Church (ET&S2, 536–37). Hutchinson managed to contact Wadsworth’s deacon, James B. Roberts, who was also the superintendent of the Calvary Presbyterian Sabbath School:

Mr. Roberts replied emphatically: “I would rather bury a daughter of mine than have her marry such a fellow.”

Later Mr. Hutchinson made a similar inquiry of the late Rev. Dr. Horatio Stebbins. . . . Doctor Stebbins’ reply was: “Oh, Mark is rather erratic, but I consider him harmless.”

These replies were forwarded to Mr. Langdon, who later responded to the effect that the matter had gone so far that he could not interfere with it, if he would. (Hutchinson, 36)

In 1906 Clemens recalled that “one clergyman (Stebbins) and that ex-Sunday-school superintendent (I wish I could recall his name) added to their black testimony the conviction that I would fill a drunkard’s grave” (AD, 14 Feb 1906, in MTA, 2: 110). For Clemens’s recollection of these responses just a few months after they were received, see 25 Aug 69 to Stoddard.

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7 See 14 Jan 69 to OLL, n. 8.

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8 Mary Paine Fairbanks (b. 1856), the family’s youngest child (Fairbanks, 552).

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9 For the past year, as a means of spreading the gospel to those who did not normally attend church, the Reverend Thomas K. Beecher had been conducting Sunday evening services at the Elmira Opera House, usually drawing crowds of thirteen hundred or more. The practice had angered some townspeople who thought a theater an unsuitable place of worship and others who felt it was depressing attendance at regular services. Beecher used his first three “Friday Miscellany” columns of 1869, in the Elmira Advertiser, to rebut his critics and he distributed fifteen hundred circulars soliciting public opinion on the matter (Thomas Kinnicut Beecher 1869 [bib11154], 1869 [bib11155], 1869 [bib11156]). Then, at his evening service on Sunday, 31 January, he reported that he had received fewer than one hundred fifty responses to his survey: “Of these answers, two were boyish, three were insulting, and one was obscene. Three advise the discontinuance of the meetings. Two give conditional advice to discontinue. The remainder (over one hundred and thirty), with various degrees of enthusiasm, ask for their continuance.” Repeating previous appeals for the collaboration of other pastors, Beecher announced: “Sunday Meetings at the Opera House will continue from month to month, as long as a Christian minister can be found to lead them and a company of attentive people to listen to Gospel messages, and join in prayer and praise to God” (“Sunday Meetings at the Opera House,” Elmira Advertiser, 1 Feb 69, 4). On Sunday, 21 February, while in Elmira to visit Olivia Langdon, Clemens attended Beecher’s evening gospel meeting, for the Elmira Advertiser observed “the pleasant countenance of Mark Twain” among the audience (“City and Neighborhood,” 22 Feb 69, 4). See also 9 and 31 Mar 69 to Crane, n. 7.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L3, 51–57; Wecter 1947, 38–39, with omissions; MTMF, 67, brief quotation.

Provenance:see Samossoud Collection, p. 586.

Emendations and textual notes:

to-night • to-|night

to-morrow • to-|morrow

yeas years • yeasrs

newspapers • news-|papers

notice. It • notice.—|It

one,) . . . yet.) • [first closing parenthesis left undeleted]

sincere—his • sincere—|— his

much. You • much.—|You

se sleep • seleep

pupil! But • pupil!—|But

How • How | How [corrected miswriting]

a conversation • a a conversation

safest. Some • safest.—|Some

alwa almost • alwamost [canceled ‘a’ partly formed]

want • [doubtful ‘wants’; ‘t’ followed by inkblot]

Ill. • [possibly ‘Ill.,’; ink splattered]