To Olivia Lewis (Mrs. Jervis) Langdon
13 February 1869 • Ravenna, Ohio
(MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00249)

Dear Mrs. Langdon—

It is not altogether an easy thing for me to write bravely to you, in view of the fact that I am going to bring upon you such a calamity as the taking away from you your daughter, the nearest & dearest of all your household [gods.1 You ] might well ask, “Who are you that presumes to do this?” And it would be [an ] hard question to answer. I could refer you to fifty friends, but they could only tell you (& very vaguely, too,) what I have been—just as a forester might talk learnedly of a bush he had ‸once‸ known well, unwitting that it had stretched its branches upward & become a tree, since he saw it. It is a bold figure, but not altogether an unapt one. For those friends of mine, who certainly knew little enough of me in the years that are gone, know nothing of me now. For instance, they knew me as a profane swearer; as a man of p convivial ways & not averse to social drinking; as a man without a religion; in a word, as a “wild” young man—though never as a dishonorable one, in the trite acceptation of that term. But now I never swear; I never taste wine or spirits upon any occasion whatsoever; I am orderly, & my conduct is above reproach in a worldly sense; & finally, I now claim that I am a Christian. I claim it, & it only remains to be seen if my bearing shall show that I am justly entitled to it. so name myself.

I beg, with justice, that you will make due allowance for the fact that I am in some sense a public man, in considering my character. You are aware that public men get ample credit for all the sins they commit, & for a multitude of other sins they never were guilty of. A private citizen escapes public scrutiny, & stands fares all the better for it—but my private character is hacked, & scorched & dissected, & mixed up with my public one, & both suffer the more in consequence. Every man in California could tell you something about me, but not five men in the whole community have really any right to speak authoritatively of my private character, for I have not close friendships with more than that number there, perhaps. I can state as an absolute truth, that only one person in all the world really knows me, & that is Miss Langdon. To her I must refer you. My own mother & sister do not know me half so well as she does. I never have been in entire [sympathy ] with any one but her (except with a brother, now dead,)2—I never have given thorough & perfect trust & confidence to any one in these latter years but her, [& so ] there has always been a secret chamber or so in my being which no friend has entered before. But I have no secrets from her—no locked closets, no hidden places, [ a ] no disguised phases of character or disposition. And so, only she, really knows me.

I do not wish to marry m Miss Langdon for her wealth, & she knows that perfectly well. As far as I am concerned, Mr. Langdon can cut her off with a shilling—or the half of it. To use a homely phrase, I have paddled my own canoe, 3 since I was thirteen, wholly without encouragement or fr assistance from any ‸any‸ one, & am fully competent to pad so paddle it the rest of the voyage, & take a passenger along, beside. While I have health & strength, & the high hope & confidence that God gave me in my nature, I will look to it that we always have a comfortable living, & that is all ‸(of a purely worldly nature,)‸ that either of us will care a great deal about. Neither of us are much afflicted with a mania for [money-getting ], I fancy. She thinks we might live on two thousand a year (& you know she is an able & experienced housekeeper & has a sound judgment in such matters,) but if I thought I could n’t earn more than that, I would not be depraved enough to ask her to marry me yet awhile. No, we can make the canoe go, & we shall not care a straw for the world’s opinion about it if the world chooses to think otherwise. This is our funeral, & we are proud enough & independent enough to think we can take care of it ourselves. ‸right.‸ If we get in trouble we will sell our point lace & eat our shucks in a foreign land,4 b & fight it out, but we won’t come back & billet ourselves on the old home, & have Charley charging us for board “on the [ u ] European plan” as he is always threatening to do with me when I linger there a few days. There’s a shot for Charley! I propose to earn money enough some way or other, to buy a remunerative share o in a [newspaper ] of high standing, & then instruct & elevate & civilize the public through its columns, & my wife (to be,) will superintend the domestic economy, furnish ideas & sense, erase improprieties from the manuscript, & read proof. That is all she will have to do. Mere pastime for a person of her calibre.

Now if anybody wants to ask questions, you can read them any or all of the above & say with perfect confidence, that it is the truth. I don’t know whether it is what you wanted or not, but I judged that the best way, after all, to write the letter, was to do exactly as I do when I wish to write a [newspaper ] article—that is, sit down & let it write [ itself. This ] letter has written itself—& you have the result. There is no restraint in it, no expediency, no policy, no diplomacy. It simply means what it says—nothing more, & nothing less.

I tender my loving duty to you & to Mr. Langdon, & wish you all ‸all possible‸ happiness & content, most cordially—& likewise the cheerfulness & peace of mind which were yours before your proud & happy prospective son came to disturb it.5

Sincerely—

Samℓ. L. Clemens.

[on back of page 1, used as a wrapper:]

Mrs. J. Langdon

Care of Charley.

Mrs. J. Langdon

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Prompted by the recent disturbing communications from California (see 20 and 21 Jan 69 to OLL, n. 6), Mrs. Langdon had asked Clemens to prepare a statement about his character and intentions that might be read or shown to the Langdons’ circle of friends and acquaintances. The present letter was his attempt to comply, but he soon had misgivings about it (see 15 Feb 69 to OLL). A general sense of Mrs. Langdon’s concerns is preserved in her 1 December 1868 letter to Mary Mason Fairbanks (see L2, 286–87 n. 3).

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2 Henry Clemens, who died in 1858 (L1, 80–82).

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3 The phrase was already proverbial in 1828 (OED, 11:53; Mathews, 2:1185). In about 1858 it became the title of a popular American song, written by Harry Clifton and arranged by M. Hobson.

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4 “And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.” “And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him” (Luke 15:13 and 15:16).

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5 Before 6 March Clemens had ceased to threaten Mrs. Langdon’s “cheerfulness & peace of mind,” for on that date she wrote to Mary Mason Fairbanks, in part:

. . . I feel oppressed (not painfully) with the constant reminder of the more than friend you have been to my child elect, Mr. Clemens—Of him what shall I say?—I cannot express to you a description of the strange, new element that has entered into, and radiated our family circle. I cannot tell you what a wealth we feel has been added to us, I cannot tell you how precious that addition is to us, neither can I describe to you the restful, yea beautiful background his mind & heart have already made to my husband’s & my future life.—I cannot tell you all these, nor have I need to, for you can imagine it all, and I know how heartily your heart enters into our lives in the matter.—Almost as a matter of course, Mr. Clemens & Livia’s engagement as far as known, has excited much surprise, but I am comforted with the assurance that a kind Heavenly Father has led them in all the way that has brought them together, therefore it is as we would have it. Their love is very beautiful to look at, and may it grow more & more perfect as they shall travel together toward immortality. (MTMF, 82 n. 1)

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

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

Previous publication: L3, 90–92; LLMT, 65–67.

Provenance:donated to CU-MARK in 1972 by Mrs. Eugene Lada-Mocarski, Jervis Langdon, Jr., Mrs. Robert S. Pennock, and Mrs. Bayard Schieffelin, great-grandchildren of Olivia Lewis Langdon.

Emendations and textual notes:

gods. You • gods.—|You

an • [‘n’ partly formed]

sympathy • symatpathy

& so • & & so [corrected miswriting]

a • [partly formed; possibly ‘o’ or ‘c’]

money-getting • money- getting

u • [possibly partly formed ‘w’]

newspaper • news-| |paper

newspaper • news-| |paper

itself. This • itself.—| itself

o. feb 13 • [o feb 13] [badly inked; possibly ‘o. feb 15’]